A blog about how real families cook and eat.
One of my son’s friends joined us for dinner. She tries to eat a gluten-free diet, so I decided to keep it simple and serve oven-baked chicken breasts, rice and steamed veggies. Seasoned the boneless, skinless chicken with my spice mix (Essence of Bargabus, recipe…
B: Toast, fruit L: Tuna sandwiches D: Chicken “Fried” Rice Had an emergency computer service call come up and we didn’t have time to shop yesterday. We had a bunch of miscellaneous veggies, so I thawed a couple of chicken breasts and made a cooker…
My wife was grocery shopping last weekend and grabbed a package of our usual mushrooms, the brown crimini ones. A passerby said she should really get the white button mushrooms because they’ve got better cancer prevention properties. My first reaction to this story was “Horse Hockey!”. Not really my exact words, but my Mom reads this blog 🙂
Of course, I had to check out. Numerous internet searches showed evidence that mushrooms (especially white buttons) inhibit the enzyme aromatase that’s necessary for the production of estrogen. Excessive estrogen has been liked to an increased risk of breast cancer. See one article here.
Another article said the chemoprotective can be seen by eating 3.5 oz. of mushrooms daily. Not a huge amount, but certainly more than we eat on a regular basis. I guess we’ll have to work a few more mushroom omelets and pizzas into the weekly rotation.
Anyway, I thought this was pretty interesting, hope you thought so, too.
It’s still a little hot and humid, so I was looking for a light lunch. The boys wanted leftover spaghetti and meatballs from last night. Lisa had a meatball sandwich. I opted for a toasted pita, schmeared with hummus, topped with arugala, chopped heirloom tomato…
Lisa was doing an art project with our #1 son. The kids were drawing vegetables and the idea was to have the roots and leaves attached so they could see how the vegetables grew. Long story short, we had several bunches of veggies: carrots, beets,…
My #1 son’s school, Flora Vista Elementary in Encinitas, started hosting a Farmers’ Market a couple of weeks ago. It’s on Sunday from 2pm – 5pm. More information on San Diego County Farmers’ Markets here. Dr. Steve, his lovely wife and adorable son came over and we set out to shop. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera. We’ll take some pictures next time.
The market was pretty well populated, maybe just a little too heavy on prepared food and crafts. There were two barbecue stands, Indian food, kettle corn, smoothies, a juice stand, prepared garlic spreads, flavored hummus (about 15 variations), jewelry, walking sticks, and some other stuff I’m forgetting. Oh yeah, and some produce, too.
They had all the stuff that’s in season, tomatoes, avocados, asparagus, oranges, etc. We bought green beans, asparagus, avocados, oranges, and strawberries. No one was selling heads of garlic, but the nice lady at the garlic spread place gave me one from her display. We headed for home.
On the menu tonight: Continue reading Farmers’ Market and Dinner
My son loves brussel sprouts and salmon. Not bad for a boy of 7. These are not your mom’s sprouts. They come out a little crispy, caramelized and sweet. The recipe is very simple. Wash and trim the sprouts.
Plantains are those fascinating banana-looking fruit surrounded by a bit of mysticism. Are they really fruit or vegetable? Do we eat them raw or cooked? When should we eat them? They start out bright green and hard, move toward beautiful yellow, slowly get black specs…
My wife was looking for some in-season fruit for my Number 2 Son. My Number One Son asked how we knew what was in season. A quick Google search uncovered this fabulous web site, Eat The Seasons. Great idea, brilliantly simple interface, terribly useful. Who knew that sunchokes were “in season”? I didn’t even know what a sunchoke was. Some of the items in season are links to an article about them, which includes history and facts about the item, as well as recipes. Check it out. Screenshot below…
