Eat your Colors

At dinner tonight I shared a secret with my children. I hated vegetables growing up. I would eat cherry tomatoes out of our family garden and pick the cucumbers out of salad, but that was it. I loathed the frozen spinach that was boiled with love, the bagged shelled peas that ended up microwaved on my plate. When my parents would try and placate my veggie hating self she would let me go to the shiny white freezer and pick out which veggie was for dinner that night. I picked what would be easiest to hide in my socks and then flush down the toilet at the end of dinner. (Sorry for the spoiler Mom ;)

As a family, we eat our colors and therefor our vegetables. My kids are very healthy in general, and we don't give them vitamins from a bottle, we give them vitamins by giving them colorful food. It turns out that fresh vegetables are awesome. So very awesome. And anything roasted in an oven at 400 degrees with olive oil, salt and pepper and occasionally tossed to brown evenly tastes like heaven. 

As soon as we realized that spooning fake food into our babies was not actually good for them we started them on good table food and veggies right away. Our youngest who is now 20 months old has been eating table food, modified in size, since he was 8 months old. He breastfed exclusively until he was 6 months and then for two months while we waited for teeth that never came (don't panic he now has 5 little teeth), he enjoyed things you may have never, ever heard of parents giving to their children. Like lightly cooked and still runny egg yolk with a pinch of sea salt. What about salmonella you say? Well, chances are that pastured eggs from well kept chickens do not carry it. I've been eating raw cookie dough and under cooked eggs for years, and am still well. For more information on traditional first foods for baby, check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. When my youngest was new my good friend and chiropractor Julie Vollertson recommended I read this cookbook and it amazed me how little I still knew about food and eating traditionally.

So, how do I get my kids to eat their vegetables? I make them a big part of our meals. Like I mentioned last post, meat does not hold a big spot on our dinner plates and so there is a lot of everything else, and I don't mean french fries and bread. Children will not starve themselves. If they don't eat what's on their plate, I don't make my kids sit there in a state of shame or a standoff. We have a saying. "Dinner is dinner, eat it or don't." 

First kid friendly tip of the night: We try to make sure one piece of each meal is fool proof and something they will enjoy for sure, but make sure not to let them fill up on it alone. If you eat everything and are hungry, seconds is more fruit or veggie. I often put a cutting board of fresh fruit or veg in the middle of the table and let my kids pick from that to round out their plates, offering them a sense of control over their meal.

Next kid friendly tip of the night: Offer a wide variety of veggies to your little ones at different times, snacks and meals and eventually they'll find some things they get excited over, and so will you. 

Meat Lover/Meat Basher

OK, who grew up loving meat? It was the center of the meal, usually most of the meal and as my mother often chided, what you needed to eat before dessert because "it was the most expensive part." Planning a meal around a nice cut of something bloody is an American tradition, isn't it? Well, really its a post-industrialized post-farm to table generation way to be decadent and prove to ourselves that we are well off. Eating meat sometimes reminds me of a grandmother that hides her beautiful hardwood floors with carpeting because in her day bare floors meant you were poor. Meat means decadence, well-to-do. When you plan a dinner party, don't we usually pick something very meaty to feature as the main course? Its because we easily and cheaply can as a society. It doesn't always mean that it is the right thing for our bodies, our neighbors and our world.

A few years back we made the transformation as a family into "flexitarians." That is, we eat meat but little of it. Its not that I object to killing animals, as long as they lived decent lives (and therefor taste better, too) I will eat them happily. I have even have the opportunity to know the animals before they meet their demise. My boys got to name my parent's two hogs this year, one was "Lunch" and ironically, he often is, and one was "Lockoo," who was a runt and ended up dying before we could eat him. We started eating less meat because, like it was 100 years ago, good meat is expensive and hard to come by if you can't bring it up yourself. Chicken breasts at an organic market, where they sell chicken that comes from our local community and the chickens did not grow up underground in each others' fecal matter, is almost $11 a pound. That's ridiculous, but the price I'll pay for chicken that is incredibly delicious when we have occasion to afford it.

Once upon a time, I envied people who owner big white freezers in their basements where they kept extra frozen meat for dinner that they could defrost beforehand. I had no idea how they could do that. Were they rich? And then it occurred to me when I placed our first purchase for meat by the animal. Last spring we bought a lamb, cute and fuzzy it may have been it was delicious and less expensive as a whole. I called Bird Creek Ranch in Cascade, MT where Cindy Kitteredge and her husband raise Icelandic Sheep and Highland Cattle and ordered a lamb. They delivered it, personally, to my door for no extra charge and for around $120 I had enough lamb to last me a full year. Meat in bulk is the answer. My parents, bless them, gave us half a hog as a Christmas present this year and also hunt, so we acquired much of their processed venison. And while Eating an excess of meat at a meal is a bad idea, when you can and do add it in, it tastes so much better when it died happy.

Family Tip of the Day: Serve less meat at a meal. It costs less at the market and frees up room for one more fruit or veggie on the plate to round out hungry little bellies.

Recipe for Almost Friday: Deep Dish Pepper Pizza and Butter Asparagus

I find myself being very creative for Thursday and Friday and it often inspires some yummy combinations. Tonight was a yummy pizza, all from scratch (even the sauce) and some Bountiful Basket Asparagus sauteed and steamed in butter and lemon juice. Here's how it went:

Step 1: Shake the 20 month old off my leg and Set the focaccia to rise-

In my stand mixer bowl I toss-

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 packet yeast

1/2 tbl garlic powder

Heavey 1/2 tsp of salt

1 tbl dried or fresh herb (tonight was dill)

Start the dough hook and slowly add 3/4 cup wamr water until combined

Drizzle ball with olive oil and set to rise for 30 minutes in a warm place

Step 2: Promise the 4 year old I'll take him on a bike ride and throw the quick pizza sauce in to roast then...

In a pyrex container I drop-

3 tomatoes (cored and quartered)

1 small yellow onion, quatered

2 tbl olive oil

1 tbl balsamic vingear

pinch salt

pinch pepper

two cloves garlic, chopped

Dried or fresh basil

I roasted it at 450 degress for about 30 minutes, while the dough is rising.

Step 3: Take three kids and dog on walk during roast and rise.

Step 4: Take the sauce from the oven and put it in the food processor, pulsing until it is a combined sauce-like item. I added a pinch of brown sugar or squirt of honey at this point.

Step 5: Put the focaccia dough in a cast iron pan, flatten it out and add the sauce to the top. I add several slices of provolone and grate the leftover cheddar. I julienne yellow peppers on top of the cheese and bake the pizza at 425 degrees for almost 20 minutes. 

Step 6: I cut a bunch of asparagus in half and toss it in a pan with 1/4 of butter and about 1 tbl fresh lemon juice. I cover the pan and steam the asparagus, occasionally tossing it until tender, about 20 minutes.

It was all delicious, and my kids ate it all :)

Years ago I sat with my one year old and then only child on the carpet of my living room, with a Blues blues DVD on our very small television, rapidly spooning Gerber Microwave soup-like item into his little mouth. After I put him to bed, I ordered myself a pizza and bread sticks and it showed up magically to my big brown front door.

I weighed 215 pounds (I'm 5 foot, 2 inches tall) and was always tired, always grumpy, and somehow spending terrible amounts of money on food although there were only three of us in the house. 

Two years later, as an experiment for Lent, we decided to eat organically for 40 days. It was delicious. The habit stuck and I no longer needed to have minor panic attacks when walking into the ultra bright Wal-Mart.

Now, I'm 100 pounds lighter, 100 times happier and have boundless energy (most days) for my three boys, ages 6, 4, and 20 months.

I cook organic and want to share my recipes with you. I insist it is possible while working 40 plus hours a week, feeding young and sometimes picky eaters, and shopping for five mouths. It is possible when you don't make as much as you would like (I'm a counselor at a treatment center, my husband works in retail.)