This Little Piggie went to Tennessee

Here are a few photos from our weekend in Knoxville:

The Appalachain Foothills

Family Time

Mickey and Minnie preparing to Trick-or-Treat

Low Country Boil

A Very Rainy Football Game

A Winning Team

Our Return Flight, over the Phillies' Stadium as Game Four in the World Series Was about to Begin (The bright blur in the middle of the photo; Eagles Stadium is in the foreground)

These weekends, it is very hard not to be piggies. I'm of the mind that it is okay to enjoy good food in moderation, but to indulge on special occasions. As Mireille Guiliano says, "We eat grandly on occasion, not regularly." So, as we head back north, we're also heading back into a world of moderation.

You might be wondering about our eating habits, as I'm prone to make quickbreads and brownies and cakes (oh my!). I'm not going to say that we don't struggle with weight gain with all of these goodies around, but I do want to give you a trick which my mom taught me: use your freezer! If you wrap your goodies up and freeze them, you will be able to enjoy them longer, avoiding the siren call of overindulgence from the brownies on your countertop. Plus, you avoid wasting your hard work and good food due to some questionable blue fuzz.

Depending on the food, I wrap differently. Here's an idea of what I do:

Yeast bread (Like the Colonial Oatmeal Bread): Sliced and bagged by half-loaves. I know that we can safely get through a half-loaf without it going bad. When we run out, I pull out the next half-loaf the night before so I can easily make sandwiches the next morning (without having to pry apart frozen slices of bread).

Quick Bread: Sliced and bagged. I'll admit, my husband is the one who usually eats this for breakfast, and he does have to do a bit of prying with a knife to get the slices apart. He pulls out a slice each morning and toasts it. You could also leave a half-loaf out like the yeast bread, but that's too tempting for me.

Muffins: Individually wrapped with saran wrap, and then bagged all together in a freezer zip-lock bag. My husband pops these out for an on-the-go breakfast.

Brownies: I made these brownies in muffin tins and wrapped them individually with saran wrap, but have also wrapped traditional brownie squares (two together) with saran and bagged them all together in large zip-locks. I can pull these individually wrapped portions out of the freezer to throw in my husband's bag; they'll be thawed by lunch.

Cookies: I usually freeze put these in rubbermaid containers, but they could also be bagged in smaller baggies for pre-portioned on-the-go goodies.

Don't throw out leftovers: When we don't make it through a batch of soup or red beans and rice within a few days, I freeze those, too. I use quart bags and label them (date and contents--There's nothing worse than an unknown, questionable substance in the freezer!). Some items don't freeze well as is, but can be safely stashed away in soup or stew form (for example leftover thanksgiving turkey can be frozen as turkey hash). It might take a little bit of extra effort, but you will love having something on reserve for those nights that you don't have time to cook.

Our freezer is small enough that these emergency meals, goodies, and on-the-go breakfasts don't get lost below the ice cream and freezer packs, but if you have a larger freezer, it might be a good idea to keep a running list of what might be lurking behind the frozen peas. And remember, don't leave food in your freezer for more than a few months; it will start losing its quality.

Eat your (Roasted) Vegetables!!!

My sister-in-law recently asked me for advice on cooking vegetables for kids.

If you've picked up anything about me from reading this blog, you'll know that I have a husband. Although he sometimes acts like a kid, he's not one.

So...I don't really know anything about getting kids to eat their vegetables. But I can tell you, that when I do research for different recipes, I occasionally come across comments like, "My children devoured this!" or "I'll never cook this any other way--I hated the mushy vegetables my parents made as a child," or "My kids beg for this." I'm assuming there's some credit in the testimony of others.

Most of these astounding testimonies of vegetable-craving children have revolved around one cooking technique: roasting. I'll admit it, I am a huge advocate for roasting vegetables! Roasting is basically tossing the vegetables in olive oil, salt and pepper, and cooking vegetables in the oven at a high temperature (usually around 425 degrees) until they are slightly crispy. Depending on the vegetable, they will caramelize slightly in a way that brings out the natural sweetness.

Here are some of the vegetables that we have tried (and the extra herbs or spices that I toss in with the salt and pepper):

Broccoli (lemon juice or lemon pepper)
Cabbage (nutmeg)
Brussels Sprouts
Carrots and Parsnips (dill)
Sweet Potato Wedges
New Potato Wedges (rosemary)
Butternut Squash (rosemary)
Asparagus
Green Beans (herbes de provence)

Some vegetables that are on the docket: Cauliflower, Acorn Squash, Bell Peppers

Fall is one of the best times for roasting; most of the fall vegetables are roast-worthy. I'm not going to give you recipes for all of these vegetables (although the method stays the same, the cooking time varies)*. But I am going to encourage you to try this method**. See what your family likes. Our family likes the broccoli stems roasted, but we prefer the florets steamed in our traditional manner. My husband begs for roasted brussels sprouts all year long. I could roast butternut squash every night of the week and be happy. What does your family like? Try it and see.

Roasted Butternut Squash

1 whole butternut squash (3-4 pounds)
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

Peel and seed the squash and cut into 1/2 inch cubes. Put the squash in a roasting pan and toss with the olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary.

Roast at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.

Sprinkle with extra kosher salt and pepper to taste.

*Ina Garten is the queen of roasting. If you are looking for good recipes for roasting other vegetables, check out her recipes on Food Network. You can also just do a google search; there are tons of other bloggers out there eager to share their roasted vegetable recipes!

**Try roasting several times with the same vegetables, and don't give up! I recently read in Southern Living magazine that "it takes kids seven tries to change their picky ways."

Creating a Food Calendar

I'll apologize in advance. In the theme of starting a new school year, this blog post is highly instructional, a bit long winded, and although it does have a lot to do with food, it is not a recipe. Therefore it is lacking the lovely food photos usually displayed. I hope that you'll be just as happy with a photo of us on the first day of school.

Several of you have asked about constructing a food calendar. It's a basic process, but I'll try to paint a picture for you here and to give you insights into my "creative" process. But before I begin, here are a few pointers.

Pointer 1.) Do not plan to cook every night! I recently read a magazine article that gave menus for every night for an entire month; how overwhelming! This is real life here. Plan for leftovers.

Pointer 2.) Limit yourself. I'll explain more on this below, but limits are good. They push us to become better cooks.

Pointer 3.) Be aware that someone may ask you to dinner and threaten to interrupt your calendar. Fellowship is so important! People should come before schedules. Try to be willing to move things around, or if you've already bought the ingredients and, say, the meat is going to go bad if you don't cook it that day, invite them to your house for dinner! Real life has interruptions!

Some very helpful aids.

The Process:

1.) Create a blank calendar using a program such as Microsoft Word or Publisher. You can start with as little as one week and up to six months. Think of this as your canvas.

2.) Go ahead and throw on there any food-related special events, occasions or holidays. If you have a Supper Club at your house once a month, put that on there. If you are hosting Thanksgiving, that would be good to include as well.

Look at these beauties! Please don't leave them on the shelf! (Ignore that Pat Conroy library book!)

3.) Pick three to four nights a week that you want to cook. I have tried both, and right now I am on the three night plan (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Next, limit yourself and choose a genre or theme for each cooking day. For example, for the next four months, we will have soup each Monday, breakfast for dinner each Wednesday, and a seasonal meal each Friday in our household. Here are some other genres you can employ: international cuisine night, meatless meal night, seafood night, crock pot meal, etc.

One point of limiting is to encourage you to try some new dishes. If we are having soup every Monday night, we don't want to eat the same soup over and over again. So, I have to branch out and look for new soups to try.

Another facet of limiting your genres is to give you some structure and guidlines as you develop your calendar. You will only have to look in one section of a cookbook to find all of the breakfast recipes. It is also freeing because you will know generally which days are busier than others, and you can plan the easier fare for the busier days. For me, I have class on Mondays and Wednesdays evenings, so they have easier preparation nights (theoretically). I do not have class on Fridays, so I can spend more preparation time and get my fill of seasonal fall and winter fare.

4.) Here comes the fun part: choose your menus! Pull out all of your favorite cookbooks. Go to your favorite blogs. Go to allrecipes.com. If you want to challenge yourself, pull out the cookbooks that you don't normally use. Using them as a guide, go through and fill in your calendar.

I usually do not note where I found the recipe or idea for the meal; for example, I might have run across a Shrimp and Grits recipe in a magazine and put it on my calendar. When it's time to cook that meal, however, I have no recollection of which cookbook or website or magazine inspired that night's menu. This is usually not an issue for me because I have no quams about finding a new Shrimp and Grits recipe to use. However, if you have a specific recipe that you want to try, it is a good idea to note the recipe source on your calendar.

Printed internet recipes, magazine clippings, photocopies of my mom's handwritten recipes, and notecard recipes from my grandmother are organized in notebooks.

5.) Print out your calendar and hang it on your refrigerator, but remember that things might change around. Be willing to mark through menus, or move them to the next day. Friday night meals might be pushed to Saturday night or Sunday lunch. You might not even get to a meal; throw that meat in the freezer for a later date!

I know that this seems like a long process, but if you're to this point, then you're pretty much done! Use your calendar to make out your grocery list each week!

Here is a sample month (click to make it larger):

Packing a Road Trip Picnic

This past weekend, my husband and I went on a trip to our Nation's Capital. I had never been to Washington, D.C. until this outing, and it did not disappoint.

Whenever we go on road trips, we generally try to stay away from fast-food stops. So, even on trips that just take a couple of hours, we pack a "road trip picnic," which can be eaten in the car or carried on sight-seeing strolls. This is what we brought on this trip:

Ham and provolone sandwiches with mustard and Claussen pickles on French rolls
Grapes
Sea Salt and Cracked Pepper Kettle Chips
Home-made Kettle Corn
Dried Fruit
Apples and Bananas
Cherry Chocolate Chunk cookies
Provolone cheese, goat cheese and Wheat Thins
Dry roasted peanuts
Bottles of water
A bottle of wine (to enjoy at the hotel after a long day of walking)

When you pack your road trip picnic, make sure that you only have enough refrigerated items that you can eat within 10 hours or so, or that you don't mind tossing anything that has not been eaten. Alas, we had to throw away some perfectly wonderful goat cheese and provolone.

Also, when you are packing, you don't want to have to do a lot of cooking. I made the kettle corn the day before our trip, and put together the sandwiches right before we left. Everything else, I picked up from the store or bakery or pulled out of our pantry.

If you take a road trip picnic, here are a few other items that you will want to remember to pack in your picnic basket:

Napkins
Forks
Cheese knife
Cutting board
Extra Ziploc bags
Trash bags
Wine bottle opener
Plastic cups (for the wine)
A kitchen towel or a few paper towels
A couple of freezer packs in your cooler

Do you take road trip picnics? If so, what do you pack?