Bread, Wine, Salt

lunch for 1 adult and 2 preschoolers This is how I get my kids to eat vegetables.* Snack at preschool tends to be fruit and some kind of simple carb.  I'm not thrilled by this, but as that's the only thing about that school that doesn't thrill me I try not to whine too much. Snack yesterday was white rice, soy sauce and pineapple, today was canteloupe and cheese quesadilla.  I try to make lunch focus on veggies since I know the starchy carbs will reappear at afternoon snack (today I made lemon millet muffins) and possibly again at dinner.   This box provides 1 hard cooked egg per person, lots of veggies and some ranch dressing for dip.  My older son, who rarely eats all the way through a hard cooked egg dipped his egg in the dressing and ate it all, along with a good number of veggies.  Dip is a good way to lure unsure eaters to their vegetables.  If you choose or make a dip with quality ingredients the bit of fat it adds will not only make the v...

I dropped a bunch of cookbooks in front of my husband this weekend and told him to pick meals for the week. He filled out a weeks worth of dinners with references so I could find the recipe.  It was very helpful.  What he didn't do was actually read the recipes.  Once of his choices was spaghetti with plum tomatoes and basil.  I didn't follow the recipe because I'm an inherently lazy cook and because I believe I am capable of throwing together a fresh tomato sauce.  You are also capable of creating such a lovely thing. So I'm not going to give a recipe, but I will walk you through the process. Start with good tomatoes. There's no point in trying this with mediocre tomatoes.  Buy enough to feed however many people you're going to feed.  Set a pot of water in the stove to boil. Coarsely chop the tomatoes, place in a colander and sprinkle with a small amount of salt.  Allow to drain.  When the water comes to a boil, drop spaghetti, ...

You may be aware than I am a big fan of homemade birthday cakes. But my husband doesn't want cake, he wants a cheese custard with a crust. Sure, we call it cheesecake, but it's not cake. I feel like I'm cheating somehow, serving up custard pie when I should be making layers and frosting them, and maybe even trying out some of the tricks I learned at the cupcake workshop I attended a while back. But no, he wants cheesecake and it's hard to argue that the layer cake means I love him more than the cheese pie he really wants. So it must be the best cheesecake possible. Naturally I turn to someone known for being meticulous about recipes, Jack Bishop of America's Test Kitchen. The cheesecake is fabulous. It is creamy with just enough sweetness. The crust holds together but doesn't require you to hack at it with the knife. We will ignore the fact that this recipe comes from gimmick cookbook Cooking with Friends where the Friends in question live...

We were in week five of a kitchen renovation that the designer blithely assured us would take three weeks. We had just gotten to “functional kitchen” and we'd been eating at restaurants and from take-out containers so much that I just needed to cook, and I owed a meal (or twelve) to some friends. Our new cabinets, counters and most of the appliances came from IKEA, so Swedish cuisine seemed appropriate, and I broke out my copy of Aquavit: And the New Scandinavian Cuisine Marcus Samuelsson offers up a variety of modern dishes from his restaurant that are inspired by the food he learned to cook in his grandmother's kitchen. Naturally I went straight to the cliché of Swedish Meatballs. I'm told that the Italian-American classic spaghetti and meatballs is an American invention, meant to cater to the meat loving Americans that the Italian immigrants wanted to attract to their restaurants. My guess is that my own Swedish-American ancestors were part of that crowd o...

After several weeks of blowing off playgroup (It's hot outside in the summer!) and then showing up with a grocery bag full of whatever seemed lunch like at the local grocery store, I finally got a lunch packed. One apple, one cucumber, and a handful of carrot chips with some ranch dressing for dip was enough for me and the boys. We each had a yogurt and water.  Those of you wondering where the starch is, it was at breakfast, morning snack and dinner. Don't forget to check out the other lunches at What's for Lunch

A hearty welcome to Maud's readers. She's right. This space is sadly neglected.  I actually have a couple of posts in the hopper though, including one about Swedish Meatballs that will be ready just as soon as *someone* gets the photos processed.  Ahem. In the meantime you might enjoy the following posts which seem appropriate to the changing weather: An easy, delicious chili cornbread casserole for when you need to take something to a potluck, or you want to make something on Sunday that you can portion out for lunches during the week. A lovely, moist but not oily, carrot cake , great for birthdays and any cake requiring occasions. And finally this Red Kidney Bean Stew is perfect for miserable days when you think it might never stop raining or be warm again.  It's so good it will make the sun shine in your house.  (Maybe) I hope you enjoy these, and that you'll come back for the meatballs (ooh, and there's cheesecake coming soon, too.  Y...

More than once I have gotten within half an hour of dinner time and had no idea what I was going to do about dinner. Nothing was planned, and I could not mentally survey my pantry and compound something easy. On days like that, there are only two ways to avoid a restaurant: spaghetti or having something in the fridge that I can scoop into bowls and call dinner. In the winter time that something is soup, but in the summertime it's tabbouleh or this easy to assemble salad. It also travels well to potluck lunches. photo by Rich Renomeron 2 cans black beans, rinsed OR 2.5 cups cooked blacked beans OR 1 ¼ cups dried black beans 16 ounces frozen corn (or fresh if you can get corn picked that day) 1 jalapeño pepper (optional) ¼ cup olive oil 2 bunches scallions 1 bunch cilantro 5 medium tomatoes OR a pint of cherry tomatoes juice of 2 limes salt and black pepper to taste If you're starting with dried beans, cook beans until tender . Preheat oven to 400 F. Line a baki...