Big Words Little Foodies Recipe Swap- Night Vision

Welcome to the 3rd week of the Big Words, Little Foodies Recipe Swap. Tuesday is the day to find the humor in the funny things kids say about food as we try our best to feed the family.

To play:
1) publish a post on your blog fitting the Big Words, Little Foodies theme, and link up with Mr. Linky on this post.
2)Don't forget to link to this post within your post. For more details on the weekly Big Words Little Foodies blog event, see this post.
3) Not required, but feel free to right click and save the Big Words, Little Foodies .JPG above to use in your post.

Big boo has to get up early for school. Most mornings he wakes on his own right, but some mornings I have to wake him up. When he's groggy, I offer him a piggy back ride down the stairs. Last week I gave him a ride down, but forgot to switch the light on in the stair well.

Me: Whoops, silly me. I forgot the flip the switch, sorry we had to come down in the dark.
Big Boo (totally straight, not in joke telling voice): No problem. Did you know I can actually see in the dark. I eat carrots.

It's so rewarding to hear the boys talk about the connections they have with wholesome food. The super powers of food have always been something they sink their teeth in, so it's no wonder that carrot's night vision enhancing benefits are something big boo can causally talk about just after waking up.

Check out these night vision enhancing recipes:


Whole Grain Carrot Cake- I tried a dozen carrot cake recipes before settling on this one.

Candied Acorn Squash- cooking this make me think of my grandma.




Honey Gingered Carrots (from CM on cooks.com)
1 lb pound of baby carrots (or 1 lb of whole carrots cut in similar size to baby carrots)
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons butter
salt to taste
3 cloves garlic, whole, peeled
1-1 1/2 tablespoons fresh ginger, finely minced

In a cast iron skillet (or non stick, heavy bottomed pan that can take a lot of heat) melt 2 TBS of the butter and the carrots over medium heat, stirring often until carrots are browned. Add salt, garlic and ginger and continue to cook until carrots take on a "roasted" color (not blackened). Be careful not to burn garlic, once it browns, mash it with a fork, and push to side of pan where heat (might be) lower. (As Alton brown says, burned garlic is not good eats....). Stir in honey and remaining TBS of butter until melted and remove from heat.

Ham Bone Split Pea Soup - Will Kids Eat It?

Since it's hard for a real foodie to be frugal by clipping coupons (ever seen a coupon for grass-fed beef or kohlrabi greens?), I have to resort to other methods to keep grocery costs down on some of our food items and meals. A good lot of our ingredients are, um, pricey.

lower cost ingredients
One way I do that is by cooking with legumes (beans and lentils) and whole grains frequently. Even though 3 out of the 4 of us actually like beans and rice, we don't want it twice every week. So it's good to have a nice collection of legume/grain combos your family enjoys so no one tires of this type main course. Sad to say, while I've eaten split pea soup many times, I've never made it! That is about to change. Hubby loved it, big boo loved it, and I loved it. Little boo ate it, but he hasn't found his love of soup. Yet.

getting mileage out of pricey ingredients
Once you've bought that free range turkey, organic chicken or bag of locally grown greens, you have a sunk cost in the bones, skin, stems and roots. That is, if you toss the scraps in the garbage. So don't do that. Reuse them to add tons of flavor (and nutrients) to said legumes and grains!

Bones and pan juices make great stock. Veggie scraps make great stock. Save both items in ziplock freezer bags, and put pan juices in freeze safe containers. I mix pan juices from chicken and beef all the time. Then when I go to make soup, a pot of beans or batch of rice I have some cooking liquid or bones to add flavor and consume nutrients of those sunk costs. Stay tuned for details on how and what to save in your veggie scrap bag.

Now this ham bone is nothing special, it's not pastured or free range or what ever classifies pork as containing more nutrients. It's just the bone from the $9 ham I nabbed in a post holiday meat sale at HEB. But it did add a ton of great flavor to a pound of green split peas. And I even scraped the marrow out of the bone and added back to the soup pot, another foodie first for me. Alton Brown would be so proud.

I did soak my lentils overnight in the oven with a couple tablespoons of the whey I had left from the paneer little boo and I made last week (stay tuned for details, it was one of three recipes we tested from Kids' Kitchen, a product I will be reviewing and giving away soon). The whey helps break down phytic acid (an anti-nutrient) present in grains and legumes which allows the body to absorb more of the minerals in split peas.

Ham Bone Split Pea Soup
based on Uncle Bill's recipe on recipe zaar
1 ham bone, meat cut from it and reserved
8 cups of water
1 bay leaf
1 lb split peas (rinsed)
2 medium carrots diced
1-2 onions diced (don't toss the skins)
2 ribs of celery chopped
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt (or less)

Starting with ice cold water (or a frozen bone in water) in a stock pot, add bone, bay leaf, pepper, onion skins, celery seed and a pound of split peas. Bring water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for 1- 1.5 hours or until pea are tender (45 minutes if you soaked your lentils over night). Remove bone, pick off any remaining meat adding it to reserves, scrape out marrow and return marrow to soup. Remove onion skins and bay leaf. Add carrots, celery, onion to soup pot and cook until tender for 30 minutes. Add salt and any ham you reserved. If you want it thick, use an emulsion blender to puree the soup. I like to see some veggie chunks so I pureed half the soup.

Don't skip the ice cold water step! The water temp helps extract the minerals, flavors and nutrients from the bones, which accomplishes your mission: optimize sunk costs.

Kid Appeal Tip If soup is not on the good eats list for your kids, don't fret. It will be one day. But you gotta put it on the table, frequently! Until then pick something else to serve with soup to get the kids from groaning at the table. Cheesy toast on the side, or toppers like crackers, croutons, cheese, sour cream can give kids some ownership of how they take their soup. But set some ground rules. Toppers are only to be consumed in the soup. They can load up as much as they want on top of soup and eat them with a spoon. And seconds of cheesy toast are right out until a bite or five of soup is down the hatch. Slowly, and perhaps over months or longer your kids will learn to eat soup. Big boo used to cry on soup night. He loves it now. I ate soup of no kind until I was a teenager, and even then it was solely chicken noodle until I was in my 20s. Raise your hand and repeat after me: "I have to serve soup, before my kids will eat soup."


So. Which is it? Do the kids love soup or hate soup?