Baked Brown Rice

I have been meaning to try baked brown rice for a while. This winter I gave it a shot, and I am so glad! I don't know if I will ever cook rice on the stovetop again. It comes out perfect every time (make sure it's always placed on the middle rack), and you don't have to keep an eye on it. I can walk away (which is mandatory...many meltdowns occur with my little ones between 4 and 6pm) and not worry about it boiling over.

I use Cathe Olson's recipe in The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook, but here is a very similar recipe from The Motherload. I simplify by heating the water up in a teapot and adding oil rather than butter to the rice at the same time as the water.

Sometimes I fancy it up with adding a cube of Rapunzel bouillon at the same time as the water - just stir with a fork to break it up. Then adding some minced parsley just as it comes out of the oven. This is a great side dish to Snobby Joes.

Pesto Pasta

Want a super quick healthy meal? Go to pesto. You can even have it during the depths of winter. I've shared a recipe during the summer, and this is basically the same minus the fresh summer roasted vegetables. During the winter, our pesto is straight parsley.

This meal is so quick. You can pair it with a salad or just a side of toast. My kids love it, and it's very fulfilling. You can get this made in less than 20 minutes if uninterrupted (unlikely in my house). :)

Ingredients:
one pound whole wheat pasta (I prefer penne - so easy for kids to eat)
two handfuls of walnuts
three garlic cloves
one teaspoon sea salt
six twists of freshly ground pepper
3/4 bunch of flat-leaf parsley (I leave the other 1/4 of parsley for other meals during the week - through it in rice or a pasta sauce)
olive oil

Directions:
Bring large pot of water to boil. Cook pasta 8-10 minutes. Reserve 1 cup of pasta cooking water. While pasta cooks, process walnuts, garlic, salt and pepper in a food processor. Add all the parsley and continue to process. Drizzle no more than 1/4 cup of olive oil while processing parsley. Use reserved pasta cooking water to continue processing the pesto for your desired creaminess. Add pesto to cooked pasta. Add more cooking water if more creaminess is desired.

To bump up the nutritional value, add frozen peas or roasted kale.

Post Punk Cornbread

My family loves, loves, loves, loves, LOVES this cornbread! Guests really enjoy it, too. I make this at least once a week during the winters to accompany our chili. It is so hard to not eat the entire pan. It's perfectly moist and not too sweet. The authors of theppk.com (The Post Punk Kitchen) are also the authors of Veganomicon. This recipe also shows up in that fantastic cookbook, but it replaces the 2 Tablespoons of maple syrup with 1/4 cup of sugar. So choose the sweetener of your choice. And...as you can see...it is very much kid-approved!

Planning Healthy Meals and Making Them Happen

It's that time of year when our meals are the most predictable. During a Minnesota winter, someone like me who is interested in keeping our food (in order of importance) local, simple, sustainable and organic needs to get creative with dried goods and root vegetables. I often repeat the same repertoire every week in order to meet the previously mentioned pre-requisites but also to keep the family happy. My four year-old is in a phase where he can find something wrong with everything, so I find the more predictable (like most things in our life) the meal the less arguing.

Making the meal and its preparation simple is key in order for it to actually happen, since I rarely have a moment where a child of mine doesn't need my hands, words or breasts. Ha! Also, I want our food to taste like itself...I want my children to know what parsnips, rutabagas, kale, garlic, etc all taste like. I believe knowing these tastes from the moment they begin eating is what encourages them to grow into adults that will continue to choose and enjoy healthy foods.

So, here's a glimpse into how I plan our weekly meals. "Plan" being the key word. Planning is essential in getting wholesome, simple meals on your table if you plan on feeding people beyond yourself every day of the week.

I plan six dinners a week. We enjoy allowing ourselves one dinner out if we feel up for gathering the children and taking them somewhere...or we simply order pizza. Ordering pizza is a guilty pleasure of mine. Often our lunches are leftovers from the night before which helps guarantee a balanced lunch. These are the categories I use along with some of our most common winter recipes:

1. Pasta
-Cabbage Pasta

2. Chili

3. Lentils
-Lentil Bolognese
-Snobby Joes

4. Tofu

5. Soup
-Potato Leek
-White Bean and Tomato

6. Burritos
-Yes, burritos get their own category, because they are awesome.

Sometimes these categories overlap - like Lentil Bolognese. When that happens, I will then plan for two soups or two chilis that week...or a new random recipe!

I hope this inspires some to simplify and plan their family meals. I hope you have some tips for me! I plan to share some of our staple winter recipes in the coming weeks...