Waffle Toast - How to get your kid to eat

LTH sometimes wants waffles during the week but there's no time to make them.  One day, I decided to put some toast in the waffle iron to make "waffle toast".  It is now his go to breakfast almost everyone morning.  The downside is he isn't eating as much oatmeal as before but at least it's whole wheat bread.

How to get everyone in your family to eat vegetables - Pureed Vegetables

Adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

I'm on a pureed vegetable kick!!  We are all inhaling these things almost as fast as I can make them.  LTH likes pureed parsnips the best but he'll also eat without any complaint pureed cauliflower and pureed carrots.  With a little discussion, he also ate the pureed butternut squash.  I wasn't as crazy about it myself though.  We are on our second weekend of me making 3 different pureed vegetables at once.  Then, we had vegetables of the rest of the weekend and for the first part of the following week.  It only took about an hour!

Ingredients:
Most root vegetables will work here.  The ones I've tried are carrots, parsnips, cauliflower and butternut squash.  I want to try turnips and rutabagas.
You can also add different flavorings for each vegetables.  The cookbook recommends the following:
Carrots - ginger, orange juice and orange zest - VERDICT: makes the carrots almost like a dessert
Parsnips - sour cream - VERDICT: not needed - just add a little salt and pepper and you're good to go
Cauliflower - ricotta, nutmeg and Parmesan - VERDICT: I haven't tried the ricotta but they were great without it.  I do recommend the nutmeg.  It's an interesting flavor that makes the cauliflower have more taste.
Butternut Squash - roasted garlic - VERDICT: it needed more!! They would have been more palatable with more roasted garlic.  You live and learn.

Instructions:
Cut the vegetable into 1 inch pieces.  Put into pot with water just to the level of the vegetables.  Bring to a boil and cook for 5-10 minutes until cooked through but not mushy.  Although you can use a food processor or a blender to make these purees, I highly recommend investing in a food mill.  The food mill gets rid of any of the fibrous parts of the vegetables versus chopping them into smaller pieces. In the case of the parsnips, you will greatly appreciate the difference.  Once the vegetable is pureed, add the mix ins discussed above or come up with your own seasonings.

Uses:
We've been using them as our vegetable dish at each meal.  But, I've also heard they can be used as dips for other vegetables or for chips.  They could also be used as a filling for ravioli.  Please post any other ideas!

Easy Green Beans (Faux Loubieh Bi Zeit)

I previously posted that my son likes the Lebanese green beans loubieh bi zeit. Well, I figured out a quick shortcut to making them. Just mix the canned green beans with bottled spaghetti sauce. Although I try to make everything homemade for him, it's impossible to do so.

What Else Does My Son Eat?

I thought I'd add to the list of foods. As an update on Peanut, he'll be 16 months on 1/7. He had his 15 month well baby visit last Tuesday. He weighed in at almost 22 pounds and is almost 31 inches long. He's a long skinny boy!

Roasted Sweet Potatoes (sweet potato fries was on the last list but I've decided that just roasting the sweet potatoes is almost as easy if I plan and are definitely better for him)
Stuffing (I may just break down and buy Stove Top to make for him :)
Ancho Pork and Hominy Stew (previous post) (he actually just liked the hominy stew part and not the pork. I'll post a modified recipe soon)
French fries (we've found that he actually likes these now. I'm not going to make them at home since they'll be a nice treat when we're eating out)
Broccoli sauteed in garlic
Benedictine spread (cream cheese and cucumbers) from Garnett's Cafe

And we've found a cheese that he does NOT like





Stilton Cheese

Whole Grain Waffles

I like to add as much healthy as I can to breakfast. When DS decided he didn't want to eat oatmeal for breakfast anymore, we started doing waffles instead. These have whole wheat flour, wheat germ and milled flax seed. They may not be as light as regular waffles but I think they're pretty good and Logan has consistently eaten them for breakfast for about 3 months now! Adapted from The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook (1980 edition)

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons milled flax seed
2 tablespoons wheat germ
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup yogurt ( in a 2 cup or bigger Pyrex)
enough milk to make 2 cups in the Pyrex mention above (your making buttermilk so you could also used buttermilk)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 tablespoons vegetable oil

Directions:
Whisk together dry ingredients. Whisk together wet ingredients. Whisk wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Follow your waffle iron's instructions.

Loubieh Bi Zeit (Lebanese Green Beans)

MTH and I had take out from The Phoenician a few weeks ago. There were some leftover Loubieh Bi Zeit. I thought that DS may like them. He LOVED them! Given that he previously was not as enamoured of green beans, I decided I needed to figure out how to make them. Here's a recipe that I adapted from http://homemade-recipes.blogspot.com. Here is the link to the original recipe.

Ingredients:

olive oil
onions, chopped
garlic, chopped
1 can of green beans (I used half sodium)
1/2 can of tomato sauce
1/2 half lemon, juiced
2 cups of chicken broth or you can use chicken bouillon
Pepper

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan.
   
2. Add onions and saute until translucent.
3. Add garlic and cook until fragrant (no more than 2 minutes).
   
4. Add green beans, tomato sauce, lemon juice, chicken broth and pepper.
5. Cover and cook on low heat for 45 minutes. You can probably cook less and it will be fine.
   

My Son's Top 9 Favorite Foods

My son will officially be 15 months old on 12/7. It's hard to believe that he was only 3 months old almost a year ago. So far, he has proven to be a good eater.

1. Cheese, cheese and more cheese - definitely his favorite food. The sharper the cheddar, the better. He also loves goat cheese and sheeps milk cheese. He likes to eat it as is or in grilled cheese.
2. Sweet potato fries
3. Bread
4. Waffles - he has these every morning for breakfast almost without fail. We've tried to introduce other things but he doesn't care to branch out. I make these over the weekend and then freeze them for his eating pleasure throughout the week.
5. Baked beans
6. Lebanese green beans (loubieh bi zeit)
7. Roasted carrots
8. Roasted chicken and mustard sandwich - yep, he loves mustard.
9. Fried bananas

Things he currently doesn't like
chicken nuggets
French fries
birthday cake (he liked feeding it to his Mom)

Sauteed Apples (No sugar added)

I have a jar of coconut oil from making a carrot cake from the 101
Cookbooks website. I've started using it to saute several of my son's
fruit dishes. For this one, I just sauteed the apples in the oil until
soft. Then at the end I added cinnamon and nutmeg. No sugar added! You
can do this with bananas, sweet potatoes, plantains, the list goes on.

Banana Nut Whole Wheat Pancakes

I love banana nut bread so I decided to make banana nut pancakes. Really, it's just my normal pancake recipe with additions. I've also added blueberries.

1/2 cup plain flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 T wheat germ (optional)
2 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
1 1/4 cup milk (you may want to use more to make a thinner batter)
1 egg
2 t vanilla
2 T oil
mashed banana
chopped pecans

Mix the dry ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well but do not overstir. When making the pancakes, add the mashed banana and chopped pecans. Then, when you turn the pancake, you'll have nice caramelization of the banana and toasting of the pecans.