Nourishing and Nurturing

Recently, my BFF and a few others have requested ideas for dinner recipes and for my thoughts on family nutrition.  So, if you are one of those people, this post is for you!  I am NOT a nutrition expert OR a food blogger, but I guess I can pretend!  Haha!  But honestly, I do LOVE good food and studying nutrition.  I believe that cooking FOR and WITH my children is one of the most important (and most fun!) ways for me to nurture and nourish them, both literally and figuratively.  It is a major part of my parenting!  So, from time to time, I will post here on my family blog about some of my favorite family meals and how we approach nutrition as a family.  For today's post, I will start with one of my winter favorites: Baked Potato Soup.  Yum!

This year, I am setting aside a day each week to have one of my kids be "in charge" of dinner.  They get to choose what we eat, plan the menu, and make the food...usually with my help. :)  I love the time we are spending together when they are learning skills that are critical to independence and good health!  But there are drawbacks...dinner prep takes *a bit* longer (translation: a LOT longer) and sometimes the children discover my nutrition secrets: such as when Coco here learned that her favorite soup is actually made up mostly of cauliflower!  Ha!  Believe it or not, she was actually really excited to learn that something that tastes so good is also good nutrition!

Here is the way we make it:

1 Large Russet Potato (or you can use 2 small)
2 Heads Cauliflower (cut off stems and cut into florets)
2 Cups Chicken Broth (I have also used Veggie Broth for a "meatless" recipe)
2 Cups Milk (I use whole)
3 Tablespoons Fresh Chives (chopped)
1/2 Cup Whole Milk Plain Greek Yogurt (or use lowfat yogurt...or you could even use sour cream)
1 Teaspoon Salt (or more to taste)
1/2 Teaspoon Pepper

Start by baking the potato in the oven or microwave (for this recipe I almost always just microwave it).  Let it cool a bit and peel it, then cut it into large chunks and place in a large pot with the broth and milk over medium heat.  Slowly bring to a boil.  Meanwhile, steam the cauliflower until it is soft enough to blend smoothly.  Add the cauliflower to the potato, broth, and milk mixture.  Blend the whole thing until smooth.  You can use an immersion blender right in the pot if you want, but I always use the Blendtec (one half of the soup at a time) because it makes it soooooooo creamy!  Then add the yogurt, salt and pepper, then continue simmering for another 5-10 minutes.  We serve this topped with grated cheese, crumbled turkey bacon (we even used diced ham when we had it leftover from Christmas), and more fresh chives.  It is usually gone in ten minutes flat whenever I serve this!  So GOOD!

As for ideas for good meals for a family, I really just use a variety of sources to inspire me.  My general principles for dinner are to go heavy on the vegetables (at least half the plate), include whole grains or legumes (this is particularly important with the growing boys in my house...otherwise I could never keep them full!), and add a serving of protein.  At least once a week, I do a meatless meal.

I do use recipes, but I usually use them as more of "guidelines" than specific instructions, and I make my own adjustments based on preferences.  For example, I don't really avoid gluten or healthy fats, but I do try to stay away from processed oils and foods made with "enriched" flours or grains.  Although I did read recently that whole wheat foods are now on the enemy list because of processes used in harvesting wheat...yikes!...I am not prepared to completely eliminate these items from our diet, particularly when the Word of Wisdom calls wheat the "staff of life."  I also avoid products labeled as "lowfat" or "nonfat" (especially dairy foods) because of the bad processing and fillers used in those products.  I like to make my own broths and breads, but I don't always do that because it is time consuming.  Also, I love butter!  So, your family may or may not like my specific recipes.  My creations are usually a mixture of my own preferences and other people's ideas, and I regularly get inspiration from a wide variety of foodies, including the Pioneer Woman, Skinnytaste Gina, and Lisa Leake from 100 Days of Real Food, the Beachbody Recipe Guide, Two Peas and Their Pod, among others!  See, I'm all over the place!

Okay, but to provide some real ideas as requested, I will show some of my recent favorites:

Okay, I seriously thought I had died and gone to heaven when I ate this!  Oh. My. Goodness!

This was a meal that I made when we were having the Elders over for dinner.  The meat is a Balsamic Pork Roast that I made in the crock pot.  Delish!  I also made my favorite whole grain dinner rolls (I substitute flax seed for half the eggs and use butter instead of oil).  But the salad--holy cow, the salad!  SO amazing!  This was inspired by something I saw on the Food Network while folding laundry.  I roasted some diced butternut squash (I used butter, salt and pepper, but olive oil would also be great), toasted some pumpkin seeds, shaved some Parmesan cheese, and tossed them all together with some mixed greens.  Then I drizzled it with a simple balsamic vinaigrette (homemade).  It was heavenly!  And heavenly is good, because I was serving it to the Elders!

There are some things that we eat so frequently that I like to have plenty on hand, but I also prefer them to be homemade.  A few examples include black beans, chicken and vegetable broth, and sandwich bread.

A shout out to my friend, Elisa, and her food blog, Real Foods Mom, where I got the recipe for black beans in the crock pot!

Homemade chicken or vegetable broth makes the kitchen smell good all day long!

When I make chicken broth, I generally use chicken breasts as opposed to a whole chicken or carcass, mainly because I like to keep the meat for shredding and using in other recipes.  Just my preference!

I got my bread recipe from the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  I make at least two loves a week of their honey whole wheat sandwich bread (slightly tweaked to my taste), but there are a lot of other amazing recipes, too!  But I hate how this book touts canola oil as a healthy oil, when other "experts" say it is the worst possible oil you can use in food.  What?  I hate when the experts contradict each other because it makes my life more difficult.  Ha!  I just use butter in my bread now because I like the flavor better anyway.  Whatevs.

I am sure there are "experts" who would object to this bread, since it contains whole wheat and gluten and butter, but I feel that this is far better than what I can buy in the store.  And it is delicious!

Because I have my kids home with me during the day for homeschool, I have more opportunity to make sure they are eating well all day.  One thing I make for my kids almost every day is a fruit or veggie smoothie as a morning snack.  I love experimenting with different recipes, but I have to be careful or my kids won't like it!  And I hate wasting!  Blendtec has great recipes for smoothies, but really you can find recipes online all over the place.  Our favorites include tropical (banana, strawberry, pineapple, shredded unsweetened coconut), black forest (banana, cherry, unsweetened cocoa), apple-blueberry (banana, apples, blueberry, cinnamon), green flaxy (banana, oranges, pineapple, spinach, kale, flax seed), peach (banana, orange, peaches), carrot-orange (banana, carrot juice, oranges, pineapple, cinnamon), kale-apple (banana, apple, kale, strawberries, peaches) and more!  I often throw in plain whole milk Greek yogurt (for protein and creaminess), some chia seeds, or some hemp seeds.  On the rare occasion that a smoothie needs sweetener, I use xylitol.  You can use milk or rice milk or coconut milk or almond milk for smoothies, but I generally just use water!  Smoothies might seem too big to make for a snack, but when I divide it between me and my four kids, it is perfect.

I took this picture when I reached 700 uses of my Blentec, which was a few weeks ago now.  I got my Blendtec as a Mother's Day gift LAST year, so you can see that I use it a LOT!  That's a lot of smoothies!

Here is my cute Avery enjoying a carrot-orange smoothie.

Here are a few more ideas for great dinners:

Chase made this delicious and simple Chicken Noodle soup with whole wheat noodles!  It is just 6 cups of chicken broth with 3 cups uncooked whole wheat noodles, chopped carrots, celery, and onion (about a cup and a half of each), and seasoned with salt and pepper (about a 1/2 teaspoon of each, or more to taste).  Just bring the broth to a boil and add the uncooked noodles and vegetables.  Continue boiling until the noodles are soft and the veggies are tender.  Oh, and of course, add some shredded chicken (about 2 cups) and the seasonings at the end.  I just make the shredded chicken when I'm making the broth and freeze whatever is leftover to use in future meals.  If you want to take your chicken soup up a notch, however, I have used a chicken lime soup recipe that is totally amazing, although I don't have a picture.  This one doesn't include noodles.  Instead, we serve Chicken Lime Soup with chips and the Pioneer Woman's Restaurant Style Salsa on the side.  Yummy!

Here is an example of where I use convenience food because I do NOT have the time to make my own tortillas for a weeknight dinner!  I have made my own tortillas before, and they are amazing!  But, for a quick and simple dinner, I just use a store-bought wrap.  This dinner is yummy and easy.  Just use your favorite Greek salad recipe, grill some chicken (my favorite seasoning for grilled chicken is lemon pepper and seasoned salt), and put them together in a wrap.  Healthy and full of flavor!

An amazing soup that you can make in the crock pot!  This is a chicken enchilada soup that my whole family loved.  And it looks so pretty, too!

Another way I get inspiration for family meals is to try to copy my favorite foods from restaurants or places we like to go out to eat.  We LOVE Chipotle Mexican Grill, and I especially love their grilled chicken or carnitas salad.  So, I figured out how to make it at home.  And it's easy!  Just chop up some romaine lettuce, add grilled chicken, pico de gallo, black beans, chopped avocado, grated cheese and a dollop of plain Greek yogurt.  I have also used pork or carnitas if I have some leftover from other meals.  And, of course, the finishing touch is the salad dressing!  I found a copycat recipe for the Chipotle Honey Vinaigrette that tastes almost exactly like the restaurant dressing, and it's so easy!  

Making pico de gallo is always more fun with a little help!  Here, my Little Buddy is using all his strength to squeeze some lime juice into the bowl for me.  Ha!

You hardly even need a recipe for pico de gallo.  It is basically equal amounts of diced tomatoes (I use Roma), chopped cilantro, and red onion.  Then you add some chopped jalepeno (if you dare!), some lime juice, and salt and pepper.  Personally, I usually add a little extra tomato, just because I like it better that way.  Whatever makes your skirt fly up!

Homemade vinaigrette is really so easy to make, either with a blender or just shaking it up in a mason jar.  This copycat recipe for the Chipotle Honey Vinaigrette is a good one for the blender, because you really want those chipotle peppers well-blended and smooth!  And incidentally, the recipe I found calls for vegetable oil.  Now, I've never met him, but Nate has known the owner and original chef of Chipotle Mexican Grill for years as one of his attorneys, so he has talked about him from time to time.  And, from what I know of this guy, I seriously doubt he would use vegetable oil.  I substituted olive oil in this recipe and it worked great!

Here is the finished product of my Chipotle Grilled Chicken salad.  You can probably see that I added spinach and kale to this one, but it was only because I was low on Romaine.  Oh my!  SO yummy and gorgeous!

And one last thought: I am not opposed to eating meat, but I do recognize that it is wise to eat it "sparingly" as suggested in the Word of Wisdom.  Although, we still probably eat it a little more than sparingly, it's a lot less than we used to do!  As I mentioned, I have been trying to do at least one meatless meal a week.  Here is an example of a meatless dinner that is really amazing, although I admit that it was pretty time consuming.  I made a black bean burger and topped it with a cilantro-jalepeno slaw (I used this recipe from Tasty Kitchen, but I only made the slaw, and in half the amount), and served it on a store bought whole wheat sandwich roll.  I won't include this recipe for the black bean burger, because I found this one to be flavorful but a little dry, so I'm going to keep looking for something more suitable.  The slaw added a really nice touch.  This sandwich is packed with protein without any meat at all.  It was very filling and tasted great.  Meatless is a great option to try, even if it's just part time!

Fact: I grew up in the 70's eating the Standard American Diet.  You know, that diet of Lucky Charms, peanut butter and jelly on Wonder bread, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, spaghettios, creamy chicken casseroles, etc., that has made everyone fat?  Yup.  The very same one.  And when I got married I was NOT a good cook.  And when I started having children I was still not a good cook.  It was not until a few years ago that I was inspired to study nutrition all on my own and started to really learn about good food and how to cook.  I've come a VERY long way, believe me!

I've also learned to adopt a pretty moderate food philosophy:  Don't eat too much.  Don't eat too little.  I try to eat clean, unprocessed food usually about 80% of the time.  Because the fact is, an extremely busy lifestyle does not allow me to be completely restrictive and PERFECT in my family's diet.  WAY too stressful!  And so eating really well 80% of the time feels pretty good to me!  Sometimes we want to enjoy sugary treats just for fun or for tradition, and sometimes processed food is called for just for convenience.  We eat fruits and vegetables every day.  We eat whole grains, rices, and pastas whenever possible.  We eat meat, but not in large amounts.  We like to throw in plenty of superfoods where we can.  And we like foods full of flavor.  But it is not out of the question for us to have sugar cereals or frozen pizza or other "naughty" foods!  And, we like to have a really decadent treat for FHE once a week.  I feel like this is a fairly reasonable philosophy that works for us.  Although I am always willing to change and try new things as I learn more.

I hope this has been helpful to those who asked.  Like I said, I am not an expert, but I have learned a lot and I really enjoy good food.  Now, if only I could figure out how to justify a large serving of chocolate chip cookies in my daily diet...that would be just about perfect!