FUN is a really important ingredient when getting into the kitchen with your kids. Mini-foods are a big favourite as they are both fun to make AND eat.

With each one of our shows,  Sage will be presenting a “Food Fact” with some neat information about the food word of the day.

I am always doing my best to create recipes that have as much nutrition as I can pack into them without sacrificing taste or texture.The kids DO know what goes into the sauce. For whatever reason, they tell me if they can’t SEE all the vegetables, they don’t mind them being in there…and they LOVE the taste!

Let us know what you think!

First of all, let me say that other than my birthday week, I have been eating primarily vegan for almost two months now!

I have found some great raw snacks to satisfy my sweet tooth, my jeans are looser, and I am feeling lighter and have more energy all round. I don’t know that I would commit to veganism completely, as I love good restaurants and fine dining too much, to say nothing of the occasional glass of wine with dinner or with friends….

I will be changing the tone of this blog a bit, too. As anyone can see I have not been posting much for a while as I needed to figure out where exactly I wanted to go with this. It WILL have to do with kids, since my kids (and what they eat) are top of my passion list!

We all start out our day with smoothies now, though mine is still the only green one

Day 2 was a day with a lot of traveling: I ended up with a banana, strawberry, spinach, flax meal, and apple smoothie for breakfast..and oh yes, spirulina and aloe vera also in there. Lunch on the go ended up being tomato soup from a local cafe after an appointment, and a big green salad for dinner.

Day 3: Today, that is, started with the same breakfast smoothie as day 2, only I also added celery and beet greens. I drank half in the morning and half at lunch. Later in the afternoon I had a kale salad. Yummy though very chewy, with basil dressing.

Dinner was a very green smoothie: all of the above minus the spirulina and aloe vera. Added in were carrots.

I feel great, and am drinking a lot of water, as always.

Yes, the Holidays were fabulous, and delicious, and I admit I WAY indulged in lots of sugary, yummy, alcohol-based treats…and now my body is feeling sludgy, and sluggish, and I am ready to do a delicious green cleanse to get back in prime working order. I felt so good after 2 months on the Candida Diet: No sugar, yeast, or fermented ANYTHING, and I want to feel that good again, if not better!

Interesting to do this when I am starting to film a cooking show cooking food for kids that is not only tasty, but nutritious..yes, even the desserts. This certainly ensures that the kids will WANT to eat it as they will be doing ALL the tasting for a while!

Today, January 5th, I’m starting on Day 1. Anyone care to join me?

Baked doughnuts. Our first effort for a new show I’m doing called Pictures You Can Taste.

The doughnuts came out tasting delicious, though a bit overdone and we put too much batter in the pan. Tomorrow we will use a piping bag and be better prepared. Practice, as they say….

I will be posting when the show is in the bag. Meanwhile, have a doughnut!

I know, I know! I haven’t posted for AGES! I missed Halloween ( Literally. I was sitting in airports all day.) I missed Thanksgiving (I just returned the evening before). I hope that everyone had amazing holidays and ate extremely well!

One of the best restaurants I encountered on our whirlwind trip through California was surprisingly enough at the Sheraton next door to Legoland. Needless to say, considering its vicinity, the hotel is very family-friendly but big enough to stay peaceful at the same time. It has a huge and perfect-temperatured pool and jacuzzi, and the spa offers stress-reducing massages for harried Moms and Dads. Unfortunately, we did not get to try out the massage offerings, though Anton and Sage both took advantage of the gym and there were quite a few kids there with their parents, learning how to use the equipment. But I digress…

The restaurant:

We started with the spreads: A beautiful bright green cilantro-based spread, which if you love cilantro like I do, will keep you happy all evening…A Mediterranean olive mix ( Yum. Need I say more?), and a sun-dried tomato, almond and olive spread that also was delicious. The bread was fresh, warm, and plentiful.

I had side dishes for dinner as there were so many things I wanted to try…These were fresh organic local squash in a red curry sauce, Mmmm.

I also got the lamb souvlaki skewers with goat cheese and mini roast tomatoes, very yummy!

The kids both got the mini hamburger plates, which were great but they order them so often I don’t take pictures anymore….

Anton got the bass special, which he declared excellent.

We were all too full for dessert. Really.

Late the next morning we found the breakfast to be equally good.

I got the “French Breakfast”, a croissant filled with scrambled eggs and swiss cheese. Really GOOD eggs, mind you, not something that’s easily found most places.

Griffin got the breakfast cereal with fresh berries. Sage got the silver dollar pancakes, which were so good that they disappeared before I could get a photo!

Anton got the lox and bagel. The lox swam away before I could get a pic of that, too…

So rest assured, families going to Legoland! There is a GREAT restaurant right next door!

all photos and content ©leslie hunter uhl 2011

I just got back into town from taking the kids to Denver and found that there are THREE posts that have disappeared like they never existed, save for the bits of them that are posted on Foodbuzz. REALLY weird! Photos, everything, gone, gone, gone…. All but one post from my two months of living yeast-free.

I am still pretty much eating the same way, basically because I feel so good! However, every once in a while a little extra something is OK.

For instance, our neighbour brought over some fresh-picked pears from his garden. A pie was in order, with a ground almond crust and fresh raspberries on top.

It was delicious!

Recipe will follow, as I neglected to write it down and need to jog my memory….

all photos and content ©leslie hunter uhl 2011

Yes, you heard it right: yeast-free pizza dough. The kids were clamoring for Daddy’s pizza, he felt that Mom should not go without, and here is the result.

Let me just say that this effort ( a first timer) can be improved upon. It was a bit dry; he pre-baked the dough before toppings were added. The result was overcooked but tasty. I would suggest just using it in the usual pizza dough manner: stretch dough onto pizza pan, add toppings, and bake till done.

It makes a tasty flatbread, too, excellent with eggs in the morning. Or making lunch sandwiches…

I love that he invented this and it’s a nice benefit for all people looking to eat delicious food even when they can’t have yeast!

Yeast-Free Pizza Dough

In a mixing bowl put:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

In a separate bowl, mix:

1/2 to 2/3 cups milk

1 egg

2 tablespoons butter (melted)

Add the wet ingredients to the dry all at once and mix well until dough forms.

Knead dough on floured surface and then roll out to desired pizza thinness.

Put dough on pizza pan, add toppings, and bake at 400F for about 8 minutes.

all photos and content ©leslie hunter uhl 2011

Before I start, here, I would like to celebrate the memory of Charles Wyly, who was killed in a car crash this past weekend. He and his wife have been very generous patrons of the arts here in the Aspen Valley and had recently opened their home for a gala fundraising event for the Wyly Center for the Arts, a place dedicated to art for everyone. This means the disabled and the at-risk can have the joy of creating art along with the able-bodied and talented.

My heart goes out to his family, I know he will be sorely missed.

I had just gotten back home after a week away and that was staring out at me from the paper when I went to check in Sage at the dentist’s office. Bit of a shocker!

On a more delicious note, our currant berries are ripe and huge! This is the first year they have really, well, BLOOMED since we planted them three years ago. You have to keep one step ahead of the birds, here, so we got a- pickin’ and they made a delicious pie!

If you decide to buy a pre-made crust from the store I recommend Marie Callendar’s, though home-made is usually our first choice.

Super-Easy Recipe:

1. Wash the berries.

2. Make strawberry Jell-O.

3. Bake pie crust. Let cool.

4. Place berries in pie crust.

5. Pour Jell-O over berries.

6. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours, until jell-o is firm.

7. Go crazy with the whipped cream.

8. Eat!

all photos and content ©leslie hunter uhl 2011

Our neighbours called, asking us if we wanted to come over and pick bush cherries, as they had a kazillion ripe cherries and not enough places to put them. Needless to say, we grabbed a big shopping bag and rushed on over!

Now, bush cherries are a lot smaller than regular cherries though they still have the same huge pit. Pie seemed out of the question, so I figured I’d go for it and make jam. Not something I’d done before but I figured it would be a good experience, why not?

I found a recipe for cherry jam on Savory Sweet Life blog and it seemed easy enough.

I washed the cherries, put them in some water, and boiled them just long enough to make it easy to pit them. Squeezing the juice through a cheesecloth was a mess, but then I found that the juice and pulp came through very easy in a colander, so I finished the rest using that method, calculated the sugar I would need, and poured that into the pot along with the juice and zest of 2 lemons. The mixture was boiling merrily away when I looked at the recipe and suddenly realized that WATER was not on the ingredient list….Hmmm.

OK, I guess I’m making syrup instead of jam.

It turned out beautiful and not too sweet. You can really taste the cherries, and the kids prefer it over maple syrup on their pancakes. That’s a first! I have yet to try it on ice cream or cake, but it would work really well with those, too.

The syrup jar label was created by Sage. We love it!

all photos and content ©leslie hunter uhl 2011