Focaccia
I know I live in France but sometimes it is nice to have some bread other than a baguette. I found this recipe for Foccacia the other day and it is great. It is by one of my favourite cooks and food writers, Nigel Slater, who has written some fabulous recipes for the Guardian. It is super easy to make and completely delicious. I even got my children and some of their friends to get involved and they loved slapping and prodding a piece of dough… great way of getting some dough kneaded.
The great thing about Foccacia is that you can garnish it with whatever you have handy in your kitchen: cherry tomatoes cut in half, cheese, olives, any kind of herb or just plain salt and olive oil. I do love this kind of recipe — it’s super simple and whatever you do with it, it always turns out great.
- Emilie
Igloo Zoo
No matter the weather, every Friday after school my children and I head down to Igloo Zoo for a fix of creamy frozen yogurt. YUM-OH! We patiently wait behind the hoards of teenage schoolkids who are equally excited. It is pure decadence and relatively sinless (I figure) given that it is made with real yogurt (live cultures) is 99.5% fat-free, high in antioxidants and low in sugar. There are 4 flavors on offer — original, green tea, cocoa and pomegranate. As an incentive (not that we need one) they offer an array of amazing accoutrements like organic kaffir, lime biscotti, white chocolate, pomegranate seeds, passion fruit puree, halva (a middle eastern treat made from sesame seed), choc-covered goji berries, lychee and a host of other treats. Admittedly, I usually eschew the more exotic toppings in favor of good old triple choc crunch, passion fruit puree and coconut…beyond divine!
If you are visiting Melbourne, the Gold Coast or Sydney check out locations here ! If you live elsewhere in the world and you are hankering for your own sampling of Igloo Zoo — I apologize profusely for the tease!
- Sara
My Bread
After mentioning my love for bread baking last week, I received a couple emails asking which pizza dough recipe I use. The good news is that both the No-Knead bread recipe and our favourite pizza dough recipe come from the same source: Jim Lahey’s My Bread. We have a large stack of bread-baking recipe books, but this one is definitely our favourite. What I really love about the book is how he uses photos to walk you through the recipes, step by step, making it nearly impossible to mess up. And his pizza dough really is the best.
The book is available from Amazon (UK and US).
-Courtney
Dear Avocado…Thank you.
The summer in New York City has been brutal. I’ve heard that it was the hottest July on record but August was pretty unbearable as well. Meanwhile, I have been outdoors most of the time, forgetting to re-apply sunscreen and definitely not taking care of my hair which now is the consistency of straw. So… the other day while sitting around making guacamole with a friend, she suggested I mash up an avocado, mush it around with an egg yolk and put it in my hair. So next thing I know I am massaging in the green goop and wrapping my head in saran wrap (sexy!) and after sitting with it for 45 minutes I was shocked! It really did give my hair a noticeable boost as it felt suddenly thicker and healthier. I am going to do it with the kids because I think they would love it — especially after a summer of chlorinated pools!!! I also hear that Mayo works well — I will try that next and let you know.
Just to recap: mash up avocado, mix in egg yolk, apply to hair (more at the roots), sit for a bit, rinse it, done.
-Dina
(Image from For The Birds)
Blackberry Cobbler
We’re currently staying at my family’s beach house on Bainbridge Island (Washington State), enjoying the rocky beaches and cold, cold water of the Puget Sound. We’re also enjoying the delicious blackberries that grow wild everywhere around here — blackberries for breakfast, blackberry smoothies, blackberry jam, blackberries on ice cream… and blackberry cobbler! Yummmmm. I send my kids out every afternoon with a big bowl and they come back with purple hands and faces and mounds of fresh berries. Doesn’t get better than that!
Anyway, here’s the recipe we’ve always used. It’s taken from one of my very favourite cookbooks, Alice Bay, and it’s delicious! (more…)
Picard
The French are known for their elaborate cuisine, but there is a secret hidden in many French freezers and its name is Picard. When I first moved to France I could not figure out what went on in the Picard shops — they are huge expanses, kept all white, with freezer upon freezer standing beside each other… and, as I found out, full of frozen food. Even then I wasn’t convinced — years of terrible frozen pizzas and microwave dinners had turned me off frozen food. Turns out the French are addicted to their local Picard, and with reason — Picard food is (mostly) fantastic. (more…)
We All Screamed for Ice Cream
Recently, we had friends come stay with us for the weekend and they always show up bearing gifts and fun things to keep us occupied. That being said…when they unloaded this pink ice cream maker from the trunk of their car a virtual riot ensued. My girls screamed at the sight of it and wanted to unpack it, make it and eat it STAT. I screamed (to myself) about where I was going to store this thing that I needed like a hole in the head. And then, our friend screamed as they almost dropped it while carrying it into the house.
Summer though is really all about the joy of ice cream so after getting it set up inside I decided that it wasn’t such a bad idea to just make it at home. Making ice cream is actually quite easy and the great part about making it in-house is that you can control what is in it (all natural ingredients, organic milk, fresh fruit, etc;) In 15-20 minutes you can whip up soft-serve ice cream, sherbet or frozen yogurt and I love the cute little dispensers on the side for sprinkles and nuts. So while we all screamed initially for different reasons, this is one of our most prized summer indulgences!!!
Whole Wheat Bread
My husband and I are big into bread baking. On the weekends when we have the time, we usually make a few loafs of the No-Knead Bread, a recipe made famous by the New York Times. We also make home-made pizza at least once a week (I would eat it every day of the week if I could — it’s that good!), and we play around with new bread recipes all the time. My sister sent me this recipe for whole wheat bread which comes from the food blog Orangette. The fun thing about this recipe is you can play around with different flours to create different textures. This bread (pictured) was made with flaxseeds, flaxmeal, and garbanzo bean flour — an even healthier version.
-Courtney
Kitasticks Chopsticks
Esther did a brilliant post a while ago on how to make your own child-friendly chopsticks. I admit to being a bit lazier and got my girls some Kitasticks — chopsticks that can be linked to together and are super easy to use. These great little sticks were designed by a Finnish design collective, (it is always a success story when Northern European design meets Asian design) and I picked them up at Merci. The kids love them — the prospect of using chopsticks rather than their usual forks and knives got them so excited that they insisted on eating a sandwich with their new chopsticks. Not exactly what I had in mind, but oh well…
- Emilie
Tea Time for Tots
For the past few years my family has had the good fortune of spending a month living in London. We are always quite sad to leave, but memories of London remain with us day to day via our much improved vocabulary, our deep appreciation for the BBC & Peppa Pig, and our proclivity for afternoon tea. You don’t often see children drinking tea in the states, however some of my friends love to serve their children chilled chamomile or herbal teas. At first I thought it was a bit strange but now I think it’s a fantastic alternative for kids and at least one of my girls is catching on. I found these German designed tea-bag cup loungers from Donkey Creative Labs and I think they are absolutely hilarious. They come in all sorts of themes — mostly for adults — but I thought they were so cute I just had to share.
-Dina
Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup
For those of you who are not familiar with Ellie Krieger, I would highly recommend any of her cookbooks — specifically The Food You Crave
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Beetroot
I think I only discovered the beauty of beetroot in my thirties. If I am not mistaken, when I was a kid, beetroot used to come out of a tin and had the texture of a wet piece of Styrofoam. Now that I have started buying fresh beetroot and have learned to roast or steam it, I have developed a new appreciation for this vegetable. Plus, my kids love it… though that might have more to do with the fact that I told them that their pee would turn pink if they ate loads. (This is very exciting if you happen to be four years old). So here are a couple of things that I have started making with beetroot…
1. I roasted them for an hour in olive oil and a bit of lemon juice and balsamic vinegar in the oven with a garlic clove or two and I then served them as a side dish garnished just with a bit of parsley. (more…)
Summer Sweetness: Upside Down Fig Cake
Living in Los Angeles, we’re so fortunate to have an abundance of fresh, organic and local produce year round. You can find farmer’s markets every day of the week in a multitude of L.A. neighborhoods with readily available, inspiring ingredients. One of the ingredients that I get particularly excited about each year is the fig. When figs are in season, I can’t get enough of this beautiful, sweet, fleshy fruit. I could eat them served just about any way – whole and fresh, mixed with yogurt and honey, in savory Moroccan dishes, and in this delectable, moist fig cake courtesy of my good friend Jules who frequents the markets every week, searches for the best of the best produce and creates dishes for her family and her blog, Renaissance Mamas that positively make my mouth water. Her cake is similar to the pineapple upside down, with the added sophistication of the succulent fig. I think it would be even more delicious with a big dollop of lightly sweetened crème fraiche. Yummmmm… Here’s the recipe: (more…)
Beaba at VUP Baby
I’ve raved before about the Beaba Baby Cook — it is one of the few must-have baby gadgets I always recommend to new mums. And the baby spoons from Beaba are also my all-time favourite spoons — they’re made from BPA-free silicone and have nice, long handles for easy feeding. I have one in every colour!
Actually, when it comes to the Beaba brand, you really can’t go wrong — all their products are great. And they’re now conveniently available from VUPbaby, the ultimate source for non-toxic baby products.
-Courtney
Stuffed Zucchini Flowers
I am just back from the French country side where we have spent a lovely few days of just playing or, alternatively, doing strictly nothing. It is so nice to get out of the city sometimes… One of the big bonuses of our summer house is that our neighbour lets us pick vegetables out of his vegetable garden, which is quite a change from picking vegetables from the supermarket shelves. It actually takes a lot of thinking out of the equation as we organise the menu around what is available in the garden, and start coming up with new ideas for recipes depending on the pick of the day. Last week was all about Zucchini — my good friend Russell who was visiting, had eaten stuffed Zucchini flowers in a tapas bar in London, so he tried to recreate the tapas dish and it was amazingly good! Here is the recipe:
Berry season
I remember as a kid I came home during lunch break and my mum sent me to the neighbours (who had a strawberry farm) with a very little amount of money and I came back with a wooden crate filled to the top with strawberries — the reddest, sweetest, biggest and tastiest variety you can imagine. Before I came home I had eaten about a third, for lunch we had another third (on bread, with a little sugar), and the rest was eaten with yogurt for desert. Bliss.
Last week, in my father-in-law’s Mr. McGregor-like garden I picked a generous amount of raspberries, and quickly made raspberry jam (my favourite ever jam)! And yesterday I picked the few redberries from our neighbour’s shrub that came peeping through the hedge, and made blue redberry muffins of them. I just love berry season! Can’t wait for the blackberries to be ripe (blackberry jam is my second favourite jam)…
Have you been eating berries? Any good recipes to share??
xxx Esther
P.S. That cute cutting board is from Tas-Ka
Let’s have a picnic!
How cool are these picnic suitcases? My kids were each given one so they could bring their own picnic to the park. They are filled with a melamine plate, a bowl, a cup and cutlery, and there’s enough space left over for food and drinks. We love them — they’re so practical and stylish! They’re made by the original French brand Minimo, and available through supercool website Peanut and Pip, where I noticed a lot of the Minimo goodies are for sale!(!!)
xxx Esther
Vegemite — a great Aussie icon
Ah, Vegemite. Without doubt it is Australia’s favorite sandwich spread. But while it is loved by the locals, it is generally repulsed by our visitors.Visually, I will concede, it is a little unappetizing (hmm…black sticky tar?). And chances are, unless you grew up on it or follow the guidelines below (without digressing I should add) you will probably never acquire the taste for it. For first timers the taste of Vegemite is very unexpected, surprisingly sharp and in order to avoid gagging which so many of the uninitiated do on their first bite, you need to apply the Vegemite sparingly with liberal amounts of butter. But, rich in Vitamin B Aussie kids are brought up on the salty-tasting spread from babyhood (hooray for toasty Vegemite soldiers dipped into soft-boiled eggs!) and it is a school lunch box staple. I personally know many Aussies who won’t travel without a small jar or easy-squeeze tube of Vegemite for fear that they will not find it and then shock horror, what on earth would they have on their toast in the morning? (more…)
A Non-Drippy Sippy
We built the pyramids. We sent a man to the moon. We even figured out how to get internet access on an airplane. And yet — someone STILL has not figured out how to design decent sippy cup for kids! While I am thankful every day that my girls drink out of a cup, the wounds are still fresh from those days of searching for the pieces to put one back together after running it through the wash — not to mention the never ending stench of rotting milk trapped in the straws, and the clutter in the cabinet of mismatched tops and bottoms. I have tried MANY over the years and have never really been that happy with any of them. For a long time the front-runner was the sleek looking Sigg which was durable and only TWO pieces — but I found them to be too small and tough to open. And now, although we are not quite there, the recently discovered CamelBak is the best one to date. It is very kid-friendly, BPA free, does not leak, and is easy to clean (although three pieces.) It holds up great after a lot of abuse and it is a nice size. They also have great ones for adults and are available all over the web and at Whole Foods.
-Dina
Bear foods
I can spot a new kids snack a mile off — it’s like I smell something new in the air as soon as I enter the supermarket. I spotted Bear yo-yos last year and immediately my fruit-loving daughter was a fan. Now we are all fans of the Bear snacks (I especially love the Cocoa Cherry Pie nibbles). They are not just for children — their selection of nibbles are delicious combinations of fruit and granola and come in bags that are all under 100cals — so perfect for my 4pm sugar-fix.
Bear was started by personal trainer, Hayley, last year in an attempt to find a tasty alternative to chocolate, biscuits and treats — clearly a lady with my needs in mind! She chose the name ‘Bear’ after she read an article which said that bears who had found their way into cities and therefore foraged for foods in bins behind fast-food joints ended up being 30% fatter and 30% less active then their wild counter-parts. They also died younger.
So Bear produce all their nibbles as nature intended — no fiddling, no air-freight fruit and fairly-traded. You can buy Bear goodies through Ocado.
-Mo. x
