I am currently co-teaching a cooking class to a group of 6-9 year olds. Our goals have been helping all of the kids to gain confidence in the kitchen, introducing them to new healthy foods, and exploring new foods and food preparations.

Over the course of the past weeks we have been working with them to be open to trying new foods, even if the foods being offered are ones that they would normally be resistant to eating. We have done this in a few ways.

1)   As a class we all agreed that we would try very hard not to use words such as “gross” or “yuck” and phrases such as “I don’t like it.” We talked about how we didn’t want to make anyone feel badly about their tastes and also about how sometimes when you hear someone make a negative comment about a food it can influence how you then taste the food.

2)   No one is ever forced to try a food and they are always welcome to quietly spit it out into a napkin if they don’t like it. This created a sense of safety and, amazingly, everyone has tried everything we have made!

3)   We have been exploring flavor and food. Over the course of a number of classes we have played with a base ingredient and then added different flavors to make different dishes. For instance, with yogurt we made a sweet yogurt dip and we made a tzatziki. With chickpeas we made hummus and maple-roasted chickpeas. By doing this, the kids have begun to understand the power of preparation—that even a food that may not normally be a favorite can become delicious if it is made differently than we are used to.

So this week we decided to push them a little bit! In the first class one of the questions I asked was: what are your favorite foods and what are foods that you either are not so sure about or that you don’t enjoy eating? Almost everyone in the class named spinach as their least favorite food. So this week we made two recipes with spinach.

In order to try to make everyone comfortable we sat down together before cooking and I laid the groundwork. I reminded them of the ways that we had explored making foods taste differently, I reminded them about how we taste foods and respond to them, and then I told them with a lot of enthusiasm about the dishes we were going to make using spinach: a mock-mint chocolate chip ice cream and pesto for mini-bagel pizzas.

Some kids were quite nervous to be working with spinach, but they all remained engaged and open. The mock-ice cream was an easier sell because it was such a fun and novel idea, but the pesto was definitely a stretch for some kids. As we made the pizzas with the pesto, I gave each kid control over how much pesto they wanted on their pizza, and to my surprise everyone was willing to have at least a little bit. They were also invited to taste the pesto before they spread it on their bagel. It was wonderful to see their faces as they tried the dreaded spinach in both of its forms and discovered that they LOVED it.

I’m not expecting the major spinach haters of the group to suddenly be willing to eat steamed spinach at the dinner table, but I do hope that this experience will help to take at least some of the fear away and that perhaps they will be a little bit more open when they encounter spinach the next time.

There were two lessons that really came home to me in this experience. One was the power of setting the scene for trying new foods. By remaining pressure-free and fun about it the kids were able to feel in control and, therefore, remain open. The other was importance of trying different methods of preparation. If you’ve got a spinach hater, or even if you don’t, I highly recommend this spinach pesto recipe as a fun way to use this healthy leafy green vegetable!

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Spinach Pesto

Course Sauce

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 5 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• 6 ounces baby spinach
• ½ cup walnuts
• ½ cup parmesan
• 1 clove garlic
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Place all the ingredients into a food processor and process until it forms a paste. Taste for seasoning.
• Use as a pizza base, in sandwiches, or on pasta

Notes

If using for pasta, save a bit of the pasta water to help to mix the sauce into the pasta

<p>The post Spinach Pesto and the Power of Preparing Foods in New Ways first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>

It seems like each family has their own recipe for the special occasion version. Some use lots of different kinds of cheeses, some use only one, some have secret ingredients, and everyone thinks theirs is the best.  We tend to think of this dish as labor intensive and time consuming, so it is usually reserved for special events and macaroni and cheese bake-offs.

The boxed version also has a special place in many of our hearts.  We think of it as a quick and easy meal. It reminds us of our childhoods. It is comforting.  For me, it was one of the first things I learned to cook entirely on my own. My mom flat out refused to make it for us because she thought it was junk, so her rule was: “You want to eat it. You have to cook it.” It was actually ingenious on her part because it got my brother and me into the kitchen at a young age and the independence and confidence it built led us to explore cooking further. Sure, there was that time when my brother and I were home alone and I almost burnt down the house by leaving the dishcloth on the stove, but I got it to the sink in time and we’re here to tell the tale.

To be totally honest, for the first few years of my kids’ lives, I made the boxed stuff for them, too. I figured I had grown up eating it occasionally, I was mixing in veggies, and I was buying the organic stuff, so really how bad could it be? But then the guilt started to sink in.  Here I was, making a concerted effort to make as much food as possible from scratch, but I couldn’t be bothered with mac ‘n cheese? It just didn’t seem right. Would it really take so much longer to make it from real ingredients? It didn’t seem like it would. So I started experimenting.

I am here to tell you that you can make real mac ‘n cheese in the same amount of time it takes to make the boxed stuff. It is delicious and creamy. It is completely satisfying. I promise! I swear! It is true! It is amazingly simple and it will make you feel like a culinary badass.

I recommend using organic ingredients and whole wheat pasta to up the nutritional content, but that’s entirely up to you. I’m a big fan of sharp cheddar for this recipe. I think it adds a nice punch. If you want it orange like the stuff you had as a kid, turmeric does the trick (see below)! I also always mix in a veggie with mine (peas, broccoli, spinach), but that’s just me.

So over the Thanksgiving weekend, think about trying out this recipe or use it in the coming weeks when you are crunched on time and tempted to pull out the boxed stuff. You won’t be disappointed!

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Real Mac ‘n Cheese

Course Dinner

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 4

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• 2 tbl butter
• 2 tbl flour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 cups cheddar cheese grated
• 2 cups whole wheat macaroni elbows, shells, and fusilli all work well
• ½ tsp Dijon mustard
• salt and pepper
• nutmeg
• turmeric if you want it to be orange
• vegetables for mixing in optional

Instructions

• Start a pot of water to boil.
• Grate the cheese with the grating tool on your food processor or with a box grater. Prep your other ingredients so you can move quickly when the time comes. If you are going to stir in a vegetable, get it started cooking.
• When the water comes to a boil, dump in the pasta. In a separate pot, melt the butter. When the butter is melted, add in the flour and stir until it forms a paste. Add in the milk and stir until combined. Dump in the cheese and stir until it forms a creamy sauce. Add in mustard. Add salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. If you want it to be orange, add in some turmeric.
• When the pasta is done, strain it and mix in the sauce. Mix in your veggie (optional) and serve.

Notes

If you have leftovers, I highly recommend reheating them in a pot with a tiny bit of milk. It tastes much, much better than microwaving it.

<p>The post Who Needs the Box? Real Mac ‘n Cheese first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>

There are a couple of tricks that I have learned over the years that help this kind of multitasking work well:

1)   The kitchen timer is your friend. This allows me to focus on the tasks at hand and not have to keep an eye on the clock. When I’m really on a roll I often have both my oven timer and the microwave timer going at the same time.

2)   Think through the pots and pans you are going to use ahead of time. I mentally assign pots and pans to different dishes so that I am not suddenly scrambling at the sink to clean a pot as things sizzle on the stove.

3)   Think through the order of things before you start. If you are going to need the oven at two different temperatures, think through which dish should be done first and which second.

So what did this look like yesterday? I started the spice brew for my chai on the stove, setting the kitchen timer. While it was in the first stage of brewing, I chopped the veggies for the sauce. When the timer went off for the brew, I paused in the chopping and started the second round of brewing, setting the timer again. Then it was time to start the pasta water and the sauce. When the timer went off for the third time, I took out the tea bags, mixed in the last ingredients, and left the chai to cool.

Then it was time for the next batch of veggies to go into the sauce. Once they were in, the water came to a boil, so in went the pasta.  I started the oven to preheat and then my five-year-old appeared wanting to help. So I set him to work prepping the herbs for the sauce and then together we chopped the olives (he can’t handle a chef’s knife on his own quite yet). All of those things went into the sauce, he went off to play, and I had time to chop the broccoli for roasting. By then, the pasta was done, so I strained it, popped it into the sauce, mixed in the final ingredients, and into the oven it went. And I set the timer again.

While the pasta baked, I prepped the broccoli for roasting and put it to the side to go in when the pasta came out, decanted the chai, and even did a first round of dishes. Then, when the pasta came out, I reset the oven temp, put the broccoli in to roast, and again set the timer. I used that final timer both for the broccoli roasted and the pasta cooling!

It may sound overwhelming and crazy, but with just a tiny bit of planning ahead and the use of my love, the kitchen timer, it all went very smoothly. And in the end, dinner was made (as well as lunches for a couple of days), roasted broccoli for lunches and to go into quesadillas later this week was done, and my chai was ready and waiting for me in the morning.

Oh, and I felt a little bit like a superhero.

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Baked Pasta

Course Dinner

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 40 minutes minutes

Total Time 55 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• ½ lb whole wheat pasta shells and fusili are favorites in our house
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 carrots pealed and chopped
• 1 green pepper chopped
• 1/3 large head of broccoli chopped into bit sized stem pieces and florets, add stem pieces to onion pile and keep florets out separately
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 1 28 oz can chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbl fresh oregano chopped or 1 tsp dried
• 1 tbl fresh thyme chopped or 1 tsp dried
• 1/3 cup red wine
• ¼ cup olives chopped
• 1/3-1/2 cup feta
• 1-2 tbl fresh basil
• 1/3 cup parmesan
• salt and pepper
• extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 425. In a 5-6 quart dutch oven, heat 1-2 tbl of olive oil on medium-high, add onion, carrots, green pepper, and broccoli stems (you’ll add the florets later). Turn down to medium and cook until the onions are translucent. Start a pot of water to boil. Add garlic and stir for 30 seconds. Add broccoli florets, can of tomatoes, oregano, thyme, wine, salt and pepper. Turn down to low and let simmer gently. When the water is boiling, add pasta and cook until just al dente. When pasta is ready, strain and add to the sauce. Mix in the olives, basil, and feta. Sprinkle parmesan over the top. Cover and put into the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, uncover and broil for 5 minutes.

<p>The post Baked Pasta and Multitasking in the Kitchen: Making Time Count first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>

As is true in many households, Italian food is one of our go-to cuisines.  Pastas and homemade pizza are often on our weekly food plan. One of the reasons I like these options so much is that they are very flexible—I can almost always come up with a way to use whatever I have left in the house at the end of the week in an Italian dish of some sort. The leftovers of a meat can be added to a sauce or as a topping for a pizza.  A little bit of ricotta can be used as filling in a pasta or put on pizza. And then there are the veggies as toppings on pizzas, as an extra crunch in a sauce, roasted and mixed in, the possibilities are endless!

And I have learned a trick that enables my Italian obsession: make the sauce ahead of time. There are a number of reasons why this has been such a breakthrough for me: 1) I save a lot of money not buying the jarred tomato sauces, 2) dinner is made a lot faster and there is a lot less stress because I always have the sauce on-hand, 3) I can incorporate a lot more vegetables directly into the sauce than are usually in the jarred stuff, and 4) it tastes SO MUCH BETTER!

I started on this vats-of-sauce kick when my brother introduced me to the amazing Babbo Basic Tomato Sauce recipe.  I started making double batches of the stuff about once a month and freezing it in smaller portions to be used for whatever I needed: pizza sauce, marinara sauce, a base for a sauce with other additions to it (veggies, meatballs, etc.).  I then I started to play around with it to sneak in some more veggies—adding more carrot, some green pepper, etc.  Now I use this sauce almost once a week in some way, shape, or form.

Some ideas on ways to use the sauce and add even more veggies:

1)   Super Veggie Pizza Sauce: heat up about 2 cups of the sauce. Throw in a ½-1 cup of steamed broccoli or spinach. Puree all of it together with an immersion blender, food processor, or blender. Use in place of pizza sauce on your pizza.

2)   Roasted Veggie Sauce: Chop up some of your favorite roasting vegetables into bite-size, or a little smaller, pieces.  Roast them.  Toss them into the sauce and serve on your favorite kind of pasta.

3)   Use this sauce in the crock pot veggie lasagna.

It really is versatile and fun! Enjoy!

<p>The post Basic Tomato Sauce: A Vehicle for Vegetables first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>