From Tami: Cooking + Recipe!

Sometimes, this Mama doesn’t have enough time to cook a nice meal. Or maybe I have the time, but not the energy. Often, I cook up a huge batch of one of my quick-and-easy staples, and then we do leftovers for a couple of days.

What I’m saying is, my kids eat a lot of chicken.

Pizza too, because it is so fast and who doesn’t like pizza?

But I do feel bad about it. I enjoy cooking, when I feel up to it, and I like knowing that my kids are eating healthy, varied, and home-cooked meals.

One thing I try to do is make sure that, on weekends (which is when I do most of my cooking), I make at least one dish that is special—like top 5 on the favorites list—for each kid. Bonus points if two kids share a favorite dish! I try to shake it up with new recipes as well, if I can. The nice thing about these weekend cooking-binges is that there are usually leftovers for a few days.

One easy thing is that most of my kids go for simple foods anyway. I ask them what they want and get mommy-points for making it—not tough when the answers include grilled cheese, rice, and chicken soup!

Creativity is especially tough when you have a veggie-phobe or three, because variety and new foods are often greeted with suspicion and replaced with pasta anyway. This is why, no matter how creative I would like to be, I often fall back on the same few oldie-but-goodie-style recipes. Hey, if it isn’t broken, right?

So, for fun, here is a super easy chicken recipe (and I use that term loosely because I almost never measure when I cook):

• Mix equal parts honey and mustard in a bowl, add as much curry powder as you want. I use lots of all three ingredients. You can add garlic or parsley or whatever you want to dress it up further.
• Slather onto chicken (I usually do quarters.)
• For extra fanciness, toss some dried fruit on there if you have it—I like using prunes and apricots.
• Feel free to stick some chopped onion, potato, and carrot in as well. Or don’t. No judgement here.
• Cover and bake until done. Uncover towards the end for texture reasons. Or just bake however you usually bake your chicken.

Serve over your favorite grain for a bit more substance and an elevated presentation. I usually go for jasmine rice or couscous, but quinoa, buckwheat, or farro would work too. Bon appétit!

The end!

I want to hear some of your favorite go-to recipes. The faster, the better!

Happy cooking, Super-Moms!

Tami