Healthy Family Recipes

healthy family recipes

Whole 30 Creamy Bacon, Leek and Cauliflower (BLC) Soup

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This fabulous bacon, leek and cauliflower soup will hit the midwinter spot – whether you’re doing Whole 30 or not! 

BLC Soup: Creamy Bacon, Leek & Cauliflower. Perfect for #Whole30. #Dairyfree and delish. #paleo

BLC Soup: Bacon, Leek and Cauliflower. Perfect for Whole 30. Dairy-free and delish.

 

If you’ve been joining in on the January Whole 30, you’re in the home stretch! But you might want to make this again (and again, and again) even once your 30 days are up. Totally dairy-free, this manages to be rich and creamy without being heavy. With an immersion blender, it’s also a total cinch. If you don’t have one, it’s also totally possible in a blender, don’t worry! You’ll definitely want to drizzle this with either Nom Nom Paleo’s sublime homemade sriracha or the good stuff from the Paleo Chef.

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Red Wedding Soup (SPOILER ALERT) for your Game of Thrones Finale Party

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Nice day for a: Red Wedding Soup.

There’s nothing more ME than a recipe title with a spoiler alert. I’m going to let my geek flag fly just a little in this post, but first, in all seriousness, if you’re a watcher and you’re NOT caught up on Game of Thrones, SAVE THIS POST FOR LATER.

Ah, the rich, slightly pungent taste of betrayal. As both an avid reader and watcher of the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire series, I knew what was about to go down on Sunday’s episode.  And the hype leading up to it was nothing compared to the hysteria from unspoiled viewers that followed for the next 24 hours – even if you’ve never seen a minute of the show and have no interest whatsoever, you probably noticed that there was a bit of a kerfuffle. The dreaded Red Wedding.

Though I don’t get to do it nearly as often as I used to in my pre-child, more carefree life, I still get major kicks from thinking up and executing (COUGH) theme foods. Since I usually watch the show with a friend, I HAD to bring something special for this one. Red Velvet Wedding cupcakes were a thought, but then I thought of the great old classic Italian Wedding Soup, with meatballs and escarole. I just needed to bloody it up a little.

Traditionally, you usually stir an egg into the hot soup shortly before serving, like egg drop soup, but in my first batch (good thing it was delicious enough to eat 2 huge pots of it this week), I didn’t love the visual effect, nor did I think it added much to the flavor. Round two I added more tomato paste and omitted the egg: perfect. As-is, it’s totally paleo, ’cause that’s just how I roll these days, but feel free to add breadcrumbs or Parmesan if you prefer.

Bring this to the season finale next week and curse the Freys, Lannisters (save for Tyrion) and the Boltons as you savor the savory. Take heart, gentle viewers: The North Remembers*. …

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BLC Soup: Creamy Bacon, Leek and Cauliflower

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BLC Soup: Bacon, Leek & Cauliflower. Dairy-free and delish.

What would you say are your top 5 kitchen appliances?  Actual stovetop and oven excluded. I’m talking about those workhorses you rely on constantly, across a huge range of different recipes, used almost daily or even multiple times per day? I have some that often get used multiple times per meal. Have you thought of your 5? You might even have a longer list.

Now, imagine that you have to box them all up and put them in a storage facility, completely and utterly inaccessible. How long could you go?

Well, I just got back from a cross-country trek with all my worldly goods, which were in a storage unit just shy of 3,000 miles away. In February of 2011, I locked it up and drove across the country to Portland with Donna’s help, bringing only what I could fit in my car. That’s right, My Cuisinart, my Kitchen Aid, my mandoline, my slow-cooker, even seemingly minor items like microplane zesters and wine openers – I’ve done without them all for two years. I am a fortunate person indeed to have had all these material luxuries in the first place – this was a fine life lesson in not taking what we already have for granted.

So at long last, we’re reunited, my stuff and I.   The very first thing I made in my Vitamix (thank you Donna!) was Nom Nom Paleo’s homemade sriracha, which is just stupefyingly good. And then I made the fabulous  bacon, leek and cauliflower soup you’ll find below – using my immersion blender. (And then of course I topped the soup with the sriracha.) Totally dairy-free, it manages to be rich without being heavy. And with an immersion blender, it’s also a total cinch. If you don’t have one, it’s also totally possible in a blender, don’t worry!

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Serendipitous Salmon and Sweet Potato Chowdah: Dairy-Free!

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Salmon Sweet Potato Chowder

Salmon Sweet Potato Chowder

It seems to be salmon season around these parts. This just so happens to dovetail nicely with soup season, as luck would have it. Last weekend, I accompanied my precocious four year old, Lily, on a special school field trip to the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. Her preschool is currently doing a unit on salmon, includes obtaining their own salmon eggs to hatch, and they wanted to seize the seasonal opportunity. So I took the morning off work, packed our lunches, and headed east into the gorgeous Gorge.

As it happens, this was a place I had visited years and years ago with Donna, not long after we first reunited, on one of our early visits with her whole family. Understandably, the Kellys enjoyed showing off their fabulous state, and seeing the salmon jumping up a fish ladder and watching them pour through a counting station at an underground viewing window is quite the fascinating Oregon experience. But I hadn’t realized we were headed to the exact same place until we arrived and I instantly remembered my first experience there. I never would have predicted that one day I’d be living here myself – it’s amazing how life works out sometimes, is it not? We had a fabulous, if very wet, day, and I bought Lily a stuffed Chinook salmon (pictured above) at the hatchery gift shop.

Lily at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. I think the Kellys will agree she gets her fashion sense from her Auntie Kate.

A final serendipitous moment awaited me. Craving salmon after all this – I really have embraced my inner omnivore, haven’t I? –  I decided to hit a New Seasons (glorious Portland area food lover’s shangri-la) on our way back. Lo, whole salmon was on sale for $5.99 a pound! This soup was simply meant to be. Serendipity again. They were kind enough to sell me just half of one, filet it AND give me all the trimmings for stock, and thus I happily spent the remainder of the day making stock using this recipe. I froze two of the filets for future fun, seared one to eat immediately, and used the other in this impromptu gluten-free, dairy-free chowder.

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