Visualize Whirled Peas

Previously, sweet potatoes. Now, peas!



These were a big hit right away. Every other food I've introduced to the boy has required a few offerings before he was willing to eat much. With this stuff, he just gobbled it down from the first time. Fine by me! It has a great color and smells great, too.

I just boiled a whole bag of frozen peas and creamed them up in the food processor. Like before, I froze individual servings in aluminum foil. This resulted in quite a few servings socked away, so it's a good thing he likes it.

Homemade baby food

After a month or so of solid food, I've finally managed to make some homemade baby food for my son!



This is simply two sweet potatoes, baked for an hour at 425 degrees, peeled out of the skin, and mashed up thoroughly with a fork. In the picture I'm dividing it up into servings, and wrapping each in foil for freezing.

Previously I'd given him some store bought sweet potato baby food, which he really liked and gobbled up. It took him a few times to come around to this stuff, but today he finally ate nearly his whole serving of it.

The other thing I've made for him is mashed-up banana. That, however, is not nearly so photogenic! I just mash up about a quarter to a third of the banana right before feeding time (and then eat the rest of it myself!). He has taken a long time to warm up to that as well, but when he got some this evening he really scarfed it down.

Salads for Summer

A big salad with tons of toppings is a nice cool dinner for hot evenings. Mr. Mongie and I like to do it salad-bar style, so we can each have different toppings. Here are some of our toppings from one of those nights. I thought the variety of colors was great.

Independence Day!

This was our dessert two years ago. The literal take. :)

Another Dinner

Yet another recipe from The Healthy Slow Cooker!

This is mushroom and chickpea stew with roasted red pepper coulis. It came out a bit spicier than I was expecting. I guess from the turmeric. I hadn't realized turmeric was spicy - I thought it was just, well, yellow! The vinegar in the coulis is a nice contrast to the spiciness, though.
I love chickpeas. I can eat them plain, right out of the can. So it's nice to find a recipe to put them in. Too bad it used up the whole can and there were no leftover chickpeas for me... ;)

Dinner

This is Moroccan-style chicken with prunes & quinoa, another recipe from The Healthy Slow Cooker. The chicken & prunes are also flavored with lemon zest and some other spices. It's especially tasty if you get a bite with chicken, prunes, & quinoa all together. I also think it's a little better leftover, when the flavors have blended together more.

Chicken Cassoulet

Another crockpot dinner:

I LOVE this dish. The recipe is from The Healthy Slow Cooker, like the soup. There are two main keys to this dish: fresh dill and cremini mushrooms. The dill, freshly chopped, gets added right at the end of the cooking time and adds a wonderful flavor. The mushrooms are like little treasures hidden throughout the dish. It makes a huge difference to use fresh mushrooms (where the gills aren't open yet), both in flavor and texture. The chicken thighs fall apart into a wonderful stewy consistency. So good! I always make the largest batch possible so I can have the leftovers for lunch all week.

Souped Up

Dinner!

This is Mushroom Lentil Soup, made in our slow cooker, from The Healthy Slow Cooker. One of our very favorite recipes from a favorite book. The garnish is Greek yogurt and chives. This recipe is especially great, because it's even better when it's leftover and the flavors have melded even more.

Turkey Burgers

In my family, the day you do the grocery shopping is called Cornucopia Day, because suddenly the house is filled with delicious fresh food! Saturday is Cornucopia Day for me & Mr. Mongie.

So yesterday (Saturday), we had these burgers for dinner. The patties are ground turkey with chopped onion and Worcestershire sauce mixed in. I stumbled on a new technique for mixing it together - I put the onions in the bowl first, then the Worcestershire sauce, so that it soaks partly into the onions. Then I put the meat on top of that and smoosh it all together. This distributes the sauce more evenly than pouring it onto the meat and then mixing. The tomato is an heirloom variety from the supermarket, and the avocado is from a friend with an avocado tree. Both the tomato and avocado had nice strong flavors. Put it all together and you get a yummy, if tall, burger.