I also love them for how versatile they are. You can use them on their own as a side dish or include them in a huge variety of dishes including omelets, pastas, grain salads, pizzas, quesadillas, wraps, grilled cheese/paninis, stir fries. And you can flavor them in various ways–salt and pepper, indian spices, chili powder, parmesan, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, and bread crumbs are just a few of our favorite ways to have them.

Roasted vegetables are also often a great entry point for picky eaters. The reason for this is that roasting brings out the natural sugars in the vegetables, which makes them sweeter and, therefore, more appealing to those who are more resistant. If I am working with a client who is trying to feed a very resistant eater, the vegetables that I most often recommend starting with are potatoes, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, and broccoli because they seem to be the most accessible for tentative tasters. Potatoes and sweet potatoes can be sold as “like french fries” and dipped in ketchup and cauliflower and broccoli can be “trees” that a giant is eating or can be loaded with parmesan.

If you’ve never roasted vegetables, give it a try! And if you have, see if there is a way you can change it up to make it more exciting. I think you will be very pleasantly surprised!

Print

Roasted Broccoli

Course Sides

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• 1 large head of broccoli cut into bite-sized stem pieces and florets (or a bag of pre-cut broccoli)
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Toss broccoli with 1 tbl olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
• Spread evenly on the baking sheet, trying to have a single layer.
• Roast until just tender, about 10-15 minutes.

<p>The post Roasted Broccoli first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>

One of my favorite ways to stretch the food I make farther is with a grain salad. If I am making a pot of grains—rice, quinoa, millet, couscous, etc.—I always make extra. So much can be done with leftover grains: you can turn them into breakfast porridge, throw them into a big green salad for some added heft, mix them into soups or stews, fold them into veggie burger batter, and, my favorite, turn them into a grain-based salad. Grain salads are great because they can serve as a hefty side dish and are so incredibly flexible—any leftover vegetables, cheese, or salad dressing you have lying around can get thrown in!

If you’ve got 1 ½-2 cups or more of leftover grains, some vegetables, some salad dressing or oil and vinegar, and some sort of protein (although even that is optional), you’ve got a grain salad!

Print

Simple Grain Salad

Course Side

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 5 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• 1 ½-2 cups leftover grains rice, quinoa, millet, couscous, etc.
• 1 or more cups vegetables chopped or grated raw vegetables; leftover roasted, steamed, or stir fried vegetables; and marinated vegetables such as artichokes and hearts of palm, all work well
• 1/4 -1/2 cup or more of protein chopped up or shredded leftover animal protein, chickpeas, beans, lentils, or cheese are all great—optional
• Some moisture salad dressing or olive oil and balsamic vinegar
• Herbs and spices oregano, basil, thyme, garlic powder, chili powder, and garam masala are all delicious

Instructions

• Mix the components together and serve.

Notes

Fun tip: The flavor will get even better if you leave it sitting for an hour or more, so one easy trick is to make the salad when you are cleaning up after dinner. Just mix the leftover grains and vegetables from dinner together with some herbs and moisture, throw it in the fridge, and then serve it the next night as a side dish at dinner.

<p>The post Simple Grain Salad: A side dish without a recipe first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>

But when I first got the grill I was pretty terrified about using it. It was a heat source I didn’t know (How hot was it going to get? How responsive would it be?) and it involved utilizing techniques I wasn’t familiar with (and am still mastering). Even now, two years later, each time I grill there is a little bit of anxiety.  The way I decided to overcome this anxiety was to focus on mastering grilling vegetables. For me, this felt like an easier entry point into the world of grilling. That way, even if I burned everything up, I wouldn’t have wasted a ton of money.

I think that this can be a good way to enter into cooking overall. If you aren’t confident in the kitchen or in some particular type of cooking that you wish you could do, try taking on a smaller project in which you can become confident.  For baking, this could be making muffins or breads. For meats, it might be starting with a roast chicken or baked chicken thighs. For pasta, it might be a quick veggie sauce or mac n cheese. For a specific ethnic food, it might be one simple dish that exposes you to the spices and herbs of the culture. Then, as you gain confidence, you experiment, try new recipes, and build your repertoire. Pretty soon you’ll be making things you never thought possible!

So here’s how I got started with grilling vegetables. It couldn’t be easier, but holy cow does it taste amazing! I made a huge platter of these on Sunday for my son’s family birthday party and they were the first thing gone. These are delicious on their own, in salads, and in sandwiches.

Print

Grilled Vegetables

Course Side

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 15 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• Vegetables that you want to grill bell peppers, asparagus, eggplant, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and summer squashes are some of our favorites
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Instructions

• Preheat the grill to 450.
• Slice the vegetables such as eggplant, squashes, potatoes, and sweet potatoes to ¼-½ inch thick. Slice bell peppers into thick strips, about 1-inch wide.
• Put vegetable pieces into a large ziploc bag. Pour in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Shake well to make sure all the vegetables are coated.
• When the vegetables are prepped, turn the grill down to 400 or so and place the vegetables on the grill. Close the grill to keep in the heat.
• Set your timer for 2 minutes. When your timer goes off, check the bottom sides for charring (you want nice, dark marks on them). If they are ready, flip and set for another 2 minutes. If they need more time, give them another minute and check again.
• Once you have flipped them, set your timer for the same amount of time you grilled them on the first side. When timer is done, remove the veggies from the heat and serve.

<p>The post Grilled Vegetables: A Sign of Spring first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>

I love bok choy. I really do. I love it in stir fry because it adds such a wonderful crunch and flavor. There is only one problem: unless I am making a stir fry to feed 10, I always have leftover bok choy and I just don’t know what to do with it. Now, as I have written about before, I hate wasting food, so I have tried it in salads and have never been crazy about it. I have tried braising it and that’s ok. But I really wanted to find a way to use my leftover bok choy that would be tasty and exciting. And I finally did! Sweet potato-bok choy soup.

Similar to many sweet potato soups, this soup is creamy, sweet, and needs a little spice to make it really sing. But once I found the right balance—to die for! And the best part: it can be made in the slow cooker with just a few minutes of prep time, which makes it a great weeknight meal. This soup is also great for meal planning because one night you can have stir fry and the next this soup, and you’ll only have to buy one bunch of boy choy!

And now confession time: I have a nice little picture to show you the prepped veggies in the slow cooker (which also betrays the almost-dire state the bok choy was in by the time I got around to making this batch of soup), but in my frazzled one-kid-is-on-spring-break-and-the-other-isn’t state last week, I forgot to take a picture of the final product, which we had with soda bread rolls, cheese, kerrygold butter, and a side salad. Yum! But you’ll just have to trust me that it was beautiful, and maybe when one of you makes the soup you can send me a picture to add…

Print

Sweet Potato-Bok Choy Soup

Course Dinner, Slow Cooker

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 hours hours

Total Time 5 hours hours 10 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• 1 large sweet potato peeled and cut up into 1-inch cubes
• ½ bunch bok-choy roughly chopped
• 1 onion roughly chopped
• 4 medium carrots peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 clove garlic peeled and chopped
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 6 cups stock chicken or veggie
• salt and pepper
• Yogurt optional

Instructions

• Prepare the vegetables. Dump all of the ingredients, except the yogurt, into the slow cook and give a good stir. Cook on high for 5 hours or low for 7-8. Puree with an immersion blender or in a blender in batches. Serve with a dollop of yogurt for added creaminess.

<p>The post Sweet Potato-Bok Choy Soup first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>

Then we spent a late evening with an old friend, playing cards and laughing a lot. It was a wonderful reminder that even as time goes by, even the closest relationships that continue to grow and change.

And then the weekend ended with a family dinner with all the cousins running around (4 boys in 4 years). Similar to the friends gathering, the kids were off entertaining themselves, having an amazing time, and the grown-ups could watch from a distance and enjoy each other.

This feels like a major milestone in parenting—that time when the kids are off entertaining themselves and you can (sort of) trust that no one is going to fall from a great height or poke their eye out. It feels like the time just flew by, and yet I am SO GRATEFUL to be here now.

Along with all of these gatherings was a lot of cooking—because you have to have food to share with one another!! Part of that cooking extravaganza was a huge, and I mean HUGE, batch of black beans. I figured while I was cooking for 16, I might as well make some extra for our family as well. So beans were soaked overnight and out came the biggest le Creuset pot I’ve got (an inheritance from my grandmother). As the they were cooking and I was stirring this ridiculous vat of beans, I thought I might have gone off the deep end and, indeed, there are a lot of beans left over. Of course, some beans are going into the freezer for a later date, but as I was getting ready to put them all away, I decided to use this as an opportunity to try something different with the beans: Black Bean Burgers.

All the recipes I found seemed kind of blah. Black beans, onions, and spices. A good start for sure, but I wanted something that had more pop to it. And then I discovered a number of recipes for Sweet Potato-Black Bean Burgers. Now, I don’t know about you, but sweet potatoes and black beans is one of my favorite food combinations of all time.  The sweet, the salty, the smoky. Mmmmmm. So I pulled inspiration from a number of the recipes and came up with my own version. I have to say, they are amazing (I couldn’t wait until dinner to try them).

I’d recommend making a double batch and then freezing the raw patties. Then you’ve got frozen veggie burgers on-hand for busy nights! To freeze them, lay the patties out on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for an hour. Then take out and put into a Ziploc bag, in layers divided by the parchment paper you used on the cookie sheet, which you can cut in half to fit into the Ziploc bag.

Enjoy!

Print

Sweet Potato-Black Bean Burgers

Course Dinner

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 40 minutes minutes

Total Time 55 minutes minutes

Servings 12

Author Jessica Braider

Ingredients

• 1 ½ lb sweet potato peeled and chopped into 2-inch chunks
• 2 tbl coconut oil or olive oil
• 1 cup cooked millet could also use brown rice or quinoa
• 2 cups cooked black beans or a 15-oz. can rinsed and drained
• 1 cup old fashioned oats
• ½ cup finely diced onion
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp paprika
• ½ tsp salt
• cayenne pepper to taste
• Oil for cooking the burgers

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 425. While the oven preheats, peel and chop your sweet potatoes. Toss the pieces in 1 tablespoon of coconut oil and a little bit of salt. Roast on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes, or until soft. Set aside to cool.
• If you don’t have leftovers of an already cooked grain on hand, toast 1/3 cup of millet in a saucepan over a high heat until they start to pop and take on a nutty smell. Add 2/3 cups of water and some salt. Bring the water to a boil, then turn down to low and simmer and cook covered for 15 minutes. Then turn of the heat and allow the millet to sit, covered for 10 more minutes.
• In a small pan, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil on a medium-high heat and sauté the onions until they are just starting to brown. At the last minute, throw in the minced garlic and stir.
• In a food processor or blender, grind the oats until they are slightly broken up, but not turned into flour.
• In a large mixing bowl, mash the sweet potatoes with a potato masher or large spoon, add in the rest of the ingredients and stir/mash until well mixed (it is ok if the black beans get mashed up). Or, if you prefer, put all the ingredients in the food processor and pulse until just combined (don’t overmix).
• Scoop a scant ½ cup of the mixture and shape into a patty. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a cast iron skillet or non-stick pan, pan fry until starting to brown, about 3-4 minutes per side. Serve on buns or toast and with your favorite toppings. Enjoy!

Notes

NOTES:
-A great place to include your kids in the cooker is at the mashing part. Let them mash away! They will love it!
-I recommend making a double batch and then freezing the raw patties. Then you’ve got frozen veggie burgers on hand for busy nights! To freeze them, lay the patties out on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for an hour. Then take out and put into a Ziploc bag, in layers divided by the parchment paper you used on the cookie sheet which you can cut in half to fit into the Ziploc bag.

<p>The post Sweet Potato-Black Bean Burgers first appeared on The Balanced Kitchen.</p>