Homemade Dressing Rocks!

Hi, Izzy here. Most of my fellow foodies out there would have to agree, that although making homemade dressing takes a little bit of time and energy, it is well worth the effort! I like to help my mom whisk up homemade dressings for my vegetables. I like to eat vegetables in several different forms: raw, steamed, mashed, sauteed, as a salad, grilled, etc. The common denominator, regardless of how the vegetables are prepared, is that I love to have fresh dressing with my vegetables. Sometimes I drizzle the fresh dressing over my vegetables. Other times I like to dip my veggies into a bowl of freshly made dressing. Here is a link to an easy recipe for GINGER, ORANGE DRESSING. As a rule of thumb, I usually use a 2 to 1 ratio. I use 2 parts vinegar, to 1 part olive oil. I think the key to great dressing, is to use good quality ingredients. I like to use fresh herbs, alliums, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, good grainy mustard (to get a good emulsification in my dressing), great quality vinegar and olive oil, and usually fresh citrus juice and zest in my dressings. You can mix it up though and use whatever you have on hand. My mom does all the dicing (I don't use real knives yet, since I'm only two). I use a large bowl and I whisk all of the ingredients together for a few minutes. Then my mom hands me the sieve or strainer and I strain the dressing. Sometimes we opt to keep the chunks in the dressing and we avoid this step. Other times, I do prefer to strain the dressing through a sieve for a smoother texture. We transfer the dressing to a cute airtight dressing jar and then we serve it alongside vegetables. We usually store our dressing in the airtight container in the refrigerator for about a week. Well, it usually doesn't even last that long, because we eat it all up! I hope I have encouraged you to be bold with making homemade dressings at home. Sure, it's easier to use a store bought dressing. It's more fun though, to get creative and to use bold, fresh flavors with every snack or meal.

Here's a quick tip to my fellow toddlers out there: When you are shopping in the grocery store, help your caretaker find a few fresh dressing ingredients and encourage him or her to keep them on hand in the refrigerator. For instance, a chunk of ginger, a few sprigs of thyme, a shallot and an organic orange, will last for a couple weeks in your refrigerator. If a good quality olive oil or vinegar goes on sale at the store, pick an extra bottle up for your pantry. You and your caretaker will be more inclined to make fresh dressings if you already have the ingredients on hand. As my grandpa Sergi used to always say, Salute!

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Go Green With Fresh Herbs

Hi, Izzy here. As a two year old, my palette is still developing. My taste buds seem to change every few months. One thing that has remained the same for the past several months, is my love of the homemade sauces that my mom and I make together. We make homemade tomato sauce, hummus, pesto, bechamel, and more. My favorite sauce to this day, is fresh pesto. I love the vibrant green sauce with its bold flavors. We like to plant fresh herbs and use them in our sauces. We usually make our pesto using fresh, organic basil as the star ingredient. We'll usually add a small bunch of additional herbs, just to balance out and spice up the flavors a bit. In our last batch we used sweet basil, arugula, dill, and water cress with pine nuts, olive oil, lemon zest, garlic and fresh Parmesan cheese. Because the cheese is very salty, we like to taste the sauce, before adding any salt. I take a small spoonful, taste it and then tell my mom, "more salt please" or "no more salt please". If I am going to add any salt, I add a small pinch at a time. You can always add more salt, but you can never take it back out. My mom lets me carefully add the ingredients
to the top edge of the food processor. I'm very careful to avoid getting my hands even remotely close to the blade at the bottom.We pulse all the ingredients together (except for the oil) and then I slowly drizzle the olive oil into the food processor, through the opening at the top. Once everything looks like it's incorporated, my mom takes the blade out so it's safe for me. She lets me scrape the sides of the bowl down with a spatula. I stir in any remaining bits into the mixture, so everything gets combined. We transfer the pesto into a bowl. Sometimes we just dip vegetables or crackers into the pesto (a tray of raw vegetable is called a crudite; we dip the vegetables in pesto and a vinaigrette that I help my mom whisk up too). Other times we spread the pesto onto bread and dress up an ordinary sandwich with it. My favorite thing to do with pesto, is to mix it into my pasta. Being true to my Italian roots, I absolutely LOVE pasta; all kinds of pasta. I recommend a good angel hair pasta for the pesto. The shallow surface area of the angel hair allows for more pesto per bite. It's delicious! If you have left over pesto, you can refrigerate it in an airtight container for up to 5 days. You can freeze it in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Note, if the left over pesto starts to turn brown, then the air has gotten to it and it's gone bad. I'd recommend tossing it. We usually don't end up with left over pesto for very long because when we make fresh pesto, we put it on everything within a few days. You can put a little spoonful in an omelette to add some flavor. You can add a teaspoon of pesto to a bowl of homemade soup.

The possibilities are endless. My number one recommendation is to simply try making some homemade sauces of your own. Sure, the store down the street sells pesto and sauces, but with a little bit of planning and preparation, you can Go Green with Fresh Herbs in your very own kitchen. Your taste buds will thank you! Your comments are welcome. Salute, Izzy

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Learn to Count While Making Pizza

Hello my fellow foodies. I've had an epiphany with regards to the benefits of cooking in the kitchen.Yes, I have a blast cooking in the kitchen. I love it. I enjoy learning about new foods. My sense of smell and taste is enhanced every time I'm in the kitchen helping my mom. With that said, a truly invaluable benefit of cooking in the kitchen is that I learn about spatial awareness and I enhance my counting skills. As a two year old, it's really important to learn how to count. My mom lets me flour the island counter while we roll and stretch out the pizza dough. She lets me spoon the sauce all over the dough. I get to sprinkle the cheese, mushrooms and olives all over the dough too. This helps me to learn about portion regulation and spatial awareness. Ya see, I cut the ingredient portions in half with my hand and then in half again before I sprinkle them onto the pizza dough. I visualize the pizza in four sections.

Then I take each of the four piles that I've divided out and sprinkle them evenly onto each section. Since I'm only two and I'm still a new cook, this helps ensure that I have enough cheese, olives and mushrooms to cover the entire pizza. I also really enjoy counting! I get to count out the pepperoni slices while I'm placing them on the pizza. I'm getting really good at counting one through twenty. Occasionally I'll eat a slice of pepperoni while I'm working, so then I have to start counting all over again. I'm a beginner ya know. I realize that if I were in a professional kitchen, I couldn't eat the ingredients as I prepared the meals, but this is a luxury of being a home cook. One more piece of advice: start with really good quality ingredients. This way, the likelihood that the end product will taste great, is pretty much a sure thing. As I always say, remember to have fun in the kitchen. Laugh a lot. Smile with the adult who is helping you in the kitchen. Always, always, always prepare your food with the ingredient of "love" in your heart. Love is the most important ingredient we can offer one another. If you can, invite a neighbor or a friend to share the meal with you. In Italian, Salute means health or well being. I hope you have good health and great wellness this week. Salute, Izzy

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Italian Biscotti are a Family Favorite

Hi, Izzy here. Have you ever tried biscotti? You probably have.

Knead Your Dough with Love

Celebrate a Job Well Done!

You may have just forgotten what they were called. They are the crunchy, oval-oblong shaped biscuit like cookies that you'll often times see in the indie, local coffee shops. They are sometimes known as the "twice baked" cookies. They were first made in Prato, a province in Tuscany, Italy. You can find biscotti in specialty markets. I think you can also buy them in bulk at larger chain stores as well. Well, I see them often, because I make them with my mom at home, a lot. They are absolutely delicious and they are not that hard to make. I'm part Italian ya know, so I love an opportunity to eat a delicious Italian treat, and celebrate my Italian heritage at the same time. You can find dozens of recipes for biscotti on the internet. I love the ones with nuts, dried fruit and fresh citrus zest (orange zest is my favorite). You can also make chocolate and nut versions. Sometimes we like to dip them in a ganache and let the chocolate harden on the cookies.
Making homemade biscotti, you end up with a really sticky dough, so flour your work surface and hands well. You portion the dough out into two or three loaves. You bake the dough and remove it from the oven so it can cool slightly. Then you reduce the oven temperature. You slice the loaves width wise into half inch pieces. You turn them cut side down on a
parchment lined baking sheet and you bake them for about 15 minutes.

Measure with precision

You remove them from the oven, flip them on the tray so the alternating cut side faces down. You bake them for about 15 additional minutes. I let me mom deal with all the hot oven stuff. She always asks me to stand back while she's moving the trays in and out of the hot oven. It's important to follow the rules of the kitchen, since I'm only two. I recommend that my peers and fellow toddlers out there, listen to their parents carefully in the kitchen. You'll keep your parents happy. You'll stay safe. As a result, you'll end up doing more cooking in the kitchen and having more fun.
My favorite things to do with biscotti are to eat them and to pass them out to friends and neighbors, so they can enjoy them as well. My recommendation to you is to get in the kitchen with your parents. Try something new. Biscotti might have seemed difficult before you read my post, but now don't they seem totally approachable? Cook with confidence and laugh a lot while you're in the kitchen! Cheers, Izzy

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Make Homemade Tortillas

Hi, Izzy here. We like to make homemade tortillas in our house. They make the house smell great. Everyone can get involved. I like to help my mom knead the tortilla dough after we mix the ingredients together. Then we section the dough into little balls. I love rolling the dough into little balls. It's fun! Then we flatten the little tortilla balls in the cast iron tortilla press. We then throw them from hand to hand in the air (to lighten the dough a bit). Then we put them on the heated comal to cook them. My my mom handles flipping them on the comal for me (since it's hot). I always try to adhere to the safety rules in the kitchen, since I'm only two. Some day though, I'll look forward to flipping the tortillas on the comal myself. It's fun to think up fun fillings for the tortillas. Sometimes my mom
slow cooks pork ribs to fill the tortillas with. Sometimes we just fill them with rice and beans. My favorite thing to do is to enjoy a nice warm tortilla, hot off the comal, with a little bit of real butter. Yum! Check out the recipe on the back of the Maseca package. I've had some of my friends over to help me make tortillas too. I had them bring various toppings and we had a tortilla party. Most of all - have fun and spend lots of time laughing in the kitchen! Share some of your stories with me in the comments section. Have you ever helped your parents
make homemade tortillas? Cheers,  Izzy.

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Rainbow Cookies that Sparkle

Hi, Izzy here. I want to show other youngsters out there how to have a blast with cookie dough. My mom helped me make a basic sugar cookie dough recently (you can find a number of easy sugar cookie recipes online). I had to adhere to mom's warning to avoid eating the delicious dough until the cookies were baked (due to the raw eggs in the dough). Your parent can help you find a recipe with or without eggs in it, but I recommend waiting to eat the

dough until the cookies are fully baked, either way. After our cookie dough was completely mixed together, we divided the dough into 4 sections. We mixed in a pinch of edible food color gel to each section (we ended up with a red section, a blue section, a green section and a yellow section). We pulled little pieces of each of the colored dough sections and rolled the gathered dough into little balls. We placed the little dough balls on a cookie sheet and baked them. Each cookie turned into a unique piece of artwork. Some of the cookies reminded me of impressionist paintings I had seen in

my mom's art books. We also added sprinkles to some of them to enhance their sparkle. We had an absolute blast making these cookies. I can't wait to make them again soon. My suggestion to other kids out there is to one - wash your hands first, two - get your hands dirty in the kitchen, three - laugh a lot while you're doing it. Laughing a lot makes your caretaker smile too! Oh, and most importantly, share the delicious cookies with your friends and neighbors. Nothing draws people together more, than a shared snack or a meal.

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You're Never Too Young, Thanks Mom.

Hi, Izzy here again. Just a reminder that I'm two years old. Today I was reflecting on how grateful I am that my mom exposed me to the kitchen when I was younger. Here is a picture of me at 6 months old. She used to cut fresh vegetables and fruits and let me smell them and suck on them (big pieces of course, so I wouldn't choke on them). She also supervised me the entire time. I remember smelling the large, freshly diced, rounds of yellow and green zucchini, carrots, parsnips, purple potatoes and sweet potatoes. I liked the tangible aspect of holding onto the different vegetables. I also liked being able to smell the sweetness and uniqueness of each vegetable. Plus, she started teaching me the various colors: purple, green, yellow, orange, red, etc. In fact, "purple" was one of my very first words. My mom used to also set cooking utensils and objects on my highchair tray. I used to grab the measuring spoons, measuring cups and little bowls. I always enjoyed sucking on a freshly picked lemon. Anyways, I just thought I'd blog again today about my love and passion for food, which was engendered largely by my mom, when I was only 6 months old. I've always enjoyed smelling freshly made food in my kitchen at home. It just makes me feel "at home". Thanks again, mom. I love you. Izzy.

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