This week is all about the Best Of ChowMama 2009! To help ensure that you begin 2010 with a recipe box loaded with quick and healthy recipes that your whole family will love, I’ve hand selected my favorites (recipes that I return to over and over again) and the most popular recipes as measured by traffic and comments (ones that worked out well for me and you).

Phew! 2009 was a busy year filled with lots of ChowMama goodness. I hope this week’s picks help kick off a delicious 2010 while we gear up for a new year of recipes, tips and discussions. To end the “best of” extravaganza, I’m highlighting a few posts that fall under the “parenting” header. Instead of highlighting a recipe, these posts focus on a tip that (hopefully) makes cooking for your family easier, a way of thinking that (maybe) sparks a shift towards more inspired eating, or a topic that (with any luck) gets a thoughtful debate started. These are my favorite posts to write. I hope you enjoy them, too. Let me know if you do!

Food & Parenting
More Avocado Please
*as i giddily cut open a perfectly ripe avocado one day, it occurred to me that everyone might not enjoy these delicious and super healthy fruits. how could that be? maybe it was a simple matter of needing ideas for how to use a new ingredient, or how to use a familiar ingredient in new ways. either way, i hoped that this post would help spread the avocado joy. i hope to write more posts like these in 2010—would that be useful?

A Tasty & Healthy Halloween (Yes, It’s Possible!)
*i use the word “healthy” a lot, and maybe i should clarify (duh!). to me, healthy isn’t necessarily about cooking in the style of cooking light (though sometimes it is). it’s more about an approach to food that encourages a love of natural, whole foods across the entire family, members big and small. sometimes it means making muffins with minimal sugar, flax seed and applesauce. other times it means making decadent, full fat cookies instead of buying packaged ones. this balance is an especially hard one to maintain during halloween, which is why i was thrilled to come up with a few helpful ideas.

Parent-Friendly Cocktail Party Planning
*this was one of my very first “parenting” posts! i remember vividly thinking that i wanted to establish, for myself and ChowMama readers, that parents can entertain, even cook for a crowd, without losing their minds. this was my way of helping make that a reality. i didn’t have a holiday cocktail party this year—my littlest chowbaby was still way too little—but i did cook tons for the holidays using some of the ideas laid out here (more on that next week).

Why Hiding Vegetables Misses the Point
*my hot topic of the year, this one always gets the conversations started. in fact, this is the second (more eloquent) post that i wrote on hiding veggies. see the first one, too, especially for the lively discussion in the comments. there’s not much to add—i say it all in the post(s).

Organic vs Local, What’s a Parent to Choose?
*to be honest, i wrote this post in a bit of a huff. i was frustrated at not having a clear answer to which was better for kids, organic or local foods, when i was so entrenched in thinking about the related issues. how could i not have a clear POV with all of the research and thinking i’d done about food, feeding, organic and local? and, if i didn’t have a clear POV, how could those of you who don’t have the same time to devote to thinking about such things. it’s madness! and that’s all i set out to write—an exasperated, “WTF!” i had no idea that it would be such a popular post and get such great conversation started here (and also on Twitter).