Hearty chili is a cool-weather favorite, but lighten it up with mild green chilis, white beans, and chicken, and it's something that satisfies year-round. It's a lot quicker to make than old-school beef chili, it's healthy, and the kids will eat it, too. Part of the fun is adding a variety of toppings to the finished dish. You can substitute ground turkey for the chicken if you want. It's good either way.
Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog A Family that Eats Together, where she shares meal plans and recipes and family dining ideas that will please foodies and children alike. Nicole is also the creator of the new Little Froglet line of children's activewear. Check out Nicole's meal plan for this week.
This week's featured lunchbox is for the kid who desires everything sweet and for the parent who wants to make their lunch healthy.
Our family loves to explore Mt. Tamalpais. Usually, we pack a picnic for lunch during our hikes, but on our last visit we decided to take the kids to the Mountain Home Inn, one of the few restaurants up on the mountain. It was a gorgeous, clear day, and we knew the views from the restaurant's deck would be amazing.
The Mountain Home Inn has been a fixture on Mt. Tam for a century, and it's a great place to stop for breakfast, lunch, or dinner before or after your Mt. Tam adventure. Of course we opted to sit outside on the deck, taking in the spectacular views of Marin County and relaxing in the shade of the patio umbrellas. Our friendly and attentive server brought us a bottle of water infused with mint as we perused the menu.
The Mountain home inn offers a variety of dishes, from bratwurst on a bun with house-made potato chips (a nod to the inn's beginnings as a Swiss/German roadhouse) and burgers to fresh pastas and a vegetable frittata. There's also a children's menu, which is offered up with crayons for coloring, that includes favorites like chicken fingers and fries, kids' pasta with butter and parmesan, french toast, and more.
Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog A Family that Eats Together, where she shares meal plans and recipes and family dining ideas that will please foodies and children alike. Nicole is also the creator of the new Little Froglet line of children's activewear. Check out Nicole's meal plan for this week.
Most kids love chicken nuggets. I am not preferential to store bought nuggets for a multitude of reasons but I think they are great when homemade. Here is a quick and easy recipe for chicken nuggets that your kids will love. My son couldn’t stop telling everyone at school how his mom made him chicken nuggets. He was so proud and I am sure yours will be too!
Quick tip: Make 2 dozen and keep them refrigerated to use them as you need to. These keep for 4–5 days.
Sometimes it seems that people make things in slow cookers just to see if it can be done—and of course be edible, too. One of the slow cooker recipes I've always been skeptical of—untiil now—is lasagna. It's possible to create a tasty lasagna in the slow cooker with a minimum of work and mess, and the results are delicious.
You do sacrifice the crispy, bubbly top that you get from the oven-baked version, but then this version is something that you can quickly make for a weeknight meal. This recipe is for a meatless slow cooker lasagna that's packed with flavor from fresh herbs and garlic.
It's apple season, and after a couple apple-picking outings and receiving gifts from our neighbor's apple trees, we've realized that we have a real surplus of apples in our kitchen. What's an easy way to use up some of the fruit? Applesauce, of course.
Homemade applesauce is very easy to make, and really beats that stuff you get in a jar at the supermarket.
Serve it to the kids as a snack, or as a side dish with potato pancakes, pork roast, and more. You can also use it as an ingredient to make other tasty treats like applesauce muffins.
Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog A Family that Eats Together, where she shares meal plans and recipes and family dining ideas that will please foodies and children alike. Nicole is also the creator of the new Little Froglet line of children's activewear.
Dragging myself out of bed, it’s time for the daily rush out of the house while also having to make breakfast and lunch all at once. I am so thankful for all the creative products out there to help me make lunch for my son, which I know, will be fun to eat.
My favorite lunchbox tool is the bento box. It fits neatly into my son’s standard lunchbox and I can stuff it full of yummy treats for him to eat. I have found that the easiest way to make a sandwich for him is to make tortilla wraps. They are easy to hold and the combinations of things that you can wrap are endless. I also love silicon cupcake wrappers, which I fill with goodies that would otherwise go everywhere not to mention they cheer up a lunchbox just like that!
I know some people who say that pizza is one of those dishes that's always better when you dine out. I respectfully disagree however. While that might be true for topping-laden old-school American pizza, we've been successfully making some pretty wonderful Italian-style pizzas right here at home. Unfortunately, we lack a wood-burning pizza oven in the backyard (someday…), but we get some good results in a regular home oven with a little preparation.
Our latest home pizza night was inspired by the surplus of heirloom tomatoes from our vegetable garden. The tomato plants seem to be going full throttle now, and we have more tomatoes than we know what to do with. Pizza seemed a great way to help with the problem!
Pizza Dough
The refigerated pizza dough sold by Trader Joe's is actually very good, and we use it all the time, especially if we want to make pizza on the spur of the moment. Making your own pizza crust isn't all that challenging, though, so if you have the time, go for it! The results are usually quite good, and you can even freeze extra dough to use later.
A few weeks ago, we had a fabulous time at the first-ever Farm-to-Table Dinner at Novato's Farm Girl Nursery. The nursery, a labor of love by Novato resident Lisa Marvier, has really taken off as a local resource for fresh produce, seeds, plants, and food education. Our kids even attended one of the nursery's summer camps and had a blast.
The Farm-to-Table Dinner featured five amazing courses prepared by Marin chef Suzanne Griffin, as well as wonderful conversation with some really interesting people. Dinner guests chatted over wine before dinner and toured the beautiful Farm Girl Nursery property, where we even met some goats and horses. Later, we all sat down for dinner outdoors at a rustic table. As the name implies, all the courses, from the opening Caprese salad to the the closing berry tart with a date-and-nut crust, featured ingredients sourced from Farm Girl Nursery's gardens.
While everything was delicious, my favorite course was the green Farm Girl gazpacho served as the second course. It was so fresh and cooling (the dinner was on one of those rare really hot days this summer), and was a wonderful amalgam of different flavors. Chef Suzanne was gracious enough to share the recipe with me, and it follows below, so you too can amaze your dinner guests with something this good!
Hearty chili is a cool-weather favorite, but lighten it up with mild green chilis, white beans, and chicken, and it's something that satisfies year-round. It's a lot quicker to make than old-school beef chili, it's healthy, and the kids will eat it, too. Part of the fun is adding a variety of toppings to the finished dish. You can substitute ground turkey for the chicken if you want. It's good either way.
Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog 
Our family loves to explore 
Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog 
Sometimes it seems that people make things in slow cookers just to see if it can be done—and of course be edible, too. One of the slow cooker recipes I've always been skeptical of—untiil now—is lasagna. It's possible to create a tasty lasagna in the slow cooker with a minimum of work and mess, and the results are delicious.
It's apple season, and after 
Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog 
I know some people who say that pizza is one of those dishes that's always better when you dine out. I respectfully disagree however. While that might be true for topping-laden old-school American pizza, we've been successfully making some pretty wonderful Italian-style pizzas right here at home. Unfortunately, we lack a wood-burning pizza oven in the backyard (someday…), but we get some good results in a regular home oven with a little preparation.
A few weeks ago, we had a fabulous time at the first-ever Farm-to-Table Dinner at Novato's 
