Mom's Nissu Recipe

Every year around Christmastime (and other times of year when perhaps it's rainy and a cup of tea and warm soft bread would go a long way) I pull out my mom's Nissu recipe and enjoy the slightly sweet cardamom bread with tea or coffee.  I enjoy baking it so much that most years I try to bake it for Greg's work and for our next door neighbors, too, making a little extra each time so we can enjoy it with coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon.

Nissu is a Finnish bread that is usually a soft, braided loaf spiced with cardamom and sometimes including dried fruit.  Cardamom is expensive, but worth it, especially if you make extra bread for friends and neighbors and you can use the spice in savory meat dishes as well.

Mom's recipe that our family has enjoyed for decades is a simple version with a soft texture, light cardamom flavor, and it's basted with coffee and then topped with icing and maraschino cherries (optional) after baking.

This year I made four smaller loaves using the same recipe that usually makes two long ones, and found it the perfect amount to give to our neighbors who are families of two.

Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 T yeast, dissolved in 1/2 cup of lukewarm water

2 beaten eggs
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom (or the crushed seeds from four pods)
up to 3 1/4 cups flour to make a soft dough

Coffee baste: 1/4 cup coffee combined with 2T sugar
Icing: 1 1/2 tablespoons heavy cream mixed with 1 cup confectionery sugar

Warm the 1/2 cup of milk in a saucepan until just steaming.  Remove from heat and stir in the butter, sugar, and salt until the butter is melted and the sugar has dissolved.  Cool to lukewarm (so you don't harm your yeast).  Combine milk mixture with 1 T yeast that has been dissolved in 1/2 cup of warm water.  Add the beaten eggs, cardamom, and the flour a little at a time until you have a soft dough that isn't so sticky you can't knead it, but is still very soft.  Too much flour will reduce the softness of the bread.

Knead bread and allow it to rise.  (If you've never made a yeast bread before, you may like reading my first blog post on making bread that covers the steps in more detail.)  Braid into two loaves.  I separate the dough into six equal parts, roll them into strips on the counter, and braid them loosely.  Allow to rise slightly in loaf form, at least while the oven preheats or until visibly increased in size just slightly.  Bake at 350 degrees for twenty minutes or until golden brown. Don't over-bake.

Braided loaves ready to go in the oven.

Transfer to cooling racks and baste two or three times with sweet coffee.  Frost with icing while still warm.  The icing tends to drip and make a mess on the counter, I like to put kitchen towels under the cooling racks that can then be soaked in the sink for a little while and thrown in the washing machine, rather than having to scrape and scrub the counter after the bread is glazed.  Growing up we put maraschino cherry halves along the bread, but I've started omitting them when I gift the bread because it travels better.

I know we're past the Christmas season - but Nissu is a wonderful treat with coffee or tea any time!

Finished Nissu cooling on the racks!

Train Cake!

Will loved his birthday cake :)

As part of Will's birthday celebrations, we had a birthday lunch for my side of the family at my parent's house up in Maine.  A little tired out from traveling, I lost some steam (pun intended) when discussing the possibility of making Will a train cake for his birthday.  Turns out, this was a good thing, because when I went upstairs for a nap, my mom and Greg took Will to the grocery store and bought ingredients and decorations for the BEST TRAIN CAKE EVER.

Crafty, baking enthusiast Mimi... engineering Eagle Scout husband who used to win cake competitions in boyscouts... it was pretty spectacular.

Here's what they came up with!

Here's how they did it:

Cake: Mom took four mini loaf pans and baked chocolate cake in them, adjusting the cooking time and using a toothpick to make sure they were done.  Each loaf became a car.  She used leftover batter in mini cupcake tins and a few of those stacked on top of each other became the front of the engine.

For the apple cart and the pumpkin cart, we left the loaves intact rather than leveling them off with a serrated knife, so that they would look like they were abundant with cargo.  For the log car, we leveled it off, keeping scraps to make the grill of the train.

Frosting: Mom made a butter-cream frosting and we used food coloring to get the shades we wanted for a colorful train.

Apple Car: raspberry m&m's come in a beautiful two shades of red and are slightly larger than regular m&m's, giving the cart a real apple look.  White piping around the top of the cart, and oreos divided make up the front and back wheels (we put wheels with stuffing on the backs of the carts, and wheels without stuffing on the front).

Log Car: Pretzel sticks cut down to size with a serrated knife, secured with dabs of white frosting that we used to pipe details onto the rest of the train.

Pumpkin Car: Will's birthday is in September, and the Halloween candies were out!  Hence the adorable little pumpkin candies that made perfect cargo.

Engine: Greg cut a cake loaf in half and then used those scraps and a master hand at frosting to put this train engine together!  He used mini cupcakes to make the front of the engine, securing them with spaghetti (it all has to be edible in Greg's world - a standard leftover from his scouting days) and then using a marshmallow and frosting to make the smoke.  He even cut the grills out of cake and applied them with frosting.

Base: My Dad cut a cardboard box to an appropriate size, taped paint sticks to the back for structural support, and covered it in tinfoil.  Although this was his primary contribution aside from photographing us, it could be argued that my Dad did more than I did in this whole process, since I just messed around with food coloring and frosted some of the train cars.

Verdict: We had a GREAT time making this cake, it was one of the highlights of my weekend!  Will LOVED it.  As soon as he saw it, he started pointing and saying "Train!  Train!  Train!" It was amazing :)  I am so lucky that I was too tired to figure it out... because I couldn't beat Mimi and Greg's train in this lifetime!  They are AWESOME.

Happy Birthday, Will!

"Train?  Train!  Train!"

Greg holds the base that Dad made for the cake, prior to aluminum foil.

The true engineers at work.  I think Dad is getting himself some decorations to eat. That's mostly what Dad and I did. Have you ever had pretzels dipped in frosting?  They're good.

Look!  I helped!

Will engineers his own log car :)  He loved the different decorations on the cake!

How to Make Homemade Jam

Every summer, my Mom turns out batches of the most beautiful homemade strawberry jam you can imagine.  It's a vibrant, beautiful red, almost pink, and it tastes so sweet and fresh even when you crack open a jar at Christmas-time months later.  Nothing I buy in the store compares.

I have always been intimidated by the thought of making my own.  What if it doesn't gel?  How do you know it's sealed right?  That the jars and lids were sanitized right?  Sealing glass jars seemed so daunting, and so important to get right.  Heaven forbid you mess around with food safety when you're giving gifts or feeding your own small children!

Luckily for me, Mom knows what she's doing, and when you have an expert to show you what each step looks like, it's really not hard.  Like so many things in life, the invention of how to do it probably required genius, but once someone who knows how clears up the mystique, it's actually pretty simple.  (Knitting, baking yeast breads, jam.... Mom is so good at teaching me life's little mysteries!)

Since it's not really strawberry season anymore, we picked a fruit that's at it's peak.  Here's how we made Peach jam!

Step One: Invite an amazing friend over who is extremely helpful and good with children

Step Two:  Sanitize the glass jars, flat metal lids, and screw bands.  Boil the clean, empty glass jars in the canner while you assemble other ingredients.  Pour boiling water over the flat lids and screw bands and let them sit.

Screw bands and flat lids, sitting in hot water until needed.

Empty glass mason jars, boiling until use.

Step Three: Peel and finely chop four cups of peaches.  Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  We peeled and roughly chopped them, then finished them in the food processor so that they were quite finely chopped but there were still visible chunks of peach.  I bought 4 lbs of peaches, and ended up using 7 to get the four cups.

Step Four: Double check to make sure you have the exact amount of fruit required by your recipe (most pectin packages come with recipes if you need one) because otherwise your jam might not set.

Our food processed peaches and the Sure Jell pectin we used.

Step Five: Measure out your sugar so it's ready to be added all at once.  It's important to be exact or the jam might not set.  Our recipe called for five and a half cups of sugar.

Step Six: Stir the box of pectin into the fruit and bring the mixture to a full rolling boil.  (Bubbles even when you're stirring.)

Step Seven: Add the sugar all at once while stirring and return to a full rolling boil, then boil EXACTLY one minute, stirring constantly.  Mom stressed the importance of precision in every step to get the jam to set - she had us prepare a timer before we started heating up the fruit and pectin, so we could press go the second the sugar began boiling again!

Why did you THINK jam tastes so good?
(Just don't eat it all at once.)

The sugar has been added and the mixture is boiling while stirred -
START THE TIMER!

Step Eight: Remove from heat and skim off the foam (see above photograph).

Removed from heat, with the foam scooped off.

Step Nine: Remove glass mason jars from boiling water and get ready to fill them.

Step Ten: Fill the glass jars almost full, to about 1/8th of an inch from the top.  Wipe any dripped jam from the top and threads of the jar.  Cover with the flat part of the lid, then screw a band tightly onto the jam jar.  Place the filled jam jar into the canner.

Probably you should use a towel when holding the hot glass jar! 

Step Eleven: Fill remaining jars and add to canner.  Make sure they're covered by at least one or two inches of boiling water, then boil the jams for ten minutes.

Filling jam jars!

Jars of jam, sealing in the canner.

Step Twelve: Remove jars and let sit upright on a towel to cool completely.  Then let sit out at room temperature for twenty four hours.  As they cool, you may hear little pops as each jar vacuum seals.  To check and see if a jar has sealed, press down on the center of the lid, if the lid springs back, it didn't seal and you need to keep it in the refrigerator and use within a week.  Otherwise, jams can be stored for up to a year before opening and refrigerated three weeks after opening.  (Hence Mom's amazing tradition of gifting people with Strawberry jam around Christmas time!)

We are so awesome. (Alternate caption: Peach jam, cooling on the counter)

*Note: It's recommended by canning experts that you remove the bands for storage, since moisture trapped in the threads of the jar could cause them to rust, and because they can make a jar seem sealed that isn't.  Keeping them on for gifts and transport is fine!

Serving suggestion - homemade white bread!

Mimi entertains Andrew from his supervising position on the kitchen floor. (Will was napping.)

Thanks Mom!

Play Dough Recipe

When we were toddlers, Mom used to make us homemade play dough all the time. I loved it when she made us a fresh batch and it was still warm when we started molding it into different shapes.

My favorite color was blue. When she brought it into pre-school for everyone, she'd make a quadruple batch of the stuff and it was always a huge hit!

Best of all, it's safe to eat should someone decide to have a little taste. It's way salty, but it came from your cupboards and not a factory, and that makes me feel better about it if a little gets tasted.

We made some for Will to play with right before Andrew was born and he loved it. Even though he was in his high chair (mess control!) he understood pretty quickly that it was play time, not food time. He didn't eat a bite of it!

It was a blast!

Here's the recipe:

Play Dough

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
A few drops of food coloring
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

Add the food coloring to the water, then mix all ingredients in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it resembles the consistency of mashed potatoes. (There will be a distinct change, you'll know!) Cool slightly and knead (don't add any extra flour) until smooth. Store in a sealed plastic bag or pyrex so it doesn't dry out - it can last up to a week before it dries out.

Fruit and Vegetable Quinoa

Quinoa. It's no longer just for Incan warriors. This South American "grain" has infiltrated Mommy pantries everywhere where it's valued for its fiber content, nutrients, and protein. (Ok, maybe it's over-represented in suburban Mass, where we like to spend playgroups talking about omega-3s, flax-seeds, and why our toddlers will only eat raisins. Wait, that last one is just me. Nevermind.)

Quinoa is one of the few vegetarian options that's considered a complete protein, meaning it has all nine essential amino acids, something that's found in very few vegetable sources of protein. So if you're eating more meatless meals for environmental, health, or picky toddler reasons, quinoa is a great choice.

For all these reasons, I've been keeping quinoa in the pantry and using it in my own recipes. (Using other people's recipes or cookbooks might require "foresight" or "planning". Hah.) I've come up with some not so good ones (don't cook tons of dried fruit directly with the quinoa, it will be a sugary disgusting mess), but the other night Will and I had a one pot quinoa dish that was a winner for both of us.

Here's the recipe:

Fruit and Vegetable Quinoa

1/2 cup dried, pre-rinsed quinoa
3/4 cup water or low sodium chicken stock
2 T butter or olive oil
2 carrots, peeled and chopped into toddler safe bites
1 zucchini, chopped into toddler safe bites
1 granny smith apple, peeled and chopped into toddler safe bites
1/2 cup prunes, chopped into toddler safe bites

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the carrots and soften slightly, about five minutes. Add the chicken stock or water and bring to a boil. Add the quinoa, return to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cover. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. When the timer reaches 8 minutes, add the chopped zucchini, stir, and recover. When it reaches five minutes, add the chopped apple, stir and recover. When the timer is done, check the quinoa for readiness, drain excess liquid if necessary, and add the prunes. Fluff and let sit while you get your favorite toddler set up in their high chair.

Makes enough for a hungry, pregnant mother and one toddler, or a good side dish for several adults.

The ratio of quinoa to fruits and vegetables is such that you'll have a dish that has lots of fruits and veggies slightly coated in quinoa. I let Will eat it as a finger food, and he got plenty of quinoa just by picking up bits of carrots, zucchini, etc. to eat. Add a glass of whole milk, and you've got enough fat, vitamins, and protein to make it a decent toddler dinner. And I only had to wash a vegetable peeler, knife, cutting board, and one pot. Nice.

Knesting

Nesting with a k... it's what knitters do when they have a little one on the way. It's become my favorite form of nesting now that I'm heading towards week 38. All that closet rearranging, laundry, and organizing was wearing me out. What I should be doing this late in pregnancy, besides chasing my favorite little toddler-bug around, is resting.

But I can't rest. I need to get ready. There's a baby coming. A BABY! A baby. I'm going to have another baby. I need to be ready. It's going to be a lot of work. I should do some of that work now. What can I do now. I'm going to have a baby. B-A-B-Y. ("Oooh, ice cream, I love ice cream!" As Greg likes to say whenever anyone spells anything around Will.)

This is where knitting comes in, and perhaps every type A personality out there should take up knitting during their last weeks of pregnancy if they don't knit already. It's "productive" because you're working on a baby blanket or sweater or hat for the new arrival, but you do it sitting down. (Please knit sitting down. This is counter-productive advice if you try to knit while you're grocery shopping or pushing a stroller.)

I recently finished a stroller and car blanket for "February", and am now happily knitting away at a little Debbie Bliss baby cardigan in cashmerino.



(That's the other nice thing about knitting for babies, you can buy yummy, expensive yarn because you only need a few skeins for a sweater.) My Mom hinted that the baby will probably come as soon as I finish this sweater because I'll be "ready". Not sure whether to knit faster or slower...



The stroller blanket is a double knit, a striped blanket for the back and a checkered blanket knit in intarsia for the front, both with seed stitch edging that you sew together for finishing. (Debbie Bliss, Essential Baby, Stroller/Buggy blanket.) It was a fun, relaxing knit EXCEPT for my tendency to keep knitting without untangling the five balls of yarn I was using. Sometimes this worked out okay since you cut them each time you finish a block and the colors rotate, but sometimes my tendency to just pull and pull as long as I could knit even ONE more stitch created a bit of a mess.

That's when you should have your mother down to untangle your mess while you keep knitting. Or knesting, as it were.



Thanks Mom. Love you!

Cookie Party!

Visiting family in Maine this week for Christmas, and was too busy to post yesterday because we were having a COOKIE PARTY, which may just be the best idea ever for a holiday open house. My Mom made five different kinds of cookies, and supplemented with a few from Trader Joe's. (Yes, five different kinds of cookies, the week before Christmas. See where I get it from?)


My mother and sister, with a display of about half the cookies actually baked!

Mom flipped through recipes that are family favorites, and chose a few new ones from (of course) the Martha Stewart Cookie cookbook, and provided an amazingly tasty variety with coffee and tea and spiced cranberry apple cider.

We had almond cookies, a butter cream cheese walnut cookie, chocolate cookies, pinwheels, gingersnaps, and peppermint cookies from Trader Joe's.

Among the winners was our traditional favorite, Mamie Ruth's chocolate cookies, a recipe that's been in the family for generations. It's one I make every year, and was actually features on our Christmas Card this year.

Here's the recipe:

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
confectionary sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt the unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler and allow to cool. Cream the eggs, vegetable oil, sugar, vanilla and chocolate together in a mixer. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, then add to the wet ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate for an hour and a half or overnight. Drop by rounded tablespoon into confectionary sugar, flatten slightly, and bake 10-12 minutes on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Cookies should still look slightly moist as you pull them out of the oven - do NOT overbake! I often will make a batch, cool them slightly, and then try one to ensure I haven't overbaked them.

Makes approximately four dozen cookies.

Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Dinner

Greg and I recently watched a documentary from the History Channel about the History of Christmas, and it got me all fired up to host my own Christmas dinner complete with an eclectic mix of my favorite Christmas traditions. One of the interesting things in the documentary was just how much Christmas "traditions" have evolved and changed over the centuries, and the origins of the varied ways we celebrate the season. (Christmas trees? German. You can thank Queen Victoria's husband Albert for introducing the custom to the English speaking world.) One take-away from the film was that it really is in the Christmas spirit to borrow and mix your favorite holiday ideas to develop your own family "traditions" for how you celebrate and make it a special time of year.

So this year, I decided I'd like to celebrate by having a small gathering of friends over for a Christmas dinner early in the season complete with warm, spiced wine and figgy pudding for dessert. (I've never even had figgy pudding. But hey, it's tradition.) Part of the fun of hosting your own holiday dinner is choosing to make your own favorite holiday foods; I served just the foods I loved and had a blast making them.

Here was our menu:

Appetizer:
Goat cheese and fig jam on toasted baguette slices
Warm spiced wine

Main Course:
Roasted Orange Chicken
Caramelized Onion Glazed Ham
Baked Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms
Paula Dean's "Ol' No. 7 Yams"
Spiced Buttered Carrots
Wild Rice with Cranberries and Walnuts
Cranberry Sauce (sort of - I left it in the fridge :/)

Dessert:
Warm figgy pudding with caramel cream sauce and a dollop of vanilla iced cream
Chocolate Almond Butter Balls

We served dinner at 5:30 so Will could join us. I prepped everything in the morning and had it ready to go in the oven or on the stove-top before guests arrived.

I had a wonderful time. It was so much fun to plan a menu of my favorite foods to share with friends and have a chance to cook it while my amazing husband alternated between chasing after our toddler and cleaning up my dishes. It also gave us incentive to finish decorating the house for Christmas, and have the decorations enjoyed by more than just the two of us.

I am so, so, so lucky

It's now, while Will is young and our second isn't even born, that we'll start figuring out what celebrating Christmas means for our family, and develop the traditions our children will look forward to each year that will make the season special. I'm looking forward to everything from Christmas stockings and cookies for Santa to that mulled wine and figgy pudding with friends!

He might grow up thinking everyone has figgy pudding at Christmas :)

Merry Christmas :)


Recipes:

Warm Spiced Wine: Burgundy is traditional, but a pinot noir or grenache mix would also work well. This is not something we'd do to an expensive bottle of wine, but something mid-range is going to taste better than the least expensive bottle you can find. (Spend more than you would if you're making sangria, less than if you're serving it alone or with a nice meal to company.) Heat over very low heat just until warm with a stick of cinnamon and some cloves secured in a cheese cloth or tea ball. Can remain on low heat, just don't let it come to a boil!

Roasted Orange Chicken: Rub the outside of a chicken with orange slices, then place the orange in the body cavity and truss the chicken. Brush the chicken with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse kosher salt and pepper to taste, and roast at 425 degrees until the exterior skin is krispy and the chicken has reached a safe internal temperature according to your meat thermometer and juices run clear. (About one hour for a five pound roasting chicken.) Let sit for twenty minutes tented with foil prior to carving.


Caramelized Onion Glazed Ham: This recipe was inspired by "Jimbo's Hambo", a Guy Fieri recipe from the Food Network. The original is excellent - I just didn't have all the ingredients on hand.

Glaze:
Olive oil
1/2 a yellow onion finely chopped
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 cup of coarse mustard
1 six ounce can of pineapple juice
1/2 cup of honey
1/4 cup of Jack Daniels
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Lightly coat a large saute pan with olive oil and turn heat to medium. Sautee the onions until translucent (they'll caramelize as the glaze reduces and in the oven). Add the garlic and stir for another thirty seconds. Remove from heat to add the Jack Daniels and deglaze the pan. Add all other ingredients, stir well, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until greatly reduced to a glazing consistency - I let it simmer on very low heat for about an hour and a half while I prepared the other dishes.

When the glaze is ready, take an uncut, precooked ham and place it in a roasting pan with a little water to prevent burned drippings. Cut it about half an inch deep in long diagonal cuts, then criss cross the other side. Dot the ham with cloves to hold the cuts open so the glaze can seep into the ham. Pour the glaze over the ham and cook it until heated through - this will vary based on ham weight, see directions on the ham you've bought. I glazed my ham in advance and left it in the refrigerator for the afternoon.



Baked Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms: I used Mark Bittman's recipe in "How to Cook Everything" for stuffed button mushrooms, but substituted Portabello mushrooms for a heartier version to serve with the meal.



Paula Dean's Old No' 7 Yams: This is a runny, delicious sweet potato casserole that makes amazing leftovers. I double the amount of sweet potato and reduce the water called for by a cup because the sauce is always so runny. Recipe is available online at the food network website.



Spiced Buttered Carrots: I used a recipe from the Bon Appetit "Fast Easy Fresh" cookbook.

Wild Rice with Cranberries and Walnuts: This is inspired by a Martha Stewart recipe from one of her Thanksgiving magazines. It calls for candied pecans, which I had trouble finding at Whole Foods, so I substituted plain chopped walnuts this time. I sauteed onions in olive oil until transluscent, then added wild rice and toasted it for a few minutes until fragrant. I added water according to package directions, simmered an hour, and then drained away excess liquid. I then tossed the wild rice and onions with about half a cup of orange juice until reduced to a glazed consistency, and mixed in dried cranberries, dried parsley, and topped with chopped walnuts just before serving.



Figgy Pudding: I found a modernized version of figgy pudding online on the food network website. The recipe makes way more than it claims in terms of batter and sauce. I used muffin tins instead of individual ramekins, and made 18 individual figgy puddings. (The recipe's instructions say to fill four one cup ramekins 1/2 to 3/4 full. If you do the math on the recipe's ingredients, that would require absurdly less batter than you make.) I used half figs and half dates for the dried fruit, and I used half brandy and half water when I brought the fruit to a boil and pureed it. I also reduced the sauce recipe by about 1/3 and still had plenty of sauce. I made the batter and placed it in muffin tins in the fridge for the afternoon and then put them in the oven shortly after we began eating in order to have warm pudding ready after the meal. Reheated the sauce and served! Despite it's being a little non-traditional (baked, not cooked by immersing a container in hot water, not nearly enough booze, etc) it was an easy recipe, had a very nice fig flavor, and certainly felt like Christmas to me!



Mimi's Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls: I used almond butter for this gathering, trying to be all gourmet. Big mistake. They weren't bad, but they weren't my great grandmother Mimi's peanut butter balls. I will stick to her original recipe in the future!

Makes approximately four dozen peanut butter balls.

2 cups finely crushed graham crackers (About 12 graham cracker squares, use food processor)
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
One jar creamy peanut butter

2 cups chocolate chips
1/4 cake of paraffin cooking wax

Combine the graham crackers, peanut butter and confectioners sugar and mix well. Chill. Drop by rounded teaspoon full onto wax paper and chill several hours. Melt paraffin wax over double boiler. Add and melt chocolate chips. Dip balls into the chocolate (I use two spoons) and then place back onto wax paper and into the fridge to cool and harden. May be served at room temperature but store best when chilled.



Happy Cooking!




Don't wear yourself out :)

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

I love going apple picking in the fall, it's one of my favorite fall traditions. This year, I took Will for the first time with my Mom and Will's playgroup. It was so much fun, and we picked a ton of apples.


I made the requisite apple pie and homemade applesauce, but then decided I would try something new and made a butternut squash and apple soup. I ate two bowls with baguette as a meal, but it would also make a great first course for any autumn dinner.

I came up with the recipe myself, but it's based on soup and puree techniques I learned in a cooking class I took last year, and my refresher from Chef Marc!

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

2 T butter or olive oil
2 carrots, peeled and cut into a large dice
2 stalks celery, diced
1 large onion, diced
1 Butternut Squash, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
1/2 cup apple cider, white wine or water
4 cups low sodium chicken broth
6 apples, peeled and cut into large chunks
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves


Heat the butter or olive oil in a pan over medium low heat. Pour yourself a glass of wine to drink. Add the diced onions, carrots, and celery and sauté until vegetables are soft and onions are translucent, about ten minutes. Add the chunks of butternut squash and sauté about five more minutes. Deglaze the pan with the cider, white wine or water. Add the chicken broth and bring to a simmer. Add the apples and spices and simmer until you've given your son a bath and put him to bed. (Or until apples and squash are thoroughly cooked and softened and flavors have developed, about half an hour.) Soup can simmer on very low heat for longer if needed. Puree with an immersion blender or in small batches in a regular blender. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Freezes well.

Cherry Tomatoes!

We've got cherry tomatoes! This is the first year we've grown tomatoes, and I love going out each morning to pick the ripened fruit. Greg and one of his coworkers made "earthtainers" this year, and the plants responded by growing like CRAZY! (For more on earthtainers, check out the website, http://www.earthtainer.org/ where you can find free blue prints to make your own.)


Greg, Will, and one of Greg's amazing earthtainers growing cherry tomatoes. That's one tomato plant, which was only four inches tall when we brought it home from Volante Farms!

At first I was worried that we'd have too many tomatoes, but now I'm starting to wonder if there is such a thing. I love cooking with these! We've had mozzarella, basil and tomato salad, pasta with fresh tomato and white wine sauce, Tofu Bhuna Masala, and my grandmother's amazing vegetable soup, all made with fresh tomatoes from the garden. I haven't even had to make sauce and freeze it yet, and we've eaten over 150 cherry tomatoes from this plant! (Not exaggerating or joking. Look at that thing, it's a monster!) Of course it helps that I have six basil plants in my herb garden that I started from seed in April. Now if only there was such a thing as a mozzarella plant...

Our most recent culinary use for cherry tomatoes was a Martha Stewart recipe for Cherry Tomato Mozzarella Zucchini pie. I followed the recipe to a T, homemade parmesan pie crust and all (Will was with Greg!) and it was pretty good. My slice would have been better if someone *cough*Will*cough* didn't steal most of my tomatoes, but it was still worth making :)

Her recipe is online here: http://www.marthastewart.com/317661/cherry-tomato-bocconcini-and-zucchini-pi

Mine doesn't look as nice as hers, but whose does?! It still tasted great :)

Meat Dishes for Will - More Homemade Babyfood

Thank goodness Will has finally taken to eating solid foods, and with great enthusiasm! But this new three meals a day routine means I have to devote greater energy to providing him with variety and nutrition.

My pediatrician encouraged me starting at the nine month visit to give Will small, well cooked portions of anything we were eating with the exception of shellfish, peanut butter and honey. In theory, this sounds great - I'd love to feed him little pieces of steamed green beans and cooked chicken. But the reality is that I'm often eating leftovers or sandwiches for lunch, having dinner with Greg after Will goes to bed, and in the summer, we eat a lot of raw fruits and vegetables, salads, and other things that aren't very baby friendly.

So while he and I can happily split a hummus sandwich or share our morning oatmeal, I still need to have plenty of baby food on hand so he can have something to go with his typically carb-loaded finger foods.

The organic jarred food I buy is great and convenient and preservative free, but there are only so many kinds, especially now that Will should have chunkier meals with some texture. He should also be eating more meat at this age than just vegetables, in order to get the fat, iron and protein babies require to grow at the rate they need to. (Healthy eating for adults and healthy eating for babies are two different things, which I realized mostly after reading three different baby books reminding me that full-fat dairy products and butter are beneficial for babies, while high fiber actually isn't.)

Long story shorter, here's two baby food recipes I made up for Will to stock my freezer.


Ground Beef with Sweet Potato and Onions

1/2 pound grass fed ground beef
1 T unsalted butter or olive oil
1/4 organic onion
3 medium sized or 2 large organic sweet potatoes

Roast the sweet potatos at 400 degrees until soft, approximately an hour and fifteen minutes. Remove from oven, slice lengthwise, and allow to cool. Melt the butter in a medium skillet on medium heat. Dice the onion very finely and cook in the melted butter over medium heat until softened and transluscent, about ten minutes. Add the ground beef and break it up into tiny pieces while it cooks. I use a potato masher, which works great. Cook beef until well browned and thoroughly cooked, then remove from heat. Slip the skins off the sweet potatos and puree with a hand blender or in a food processor, adding enough filtered water to achieve a thick but smooth consistency. Stir in the ground beef and onion mixture. Refrigerate and use one portion, and freeze the rest for up to one month. Makes 4-5 cups, which I turned into 17 quarter cup sized servings.

Note: It might be better to have your butcher grind a cut of beef for you on site; some packaged ground beef is actually cured with ammonia, which is not something I want to feed my baby.


Chunky Chicken Soup with Rice

4 organic carrots, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 an onion, finely chopped
1 T olive oil or unsalted butter
2 celery stalks, finely diced
2 chicken breast halves, cut into tiny pieces
3 cups water or reduced sodium chicken stock
1/2 cup white rice

Heat the oil or butter in a medium sized stock pot over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion and celery and sautee until softened, about ten minutes. Add the 3 cups of water or reduced sodium chicken broth and bring to a boil. Add the cut up chicken and the rice and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes or until white rice is soft and chicken is cooked through. The vegetables should also be very soft, but if they're a large dice you may want to increase cooking time to 45 minutes. If desired, pulse with a hand blender to reach a smoother consistency.



Will was very receptive to the sweet potato with beef and onions especially!

Cookbooks I'd Rather Not Cook Without

I love curling up with a cookbook and flipping through the descriptions and photos for inspiration. (Unless of course dinner is in an hour and I haven’t even been to the grocery store.) I’ve purchased and been given quite a few cookbooks over the years, but there are some that stand out as absolute favorites that I reach for time and again.

Fairchild, Barbara. bon appetit fast easy fresh cookbook 1,100 quick dishes for everynight cooking

I checked this cookbook out of the library (try before you buy, a great way to get fresh dinner inspiration regularly!), and loved it so much that I mentioned it to my mother who got it for me for Christmas. Every recipe, and I mean every recipe, that I have made from this cookbook has turned out amazing. It has a focus on fresh ingredients and food that is flavored by herbs, spices and produce rather than a lot of fat or sugar. The flavors are amazing, and the recipes are easy to prepare. Some of our favorites: Pork cutlets with figs and balsamic vinegar, salmon with pistachio-basil butter, chicken with spicy peanut sauce, linguine with pears and gorgonzola cheese.


Bittman, Mark. Quick and Easy Recipes from The New York Times

I am a bit of a Mark Bittman enthusiast, and I’ve been slowly converting friends and family too. This is one of my favorite recipe books for a fast dinner because most of the recipes have very few ingredients, which cuts down on prep time and or shopping time if I do need to run to the store for something. They’re simple, but still creative. Some favorites: chicken with apricots, grilled steak with roquefort sauce, penne with butternut squash, salmon burgers.


Bittman, Mark How to Cook Everything

Presumptuous title, insanely awesome cookbook. Each chapter starts with a basic overview of the topic to help provide an understanding of the fundamentals that will benefit you no matter which recipe you choose. Everything from how to select fresh fish to the different types of flour and how to substitute them in various recipes. Much of my confidence in the kitchen comes from reading the beginning of each chapter and applying that knowledge to all of my cooking. He’s also great at providing helpful variations on primary recipes so you can take one basic recipe and make it many ways. His suggestions often spark my own creative combinations, whether it’s add ins to pasta or a new quickbread recipe. Some favorites: sauteed chicken cutlets with lime sauce, overnight waffles, curried chicken and apple salad, chicken and garlic stew.


Bittman, Mark How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

Eating vegetarian meals at least a few nights a week is healthier for us and better for our environment. Bittman’s large volume has helped me move beyond the stereotypical pasta and rice dishes and into more exotic grains like quinoa and bulgur wheat. It has charts on how to cook almost every kind of grain and legume you can find, tables on the best methods and cook times for vegetables, and a lot of suggestions on how to cook a balanced vegetarian meal. It’s full of informative reading, excerpts on whole wheat pasta and pasta alternatives, a detailed description on making your own gnocchi, a chart detailing which types of potatoes work best in which types of recipes, 17 dip suggestions for serving with crudite. Reading this doesn’t just make one dinner, it makes you a better and more informed cook. Some favorites: beets baked in foil, curried eggplant with coconut milk, simpler than pilaf baked rice.


Druker, Marjorie with Silverstein, Clara. New England Soup Factory Cookbook

Greg works near the New England Soup Factory, which is one of our favorite lunch spots for rainy days especially. Their lobster bisque is to die for, but I’ve never had a soup there I didn’t like. Their cookbook is absolutely amazing, and it’s helped me reach a new appreciation for soups. They are chock full of vegetables, many of them freeze well, and they can feed a ton of people and keep warm if guests are late in arriving. Not to mention that they’re delicious, especially with these recipes. Some favorites: carrot and ginger soup, sweet potato chicken and barley soup, chicken tortellini soup, apple onion and cheddar soup, caribbean chicken soup with coconut.


Publications International, Hershey’s Best Loved Recipes

Our chocolate loving friend Danielle gave this to me on the occasion of my bridal shower in 2007, and it’s been my default for cakes especially ever since. If you’ve been over and had chocolate cake, it was the Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake from page 8. For Greg’s birthday every year? The German Chocolate Cake. My birthday one year and only one because I want to have more birthdays? The flour-less chocolate torte, made by Greg. Oh and it was amazing.


Mom, Kelly’s Family Cookbook

When I was nine months old, my mother took a blank journal and started writing in it all the favorite family recipes that she made, and we requested, often through the years. It has all my favorite bread recipes, plus Grammie Ruth’s vegetable soup, the zucchini bread we couldn’t get enough of growing up, how to make mom’s chicken pie, you name it. Pretty soon I’m going to start one for Will.

Pumpkin and Spinach Baby Muffins (8 Months Plus)

Will has finally started eating solids with great enthusiasm - with one caveat. Wants to do it himself. Vehemently. This makes finger foods my friend, since his frantic grabbing for spoons full of baby food requires a great deal of effort on my part to keep aimed towards his mouth rather than forehead. Half a jar of baby food mutually guided works especially well for both of us when it's supplemented by something he can have complete control over, like baby puffs or teething biscuits.

When I give him something he can eat on his own, he gets a great deal of entertainment and satisfaction, and I get ten to fifteen minutes to eat my own food, empty the dishwasher, or start dinner. (All while keeping an eye out for choking, of course.)

But while baby puffs are well received, they're expensive and not very nutrient or calorie dense. So I flipped through my baby cookbooks and saw some recipes for baby muffins. Just the thing! Except that most of them had eggs and added sugar, the first being a no-no for babies under a year, and the second being something I'd like to avoid as much as possible.

So I took some inspiration from about five different recipes, substituted apple sauce for the eggs as a binding agent, sweetened it lightly with molasses, and made Will some mini-muffins that are chock full of vitamins AND entertainment.

Here's the recipe:

1 and 3/4 cups organic all purpose flour*
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
dash of ginger
1 cup finely chopped fresh organic baby spinach
1 cup organic pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup no sugar added applesauce (I use homemade, see baby food blog)
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup water (more as needed)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients and stir just until blended. Add a little more water if necessary to reach a thick batter consistency. Spoon into a greased mini-muffin tin. Bake in middle of oven for about ten minutes until tops are lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan for a few minutes then remove to finish cooling on a wire rack.

*Talk to your pediatrician about any new recipe, and about serving wheat, especially if you have family history of food allergies. Will had already had wheat prior to this with no reaction, so our pediatrician cleared this recipe for him. Look into substituting rice flour.

Will ate two of these with great gusto even after he had already had his normal dinner of baby food! I put most of them in the freezer and kept out some for the next few days. I plan to thaw them on the counter overnight for more nutritious entertainment in the coming months.

I hope to experiment with more muffin recipes in the future. Sweet potato, zucchini, carrots - any vegetables that do well in quick breads are shoe-ins for baby muffin recipes where you get to control the sugar. Once Will is a year old I can substitute whole wheat flour for some of the regular flour and up the fiber and nutrient profile of the muffins, plus at that age you can usually introduce cow's milk and eggs, so baking will be even easier. Until then, I am considering taking some help from a vegan cookbook (local library here I come!) to find tips for baking without milk and eggs.


I loves muffins.