Tiffanie: this week's menu

Happy New Year! Have any eating goals for the year? I'm pretty happy about how I've been integrating whole foods into our diet, thanks to our CSA box. I would like to increase the variety in the kids' diets -- they would prefer that I only feed them cheese and wheat combinations (for the girl) or tortillas with beans and cheese and rice and corn (for the boy). On the positive side, they do ask for a vegetable with each meal if one is lacking, so at least they are getting some good habits. I think I'll be trying out more recipes from Vegan Lunch Box, and trying to get them to eat more soups.

I'm using my Clean Food cookbook this week, and trying to largely choose recipes that I have nearly all the ingredients for already. Frugality! We're going to be keeping a close watch on our expenditures, as part of another goal this year, so my grocery purchases will be remarked upon. :-D

My plans include:

• lentil walnut pate, as a snack food to eat with crackers.
• roasted kabocha squash and creminis, creamy cauliflower soup, baked chickpea pancake with rosemary.
• stuffed squash with rice and chickpeas, tamari-braised mustard greens.
• Goodness soup (sort of a winter vegetable bean soup), and wholegrain pancakes (baked patties of a grain (quinoa, millet, or rice) mixed with some onion and carrot and oil and flour) with applesauce.

Yes, I have many winter squash in my cold garage to eat. The CSA box this week gave me kale, mustard greens, apples, carrots, beets, cauliflower, leeks, and butternut squashes (3!). Tonight I'm using the kale and beet greens in a tofu scramble with yellow rice, and I have many roasted beets already on hand for a salad. The mustard greens, cauliflower, leeks, and the biggest squash are going to be used in the recipes above. That leaves me with many delicious Granny Smith apples, two smaller squash, and plenty of beets and carrots.

I am also going to attempt handmade pasta this week, as I am planning on running a kindergarten cooking class on making noodles on Monday. Looks straightforward enough -- I'm doing the simple flour/egg/water/salt combination, and I'm going to see if it tastes good with the traditional butter and cinnamon-sugar sprinkle (it's what the Italians did before tomato sauce, and is supposed to be very good).

Happy eating!