To my sweet, smart, fun, beautiful daughter,

You are two and a half years old today!

After weeks of talking about your birthday, we get to pretend it’s your birthday today! You’ve already asked for ice cream and presents. Sorry, kid! I’ll sing to you and give you lots of kisses instead.

Happy Half-Birthday to you!
Happy Half-Birthday to you!
Happy Half-Birthday, Miss Leyba!
Happy Half-Birthday to you!

And many more!

Happy Half-Birthday, sweetie!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

We’re almost to August and you know what that means:

The bushes on our driveway are ripe with fruit.

Luckily, Miss Leyba loves blackberries.

And so do I.

Excuse us while we go eat a handful.

Yum.

All super tasty, healthy and simple, most of them whipped up from random ingredients found in the fridge, but none of them perfect enough to post a recipe (yet).

Quinoa pasta with (leftover) grilled zucchini, chickpeas and garlic (ingredients assembled, ready to go in the sauté pan):

Salad with assorted veggies and grilled figs, purple potatoes, and grilled king salmon (definitely a meal fixed with leftovers, but the salmon was INCREDIBLE and we love grilled figs!):

Gluten-free pizza with pineapple and red onion for Mama / plain cheese for Miss Leyba (tastes SO much better on the grill; we probably won’t make this in the oven again):

Double potato frittata with arugula (too much potato, not enough arugula, garlic and cheese):

And, finally, here are the BEST recipes of the past week, both of which I’m looking forward to refining.

Salad of grilled figs, goat cheese, roasted almonds, and balsamic vinegar (a great example of using simple, high quality ingredients to create a phenomenal dish):

Chilled noodle salad with mango (recipe here, from Vegetarian Times. I have plans for making a more simple, fast and protein packed version. While delicious, it took me a full 45 minutes to put this one together… and, yes, I did have a toddler distracting me. You may be able to cook it in less.):

Yum, yum!

The best part of living 25 minutes from the beach? Frequent trips to the shore without any guilt about how long you stay. Drive to the beach for an hour or two before naptime? Why not?!

We had a lovely time.

I’m a sucker for food that’s easy, tasty and healthy. We tried the Swiss Chard with Chickpeas recipe and, oh boy, did it fit those categories and, wow, did we love it! I almost threatened to arm wrestle David over who got to eat the leftovers for lunch today. (I gave in; he took them to work. Yes, I sound like quite the doting, loving wife, but really it meant I didn’t need to whip up something else for him to bring in!)

Here’s our adaptation of Real Simple’s recipe for you to try and enjoy:

Swiss Chard With Chickpeas, Pine Nuts, and Quinoa Pasta

Ingredients
1 8-ounce box quinoa pasta
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus 1 teaspoon to cover pasta after its cooked
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 15.5-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed
1/2 cup raisins (dark or golden)
2 bunches Swiss chard, stems trimmed and cut in thirds
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions
Cook pasta according to manufacturers directions. Toss with a light coating of olive oil and set aside.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet or stockpot, over low heat, toast the pine nuts, shaking the pan frequently, until golden, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

Return skillet or stockpot to medium heat, add the oil, and heat for 1 minute. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the chickpeas and raisins and cook for 3 minutes. Add the chard, salt, and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the chard is tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Top the pasta, divided amongst four plates, with the chard and sprinkle with the pine nuts.

And for the kiddos adverse to wilted leafy green vegetables, you can serve them pasta with chickpeas (and a strip of nori on the side). “Yum, yum, delicious!” says Miss Leyba. Can’t argue with that!

I’m so looking forward to making this dish again. Here are some variations I’m excited to try: using spinach or kale instead of chard, almonds or walnuts instead of pine nuts, and substitute the quinoa pasta with cooked millet, rice, quinoa, or (as the original recipe suggests) couscous.

What ingredients do you like to splurge for? Expensive imported olive oil? French sea salt? Black truffle oil? What are your special ingredient guilty pleasures?

These are ours.

1. Milk in glass jars. We think it tastes better, oh so much better, and we love that the bottles are reused indefinitely. We’ve tried to go back to plastic cartons for budgetary reasons and find we can’t. We’re partial to the Straus Family Creamery milk, a local and eco-groovy brand sold here in Sonoma County. I’d love to take our commitment to good milk further and try raw milk, but just can’t seem to work up the courage. Perhaps I need to get to know some dairy farmers and have them try to convince me…

2. Balsamic Vinegar NOT made in Italy and laced with lead. This sounds counter intuitive, right? I recently learned that the balsamic vinegar I was pouring over my salad every day contains lead. In California all markets selling balsamic vinegar must post a Proposition 65 warning which states that balsamic vinegar contains high levels of lead. Apparently balsamic vinegar manufactured in Italy (the good stuff, right?!) has especially high levels of lead due to older water pipes laced with, you got it, lead. Some, but not all, balsamic vinegars manufactured in the United States contain lead as well. I recommend purchasing a brand that tests for their lead levels. We are especially partial to the local O Olive Oil brand. While not organic, at least I know that we’re not lacing ourselves with lead and, wow, their products are tasty!

3. BPA-free canned goods. You know all those canned goods in your pantry? Well, they’re laced with BPA in the sealing process. Eden Foods is our organic, go-to brand for canned beans. While they are more expensive than the competition, they don’t contain BPA and for us that makes them worth it. One of my goals this summer is to soak and cook garbonzo beans, but I still like to use Eden cans for black, pinto and navy beans that take longer to cook.

4. Locally made cheese. After ordering my favorite salad at the Underwood Bar and Bistro too many times to count, I realized that I could make it myself with the exact same cheese: Point Reyes Farmstead Blue Cheese found at our local Costco for a fraction of the price at Whole Foods.

And despite the steep prices of these items, they are still much cheaper than a fraction of the amount we used to spend eating out. For me, it’s the simple pleasure of good quality, local organic ingredients that make a family meal even more special.

Now it’s your turn. What do you like to splurge on in the kitchen?

Last month I added up how much we spent on eating out, screamed, fainted dead away, and promptly set up a monthly “eating out budget,” which of course we blew by July 9th. It’s going to be a long month spent slaving away in the kitchen…

Although last night I felt burnt out from cooking after an elaborate breakfast and lunch, so we dined on fish sticks, leftover polenta pizza, cheese and crackers.

Clearly we can do better.

This is an opportunity to enjoying some delicious home-cooked meals!

Here are some quick, vegetarian, gluten-free and (mostly) figure friendly recipes I’d like to try this month:

– Chilled Cantaloupe Soup
– Spinach, Apple, and Walnut Salad
– Swiss Chard With Chickpeas & Couscous (substituting quinoa for the couscous to be gluten-free)
– Thai Spiced Tofu
– Honey-Balsamic Bean Salad
– Wild Seaweed Salad Recipe
– Skinny Omelette Recipe
– Arugula Salad with Strawberries
– Blueberry Corn Salad
– Crunchy Peanut Slaw

We will also probably cook up these familiar standbys:

– Make your own burrito bar (pictured above)
– Potato and spinach frittata
– Vegetable coconut curry
– Golden spice rice with chickpeas
– Split pea soup
– Tempeh reubens
– Pasta tossed with veggies and cheese (see top photo)
– Grilled veggies, tempeh, burgers, fruit, pizza…

For those days when I just can’t come up with any cooking ideas on my own, I have this master list of recipes that we enjoy, as well as a binder full of recipes with gorgeous glossy photos ripped from magazines and printed from the internet. For inspiration. For reference. For quick and easy suggestions.

Nevertheless, every now and then we have peanut butter and jam sandwiches (on rice cakes) cause it’s just one of those days… we are trying so hard to resist the temptation to head out to grab a quick bite at a neighborhood restaurant (like we used to do all the time). So far, we’re doing good.

(By the way, I wrote this yesterday before Amanda’s kitchen post. Great minds think alike! In this one instance I am glad that I only have time to blog during Miss Leyba’s naps and couldn’t post it until today.)