This month is kind of a wacky month for my recipe roundup because three of these recipes come from one cookbook: Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook*. I have a complicated relationship with this cookbook. I love it because everything that I make from it comes out so well, the pictures are beyond beautiful, and the recipes are truly inspiring, but I also find it challenging because many of the recipes include obscure ingredients that, truthfully, I am not willing to drop lots of money on to possibly use just once before they go bad. So I have started adapting when I use the book and so far that has worked out pretty well!…
Recipe Roundup: March Edition
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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Shakshuka Pita Pizza
“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….
Cooking Projects for When You’re Homebound
As you have very likely heard, the East Coast is bracing for a weekend full of rain (if not a hurricane), which means many of us will be stuck indoors quite a bit in the coming days. I’m not going to lie, weather events like this and snow days (which hopefully we won’t get too many of this year) can be stressful and loooong when you are stuck at home. But instead of looking at these as an annoyance, it can be helpful to shift our perspective and look at them as an opportunity to get some cooking projects done!
So I thought I would share with you my steps to making an impending day at home a culinary hit. Plus I’ll share some recipes that might be fun to try….
4 Cooking Projects to Do with Your Kids, Plus Watermelon Water
I am in the midst of three (3!) weeks in between the end of school and start of camp, which means that I am doing that juggling act many of us experience at some point during the summer when we are trying to get work done and also provide fun and engaging activities for our kids (although I am definitely also a believer in free time when kids entertain themselves and even get bored!). Our plans for these weeks include some house projects (cleaning and reorganizing the playroom!), some fun out-of-the-house activities, and cooking projects to stock of the freezer for camp lunches.
As I have written about before, cooking with kids is great for many reasons including decreasing picky eating, introducing new foods, helping them to understand where their food comes from, giving them confidence, and introducing them to math concepts, but it is also a lot of fun, especially when they can get their hands dirty!
If cooking with your kids is a daunting thought, try one of these recipes to get you started. They are favorites in our house!…
Spinach Pesto and the Power of Preparing Foods in New Ways
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….
Yes, I Still Eat Pizza: Why I Don’t Demonize Any Foods
Recently, there have been a number of headlines about how pizza is really bad for kids. With headlines like “Pizza is bad for health. But do you know how bad?” and “Experts zero in on pizza as a prime target in war on childhood obesity” and “Pizza cuts into kids’ health, study finds” it is enough to make any parent feel anxious or guilty about how often their kid eats pizza. And while I agree that pizza, especially pizza from a restaurant, is likely full of certain ingredients that we may want to limit, for our kids and for ourselves, I am of the mind that focusing on one food as dangerous is not helpful, and, in fact, may draw attention away from the larger issues involved in feeding ourselves and our children better. …
Basic Tomato Sauce: A Vehicle for Vegetables
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!…