Category Archives: Food

Milk and Cookies

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I started making lactation cookies for Megan about 8 months ago. She’d returned from a Mommy-Meet-Up with a few of her fellow December Moms, and had been raving about how delicious they were. She’d tried to save one for me to sample, but ended up eating it … “for Niko, afterall…” Ever a fan of homemade cookies (really, though, who isn’t…), and looking for ways to contribute to feeding Niko early on, I set out to recreate the cookies she’d swore were good enough to eat by the plateful.

Lactation Cookies
(adapted from recipe at Epicurious.com)

Ingredients
– 1 cup butter
– 1 cup sugar
– 1 cup brown sugar
– 4 tablespoons water
– 2 tablespoons flaxseed meal (no substitutions)
– 2 Lg eggs
– 1 teaspoon vanilla
– 2 cups flour
– 1 teaspoon baking soda
– 1 teaspoon salt
– 1 tablespoon unsweetened shredded coconut
– 3 cups thick cut oats
– 1 cup chocolate chips
– 1/4 cup sliced almonds
– 2 tablespoons brewer’s yeast (no substitutions)

Yield: depending on your desired cookie size, can make 10 – 12 dozen cookies

Preparation Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix the flaxseed meal and water, set aside 3-5 minutes. In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar,

then add the eggs one at a time until blended. Stir the flaxseed meal mixture into butter, eggs and sugar, and then add the vanilla. Mix until well blended. In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients, except the oats and chocolate chips.

Stir the butter mixture into the dry ingredients, and then add in the oats and  the chocolate chips.

Spoon the cookie dough onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets (unless you’re okay with cookies that taste like roasted carrots). Bake 8-12 minutes.

A note on sugars: Though it costs more, we exclusively use natural or “raw” cane sugars like turbinado, muscovado or Demerara when a recipe calls for brown sugar. According to Heidi Swanson in her book, Super Natural Cooking, commercial brown sugar used to be a semi-refined version of white sugar, and therefore viewed as a more healthy sweetener. However, now-a-days, brown sugar is simply refined white sugar that has molasses added back to add some color. Perhaps it’s all in my head, but I prefer the rich, deep flavors of natural sugar to refined. Refined white sugar, while undeniably sweet, lacks dimension. In terms of “white” sugar, we use Florida Crystals.

The Other Big One!

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Given all of his December birthday buddies and the proximity of the holidays, we didn’t throw a party for Niko until the end of December (thankfully, we were still able to celebrate him in 2012!). First birthdays, as it turns out, are more for the grown ups than the little kids. In fact, it becomes an excuse to have an extended brunch cocktail party in the middle of the day with crawlers and toddlers underfoot–chewing up Nibbly Fingers, mouthing any toy that happens to be at hand, and tugging on any pant leg for a lift up for a better perspective on things.

Inspired by Niko’s friend Shiohn’s birthday cake (whose parents are also restricting sugary baked goods), and to accommodate some of his pals’ food allergies, Niko’s birthday cake was composed of five vegan, gluten and sugar-free, lemon, raspberry, cornmeal pancakes stacked with round banana slices between each layer. I’d set one pancake aside for Jonah, who has a dairy allergy, before icing the “cake” with vanilla Greek yogurt.

 

 

Lemon Raspberry Cornmeal  Pancakes
(adapted from The Pioneer Woman)

1-1/2 cup (scant) Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour

1-1/2 cup heaping yellow cornmeal

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons baking powder

2-1/4 cups oat milk

3 teaspoons vanilla
3 teaspoons egg replacer + 4 tablespoons warm water (mixed until thick)

2 tablespoons organic, unrefined coconut oil, melted
1/2 cup raspberries
2 medium bananas peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
lemon and juice from one lemon
vanilla Greek yogurt for icing

Preparation Instructions

Mix together flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and lemon zest in a bowl. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, mix oat milk, egg replacer, lemon juice, and vanilla. Pour into the dry ingredients. Gently stir in raspberries.

Stir in melted coconut oil. Set batter aside. If batter is overly thick, splash in a small amount of oat milk.

Heat 1 tablespoon canola oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. When heated, drop 1/4 cup batter per pancake and cook until golden brown on both sides. Remove from skillet and set aside.

Stack four pancakes, layering sliced bananas rounds between each pancake. Using an offset spatula, coat the pancake cake with vanilla Greek yogurt. Decorate cake and plate with any extra banana rounds and raspberries. Dig in!

A dumpling by any other name…

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You say pierogi. I say varenyky.
This year for the holidays, Megan, Niko and I traveled down to Arlington, VA to join her brother Franz and his wife Maria’s family for a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve feast.
In preparation for the 24 people who’d be feasting, Megan, Franz, Maria and I spent all day in the kitchen, making and rolling dough, boiling and mashing potatoes, sauteeing cabbage and onions, and stuffing and folding savory varenyky — all under the watchful eyes and expert hands of Maria’s mother.

In total, we produced close to 200 of the dumplings. Crawling through our hive of industry, Niko passed from eager hand to eager hand, lap to lap, contenting himself on small balls of potato and cheese filling and punctuating Doris Day radio on Pandora with bursts of laughter and baby gurgles. In the end, he feasted as well as the rest of us, and the homemade pierogi that filled his belly furthered him on his journey of solids.

 

 

Breaking Bread

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Road trip! At 8 months, we celebrated Niko’s first tooth by introducing him to some actual solids. I’m talking non-mashed, use-your-gums-and-ridiculous-amounts-of-saliva kind of solids. While visiting his Aunt Ariana in San Francisco, we fed him some delicious sourdough bread from Basque Boulangerie in Sonoma (we kept the wine for ourselves).

Auntie A made sure his bread-nomming technique was ship shape.

Since his first food was avocado, we thought he might be ready to try a black bean burrito with avocado in it. He seemed interested in Megan’s lunch from Papalote Mexican Grill, so we thought, why not! Turns out we were witness to the first of many burrito face-plants.

That said, he seems to have an equal affinity for eating his own shoes, so I won’t go thinking his tastes have become so refined…


Next dispatch, we’ll be reporting again from the East Coast!

First Food

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When we took Niko in for his 6-month check-up, his doctor asked what we were feeding him. When we explained that he was still eating breast milk, she exclaimed, “Feed that boy–he’s hungry!” For the record, our big boy was weighing in at 18.3lbs, the 65th percentile for his age. Certainly big, but at the six visits prior, he was consistently topping the scales–weighing in between 93rd and 96th percentile for his age. So we took him right home and prepared his first “solid” meal, avocado mashed with a bit of breast milk. We used the breast milk for two purposes: to add a familiar flavor to this first meal, and to create a soft enough consistency for our toothless wonder. He loved it! His eyes lit up and he grunted with delight at every bite. We opted to avoid rice cereal (still haven’t fed him any), despite tradition, because, well, it’s boring. With so many rich and bold flavors in this world, why eat fortified rice puree?