Posts tagged under Pasta. Show all posts.
The one day I pick up the kids from school for lunch and it’s raining…great. There isn’t enough time to be creative, nor spend a lot of time at the stove, so today it’s all about convenience. Growing up my sister was hooked on Kraft Dinner and my mom always made sure to have a couple of boxes on hand. I, on the other hand, have never been a fan of Kraft Dinner or any other prepared mac and cheese brand. My children, however, are big fans of “the real kind you get in the box”. Last week when I was grocery shopping I noticed that Kraft now carries two whole wheat varieties of the traditional Kraft Dinner, white and orange cheddar. So I picked up a box to give it a try. The 100% whole wheat pasta justified my convenience food purchase. Rolled up ham, a few cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber, and a handful of mini carrots and we had a well-balanced lunch. All four of the kids devoured their mac and cheese and claimed to enjoy it just as much as the original (even when I mentioned it was made with whole wheat pasta). It’s definitely a healthier convenience lunch food option.
What are you serving your kids for lunch?
I must confess that as much as I love cooking (and food!), most food sites don’t really appeal to me. They always seem like they are trying too hard or they end up making me feel inadequate in the kitchen. But recently Mixing Bowl Mama (aka Jan Scott, mom of two boys aged 7 and 9) from MixingBowlKids.ca paid us a visit over here at the EatSavvy blog and introduced me to her wonderful site. I must confess I am hooked. Her conversational posts are full of great and easy recipes for any family. Fresh ingredients are a major theme, as is getting the kids to help with the food prep, something I am working on. In fact, I love this site so much I’ve taken to making most of the recipes on the site in lockstep to them being published! It’s nice having someone else help me with great ideas in the kitchen now for healthy, yummy food for my family. Try the Banana Bites and the Pasta a la Mama to get started, and jump on board the MixingBowl Kids bandwagon with me!
What are your favourite food sites?
Photo courtesy of MixingBowlKids.ca
It’s keen-wa, not kin-o-a, and it’s my new fave side dish. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a grain-like crop, grown for its edible seeds. It has a light, fluffy texture when it is cooked, much like couscous or white rice (which is what I have been using it in place of), but its mild, nutty flavour is much more interesting. It’s available in most grocery stores now and it only takes about 12 minutes to cook, so it’s handy to add to any meal. It’s gluten-free and much higher in protein that most grains, so it’s a great nutritional addition.
You can cook it in chicken stock for a little flavour, use it in place of pasta for a cold summer salad or add it to soups and pasta sauces as you would barley. Every summer, I make up big batches of what we call Quinoa Greek Rainbow Salad (which was inspired by this recipe but I use lots more lemon, mint, olives and feta than they specified), and bring it in for lunch in the office, or use it as a side dish with grilled chicken or fish.
For breakfast, I even enjoy it with some berries, nuts and honey, instead of the usual oatmeal porridge. It’s my new superfood! Have you tried quinoa?
Looks like we have lots of quinoa fans.
Cookies - what a great idea.
Vicky - please share your pea salad recipe!
thanks
love love quinoa.
It is SO SO good for you and so versatile too!!
I have a curried pea quinoa salad recipe that is my fav.
Adding a handful of fresh herbs goes along way to improving the flavour of a simple pasta dish. And, picking those herbs from your garden or patio makes it taste even better. I had thrown out more than my share of wilted, packaged herbs from the grocery store, so I could see the benefits of planting my own. Not only is it more convenient to have them on hand, but it is also more economical.
My favourite fresh herb to accompany pasta dishes is basil. It is called for in most of the recipes I use and I love its intense, fresh, earthy flavour. Fortunately, it is easy to maintain and grows very quickly. This weekend, I decided to harvest what was left on my plants and make basil pesto as a sauce for pasta. On Saturday morning I picked up a couple of extra plants at the Brickworks Farmer’s Market just to be sure I had enough. If I was going to make my own pesto, I might as well make enough to freeze!
In the past I have used small plastic Ziploc containers to freeze it in, but more than half the time it was too much for the recipe I was making. This time I used ice cube trays to freeze the sauce. So simple and so fast. Here’s what to do:
Basil Pesto
Preparation time: 20 minutes
You’ll Need
Preparation
I’m with you on the basil…just delicious and one of my favourites. We also use pesto to make pesto butter…just add pesto to softened butter and use on baked potatoes, toast with some tomato and mozzarella and fish…yummy!
Jarred spaghetti sauce was a definite staple in my cupboards when I was a student and for a number of years thereafter, but somewhere along the way I developed a distaste for it. Maybe it was the salt or maybe it was the lack of resemblance to a fresh tomato, but I started making pasta with accompaniments such as homemade meat sauce and other additions (goat cheese and basil ranking high up on the list).
But now as a mom of three, I felt like I was making my life unnecessarily difficult not stocking up on the stuff – after all, most kids love spaghetti with sauce. Then Eden Organic’s No Salt Added Spaghetti Sauce caught my eye and I am glad it did. Made from organically grown, vine-ripened Roma tomatoes and extra virgin olive oil, it’s cooked within hours of harvest (so you can taste the freshness) and has no salt added (and you definitely won’t miss it). One night I made a quick lasagna with it and another I served it to the kids with spaghetti. Big hits! So no more feeling nostalgia for the big jars for me – I’m all stocked up.
I often think back to when my boys were toddlers, and wonder in amazement how we made it through some of those years. It isn’t that the tween years are easier (oh, I promise you they certainly aren’t), but feeding toddlers was probably the most difficult when they were between the ages of two and four.
Picky palates reign supreme during those tumultuous years, and finding a nourishing meal that pleased everyone was virtually impossible. Like most kids, mine loved pasta, and the more kid-friendly the meal looked, the more they were likely to devour it without inspection or difficulty.
Enter Baby Bolognese. This meal made an appearance more times that I’d like to count back when dinners were challenging, and to this day it’s still a popular comfort dish, although I occasionally fancy-it-up with the addition of linguine, spinach and baby bocconcini.
Do you have a favourite toddler dinner? Which meals are a favourite for your little ones?
To see the full printable recipe, click here: Baby Bolognese
Comments
When my kids are home for lunch we like to make a “Platter Special”...a few different sandwiches, cut into small pieces, veggies and hummus, fruit and yogurt dip and a sweet or two….it works great if friends come home with my kids as there is bound to be something on the platter that will be liked.
www.mixingbowlkids.typepad.com
We usually make mini bagel pizzas, homemade “lunchables” or leftover turkey meatballs, turned into a meatball sandwich, for lunch. When paired with a fruit kebob or some fresh veggies and hummus, we have a well balanced meal in a short amount of time. Another favourite when the kids stay for lunch is a thermos of soup, left over from the previous nights dinner, with a hunk of fresh bread…yummy!