Two heads of broccoli, head of cauliflower, bunch of leeks, bag of green beans, butternut squash, acorn squash, and a half bushel of apples we picked yesterday at Linvilla Orchard. I’ll probably hang on to the squashes for a while since they store well, but stay tuned for apple recipes to come.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a row of producing raspberry bushes amongst the apples yesterday. After stuffing his face with raspberries the toddler had no interest whatsoever in picking apples. It took some work and we suffered through some whining but we still managed to pick several varieties in a short time period- most for cooking but a bunch for eating. We came home with Jonagold, Jonamac, Macintosh, Stayman Winesap, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Smokehouse. The delicious varieties are for for eating.

I may can some apple sauce or apple butter but most likely I’ll use the apples for fresh baked goods. I see apple cake, apple muffins, apple pancakes and apple crisp in my future. And for the record, apple picking with a baby strapped to your chest is infinitely easier than strawberry picking with a baby strapped to your chest. But the toddlers much prefer picking and eating the berries as they go.

Also? The actual pumpkin patch isn’t nearly as interesting to a toddler as the pumpkin “patch” with thousands of already picked pumpkins in a variety of sizes assembled in various configurations. Though I suppose I didn’t really find that all too surprising.

Basic granola is made from a baked mixture of oats, nuts, and seeds. It’s very easy to make and unless you’re careless and forget to take it out of the oven (not that I have first hand knowledge of that or anything) it’s really hard to screw up. All you have to do is mix the stuff together and bake it at a low temperature stirring occasionally until it’s lightly browned. Buying the ingredients separately at the grocery store is expensive, but you’ll definitely get more for your money than you will buying a box. Buying the ingredients from the bulk bins at a health food store is your best bet.

I’ve made several batches of granola now and haven’t yet committed to a recipe. The first tray of granola I made using applesauce and honey as sweeteners wasn’t quite sweet enough. The next few batches with maple syrup and honey were a little to maple-y. I think there’s a perfect balance out there somewhere, and I’m happy to keep trying granola recipes until I do.

Here’s my basic recipe for granola. It makes about ten cups.

5 cups rolled oats
2 to 3 cups raw nuts- I use a mixture of chopped pecans, slivered almonds and cashews
1 cup sunflower seeds
¾ cup sesame seeds
1 cup unsweetened coconut
1 tsp. salt

Wet ingredients:
¾ cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/3 cup maple syrup
¼ cup honey
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Dried fruit (added after baking)
1 cup of fruit of your choice. I use raisins, craisins, dried cherries, blueberries, apricots, apples and whatever other dried fruits I have on hand.

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Stir wet ingredients together, pour over the dry ingredients and mix well. Spread the mixture over two baking sheets and bake in a 300 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until lightly browned. Stir in the dried fruit and let cool. Store in the refrigerator in a large ziploc bag or airtight container.

There’s a lot of room for improvisation in this recipe. What do you like in your granola?

Like the oven roasted tomatoes, caramelized onions are something you can make a lot of all at once and keep in the fridge for a week or more. While I roasted the tomatoes I caramelized* several red onions and put them in a jar for later. The next day, when it was time to make dinner I was ready to go. I took the puff pastry out of the freezer to defrost for about half an hour before I was ready to cook. While the oven preheated to 400 degrees I rolled out the pastry into a 12 inch square and put it on a large, rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I brushed the puff pastry with Dijon mustard and sprinkled it with a handful of shredded mozzarella. I arranged the tomatoes into rows with a little bit of space between that I filled with the caramelized onions. I sprinkled another handful of cheese on top. By the time the pizza was assembled the oven was preheated.

The pizza baked for 15 minutes and cooled for 5 before cutting into squares. Because all of the prep work was done in advance it took me thirty minutes total to get dinner cooked and on the table.

*to caramelize, cut onions in half lengthwise, peel, and slice into thin half moons. Saute over medium low heat with a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil, and a pinch each of salt and sugar. Cook for about 20 minutes, or until the onions are soft and brown and your entire house smells amazing.

I preheated the oven to 225, cut and chopped a few stems of rosemary and a handful of time from the garden out back, and cut all of the tomatoes (mostly plum with a few heirloom Mr Stripy thrown in) in half. I put the tomatoes skin side down on two baking sheets, drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled them with salt, fresh ground pepper and the herbs. I threw a few unpeeled cloves of garlic on the trays for good measure. Then I put them in the oven and ignored them.

After three and a half hours I checked the tomatoes. They weren’t quite as shriveled or brown at the edges as I was hoping for so I left them for a few hours longer. After they’d been in for about six hours total the house smelled divine. Planning on using them for dinner the next night I peeled the garlic and put them and the tomatoes in two jars, pouring in the oil and herbs remaining on the trays.

The tomatoes, slow roasted, are sweet and tangy. They make an amazing sauce or are delicious right out of the jar. They’ll keep, covered in oil, in the fridge for a few weeks or you can freeze them and save them for the cold months ahead- if you can stop yourself from eating them.

You can make it in a food processor if you like a smoother consistency. I just mash it by hand to avoid dirtying another dish. You can also skip the garlic paste and just stir in minced garlic, but it will make your baba ganoush a lot more potent- you’ll taste it the next day. Since it’s dip your kids will probably eat it. Cut up some veggies or serve with crackers or pita triangles.

1 large eggplant (about 1 pound)
1 glove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, plus more for garnish
2 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Prick eggplant with a fork and place on a cookie sheet lined with foil. Bake the eggplant until it is soft inside, about 20 minutes. Alternatively, grill the eggplant over a gas grill, rotating it around until the skin is completely charred, about 10 minutes. Let the eggplant cool. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise, drain off the liquid, and scoop the pulp into a medium bowl.

On a cutting board, work garlic and 1/4 teaspoon salt together with the flat side of a knife, until it forms a paste. Add the garlic-salt mixture to the eggplant. Stir in the parsley, tahini, and lemon juice. Season with more salt, to taste. Garnish with additional parsley.

The best thing about the Wrap-n-Mat is that it doubles as a place mat. We eat a lot of lunches at the playground or on the go so I pack a lunch almost every day. Then we never have a clean place to eat them. I am not a germ-phobe, but I do get skeeved out by the idea of my kid rubbing his food all over the remains of another kid’s lunch. I know kids and know they pick their noses, sneeze all over things, drool, stick their hands in their pants and wipe them off on any available surface, and engage in all sorts of other unsavory behaviors only acceptable for the youth. So eating lunch at a table at the local children’s museum gives me the chills when I think about it. The Wrap-n-Mat is so appealing that my kid actually uses it as a placemat and insists on returning his half eaten drool covered sandwich to the mat before he takes off.

The prints aren’t sophisticated, but they are cute and appeal to the little ones. My husband, a teacher, doesn’t mind them either and also appreciates that the wraps double as place mats since he eats lunch on tables also touched by children.

I also like the Wrap-n-Mat because it appeals to the do-gooder in me. I’m always trying to reduce the amount of trash we produce, so these mats are great. Now I just need to find some easy to clean, reusable snack bags to house our steady supply of pretzels, raisins and crackers.

The past several weeks I’ve done my best to get there at 2.00 when the market opens. The line starts even earlier. I was 15 minutes early last week and the line was already ten people deep. I waited in the hot sun for about 20 minutes before I made it to the front of the line. I needed my husband who was towing the toddler in the bike trailer to help me home with the goods. Sam was most excited about the watermelon, which sat beside him in the trailer on his ride home. But once he saw the goods laid out on the kitchen counter it was the corn that got his attention.

In addition to seasonal fruits and vegetables the market also offers baked goods, jams and jellies, eggs, quilts and fresh cut flowers.

Lettuce is a lousy chard substitute so I grabbed a yellow squash, a cubanelle pepper, some cherry tomatoes, and a handful of fresh basil from the garden. I quartered the squash lengthwise and cut it into ¼ inch slices and quartered the tomatoes. I chopped the pepper and added it to the onions in the pan. When they were lightly browned I stirred the squash into the pan and let it cook a few minutes to soften.

I rolled out the puff pastry and put in an 8 inch square pan instead of a pie dish to make room for the extra veggies. In a bowl I whisked together a cup of evaporated milk, 4 eggs, 1 egg yolk, salt, pepper, a dash of cayenne and a couple of ounces of grated cheese. I stirred in the vegetables and chopped basil and poured it into the prepared pastry crust. I put the square pan on a rimmed baking sheet and baked it in a preheated 425-degree oven for 25 minutes, then I lowered the heat to 350 and let it cook through for an additional 15.

This time the tart was not a soupy mess. It was firm to the touch and nicely browned on top. I let it sit for a few minutes to settle and cut it into squares. Bob ate more than half of the tart that night and took the rest to work the next day for breakfast. Sam took a few bites before saying, “I don’t like tomamoes,” and wandered upstairs to play with trains. I thought it was pretty good.

The prep time is quick and the recipe is easy to adjust for the vegetables you have on hand. It’s similar to a quiche or frittata with a puff pastry crust.

leek and swiss chard tart without leeks or chard

The meals are totally a toddler control thing. He’ll eat what he wants when he wants and there’s really nothing I can do about it. He currently gravitates to the white foods (pasta, crackers, etc which drives me insane) and fruit. I make sure I always have something he’s likely to eat on his plate at meals along with whatever we’re eating. I give him a ton of options- small amounts of everything- so he’ll at least eat something and ask for more of whatever strikes his fancy. I figure as long as he eats protein, fruits, vegetables, and dairy over the course of a week it’s fine. If we get halfway through a week and I realize he hasn’t eaten any dairy I’ll start pushing ice cream or chocolate milk.

My rules for dinnertime are that he has to sit at the table with us and whatever is put on his plate has to stay on his plate. If he doesn’t like the look of something he can’t move it away or throw it on the floor. Some nights we make him take two or three more bites of something before he leaves, but that’s because we’ve learned that those two or three bites often turn into ten or twelve.

The biggest rule is that meals are not worth fighting over. Though some nights it’s hard for me to restrain myself, especially when I’ve made something I know he’ll like, I will not argue, poke or prod. If he doesn’t want to eat it, I won’t make him. There’s no use fighting. He’s not going to let himself starve. By offering a variety of healthy foods and letting him eat as he goes I know I’m doing my best. Just exposing him to different foods, whether he eats them or not, will help him learn about eating and nutrition.

how I get my toddler to eat

So last night’s dinner, was a surprising success. Tired from a four mile walk, wearing the baby on my belly most of the time and the toddler on my back the rest of the time, I was in no mood to cook so I turned to the fridge. We hosted a little happy hour party for our friends and neighbors Friday evening and had a random assortment of leftovers. I reheated three hot dogs (two soy and one regular) and the leftover pita in the toaster oven. I peeled a few carrots from the CSA and put them on a plate with crackers and homemade hummus. On another plate I arranged tortilla chips and homemade salsa. I put out bowls of cut up peaches, cantaloupe and watermelon and the remaining pasta salad.

Sam picked out most of the cheese, tomatoes, green beans and basil from the pasta salad but ate the pasta despite the sun-dried tomato sauce. For every bite of soy hot dog he got two tortilla chips. He ate carrots and fruit without prompting. All in all he actually ate a decent meal with representation from most of the food groups. Providing a variety of foods tapas style made it easy for Sam to eat without needing to assert his toddler individuality. It’s not something I can do every night, but a few times a week might make dinner time a bit more enjoyable for all of us.