Feeding a Family

As I've said before, I'm of the mindset that life at home should be simple and that children need a solid framework of boundaries. However, as a new parent who never really experienced the raising of another child (such as a younger sibling) and, therefore, is starting out with a complete blank slate of knowledge, I've done my fair share of researching the subject rather than simply going with my instincts. How do you get a child to behave? What are the best and most appropriate toys? What effect does television have? How do you prevent a child from becoming a picky eater? Subject after subject. I read online articles, I look at parent forums, I buy books. One of the pieces of writing that has had a more profound affect on my parenting mindset is Kim John Payne's, "Simplicity Parenting," which is generally right in line with my own instincts and preferences. He touts the possession of fewer toys (and simple, imaginative ones at that), less technological interference (computers, phones, television), planning ahead, and uncomplicated organization, among other points. Honestly, if only one parenting book is ever purchased, I'd suggest this one, but it really depends on your own opinions.

Back to the point, Payne also touches on the family meal, suggesting a way to make it a simpler task. When you have more than two people to cook for, especially when any of those people is a child, cooking can become a burden. When a toddler is clinging to your legs wanting to be picked up in order to watch the entire process, leaning into the hot pots looking for a taste, or pulling at your arms to drag you away for some play, the effort has been made that much more frustrating and difficult. Something that used to be a joy can be dreaded. And those are only a couple examples of how cooking for a family can feel harder than cooking for just yourself or a significant other. So, what's the solution?

Beyond the obvious pre-planning and prepping, stocking the freezer with pre-made, bulk meals, which all of us will advise...Payne's suggestion is to establish a meal schedule. Think back to the meatloaf Tuesdays of the 50's; each day is assigned a specific meal. Now, don't cringe! A popular belief is that this sets you up for food boredom. "GREAT, meatloaf AGAIN." No no...deciding that every Sunday will be a pasta dish does not constrain you to making the same exact pasta dish every single week. In fact, for me, it has opened up a whole new world of cooking. But then it depends on how specific your meal choices are. If you decide that Tuesday will be meatloaf, then you have just stuck yourself into a fairly small box of choices. If you decide it's beef night, though, you still have endless options. Will it be steak? What cut of steak? Braised beef? Stew? Hamburgers? Meatballs? Empanadas? Meatloaf?

The point is to create a framework within which you have many options. Of course, this may still leave you open to indecisiveness, "Steak? Hamburgers? Ugh, which one!?" but then that simply hinges on your ability to make a final, quick decision and, no matter what, that debate is simpler than the debate of every main course in existence ;) Also, you very clearly have the option to plan the entire week ahead of time, thus making the task even simpler. Either way, knowing that I'm absolutely going to be eating soup on Wednesday allows me to only research soup recipes, to simply mull over which flavor of soup, rather than to mull over every type of dish imaginable as well as which main course and which side. As someone who's incredibly, incredibly indecisive, this has actually made my daily life run much more smoothly. I can't believe the difference in my evenings, especially work nights, when I know exactly what main course to look for.

As I said, you actually have so many options within that framework that you're now more able to create a diverse weekly menu, or at least that's how it's gone for me! Before creating this schedule, I was so indecisive that I'd essentially break down and just go with what I know, in which case we ate a lot of coq au vin, butternut squash risotto, and pasta with bolognese. What's easier than making a dish you've made a thousand times, that you definitely have the ingredients for, that you definitely like?

With the schedule, though, I know to research a pasta recipe for Sunday. Will we have spaghetti with marinara? Or maybe linguine carbonara? How about stuffed manicotti? Lasagne? Orechiette with lemon and artichokes? Conchiglie with roasted broccoli and garlic? What about pappardelle bolognese? Will I make a fresh sauce or use something from my freezer stock? And the remainder of the week is the same. In which case...

Rather than having coq au vin, butternut squash risotto, pasta with bolognese, more pasta with maybe marinara, chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes, and maybe leftovers of one of these dishes the seventh night and generally repeating this week in and week out...We end up with linguine carbonara Sunday, French onion risotto Monday, burgundy beef stew Tuesday, roasted winter vegetable soup Wednesday, chicken piccata Thursday, balsamic glazed salmon Friday, and garlic roast chicken with creamy mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, and fudge brownies Saturday (that's our "feast" night, rather like the traditional, fancier Sunday supper). Then, the next week, we have fusilli with artichokes and sun dried tomatoes in a white wine sauce Sunday, rice with eggs poached in tomato sauce Monday, ribeye with red wine sauce and Italian oven fries Tuesday, vegetable pot pie Wednesday (soup night and I count pot pie filling as soup!), curry chicken over coconut rice Thursday, pistachio-crusted whitefish with garlic potatoes Friday, and chicken Milanese with roasted tomato crostini, rosemary garlic spaghetti, and salted caramel ice cream (for dessert) Saturday.

Are you salivating yet!? I just ate peanut-crusted chicken with orange-coconut basmati rice and curry sauce and I'm already hungry again after all that! 

My point in this massive list of meal ideas is this...I'm incredibly indecisive. When left with every option in the world for what to eat, I'm going to panic trying to figure out what I feel like eating and attempting to match that with what each member of my family feels like eating, as well as ensure we actually have the ingredients on hand and, if not, figure out a whole new meal or, *gasp*, trek to the store on a work night. Then, when I just can't take the inner debate anymore, I'm going to default to a go-to dish that we'll probably eat at least once a week, if not more. Maybe you don't have this issue, but if you do...if you just never know what to make, take too long to decide at the last minute, can't organize well enough to plan ahead with all those options, find the prep work each night a ton of work...then this can help you too!

And your spouse and your kids are not allowed to push you to deviate from this. "But I don't feel like soup!" Well, that's too bad because that's what we're having and once you smell it and you eat it, you're going to love it and feel content and satisfied. The same goes for you; maybe you don't feel like eating whatever it is that you've decided to make, but that will most likely change once you've sat down to eat. It certainly has for me every single time I've come into this dilemma. Once that delicious meal hits your tongue, you're in! The point is that you have to stick with the plan or it's rendered useless and does you no favors. 

My ultimate suggestion is to create a meal schedule so that you have a framework within to work, plan a week's meals ahead of time (then you can shop for any missing ingredients), and do whatever prep work you can beforehand. I haven't gotten down the habit of planning the entire week ahead or doing the prep work, but it definitely helps if you're able to get into that groove. Also, a lot of meals actually end up having the same base ingredients like, let's say, onions. So, if tonight's meal calls for onions, I cut up more than I need and keep the rest in a container in the refrigerator so I end up with that much less effort to make (and tools to clean) the next time that particular ingredient pops up in that week's meals. And if you don't end up needing it, you can freeze the rest (just research whether an ingredient can be frozen raw or needs a quick blanching first) and the same idea applies for the next time you do actually need it. I've ended up having zero prep to do some nights simply because it's all ready to go in my fridge!

And beyond all this, you can use your leftovers to create a completely new meal. Mashed potatoes can be turned into potato soup or used to top shepherd's pie; rice put into a stew or reheated with a fried egg or turned into stir fry; cooked chicken can be gently reheated with a new sauce or put into pot pie, shredded into chicken salad...don't constrain your leftovers to the same exact dish from which they originated. I mean, this is how some of our best dishes were made! Mixing and matching leftovers to ensure every bite gets used up.

So, if cooking for your family on a nightly basis seems a daunting, even scary task, simplify your life by creating a framework within which to work, but leave that framework wide and open to let your creativity fly.

I want to take some time to talk about feeding children. B. and I have been pretty lucky in that our daughter appears to love anything she puts in her mouth (she's even sneaked a lick of lanolin off her fingers and said "Yummmmm," maybe something we should worry about for the future? Haha!). That's not to say that she's never rejected anything she's been offered; she certainly has. However, her rejections are more to do with not wanting to eat something at that moment rather than not liking it, which I know because she always gobbles it up eventually without any prodding.

Last week, though, we had a lot of difficulty getting G. to eat much of anything. She'd gotten sick with a little stomach bug (my poor little moo!), so I'm certain that's the culprit, but she's since back to her normal, healthy self, and is still continuing to reject some of her favorite foods. For any parent, this is a frustrating situation. You want your kids to be healthy, so you try to give them nutritious foods, but when they refuse to eat them, your new stressor is the idea that they might starve, so you turn to feeding them anything they're willing to eat, which is better than nothing, right? There's just an automatic frustration and near-panic you feel thinking about your child starving, as if they're going to die if they miss a single meal because they didn't want to eat beef and carrots, but you were unwilling to give into grilled cheese and cookies.

But what can we do to help our children eat better, to get the right nutrients in their bodies without a fight, without a tantrum? I know that not everybody has been as lucky as we have and that, eventually, we'll probably have more serious run-ins with these issues, so I've been trying to come up with solutions, preventative measures for the future, if you will and I thought what better place to work them out than right here in my mommy food blog? :)

Before I get into the solutions to the problem, I do want to preface this by saying that we can all be at least as near-lucky as B. and I have been if we start on the right track from the very beginning. If your child has never eaten McNuggets with french fries and Coke, he's never going to refuse to eat anything but that. And I realize that we can't shield our children from these things forever, there are going to be school meals, the influence of friends, any number of outside situations that expose our children to less-than-ideal meal choices. But the point is that if you wait for those situations to introduce your children to those foods, then they're going to be less likely to care about them because you'll have already helped their taste buds develop toward a preference for wholesome, home cooked food. Beyond that, just because they can get it while apart from us doesn't mean we have to allow it in our home. Your teenager may very well go to a party and get drunk, but that doesn't mean you allow him to get drunk in your house (or anywhere), right? It will be easier on you, in the long run, if you start your infant on wholesome, homemade purees, which graduate to wholesome family meals that are only sprinkled with little "treats" here and there of fast food or sugary desserts.

Now, onto the problem solving! To me, this is simply a matter of thinking outside the box. What can we do to get nutritious foods into our children's bodies? Trick them. I'm a huge advocate for boundaries, for a framework of rules that establish you as the leader and teach your children that they must respect you and must follow those rules and this includes eating habits. I'm also a fan of teaching proper habits rather than tricking kids into them, such as using fun games or letting your children pick out the food or grow it and help prepare it to encourage the desire to eat it. However, we have to take everything one step at a time and while you're trying to teach your children to follow the rules and to learn to enjoy trying new foods, you probably still want them eating healthy in the meantime, in which case we resort to trickery. So, teach your children that they must taste everything at the table, that they don't have to like it, but that they do have to try to eat it, that everyone in the family eats the same meal, that they aren't allowed to complain; teach them to love and take pride in their food by allowing them to help out with a small garden, to look for the coolest or most tasty looking produce at the market and pick it out themselves, to help prepare it for a meal and feel proud and excited when it's time to not only eat it themselves, but to serve it to you. While you're busy working on these lessons, though, sneak the good stuff into what looks like only the tasty stuff and be happy that your children are healthy.

So, how do we do this? To start, let's get to the root of the problem. It's not that children actually dislike all these healthy foods; they're perfectly tasty and we know it. The biggest issue is that many children, especially as they get older, aren't apt to try new things and always appear suspect. They want to decide what they're going to eat, not have you make a suggestion and they don't have to know whether it tastes bad, they're simply not going to put it in their mouths to try, in which case we need to figure out how to do that without them realizing it.

The place to begin, to me, is with your children's favorite foods, the things they're likely never to reject, never to frown at or be willing to go without! The examples I have for my daughter aren't too helpful for those whose children prefer less healthy foods. She lights up for plain Greek yogurt and smoothies (one of the easiest things to hide other foods in) and has even traded a cookie in return for either of those or a chunk of Gouda cheese, a bowl of sweet fruit. My husband, on the other hand, is about as picky as they come, in a bad way :) So my work to sneak nutritious foods into him may be a little more helpful ;)

So, let's start out by taking a look at vegetables, the cryptonite to many a child (and my husband)! If your kids are going to be able to spot a vegetable a mile away, to slowly and painstakingly eat around each little bit of carrot or simply to push their plate aside, then we need a solution that makes it look as if there isn't a single vegetable in sight. For the more mildly colored veggies, this is fairly simple. Take parsnips, for example; they look like cream-colored carrots and when you chop them up, they can very easily be mistaken for russet potatoes. I get my husband to eat them by also cubing potatoes and then serving the two together, in which case he can't differentiate and doesn't actually realize I put anything on the plate besides potatoes. Also, parsnips are sweet, so they should be appealing to a child's palate! Combining them with potatoes is actually quite common too, such as mashing them together or grating them into hash browns.

For less easily hidden vegetables, like carrots and corn, we have to make a little more effort; it seems like no matter how finely you chop a carrot and now matter how dark and thick a sauce or gravy is with no matter how many other ingredients, they're going to stare your kid right in the face like a bright light. My answer to this is simply to puree them instead, a little trick I learned from my experience making Bolognese, a delicious red wine meat sauce for pasta. The foundation of this sauce is pureed raw carrot, celery, and onion, which are browned in a pot before adding the remaining ingredients. Of course, the proportion of vegetables to meat is very low, so it wouldn't exactly be a significant dose of nutrition for your child, but that doesn't mean you can't alter the ratio to suit your needs. The flavor might change, but I bet it would still be delicious and a child very likely wouldn't know the difference as long as they can't see it. Other foods you can easily mix finely chopped/minced or pureed veggies in are anything that includes ground meat (chili, hamburgers, meatballs, meatloaf, shepherd's pie, lasagna and other casseroles). Just keep in mind that you're going to want your child eating, let's say, half a carrot, not one bite of carrot, so pay attention to the ratio of veggies to other ingredients to ensure nutrients are actually making it to your kid.

Other ideas to hide vegetables are cooking soups, pureeing them so they're creamy, and serving them over pasta. Almost any soup will probably taste delicious alongside pasta and, honestly, what's the difference between that and a pasta sauce? Maybe chicken stock? Your child will never know the difference! And because a lot of vegetables taste great with tomatoes, you can even hide them in your tomato sauce because, seriously, what kid doesn't like spaghetti with meatballs and marinara? Just imagine...minced veggies in your meatballs, pureed veggies browned in your marinara sauce...your little one won't be able to escape them!

Also, think about how to make a vegetable appear more appealing, for instance, turning sweet potatoes into roasted sweet potato fries. You can cover them in grated Parmesan cheese for a more child-friendly appeal and maybe even start out with half sweet potatoes, half russet, so they're more apt to try them since they'd be mixed up among something they're used to. If you add unhealthy ingredients, such as loads of cheese, to make an otherwise healthy food more appealing, though, remember to slowly reduce the unhealthy ingredient so that, eventually, your child becomes accustomed to the natural flavor and no longer needs tons of cheese or ketchup to think it's tasty because, while getting those nutrients in, no matter what, is great...you still don't want to equally hinder your child's health with fat, salt, and sugar. A good example is how I used to refuse to eat any pasta except buttered noodles; there could be nothing else on them, just butter! As I got older, though I still adored the dish, I realized how bad it was for me and that something needed to change. I wanted to replace the butter with olive oil (a very beneficial fat that I highly recommend for cooking and to flavor savory foods), but the problem was that I hated it; it was totally gross to me. What I did was start out with, let's say, 3 parts butter and 1 part olive oil. Then I slowly reduced the butter, replacing it with olive oil, until I finally no longer needed even a drop of butter and actually found that olive oil tasted delicious. Flavor preference doesn't rely on first impressions; as long as you continue to eat a food, you will very likely learn to love it and to crave it, which is why we can't take stock in our children's dislike of healthy foods and must toil on to get them to continue to try until they've learned to love!

Now, onto fruits! This can be fairly easy because a lot of children actually like fruit since it's so sweet.

To start, let's do take a look at G.'s favorite, albeit nutritious, favorites. Smoothies are something that I'm guessing most children would like, even those addicted to cookies and Little Debbie snack cakes. The thing is, they're sweet and brightly colored! What can be more kid-friendly? They don't have to know there's healthy food inside. For one thing, you don't have to call it a smoothie if that might be a deal breaker; call it a milkshake :) Honestly, that's pretty much what it is and when you buy them from fast food fronts or restaurants, that's what they may as well be called because they're likely just as terrible for you. The homemade ones can be packed with nutrients, though. Nutrient bombs, if you will. The key is to find nutritious ingredients that won't alter the flavor or texture in an adverse way. For instance, I love to put cooked brown rice in our smoothies. It's soft, so it purees very well, blending with the other ingredients easily. At the same time, the flavor is so mild, especially in comparison to the strong flavor of the sweet fruits, you'd never taste it. I had my husband take a taste of the first smoothie I made (with half a cup of brown rice in it) and not only did he have no clue I put something odd like that in there, he thought it tasted good!

Other ideas for smoothies would be mild-flavored leafy greens, such as raw spinach or kale, which don't actually give off much flavor and, if blended long enough, liquify right into the other ingredients. The only problem is muddying the color, but if you invest in a black or opaque water bottle, this isn't an issue because your child won't even see it (I do this so my coworkers don't get grossed out by my swampy-looking drink). Also, if your child is young enough, such as mine (she's 19 months), they just won't care! In addition to those, great additions are cooked sweet potato, nut butters or raw nuts, tomatoes (paired with something sweet and complimentary like strawberries, they'll simply blend in!)...if you have a strong enough blender (like a Vitamix), you can add whole, tough vegetables such as raw carrots and, as I said before, as long as you blend long enough, it should liquify properly to blend with the other ingredients, many of which are pulpy all on their own. A great idea is to look at similar drinks on the shelf at the store, like V8's line of fruit/vegetable combo drinks and instead of purchasing those (which will have much more nutrient-loss than your homemade smoothie because most nutrients are in the pulp, not the juice, and because shelf drinks are pasteurized, thus reducing vitamin strength through boiling), buy the whole fruit/vegetable ingredients and blend them up alongside plain yogurt (Wallaby Organic Plain Greek Yogurt doesn't have the nasty sour taste of most plain yogurts, so is easily hidden in a smoothie) and whole milks (I recommend unsweetened almond milk, which will add more protein than dairy) to create a nutrient bomb of a delicious drink. You can even add some cocoa powder or melted dark chocolate to make a "chocolate milkshake" that's hiding a load of health. Since the smoothie is likely filled with sweet fruits, a refined-sugar-filled syrup, such as Hershey's, is unnecessary. It doesn't contain the antioxidants of unsweetened or dark chocolate anyway, so you can't rationalize it away ;)

Beyond these little hidden gems, put some thought into the regular castmembers. For instance, like I said, unsweetened almond milk is a great choice over dairy because it has added nutrients that dairy doesn't possess. Plain yogurt is obviously far better than any flavored yogurt, even vanilla, because those are chock full of refined sugars. However, plain yogurt can jump out at you in a smoothie if you're not used to that sour tang, which is why I keep a mass supply of plain Greek yogurt since it very nearly tastes just like sour cream! That may sound odd to put in your smoothie (something that tastes like sour cream), but I promise you don't notice. When you're considering fruit, think of the benefits each possesses. Berries are wonderful because they're lower in sugar than other fruits and have antioxidants, as well as other benefits. Bananas are filled with potassium and, though higher in sugar, still wildly nutritious, not to mention their flavor is overpowering, so they're great at masking additions you may not want at the forefront of flavor.

Doing a little research can go a long way in getting ahead in the game. So think about your child's favorite foods and how you can alter them to be more nutritious. The more you work at this, the more you cook for yourself and your family, the more easily these things will come to you and, suddenly, you'll feel like a pro!

Nutritious Almond Cookies

This special blog entry goes out to fellow momma and friend since elementary school, N.H! ;) I happened to make a Facebook status about the nutritious cookies I made for G. tonight and all she had to do was say, "Blog the recipe!" and I sat down at the computer, haha. I just figured, I already made most of my workday food and Gia's lunch, so why not give myself a little break from pre-weekday responsibilities and quickly blog an easy recipe?

As I've mentioned before, I fairly recently purchased Gwyneth Paltrow's, My Father's Daughter, a cookbook that I have come to be a little bit obsessed with. That's generally the case when I find something new (to me), but this particular book is unique in that the recipes are mostly very simple, nutritious, and Gwyneth doesn't simply leave you wondering why she's using agave nectar or spelt flour; she doesn't even leave you wondering what on earth they are. Beyond all this, her recipes come from her very own family kitchen, dating back to her grandparents', so you can tell that every page is filled with love. Her introduction about her father almost brought me to tears; her prose is beautiful and her love so clearly strong. It's becoming a go-to book for me because I know that the person who wrote it has done the research herself and is building her children's lives around nutritious, yet delicious meals surrounded by a framework of generous love and care from outside the kitchen all the way to the table.

I try to be fairly strict in my own framework. All meals should be nutritious, but there can be one indulgent snack in the late afternoon during that restless time between lunch and dinner, waiting for both parents to be home at the same time and the meal to finally be placed on the table. One sugary snack for a little burst of energy to carry one through to dinner without wanting to simply collapse and whine. I'll admit, I stole this idea from the French, but I think it's genius. I prefer no snacking, but if it's going to happen, it's going to be fruit, which is healthy and non-filling, so my child won't refuse to eat her next meal, yet won't be whiny in between. The special late-afternoon snack is different, though. It needs to fill and to satisfy! And, though, I don't mind giving G. a treat that's the absolute opposite of nutritious during this time (I adore her reactions to each new dessert we try), I'm always looking for healthy sweets that she can associate as treats, but that aren't actually very bad for her, if at all. I'm rather desperately trying to get this family on track with nutrition--to have nearly no shelf cookies or chips sitting in our pantry. If I can get in the habit of homemade, even if it's a junky, sugary mess, I prefer this to the overpriced, preservative-filled snacks on the shelf.

A few times a day, G. will try to get us to open the pantry so she can have one of Daddy's cookies, but obviously a nutritious one would be better to slip to her than a cream-filled Oreo. So, tonight I made a recipe by Gwyneth's mother, Blythe, whom her children refer to as "Lalo." There's, essentially, nothing truly "bad" in them and the process of making the dough is very simple. The base of nutrition is in the almonds and barley flour. The reason for the almonds is obvious, but barley flour is probably fairly unknown to many of us! It's derived, obviously, from barley, which has less gluten than wheat; it's a low-glycemic index grain, meaning it regulates your blood sugar better than white/wheat flour, not as easily spiking it. It also has far more fiber than white flour, even a bit more than wheat, and eight essential amino acids! Of course, I can't tell you how it might alter the flavor of a baked good, depending what you use it in, but since barley carries a nutty flavor, it's pairs perfectly with these particular cookies and, I bet, with others. So, while many people would credit flour as one ingredient contributing to the junkiness of cookies and other baked goods, this one cannot as easily be blamed for you or your child's sugar high and subsequent crash ;)

Beyond these two ingredients, there's your usual salt, oil, and a sweetener. Instead of sugar, though, "Lalo" uses pure maple syrup. And instead of maple syrup (because I hate the flavor and, thus, never buy it), I use agave nectar, which is also very low on the glycemic index, yet sweeter than sugar, and actually contains some vitamins!

If I haven't scared you away from these cookies by touting all this nutrition, great! And if I have...just give them a try! I cut the recipe in half so as not to waste my ingredients (and even more time from forming double the cookies) in the event that they ended up in the garbage, so you can feel free to do the same. And if these are for your children, remember this: we learn to love food. We love the food that we've grown up eating because that's what our taste buds and our bodies are used to. There's no innate preference for Chips Ahoy or Big Macs. So, while you may eat one of these cookies and think "Eh...it's tasty, but not something I'm going to really look forward to!" your child may have a completely different take. If you give your children nutritious foods from day one, then that's all they're going to know and all they're going to crave (I'm not saying never stray, but that isn't part of the point). My daughter has traded me a cookie for a smoothie or a mandarin orange. She acts like plain Greek yogurt is Reddi -Wip straight out of the can. Her favorite dinner is butternut squash risotto with no butter and no Parmesan cheese! Why? Because this is what I've fed her from the start.

G. is 18 months old (1.5 years to you non-parents who are shaking your fists at my continued use of months past the number 11, haha!). My 32-year-old husband acts like I'm trying to feed him dog poop if I ask him to try a spoonful of plain yogurt. He wouldn't go near one of these cookies if they were the only thing standing between him and a lifetime supply of free Oreos. I still cannot get him to touch a carrot without tricking him. Yet, growing up as probably one of the most pickiest eaters I've ever come to know (I believe he used to refuse to eat chicken. Chicken, of all things!), I have trained (yes, I'll say it, trained) this man to enjoy fish. One of his most hated vegetables, the tomato, is now part of his regular diet. Flavor preference is about training your taste buds. So...don't look at these cookies as inferior to a bag of orange Milano's...look at them as an opportunity to associate something healthy with something indulgent. Save the Milano's for your once-a-week treat and use these as your daily craving satisfier. That's how I went from the peanut butter sandwich and Swiss Cake Roll monster to the healthy woman eating almond and barley flour cookies!

Anyway...enough of my diatribe. I urge you to try these cookies, to look up this wonderful cookbook, and to make your way along a journey to bettering not only your children's health, but your entire family's :)

Buttermilk Pancakes & Homemade Dry Mix

Every Saturday, we have pancakes for breakfast--light, airy, fluffy buttermilk pancakes. This is something Billy and I used to do back when we had first moved in together, but after the baby, it since became a rare practice simply because cereal or eggs were faster and required less cleanup. After establishing our meal schedule, though, I decided to renew the tradition of Saturday morning pancakes and am so happy for it! It's a relaxing treat to look forward to after a week of waking up early for work and tiring oneself out from morning to bed with the daily responsibilities of life, especially parenting life.

I first published this recipe in my previous blog, Bee Sweet, but after years of working with it and trying new things, I find I have more to say on the subject. So, this may be a bit of a repeat for some, but bear with me. 

When we moved in together over three years ago, I decided to carry on the tradition of weekend pancakes that I had grown up with. Every Sunday, my dad would make thin, delicate Jiffy Mix pancakes and boy were they good. I believe he had actually grown up with the traditional thick, fluffy variety, but thin is how my mom liked them best and, so, that's how he made them and they grew to be my favorite too. I always thought those thick, fluffy restaurant pancakes were too dry and tough, but I would later find out that's likely because of their own recipe and mixing methods, not because of the size of the pancake! Remember this when making your own...mixing is key.

Bruce Paltrow's thin, delicate buttermilk pancakes

Anyway, every weekend I'd make Jiffy Mix pancakes until, one morning, we found ourselves with an empty box! I did what any determined pancake lover would do...sucked it up and made them from scratch. All I have to say is thank goodness we ran out of Jiffy Mix! I made Martha Stewart's buttermilk pancakes and never knew that thick and fluffy could be so good. I was a total convert; thin, delicate pancakes no more! And definitely never restaurant pancakes for as long as I shall live...Call me snobby, but I don't ever want to feel excited for something, order it, and then miss my own because I know very well that it's better.  

Of course, I still adore my dad's pancakes. I tried a recipe by Bruce Paltrow, which resulted in the most delicate pancakes that have ever touched my palate and actually found it extremely difficult to choose between them and Martha's fluffy ones, so it's really about your own tastes! Billy outright prefers the thick and fluffy, so I stick with Martha's recipe, but if you're a bigger fan of thin and delicate, even almost crepe-like, by all means, stick with a recipe for those. Absolutely, though, find yourself a tried-and-true, from-scratch recipe and you will never turn back! 

On the left are Bruce Paltrow's pancakes and on the right, Martha's. Both amazing...

Now, I've been making these buttermilk pancakes for years and I never thought they could get better. I will preface this by saying that I did slightly alter the recipe. Martha calls for buttermilk and melted butter...I used powdered buttermilk (because it keeps for eons in the refrigerator) with soy milk and vegetable oil. For three years, this is how I made the pancakes and they were out of this world. In my opinion, they could not be beat! But then I bought Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook, My Father's Daughter, in which she touts her father's pancakes as the ultimate best anyone could ever eat; challenge on! And you know the results...amazing, amazing pancakes that I could not choose as first nor second because there was just no comparing. I imagine they may very well be the best of the thin and delicate while Martha's are the best of the thick and fluffy (from what I've tried!)...but this is all beside my point. I wanted to make Bruce's authentic recipe and test it against Martha's authentic recipe, not against my slight alterations. How could I truly know whose is better if I change the original? So, we bought real buttermilk and I couldn't believe my eyes or my mouth. 

I had never considered the difference that could exist between fresh and powdered buttermilk. It seems obvious that the texture could never be the same, but as I'd never really used it before, I hadn't realized that there's a big difference between the consistency of buttermilk and your everyday cow's milk that we dip cookies in or pour into our bowl of cereal. I thought it was a taste thing...but buttermilk is more along the lines of heavy cream; it's very, very thick. The pancake batter I started out with, using powdered buttermilk, had a medium consistency that got thinner as I got to the bottom of the bowl. The second I mixed the batter with real buttermilk, though, I could tell the difference. It went from a pourable liquid to what looked like incredibly wet, yeast bread dough. There is no pouring this batter! You must scoop it and you may even need to shake it out of the measuring cup or scrape it with a spatula, that's how thick it is. And it does not thin as you get to the end; it's as thick as ever. I never knew! So, while substituting the buttermilk will still result in crazy delicious, light and fluffy pancakes, there's really no replacing it. You wouldn't think they could get lighter and more airy, but boy can they.

If I still haven't convinced you to ditch your generic dry baking mix or bottle of pre-made batter in favor of one hundred percent homemade, let me point this out to you...any homemade baked good can start out from a homemade dry mix! And how much time is it going to take you to make more than a box's worth of pancake mix? Five minutes? I've always been of the opinion that homemade doesn't truly take much longer than a store bought mix--you have a few extra measurements, but that's all; you still have to measure and mix in the wet ingredients that aren't included in the box! But I can admit that pulling out and putting away even a few extra ingredients can feel like so much more, especially when your life so often feels busy and hectic. You don't want to have to pull out flour, sugar, baking soda, and baking powder when you could just pull out one box alongside your wet ingredients. So...make a dry mix and you've just solved the problem. Once every few months you make this mix and it will feel like nothing, trust me!

So, for all the busy people out there whether it be from work, children, or just life in general, here are Martha Stewart's delectable Buttermilk Pancakes along with my dry mix version for easy, effortless Saturday mornings :)