Thai is a very close second (sometimes it is first) favorite behind Chinese food and one of the reasons why is because of their amazing sauces… peanut sauces, sweet spicy sauces… just amazing.

Last night I made this sauce to put on chicken satay, yes I know that usually people eat it with peanut sauce but I had no peanuts and I wanted this. Sue me.

I have to share the sauce here because it is just so amazing. Right now I am eating it poured over some steamed jasmine rice and just loving it.

Sweet sauce for spring rolls (this is also REALLY good on tofu)

Start off with a simple syrup… 1 part water and 1 part sugar. For this recipe I used half a cup of both. These need too simmer and reduce by 1/2 – 1/3. You know it is ready when you put a spoon in it and it coats the spoon.. you know.. like syrup.

add to this 1/2 of red wine vinegar. i actually didnt have any so i used white whine vinegar.. the result was very similar though not as good… but know that you can use this in a pinch. make sure that it is good stuff though…not the cheap stuff. this is worth it.

Now, I know you are supposed to use a couple Tbsps. of fish sauce but we cant have that here and if you are veganizing this you cant… so omit this. The result will not be exactly the same but really.. it doesnt need it (i know I might get angry emails because of this and I am prepared to deal with that).

After it reduces you add the vinegar, fish sauce, red pepper flakes (to taste, I like it HOT so I add 3 or 4 tsps.) and some shredded carrots. again.. to taste.. I like it in mine a LOT. I usually HATE carrots but this calls for them… and they give it a nice color.

Mix this all together and let it sit for a bit. Chilling it would be good but not chilling it is ok too. I also add a little green onions to it. Most people dont but I love it in mine.

If I had a choice I would hook an IV full of this stuff to my vena cava… the rest of you that understand moderation just should enjoy this.

A little bit of family history here… my brother wont eat veggies. My father wont eat veggies. My mother would try to force feed us canned green beans and spinach which would promptly make us gag and puke yet we were not allowed to get up from our chairs until it was all off of our plate. So… I grew up hating veggies. One of my youngest memories is of sitting at a table with a plate of green metal smelling goop in front of me that my mother called spinach that I saw her pour out of a can and into our plates, it looked like sludge. I have vivid memories of the juices that my mother would make us with her extractor… all carrot based. I hate carrots.  She would try to trick us by putting apples, pears, and other fruits into it… but it was just a waste of good fruit to us. The carrots killed the yummy fruit flavor, worse when celery was put in it. ICK.

To this day I still believe that this harmed the way that my family views healthy eating. I cook and if the words “healthy” are uttered it is almost like a bad word… yet if I dont tell them what is in it.. they will eat it… and ask for seconds… so I have stopped saying what is in food and we are good to go.

WHen cooking for MIke and the kids I dont have the same struggle. Mike and i eat most veggies and Kate will too, we are starting Calvin on eating everything and hope that we dont have troubles with him. Yet sometimes all kids, even the best eaters…get picky.

There are days when Kate wont eat anything but soy cheese and crackers with maybe two grapes and 4 raisins. I have realized that this is why all kid food is “fortified” and has “100% of the needed supply of vitamins and minerals”.. because you dont know if that is all they are going to eat for the day… so you want to make sure that your food packs a serious punch healthwise.

This explains the allure of books like  The Sneaky Chef,and Deceptively Delicious. They are all mother’s desperate attempts at trying to trick their kids into eating better.

This becomes a real issue for those of us with kids with allergies or who are veg*s. I remember the phone call from my own inlaws that were concerned that Kate wasnt getting enough calcium in her diet because she couldnt eat dairy. I of course dont worry since I know that soy milk, tofu, and other products that we have on hand all have calcium in them. Leafy greens also have that and her diet is balanced enough that we arent concerned about her calcium intake.

I found the Pyramind website that the government has set up has some interesting info on where veg or dietary restricted families can get their nutricion from.

As for us?

I have been known to put turnips, brocolli, and cauliflower into mashed potatoes. I put tomatoes and spinach into breads. I bread meats with oats and whole wheat flour.  Grated zucchini and carrots taste great in cakes.  My family loooves quiches. Some phyllo dough and cream cheese/tofutti is a great device for delivering greens and other veggies into picky eaters.  Raw green beans are crunchy like chips and are well loved, sprinkle some paprika and salt on them for a twist. Or better yet, make your own baked veggie chips. Soups are a staple here. We make our own broths that are boiled down veggies and bones or something similar…  the list goes on and on…

Want some fun drinks for parties?  Here is one from Veg Kitchen:

Sneaky Peppermint!

Makes about 2 to 2 1/2 cups

• 1 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup brewed, then cooled, peppermint tea (fairly strong)
• 1 cup ice cubes
• Handful of fresh spinach leaves (don’t let anybody see you do this.. it will make the drink green but not interrupt the flavor, adds nutrition)
• Raw sugar to taste, optional

Whirl away until in a food processor or blender until smooth. Pour into glasses to serve.

Teas are a great way to get nourishment into kids too. Red Raspberry Leaf and Nettle Tea which I drank when i was pregnant is a great sources of potassium , iron, and other goodies for your blood. Make a tea of these and make it into a popsciple for kids while sweetened with honey or stevia makes a good treat that they will LOVE to eat…. and they will think that they are getting away with something when they do!

Now I am off to find a way to sneak peas and liver into cream cheese icing. Wish me luck!

Squash is a food that is in season a great deal of the year here, our climate seems to lend itself to it being grown. We have this green which is my fave, a few yellow variaties, and some other round ones that look like little pumpkins.

The name of my dish “Calabazitas” is actually “little pumpkins” in spanish. This is a really great veg*an dish that is easy to make and inexpensive. We have been getting some great squash in our share recently and i had been waiting for the right opportunity to make a good dish out of them. Last night was the night.

I chopped some red onion. I like using red in this because it is sweeter. I let it sweat for a bit… I didnt want it brown but just translucent and soft. You know what I mean.  I love onion when it is soft and sweet. It adds depts to the party.

After this I added the chopped squash. I like it in squares or strips. I dont know the fancy schamncy name for that… I didnt go to culinary school folks. I just know that small means it cooks faster and I dont have patience or time. So small it is. I let those sweat for a bit and then I add a can of diced tomatoes and raise the heat a bit. At this time you can add corn, cooked and drained beans, and maybe a little veggie broth.  For spices I like cumin (duh), garlic, salt, pepper, maybe some red pepper or chipotle powder… but only if you can handle it. This dish has some great flavors on its own so it doesnt need much. Dont over do it. Cover and let it simmer for a while.

It tastes great right off of the oven but it also tastes good cold…I dont know why it actually tastes better the next day right out of the fridge like a cold soup.

This is a pretty typical mexican dish that I inherited from my mom. It is savory but subtle and easy for kids to eat because it is in small-ish chunks. I tell my kids that the tomato is ketchup. That helps a ton too.

Curried Lentil Soup
Serves 6 heartily

2 teaspoons olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 1/4 teaspoons curry powder or paste
4 cups chicken broth (vegetarians, use veggie broth)
2 cans coconut milk
3 cups lentils (or use one package)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil or 2 teaspoons dried
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes — undrained

I sauteed the onions and cabbage (i added cabbage to the soup) and then added the rest of the ingredients…  the result was amazing.

We had it for dinner Friday night and then we had it for lunch Saturday along with some chicken soup. My inlaws came over and they mixed the soups together which was really quite tasty.

Yesterday I made oats and cheese bread and it was finished up fast. Too fast.

I will post pics later on tonight. Yum-o.

Since Mike has been out of town I know that he has not been eating well so I made a salad for dinner to help his body recover from the evil crap food that he has been eating in Austin.

I used the fruits from our CSA share this week and veggies. It has beet greens, apples, citrus, and more.

I put some honey covered walnuts in it and make a citrus and apple cider vinegar dressing.

The bad:

I made baked fudge.

I baked it in some ceramic loaf pans that i have. One for me, one for Mike.

Mike had his in a nice glass container. With ice cream.  He is civilized… that cannot be expected from me.

I ate mine right out of the pan

Baked Fudge

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 heaping tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300 to 325 degrees.
Beat eggs until light in color. Beat in sugar until just combined.
Add cocoa, flour, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Mix gently until well combined.
Pour batter into four large ramekins or 1 8-inch square baking dish.
Set ramekins or pan into a larger pan halfway full of water.
Bake 40 to 50 minutes, or until upper crust is crispy and the rest of the batter is firm but not set. Toothpick should come out…not clean, but mixture should not be overly runny.

I ate mine with ice cream, you can make a whipped cream topping for it.

I shamlessly stole this from Pioneer Woman. Bless her soul.

It is called Industry Country Market it has solar and wind energy and they have classes about green living. They are also a little store and a quaint looking building.

This has been my dream todo for years. I want a little restaurant/store outside of the city.Where i grow my food and serve it to others.  Mike had even thought about putting an alien ship stuck on the land and give tours.

Someone already did this and it makes me sad because now if we do it, we will just seems like copycats. Oh well.

I have been cooking up a storm recently. Above is the banana bread that I made today.

After picking up my co-op share this week I was enthralled that we got greens and cauliflower. Today I made cauliflower curry with coconut milk for dinner. I veganized it (just like the banana bread above) because the cream does not go well with Kate.

Michael was in Austin this week for a few days and I dont realize how much I love him until he is gone… so when he got back I was so happy and now all I want to do is stare at him and make sure he never leaves my sight again. SO of course I cook a lot because I figure that if I cook good food he will never leave again right?

I made this carrot cake last week and was very happy at the outcome. It was vegan and moist and wonderful. I am pretty sure that I have not had a cake that was better than this. I didnt not frost it at all but it didnt need it. I also hate most frostings.

kate helped me with this.

Here I am shredding the carrots with her. I used baby carrots because I think they are sweeter.. I could be wrong but well it tasted wonderufl so I dont care if I am wrong or not.

She was lifting the bowl to me and saying that it smelled good, and it did. She loved eating the shredded carrot bits, she was so funny. She also loved mixing the cake with me.

I saw this recipe for Five Minutes a day bread and it seems like it would work for us. We are crazy busy and sometimes this break making thing takes a real long time.

We will get brave though…. and when we do I want to try this potato bread recipe.

Tonight is the first night that Mike goes back to teaching this semester. He teaches two classes again, this time on Tuesday nights and on Saturday mornings. I always miss him and the kids go crazy without their beloved father.

Another gadget that I have been loving this new year has been my rice cooker. Mike bought me an amazing rice cooker for Christmas last month and I have been really using it often.  Last night I made chicken Mole sauce with spanish rice and the rice cooker took care of the rice for me.  I boiled the chicken and used the stock from it to make the rice and to make the mole sauce.

Speaking of food… Calvin my little chunkster is crazy trying to get solid food into his little mouth. He grabs at plates, he tries to stuff things in his mouth all of the time. He lunges at people eating and he stares at our plates, following the food to our mouths like a lost puppy. I feel sometimes like an awful mother for not giving in to his obvious desire for wanting solid foods, but I have my reasons.

What are they?

Glad you asked!!

To begin with these are the signs that an infant is ready for solids. (From Kellymom.com)

• Baby can sit up well without support.
• Baby has lost the tongue-thrust reflex and does not automatically push solids out of his mouth with his tongue.
• Baby is ready and willing to chew.
• Baby is developing a “pincer” grasp, where he picks up food or other objects between thumb and forefinger. Using the fingers and scraping the food into the palm of the hand (palmar grasp) does not substitute for pincer grasp development.
• Baby is eager to participate in mealtime and may try to grab food and put it in his mouth.

Shake n Bake is 85% there but not 100% so he gets no solids yet. He is also not 6 months old yet which is the minimum that one should wait to introduce solids to a child. We have a family with a history of allergies, Kate has dairy allergies so I am going to wait as long as I can to make sure that his “gut” has been closed. For the first year solids are just for play anyways as babies need to stay on breastmilk being their primary source of nutrition for at least a year so I am in no hurry.

If you see the picture above, he isnt hurting or starving… so we really dont need to stuff him full of food quite yet. Also it will be cheaper for us to not feed him solids. When he is on solids he will eat us out of house and home. Seriously folks.

We both realized that neither one of us uses the microwave… so why not get rid of it?

When we first started dating we did not have a microwave because we lived in a teeny tiny apartment in which we hardly had room for anything, so this little machine was just not feasible. When we bought our house we realized that we owned a microwave it had just been in storage so we brought it out and it has been sitting on our counter ever since.

I think the only thing I use it for is to melt butter when I am feeling lazy… but other than that I have no use for it. We hate how it reheats food. We dont heat up the baby’s expressed breastmilk in it because you arent supposed to… we dont have frozen foods…. so really we have no use for it.

I am considering freecycling our microwave sometime this week.  I fear that as soon as I do I will realize that I am going to just DIE without it but somehow… I dont think that it will be a problem.

I totally believe in short cuts when cooking… but there are a few things that I just will never understand. One of them is why people would use a mix for pancakes. Really people it is not that hard to make pancakes. I cant bake to save my life yet somehow I am pretty decent at making pancakes of all sorts.

This morning I made banana pancakes with some ripe bananas that needed to dissappear soon. We all ate them up and they made for a hearty breakfast with some fruit salad.

After the breakfast we all got ready for our busy day.

Our front flower bed hadnt been touched in ages and it needed some real work. I decided that this weekend was when we would start on tilling the soil for our fruits and veggie that we will be growing this next year in our garden. It was a nice warm day, around 75 degrees, and it had been for a couple of days. This made it a good time to start airing our ground and getting rid of weeds and old plants. It was hard work and we didnt get all of it done but we did get a great deal done. It was also a ton of fun. Recently leading agencies have some out saying that kids dont get enough Vitamin D which is because they arent outside in the sun enough. I wanted to make sure that my kids didnt have this problem.

Kate even helped.

She was on her little knees digging out weeds and airing out the dirt.

The little outdoor set that my brother in law gave Kate for christmas was immediately put to good use and it got all dirty. She used it to carry around dirt and to scrap the ground with her little hands.

Calvin was part of the fun too. Mike and him were outside hanging out with us. We had some waterproof blankets for picnics that we put him on and he sat up and watched us like a champ.

We filled a wheelbarrow with weeds and trash and compost goodness… i dug so hard that I bent a rake.

I guess I dont know my own strength huh?

We then started raking up the leaves to put in our compost pile which makes beautiful soil for us to use.

Kate did a bang up job helping us rake up leaves. You know when she wasnt trying to eat them.

Of course the leaves provided her with a new set of toys to play with.

You cant fake laughter like that… and you cant give a child the happiness and peacefulness that comes with a roll in the sun with a Wii or Xbox.

After a while Mike got in on the action. Calvin needed to nurse for a bit and Mike got jealous of all of the fun that Kate and I were having.

when we were done, she was ready to go again… you cant stop a motivated little girl with dirt on her mind.

I know that it isnt supposed to be 75 degrees around christmas, but if it is going to be… why not use it for good?

After this we all had a good shower and the kids took a nap. No better way to get a little Vitamin D huh?