Today we’re happy to announce the launch of our new Meal Makeover Moms’ Kitchen blog. We’ve added lots of new features so please visit us there! We will no longer be posting to this blog so be sure to leave comments on our new-and-improved site.
All the best,
Janice & Liz
Aka, The Meal Makeover Moms
We’re delighted to announce the winner of our latest giveaway for a Fagor Duo Pressure Cooker. With close to 250 entries, Lorene S., a mom of two little boys from Marietta, GA was selected as our winner using Random.org. In her comment to our blog, Lorene wrote: “I’ve never used a pressure cooker but have only heard good things from my siblings who have. At this point in my life (and, due to the state of the economy, ALL our lives), anything that reduces stress is welcome. Healthy meals prepared quickly definitely meets that requirement. Risotto in 12 minutes? A whole chicken entree in 25 minutes? Sign me up!” Congratulations Lorene!
We enjoyed reading all of your comments and will post some of our favorites to the blog early next week. We are scheduled to launch our new blog design on Monday (if all goes according to plan) – we’re calling it Meal Makeover Moms’ Kitchen, so stay tuned for a fun new look and a bunch of cool new features.
In this week’s Cooking with the Moms podcast, we share tips for getting your entire family hooked on seafood! We’ve no doubt all heard the recommendation to eat two fish meals per week. After all, seafood – salmon, shrimp, tilapia, catfish – is a great source of high-quality protein, rich in heart-healthy omega-3 fats and contains nutrients that promote good health. Translating that advice into simple recipes that the whole family will love can be a challenge. Our two recipes, Almond-Crusted Tilapia and Shells with Shrimp & Edamame will make it a whole lot easier and are sure to appeal to your kids, even if they’re picky!
From Liz
Last week, I had the pleasure of dining at Morimoto in New York – run by famed Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. I’m not sure said mom of two from the Boston burbs would ever be hip or chic enough to fit in with the restaurant’s usual dinner crowd, but since I went there for lunch, I blended right in.
Morimoto restaurant
I have several reasons for sharing my lunch experience with you. First and foremost was the food. It was simply spectacular. I ordered a Bento Box lunch with miso soup, salad greens with kabosu vinaigrette, vegetable and shrimp tempura, sushi, and roasted black cod. This colorful sampling gave me a real taste for Morimoto’s cuisine (if you ever went to lunch or dinner with me, you would soon discover that I love to have a bite of everything). If you’re not familiar with bento boxes, here’s a short description from epicurious.com:
Bento Box
[BEHN-toh]
A thin metal or lacquered wooden box divided into compartments. The bento box is used in Japan for storing separate small dishes that comprise an individual meal (most often lunch). In Japan, the bento lunch, which is commonly available at train stations, represents fast food elevated to high culinary art and design. Each of the country’s 5,000 stations sells a unique box lunch that reflects the cooking of the region. The beautifully designed bento boxes can take on myriad shapes including masks, tennis rackets, nuts, golf balls or other objects both traditional and whimsical. More than twelve million bento-box meals are sold to hungry travelers and commuters in Japan each day.
The second reason for telling you about my meal was what happened after I left the restaurant. As I walked into the adjacent Chelsea Market, I ran into the chef himself! Talk about an unexpected celebrity sighting. While I had the opportunity to tell Morimoto how much I loved the meal, I regret not having my picture taken with him – not because I’m shy but because I didn’t have my camera with me! Oh well…
Chef Morimoto
As a Meal Makeover Mom, the whole fun, small portion bento box thing hit me over the head like a giant wok; it’s perfect if you have a picky eater at home and are looking for creative ways to introduce a broader array of colorful and nutritious foods. After surfing the web, it turns out I’m not the only one who has had that same epiphany. At the blog, Lunch in a Box, Biggie, a mom from San Francisco who formerly lived in Japan, shares an endless number of lunch combinations in the bento box – not just Japanese but Mexican, Thai, and Italian to name just a few. And then there’s Laptop Lunches, a website featuring products, cookbooks, a blog, recipes ideas and more.
Bento box photo courtesy of laptoplunches.com
I’m amazed how one lunch in New York opened my eyes to a whole new style of eating. Janice and I can’t wait to invest in a few bento boxes of our own. The plastic boxes seem like a natural for packing school lunches, but we also plan to shop around for slightly fancier ones for serving family dinners. If you have any favorites, please share them here on our blog. And certainly, the next time you’re in NYC or happen to be in the neighborhood of Morimoto, I highly suggest you step inside for lunch. The price for a NY restaurant was quite reasonable and the atmosphere warm and welcoming. And hey, you just may have a celebrity sighting of your own while you’re there!
On this week’s Cooking with the Moms podcast show, we let our hair down with two dessert recipes that feature one of our favorite foods: chocolate! Chocolate is one of those foods that says, “I love you.” (It’s too bad Brussels sprouts and broccoli don’t elicit that same warm & fuzzy feeling). To show all the special people in your life how much you love them, try our Chocolaty Coconut Party Torte and our Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries – two recipes with some surprising and healthy ingredients.
But clearly, chocolate isn’t the only food you can share on Valentine’s Day. Consider an array of red foods to keep your loved ones healthy all year round. Today’s Washington Post does a nice job outlining some of those foods — red grapes, watermelon, red bell peppers, red quinoa, beets — and the health powers associated with them.
For a few years now, we’ve had our eye on chicken casserole – that quintessential stick-to-your-ribs comfort food made with rich ingredients like cream of chicken soup – longing to give it a healthy makeover. Why we didn’t get our dietitian paws on this recipe until now is a mystery, but when Jennifer C. a mom of two from Jackson, MI sent us her grandmother’s recipe for Chicken & Almond Casserole and asked us to make it over, we were suddenly motivated into Recipe Rescue action.
Laurie mixing topping
The original recipe called for chicken, celery, mayonnaise, a can of cream of chicken soup, hard boiled eggs, slivered almonds, minced onions, cracker crumbs, and yes, you guessed it, potato chips. “I didn’t love the combination of the mayo, soup, eggs, cracker crumbs, and chips,” Jennifer told us. “And besides, the kids and I don’t like cooked celery.” What Jennifer did like were the almonds and the fact that this recipe was something she found in her grandmother’s old recipe box.
Jennifer assembling ingredients
Sean grinding the flaxseeds
Jennifer’s New Year’s resolution was to feed her family a healthier diet. “We’re busy and crazy and I was falling into the pattern of eating out or making convenience foods for the family. I decided that I had to do better for my kids.” To help Jennifer meet her goal of eating out less and cooking more budget-minded meals at home, we turned her old-time recipe into a dish any modern-day mom would rave about.
For our Recipe Rescue, we switched from celery to broccoli – definitely more kid friendly, used a light canola mayonnaise for some heart-healthy omega-3 fats, and chose an all-natural cream of chicken soup to cut some of the sodium and fat from the original recipe. We also created a super-yummy topping (we’re not kidding, this topping rocks) with fluffy, flaky Japanese panko breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, ground flaxseed, and finely chopped almonds. By adding the almonds to the topping vs. mixing in a handful of slivered or sliced, we kept the great nutrition (almonds are rich in cholesterol-lowering monounsaturated fat) without freaking the kids out (let’s face it, some kids can’t handle “lumps”).
Ready to enjoy the Recipe Rescue!
The entire family loved mom’s dinner. When Jennifer asked ten-year old Laurie if she liked it, she replied, “Mom, did you think I wouldn’t?!” Even eight-year old Sean, known to be picky at times, ate it, though he preferred the broccoli and crunchy topping over the actual chicken. Jennifer told us that she loves to cook and plans on making our Recipe Rescue again and again. Now that’s what we call success!
Chicken & Broccoli Casserole with Crunchy Almond Topping
Makes 5 to 6 Servings
* To cook the chicken, place in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 350°F until the meat is cooked through and no longer pink in the center, 35 minutes.
In today’s Cooking with the Moms podcast show, we turn the dinner hour into the dinner minutes. Recently, we discovered the amazing ease, health benefits, and convenience of cooking in a pressure cooker (not the one your grandmother used but the modern-day style that won’t explode!). To help busy families get nutritious meals on the table quickly, we have two recipes: Butternut Squash Risotto, bursting with great flavor and immune-boosting vitamin A, and Shane’s Fabulous Lentil Soup, a kid-friendly recipe we got from pressure cooker guru, Jill Nussinow (AKA The Veggie Queen). If you havn’t entered our giveaway yet for a Fagor Duo Pressure Cooker, be sure to scroll down to our January 23rd blog entry to learn more.
View All...