Farro and Beet Salad with Blood Orange Vinaigrette

I’m working from Delburne, this week – the town in rural Alberta where my Grandma, Aunt and Uncle live – aka. it’s our extended family’s meeting place. There’s something wonderful about visiting Delburne that consistently feels like a travel back in time to a place where you rarely see people on their iPhones and the food on your dinner plate came from the soil or a nearby ranch.

When I’m here, eating vegetables is easy since Grandma’s fridge and freezer are overflowing with the bounty from her garden. But, admittedly, eating a slice of Grandma’s homemade banana cream pie after dinner is equally as easy, too.  Case in point: last night.

Although the weather is expectedly cooler here than it is in LA, it’s still picnic weather and a good enough reason for me to enjoy this plant-based salad with my family.  And with Earth Day being tomorrow, it’s seems fitting to spend some extra time outside, soaking up the fresh air.

Farro and Beet Salad with Blood Orange Vinaigrette

This plant-based whole grain salad features beautiful, well-rounded ingredients – Earthy beets and farro, creamy goat cheese, salty pistachios, and bright blood oranges. It’s the perfect salad for a springtime picnic!

Ingredients:

1 cup farro

1 bunch asparagus

3 large beets

1/3 cup shelled pistachios

1 (4oz.) packet goat cheese

dressing:

2 tablespoons blood orange juice

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Whisk dressing ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.

2. Cook 1 cup farro with 3 cups of lightly salted water, until tender and water is mostly absorbed. Drain, and set aside to cool.

3. Wash and cut beets into quarters, and steam until tender. Allow to cool.

4. Wash and trim asparagus and steam until crisp. Allow to cool.

5. Remove skins from the cooled beets and cut into bite sized cubes; cut asparagus on diagonal into pieces.

6. Add farro, beets, asparagus, and pistachios to a large bowl and crumble in goat cheese.

7. Toss with dressing and serve.

Enjoy, preferably with those you love.

{Recipe Redux} A Method for Roasted Vegetables

In yesterday’s blog post, McKenzie mentioned that my birthday was last week.  She kindly and discretely left out that it was my 40^th birthday. 

I have to admit, I was sort of dreading my birthday.  For a woman, your 4^th decade is filled with changes I wasn’t ready to face.  But somehow I woke up last Saturday filled with gratitude and a sense of peace with growing older.  I have so much to be thankful for. 

I am extraordinarily lucky to have entered a second career that I love, one that fuels my interests and passions and feels important.  I am blessed to have McKenzie as my partner in Nourish, and as my dear friend and sister.  Kind to every inch of her being and genuinely caring about others, she is one of the people I admire most in this world.  I have a loving family and a community of friends who inspire me.  I am healthy.  I love my home.  And most importantly, I have the most amazing husband who inspires me every day to be the best version of me.  He is the most joyful person I have ever known, and I am so grateful for his love in my life.

So, forty isn’t so bad.

One of the great benefits of growing older is being able to relax and let go of perfection.  I think cooking is better that way, too.  I like learning a method better than having a recipe.  A method lets me bring in my own creativity, my own likes, and make a meal my own. 

So that’s what this is: a method.

Learning how to make deliciously roasted vegetables is a cooking basic.  For the Recipe Redux this month, we were challenged with the concept of cook once, eat twice.  How can you take the ingredients from one meal and stretch them to another?  If you have roasted vegetables in your refrigerator, you’re always just a few minutes away from a meal.  The vegetables should be of your choosing:  broccoli, cauliflower, red peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, tomatoes, asparagus, potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash.  Use your imagination.  I love roasting citrus slices as well. 

To make delicious roasted vegetables, preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  Cut all of the vegetables about the same size and place them in a bowl.  Toss them with olive oil to coat them.  Season them as you choose.  I like sea salt, red pepper flakes and lemon zest.  Sometime oregano or smoked paprika.  Sometimes za’atar or fresh thyme.  Place the vegetables in an even layer on a baking sheet and roast for about 20 – 25 minutes or until they are caramelized and golden.  The biggest mistake people make when roasting vegetables is to remove them from the oven too soon.  Let them get color, because color is flavor.  Once they are done, remove the pan from the oven and let them cool on the baking sheet. 

Now, you have so many options.

As McKenzie said in her last post, I love pasta.  For pasta with roasted vegetables, heat a little olive oil in a skillet and sauté a sliced shallot until golden and translucent.  Toss in some red pepper flakes and maybe a few halved grape tomatoes.  Add a splash of wine and simmer for a minute or two.  Add your roasted vegetables and a big handful of fresh spinach.  Then add hot cooked pasta (preferably whole wheat) and a ladle of the pasta water, about ½ cup.  Toss in some grated parmesan cheese and some lemon zest and toss the pasta together.

I also love frittatas, and they are one of my go-to weeknight meals.  Whisk together a few eggs (two per person) and add a pinch of salt and a big handful of roasted vegetables.  Add herbs if you like, or maybe some fresh spinach or arugula.  Place a small skillet over medium heat and add a little olive oil.  Pour in the eggs and then place some cheese on top—maybe some goat cheese or feta, or some shredded sharp cheddar.  Place the skillet in a 375 degree oven for about 10 to 15 minutes or until it is puffed and golden and the cheese has melted.  Remove from the oven and let the frittata cool slightly before slicing.

There are so many other things you can do with roasted vegetables:  make a grain salad, eat as a snack, top with a drizzle of olive oil and a big dollop of yogurt for a beautiful side dish.  You can eat them for breakfast, topped with an egg.  Make a roasted vegetable pizza or an open-faced sandwich.  The ideas are endless.

I hope you take this method and make it your own, relax in your own kitchen and embrace the things you are thankful for.

xoxo 

    

An InLinkz Link-up

Healthy Baby Foods and Hearty Soups

Disclaimer:  This is a sponsored post; as always, we only work with brands and products we believe in.

Over the last several months, many of our friends have become new moms (and several more have little ones on the way)! And as their “mini-me(s)” have grown, many of our friends have developed a keen interest in making their own baby food.  So, we thought it would be fun to call upon our friend, fellow dietitian and founder of SuperKids Nutrition Inc., Melissa Halas-Liang to share her tips and tricks for how to make your own baby food. 

Without further ado, here's Melissa!

Food for Baby

By Melissa Halas-Liang, MA RDN CDE

Making meals for the littlest members of your family can be both easy and healthy. Preparing baby food in advance allows you to buy seasonal foods at their peak and at a cost savings. Freezing baby food means fast, simple future meals. With the Champion Juicer, you gain complete control over your baby’s food by making it yourself, which will ensure there are no additives or preservatives. You can use a food processor or blender to make baby food, but the  Champion Juicer has dozens of small blades that quickly and efficiently homogenize the food into a very smooth consistency. Another time saving tip is to use your home made baby food as a base for family meals, like soups.

Tips, tricks, and time savers when making baby food

Saving time is important to modern families and by using the same ingredients to make meals that work for baby as well as all other family members, you will reduce your time spent picking up groceries as well as in the kitchen.

To save time when making squash, roast the squash whole. Cutting a large, hard squash in half is challenging! Skip this step and simply place a whole, washed butternut (or other winter) squash in a baking dish and roast it in the oven at 425 degrees F. Just remember to pierce it with a few fork holes, which allows the squash to vent while cooking. There is no need to preheat the oven. A medium squash that weighs roughly two pounds will take about 90 minutes to cook.

If you are freezing leftover pureed foods, freeze them in ice cube trays.  This saves time when you want to use them again because it makes them easily accessible and you will only have to take out and defrost what you need. You can use these pureed cubes in so many different dishes for both your baby and the older members of your family, including in potato latkes, to enhance the flavor and nutritional value of store bought tomato sauces or salsa, in mashed potatoes, or as the glue for vegetarian bean burgers.

If you’re making your own baby food, you don’t always have to think vegetables—fruit is a healthy and nutritious option for your baby, too! Pureed fruit can be given to a baby and then mixed with plain yogurt and frozen in ice pop molds or silicone squeezable molds as a snack for yourself and your older children.  Or, if you make a fruit smoothie for yourself, freeze the leftovers as pureed fruit for your little one.

Using baby food ingredients to feed the rest of your family 

Foods you feed baby do not have to be different from the foods you feed yourself and the rest of the family! For example, when making a chicken and butternut squash meal for baby, think about ways you may like to enjoy these foods as well. Add chicken slices to a delicious chicken Caesar salad, or roast the chicken and butternut squash and serve over whole-wheat pasta or wild rice. Use the mashed butternut squash as a base to make a delicious butternut squash soup or as a creamy base for risotto or macaroni and cheese, which will allow you to cut back on the normal fatty ingredients without sacrificing texture or flavor. Add slices of grilled chicken to both dishes for a healthy, lean protein.

How to use the Champion:

To make baby food with multiple ingredients, be sure to alternate each ingredient for an even consistency. Many babies enjoy the mixed texture that results from two or more foods together. You can also run the finished product through the Champion Juicer once more for an even smoother texture, perfect for younger babies.

Now enjoy making chicken and butternut squash puree for baby and butternut squash soup with chicken for your whole family to enjoy.

Basic Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients:

•       1 teaspoon olive oil

•       clove garlic, minced

•       ½ cup sweet onion, chopped

•       ½ cup carrots, chopped

•       ½ cup celery, chopped

•       1 teaspoon fresh sage, chopped (or 1 teaspoon ground dry sage)

•       1 teaspoon fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary)

•       ½ teaspoon sea salt

•       1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

•       3 cups vegetable broth

•       1 15oz can of pumpkin

•       1 ½ lbs butternut squash (peeled, seeded, cubed)

Directions:

1.     In a large stockpot, sauté garlic and onion in olive oil over medium heat, until onion begins to caramelize.

2.     Add carrots, celery, butternut squash and herbs through the Champion juicer for smoothest consistency. Alternately, use a standing blender or food processor to puree.

3.     Then transfer to pot, mix in sea salt, pepper and vegetable broth.

4.     Bring all to a boil and simmer for 20-25. Garnish with additional herbs if desired and enjoy.

Squash and Chicken Baby Food (appropriate for babies 7 months or older)

1.     Fit the blank screen (or use homogenizing body) onto the juicer body. Peel and de-seed a medium butternut squash.

2.     Cut into chunks and bake at 375° for 40 minutes.

3.     When making boneless, skinless chicken breast for your family put some aside for baby! Cool and cut into chunks.

4.     Alternate chicken chunks and squash chunks through juicer. For a finicky baby, run mixture through again for a smoother texture.

Time-saver tip: bake the butternut squash whole and peel after it’s cooked. Don’t forget to prick with a fork to allow the steam to escape.

Ingredients:

•       1½ cups of the butternut chicken puree

•       2 cups chicken broth

•       1/8 teaspoon cumin

•       1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

•       ¼ teaspoon black pepper

•       ½ teaspoon salt

Directions:

1.     Stir until thoroughly heated and serve.

2.     Both the baby food and the soup recipes above work for zucchini, squash, cauliflower, broccoli, roasted red peppers, sweet potatoes, and peas as well.

Melissa Halas-Liang, MA, RDN, CDE is a Registered Dietitian and Certified Diabetes Educator with a Masters in Nutrition Education who is a nationally recognized childhood nutrition expert. She is founder of SuperKids Nutrition Inc. where she is “saving the world, one healthy food at a time.” Read more about her Super Crew children’s books and discover how good nutrition can help you live your best health potential through her on-line courses blog, Melissa’s Healthy Living.