Kitchen Helper

I'm pretty sure I've never posted a recipe or talked about my cooking on this blog, but yesterday I had a good cooking day that I just felt like sharing. Lately, I've been preparing most of our dinner meals during Jake's afternoon naps because it's really challenging for me to prepare the meal while he's awake vying for my attention. So immediately after I laid Jake down for his nap yesterday, I got to work. This meal idea came from two sources. The first was the leftover fresh vegetables I had from the veggies and dip I brought to a Super Bowl party. I had fresh broccoli, cauliflower, red bell pepper, carrot, cucumber and tomatoes. All these fresh veggies were staring at me from my fridge, and I wondered what I could do with them so that my family would actually want to eat them. Well, the answer came from source #2; a chef on the Today's Show highlighted kid friendly, healthy meals and he made a fried rice dish. Perfect! I love fried rice, Kevin loves fried rice and hopefully, Jake would too. I rarely cook anything Asian and have actually never cooked fried rice at home, so here was my first attempt.

First, I cooked cubed chicken breast seasoned with Lawry's Seasoned Pepper in a skillet. After the chicken was thoroughly cooked, I removed it from the pan and set it aside. Meanwhile, I cooked 6 servings of brown rice (I definitely wanted leftovers, and I had lots of veggies, so therefore I made lots of rice). I cut red bell pepper, onion and carrot into small pieces. For the broccoli and cauliflower, I decided to use my mini food processor. I wanted those veggies really small, because Kevin doesn't especially like them. I sauteed all the veggies with some minced garlic, added in the rice, cooked chicken, then a couple scrambled eggs cooked separately. I stirred it all together with soy sauce and pepper to taste. Voila!...Wednesday night dinner (plus enough leftovers for lunches)... I was especially proud of this dish because I'm finding it hard to always incorporate veggies in my meals, especially ones that Kevin doesn't particularly like (like broccoli and cauliflower). I really liked this because you could tell those veggies were in the dish, but you could not pick them out and they tasted good blended with everything else. Later, however, I did have a conversation with my friend, Chez, about the problem of the flavors in fried rice blending together rather than being able to distinguish the separate tastes. I agree that this is a downside to stir frying all the veggies together, especially having some cut so small. If you're willing and have the time, I'm sure the taste would be better if everything was cooked separately, then added. For me, though, it was good enough to cook the meat, eggs and veggies separate.

With the dinner meal out of the way waiting in the fridge for Daddy to come home, and Jake up from his nap, I was in the mood to make some banana bread. I LOVE banana bread, and only made it for the first time a couple weeks ago (baking is NOT my thing). I got the recipe from this blog. It's the "Banana Bread" recipe found under the breads link. I decreased the sugar and butter, and I think it's still scrumpious. As I earlier said, it's hard to cook with Jake around, so I tried something new. I wheeled his highchair in the kitchen, and he quickly became my little helper...
Of course, his best helping right now is keeping himself entertained with some kitchen tools. Although, I do have big plans of him really being my little helper. I want to do what I can to turn him into a man who can cook...

Here's the final product. Also, the original recipe says bake for 1 hour. Mine only baked for 50 minutes, and I still think it could have been reduced 5-10 minutes. Maybe because I used a dark pan...either way, beware of cooking time...

It looks and smells so good, we just couldn't wait until breakfast to dig in!