Powernap: Quick Recipes For When Time is Limited!

Next week I’ll be unveiling an awesome project I’ve been working on with Whole Foods. This fall they challenged me to feed our family exclusively from their store for one whole week on a $100 budget. I was so excited to take on this task since I’ve always loved Whole Foods but have, in the past, admittedly been wary of their reputation as a place to spend the “whole paycheck.” However, that all changed last week when, with some strategic shopping and the use of coupons, I was able to squeeze out a week’s worth of healthy meals on an incredibly limited budget. Starting next Tuesday I’ll report on all the details but today I am going to give you a sneak peak at a simple soup I made toward the end of the week to use up some of our tasty leftovers.

Fall colds are not fun. Especially when you are pregnant. When I managed to come down with one last week I turned to all the home remedies I could find. Steamy cups of tea, clear soups, hot compresses – you name it, I did it. Since my taste buds were pretty much on the fritz one of the soups I made, for both its restorative benefits and the strong flavor, was this homemade Apple Cider French Onion version. I’ve been all about oniony flavors lately and I knew this rich, brothy soup full of pungent onions and a hint of apple cider would lend the helping hand I needed.

Last week was a whirlwind. We had barely arrived home from Columbus Day weekend in Cooperstown before we were off to Lima, Ohio for my friend’s wedding. Cooking-wise it didn’t leave me a lot of time to stock up on my weekly groceries and dig into a big week of meals. Instead, I just took each day as it came and whipped up a few of our favorite meals on the fly. One of these was our stand-by quick carbonara. My brother, Uncle Will, is a huge fan of this simple recipe so we always eat it when he is around. It is perfect for when he visits because I can literally make the whole meal in 15 minutes.

I love chai tea in the morning. In the summer I drink it over ice and in the winter I drink it warm with milk. When I ran out of regular milk the other day I decided to try adding coconut milk instead. I don’t need to stick to a dairy-free diet or anything, but I love the flavor of coconut and I certainly wasn’t about to run to the store for milk at 6am! Luckily, my little experiment turned out to be a tasty treat. I did my best to whip the milk into a froth with a whisk (I’ve put this to my Christmas wishlist!), added it to the hot tea, and topped it all with a pinch of cinnamon. The naturally sweet coconut milk was the perfect compliment to the spicy tea and was just the way to start the morning.

This month I’ve been all about indulging my cravings for spicy food and it is beginning to show around here. I know a lot of you don’t mind a little heat now and then so hopefully I’m not going too overboard. Rest assured, I always include instructions on how to tone down the heat to suit your palate! In our Facebook chat earlier this month some of you indicated you want more slow-cooker dishes that are not beef or pork oriented. Lucky you, because now that the weather has cooled down, and I am slowing down I bit, I’ve been using my slow-cooker every chance I get and today I’ve got a great, lighter fall/winter soup for you!

Today I am thrilled to be working with Fage yogurt. I have been a longtime fan of the authentic tangy Greek yogurt and I consider it a staple ingredient for many of my favorite recipes. Not only does it impart a delicious tang into anything I am making, it also adds a lot a protein while being low and calories and fat. I swear that using it bind chicken salad is the only way to go, my husband swears it is best when served with granola and honey first thing in the morning. During my first pregnancy I ate tons of it which perhaps explains why my daughter is obsessed with it too!

One of the challenges of the school year is packing healthy, fun snacks for kids. I don’t want my daughter to turn into a serial snacker, of course, I never want snacks to replace her actual meal. But she has to take snack to school every day and really needs a mid-afternoon munchie to hold her over until dinner. Since I do my best to make all of her food from scratch I usually make loaves of our favorite snack breads for her. A slice of Zucchini Applesauce Bread or Rhubarb Orange Snack Bread are two favorites and are satisfying, healthy snacks for her pre-school palate.

When I was in Cooperstown earlier this month my mother whipped up this delicious watermelon salad for a potluck. Sadly, I wasn’t invited to the potluck, but I did get a chance to take a photo of it and sneak a quick taste before she whisked it away. While I haven’t replicated the entire thing in my kitchen yet I have made a small, individual version. It is so easy!

Reading Bon Appetit usually sends me over the edge with inspiration. I hardly ever finish that magazine without folding down at least half a dozen recipes to try. But now, given my current state, the allure of my favorite food magazine is working overtime and when the most recent issue came I think I folded down every other page. That is not an exaggeration. One of the first things to catch my eye was this awesome raw tomato sauce. What a genius idea for summer when nobody wants to turn on the stove and the freshest, ripest tomatoes are widely available.

Today I am joining in the PBS celebration of Julia Child’s life in honor of what would have been her 100th birthday this August. People from all over are spending the month cooking their favorite Julia recipes and sharing them far and wide in the spirit of food and friendship. My favorite Julia recipe has long been her brownies. They are the perfect combination of fudgy and cakey and I simply adore them served with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

When we got home from Martha’s Vineyard the first thing I bought at our local market was a bag of fresh peaches. I adore peach season and am so thrilled it is finally here. I can’t wait to preserve peaches in vanilla syrup, make roasted peach iced lemonade, and eat them sliced over granola for breakfast. This week I was also in the mood for a peach dessert so I decided to adapt the classic peach pie recipe from my cookbook and make a peach galette.

One of my favorite parts about summer is reaping the rewards of fresh tomatoes. I know it sounds so trivial, but I can’t stand the watery tomatoes that are in the market year round. The red beauties grown locally in June through September are infinitely more flavorful and juicy so I gorge on them all season and preserve as many as possible for winter while I’m at it. This year my tomato plant started producing little cherry tomatoes pretty early and we’ve been having a ball harvesting and eating them with just about every meal. So far I’ve made tiny slow-roasted tomatoes and a great simple dinner of pan roasted tomatoes with pasta. This latest dish came from my desire to for tasty summer appetizer to go with a summer salad.