How to Pack a Lunch Your Kid (might) Actually Eat!

I've come to the daring realization as a parent (perhaps a bit late), that when your child brings a homemade lunch to school, compromises must be made. Kids like packaged food because it's everywhere, and it's made to appeal to them. Chances are good that many of their friends have cheerfully packaged food in their lunch box, and they want to feel like part of a group. It is possible, with some careful label reading, to find nutritious, real foods that are pre-packaged and taste good.

All the lunch fare pictured above are made with actual food ingredients and each has less then 10 grams of sugar (most is naturally occurring). Natural foods stores and co-ops have many healthful options to put in a lunch box. I picked up French applesauce squeezers, unsweetened Cinnamon applesauce cups, and mini packs of trail mix at Trader Joes, and unsweetened fruit cups at Whole Foods.

Cheese sticks are a great snack that my kids like, and have plenty of protein and calcium. I choose regular cheddar cheese, or cheese wedges like Laughing Cow Original Creamy Swiss cheese, because they're not low-fat, as most pre-packaged string cheese is. I choose non-skim cheese for a number of reasons one being that skim milk has actually been found to make children more overweight, while whole-milk has not. Essentially I try to feed my family food that is whole and as close to it's original nature as possible.

For dessert, which isn't required, but is much coveted by young connoisseurs, I try to find treats that are delicious and not too sugar-filled. Lindt truffles have only 5 grams of sugar in each one and are very satisfying. My kids also like fruit leathers or Simply Fruit Roll Ups, both of which have no added sugars.

What healthy snacks and treats are you packing for lunch?

Beef Brisket from the Garden of Eating

My dad introduced me the beauty of a good brisket, an essential part of his diet as a child, growing up in an Eastern European Jewish family. I think my first attempt at cooking brisket would make Dad proud (and come back for seconds). Hilltop Pastures Family Farms had 100% grass-fed brisket on sale for $2.99/lb at the Midtown Farmer's Market last weekend, but I neglected to buy it because I wasn't sure how easy it would be to cook. I leafed through my cookbook collection when I got home, and found a super simple recipe, it's as easy as making a pot roast. So I picked up a mini 2 lb brisket from the Wedge Co-op, which was tasty but unfortunately not grass-fed.

The recipe I used for barbecued beef brisket is from the The Garden Of Eating: A Produce-dominated Diet & Cookbook by Rachel Albert-Matesz and Don Matesz. I also made the Better Barbecue Sauce from here and it was perfectly tangy, subtly sweetened with a bit of honey, and deliciously thick. I added a few dashes of cinnamon, a pinch of cardamom, and a splash of red wine just for some extra zing.



The Garden of Eating Cookbook is completely worth buying, for the brisket recipe and many more of my new favorites, but is pretty expensive on Amazon. I have seen it at the Seward Co-op in Minneapolis for it's suggested retail price, or you may buy it directly from the author's website.



I'm sharing this with Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday!

A Mess of Greens

I live in the heart of a big city, filled with good grocery stores, yet I take so much pleasure in growing and picking some of my food from our backyard. Today I harvested three different kinds of kale, Red Russian, Lacinato (or Dino kale), and Green Curly varieties. My favorite way to enjoy kale's robust, earthy flavor is gently sauteed in butter with lots of garlic, a dash of balsamic vinegar, and if I'm feeling extravagant (or extra hungry), crumbled bacon on top.

The rest of our little garden is coming along nicely as well;

Local Spring Chicken

Young pasture-raised chickens, stuffed with fresh tarragon

Local Spring Chickens with Fresh Herbs
serves 4

Ingredients:
2 young, pastured chickens (less then 3 lbs each)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil or butter
1 large bunch fresh tarragon, ends chopped off, large stems removed
1 small head purple garlic, cloves peeled and finely chopped, or pressed
1 T dried rosemary
sea salt
1/4 cup cream

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix chopped or pressed garlic with olive oil or butter.
3. Lay chickens, breast up, in a clay or enamel roasting pan. Stuff each chicken with 1/2 bunch tarragon. Massage the chicken skin all over with the garlic oil. Sprinkle on the dried rosemary and season with real sea salt.
4. Bake chicken for about 1.5 hours at 350 degrees, then an additional 15 minutes at 425 degrees, depending on the size of the birds. Chicken is done when a meat thermometer reads 165 degrees in the thickest part of the thigh. Read this for further information on safe poultry temperatures.
5. When chickens have cooked through, remove from the oven and transfer them to a serving platter. Place the roasting pan over medium heat on the stove top and pour the juices from the chickens into the roasting pan, deglazing the pan by stirring with a whisk. Add in a 1/4 cup cream and continue stirring until incorporated. Now you have a deliciously rich gravy to serve on top of the chicken.

I served these chickens with cumin and paprika-crusted roast cauliflower and sweet potatos, local pickling cucumbers, and rice.



I'm sharing this with Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday.

I'm entering this recipe in The Local Cook's Cooking accross America Contest!

Strawberry Lime Pie

I'm of the belief that summer events need a pie to truly let guests know there's something to celebrate. My most coveted seasonal food is without a doubt local strawberries. I highly recommend picking them yourself for the complete, blissful experience. Sam Kedem Orchards located in Hastings, MN, begins U-Pick organic strawberries next week.

Just look at the delicious strawberry lime pie I made for our Memorial Day picnic, it makes me want to head strait for the strawberry patch. The recipe is loosely based upon two pie and cake recipes (key lime pie and strawberry cake) from an interesting raw vegan dessert cookbook, Sweet Gratitude: A New World of Raw Desserts.

This "un-cook" book is really worth owning even if you aren't vegan. All the recipes are gluten and grain free, and rely on whole foods for ingredients. A word of caution, though, is I use about 1/4 to 1/3 the sweetener called for in these recipes and still find them to be very nicely sweetened. I also do not use the agave syrup called for, as from what I can tell it's basically gussied up corn syrup, successfully marketed to health food loving folks.

Everyone at the party we went to loved this pie, in fact I heard from a couple guests who admitted to having seconds! If you're curious about raw vegan fare and want someone else to do the "un-cooking" for you, check out the Ecopolitan Restaurant in Uptown. The food is beautiful and yummy, much of the produce is locally sourced, and the wine list is usually pretty good too.

Pad Thai with Bay Scallops and Marlin

Easy homemade pad Thai with seafood.

I enjoyed this homemade pad Thai with Bay scallops and wild-caught marlin from Coastal Seafoods, adapted from a recipe by Kasma Loha-unchit, author of It Rains Fishes: Legends, Traditions and the Joys of Thai Cooking. Pad Thai is one of those dishes I had mistakenly thought you could only really get at a restaurant. Truth be told, it's actually a very simple meal to make at home if you have a decent cast-iron wok, which I don't, so I borrowed my dad's 30 year old, much loved wok. This not-so-traditional Thai stir-fry was delicious.


Beautiful, sustainably produred fish makes all the difference in creating this meal.

Shredded red cabbage, finely chopped lacinato kale, and thinly sliced bell pepper were used in lieu of the bean sprouts, as that's what I had on hand. I didn't have any dried shrimp, though I do like them and you can find them locally at United Noodles, look for the kind with no artificial coloring or msg added. I chopped up roasted cashews in place of the peanuts just because I love cashews. One important part of making this recipe to not over cook the seafood, especially the scallops, cook the seafood separately and add in to each plate at when it's time to serve.

Please visit Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays for more real food blog links and recipes.

Real Food Menu Plan- Thai food, seafood and more

A fantastic summer meal- Pork Laab

It's almost summer in Minneapolis and things are getting hot. Farmer's markets in the Twin Cities are ramping up into full bloom, CSA farms will soon be ready to pack bushels for delivery, and our own backyard garden is beginning to look edible.

Here's what's cooking in my kitchen this week:

Monday: organic chicken breasts sauteed in green curry and ginger coconut milk marinade, stir fried veggies and rice, spicy (homemade) peanut sauce for the grownups! Recipes inspired by a beautiful cookbook I received for mother's day, Cuisine for Whole Health.

Tuesday: pasture-raised lamb chops with mint gelee, beautiful purple sauerkraut, mashed sweet potatoes with Gruyere melted on top. Recipe for mint gelee can be found in one of my favorite cookbooks, Full Moon Feast.

Wednesday: Grass-fed and local beef cheeseburgers, roast broccoli and cauliflower.

Thursday: Shrimp or bay scallop pad Thai over rice noodles, with red cabbage, bell peppers and lacinato kale. I have seen a few tasty sounding recipes for pad Thai without the ubiquitous rice noodles but I think the noodle version will go over a lot better with my kids. Here's a noodle-free version that caught my eye.

Read a history of pad Thai and learn how it is commonly made at Kasma Loha-unchit website. She is the author of the best Thai cookbook I've ever had the pleasure of reading, It Rains Fishes, which will cost you a pretty penny but is well worth it.

Friday: Pork laab salad with local lettuce, cucumbers, cilantro, basil and lime and chopped macadamia nuts. It is similar to what you see here.

Saturday: Grilled grass-fed rib-eye steak with local dill potato salad and creamed spinach. For many delicious creamed spinach variations see Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking volume 1, it's one of the classics of classics for all home cooks.



I'm sharing this post with Kelly the Kitchen Kop's Real Food Wednesday!

Lemon Sour Cream Cheesecake (gluten free and low sugar)

This lovely Lemon Sour Cream Cheesecake was apart of my Mother's Day brunch. It was so gorgeous I almost didn't want to slice it. This isn't a very sweet cheesecake, as I'm learning to make classic desserts with very little sugar, and am enjoying the results! For the crust I used shredded coconut, melted butter and 1/2 tsp sugar which I pressed into a cake pan and toasted for a few minutes. The cheesecake filling was made with plenty of real foods including Fage Total Greek yogurt, whole sour cream, organic cream cheese, lemon zest and freshly squeezed lemon juice, pastured eggs and egg yolks, 1 packet of gelatin, real vanilla extract, and a total of 2.5 tablespoons local honey. I don't have the recipe written down, as I sort of winged it, using a couple different recipes as inspiration, one from the gluten-free magazine Living Without. Where does the vibrant yellow color of this cake come from? From the gorgeous orange yolks of local eggs purchased at the Midtown Farmer's Market.

My Co-op Rocks!

photo credit

I adore food co-ops. Cooperatively owned grocery stores have high ethical standards for procuring their food, such as Fair Trade certified produce and coffee, offer employees decent wages and benefits, and are committed to lessening the environmental impact their business makes.

What I love most about the food co-ops in Minneapolis, is the wonderful selection of real food. Much of the food at our local co-ops in the Twin Cities is whole, fresh, organic, unprocessed, and lovingly made. Local, small-scale farmers, and independent food artisans are supported by co-op shoppers, and generally speaking, food co-ops do not carry meat from factory farms.

One of my favorite co-ops is the Seward Co-op. They carry really unique, nourishing foods that other co-ops, and certainly regular big box grocers don't have. Yesterday I was elated to see local morel mushrooms for 39$/lb. I've recently seen morels for 70$/lb at other stores and they weren't local. Here is a recipe for cooking these super special fungi. The Seward recently brought in Elk meat from Doraisamy Farms in Garfield, Minnesota, how cool is that? They also carry pastured duck eggs from Living the Dream farm in Oceola, Wisconsin.

Some great deals are to be had at the Seward currently, including the best grass-fed cream youll ever try, in glass bottles, for only 3.19/pint. For non-dairy drinkers, the Seward has Turtle Mountain coconut milk products on sale as well.

I'm so grateful to live in a city where the community values real food and people are happy to support places like the Seward Co-op and all our fantastic farmer's markets.

I'm sharing this with Kelly the Kitchen Kop's Real Food Wednesday and with Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday!

Duck Fat and Hungry Monkey

Hungry Monkey by Matthew Amster-Burton, is a gem of a book written by a real dad (and food writer), about feeding his daughter real food and all the amusing and interesting things that happen along the way. There are a few recipes but mostly it is a memoir, infused with humor and honesty. Aside from all that, read this book if only as a way of saying "thanks" to Mr. Amster-Burton for possessing the chutzpah to publish the following. Bless him!

...fat is our Hurricane Carter, our Claus von Bulow: wrongly convicted and still tainted even after its acquittal. The best evidence at this point says that dietary fat (with the exception of trans fat) is unrelated to heart disease and cancer risk, and also unrelated to weight gain, except for studies that indicate that low-fat diets cause people to gain weight. Still, admit you cook with lard and people will react like you keep a loaded gun in your kid's room.

-quoted from chapter 4, Stew You Can Chew.

While I'm on the topic of lard, I must tell you to go try some of the rendered duck fat from Clancy's butcher shop in Minneapolis. At 8.99/lb It doesn't cost much more then grass-fed butter (Pastureland is 6.19-10$/lb depending on where you buy it) and you don't need much of this semi-solid gold to make a big flavor impact. I love the unctuous, yet subtle flavor duck fat imparts when used for making pomme frites, a simple stir-fry, or sauteing thinly sliced pork shoulder and vegetables for Pad Thai. If you cannot find locally sourced duck fat, Rougie French duck fat is a very good quality product as well.



I'm sharing this with Kelly the Kitchen Kop's Real Food Wednesday!