Carrot and Plum Salad with Dates

Here's the theory I'm testing: are carrots the world's best vegetable? 

Here's why they just may be: they work well with savory and sweet dishes and they're lovely with any meal of the day. They're perfect inside of a breakfast frittata, they're a wonderful accompaniment to sandwiches when shredded, they're magical healers in soup, and they are a delightful addition to dinner salads like this one or this one or part of hearty main dishes. On top of that, they're a great source for beta carotene, Vitamin A, Vitamin K and fiber. Here's one summary of the many health benefits of carrots including an interesting history, nutrition summary and tips.

Is there any place the humble carrot *can't* go? I don't think so!  

I decided to test this theory and create a non-savory dish using carrots to serve with breakfast. The kids were a little suspect when they saw me chopping up carrots at breakfast time. I steamed a big old batch of carrots recently and had them ready to go in my fridge. I pulled some plums and a lemon from my fruit basket and some Peeled Snacks pitted dates and ground cinnamon. The kids, no longer wary, started snacking on the dates and plum chunks. 

Carrots in a breakfast fruit salad! 

Voila! The flavors were great together. I added 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt to balance the sweetness and tossed well. Great flavor but it was missing something: crunch. I made some quick croutons using a couple of slices of Citrus Rye bread that I have in my house from Eric Kayser bakery (best.bread.ever.) and added them to the top of this dish and it made all the difference in the world.

Carrot and Plum Salad with Dates and Croutons

This dish flew out of the bowls. My son wanted more dates in his. My daughter wanted more croutons. With recipes this simple, it's easy to make accommodations! 

Carrot and Plum Salad with Dates

Ingredients
1 pound carrots, peeled, steamed and chopped
1 cup pitted Peeled Snacks dates, chopped (taken from the Go Figure - Fig, Date and Apricot bag)
2 cups plums, cut into chunks
Juice of one lemon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Homemade croutons (recipe here, at the bottom) 

Toss all ingredients together until the flavors are nicely combined. Enjoy at any time of the day!  

Carrot Salad with Peeled Snacks Dried Cherries

Last night as I unpacked my weekly box of produce from Urban Organic I realized that I already had three bags of organic carrots in my fridge. Three! I'm not even sure how that happened but I'm pretty darn excited about it.

Months ago, LaLa Lunchbox teamed up with Peeled Snacks and their dried cherries, while only available for a limited time, are beloved by my family members - I was psyched to combine them with my carrot  overflow. I absolutely love these dried cherries - and feel great serving something to my family with a label that says "organic cherries. Nothing added."

I came up with the recipe below to combine the earthy carrot flavor with the succulent dried cherries from Peeled Snacks alongside some of our summertime favorites and it made for a wonderful lunch salad today. 

I peeled and roughly cut all three pounds of carrots and steamed them until they were al dente. Some of it made for a fantastic snack last night as my husband and I feverishly tried to catch up on past episodes of Breaking Bad before the new season begins. Today I combined a pound of them with Peeled Snacks dried cherries, avocado, cilantro, lime, scallion and spices (full recipe below) and the outcome is awesome. I've been so into grain salads and kale salads lately, and this is a refreshing, welcomed change.  

Ingredients 

1 pound of carrots, peeled, chopped and steamed
1/2 cup Peeled Snacks dried cherries
1 scallion, chopped
1/2 avocado, cut into chunks
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon olive oil
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined. Eat right away or let it sit so that the flavors intensify. Enjoy! 

Brownies with Avocado and Black Beans

I'm a fan of recipe experimentation. And as I've been saying lately, I'm also fan of all things avocado. So when I came across this recipe from Ambitious Kitchen for Black Bean Avocado Chocolate Chip Fudge Brownies it was something that fit right along with my "sure, I'll give it a whirl" philosophy. 

I let my babysitter know that I was making these and she giggled - admittedly they sounded weird. But when it came time to try them, they got a universal thumbs up! I'm always a fan of letting my kids know exactly what's in their food. In addition to being honest and promoting honesty, I want my kids to be excited by the myriad of possibilities inherent in the foods we eat. I don't believe in hiding vegetables or fooling children. Ever. 

So when I told them that these brownies were made with black beans and avocados they were truly amazed. And kind of delighted that something so delicious and fudgey came from ingredients that are usually associated with savory foods. This is what I call a win!  

I modified the recipe slightly because I didn't have enough brown sugar in my pantry and I misread the recipe and added a whole avocado instead of a half. I made some other slight changes to the salt quantity and chocolate chip quantity. My modified recipe is below. I refrigerated these brownies and once cold and firmer, the texture was much better (too mushy at room temperature, undoubtedly my own fault thanks to the additional avocado!). Overall, this was a yum. I'll make these again. Thanks to Monique from Ambitious Kitchen! 

Ingredients

• 1 – 15 oz can of black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 large egg
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 large ripe avocado (I would advise against this. Try it with 1/2 avocado)
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips (I used dairy free chips) 

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8×8 inch baking pan with parchment paper.
2. Place all ingredients except chocolate chips into a bowl and blend until smooth with stink blender or food processor. Add chocolate chips and mix well.
3. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean
4. Cool pan completely on wire rack then cut into 16 delicious squares.
5. Refrigerate (or freeze!) and enjoy! 

Kids in the Kitchen

Meals are a family affair chez moi. Well, not every meal but my kids enjoy being in the kitchen and my husband's idea of a perfect weekend is to be able to cook breakfast in the mornings and Sunday dinner for the family.  

We just came back from a farmstay at Kinderhook Farm, our second visit to Kinderhook Farm and officially decided by all as a must-have summer family tradition. There is so much to rave about this farmstay but one of the top kid favorites was picking vegetables from the garden (the hands-down favorite activity was collecting eggs). 

My kids were excited by the whole farm to table cycle and fascinated by the little holes on the leaves of their kale where they imagined tiny cute caterpillars to have nibbled. They loaded their basket with freshly picked kale, chard, pattypan squash, peppers and scallions and we discovered an unexpected visitor when we got back to our barn: a tiny white frog! 

My seven year old daughter grew a foot taller, it seemed, when we allowed her to slice the greens for family dinner. Kids in the kitchen is an amazing thing. My son has always hated peppers until this weekend when he was allowed to harvest and help prep them for dinner and while they're still not high on his list, he gave it an honest taste. My daughter, lately unexcited by new flavors, ate an entire scallion after cutting it from the garden. My son, who usually prefers fruit and yogurt to meat and potatoes, asked for second helpings of steak, and while I'm pretty sure he doesn't fully comprehend the life cycle of the cows we saw on Kinderhook Farm, he knew immediately that the steak was absolutely delicious. My husband, by the way, was beaming from ear to ear as he built a beautiful fire in the pit for grilling steaks (and later, s'mores).

More to come on our Kinderhook adventures... 

Fresh. Eggs.

This is the real deal.  

This is what free range really means. And thanks to Kinderhook Farm and our amazing farmstay, we were able to experience what just-laid eggs really taste like.   

Holy deliciousness, Batman.

Stay tuned for more details about our farmstay...