Sweet Potato and Apple Hash

This recipe is one of our fall go-tos -- it's hearty and colorful and spicy and cozy, a real crowd pleaser. It's easy enough so that Anouk can help me assemble and "cook" it, and there's something about eating apples in a savory dish that I find really intriguing. Best of all, this dish is sort of a chameleon dish -- it's good with everything, from sausages to pork to roast chicken or turkey to breakfast-as-dinner, and, if you replace the sage with cinnamon and add a dollop of whipped cream, it even makes a super dessert.

Ingredients:

3 medium sweet potatoes

1 large apple

1 small onion

1 tablespoon coconut oil (or butter)

pinch sage

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Pierce the sweet potatoes with a fork and pre-cook in the microwave, for about five minutes, or until soft but not mushy. Remove, let cool, and remove skins. Dice sweet potatoes, apple, and onion and add apple and onion to a pan with the coconut oil. Cook on medium high heat until the apple is tender and the onion translucent. Add diced sweet potato, salt, pepper, and sage, and cook until the onion starts to caramelize.

Happy Monday!

Pumpkin Quinoa Porridge

• I like the idea of oatmeal but in all honesty, I'm not much of an oatmeal person. There's just something about the texture that I find kind of gloppy and unappealing. But curling up with a warm bowl on a cool morning is, and so I'm always on the lookout for breakfast cereal substitutions that will give that cozy effect. In the past, we've really enjoyed a hot cereal made from almond meal, but lately, our go-to is a kind of quinoa porridge that we adapted from this recipe. The texture is amazing, it doesn't get soggy or mushy, and it's packed with protein which is a nice start to your day. 

• Quinoa is also very adaptable to all different kinds of flavors, so we've been experimenting with peanut butter porridge and a version with apples, but with fall in the air, it's all about pumpkin so that's what we've been using most frequently. 

Ingredients: 

1 cup uncooked quinoa

1 Tbsp butter

1.5 cups water

1/2 cup pumpkin (or up to 2/3 cup, if you want a little more oomph)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cups milk (we used soy)

• Directions: 

Soak the quinoa in a bowl of water for 5-10 minutes, rinse, and drain. Transfer the quinoa to a saucepan with 1.5 cups cold water. Bring to a boil for one minute, cover, reduce heat and simmer until the quinoa is done (about 10 minutes, or when a little "tail" appears on the quinoa). 

Remove from heat, add the butter, pumpkin, spices, vanilla, and sugar. Stir in milk until you reach your desired level of creaminess. Serve warm, with caramelized apples and more cinnamon on the top or a drizzle of maple syrup. Yum. 

When people have dinner at our house, they always wonder why there's no salt or pepper in our shakers. This is why. 

Happy Monday!

Eat more flax

This blueberry flaxseed smoothie has been mine and Anouk's go-to breakfast pretty much every day for the past few weeks. If you had told me a while ago that one day soon my preferred breakfast would have included something like flax, I would have made this face at you. But it turns out flax is delicious! And also one of the best things you can eat, healthfully speaking.

Studies have shown that flaxseed can lower bad cholesterol levels, prevent heart disease and diabetes, and even inhibit tumor growth. Most things I've read recommend stirring it into things like oatmeal or yogurt, but A. doesn't eat either of those things, and while it's fun to bake with, I don't always have time to devote to baking on a regular basis. After some tinkering, we devised a smoothie recipe that gives us our daily dose of flax and is addictingly delicious to boot.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie

1/2 cup full fat coconut milk
1/2 cup water
1 cup blueberries
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tablespoon flaxseed meal
1 scoop of vanilla whey protein (optional)

Blend all ingredients in a blender. Pour into glass. Serve with a straw (it's better that way).

This is a really dense smoothie, so you might want to add more water or coconut milk if you find it's too thick.

The taste really is a lot like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and who doesn't like that? We've subbed almond butter for the peanut, and while it's fine, it just doesn't have the same deliciousness. I'm not going to lie, this smoothie is so good that it gets me out of bed in the morning faster than the thought of a cup of coffee.

For Anouk's part, at first, she balked at the grittiness of the flaxseed, but then we upped the amount of berries, which helps mask it, and now it goes down fine. A whole smoothie is a lot for a little kid to drink at once, so I usually give Anouk just half, with a hardboiled egg or two, and then she's set until snacktime.

Happy Monday!

Charlie's Cafe

A. and I had a bad day earlier in the week. We don't have many, but when we do get one it tends to go sour pretty fast. It was one of those days when you haven't gotten enough sleep (me) or else the sleep you got wasn't good (her) and you keep taking off your diaper and hiding it in inconvenient places around the house (definitely not me, I swear). By lunchtime we were in need of a pick-me-up, so we called up some friends and headed down Granby to Charlie's Cafe.

Molly and I have decided that we are adopting Charlie's as Our Place. You know -- the place where you go so frequently that you get to know everybody by name and maybe, if you go there enough times over enough years, they reserve a barstool in your honor and name a sandwich after you? Everything is better at Charlie's. For instance, this is how the pancakes look at Charlie's:




And this is the kind of chocolate milk you'll get at Charlie's:

And that's not even special kid chocolate milk, mind you. It's just the way it comes! For everyone!

There are many things to love about Charlie's, including the extremely friendly staff and the ready availability of vegan and vegetarian options, which is sometimes hard to find in standard diner fare. But the best thing about Charlie's is that they serve breakfast all day, which means if you don't like how your day is going, you can have a symbolic do-over in the form of a fluffy Charlie's omelet with spicy, oniony home fries and crumbly-delicious beaten biscuits on the side. And so we did. We also ordered a restorative bag of the famous Norfolk donuts to go because nothing turns a bad day around like a bag of donuts, hot off the grill (pan? fryer? however it is that these particular donuts are cooked). They also come stuffed with ice cream but we're saving that for a cure for a really bad day -- you know, like when our house burns down or our dog runs away or something.

Little Zeke (a restaurant critic in the making) pronounced it: "Smiley Charlie's -- a place for kids!" Three years old and already on the lookout! I fully expect him to take over this blog one day when I have moved on to different things ("geriatric-friendly living in Hampton Roads"). Watch this space.