Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Proud of his chewy piles of turd A few days before his third-and-a-half birthday, Miles declared that he wanted to make Noop. He said that noop is mashed berries, flour, sugar, and cinnamon ("cimanin"), and you microwave it for one minute. We'd like to think that he called it Noop because it's nuked goop, but probably not. So, we made it. It was very very chewy, but it tasted good. Cinnamon and strawberries! Who would've thought? After batch #1 (photographed), he wanted to try again to make it more dry, so we did another batch with more flour, but he didn't like it because it had less strawberry flavor. So I am blogging version one until we make further adjustments. He says that the next batch will have chocolate chips, brown sugar, and puffed kamut in it. (I vetoed adding raw farro.) Let's call this batch #2 - not worth keeping. UPDATE Batch #3 - Miles wanted to add oats and chocolate chips. So we did about 1 teaspoon of quick cooking oats,

Pretty colors. In our last CSA box of the year, we had broccolini, red peppers, and shallots, which screamed stir-fry to me. I'm on a constant mission to make a shrimp dish as delicious as the one at  Pho Grand , so I searched for Vietnamese recipes and found  this one by The Spruce Eats . My modifications: I made it less spicy for toddler (which didn't matter because he decided that night that shrimp is gross), I added a bit of sweetness to the sauce which I saw in another recipe, I stir-fried the shallots before anything else to try to fry them a little bit (because I dream about the fried shallot garnish at Pho Grand but I wasn't willing to go to the effort of frying them in a separate pot), and I increased the amount of sauce. It's fresh, it's easy, the shrimp is delicious, and it's so healthy with stock as the base for the sauce. The Recipe: (adapted from The Spruce Eats) 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined 1.5 tb brown sugar 3 cloves ga

With mashed potatoes and collard greens, because the CSA box said so. I previously made  this seafood creole , which was delicious, but I wanted a simpler alternative. This one is less soupy and more just like a delicious sauce on the shrimp, which we would prefer most of the time. It also has a brighter, fresher flavor. They are both keepers, but right now I prefer this one. I worked from  this recipe from Ready Set Eat . My only changes were halving the quantities (we still had plenty) and simplifying the tomato situation to just use 12 oz of freshly pureed tomatoes instead of whole tomatoes and tomato paste. I also removed the jalapenos because of the toddler, but he thought it was too spicy anyway, so I'd say those are optional in the future. The Recipe: (Adapted from  Ready Set Eat ) 1 tb vegetable oil 1/2 onion, chopped 1 bell pepper, chopped 2 ribs celery, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 1 tb creole seasoning 1/2 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined