Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 07:26 AM
Welcome to Cooking With Kids! Every now and then, I like to show you easy recipes that you can make with your children. Also, last week, I promised you some recipes with fall vegetables. So, voila – Sweet Potato Muffins!
This recipe is from the current issue of Runner’s World Magazine.
My boss, Leslie, who has been running in a lot of races as of late, made these muffins and brought them in to the office. I must say – and Leslie won’t mind that I tell you this – Leslie doesn’t cook or bake much. So, she was pretty proud of her muffin creations and I was very impressed by them! They were so delicious, I just had to try to make them myself.
The contributing food writer, Mark Bittman, suggests that you enjoy these muffins as an energizing pre-run breakfast or post-run snack. They really are like a little meal. And they are so moist! Yum!
Sweet Potato Muffins
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour (preferably pastry flour) (NuVal score of 91 for Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour)
3/4 cups sugar (NuVal score of 1)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp melted unsalted butter (NuVal score of 2)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (NuVal score of 16)
1 cup pureed or mashed cooked sweet potato (NuVal score of 96)
1 egg, beaten (NuVal score of 33)
1/2 cup buttermilk (NuVal score of 44 for Garelick Farms Lowfat Cultured Buttermilk)
Directions:
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 12 muffin cups or add paper liners. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, ginger, baking soda, and salt. In a bowl, whisk, butter, oil, sweet potato, egg and buttermilk.
Fold wet mixture into the dry; stir until just combined.
Fill muffin cups three-quarters full.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
So, as these muffins were baking and the delicious aroma of sweet potato was filling our kitchen, I realized that I had made a mistake. I did not put buttermilk in these muffins, as the recipe suggested. Nope! I grabbed the Land O’Lakes Fat Free Half N Half instead. Oops!
I must tell you that we had a lot going on while we were photographing this one! Sunday afternoon/evening becomes blogging/cookfest at our house and as you can probably tell by the state of my kitchen, we were in the middle of blogging two different recipes and making dinner. Oh – and watching the New England Patriots lose – all at the same time. My son keeps us informed of the score. It’s kind of a chaotic scene.
But the good news was that even though I had the wrong ingredient in my muffin mix, they came out great.
Truth be told, I’m usually not much of a muffin-eater, but I loved these! I’ve been eating them all week for breakfast and for snacks. My son took them to school for snacks (smeared with butter, but that’s OK). And we even had them alongside our lovely autumn dinner on Sunday evening.
I should start a new feature called, “You Must Try This!” That’s where this recipe would go. I am definitely making these muffins again. After all, I need to use that buttermilk that I bought!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids, Uncategorized
Tags: muffin recipes, Runner's World, running, sweet potato
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 07:16 AM
On this blog, I talk a lot about food and kids. One of my goals, as a parent, has been to teach my kids about healthy eating – how to buy food in a grocery store, how to choose foods in a cafeteria or restaurant, how to recognize when they are full, and how to cook food. Writing A Better Bag of Groceries is part of my job at NuVal, but I am lucky in that the subject matter coincides with one of my personal goals.
Interestingly, I didn’t start working for NuVal until my kids were five and three years old. But last weekend, while I was organizing my photos for some archiving projects, I found two photos of my daughter that made me smile.
My daughter is only 20 months old in this photo, but already I was teaching her how to make oven roasted asparagus. To this day, it is still one of her favorite vegetables to make. She is now six.
I have two points to make with this photo.
One: Kids are never too young to begin learning how to cook. In fact, the earlier they start to learn, the more likely they will be to enjoy it.
Two: You don’t have to begin with cupcakes. Not that there’s anything wrong with making cupcakes. But it’s fun to teach kids how to make vegetables and soups and fish and other stuff.
Actually, I have a third point too.
Three: They grow awfully fast.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids
Tags: asparagus
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 07:15 AM
Want to know the most recent addition to my Cookbook Collection? No, it’s not a “healthy” cookbook. (Not necessarily). It’s the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook.
My daughter had been whining begging asking for this ever since we saw it at Borders (sniff, oh how I miss Borders.) So when I found myself in Barnes and Noble recently on a lunch break, picking up a book that my son needed for his school project, I scooped up a copy. My son is a die-hard Harry Potter fan. He read all seven Harry Potter books last year in second grade and he has started to re-read them. This year, my kids will be Harry and Hermione for Halloween.
I can’t get my daughter out of the kitchen. She loves to cook. But I thought that this fun book would help to get my son into the kitchen.
All of the recipes come from the different Harry Potter books and movies. We flipped through all of them and my kids knew exactly where each of the dishes came from. “Oh, I remember when Mrs. Weasley served that stew in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!” they said.
The book contains many British recipes (steak and kidney pie, bangers and mash) but also some basics that I thought we could have fun with in the kitchen (classic roast turkey, roast potatoes with garlic and rosemary, brussels sprouts with chestnuts).
With pumpkin in season and Halloween just around the corner, we decided to begin our adventure with this cookbook with the Pumpkin Bread found on page 204. We followed author Dinah Bucholz’s directions to a T (butter at room temperature, eggs at room temperature) and it is the most moist, most delicious pumpkin bread we’ve ever had. We did make one substitution – a trade up for higher NuVal scores. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour. Instead, we used just 1/2 cup of all purpose flour and one cup of Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour.
Much to my dismay, my son opted out of the baking project. Instead, he went outside and practiced baseball (another one of his obsessions). But I’ll keep trying to lure him into the kitchen with more great Harry Potter recipes!
While Pumpkin Bread contains a few nutritious ingredients (the pumpkin, the whole wheat flour), it isn’t exactly a nutrient juggernaut. However, my kids have been eating as a snack all week. And you know what they eat with it? Skim milk (NuVal score of 91) and raisins (NuVal score of 87). So, the pumpkin bread is a great vehicle for getting some other nutritious foods into them!
Pumpkin Bread
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (NuVal score of 67 for King Arthur All Purpose Flour, NuVal score of 91 for Bob’s Red Mill Organic Whole Wheat Pastry Flour)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 stick (8 Tablespoons) butter, at room temperature (Land O’Lakes Butter, NuVal score of 2)
1 cup granulated sugar (NuVal score of 1)
2 large eggs, at room temperature (NuVal score of 33)
3/4 cup canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling (NuVal score of 94)
1/3 cup whole milk (NuVal score of 52)
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting (NuVal score of 1)
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour an 8 1/2″ X 4 1/2″ loaf pan. (Note: I just use Pam spray for baking). Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves and set aside.
- In a separate bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed, about 4 minutes.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each until incorporated.
- Add the pumpkin and beat until combined.
- Add the milk and again beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix on the lowest speed until combined. Scrape and fold with a rubber spatula to finish.
- Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, rotating halfway through baking, until the top is golden and the loaf is well risen and feels firm when pressed lightly in the center. Remove from the oven and cool in the pan. To serve, remove the loaf from the pan, dust with confectioners’ sugar, and cut into thick slices. (Note: At our house, we cut into thin slices!)
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cookbooks, Cooking with Kids, Pumpkin
Tags: Harry Potter, Pumpkin Bread, Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook
Monday, August 22, 2011 at 07:15 AM
“Mom, you have a beauty appointment right now.” This is what my daughter is telling me. I guess I must look like I need some beautification. This is entirely possible. It’s 6:30 pm. I have dashed in the door, dropped my work bag, washed my hands and started making dinner. My kids have been at Camp all day and my 6-year-old daughter wants to spend some time with Mommy. One of her favorite games is to play Beauty Shop, where she plays hairdresser and I am her victim client.
“I checked the book, Mom. You definitely have a beauty appointment. Right now.” She is insistent.
Sitting down and getting some pampering actually sounds somewhat tempting. But it’s time to make dinner and there’s a lot to do to get ready for the next day. So, instead, I decide to see if I can recruit my daughter to help me out in the kitchen.
“Well, I can’t make my beauty appointment right now. Maybe right before bath time? In the meantime, could you help me with the green beans? I’ll teach you how to use grown-up scissors?”
She is sold.
We have a lot of green beans to cut.
I take some time to show her how to use kitchen shears. And I stay right next to her, working on our fish, so that I can keep a close eye on her. She does just fine.
In our Church School, where I volunteer, we use a Montessori-based method where we teach kids how to help with everyday household chores and we teach them how to handle objects that they have to be careful with. For example, we teach 6, 7 and 8 year olds how to sew using real sewing needles. (No one has gotten injured yet.) We also teach them how to iron. So, I figured she could handle snipping the ends off of green beans with the kitchen shears.
Here is her finished product:
And later on, up in my bathroom, I had a great beauty appointment. We kept those kitchen shears safely in the kitchen at that point! 
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 07:12 AM
My friend Alicia is always looking for ways to get some extra protein into her girls’ diets. So, today, I thought I would share my kids’ favorite after-school smoothie recipe – that not only packs some protein, it also helps you to make sure they are getting their dairy and fruit requirements for the day.
There are just four ingredients in this smoothie and they all score over a 90!
Alicia’s girls are a little younger than mine, but before she knows it, her girls will be making this smoothie by themselves, just like my kids do.
First, my daughter scoops in some Fage non-fat plain Greek yogurt, NuVal score of 94.
Then she adds in some Dole frozen blueberries (NuVal score of 100!)
and Dole frozen strawberries (NuVal score of 100!)
I love that these frozen berries score a 100, just like fresh berries. And, this is so easy for my daughter – no rinsing, slicing, de-stemming involved. Also, because they are frozen, they add just the right frozen consistency to this smoothie at blending time.
So, like I said, my daughter adds some berries…
and then she adds some more…
and then, she just adds a whole bunch of berries. In her opinion, the more berries, the better.
Mom or our sitter (I am no longer allowed to say “babysitter”) adds 1 cup of skim milk to this mixture. NuVal score of 91.
And then Mom or our sitter blends this up using my Cuisinart Smartstick (my favorite invention since sliced bread).
My son, who prefers tasting to making, finally makes his way to the kitchen…
He is a big fan of the after-school smoothie, and so is my daughter.
And so do our pet lizards, who happen to match the color of this smoothie.
Interestingly, I often make these smoothies for breakfast on weekends, but somehow the kids don’t end up finishing them at that time. But when we make these after school, they suck them dry. In fact, their favorite part is all the loud gurgling sounds their straws make when they drain their glasses (think Weeds’Nancy Botwin draining her iced coffee).
So, for Alicia, my protein-seeking parent-friend, I suggest you give this one a try. I checked the nutrition facts panels on these products. The Fage yogurt has 15 g of protein in that little cup and 8 oz of skim milk contains 8 g of protein. Put those together in this recipe and divide by two and your girls will be good ’til dinner!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids
Tags: Fruit Smoothies, snacks
