by Caroline Today after school we will finally carve all the pumpkins that have been sitting on our front stoop this month. I’ll save the seeds, to toast and eat during a post-dinner showing of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and then I’ll need a quick dinner that doesn’t add much to the general pumpkiny mess. I’m thinking pumpkin pancakes. Breakfast for dinner is a fine quick and healthy meal, and like Lisa’s recent omelette, pancakes are a fine food with which your children can practice their cutlery skills.
Eli eagerly anticipating his pancakeBen practicing his cutlery skills on actual food
These pancakes are about the lightest, fluffiest pancakes you’ll ever make (these pictures really don’t do them justice at all), so make them silver dollar size so they bake all the way through.
cooking pumpkin pancakes
They taste great served with applesauce, yogurt, ricotta cheese, or of course maple syrup.
1 c flour
3 T sugar
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1 egg
1 c plain yogurt
1/4 c pumpkin puree (canned or fresh)
2 T butter, melted and cooled
In a large bowl, beat the egg and then stir in remaining wet ingredients. Blend well. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, then stir into the egg mixture until just combined.
Heat a skillet and add a dab of butter. When the skillet’s hot, pour about 1/8 c batter per pancake. Flip when the tops bubble and the edges seem dry. Cook until the other side is golden brown, 2-3 minutes per side.
Not long ago, Finn and I were walking through Trader Joe’s, when he made his usual pit stop at the samples counter. The offering was pork carne asada, on top of a bed of tortilla chips, sprinkled with cheese. The pork had been microwaved and wasn’t very good, but I could sense that it had a decent flavor underneath the icky microwave texture. Finn, on the other hand, decided it was his favorite new food, which made me sort of thrilled, since I love carne asada.
But I wouldn’t buy the freezer bag of precooked, pre-packaged meat, and I didn’t have a good carne asada recipe, that is until we got home a few minutes later and I asked Betsabe, who was working for me that day, if she had a good recipe. She looked at me as if I was crazy for not having one, then raved about a family recipe which involves garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, a tomato mixed in a blender and used as a marinade for the meat, for up to a day. Then, she said you sprinkle some carne asada powder on the meat, grill or fry and eat with tortillas or rice, etc. She swore that everyone in her family loved it, from her parents to her husband to her baby son. When I asked her what was in the carne asada powder she shrugged and said she had no idea and we laughed. She assured me you could make it with just the marinade which is what I did because I didn’t get myself to any one of the many Mexican markets in my town before making this.
The BEST thing about this, aside from the fact that it’s delicious, is that it’s very, very fast. I chopped and prepped the condiments, set the table, and made the marinade in about 20 minutes at lunchtime. I had my pan out and ready to go on the stove, so when we rolled inthe door from ballet class at about 6:25, I sent the kids to put on their cozy pajamas and by the time the sat down to eat their first course cucumber salads the meat was near done. By 6:40 they had warm, carne asada filled tortillas on their plates.
I got my meat, which was a prepackaged 1 lb bag of Fajita meat from Holding Ranch at my farmer’s market. It’s precut into perfect little pieces, and my kids adore it. If you cook this meat really, really fast, it’s delicious and tender, but it’s also easy to overcook. I made this dinner very last minute, so I pulled some inauthentic condiments from what I had on hand, and I would have preferred to have some salsa and avocado or guacamole, but really, we didn’t miss it. Kory & I added black beans and rice, and we easily would have had leftovers from the 1 lb of meat, only Kory & I decided to eat them that night.
I let Ella and Finn choose their own toppings, which is a fun way for them to eat. I think it encourages choice and independence and the illusion that they are controlling what their meal. The trick is to put out a variety of healthy things, most of which they like, along with a few new things. I do this a lot. I learned in Texas to eat carnitas or fajitas with less meat to tortilla ratio, so 1 lb of meat easily provides enough for our family of four. Unless we get greedy. Ella’s first looked like this:
And here, the girl shows you how to roll a tortilla. In case you were wondering.
Puree all ingredients in a blender then pour over meat and let marinate for several hours or up to 1 day.
Thinly slice a white. Sautee onion in a little olive oil until tender, then drain the marinade from the meat and stir fry quickly with a sprinkling of carne asada powder until cooked. Serve with warm tortillas, and/or rice and black beans and salsa, avocado, etc.
A necessity of my cooking week is that Friday night dinners need to be quick and easy and mess-free. The daughter has soccer until 6 pm, so there’s not much time to prep. Also, my housecleaner comes and for one day, just one, I like to keep everything sparkling clean and neat. It lasts only 24 hours (ok, barely 24 hours) but it’s a really nice thing to have a really clean kitchen. Also, we very often have family movie night on Fridays (though lately we have family So You Think You Can Dance night, in which the daughter is heavily rooting for the soccer player/dancer and the boy likes the krumper… but I digress.)
In the past, this easy dinner has meant take out (we have great Mexican, pizza, or sushi), but we’re also trying to save money because I’m going to take a semester off from teaching in January, so lately I’ve tried to be creative. One warm evening recently, we had a Charcuterie picnic.
I spread the tablecloth on the floor so the kids could eat picnic style. (Also, it’s an easy clean-up–just fold up the cloth, crumbs and all.) I put out several trays: one of mixed crackers, flatbreads, and bread; one of meats and cheeses; one of condiments; a bowl of corn on the cob, a small green salad, hardboiled eggs. Much of this (corn, carrots, eggs) were leftovers so it was no work. The best bit was using nice trays and little spoons to make it look appealing. The kids grazed heavily and thought it was one of the best dinners every. It’s a nice end to the week–think heavy appetizers and cocktails, and you can vary the amount of meats/cheeses/salads to your particular level of cholesterol intake. Smoked fishes or tuna would make a great, healthier alternative.
On the cheese board clockwise from far left: spinach dip, hummus, prosciutto, English cheddar, Cotswald, Pecorino Romano, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese
On the cracker board: Akmak flatbread, pita triangles, Golden Breton, Rye Krisp
On the silver condiment tray: dijon mustard, olive paste, salt for the eggs, carrots, ligonberry jam, cornchons, homemade mixed nuts in honey
Basically, when you’re making up a plate like this you want variety: one soft, one hard, one smelly, one fun/different cheese. A range of breads/crackers. Sweet (jams, honeyes) + Savory condiments (pickles, mustards, olive pastes). Technically charcuterie refers to the meat plate, and we had mostly cheeses. You can read more about how to put together a plate here. But the key, I think for an easily family night is not to go out of your way to find and buy a whole bunch of new items but to keep a few staple and one or two special items always on hand so you can throw this together quickly for your own family or even for those impromptu guests you wish might stop by.
It happens every year, the clamor for pumpkin treats: pie, cupcakes, pancakes, muffins. Eli, particularly, adores all things pumpkin and thinks it’s quite reasonable to expect a pumpkin pie for dessert an hour after we return from the pumpkin patch. Well, maybe so, but not with the new pumpkins, certainly. In fact, you all probably know this already but it bears repeating: you don’t want a Jack-o-lantern pumpkin for pie and really, you don’t even need pumpkin (shh!). Roast an acorn squash with a cinnamon stick and some cloves, even a knob of fresh ginger, stuck in the cavity, take out the flavorings when the squash is tender, scoop it out of the skin, puree, and then proceed with your recipe as if it were pumpkin. Really, nobody will ever know the difference.
But still, we go to the pumpkin patch every year, because what’s October without pumpkins? And when we are home from the pumpkin patch, one of our favorite quick pumpkin recipes is for muffins.
Preheat the oven to 350.
Combine in a medium sized mixing bowl:
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
3 T ground flax seed meal (you can skip the flax and replace it with an extra tablespoon of butter if you like)
1 1/2 t ground cinnamon
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 t ground ginger
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1/4 t ground cloves
1/4 t baking powder
Combine in a small bowl or measuring cup:
1/3 c water, milk or apple juice
1/2 t vanilla
In a large bowl, beat until creamy
5T unsalted butter
add
1 c brown sugar
1/3 c granulated sugar
and beat until combined.
Then add
2 large eggs
1 c pumpkin puree
And mix well. Now add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk mixture. Stir just until combined. Then add, if you like, chopped walnuts, raisins, or chocolate chips (about 1/2 c each).
Bake in a muffin tin for 30 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
We’re almost past the time, here in California, when we can stock up on extra produce at the farmer’s market to store away for the winter. There are some tomatoes coming still, but I’ve got about as many as I can handle, cooked into sauce and tucked into the freezer, next to a few dozen pesto cupcakes, some apricots and some berries. I don’t have a huge freezer, so I don’t put up a lot, but if I’m careful we’ll still have something that we can pull out of the freezer for a shot of summer on a dark February day.
But happily there are some foods that taste brightly of summer to me but are easy to make out of ingredients that are available year round. Salsa Verde is one of those things. If you’re lucky enough to have an abundant lemon tree, like Lisa, and a pot of parsley on your window sill or in your garden, so much the better, but otherwise pick those up fresh at the market; all the other ingredients are pantrystaples, which means this is something you can assemble in five minutes and then have ready for chips, or carrot and cucumber sticks, roasted potatoes, a piece of fish, or simply to eat by the spoonful.
Toss everything into a blender, blend, then taste and adjust seasonings.
2/3 c parsley leaves
2 1/2 T drained capers
6 anchovy fillets (optional)
1-2 cloves of garlic (to taste; the garlic mellows after a few hours)
1/2 t good mustard
1/2 t red vinegar or the juice of one lemon
1/2 c olive oil
salt to taste
Today after school we will finally carve all the pumpkins that have been sitting on our front stoop this month. I’ll save the seeds, to toast and eat during a post-dinner showing of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and then I’ll need a quick dinner that doesn’t add much to the general pumpkiny mess. I’m thinking pumpkin pancakes. Breakfast for dinner is a fine quick and healthy meal, and like Lisa’s recent omelette, pancakes are a fine food with which your children can practice their cutlery skills.
On the cheese board clockwise from far left: spinach dip, hummus, prosciutto, English cheddar, Cotswald, Pecorino Romano, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese
