My Favorite Summer Recipe

Red Sauce

This sauce is delicious with pasta, couscous, or rice and beans. Freeze the sauce in single-eriving airtight containers for up to two months.

3 T olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 onions, chopped
2 small carrots, chopped
2 yellow squash, halved lengthwise, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 zuchinni, halved lengthwise, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 T dried rosemary, chopped
1 T thyme
4 twenty-eight ounce cans peeled, plum tomatoes

1. Saute garlic and onion in olive oil until soft - about 5 minutes. Add carrots, squash, zucchini, salt and pepper to taste, thyme and rosemary. Stirring occasionally, cook until veggies are soft, about 15 minutes.

2. Transfer half the mixture to a bowl, set aside. Gently crush the tomatoes with hands, and add them with juice to the pot. Simmer until thickens, about 1 1/2 hours. Add reserved squash and heat.

Yummy!

Healthy Food Challenge

Callie has laid down the healthy living challenge - a challenge that goes for the next 3 months, beginning August 1st (yesterday) and ending November 1st. Participants track their own progress wih a simple points system, everyone puts ten bucks in a jackpot, and the one with the most points wins.

For me, the 10 bucks just guarantees that I stay focused, not that I win. Certainly the challenge looks easy enough, until you break it down into real life events.

The food portion of the challenge looks like this:

1. Only eat sweets once a week.
2. Eat 3 servings of veggies a day and 2 of fruit.
3. Don't eat for 3 hours before bed.
4. No soda.
5. 8 glasses of water a day.

For me, it breaks down like this:
1. Food is a basic supplement to my sweets habit.
2. Fruit is good - no problem. Veggies, I'm currently getting 1, maybe 2 (if I'm lucky) a day.
3. I snack from the moment I wake to the moment I go to bed (and no, this is not just a pregnant lady thing, though it doesn't help.)
4. I don't like soda, so that's not a problem.
5. The water won't be too hard, I always have a water bottle with me.

So - what I'm going for in this challenge is not perfection but simply improvement. More veggies, less sugar. More meals, fewer snacks. And my final goal: stick to it until the end!

Wish me luck - and good luck to anyone else brave enough to take the challenge.

Baking Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yesterday I made chocolate chip cookies with my children. Elias sat on one side of me and Addison stood on the other. Addison is old enough that she can help measure and add ingredients and use the mixer now. And Elias just tries to copy everything we do, including scooping flour all over the counter. But mostly the two of them just hover like little vultures waiting for the opportunity to eat a bit of dough or to clean off a spoon or a beater. Elias especially has bird like characteristics - lately he has taken to asking for food by opening his mouth wide, bouncing up and down, and saying uh, uh, uh.

There is something very satisfying to me about baking cookies. The smells, the tastes and the actions themselves transport me back to my childhood. My mother made the most wonderful cookies! I loved coming home from school to see my mom in the kitchen, a bowl of cookie dough on the counter and warm cookies on a plate. Mom would let us "sneak" at least one taste of the dough before shooing us out of the kitchen, cookies in hand.

Lately however, I've lost my cookie baking mojo. I can't seem to recreate the soft, chewy cookies that are like my mother's. Perhaps it is the difference in climate, perhaps I no longer eat enough of the unfinished dough! Most likely, I need to adjust the ingredients for living at sea level. All I know is that I long for the cookies of my youth - a little taste of sweet heaven to transport me back to my childhood.

My mom is such a wonderful cook and baker. I love her food and the food that reminds me of her. I hope that my children will develop a love of food and someday look back and remember the cooking and baking we've done together.