A few of our favorite meals

Anyone who is a long time reader of this blog (I'm talking years, people) knows that when I started, I barely ever cooked. As in, my main culinary specialties were queso dip (with Velveeta, which I still love) and hamburger helper. Seriously. No one was more shocked than I when the first year we had our CSA, I started taking an interest in cooking and reading tons and tons of food blogs, and all the sudden this cooking thing didn't seem quite so intimidating. I've never really looked back, and still do love to cook, although the fact that I see Annie for approximately 2.5 hours a day on weekdays makes it tough for me to justify spending a ton of time in the kitchen. Ben has resumed his role of main cook of the house lately, but we tag team a lot. I know many couples do not have that luxury, and I'm very thankful that cooking and eating well is a priority to both Ben and I.

It is very important to me that Annie establishes healthy eating habits and is exposed to a wide variety of foods. There are tons of articles and books about toddlers and eating, I found this article interesting - it talks about how to have a "successful" family meal in that all members of the family eat the same thing. We don't actually abide by all of these principles yet, but something to aspire to I guess. I could (and maybe will someday) write a whole separate post about the topic of food and toddlers and my personal approach, but I will stop at that so I can get to the point of this post which is to share some of our current favorite meals.

Getting a quick meal on the table is made much easier due to the fact that Ben works from home and thankfully is able to do a lot of prep work for dinner. He usually has it started by the time I come home with Annie a little before 5. We used to have Annie eat right when she got home, and cooked while she ate for our own meal which we'd eat after she went to bed, but we both decided that eating all together is important to start now so she can see us eating the same thing she's having and so we can have that time together be a habit as she gets older and our family grows (family growing not happening yet, FYI). She has been getting better, but even holding her off from eating until 5:30 was difficult at first. For people that get home later than that, crockpots and freezer meals are probably the best way to go if you want to all eat together, or serving your kiddo a small snack right when you get home. We save super involved meals for weekends, and try to make sure meals aren't going to take longer than 45 minutes to prepare from start to finish.

Most meals that we make are "one dish" meals - while we like the occasional meat-potatoes-veg type dinner, it's just easier when all food groups are melded together, preferably with cheese. Annie seems to strongly prefer those types of meals as well. When we don't have a meal for Annie, we usually give her peas or carrots with hummus (which I froze in tablespoon size hunks - put them on a plate in the freezer and then in a freezer bag after they are frozen), toast and peanut butter or cream cheese, and some kind of fruit. We also have a sweet potato, black bean and onion mixture that we sauteed and froze in a muffin tin that is a guaranteed hit with her. Oh, and it will become clear that we don't really mind a mess at mealtime. Some meals are immediately followed by a bath. [Edited to add: A few of these recipes call for shredded chicken, or a whole chicken - if we make a whole chicken (rare) we usually shred any leftovers and freeze them in 3 cup increments, but a lot of times we just buy rotisserie chickens when they are on sale at Whole Foods and shred and freeze the whole thing for use in future recipes - saves a TON of time the night of!]

On to the food! I'll post a photo, a link to the recipe, and a short description.

Crockpot Lentil Veggie Stew - a surprise hit - Annie devoured this for several meals. We just had the half we froze yesterday, and she again ate it all up. We added parmesan cheese and served with bread.

Coconut Rice with sweet potatoes and black beans - we swapped sweet potatoes for the squash in this recipe. This was VERY quick and easy. We knew it would be a hit with Annie because she loves sweet potatoes and black beans anyway.

Spicy Kale Lasagna - ok, THIS WAS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!! I didn't miss meat at ALL in this dish, it was just as good as the other lasagna we love. Annie seriously shoveled this in as fast as she possibly could.

Chicken spaghetti - blogged before, was in our freezer stash - all members of this family love this one.

Vegetable Tamale Pie - Another great one from Alex & Sonja!! This was the meal that inspired Annie's death glare in this post, but despite that look, she ate it up. I'd like to have made this in the cute little dishes like Alex and Sonja, but an 8x8 dish did t he job for us.

Chicken chowder with chipotles - we gave half this batch to Becca and Joe. I liked this more than I was expecting to - a nice twist on a traditional chicken soup. When we have soups, we just give Annie the chunks of veggies from it with not much broth, and soak some hunks of bread in broth which of course is her favorite part :)

Chicken Pot Pie - this was definitely a Sunday meal, and took me awhile but was actually fun to make! A big food processor is a huge time saver with this. This has lots of cream and butter in it, so really couldn't be bad. It also made 2 full pies so we have one in the freezer for later!

Carrot, broccoli and cheese orzo - we added shredded chicken to this because we had it, and accidentally food processed the carrots and broccoli a bit too much so it more resembled pesto. I was skeptical of this but it was actually quite tasty and Annie loved it.

Chard and white bean stew - Loved this - apparently Annie and I both love soups with leafy greens, beans, and some kind of tomato. Ben wasn't as big of a fan but oh well. We need to make sure we cut the greens up enough for Annie though, or else we end up with her pulling one of these out of her mouth 10 minutes after putting it in:

OK, that basically clears out the past 3 months of food photos that I had on flickr.... I feel very cleansed, and I hope you all found something you want to try in the future!