Photo: Sarah Shatz on Food52

As D-Day approaches, I find myself increasingly relying on old standbys and other people’s recipes, as opposed to developing new ones of my own. I just don’t have the wherewithal to stand in the kitchen experimenting and tweaking for hours. And I anticipate that this may continue for a couple of months, as I get settled into life with the new ChowBaby.
You know me… I won’t stop whipping up my own creations but, in the coming weeks, I also hope to vet and share with you easy, family-friendly recipes perfect to get you through a super busy time. One recipe source I’ll definitely be scouring is Food52, a recipe crowd sourcing project by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. This Eggplant and Tomato Curry is one of the first things that caught my eye on the site.
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(Photo: Wusthof Kitchen Shears)

I recently posted a call to organize our kitchens together, and going through our kitchen gadgetry seems the perfect place to start. After all, the family cook’s kitchen may churn out food just as good as any other cook, but we work differently. With little time. With tots nipping at our heels. With the need to whip up one meal that can satisfy the ChowMama and ChowPapa while still accommodating ChowBabies at different eating stages.
With that in mind, the criteria I use to measure my kitchen gadgets are:

• Easy to reach: I can’t be bothered grabbing a step stool or unpacking a cabinet to get something in the way back
• Easy to clean: I can’t be bothered cleaning up a million separate pieces, especially by hand
• Cut down cooking or prep time: flourishes are nice when I decide—and arrange—to take the time but, otherwise, it’s all about saving time

Two tools that best meet these criteria are my kitchen shears and microplane.
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If you’ve been reading ChowMama for a while, you may have noticed a slow—but steady!—increase in sweets recipes over the last few months. I’d like to say it’s my “everything in moderation” philosophy in action as Isaac gets older but, really, it’s all about my pregnancy! Isaac and the ChowPapa have just gotten lucky as a result!
Most of my recent baked goodies made use of seasonal fruit, like my Sour Cream Peach Pie and Cinnamon Cardamom Cherry Crisp (both of which can be made with frozen fruit now that summer is over). Others, like these Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, are simple classics that are fun to make and enjoy with young kids. After all, once you know the deliciousness of homemade chocolate chip cookies, who wants the processed packaged kind?!
In contrast, my latest concoction, this Apple & Candied Bacon Upside Down Cake, is totally over the top. All I have to say is: I’m carrying in my uterus a child who could easily live on the outside. I want what I want and my appetite knows no bounds!
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Food News, Things We Crave, Green Your Eats, Tips, Tools & Techniques, and the Weekly Roundtable (a roundup of our most recent posts).
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I’d never made kugel before last week and decided that Rosh Hashanah was the perfect occasion to give the (usually) noodle casserole a try. In the spirit of tradition, the plan was to make a sweet kugel for dessert. But I quickly realized that making a brisket, veggies, a side and dessert was just too much for this 8-months along lady. Since bucking tradition is not an issue in this house, I switched gears and whipped up this savory kugel that served as a combo veggie-starch side dish for our Rosh Hashanah brisket.
Kugel is amazingly quick to make and so delish! Even better, it’s easily made with ingredients that can be fed to almost any eater in the house, from 8 months and up. I can’t wait to make a sweet version. In the meantime, this quick and hearty casserole will definitely become a part of my fall and winter repertoire. Maybe yours too?
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Both!
I gotta admit that I wasn’t immediately drawn to the freeze dried fruit I recently spied at my local Trader Joe’s. (I think it’s all of those freeze dried ice cream fueled family trips to Cape Canaveral.) But then I got to thinking about all of the breakfast cereals that make use of the space age snack and, in true ChowMama fashion, thought: I can use this to make my own lower sugar cereal in all of 5 seconds. Other ideas quickly followed—check them out after the jump and weigh in with your ideas for how to use freeze dried fruit!
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