Lie to Your Children—It’s Good for Them

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Making Halloween a Little Less Scary

With Halloween right around the corner, I have been giving a lot of thought to the menu for our annual block party. We are hosting the party at our house this year, and I hope to serve some delicious finger foods to fill up our bellies before hitting the streets.

I haven’t settled on the menu yet, but here are some items that I am considering:

• Vampire Drool
• Orzo with Roasted Seasonal Vegetables
• Sticky and Slightly Spicy (Bat) Wings
• Spiced Pecans
• Marinated Mini-Mozzarella (eye) Balls with Pita Crisps
• Sour Cream and Scallion Dip with Sweet Potato Chips and Carrot Fingers
• Mummy Pizzas that the kids will make themselves (Just pull apart string cheese and lay it on an English Muffin topped with a little marinara…Add some sliced olives for eyes and voila – you have a mummy pizza!)
• Pumpkin Chocolate Brownie Cake – Absolutely delicious! (We had a bit of buttermilk left over from waffles this weekend, so I used that instead of the sour soy milk she recommended.)

Update: Here are some photos of our food from the Halloween party.  Pictured, you will see Vampire Drool with a Green Ice Hand, Marinated Mozzarella Eyeballs with Pita Crisps, Orzo with Roasted Vegetables and Bat Wings.  Everything was a hit, although I was reprimanded by my daughter for not making enough Bat Wings.  They were gone in a flash!

           

Although I can control the quality of the foods I’ll be serving at home, I can’t control what will be doled out by the neighbors.

Kids are often afraid of the sights and sounds that meet them when the doors at each home creek open…but the truly frightening experience lies in the ingredients of the foods that they are collecting: partially hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup, alkali, chemicals, artificial colorings and more…

There is no sense in banning candy – that will only make everyone want it more (parents included…admit it!). But it might be worth a few moments to read some of the labels in your stash, just to see what you are consuming and how it will affect you. It just might help prevent you from over-indulging.

In some homes, parents have created a wonderful compromise – Kids select a few of their favorite treats to keep and trade the rest with you for a toy, trip to the movies or some new books.

If you would like to promote a Healthier Halloween yourself, leave the candy at the store. Instead, pick up some flower or herb seed packets, pencils, colored markers, stickers or small card games to distribute instead.

Organics – How to Prioritize

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Is Deceptively Delicious too Deceptive?

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Creepy Cuisine and Potent Potions

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While preparing for some upcoming kids Halloween Cooking Classes, I realized that you might appreciate a few recipes for Creepy Cuisine and Potent Potions that weren’t quite as sugar and fat laden as the majority of recipes you’ll find online.

Vampire Drool

Red Juice, your choice (cranberry, pomegranate, cherry etc)
Bubble Water
1 pkg frozen organic cranberries
1 latex glove
1 cauldron

1. Pour water into a latex glove. Tie the end, and put it the freezer (be sure to store it flat, so that it retains the shape you want).
2. When frozen, remove from the freezer and peel off the glove.
3. Combine juices and bubbly water in a cauldron
4. Add the frozen “hand” to complete the brew

Worms and Eyeballs

1 small onion, grated 3 garlic cloves, minced 1 large egg 1/4 cup dried bread crumbs 3 Tbs ketchup 1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves 1/4 cup grated Parmesan

1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano 1 tsp salt 1/4 tsp ground black pepper 1 lb ground dark turkey meat 3 Tbs olive oil marinara sauce 1 can black olives, pitted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Add the onion, garlic, egg, bread crumbs, ketchup, parsley, Parmesan, Pecorino, salt and pepper to a large bowl and blend. Mix in the turkey.
3. Shape the turkey mixture into 1 1/4-inch-diameter meatballs.
4. Place on baking sheet.
5. Use an egg slicer to slice the olives into rings.
6. Place one olive ring on top of each meatball, pressing lightly. This makes it look more like an eyeball!
7. Bake 15-20 minutes or until the inside is no longer pink and the juices run clear.

CALL THE KIDS:

Peel paper off the garlic cloves. Crack egg. Squeeze ketchup Grate and measure cheese Pick parsley leaves from the stem and tear into small pieces.

With clean hands, combine all of the ingredients and shape into balls Wash hands afterwards Slice black olives and press onto meatballs Wash hands again.

Strawberry Monsters

Strawberries
4″ sucker sticks
Candy Melts (your color choice)
Black decorating gel

1. Insert lollipop stick into strawberries and place them in the freezer for about 15 minutes, until they are cold.
2. While the berries are chilling, heat one cup of candy melts, in a double-boiler, stirring constantly until completely melted.
3. Remove the berries from the freezer and dip them lightly in the melted candy for a thin coating.
4. To get a Mummy look, swirl them a bit to look like layers of white wrapped around it. Ghosts can be dunked to make a little twisted peak on top. Frankenstein can be dunked and a spoon used to flatten the candy on top.
5. Set on a baking sheet lined with parchment to cool and harden. You can refrigerate them if you would like to speed this up.
6. After they harden, you can add faces. Using black decorating gel and a toothpick (as your brush), draw a spooky face.

Tips

Use green melts for Frankenstein, Orange for Jack-O-Lanterns & white for ghosts and mummies

Do You Always Eat Such Good Dinners?

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Yesterday after school, we had my daughter’s friend, Emma, over for a play date. Like most multi-tasking mothers, I started getting ingredients for dinner ready while they were playing. Emma kept coming into the kitchen to stare at my ingredients and to ask questions. When I told her that we were making Asian Lettuce Wraps, she wanted to know why I liked to make foods from other countries. I happily explained how fun it is to try new foods. She leaned over the steaming pot of pad thai noodles and loved that they were almost invisible…I am so lucky to have a career that sparks such enthusiasm in kids!

When I found out that her mother was running late, Emma ran to the table to eat dinner with my kids. After the first bite, she asked, “do you always make such nice dinners?” I looked at the table and had to laugh. It was simple and took less than 30 minutes to prepare. But it made me realize that before I began meal planning, I made the same things over and over again. Emma explained that she was tired of the foods she got for dinner, and asked me if I could tell her mom what I did to the food to make it taste so good.

When her mother came to pick her up, her stood wide-eyed as the kids asked for seconds…and thirds, and ate their asian broccoli slaw! She admitted that until she saw Emma eating with such gusto, she hadn’t realized that she was in such a food rut. She started asking questions about What’s Cooking Weekly, my online meal planning service for families, and decided that she would give it a try. Even if she just tried a few of my menus, or simply added some of my sides to her existing repertoire, she said it was still a good value. She was also excited that she would start saving money on groceries, since she would go into the market knowing what she was looking for.

She nearly had to drag her daughter away from the table when I said that I had to save the rest of the food for my husband, who hadn’t arrived home from work yet.

So, what was that simple menu that caused such a sensation?

Asian Broccoli Slaw:
1 bag broccoli slaw mix from Trader Joe’s
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 Tbs. sesame oil
2 Tbs. sesame seeds

Combine dressing mix and pour on salad, to taste.
Yes, that’s it!

Pad Thai:
This is embarassing – I used a package from Trader Joe’s that was in the back of my cabinet for 6 months. The kids loved it, and it was so easy that I’ll use it again. Next time, I might add some scrambled egg, tofu and maybe some julienned bell peppers or carrots.

Asian Lettuce Wraps:
1 pound ground turkey
1 can water chestnuts
1 small red onion
2 Tbs. oyster sauce
2 Tbs. hoisin sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
Juice from 2 limes
1 Tbs. brown sugar
Large lettuce leaves (bibb lettuce works well)

1. Dice water chestnuts and red onion. Combine in a bowl, along with the oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, salt, lime juice and brown sugar.
2. In a large skillet, begin to brown the ground turkey. After 3 minutes, add red onion mixture.
3. Cook until the turkey is done.
4. Serve by putting the turkey mixture on top of a lettuce leaf. You can wrap them like a burrito, or like a taco. Either way, be prepared for some of the filling to fall out. The kids loved the fun and challenge of eating their food like this!
5. Serve with Asian broccoli slaw, pad thai noodles or steamed brown rice.

Science In The Kitchen

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Yesterday was the first of my new After School Cooking Class series for Kids. Our class was called: Science In The Kitchen. After teaching high school biology years ago, it was fun to bring the laboratory into the kitchen!

What was on the Agenda?
We made popovers, invisible ink, sorbet in a bag and expanded marshmallows in the microwave.

Popovers

4 eggs
2 cups milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
Butter, jam, syrup or honey, for serving

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Grease 12 large muffin tin cups or 12 custard cups.
3. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat well.
4. Add the milk, flour, and salt, and beat until just blended.
5. Fill the muffin tin cups or custard cups 3/4 full with the batter.
6. Place the pan on the center rack in the oven.
7. Bake for 30 minutes without opening the oven door.
8. Serve the popovers hot with butter, jam, syrup, or honey.

What Makes Popovers “Pop”?

Steam is released from the liquids in the batter as they heat. It is confined in the oven (don’t open the door!), and gets trapped inside the gluten from flour proteins, starch, and protein from eggs. The popover literally ‘pops’ with steam, but the steam doesn’t escape because the stretchy protein holds it inside the batter.