4 lbs fresh pumpkin (two small) peeled, seeded and cut into chunks
4 large Granny Smith apples, unpeeled, cut into quarters
1 cup onion, chopped
6 cups fat free chicken broth (I used Pacific brands, which is lower in sodium)
1 cup low-fat plain Greek yogurt
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp chopped fresh herbs (sage is better, but I had thyme)
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cardamom (ginger would also be good)
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
Instructions
Toss together pumpkin, apples, onions, olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper and spread evenly onto a baking sheet. Roast, mixing once, for 30 minutes.
Add in herbs, mix again, and continue roasting until very tender and starting to brown, about 15 to 20 minutes more.
Transfer to a Dutch oven and add one or two cups of broth. Use a hand blender to smooth, adding more broth as you blend.
Add in yogurt, cardamom, nutmeg and remaining salt and heat through over medium-low heat, stirring constantly for about 5-7 minutes.
LUNCH TIP: I found the soup was even better the second day — the apple really came through and the overall flavor was more balanced. It ended up being more dense than I wanted so I added more stock to thin it out (you could even use water without sacrificing flavor).
Hot lunch: A slightly messy thermos of spaghetti and chicken meatballs
Last week, the kid and I made a tray of chicken meatballs for school lunches. It turns out that working with raw poultry is a preschoolers’ dream — so many opportunities to wash your hands! While I’m a former vegetarian and often choose veggies (and, yes, I admit it, carbs) over meat a lot of the time, my daughter is all carnivore, just like her dad. The only thing that trumps meat in her personal codex of dietary laws is chocolate, which reminds me that I really should order mole next time we go out for Mexican.
When my in-laws were in town a few weeks ago, I made a big pasta dinner — and I struck meatball gold with a recipe I came up with based on what I had in the fridge. I prefer to use ground chicken or turkey in my meatballs, but the meat often dries out because it’s so lean so I improvised a little. The secret to these amazingly light, moist, reheat-able meatballs is the combination of three simple ingredients I always have on hand: milk, bread, and pesto. Here’s my recipe for foolproof chicken or turkey meatballs that are as easy as they are delicious:
Chicken or Turkey Meatballs
1 pound ground lean chicken or turkey
2 slices of whole grain bread, torn into bits
1/2 cup of milk (whatever you have — skim, 2%, whole)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
1 Tbsp pesto
1 Tsp olive oil
1/4 Tsp salt
A few turns of fresh cracked pepper
Chicken meatball supply is quickly being siphoned off by Dad
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Ask your kid to make a (controlled) mess by tearing up both slices of whole grain bread into tiny pieces in a small-to-medium size bowl. Pour the milk over the bread until every piece is coated; set aside for 15 minutes to allow the bread to absorb the milk. Add 1 Tsp of olive oil to a skillet on medium heat. Add garlic and onion and cook until golden brown. In a large bowl, combine ground meat with the bread mixture, prepared pesto, onions, and garlic. Use a spatula or your hands to incorporate all of the ingredients into the meat. Shape mixture into 20-24 small meatballs and place 1 inch apart on lightly greased baking sheet.
Bake uncovered 18 to 22 minutes or until no longer pink in center.
I serve them with what I call my “basic marinara” — one can of San Marzano crushed tomatoes, a little sauteed garlic or onion, salt and pepper. If I have pesto on hand, I’ll throw that in, too. Pesto is one of my favorite flavor short cuts and just having a little jar of in the fridge inspires me to use it in everything from pasta to rice to sauces to egg dishes.
Shivering under a light blanket this morning, I was certain it was officially fall. It was 50-something degrees and didn’t seem to be getting any warmer — even as it got closer to noon. I could feel the call of hibernation deep in my bones — that yearly, seasonal pull to stay home, cook, bake, and live out my domestic fantasies (those fantasies that seem to drop, along with my mop and broom, as soon as the mercury rises). Alas, it ended up being 75 degrees and the pull of an outdoor restaurant on the water (with seafood, beer, friends, and a sandpit for the kids) was stronger. Still, I know fall is coming and when it does, this cauliflower soup recipe from Sweet Paul will be there. I’ll probably swap the cup of cream for Greek yogurt to take it from a weekend treat to a weekday lunch, but it will be good just the same. Until then, I’ll enjoy the last of the Jersey peaches, roasted corn, clams, Brooklyn Summer Ale, and the sun on my face.
Photo Credit: Dana Gallagher
Serves 4
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 cauliflower, broken into pieces
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup cream
salt and pepper
Start with the toast, use a cookie cutter and cut out stars from toasted bread.
Preheat oven to 380F.
Place onion and cauliflower in a large oven proof dish and drizzle with olive oil.
Sprinkle with some salt and pepper.
Roast until golden.
Place the cauliflower and onions in a large pot and add stock.
Bring to a boil.
Let it boil 5 minutes, add stock and season with salt and pepper.
Pure in a blender and serve with a toasted star, a little olive oil and some pepper.
Guess what? 1 whole chicken can = 5 great lunches for kids
I know about whole chickens and their magical ability to provide a Sunday dinner, plus several dishes later in the week. Sometimes on a particularly hectic weeknight, a store-bought rotisserie chicken is the only healthy thing standing in the way of me and a frantic call to Chinese takeout joint. Still, I need to be reminded about the power of the chicken every once in a while.
As part of our Brown Bag Challenge at Everyday Health, Melissa d’Arabian blogged about her favorite ways to use one whole chicken to make five work lunches for the rest of the week. There are some great ideas here for kids, too. My favorite is the Slow Cooker Tortilla Soup, which essentially make itself and cooks while I’m work — how magical is that?
Slow Cooker Tortilla Soup / Photo credit: Ben Fink
It got me thinking about other things I could do with a whole chicken that would be perfect for Lady M’s lunch box. Here are four more ideas I know my daughter will love. A couple of these ideas include pasta — particularly spaghetti noodles — so it might be a good idea to make a pound of pasta while the chicken’s in the oven.
Vietnamese Chicken Salad: Shredded chicken, chopped mint, shredded carrots, shredded cabbage, thinly sliced onion (more for flavor than bulk), the juice of one small lime, and a tiny bit of agave syrup for sweetness. Let sit in the fridge overnight and add a sprinkle of chopped peanuts before packing in a thermos.
Sesame Noodles With Chicken: Boil spaghetti noodles, coat with a 1/4 cup of peanut butter, 2 Tbsp. of sesame seeds, then add shredded chicken. I try do this when the noodles are still warm so it “melts” the peanut butter. I’ll probably sprinkle some chopped cilantro or green onion on top, which she will promptly pick off.
Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas: This one is so simple you can prepare it in the morning before school starts. Grab a whole-wheat tortilla, fill with shredded chicken, mashed black beans or avocado, and shredded cheese. Fold the quesadilla over and toast in a toaster oven or “grill” in a frying pan with a small amount of oil. Cut into triangles and pack it up.
Chicken and Cheese Pesto Noodles: Similar to my pasta dish last Sunday, the hardest thing about this dish is boiling the noodles. Just add a Tbsp. of pesto, shredded chicken, and some grated cheese to the pasta and you’re good to go (er, pack).
What are your favorite ways to use up a whole chicken?
This school year, my nightly pack-it-up routine has expanded to include two snacks. I’m trying to make snacks as turnkey as possible by making a list of go-to items I can get from fridge to lunch box rather quickly. That way, I can focus on the main event, which is, of course, LUNCH (said in my best Oprah voice!). Fruit, yogurt, cheese, and cut-up veggies are natural go-to items, but here are some other favorites in rotation at the moment. As I sat down to write this list, I realized that the reason they’re so popular with the kid is because they’re all associated with FUN and LOVE. And, well, I love that.
Edamame. Is there another healthy snack that’s as delicious and satisfying as edamame? Maybe it’s just me, but edamame really activates the pleasure center in my brain normally reserved for salty/crunchy/bad-for-you things like potato chips. The kiddo loves them, too — and especially loves squirting them out of the pod and popping them into her mouth. They’re available everywhere I shop from Whole Foods to Trader Joe’s to Costco to the regular grocery store so I stock up on whatever’s available at the time — individual snack packs or larger bags that I separate into other containers. I take them out of the freezer the night before, let them thaw in the fridge until morning, and pop ’em into the lunch bag. So easy.
Trail mix. For Take Your Kids to Work Day at Everyday Health, my team and I organized a healthy trail mix bar for the kids. It inspired me to think harder about just packing snacks like Cheddar Bunnies and calling it a day. Now, I mix fun finger foods like snack crackers with nuts, seeds, dried fruit, cacao nibs, and coconut chips (they’re SO good!) to even out the nutritional profile a bit. She loves the variety and I like finding new items to add to our make-shift trail mix bar at home.
Popcorn. The addition of popcorn to a Friday night movie takes the weekend from ho-hum to hooray for my kid. She loves adding the popcorn kernels to the oil (safely, of course) and then waiting for that tell-tale pop-pop-pop to happen. We love to experiment with different herbs, oils, and toppings. Parmesan cheese is the current favorite, but I’m trying to get her out of her comfort zone. Mexican Lime is on my list of toppings to try.
Muffins. Muffins are for Mommy-and-me time at my house. Lady M and I have gotten so good at finding ways to make our muffins healthier from adding brown bananas to cut sugar to Greek yogurt and black beans to cut the fat. But we’re not Nazi about it — we swap out so we can swap in. That way, there’s nothing standing the way of our muffins and a few delicious chocolate chips. We experiment with whatever’s on hand or in season. Last week, we went raspberry picking so we made raspberry and dark chocolate mini muffins (using up some sad-looking bananas from the fruit bowl for the win!). We gave a bunch to her new teachers and froze the rest for lunches for the weeks ahead.
Bunny eggs. I bought Japanese egg molds back when she was a toddler as a way of getting out of making scrambled eggs every morning. You boil the eggs, allow them to cool, and then press the whole egg into an adorable shape. “Bunny Eggs” have been breakfast stars ever since! Now that she’s eating two snacks at school, I’m adding Bunny Eggs to the snack-time mix as well. With the edamame and the egg, I like the fact that she’s getting at least one protein-packed snack per day that isn’t processed or complicated.
Now that I’ve got this list to refresh my memory when mommy brain strikes, I have another problem to solve. This morning, the kid almost toppled over under the weight of a backpack full of lunch, snacks, and her water bottle. 30 pounds of preschooler + 8 pounds of food and food accoutrement = oy vey. If anyone has any ideas on now to lighten the load, let me know. My friend Nicole over at The Humble Larder, reminded me of wax paper and paper bags last night. I’m placing my right order now.
First day of school: Reunited and it feels so good
Lady M went back to school this week. Her nerves were a bit frayed because she’s going to a new school and a lot of her friends have been scattered to the school district winds. The snapshot to the right captured her and a friend in a very relieved and heartfelt embrace. It was a short, but emotional week.
It was also incredibly hot so I stuck to easy things like Applegate Farms turkey breast and Cabot cheddar cheese kabobs and chicken fried rice (inspired by one of Weelicious’ blogs), along with fruit, veggies, and some muffins we made from raspberries we picked on vacation the week before. Today, we foraged at the farmers market in the park for fixings for the week. We ended up with corn, peaches, kale, green beans, red bell pepper, cucumbers, bread, and some gorgeous wildflowers.
Farmers’ market booty (+ baby doll)
We had ambitious lunch plans for today. I woke up imagining a seamless, get-it-all-done-on-Sunday assembly line. The park had other ideas. We stopped to take a free yoga class, hung out with friends on the playground, and took a stroll around the pond. Along the way, we completely forgot about our lunch plans so we had to quickly improvise when we got home.
I had just a few minutes to throw together today’s lunch, which will eventually get thrown into a thermos this week.
Cheesy Chicken & Kale Pasta With Red Pepper Sticks
Pasta with Chicken Sausage, Wilted Kale, and Romano Cheese
1 box of whole wheat pasta
2 chicken sausages, precooked
1 Tbsp. pesto
1 bunch of kale, chopped
1/4 cup Romano cheese (or any other good hard cheese you have on hand)
Salt and pepper to taste
While the pasta was boiling, I threw the two chicken sausages under the broiler until they were done. I quickly trimmed and chopped the kale and sautéed it in 1 tsp of olive oil until wilted. Then, I cut the sausage links into bite-sized pieces and set them aside. The last thing to do was to drain the pasta, return it to same pot, add the pesto, the chicken sausage, wilted kale, and stir! I served it with a sprinkle of grated cheese (and then a little bit more — the girl likes her grated cheese!).
It makes about 7-to-8 servings for the preschool set. If you want to tone down the carbs, you can mix up the proportions so it’s not so pasta heavy. To accompany my less-than-svelte physique, my lunch featured more kale than pasta (cue the sad trombone).
It really needed a pop of color so I served it with bell pepper strips. If I had my s%Zt together, they’d be in the pasta dish. Better luck next time.
Join me over at Recipe Rehab for the Brown Bag Challenge this week. We’ll be sharing great lunch ideas and giving away fabulous prizes.
The Lunch Lady 