For Emma’s dinner last night, I threw together a very easy pizza that was both a hit and very nutritious.  It’s a tortilla, topped with marinara sauce, topped with very finely chopped raw broccoli and kale, topped with rice cheese.  Throw it in the oven until it’s bubbly and voila!  She seemed to like it, although the broccoli did give it a very “green” taste that she kept saying was “spicy.”  I don’t know that she had the word to describe it correctly, so she settled on “spicy.”  We’re in between vitamins at the moment (switching brands and I have to order them), so that’s why I wanted to throw in an extra vegetable to her dinner.  I guess I really shouldn’t worry since most kids I know have WAY worse eating habits and don’t take a vitamin at all.  Anyway, I don’t know that I’ll put the raw broccoli in there again.  Cooked broccoli seems more mild in flavor (aka less detectable).

Finally! A healthy kids recipe that I can share. The reason why I created the category “recipes kids will enjoy” is because I wanted to come up with and share more recipes like this one. Well, so far, it has more sweets in it than healthy foods so I’m happy to get it back on track.

This recipe is really good, but purposely kept very mild (aka bland) for the kiddos. If adults will be eating this too, I recommend a zesty salsa or guacamole for the top. Other than the lack of spice, they turned out very good. And just what are the “hidden treasures?” Well, these burritos are stuffed with cauliflower and kale, but no one would ever know unless you told them. Any mildly flavored vegetables will work here, so please feel free to switch them out. This recipe makes a lot of filling, but it is totally freezable to use on another day.

Hidden Treasure Burritos

1 small onion, diced

1 large clove garlic, minced

1/2 green bell pepper, diced (pretty small)

1 baby yukon gold potato, diced (small)

1 cup cauliflower puree (recipe follows)

1 cup cooked kale, finely chopped (recipe follows)

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp chili powder

3 cups (or use 2 cans) beans, any kind

1/2 cup frozen corn kernals

5 or 6 dashes Tabasco, or to taste

1/2 cup salsa

S&P to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Bring about 2 cups veggie stock or water to a boil in a medium pot. Add 1/2 head of cauliflower and let it cook through (takes about 10 minutes). When the cauliflower has become tender, transfer it to a food processor and puree. Save the cooking liquid, and add a little at a time to loosen up the cauliflower as you puree it. Remove puree from the food processor and set aside. Be sure to rinse out the bowl of your food processor.

Return the pot to the stove and bring to a boil again. Add 3 large leaves of kale (stems removed) and let it cook for about 10 minutes. Transfer the kale to the food processor. Puree until the kale leaves have been chopped very small. Remove and set aside.

Add half of the beans to the food processor and puree them until they are pretty well mashed. Use the leftover cooking liquid from the cauliflower and kale to loosen it up if it becomes too thick to process.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, saute the onion, garlic, bell pepper, and potato in about 2 TB of olive oil until tender. Add all of the rest of the ingredients a cook for a few minutes. If the mixture becomes too thick, thin out with the rest of the cauliflower/kale cooking liquid or with some water. Season to taste with S&P.

Spoon mixture into the center of a tortilla. Roll it up, tucking the sides in. Seal the edge with a little bit of canola oil and transfer to a baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the top is light golden.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about a good reinvention for quesadillas and I think I’ve come up with something. I used to buy these frozen quesadillas that were so good– they were full of veggies and a spicy cheese sauce. So good, but obviously not vegan. I’ve come up with something that was pretty close, though.

Vegan Quesadillas

1 cup cashew cheese

2 jalapeños (or to taste), roasted

1 ear of corn, roasted

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 zucchini, chopped

1 onion, sliced or chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp dried oregano

S&P

Several tortillas

Preheat broiler and roast the corn for several minutes per side. Rotate as needed to avoid burning. When all sides of the corn have been roasted (i.e. are golden brown), set aside to cool. If you can, roast your jalapeños using this same method. The slats between my oven rack were too big and the jalapeños kept falling through (and I couldn’t find any foil to put underneath), so I ended up roasting mine on the stove. To roast on the stove, heat a large burner to medium high and put the jalapeño directly on it. Rotate as it starts to char. When the skin of the jalapeño is charred all the way around, put it into a bowl of ice water for several minutes. Peel the charred skin off, remove the seeds and membranes, and mince. Add the pepper to the cashew cheese and set aside. NOTE: Two jalapeños made this very, very spicy. It was almost too spicy for me and I will only use one next time.

In a large non-stick skillet, heat about 2 TB canola oil over medium high heat. You’ll want to avoid olive oil here and go for an oil that can take the high heat. Add the onion and cook for a few minutes until the onion begins to get some color. Add both bell peppers and the zucchini and cook until the veggies have some color to them. Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes, but stir often to avoid burning. Cut the corn off of the cob and add it to the skillet. Remove from heat.

Heat a second skillet to cook the quesadillas in. It’s up to you whether or not you want to oil it. When it is hot, put down one tortilla and spread with roasted jalapeño cashew cheese. When the down-side of the tortilla has become crispy, remove it from the skillet and set aside. Put another tortilla into the skillet and top with the veggie mixture. Put the first tortilla (the one with the cashew cheese) down on top of it. It’s done with the down-side of the bottom tortilla has crisped up. The reason for assembling them this way is because all of the veggies would fall out when you flipped it, if you were to make it the way a traditional quesadilla is made.

I served ours topped with some Tofutti BTSC (love that stuff!), some sliced avocado and a little jarred salsa. As I said, they were almost too spicy and I will cut back on the jalapeños next time.

On the side, I made some refried black beans. I cooked them up the same way I’ve made them before, except that I used black beans in place of pinto beans. These were also a tad on the spicy side, but would have been tolerable had the quesadillas not been so spicy. Must have been a very fresh batch of jalapeños that I got.

Emma’s quesadillas were pretty ingenious, I thought. Not to toot my own horn, but I do get excited whenever I find a way to reinvent a food that she likes (and she loves quesadillas). For hers, I smeared the whole tortilla with non-dairy butter (unlike me, she could benefit from the extra calories and fat). Then I smeared half of it with the cashew cheese (minus the jalapeños) and the other half with the refried black beans that I mixed some chopped frozen kale into. I put it into the skillet and folded it over et voila! She loved it!

Speaking of Emma, I have to say that she has been so good with the diet change. She never asks for milk anymore; instead, she’ll ask for “soy milk” or “chocolate milk.” Soy milk means any non-dairy milk (which is usually rice milk for her) and chocolate milk is chocolate almond milk. BTW, the sweetened chocolate almond milk is AWESOME! You should try it. Anyway, she has been so agreeable to all of the changes and doesn’t seem to miss anything. At playgroup last week, some of the kids were eating goldfish crackers and cheese sticks, but she was happy snacking on all of the food that I brought for her, as well as the vegan snacks provided by the playgroup hostess.

While browsing the dried fruit section of the grocery store yesterday, a tub of figs jumped into my cart. The figs then convinced a tub of dates to follow. Actually, I bought them intentionally, knowing that I had no clue what to do with them once I got them home. Emma really likes fig cookies (newtons, newmans, whichever), so I thought I would look around for a recipe to make them myself.

My sous chef (Emma) and I went to work this morning whipping up this recipe for a very healthy sounding fig bar. The sky was very overcast outside and it sounded like the perfect indoor activity. The entire recipe was incredibly easy to make, although I had to add a little bit more water than the recipe calls for to thin out the filling enough for my food processor to, I guess, process it. I also used maple syrup in place of the agave nectar. Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly.

These turned out really tasty, although, I think Emma preferred the uncooked version. After licking the spoon clean, she said it was:

While my figgy bars were baking, I thought of the tons of bananas in my freezer taking up valuable space that I should try to use up. I buy a big bunch of bananas every time we are at the grocery store and, when they start getting brown and spotty, I peel them and freeze them. I probably had 3 bags of frozen bananas to use up and, since my kitchen was already a mess, why not whip up some muffins too?! My sous chef abandoned me for her legos and I was left to tackle this challenge all on my own.

I’ve made this recipe for banana bread before and thought it was “very, very good,” but all that non-dairy butter is probably not too good for my thighs. I decided to substitute 1/2 cup homemade applesauce in place of the 1/2 cup margarine. I followed the recipe exactly, other than that one substitution. After filling my muffin cups, I pressed a few walnut chunks into the tops of the muffins for a little extra crunch and some Omega-3s. Baking time was about 20 minutes, and I got 12 good sized muffins from this recipe.

Not to toot my own horn, but I thought this idea was so clever.  I had some leftover pureed calzone filling (marinara sauce, cashew cheese, spinach, kale, and broccoli) that I needed to use up (or else stick in the freezer).  I didn’t have any pizza dough on hand, nor did I have the time to roll it out to make Emma’s “pizza,” so I decided to use the filling to make a quesadilla.  How clever!  Emma really likes quesadillas, but up until now, I haven’t thought of a veganized version.  For some extra calories and fat, I “buttered” the tortilla before pan frying.  These were a big hit!  She ate the entire thing.