This is a good dinner for anyone looking for a quick vegan recipe. If your kids don't like the idea of tofu, they won't know it's hidden in the sauce.

If they don't like the spinach as pictured, you can add some of the spinach to the sauce as you're making it, too. Just make sure you do that in small batches, because too much can make the sauce brownish-green instead of creamy red.

(Click below for the recipe. ...)

(Photo by me)

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Pasta with Creamy Spinach and Red Pepper Sauce" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

There may be no greener chef than Alice Waters, the Berkeley, Calif., creator of Chez Panisse restaurant who is often considered the mother of the sustainable food movement. More important to this blog's readers, she also started the Edible Schoolyard project to get more healthful food into school lunchrooms and curricula.

So for our Green Week, I decided to make the family a chock-full-of-chard frittata from Waters' latest cookbook, The Art of Simple Food.

There are at least two "green" things about this easy dinner: Not only does it have a lot of chard, but it uses the whole bunch -- even the tough, colorful stems, which would often be thrown away. Here, they're cooked gently with onions to become a tender, flavorful addition to the dish. And a frittata is an easy way to use up leftover vegetables, pasta, or meat.

I had a bit of a cooking crisis in the middle of making this. ...

(Photo by me)

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Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

This week I had my kids choose a recipe together, from one of Emeril Lagasse's books for kid chefs. "Emeril's There's a Chef in My World" -- yes, "Emeril's" is part of the title -- has an international theme.

The children liked this recipe because of its Irish influence (they've got a fair amount of Irish blood). It had not only salmon (which my son likes) but bacon (which my son likes). My daughter just liked the idea of an Irish-themed dish, and probably the concept of pie for dinner. ...(Read on for the recipe.)

(Photo by me)

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Irish Salmon Pie" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Thought I'd give sneaking in some good stuff another try.

Though she generally passes up meat for moral reasons, my daughter loves hamburgers and occasionally eats them. This recipe from the latest cookbook by Missy Chase Lapine, the "Sneaky Chef," slips in spinach, blueberries and oat bran.

This cookbook is designed to help you fool your man into eating healthfully, which isn't an issue in my house. (That explains the "barbell" title.) But this recipe worked on the kids. These tasted like regular homemade hamburgers, though the texture was much softer (I'm not actually sure it would fool a grown-up guy.) 

(Photo by me)                                

(Read on for the recipe...)

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Barbell Burgers" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Couldn't resist linking to this WebMD account of a new study that finds picky eating may be more related to genetics than to the food you're offering, especially for boys. The study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia followed the eating habits of nearly 800 pairs of twins and found that identical twins tended to share the same preferences for food and drink, according to the article.

Interestingly, girls seemed more influenced by "environmental" factors, such as what snacks are available in the home.

For parents of very selective eaters (even though I've used the term picky eater before, I don't really like it), does this news bring any comfort? Or are you more confused than ever about how to help your child eat well?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

All I can say is, hooray for Mollie Katzen.  

She's the vegetable-loving author of the string of wildly successful Moosewood Restaurant cookbooks. Several years ago, she published a cookbook for preschoolers and up called Salad People, which I picked up recently at the library to inspire my picky 7-year-old daughter to try new foods.

Several of you have suggested getting the kids involved in choosing our meals, and I think it's a great idea. I've had Leah help me at the market before, but this time I gave her the book and told her to pick something for dinner.

Even though Leah really has a hard time trying new things, Katzen's whimsical drawings and kid-friendly step-by-step directions captivated her. She not only chose this recipe for tiny tacos, but wanted to make it herself.

The original recipe calls for packaged tortilla chips, but we made our own. It's very easy -- not to mention cheaper and more healthful. ...

(Read on for the recipe. ...)

(Photo by me)

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Tiny tacos" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Dinner Together day is a good time to mention a new campaign from The Family Tree, a Baltimore nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing child abuse.

The initiative, which runs through April to coincide with National Child Abuse Prevention Month, is called "Mealtime -- The Great Family Time." Sponsored by Provident Bank, the campaign will advertise what we've already been talking about here: that studies show eating meals regularly with the family helps kids do better in school; resist smoking, drinking and drugs; and have a better sense of identity.

You can find some recipes to enjoy together on the organization's web site. Even more interesting to me was the list of 20 "conversation starters" to get the family talking around the table. Two I plan to try are:

"What is one item you own that you really should throw away -- but probably never will?"

"If snow could fall in any flavor, what flavor would you choose?"

What helps get you talking with your children at meal time?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Thought we might have more success if we went back to pasta, but tried it in a fun shape -- little pillows of tortellini.

You'll see lots of variations on this recipe around; I've made this one less creamy than some traditional versions, but it still has a tasty sauce that benefits from some reserved pasta-cooking water.

It comes together quickly with frozen tortellini and frozen vegetables; I use peas because they're the only vegetable my daughter will taste at the moment, but you could easily substitute another vegetable or two. Asparagus would be a nice seasonal touch; just blanch it separately and toss with pasta at the end.

My son loved this dish, especially the savory prosciutto...

(Photo by me)

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Cheese Tortellini with Prosciutto and Rosemary" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

We were on the verge the other night of getting takeout, and we were talking Chinese. Then we thought about the electric bill, the oil bill, the price at the pump, the prices at the grocery store...all going up.

Why not make Chinese at home for a little less money?

Of course, it wouldn't be as authentic. But it would probably be healthier, and it would be a chance to introduce some different foods to our more, um, discriminating eaters.

We figured the egg in the fried rice would be a familiar sight for our kids, who both like scrambled eggs. And they'd get fresh vegetables without a lot of hidden fat and sodium....

(Click the link below to get the recipes)

 (Photo by me)

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Chinese At Home" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

My husband had a theory about why our last couple of Dinner Together recipes weren't very successful with the kids (although we liked them). "These aren't foods they recognize," he said. (I thought last week's pizzas were a pretty familiar concept, but he said the portobello "crust" took things too far.)

So I promptly put him in charge of finding this week's recipe. And I learned that when you have dinner together, sometimes it's the parents who have to try a not-so-favorite thing to take one for the team.

John chose a homemade vegetable macaroni and cheese from familyfun.com. I'm not a huge fan of macaroni and cheese, but it's definitely a familiar food to my young ones. Only it's usually a little more orange in color, and not from the carrots you see here....

(Photo by me) 

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Vegetable Macaroni and Cheese" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

The kids like pizza. They like hamburgers (at least the taste, if not how they're made). Portobello mushrooms taste a bit like hamburgers, are high in niacin and potassium, and can stand in for pizza crust. Portobello pizzas will make us all happy, right?

Well, maybe they'll make your family happy.

Even though we tucked the spinach for their pizzas under a bigger mound of cheese than you see in this picture, the children were less than enthused. And they didn't touch the broccoli or the sweet potato.

 I was sorry that they missed out on the easy homemade pizza sauce...

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Portobello pizzas" »

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In even more of a hurry than usual for this week's Dinner Together, I turned to a one-pot meal that made good use of the sausage I had just bought. For this streamlined version, I didn't even consult a recipe.

Unfortunately, my dear daughter thought it looked awful (even though I made sure to leave the sausage out of hers).

She didn't even want to try it. I told her that was fine, but she wouldn't get her normal after-dinner treat (usually a cookie or a square of chocolate) unless she took at least a couple of bites. She finally tried it, but gave the dish two thumbs down.

My carnivore son didn't want to try this either. But he did end up liking it, and ate plenty...

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Sausage with Chard, Cannellini and Tomatoes" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Dining blogger extraordinaire Elizabeth Large just posted this query about restaurants where you can feel comfortable taking an infant. I told her our audience would definitely have ideas about it, so feel free to comment there -- and come back here to talk about it some more.

Because we really love food, my husband and I found that not being able to dine out at a lot of our old favorite places was one of the more jarring aspects of becoming parents. Here are a few places we've been comfortable taking the kids:

--For special occasions, Gertrude's at the BMA. Added bonus -- paper table coverings with crayons.

--For breakfast, Golden West in Hampden (you'll see it's already on Elizabeth's radar.) We've also had good luck at Cafe Hon in Hampden and Miss Shirley's in Roland Park, especially now that it's expanded.

--When my daughter was just about 8 months old, we took her to the now-closed Polo Grill for Thanksgiving dinner. We thought we were just too overwhelmed to make the traditional dinner, and it was just the three of us. We had a great time cooing over her, and she was in a sunny mood. But the rest of the restaurant seemed so chaotic, and it just didn't seem right to be out on Thanksgiving. We bought some Cornish game hens and made another Thanksgiving dinner at home the next day.

Where do you feel comfortable taking the kids? And what do you think makes a restaurant infant/kid-friendly, or not?

(Sun photo by David Hobby/2005)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Wow. Our second “Dinner Together” experiment on a weeknight, and I’ve hit on what for my family can be considered a clear winner.

I was paging through Roy Finamore’s great cookbook, Tasty, around 5 p.m. when I found this recipe for Linguine with Tuna. When a recipe is quick and composed almost completely of items that are usually in my pantry, I’m there. By shortly after 6, we were at the table....

Continue reading "Dinner Together: Linguine with Tuna" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 5:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

  I thought I'd start our Dinner Together experiment with a recipe from one of my favorite cookbook authors -- my mother.

 Some years ago, she "published" some of her favorite recipes in a little bound book she titled "What Are You Doing at 5 o'clock?" She rated each dish E, M, etc., for degree of difficulty, and in a preamble (which has unfortunately fallen off my dog-eared copy), she talked about the 5 o'clock scramble to feed everybody.

Thing is, she was a stay-at-home mom, raising kids in the 1960s and '70s. It just goes to show you that getting dinner on the table has always been a struggle for families, even when times seemed, well, more leisurely.

I know I didn't always make dinnertime easy for my mom. I remember rejecting her cheese souffle for a long time. I didn't remember this "Fast and Delicious Broccoli Soup" at all.... 

Continue reading "Dinner Together: A Taste of the Past" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

If there's anything close to a magic bullet that gives a kid a leg up on life, the experts seem to agree it's sitting down, regularly, to dinner with his family. And in our house, we haven't been doing that.

Night meetings, late work, activities and dietary differences have led us to the course of least resistance: Dinner for the kids is around 6, consisting often of grilled-cheese sandwiches, scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese, or make-your-own pizzas. Dinner for the grown-ups often doesn't happen until around 9 p.m., after kids are in bed. That usually involves more varied fare -- and a well-deserved glass of wine.

Now, for the health of our family and the edification of those who read this blog, we're going to change that at least once a week. We're going to eat Dinner Together, and we're going to at least try to eat the same thing. In the spirit of your favorite reality show, I'm going to mercilessly report on the results. And if it doesn't work out so well for us, at least you have a new recipe.

First let me introduce the dramatis personae:

Continue reading "Dinner Together: The Adventure Begins" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)