Guest Bloggers Meredith and Alison Make Green Salad with Pears, Fennel, and Pear Vinaigrette

15 December 2008 Filed In: guest blogger, fennel, pear, pomegranate, salads, Fall, Winter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Salad




We love us the sweet stuff over here, but it’s all about balancing healthful meals with the treats.  I have to tell you that when my friend Alison, author of the blog Alison’s Lunch that will surely have you salivating, offered to do a salad post with her mini-chef Meredith, my whole body gave a resounding WHOOP of joy.  So here is her whole post for a healthy, bright, and beautiful salad-and I swear that I didn’t pay her or Meredith to say such nice things about Tribeca Yummy Mummy.  They’re just cool like that….

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This time of year, we all have so many traditional sweet treats to make-for our friends, family and ourselves!  I remember making lots of special holiday cookies with my mom when I was little. Some that come to mind are the spritz butter cookies that I loved to squirt out of the press in the green wreaths and decorate with red hot candies, the krumkake that we made in a special waffle iron and then rolled around a wooden cone, and the peppermint-flavored dough that we rolled into pink and white snakes and then twisted into candy-cane shapes.  For a few years, my mom even made rosette cookies, with the heavy iron molds she dipped into the cookie batter and then deep-fried in her electric wok.  Remember those?  Dusted with powdered sugar, they left a grease slick on the roof of my mouth… With all those fond memories, plus plenty more of my own favorite cookie recipes, it’s pretty easy to think of holiday treats and cookies to make with my four-year-old, Meredith.  I’m sure it’s the same for you.
But why do we only think about including our kids when we’re making treats and sweet things?  I didn’t learn how to cook until I went to college-my mom didn’t think to include us kids when making dinner-I think she just wanted to get dinner on the table, and didn’t need us underfoot.  So in the interest of teaching Meredith to cook healthy, delicious meals (not just desserts), I try to include her in all sorts of cooking projects.  She’s not always quite as interested in making a salad as making treats like graham crackers (eating raw dough is one of her favorite hobbies), but there is almost always a fun part in even the most ordinary meal.  If I’m not rushing to finish lunch or dinner, I’ll ask if she’s interested in helping.  And usually she is-for a little while, anyway!
My greatest inspiration for Meredith-inclusive cookery is my friend Cate, who writes a fabulous blog about cooking with kids: Tribeca Yummy Mummy.  She is all about including our kids in cooking real food-using real, raw ingredients, and making meals and FOOD, not just treats.  Thank you, Cate, for encouraging us to raise our expectations of what we assume our kids are interested in, and are capable of doing in the kitchen!
For this salad, Meredith chopped up the pears for the dressing with a table knife, helped measure the rest of the dressing ingredients into the blender jar, and then picked the pomegranate seeds.  (Oh, and then she helped eat it!)
Green Salad with Pears, Fennel, and Pear Vinaigrette

For the Dressing:
*1 medium very ripe pear, peeled, cored, and chopped coarsely
*6 T. pear vinegar (or 4 T. apple + 2 T. apple juice)
*1/2 t. sea salt or kosher salt
*3 T. olive oil
*sugar, as needed

Place the pear in a blender with the vinegar and salt; puree it until smooth.  Drizzle in the oil while the blender is running.  Unplug the blender!  Taste for salt and sweetness.  If your pear wasn’t very sweet, you might want to add a little sugar to the dressing, or you can add more olive oil to tame the vinegar’s sharpness.  Refrigerate until ready to serve the salad.

For the Salad:
*2 large heads of lettuce, or about 10 cups of baby salad greens
*1 large fennel bulb, cut in half, cored, and sliced very thinly crosswise***
*1-2 ripe pears
*Optional garnish in winter: 1/4 c. pomegranate seeds

Wash and dry the greens.
Cut the pear in half, cut the core away and slice thinly with a table knife.

Put the greens and fennel in a bowl and toss them with dressing to your taste, then add the pears and toss gently.  Arrange on individual plates and top with the pomegranate seeds.
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Guest Bloggers Meredith and Alison Make Graham Cracker Cut-Outs

20 October 2008 Filed In: crackers, guest blogger, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Breads, Desserts, cookies, Vegetarian, Soy-free




Allow me to introduce you to Anchorage Alaskan ladies Mama Alison and her daughter and mini-chef, Meredith.  Alison runs and owns Rise and Shine Bakery with her husband, Dan, where they bake gorgeous sourdough breads.  You can see them hanging out at the Farmers Market in the warmer days, and cozying up in an Anchorage coffee shop now that it’s starting to get chilly. 

Alison also cooks and writes her way through a lovely blog: Alison’s Lunch in which she chronicles her many gorgeous veggie lunches.  I’m happy to say that she spent a little quality time over the weekend with her mini-chef and their plethora of cookie cutters making a gorgeous, healthful snack.  On a side note, it’s heartening to see that we’re not the only ones with a bit of a cookie cutter collecting problem.  Thanks, Alison and Meredith!
Alison:

I inherited a lot of cookie cutters from my mom.  I have shapes for Halloween, shapes for Valentine’s Day and Christmas and Easter and St. Patrick’s Day, animal shapes, geometric shapes, and even shapes for Election Day (elephants and donkeys).  I have A LOT of cookie cutters.  I also inherited her desire to collect more cookie cutters, which is a little strange, because I rarely make cut-out sugar cookies.

But when my daughter Meredith turned two years old and began participating in some cooking projects, I got really nostalgic about making those roll-out sugar cookies with my mom.  Of course, I also remembered how much cookie dough I ate during those sessions.  I decided to try and develop a healthier recipe that I wouldn’t mind making often, and that I didn’t care if Meredith ate by the handful.  This whole-wheat graham cracker recipe was born!  It uses oil instead of butter, 100% whole wheat flour, and doesn’t call for eggs.

Your kids can help you measure the ingredients, mix the dough, and practice rolling out a small piece of dough while you roll out the rest.  Then they can help cut out the crackers and decorate them with all kinds of toppings-nuts, seeds, dried fruit, chocolate chips… anything you like!

These crackers are fun to make, are pretty darn healthy, and have a nice, slightly sweet and whole-wheaty flavor.  They definitely aren’t as sweet as cookies, though.  Which makes them nice with tea, and great for s’mores. (When we’re making them for s’mores, I cut them into squares with a pizza cutter and then then make fork-pricks in them to look like the store-bought kind.)

Meredith loves making these, so now I have an excuse to collect even more cookie cutters!  My most recent acquisitions?   Letter shapes!  We especially love to make initials of our friends, and then march around the neighborhood to deliver them.


graham cracker cut-outs
These crackers aren’t very sweet, so if you want them sweeter, you could substitute more maple syrup or honey for part of the soy milk.  I love the combination of roasted walnut oil (Loriva brand is pretty easy to find) and maple syrup, or roasted peanut oil with honey.  The nut oil adds a really nice richness to the crackers, but you can just use canola if that’s all you have.
You can use all whole-wheat pastry flour for this recipe, which makes a nice, tender cracker, but makes the rolling out a little bit hard, since there isn’t much gluten in pastry flour.  It works fine, though, if you’re patient and don’t expect the same consistency as regular sugar cookie dough.  I have had better luck using half whole-wheat pastry flour and half whole-wheat bread flour (or just use regular all-purpose whole wheat flour).
After I roll out the dough once, the dough scraps get a little tougher to work with, so I generally just roll them out and cut the remains up with a pizza cutter into square-ish shapes.
crackers
*1/2 c. milk or soy milk
*1 t. fresh lemon juice or vinegar
*1/4 c roasted nut oil, or canola oil
*1/3 c. honey or maple syrup
*2 1/2 c. sifted whole wheat flour, plus more as needed
*1/2 t. baking soda
*1/2 t. baking powder
*1/4 t. sea salt

decoration ideas
*black and/or golden raisins (you can soak them in water to plump them up)
*dried cherries
*dried cranberries
*nuts (peanuts, almonds)
*seeds (green pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds)
*chocolate chips
*crystallized ginger pieces

1.  Combine milk and lemon juice, set aside for a few minutes to curdle.  In a small bowl, whisk the oil and sweetener together, and whisk in the curdled milk.

2.  In a medium-sized bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Make a well in the center and pour in the liquid mixture.  Stir gently until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and balls up in the center.  You might have to add extra flour, or if you’re using whole wheat bread flour, you might need to add a little more milk.

3.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly grease baking sheets if they are not non-stick.  Using a rolling pin on a floured surface, and using more flour as necessary on the top of the dough, and on the rolling pin, roll out the dough about 1/8 inch thick.  Cut out shapes with cookie cutters.  Re-roll the scraps and cut more shapes out.   Arrange them on sheets.

4.  If you want to decorate them, spray lightly with water with a sprayer bottle (this helps the nuts to stick) and go crazy with the toppings.

5.  Bake for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp.   Transfer crackers to racks and cool them before storing in a tightly closed tin.
  
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5 Comments

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  1. A Day That Is Dessert
    20/10/2008 at 2:37 pm Permalink

    How fun that you have guests today! I LOVE this idea and will try!

  2. Mama Bird
    20/10/2008 at 2:42 pm Permalink

    It’s “G” week at my daughter’s preschool and it’s our turn to bring a “G snack” for the class on Friday. I am going to bring Graham Cracker Ghosts, using my ghost cookie cutter! Thank you – perfect timing for a fun, healthy snack.

  3. Alison
    21/10/2008 at 1:31 am Permalink

    What a great idea for G week!! Now Meredith wants to make graham ghosts!! FUN!

    –alison & meredith

  4. Sophie
    21/10/2008 at 4:47 pm Permalink

    Cute cookies! I like your healthier topping ideas very much

  5. Mama Bird
    24/10/2008 at 10:52 am Permalink

    We made the graham ghosts last night and we're taking 20 to my daughter's preschool today for "G" week! See my post & link to you on my blog, A Natural Nester. Thanks for the great idea!