BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!

August 2, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Six years ago, I was struggling with the path my life had taken. I had two very small children, I had left my career working with trauma survivors, and I was doing erratic consulting work that bored me to death. I knew I needed a change and so I wrote an email to my closest friends and former colleagues and asked them a question: “If you could see me doing anything, what would it be?” I encouraged them to be creative, to be crazy, to think outside of the box. Every single person responded, and everyone said the same thing: something with food! As soon as I saw the word food, I knew I had found my answer.

Within the year, I completed a training program to become a health coach and launched The Balanced Kitchen. I had found my true calling! I was able to share my belief that cooking could be a simple, easy, healthy, and delicious part of life. I got to help people who really wanted to eat a healthier diet and cook for themselves and their families, but didn’t know where to begin. In short, I had the best job ever!

Today, I am sharing the latest development in this wonderful, challenging, exciting journey. I am SO excited to announce that I have become the new CEO (and owner) of The Six O’Clock Scramble!

What’s The Scramble?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, The Six O’Clock Scramble, founded and run by the amazing Aviva Goldfarb, is an online meal planning service committed to helping busy people get quick, easy, and delicious meals on the table every night. Aviva and I share the same philosophy: making dinner should be a low stress and enjoyable experience and that family dinners are one of the most rewarding and important opportunities to connect with and nourish the people we love and ourselves!

The Scramble will give me a platform to encourage even more people to get back into the kitchen, to experiment with new tastes and cooking techniques, and to feed their friends and families healthy, delicious meals that are simple to prepare.

But What About The Balanced Kitchen?

Some of you may be asking, what will happen to The Balanced Kitchen, to the recipes found here, and to my weekly musings on food, feeding kids, feeding ourselves, and life balance? The answer is twofold: my recipes will stay archived here on The Balanced Kitchen, but my new recipes and posts will all be on The Scramble.

I invite you to join me at The Scramble to continue getting inspiration and ideas for feeding yourself and your family well. In an effort to make that as simple for you as possible, I will be merging my list with The Scramble’s. What this means is that you will continue to receive emails from me from time to time with recipes, cooking ideas, and lots of other opportunities to experiment with cooking and eating, just from The Scramble rather than from The Balanced Kitchen.

Join The Scramble Family!

Finally (and perhaps most importantly), as an enticement and in celebration of this big change, I am offering a Friends & Family discount if you’d like to join The Scramble’s meal planning service. I love and believe in this service because it helps to make cooking that much easier and more accessible. So, if getting a meal plan delivered to your inbox or phone each week sounds appealing, if a generated-for-you shopping list sounds amazing, if access to a database of over 1,000 carefully curated recipes sounds wonderful, then join us! (And if you aren’t sure we have a 2 week free trial, so there’s no risk!)

Thank you for your support of The Balanced Kitchen over these past years. I have loved carving out my space in the food and cooking conversation. I have loved working with you as clients, meeting you at workshops, and sharing ideas with you online. I look forward to our relationship growing over at The Scramble! Sign up for a free trial now (and use the code FANDF17 to get 25% off all memberships now through August 16th).

Happy Cooking, Happy Eating, and Happy Scrambling!

Recipe Roundup: March Edition

March 30, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

I’m back with another edition of The Recipe Roundup! This month’s recipes were super successful, so I am excited to share several quick, easy, and tasty recipes to add to your rotation!

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Waffleritos: And How to Use Up the Food You Already Have in Your House

March 21, 2017 By Jessica Braider 2 Comments

I’ve got an awesome, super simple, extra flexible recipe for you guys this week! Waffleritos. Yup, you guessed it, a combination of waffles and burritos, and what could be better than that? But first, some practical tips on how to cook with what you’ve got. The inspiration for the recipe and this post comes from this month’s challenge from The Recipe Redux:

Spring Clean the Kitchen. Cook with at least 3 ingredients that are actually in your refrigerator or pantry right now. Try not to go to the store to buy anything new. Give tips on how to make a healthy dish out of whatever you have on-hand.

This topic is near and dear to my heart and is tied to one of the complaints I hear from people over and over again—that they struggle with food waste—vegetables go bad before they can use them all up, meat is forgotten and goes off, and they are reluctant to buy recipe-specific ingredients because they aren’t sure how they will use the remainders in other recipes. I have even spoken with people who have decided that they’d rather order out instead of grocery shop and cook because the food waste stresses them out so much. I am very sympathetic to this struggle as it is one that I experienced for years when I was first becoming comfortable with cooking. I vividly remember going into my produce drawer and finding slimy green things that made my stomach turn. I also remember struggling with what to do with leftover ingredients from new recipes I had tried (I used to avoid buying cabbage and bok choy at all costs for this reason). Over time, though, as I became more comfortable with cooking and improvising, I found this source of stress started to dissipate and I developed a couple of tricks that were really helpful in avoiding food waste….

Shakshuka Pita Pizza

March 9, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

“I received free samples of Toufayan Pita mentioned in this post. By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by Toufayan Bakeries and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.”

Shakshuka. Shakshuka is a dish that has been on my list of recipes to blog about for a long time now. When I first heard about shakshuka, a dish in which eggs are poached in a seasoned tomato sauce, I was not enthusiastic (as I have blogged about before, I tend to be a bit of an egg purist), but the dish just kept showing up in different places and was mentioned by chefs and bloggers that I respect and admire. So finally I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone and give it a shot. And, of course, it was delicious and super simple to make—a win, win!

But today I want to share with you and even simpler meal that I am calling Shakshuka Pizza. This is one of those meals that is great for a crazy weeknight when you have about 15 minutes to get dinner on the table but everyone is sick of quesadillas and grilled cheese….

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Tacos with Avocado Crema

February 21, 2017 By Jessica Braider 9 Comments

This month’s challenge from The Recipe Redux is near and dear to my heart: tacos!!

Show us your healthy, creative take on the taco.

For as long as I can remember, tacos have been a favorite food of mine. When I was a kid, my mom had (still has) special bowls that she used to put out the taco toppings and whenever I saw those bowls coming down from the cupboard I knew that an awesome dinner was in store! I think because I was a picky eater I enjoyed the control I had over my own plate—I got to choose which toppings I used and which I avoided and, if I was feeling brave, I could try something new in a small and safe way. As a kid, the taco options were the same every time: ground beef, kidney beans, lettuce, tomatoes, onion, cheese, and salsa. And still, with the exception of raw onions which I am not a huge fan of, I love all of those components and would happily have one of my childhood tacos any night!

For this Taco Tuesday, though, I’m sharing a different version. While the ground beef is great and we definitely eat it from time to time in our house, it isn’t usually something I include with taco night because there are other, healthier sources of fat in the meal. In fact, many times our taco nights are vegetarian, using beans as the protein source. The tacos I’m sharing today involve one of my all-time favorite flavor combinations, black beans and sweet potatoes, along with a creamy avocado-based sauce that makes the whole meal feel special! In fact, the last time I made the avocado crema my 8-year-old said, “wow! This is such a fancy meal!” when the only difference was replacing our standard cut up avocado with the crema.

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Lasagna Soup

February 16, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

A few years ago I was really desperate to find ways to get vegetables into my younger son. I had tried the battles, I had tried the pleading, and now I was trying to use the division of responsibility approach, which meant that I would choose what foods were offered but that he then would have the freedom to choose what he ate out of what was on the table and there would be no special meals or negotiations. What that meant for our family was that some nights I made a dinner that had vegetables on the side, which he almost never ate, and some nights I made a one-pot meal that included the vegetables in the dish. Often times he would pick around the vegetables, but sometimes I would find a dish that he loved so much that he would plow right through, not even noticing the vegetables.

There were two types of one-pot meals that tended to work for us. Soups and baked pastas. The kid loved (and still loves) pureed vegetables soups, which was very helpful when I felt like I was going to lose my mind. And while he would sometimes pick around the vegetables in a baked pasta, some strays would make it into his mouth and he was always cheerful when pasta was involved. Win-win. So when I discovered lasagna soup I knew I had to give it a go….

Brazilian-Style Protein Power Bowls: Comfort Food At Its Best

October 21, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

It’s that time again! Time for another Recipe Redux challenge recipe. And this time I get to share one of our go-to comfort food meals with you! The challenge this month was:

Packed with protein, fiber and color, plant power bowls are trendy and delicious. Show us the healthy recipe that’s in your bowl.

When I read this prompt I immediately knew what I was going to share with you! This is a family favorite that I developed as a quick and simple dish that is inspired by one of my all-time favorite Brazilian meals: feijoada.

For those of you who don’t know, feijoada is the national dish of Brazil. It is a black bean based stew that is filled with many, many different cuts of pork. It was developed by the slaves when all they had to work with was black beans and leftover pork. If you ever have a chance to have a real feijoada (and you eat meat), definitely do it! But the real deal is very labor intensive and requires a long, long time to cook. One day it occurred to me, though, that what I love about the dish more than the stew was the salty and sweet flavor explosion that is added through the use of toppings and that was something I could recreate very quickly and easily, so I did!…

Simple Roasted Chicken and Vegetable Medley Sandwiches

October 6, 2016 By Jessica Braider 2 Comments

I received free samples of Sabra Spreads mentioned in this post. By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by Sabra and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.

It is funny the things we can get excited about sometimes. For me, an unexpected moment of excitement has been around this Sabra Spread contest that I was invited to join through The Recipe Redux. To be honest, I was totally psyched to have reached the stage in my food blogging journey where I get to receive samples and create a recipe around a new product that I feel good about sharing with you. It was super cool to receive the FedEx box with an insulated bag inside filled with samples. And it was equally cool to be able to take my first taste of all three of the different spreads, Garlic Herb, Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper, and Honey Mustard, and know right away that I was excited to start playing around with them in the kitchen. When these small pleasures happen I think it is important to savor them and take the time to relish in them, after all shouldn’t life be about the simple and unexpected pleasures?!

So in the spirit of sharing simple pleasures, I wanted to share with you one of our family’s go-to sandwiches these days. Despite my best efforts, my boys have been giving me a run for my money on lunches recently. My 8-year-old in particular has been less than enthusiastic about a lot of the options that I normally offer, so coming up with this simple lunch option to throw into the rotation has been a life saver! I wanted something that he would be excited about, that I could feel good about, that wouldn’t take too long to prepare, and that wouldn’t break the bank. This Simple Roasted Chicken and Vegetable Medley Sandwich has hit all the marks!…

Bare Minimum Cooking: 3 Tricks for Easy Meals During Busy Times

September 15, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Over the past few days I have been having a lot of conversations with people about how overwhelmed they are feeling. I have come to think that for many of us September is a month of unexpected overwhelm. Here’s my best guess as to why September can be so brutal: for many of us September is a time of transition—a new school year, work commitments start up after summertime lulls, and other communities we are involved with start to kick into high gear with fall activities—and then there are all those pesky things that need to be taken care off that we put off over the summer, or maybe that is just me. So suddenly we find ourselves trying to get into new routines, take care of long lists of things that really should have been done months ago, and snap out of the slower pace of summer. It can be rough and oftentimes something has got to give… and for a lot of people that something is cooking.

But what if you don’t want cooking to be the thing that drops? What if you are working to get into a good routine with cooking so that you can eat healthier, save money, expose your kids to foods other than grilled cheese and macaroni and cheese, etc? Then it is time to do the bare minimum.

Many of you know that one of my main goals is to help people to realize how accessible and simple cooking can truly be. I firmly believe that even in the busiest of times, cooking is possible and worthwhile. So how to you keep cooking as a regular part of your routine when things are so crazy?…

Cooking 101: How to Cook with Eggs, Part 1

August 25, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Eggs. They are one of the cheapest (even if you buy the pasture-raised, organic ones!) and most flexible protein sources around. But many people feel like they are incapable of making them well. The truth is, eggs are actually quite simple, they just need a little bit of attention. So today I want to break down for you the different ways to cook an egg so that you can add these to your rotation for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners and then next time I will talk about different ways to use eggs in baking (i.e., beating an egg in all its stages)….