Mommy FTW

Happy Holidays!  It’s going to be a light week on the blog since I’m so busy getting ready for the Holiday.  But, I wanted to share an important tradition around my house that you might want to try.

Every year for as long as I can remember we’ve made cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.  It’s a fairly big to-do and can take awhile.  So a few years ago I went looking for a new recipe that would speed things up so we could have breakfast at a reasonable hour and still keep up with the tradition.  I found a great recipe titled Overnight Cinnamon Rolls by Alton Brown (of Food Network).

As the name implies, you make these cinnamon rolls the night before and put them in the fridge, then the next morning you bake them off.  They are totally yummy.  I hope Cameron will give them a taste this year!  I’ll be making a double recipe since everyone is always clamoring for the left over rolls the next day.

Enjoy!  And Happy Holidays to everyone out there!  And, if anyone has a tradition they’d like to share, post it in the comments or on the facebook fan page.

You’ve gone apple picking, or perhaps are joining the Red Jacket Orchard CSA – either way there are plenty of apples around, and I’ve got just the recipe for them! This apple pie recipe is the very best one I’ve ever made – mostly because you pre cook the apples so the pie is dense with fruit and not watery at all. There’s also very little sugar added. I adapted it from a recipe I found on the Food Network website, which you can find here.

What you need:

About 8 Large Apples

1 Lemon

1/4 Cup of Sugar

1 Frozen pie crust (top and bottom – they come in a pack this way)

4 Tablespoons of Butter

Cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt to taste.

1 egg, beaten for an egg wash

For my pie I used one half peck of apples (1 small back from the farm). I’d say it was about 8 very large apples. If you use large apples, it’s less peeling / coring work, which is key. I also buy a pie crust. In my opinion the frozen pie crust you can get at the store is very tasty and there’s no sense in the hassle of making your own crust.

Preheat your oven to 375. When the oven is hot, pre bake your bottom crust (prick it a few times with a fork, put it in the oven for 5-8 minutes, then remove it and let it cool).  This keeps it fro getting mushy.  Leave the other pie crust out on the counter while you make the filling so that it can thaw to room temperature.

Peel and core your apples, slice into 1/8″ (ish) slices. Put in a large bowl and squeeze one lemon over the slices – be sure not to get any seeds in. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup of sugar. Toss the apples together with the lemon juice and sugar.

Melt 4 Tablespoons of butter in a large pot – I use a large copper pot, or a cast iron pot. Put the apples in the pot and toss in the butter. Cover, cook on medium high. Every few minutes toss them around a bit and re cover. In about 10 minutes the apples will become softer and release a lot of juice. See pictures 1 and 2.

Pour the apples into a strainer over a bowl. This will separate the juice from the apples. Pour the juice back in the pot and put it over the heat. The juice will reduce after a few minutes to a nice deep caramel. Add 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. These are to taste – if you like more spice, go for it. Add a pinch of salt. See pictures 3 and 4.

Add the apples back into the caramel and toss. There won’t really be a lot of liquid, which is good.

Pour the apples into the crust which should be on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray.  Make sure to mound them nice and high.  Flip the other pie crust over the pie and use a fork to crimp the sides together. Brush the top with a beaten egg – this makes it nice and shiny and pretty. Sprinkle on a little sugar.  Bake until the pie is golden brown – about 30 minutes? Keep an eye on it towards the end. See pictures 5 and 6.

FYI if you have extra apples that you can’t fit in the pie, put them in a ziploc bag and freeze them for another time.  Or, let your little one eat them!

Let the pie cool for at least an hour before slicing. Then enjoy! See picture 7 – aren’t you hungry?!

I first made this soup for Cameron last fall when my mom brought me loads of Butternut squash from her garden.  Well, it’s that time of year again.  Squash and apples are in season – and this soup uses both!  It’s nice and sweet, a great way to sneak in vegetables to your kids’ diet, and super easy to make.

Tasty Butternut Squash Soup

1 butternut squash cubed

1 apple (I didn’t bother to peel it) cubed

3 carrots cut in big chunks

2 onions cut in big chunks

2 cloves of garlic

Butter, Olive Oil

Low Sodium Chicken Stock

nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste

Here’s what it looked like before I pureed it

Saute the onions and garlic in 1 TB of olive oil and 1TB of butter on medium heat until translucent. Add the rest of the veggies and fruit, stir around and let cook another minute or so. Add enough chicken stock to cover all the veggies. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer untill everything is tender – 30 minutes or so.

Puree or use a food mill. Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste. I didn’t really add any salt to the soup, but instead added it to my portion as I heated that up. Also to mine I added some hot sauce.

You can serve this soup over some rice or orzo, or just on its own.

I’m pretty sure you could make this soup with any squash, and just throw in any veggies you have in the fridge!

When Cameron was younger he used to go to bed much earlier, which left me with lots of time in the evening to do some work and make a nice dinner before my husband got home from work.  But now adays Cameron is going to bed around 7:30 which doesn’t leave me much time to get anything done in the evenings.  Although I like ordering out, I get pretty sick of the options, and I also miss cooking.  So I’ve been trying to come up with fast and easy dinners – and I thought maybe some of you out there could use a little inspiration!  Below you can see a meal I made with a pre breaded chicken cutlet from Fresh Direct, and a fast pasta sauce that you can make in less time than it takes to boil water and cook pasta.

Fast and Tasty Pasta:

Boil some water for whatever kind of pasta you like.  Be sure to salt the water.

Heat 2-3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a small sauce pan.  Throw in a few red pepper flakes.  Once the oil is hot and rippling, throw in a handful of halved cherry tomatoes.  Sprinkle in a little salt.  FYI, Trader Joe’s has a little package of Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes that I personally like.  Put the lid on the pan, turn the heat to medium-low and forget about it for 5 minutes.  The tomatoes will sweat a little and sort of release their juicyness.

Put your pasta in the water and cook it according to package instructions.  Reserve 1/4 cup of pasta water.

When your pasta is almost done, throw some greens in the tomato sauce.  I use any salad greens I have… Spinach, arugula, whatever.  Put in about as much as you would in a salad.  Trust me, it will wilt down.  Put the lid back on.

Drain your pasta, then dump it in the tomato sauce.  Throw in a handful of crumbled cheese – I used goat cheese (again from Trader Joe’s).  I bet mozzarella or Parmesan would also work nicely, but the goat cheese made it tangy and creamy.  If the sauce seems too stiff then add some of the reserved pasta water.  Salt and pepper to taste.  This is enough for 2 side portions – but none of it is exact.  Play with the recipe to make it how you like it!

Cameron isn’t as much of a fan of scrambled eggs as I would like, although we have had occasional success with them. My pediatrician is always saying it’s great for Cameron to eat lots of eggs because they are a good source of iron – but besides french toast, I was having trouble getting him to eat them on a regular basis. Eventually, we discovered does seemed to like flat eggs because he was always going after the egg in my husband’s weekend favorite – the bacon egg and cheese sandwich. So, when it was Dad’s turn to make breakfast for Cameron, he came up with “Eggs Daddy Style.”

Here’s the method – beat an egg and put it in a hot greased skillet (I use a little Pam, and then a dot of butter). Cook for about a minute, or until the egg is lightly browned on one side. Flip the egg and cook for a few seconds more. That’s it! It’s basically a flat omelet with no filling – but feel free to get creative and add things in!

Today I decided to make some banana bread because I had lots of super-ripe bananas, and I didn’t think Cameron would get to them all before it was too late.  I searched online for banana bread recipes and I found one that used apple sauce too (I happened to have some that I bought at the Fort Greene farmer’s market). Here’s the recipe I used, which I adapted a little bit from this one I originally found on Cooks.com (I reduced the amount of sugar, added more banana, a few spics, and omitted the nuts).

Banana Applesauce Bread
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch of salt
2 c. flour
4 ripe bananas (mashed)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 c. applesauce

Cream sugar and oil. Add eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt and beat well. Add in the mashed bananas and applesauce. Add flour and baking soda, and mix until just combined. Bake in greased loaf pan, 350 degrees, 1 hour. Or if you want to use small loaf pans, or muffin tins, just bake it for less time – when a knife inserted into the bread comes out clean, it is done. Also, you will notice it pulling away from the edges of the pan slightly.

FYI – you could probably use whole wheat flour, although I would recommend doing a 1/2 and 1/2 with whole wheat and regular flour.  Using 100% whole wheat flour might make the bread crumbly and hard for baby to pick up.

I hope your baby (and you) enjoy it!

Over the winter months I do a lot of cooking in the oven.  It’s so much easier and less messy than on the stove, and I don’t mind that it makes my apartment nice and toasty either!  I recently discovered that Cameron enjoyed the roast chicken breast I was making.  It’s so easy I thought I would share the method.  For those less inclined cooks out there – don’t worry, it’s super easy!  This uses chicken breast on the bone, with the skin on.  I don’t give Cameron the skin, but it helps keep the chicken moist during cooking.

Set your oven to 400

Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray (or you can use a dutch oven or casserole type dish)

Place the chicken bone side down / skin side up on the baking sheet

When the oven is up to temperature, bake for 45 minutes, or until the internal temperature is 165.

That’s it!  If you want to make this for yourself – I would add some salt and pepper to the chicken before baking it.

Of course Cameron can’t eat all this at once, so I take off a few bits at meal time and leave the rest wrapped up in the fridge.

I’ve been struggling to get Cameron to eat his vegtables lately, and I had a nice butternut squash my mom had brought me from her garden, so I thought I might as well use it and make some soup – I hoped Cameron would eat it.  But at least I knew I would enjoy it, if he didn’t. Well, it turned out to be a hit, so I thought I would share my recipe:

Tasty Butternut Squash Soup

1 butternut squash cubed

1 apple (I didn’t bother to peel it) cubed

3 carrots cut in big chunks

2 onions cut in big chunks

2 cloves of garlic

Butter, Olive Oil

Low Sodium Chicken Stock

nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste

Here’s what it looked like before I pureed it

Saute the onions and garlic in 1 TB of olive oil and 1TB of butter on medium heat until translucent. Add the rest of the veggies and fruit, stir around and let cook another minute or so. Add enough chicken stock to cover all the veggies. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer untill everything is tender – 30 minutes or so.

Puree or use a food mill. Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste. I didn’t really add any salt to the soup, but instead added it to my portion as I heated that up. Also to mine I added some hot sauce.

I served Cameron his soup over some rice yesterday, and today I am going to serve it over some orzo (little pasta that looks like rice).

I’m pretty sure you could make this soup with any squash, and just throw in any veggies you have in the fridge!

We were in Washington DC over labor day weekend visiting Cameron’s grand parents.  Grandma is an avid gardener and gave me some butternut squash to bring back to Brooklyn.  At first I was going to puree it, but then I thought I should go the finger food route.

I roasted chunks of the squash at 425 for about 30 minutes with a little olive oil until it was golden brown and nice and soft.  I turned it once while it was in the oven.  I put it in a tupperware in the fridge and now at meal time I bring out a few chunks for Cameron to eat.  He loves it!  Roasting the squash really helped to bring out its natural sweetness.  Yum!