I guess now is just as good of a time to tell you what I made for dinner tonight. But, before I do, I have some other random thoughts for those dads out there sweating the skillet.
- Probably the hardest thing to get kids to eat on average are vegetables. Some don't like the stalks, some don't like the leaves, and some won't eat anything colorful. This is the practical dad dinner blog, and so my recommendation here is to not fight your kids too much. The goal isn't to get the little ones to like brussel sprouts; the goal is to get them to eat vegetables. In general, any will do - if the kids like carrots, feed them carrots. If they like broccoli, then serve up some of the little green trees. I wouldn't worry about your kids getting scurvy because you know how to prepare squash instead of kale. Over time you'll be able to find enough variety in their diet to provide enough nutrients on average; plus, over the course of a week, chances are someone else is going to prepare at least one other meal.
- Most of my dinners feature three items - one vegetable, one protein, one starch. If I add more complexity, it's usually in the form of another vegetable or a veggie-protein combo, but not another starch, since kids never are starch-starved. A former nannyshare nanny that we once employed offered the best advice; serve the veggies first. If kids are hungry, they'll eat anything (and I mean anything), and so if all they see initially are the vegetables, they'll eat it. If they complain that there's nothing else, just tell them that their favorite dish is coming very soon. Also - serve the starch last; it fills them up faster and provides less benefit to their well being.
- And finally, my measurements are always rough; you don't want to spend too much time measuring out exactly 1 2/3 cups of this and 3/4 tbsp of that. The end result usually means too much food, but hey - that means leftovers and less cooking for the next meal.
Tonight, we had sauteed spinach, chicken nuggets, and rice. Frozen chicken nuggets are one of the easiest sources of protein, and requires nearly no effort, but it does take time - time to preheat the oven and time to cook. And so, I first set the oven to 400 degrees, and filled a metal baking sheet with a single layer of frozen nuggets, but not too many so that they touched.
While the oven was still pre-heating, I took out a big wok (I'm Chinese, so woks come naturally to me), added enough oil to cover most of the bottommost part of the bottom, and turned up the heat to medium. (All recipes always call for medium heat; why do stove manufacturers ever bother with a high setting?) I then took an onion, chopped it in half (while saving the other half for another day in the fridge), and diced it coarsely (say, 1/2 inch cuts, no smaller). In the wok, I added a small spoonful of pre-diced garlic, and then my onion. As it was frying up, I added a splash of sherry. By this time, the oven preheat alarm went off, and so into the oven went my pan of nuggets.
Usually, dicing onions coarsely means that some of the onion layers don't separate even if you toss it as hard as you can into the wok. However, when they're cooking they eventually do separate, and at that point in time, I threw in one whole Costco-sized plastic box (1 pound) of spinach. Again, no need to measure here; I just used the whole thing. Leafy vegetables when cooked shrink dramatically by the time they're fully cooked, and spinach does this rather quickly. I added a small pinch of seasoned salt, and in about 5 minutes, with light continuous stirring, the spinach was done.
What about the rice? Well, I had leftover rice already made, so I sort of cheated there; into the microwave and the rice was ready in about a minute. (Take that, Uncle Ben!) But, had I not had rice, I probably would have started that first before worrying about the nuggets and the oven, since rice in the rice maker takes the longest time, even in "quick" mode.
So, what makes this meal great? The total amount of time from start to finish really was the time from the start of preheating, plus about 12 minutes of nugget baking, and maybe a minute for the rice to cook. I was able to interleave the spinach in there without taking any more time, and I had enough time to start the rice. The room for error in this meal was in the nuggets - frozen nuggets can actually take a pounding in the oven, and so if I had left the nuggets in for even 5 more minutes, they would have been fine. Plus, if they're ever a little dry when they come out (they weren't this time), serving them with a little bit of ketchup for dipping masks any dryness for the kids. In the end, I had a meal ready in less than 15 minutes. Even if I had to make rice from scratch (about 25 minutes on the "quick" setting) and I had ravenous kids, I could have served the spinach first, then added nuggets a few moments later. That would have allowed my kids to start eating while the rice was in its last stages of cooking.
I realize that there are some things that I usually like around my kitchen:
- ready-diced garlic. Yes, it usually comes packed in citric acid and thus adds a slight sour flavor, but it sure saves a lot of time. Plus, the sour flavor isn't noticeable so long as you cook something else with it. (Or add a tiny bit of sugar.)
- sweet onions. They're big, easy to handle and easy to peel. I don't chop them up too finely unless I'm making a pasta sauce, and even then they don't hurt my eyes as much as other onions.
- sherry wine. For some reason, it makes everything that I make taste good to me. I don't know why. This is sort of a personal preference, and so if you like some other common flavor a lot (vermouth? mirin? Yoshida's?), keep it handy and use it, sparingly at first.
- a wok. You can stir fry just about anything (edible) in a wok. Get one with a lid; if you need to tend to something else, you can always cover a wok, turn down the heat to low or medium-low, and the food usually cooks itself.
- although I didn't use it, I recommend a rice maker, preferably one with a "quick" setting and markings on the bowl where you put in the rice and water. If you get one with a programmable timer, well then you have one less thing to worry about at dinnertime.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Recipes for Dads!
Hi,
So, every so often I come across hapless dads of small children not knowing how to cook. Being alone with the little ones at mealtimes can be so overwhelming for some newish dads, so I figured I'd offer some ideas about what worked for me and my kids (now 4 and 6).
My goals (as of 1/19/2012) for this blog are:
- To provide some easy ways to cook a reasonably healthy dinner meals for small kids old enough to voice opinions.
- Did you see that I said "reasonable"? Everything here is going to be something that I feel that anyone can make, in a way so that you don't need measuring spoons or have to take out the pasta at exactly 8 minutes in slightly salted water brought to a rolling boil. In other words, there's room for error, just like there's room for error in your kids' taste buds and stomachs.
- Nothing I call for is going to ask for a bazillion ingredients. No Dad (including me) is going to want to haul 20 different spices and use a dash of each just for tortellini.
- I don't know your kid allergies, so you'll still want to watch out for things that they can't eat. Don't give your nut-allergic kid my recipe for pesto pasta; he'll like it for exactly 3 minutes before the anaphylaxis sets in.
- Not everything's going to be about pasta. That will be boring for your kids and they'll tell you.
A few ground rules though:
- I offer no warranties about anything I post here.
- I assume you have a kitchen with a microwave, oven, and stove. If you don't have a full sized oven, a good toaster-oven will likely do, but you might not make enough food for yourself. (Read: you'd go hungry, not your kids.)
- I assume you can get to a grocery store or Costco on the weekends and can have a few (keyword: few) items the fridge or freezer beforehand.
- Everything that I post is going to take 30 minutes or less to prepare and cook. That's enough time for your kids to watch the latest episode of Wild Kratts.
- I reserve the right to change the goals of the blog whenever I want.
In the meantime, if you have a recipe that is easy to make and has worked for a Dad flying solo with passengers, feel free to send them to runforyourlives@gmail.com. If I like them, I might try it myself, and then post it. Otherwise, look here for some posts from me.
So, every so often I come across hapless dads of small children not knowing how to cook. Being alone with the little ones at mealtimes can be so overwhelming for some newish dads, so I figured I'd offer some ideas about what worked for me and my kids (now 4 and 6).
My goals (as of 1/19/2012) for this blog are:
- To provide some easy ways to cook a reasonably healthy dinner meals for small kids old enough to voice opinions.
- Did you see that I said "reasonable"? Everything here is going to be something that I feel that anyone can make, in a way so that you don't need measuring spoons or have to take out the pasta at exactly 8 minutes in slightly salted water brought to a rolling boil. In other words, there's room for error, just like there's room for error in your kids' taste buds and stomachs.
- Nothing I call for is going to ask for a bazillion ingredients. No Dad (including me) is going to want to haul 20 different spices and use a dash of each just for tortellini.
- I don't know your kid allergies, so you'll still want to watch out for things that they can't eat. Don't give your nut-allergic kid my recipe for pesto pasta; he'll like it for exactly 3 minutes before the anaphylaxis sets in.
- Not everything's going to be about pasta. That will be boring for your kids and they'll tell you.
A few ground rules though:
- I offer no warranties about anything I post here.
- I assume you have a kitchen with a microwave, oven, and stove. If you don't have a full sized oven, a good toaster-oven will likely do, but you might not make enough food for yourself. (Read: you'd go hungry, not your kids.)
- I assume you can get to a grocery store or Costco on the weekends and can have a few (keyword: few) items the fridge or freezer beforehand.
- Everything that I post is going to take 30 minutes or less to prepare and cook. That's enough time for your kids to watch the latest episode of Wild Kratts.
- I reserve the right to change the goals of the blog whenever I want.
In the meantime, if you have a recipe that is easy to make and has worked for a Dad flying solo with passengers, feel free to send them to runforyourlives@gmail.com. If I like them, I might try it myself, and then post it. Otherwise, look here for some posts from me.
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