Feeding the Tiny Dictators

I'm pretty lucky, my kids will eat most anything. But the challenge at our house hasn't really been getting food into they boys. For me it is getting food in front of the boys before 9pm.

I work full time and after getting home with Big Dog, relaxing for a beat then heading off to the kitchen, I am always struggling to get home made, healthy and tasty food on the table before bedtime. I like to cook, and I am no stranger to kitchen experimentation, so I've decided to keep track of the culinary successes and failures at our house here on this spankin' new blog.

The recipes I post will try to balance a few factors:
1. ease of preparation- while I am not adverse to complex recipes, most week night meals need to be easy for a nearly brain dead mama to prepare

2. general deliciousness- I try not to cater to the preconceptions about what kids like, but I also don't force the kids to eat anything they have tasted and rejected. I also require that food served in my house be tasty to adults. I won't eat processed dreck just because the kids like it. I like variety, not only in ingredients but in the resulting flavors.

3. nutritional soundness- Occasionally I will commit some other kind of sin against the wisdom of a balanced diet and let this one slide, but my general goal is to create meals that meet the nutritional demands of growing kids while managing the nutritional needs to keep my growing ass in check.

4. faceless- When my friend used to travel abroad, he had a hard time communicating his vegetarian preference. He finally simplified his questions to ask "Did it have a face?" when offered food. I use this term here to express my preference for vegetarian options. Generally my meals are vegetarian because I am a "Seattle Vegetarian". From what I've been told, this classification means I eat some fish, but no other farm friends. While the boys do eat meat, I don't usually cook it, so don't look for any fantastic beef recipes here, although you might find a good take on salmon from time to time.

5. shopping friendly- I like to buy fresh local produce, a variety of herbs and spices and explore new ingredients. What I don't like is to have to hit 5 specialty grocery stores just to get all of the required ingredients for one meal. That doesn't mean I won't do it from time to time, but those meals are not as high on my list of servables as those that don't require a day off and a tank of gas to prepare.

And with those goals in mind, I set forth to populate this blog with the tasty things we eat at the Dog house. Enjoy!