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Turkey and Yellow Squash Burgers

September 17, 2014 By Karen

My boys are now 7 and 3, and they’re pretty good eaters. Actually, they’re kind of awesome, but it wasn’t always that way. The big one ate everything until he was 18 months, then boycotted vegetables for almost two years. I freaked out about it, worried that he was going to be deprived of all essential vitamins, and experimented with sneaking vegetables into his diet. (Zucchini muffins were the only place I had any success.) But sure enough, by the time he was four he just started eating the vegetables that we had been putting on his plate night after night, year after year. I was of the mindset that I would rather offer the food and toss it (yes, wasteful in some eyes,) than give in to the notion that this toddler had control over what I served. He ate what we ate. Period. Or at least he was served what we ate, because he certainly didn’t always eat it. But you know something? I now have a second grader who is a very expensive dinner date. When we go to restaurants he gets insulted when he’s offered the kids’ menu, because he’d rather have the mussels with fries than chicken fingers, or seared ahi tuna with wasabi wonton chips instead of mac and cheese. Truthfully, he can be a bit of a snob about it, and we have to remind him that the the kids’ menu is not just dumbed down food but portions that are sized appropriately for his appetite. But he’s proud of himself for being adventurous, and that’s pretty cool.

And then there’s my little guy, who was a big pain in the rear end for the first year and a half of his life. He was a preemie, so it wasn’t really his fault, but let me tell you that doesn’t make it any easier when you’re the parent. The short story is that he was six weeks early and hadn’t had a chance to cook long enough, and so he had a whole bunch of delays. He was exhausted all the time, because he couldn’t self-soothe. Which meant that until he was 14 months old he only slept in stretches that were 45-90 minutes, and then he would wake and need help going back to sleep. He was constantly cranky, and so was I. He also had sensory issues, and one way they manifested was in a difficulty with textures, specifically foods. So while he nursed and had his formula, he had zero interest in solids. He barely ate anything for a very long time, and took teeny to a whole new level. And when he finally did start eating, he was picky. And for a while I indulged it in ways I hadn’t with his brother. He also pulled the whole “no vegetable” thing for a couple of years. (Maybe I could get spinach and carrots into him if they were in fruit smoothies encased in refillable solid plastic squeeze pouches so he wouldn’t see the dreaded green color, but that was about it.) But after a while with early intervention, and simply more time left on his own to develop, he started sleeping regularly, and everything started to get better. We all began to feel human again, because sleep deprivation is an unbearable form of torture (as any new parent can tell you.) Then sure enough, one day he said, “Mom, can I have that carrot?” A real, crunchy, orange carrot. And he ate it. Because he saw us eating them, and because that’s what’s normal for our family. And now he’s 3 and a half, and he doesn’t get any special treatment when it comes to food. I think I’ve finally even convinced his grandparents that they can stop prepping pasta as a backup every time they bring over chicken curry, because he may scrunch up his face and say it’s spicy, but he just reaches for his water, takes a sip, and keeps on eating.

Now I don’t write this to brag, because I’ve had more than my share of food headaches and fails when it comes to my kids. And I don’t have any magic advice, except to just keep putting the food you want them to eat onto their plates. We don’t force them to eat everything, but we are very insistent that they take at least one bite. Because maybe they didn’t like peppers last week, but this week their tastes may have changed. And yes, we resort to bribing. I’m not proud, but it’s true. And if there’s parents out there who don’t, I want to meet you because I don’t know how you do it. We absolutely pull the “there won’t be dessert” card, or the “you’re done with dinner then” line, and there can be crying and fussing, then I worry that I’m causing horrible food issues down the road. But really, I think it’s worked. And I think a big part of that is because the food is mostly home cooked, so they recognize the work that’s gone into preparing it. And for that I have to give credit to Brian, because he always reminds them, “You need to thank Mommy for making this for us.” Oh, and when we’re at a restaurant the line of choice is, “If you’re not going to try that, do you want me to go tell the chef you don’t like it?” That seems to work too somehow.

Which all goes to say, I’m not really one for tricking kids into thinking there’s no vegetables in a dish. But I am all for including them in unexpected ways that may make them more appealing, or just no big deal. So when I was paging through the cookbook “Jerusalem,” by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamini, and I saw a turkey burger recipe with shredded zucchini stuffed into it I knew I had to make it. Turkey burgers are our go-to weeknight dinner, but even though they make everyone happy time and again, they can get boring. And since everything these guys write about makes my mouth water, these hit the top of my to-make list….

Applesauce with Vanilla and Cinnamon

September 11, 2014 By Karen

When I think “apple picking,” I picture cool fall days, sweaters, hot cider, and crunching leaves on the ground. I do not imagine 95 degree weather, storm clouds blowing in violently, and getting caught in a torrential downpour.

But remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about NOT taking the kids peach picking? Well, my mom was in town visiting last week, and when she’s here we have to up our game a bit. She’s not one to just laze around, so on one of the hottest, grossest days of the summer we decided to pack the kids in the car and drive an hour away to go…peach picking. Yeah, that didn’t turn out so well. If you hadn’t noticed, it’s September now and peaches should have been picked around a month ago. So to satisfy the 3 year old in our midst, we managed to pull around a dozen unripe green peaches from the fruitless trees, and my vision of homemade peach ice cream for dessert that night was promptly shattered.

But luckily there was a silver lining to this ridiculous outing. Honeycrisp apples are in season now in New Jersey! We hadn’t intended to apple pick this early, (in fact, I didn’t even know it was possible,) but it was the saving grace to our day, and we hauled out 13 pounds of gorgeous crispy tart apples. We’re an apple family, and Pink Ladies and the ones we got are our favorites. Because we go picking every October, we’ve always been way too late for Honeycrisps, which happen to be one of the earliest varieties available. So this really did feel like a bonus, and made our entire crew happy. (And let me tell you, we needed a dose of happy because there was a whole lot of crank going on.)

I want to tell you that my first thought was “Apple Pie!” But here’s my confession: I’ve never made one before. I know, you’re probably thinking, “how can I possibly be reading this woman’s food blog if she’s never made an apple pie? Isn’t that one of the most basic things people in this country make?” Well, yeah, it might be. And around a dozen years ago I marked a recipe for this amazing sounding Apple Pie with a Cheddar Cheese Crust, and went so far as to make the dough and stick it in the freezer, but I never actually got around to baking it. (It’s a bit embarrassing.) So no, you’re not getting an apple pie post here. I’m sorry.

My first thought was actually, “Applesauce!” Because applesauce is one of my ultimate comfort foods, and it takes such little effort to make it homemade. It’s something my mom loves, and so I’d frequently find it on her stove when I was a kid. Especially at Hanukkah, when it was mandatory to have sweet fresh applesauce to serve with the salty crisp potato latkes she would fry up. When my kids were first eating solid foods, I would make it all the time, but I admit that I buy the little pre-packaged cups at the market way too often these days to stuff in lunchboxes. There’s nothing particularly wrong with them. There’s no added sugar, or funky ingredients, but it’s a waste of money and plastic and I never feel really good about it.

Because I know homemade applesauce, with just a touch of vanilla and cinnamon, tastes ten times better than anything you can buy in the store….

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

August 27, 2014 By Karen

Growing up the only chocolate chip cookie recipe I knew came on the back of a bag of Toll House morsels. And let’s be honest: that recipe stands the test of time. Simple, no fuss, and tasty. As a kid I’d hang around the kitchen while my brother would stir together a batch with a friend, anxiously waiting to lick the spoon. Back then nobody feared raw egg (even Orange Julius threw it into their smoothies at the mall to get that amazing froth), and the only possible repercussions were sticky fingers or fewer cookies in the end.

Until I hit my 20’s, I was perfectly content with getting my cookie dough fix from a refrigerated tube of Pillsbury. Even though I knew better, salmonella never deterred me (and still doesn’t.) I’m certainly glad there’s no way to go back and count how many times girlfriends and I would devour the whole thing in a night. Never baking it, we would get down to the end and squeeze what remained out of the plastic like it was the dregs of the toothpaste, but so much more delicious. Admittedly, I feel a little ill looking back on that.

Jump ahead a few years, and my baking obsession kicked into gear full swing. Pre-made dough became a thing of my past, because I learned how quickly I could throw together a batch from ingredients I typically keep at home. I tried recipes from favorite cookbooks (the one in “Best Recipes” from America’s Test Kitchen was my go-to for years,) the classic Neiman Marcus one that went viral long before social media made “like” and “share” buttons, and whatever popped out from my online searches.

But when a friend brought hot from the oven chocolate chip cookies to our book club on a cold night back in 2011, I took one bite and knew there had to be a winning recipe behind it. (Okay, so it wasn’t one bite. It was more like 47 bites because I could not stop eating them!) Deb at Smitten Kitchen had done it again. Her “Chewy Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies” found its way into my binder of “keepers,” and I haven’t looked back….

The Easiest Crockpot Ribs (and a Thank You)

August 20, 2014 By Karen

Since I officially announced Tasty Oasis on Monday with an email blast and a Facebook update, I have been overwhelmed by the response. Your messages and comments have been so kind and encouraging, and I am thrilled that so many of you have shared Tasty Oasis with your friends already. I can’t thank you enough! Creating a food blog has been something I’ve thought about for years. I think and read about food constantly. I have been collecting cookbooks for ages, and I go through them like novels, reading them from beginning to end and writing notes about what I’ll make one day. I’ve had magazine subscriptions on and off since I left college, and I have only recently tossed the towering stacks of ancient Gourmets, Bon Appetites, Cooking Lights, and Everyday Foods, saving precious recipes in binders instead. And the blogs. For the last many years I have read a ridiculous number of blogs daily. I started off with Smitten Kitchen back in her very early days, and the list just grew. With the ease of subscription services and feed readers, it’s like having my own set of food magazines every day, tailored to exactly my taste. Personally, I read everything on Feedly, and am always happy when one of my favorites has a new post up. It’s because of this hobby, or distraction, or whatever you may call it that that I decided I wanted to write my own blog. I know exactly what I like to read and see on a food blog, and now the challenge is to produce that on my own for all of you. I’m so excited to finally be doing it!

Moroccan Carrots, Garlic for a Miso Chicken, Turkey Chili and Everyday Granola Coming Soon!

Many of you wrote and asked who’s taking the photographs on Tasty Oasis. I am! It’s me! When I decided to start this project, I knew that I had to up my game and move on from my 8 year old point and shoot camera. In January I bought a Canon Rebel T3i, and have been playing with it constantly. Even though I’ve interpreted undergraduate photography classes over the years, I never really applied what I heard and always used to stick with the automatic settings. But I bought myself a food photography book, and pay close attention to other bloggers’ photography choices, and am experimenting every time I go to shoot something. The up-close macro shots seem to be working out, but if you saw the number of blurry kid photos I’ve taken you would have to laugh and wonder if it’s the same photographer! At the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens last week I experimented with flowers, and again, things that stay in one place seem to be where I have the most luck. I’m hoping with time I can actually get some good people shots though!

From the last couple of posts you have probably noticed that I use dried spices to flavor a lot of my cooking. There are a bunch of reasons, but the big ones are that they are easy, convenient and healthy. As a working mom, I often feel like I am running around with my time and brain split in 84 different directions. I am constantly looking for shortcuts, and tend to favor recipes that don’t have too many moving parts or specialty ingredients. Fresh herbs are fabulous, and you absolutely will see them frequently on Tasty Oasis, but they sadly die in my refrigerator over and over again. If I didn’t kill every plant I ever tried to grow (I know, watering would help, but that’s just another thing to remember to do), I would grow my own herbs and just snip what I needed, but I never seem to make it happen. So dried herbs and spices often come to the rescue. Plus, a spice rub means you can avoid making a heavy sauce, skipping the creams and coconut milk and the oils. Those all make things tasty, but don’t necessarily help for making a meal on the lighter side. That said, they have their place in my kitchen and when I use them I make sure to enjoy every bite.

One strategy I use to feed my family home cooked food is the crockpot. I can throw something together before leaving for work, and walk into a house that smells amazing. A lot of people think crockpot cooking is only for the winter for stews and soups, but summer is the perfect time to use the crockpot because you can avoid turning on the stove and heating up your kitchen. Living in a house that’s almost 100 years old without central air, that is brilliant. I’m such a fan of this contraption that I typically have two going on the counter at once so that I can double my recipes and freeze several extra meals at a time. This way I can have dinner ready with even less work later in the week or month. (I’ll be writing more posts about how to cook and freeze meals, so stay tuned!)…

Toasted Oatmeal with Flax and Chia Seeds

March 31, 2014 By Karen

Sometimes the simplest foods become special because you take the time to make them from scratch. There’s nothing more basic than a bowl of oatmeal, but with a few extra steps it can go from being a sensible heart-healthy breakfast to a dish that you actually look forward to with anticipation.

I didn’t grow up eating oatmeal. Maybe it’s because my mom didn’t like it and so she didn’t offer it, or that warm mornings in sunny California didn’t call for it. But I discovered it as an adult, and admit to being a frequent buyer of the quick cooking oat packs. In order to make myself feel better about these sweetened conveniences, I tried to stick with the Oats and Flax ones, but even those have more sugar than I feel comfortable with, especially since my toddler began requesting them daily for his breakfast at daycare.

So when a couple of months ago I noticed several food bloggers posting about the same oatmeal recipe from the cookbook “Whole-Grain Mornings,” by Megan Gordon, I decided to give it a shot. We had family coming for breakfast, and instead of my typical homemade granola with fruit and yogurt or waffles I serve to feed a crowd, I went a different route. Toasted oatmeal for company certainly isn’t the obvious choice, but that morning it was a huge hit. And it couldn’t have been simpler….

Chipotle Turkey Meatballs

March 3, 2014 By Karen

FAST AND EASY CHIPOTLE TURKEY MEATBALLS

Dinner is often a scramble in my house. Most days I’m lucky enough that the kids are already home from school (thanks to their grandparents,) but at 5:30pm I rush through the door and head straight to the kitchen, barely saying hello and giving kisses. I drop my bags, and before I do anything else I put a pot of water on to boil and turn on the oven. Even if I haven’t planned what I’m going to cook, I do these two things just to get the process moving. Only then do I wash my hands and check in with everyone, asking if homework’s been done and how the day’s been. For our night to go smoothly, not only do I need to get our meal prepped, but our family dinner needs to be enjoyed and completed within an hour and fifteen minutes. It’s a tall order, and not always successful, but it certainly is the goal.

I have my standard kitchen fallbacks, the dishes I throw together without thinking and without a recipe, but they’re not exactly exciting. How many times can I possibly cook turkey burgers, or toss pasta with a quick turkey meat sauce? I love pulling a bag of something homemade out of the freezer and just reheating, but it’s not always an option. So I’m thrilled when I find a great recipe that’s fast and flavorful, pleases all four of us, and can even be doubled so I can freeze half for another night. Chipotle Turkey Meatballs fits the bill perfectly. It’s slightly adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks, “Mexican Everyday,” by Rick Bayless. It’s a book that uses easy to find ingredients, most recipes can be made in less than an hour, and for dishes that take longer he has crockpot cooking instructions so your meal can be waiting for you when you get home. I’ve made several dishes and every single one of them works. It’s a book you should have on your shelf….

The Only Chocolate Cake You Need

February 21, 2014 By Karen

There’s never a wrong time for chocolate cake. It’s one of the easiest things I know how to make, which is lucky because it’s pretty much my answer for everything. A birthday? Chocolate cake. End of the weekend blues? Chocolate cake. It’s Tuesday night and I forgot that I need to bake for the teacher appreciation lunch at school tomorrow? Chocolate cake!

Chocolate cake: as simple as it comes

But I wasn’t always that person who whips up a cake from scratch without thinking twice. When I began baking, I was a recent college graduate living with my brother in a tiny Manhattan apartment. Our kitchen was almost nonexistent, and luckily I had the city to thank for every type of delivery or take out just down the street. I had no need to cook, and frankly, I didn’t know how to. I felt intimidated by the idea of creating an actual meal, and that discomfort prevented me from trying. But I have a sweet tooth, and so I found myself spending a small fortune every week on afternoon treats to go with my coffee or tea. Now if I were smart about it, I would have started cooking to avoid the expense of so many meals out, but I decided my first step to easing the financial burden would be to bake a batch of something on my own. At the time it seemed to make sense.

Who knows what I started with, but I began experimenting with different recipes, relieved that the science of baking meant I could just follow a good recipe and mostly find success. I began turning out batch after batch of scones, muffins, cookies and biscotti. I loved how the apartment would smell, and the satisfaction I felt when a tray of macaroons came out of the oven, lightly browned and chewy, with chocolate melting throughout the coconut. It was magical that such goodness could be achieved with less than ten minutes of effort and only a few dollars. And best of all was the joy I felt when I could share these creations with friends. I would take an extra orange poppyseed scone along to an interpreting assignment for a colleague, or knock on a neighbor’s door with a dish of homemade marshmallows, or show up to a friend’s apartment with a pan of brownies, and I can promise you that I never received a scowl in return. Getting something homemade makes everybody happy, even if the scone’s a little too dry, or the muffin’s a little too flat. Perfection isn’t required to make someone smile, and that takes the pressure off.

As the months rolled on, I found my confidence in the kitchen growing. I realized it isn’t a great tragedy if I burn the bottom of the cookies. I relaxed, and I started having fun. I allowed myself to tinker with ingredients and cooking methods, making things my own. I left my safety net of desserts and ventured into “real food, ” reminding myself that the worst case scenario was that I could toss a disastrous dish and call downstairs for pizza, and the only loss would be a bit of money and my time. But with every mistake I gained new knowledge, and so I never even saw that time as wasted. Who cares that the stir fry I tried ended up soggy and steamed? I learned not to crowd the pan and to use higher heat the next time. I still had plenty of food for dinner, the sauce was good enough, and it was absolutely healthier than Chinese takeout.

My life has changed a lot since those early days experimenting in a galley kitchen. While interpreting a graduate school class, I met Brian, and we got married in 2005. We moved to the suburbs the following year, had two amazing boys, and now both juggle working full time with keeping our house running and family activities organized. I make a priority of keeping home cooked food on the table and in the lunch boxes, and some days I succeed at that more than others. For me, being in the kitchen is the fun part, and because I know the output is worth the effort and appreciated, I do it with pleasure.

But let’s get back to what’s really important: chocolate cake. Celebrating a 7th and 3rd birthday within the last month, there’s been a lot of cake in our house. Really, a crazy amount of cake. To make a Lego brick cake for one and a Mickey Mouse cake for another meant three 9″ X 13″ cakes, two 8″ round cakes, four 4″ round cakes, and cupcakes on top of it all.

Chocolate and More Chocolate Makes Every Celebration Better

But having a recipe that you know always works, requires nothing fresh from the fridge, and can be prepped in the time it takes the oven to preheat makes this cake a little too easy sometimes. No melting chocolate in a double boiler, no fancy mixers needed to cream butter. Add to that it’s actually vegan, tastes even better on the second or third day but is still moist and tender on day five (making it ideal to mail to a friend with a new baby across the country), it’s pretty much perfect. Oh, and did I mention that when you add your wet ingredients to the dry, the batter actually starts to bubble and sizzle like the best fifth grade science fair project, the almighty volcano? It’s amazing….