Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

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).
You’ve been waiting for today, haven’t you? Healthy sweet treats and desserts it is. Enjoy! Tomorrow is the last day of this “best of” extravaganza and we’ll delve into parenting posts, because how we feed our families is central to how we raise our kids.
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Just yesterday I posted that I was sitting Thanksgiving out. But by now you probably know that I didn’t mean that literally. Right? I mean, I couldn’t keep from cooking all together. That’s just silly! I just meant that I’d make a little something something… like this Apple Cranberry Chutney.

Making a cranberry sauce was a risky choice. See, my mom isn’t that into cooking. She doesn’t have recipes to pass down, nor does she have any signature recipes. Well… except cranberry sauce, which is why I probably should have left it alone. But I couldn’t help myself. It’s so easy to make and, even though her recipe will always be the holiday recipe, I had to entertain some ideas I had for making it my own.
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Photo: Martha Stewart

I’m having such fun reading about all of the mouth watering Thanksgiving preparations happening in the homes of my favorite food bloggers. Tofu-less vegetarian feasts, turkey a hundred ways, roasted veggies of all kinds and tons of ridiculously delicious desserts. No such preparations are happening here, though. I’m a little disappointed, but it’s by choice. I’ll be hosting a low key Christmas and also cooking for Hanukkah, so I’m happy to sit this one out and cuddle with my ChowBabies while my mama serves up a feast.
In lieu of offering new Thanksgiving recipes, I’ve pulled together a handful of my tried and true ChowMama dishes that are perfect for the holidays. As always, these are quick, easy, healthy and will work for everyone at the table, whether 6-months or 60-years old. Enjoy!
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I love avocado. I’m envious of folks who live in places like Southern California where the fruit is local and abundant. Instead, I settle for avocados shipped thousands of miles that could stunt double for rocks. (Thankfully, they soften after some time on my counter.) Not perfect, but still pretty good. And the best part, avocados are super healthy. A nutritional powerhouse, they are especially good for your heart thanks to oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat that may help to lower cholesterol.
Avocado is also a perfect family food. It can be fed to children as young as 6 months. In fact, it was the first solid food my oldest ChowBaby tried! It’s great on its own and mixes well with other early foods like banana, cereal, tofu, peach, and pears. And—yes, there’s more!—you can freeze avocado, mashed or in slices. Just expect a little browning (it doesn’t impact flavor).
Here are 6 easy, delicious ways to enjoy avocado.
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Photo: Stetted

With a new baby around, people can’t help but come by with food. And that’s A-OK by me. In fact, it’s part of the unspoken, “welcome home, baby” contract! Having a baby in October means a serious wealth of apples. People can’t help but pick them up at the market or share some of the fruits of their apple picking labor. While having tons of fresh, delicious apples around is great, we’re having a hard time keeping up. When I noticed a bunch starting to look more sad than happy, I started dreaming up all the delicious things I could bake.
Then reality set in… with a snacker on my hands (breast feeding moms, you know the kind: the kids that want to latch and eat, and eat and latch for most of the day!), I’m not yet up to using my free time on big baking projects.  So I set out to make something quick and easy that would still give us that warm apple pie feeling: Homemade Apple Butter!
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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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