Guest Post of Homemade Pop Tarts from The Sophisticated Gourmet

A week or two ago, I received a message from Jennifer, asking if I would like to write a guest post for her site. Of course I wasn’t as wary as I would be if some random person would have asked me! I actually wasn’t wary at all. I immediately accepted her offer and began thinking about what recipe that I’d share. After some brainstorming, I immediately thought of pop tarts.

Why pop tarts? Well, isn’t it fun to re-create healthier versions of foods that contain a ton of unpronounceable artificial ingredients that most people have never heard of before? Sure it is! Pop tarts are favored by many kids, teens, and adults across the country, and when re-created, this breakfast snack tastes much better than the cardboard-y brand named one’s.



A basic pate brisee recipe (pie dough recipe), organic jam (or organic preserves), and a drizzle of icing makes this treat all worth while. Moms, the best thing about making pop tarts from scratch is that you know what you’re giving to your children. There's no artificial ingredients, and you control what goes in these pop tarts.

For this recipe, I used one of my favorite go-to pate brisee recipes which I happened to memorize. Call me obsessed, but the recipe is awesome! It results in a flaky, yet shortbread cookie like dough, which I like. By no means am I saying that this should be your only go-to recipe, as there are many wonderful pie dough recipes out there.

Pop Tart Recipe Makes 5 pop tarts If you decide that you’d want more than five pop tarts, simply double the recipe below and make sure that the pie dough (pate brisee) is divided evenly, as you’ll need to roll both of them out separately.

Ingredients:
Pop tarts: -
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (Using regular APF is also fine)
1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, just softened, cut in half-inch pieces
3 1/2 tablespoons chilled water
Jam / Preserves
* I used organic raspberry preserves, but strawberry, blueberry, and other flavors are sure to work. OR if you are obsessed with nutella, you can fill the pop tarts with that, instead. - Milk

Icing:
¼ cup powdered sugar
About 1tblspn Milk
¼ tspn Vanilla extract, almond extract, or any other extracts

Preparation:
1. Sift flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl; add 2 tablespoons of the butter. Blend in a mixer until the dough resembles coarse cornmeal or blend with two hands / pastry blender. Add the rest of the butter; mix everything until the biggest pieces look like large sized peas.

2. Slowly add in water, stir, then slowly add in more until the dough just holds together. Toss with hands, letting it fall through your fingers, until it’s ropy with some dry patches. If dry patches predominate, add another tablespoon water. Keep tossing until you can roll the dough into a ball. Flatten into a 4-inch-round disk; refrigerate. After at least 30 minutes, remove; let soften so it’s malleable but still cold. Smooth cracks at edges. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out into a 10 X 12 inch rectangle. Cut the dough into 10 equal pieces. If you have scraps, you can re-roll the dough.

3. Once the dough has been evenly cut, place about 1 teaspoon to 1 ½ teaspoons of jam / preserves on five of the sliced dough pieces, being sure to leave at least 1 ½ cm of space all around.

4. Place the 5 empty dough pieces on top of the other, being sure not to squish down the preserves, or you’ll have a big mess on your hands. Close the edges together, by using the tines of a fork. If you’d rather have a more rustic look, don’t trim the edges of the unbaked pop tarts. If you’d rather have your pop tarts a little more presentable, simply trim the edges with a knife or pastry scraper.

5. Place the unbaked pop tarts on a parchement lined baking sheet. Using the fork, make even holes in each pop tart, making sure you don’t go through the second layer of dough. Brush each pop tart with milk and freeze for 20 minutes. While the pop tarts are freezing, preheat the oven to 400ºF.

6. After 20 minutes, place the tray of pop tarts in the center rack of the oven, and bake for 15 - 20 minutes, or until nicely browned.

7. As the pop tarts are baking, prepare the icing by placing ¼ of powdered sugar in a bowl with about ¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract (or your favorite extract) and 1 tablespoon of milk. Mix well and set aside. 8. Once the pop tarts are done baking, drizzle each with the icing, and enjoy!

-Kamran Siddiqi
Author of The Sophisticated Gourmet

Guest Post - Sharing Cultural Foods with Family by La Fuji Mama

While I am away at Blissdom, I asked some of my favorite food lovers and bloggers to contribute some of their awesomeness to my blog and first up is Rachel of La Fuji Mama. Rachel and I started to communicate frequently when we were both nominated for the Foodbuzz Award for Best Family Food Blog and even since then, we are inseparable, well, virtually that is.

Hello Savor the Thyme readers! I'm excited to be here today with you. Jennifer asked me to share with you some tips and tricks for sharing cultural foods with kids. Let’s just get something out of the way first—I am NOT an expert in this arena, but I do think I have some unique insight on the topic that I can share!

My two girls are still very young (the oldest is 3 and the youngest is 1) and are still forming their palates, so I know that I’ll have a lot to learn in the years ahead. We’ve had some unique food situations in our family. My oldest daughter (who is known as Squirrel on my blog) was born in Tokyo, Japan. The solid foods during the first part of her life consisted mostly of things like mushrooms, root vegetables, rice, fish, and miso soup—the items that were readily available in the culture that we were living in.

When we moved back to the US, Squirrel went on a bit of a hunger strike. She would not eat much of anything until I was able to get to a Japanese market and buy the ingredients needed to make some of the foods she was used to. For her, the food in the US was foreign food to some extent.

In contrast, my younger daughter (who is known as Bug on my blog) was born in the US and has had a somewhat different experience with food during her first year. Because of the experience parenting in a different country and because of my own upbringing, I’ve learned a few things about expanding a child’s palate.

Ok, let’s start out with a few general observations:
- First off, some kids, no matter what you do, are just going to be picky. You can help them by giving them choices and introducing them to new things, but it may never make a difference.

- What our children like and don’t like is hugely influenced by the “food culture” in our individual homes. What is the food culture like in your home?

- Start young! When kids are young they don’t know whether or not something should be “foreign.” Almost every meal is a new adventure for them. It is much harder to change their food habits later on when they have gotten use to certain flavors and textures.

- Sometimes it takes a long time for a child to learn to like something. Don’t stop trying! Squirrel has never been a big lover of bread. Until recently she wouldn’t touch a sandwich with a ten foot pole. The other day she consumed half of a tuna fish sandwich. This was no small triumph for me—it took all three years of her young life to reach this point!

Now for a few specific methods I’ve used to introduce new/cultural foods into my kids’ diet:

- Experiment with the time of day when you introduce a new food. I have found that my kids are more receptive, and much more likely to like a new food when I serve it at lunch. By dinnertime, my kids tend to be crankier and just want things that are already familiar.

- Add foreign elements to your child’s favorite food. Does he/she love spaghetti and meatballs? Next time, try making it with udon noodles or soba noodles! Does he/she love chicken noodle soup? Next time, try adding some freshly grated ginger or lemongrass to the broth for a Southeast Asian twist.

- Get your child to help with the preparation of a new dish. That way the new dish can be a complete sensory exploration. You can talk about what the ingredients look like, what they smell like, etc. Your child can also be proud of their finished product, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll want to eat it too!

- Get creative! Bug is too young to wield a spoon or chopsticks to eat miso soup by herself, so I put broth into a sippy cup and she drinks her soup.

- Implement a rule that your child has to at least taste everything before they pass judgment. Growing up I had a very strong aversion to yams, but my parents insisted that I have a small bite every year when they were served for Thanksgiving dinner. I continued to implement the same rule into my adult years, and it wasn’t until we moved to Japan the 1st time and I discovered roasted sweet potatoes that I got over my issues with yams. I now love yams, and figured out that I just really don’t care for them prepared with brown sugar and marshmallows. I would still be hating yams if it weren’t for my parents’ rule.

- Never assume that your child won’t like something, you are just setting them up for failure. It constantly surprises me what my children will eat. Sometimes I serve something, and in my mind I think, “There’s no way they’re going to like this,” but I serve it as if it’s the most normal dish on the planet. It’s usually the dishes I most expect them to reject that end up being the ones they like the most.

Here are a few Japanese dishes that you might consider trying with your kids at home:
- Soy Sauce Eggs (shoyu tamago)
- Rice balls (onigiri)
- Miso soup (you can put familiar ingredients like chicken and potatoes in the broth!)
- Chicken and rice porridge (tori zosui)
- Potstickers (gyoza)

* If you’d like to read a wonderful book about a father and his efforts to raise his daughter as an adventurous eater, you should read Hungry Monkey, by Matthew Amster-Burton . It is hilarious, inspiring, informative, and full of wonderful recipes to try with your kids at home.

You can read my review of the book and see an example of one of the recipes here.

Broccoli and Squash Macaroni & Cheese: 30 Days 30 Ways

Happy Monday Everyone,

I am taking part in the 30 days, 30 ways with Macaroni & Cheese. You can find my contribution of Broccoli and Squash Macaroni & Cheese today. Enjoy and indulge.

12 Days of Sharing Virtual Cookie Swap - Sweet Potato Oatmeal Cookies with Orange Icing

For many years now, a close friend and I have shared the tradition of giving for Christmas. We usually donate to a non-profit that helps to feed children and families that are in need of food. We then share the information about that agency in our Christmas cards to each other.

Doesn't it feel great to give and share, especially this time of year? Doesn't it also feel great when you show and share love via food? Well, you can do both in the Share Our Strength 12 Days of Sharing fundraising campaign and virtual cookie swap hosted by In Jennie’s Kitchen.

Here's how you can help:
1. Donate any amount (really anything) and/or
2. Submit an entry to the virtual cookie jar and post about this campaign.

Another unique feature to this campaign is that other bloggers serve as co-hosts (today I am co-hosting) to help spread the awareness to all of our readers. And if simply giving by posting or by donating isn't enough, there are great prizes!




My cookie recipe came about back in October when I could not find a can of Pumpkin Puree anywhere so I decided to make some sweet potato puree and utilize it to make cookies. These really are more of a moist cake type cookie and are not really sweet enough for my family until I add the glaze.

Sweet Potato Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients: 18 cookies
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup old fashioned oats

1 cup 1% milk
1 whole egg
6 oz cup non-fat plain yogurt

3/4 cup brown sugar
1 sweet potato puree, cooked until tender, peeled and pureed (1 lg. sweet potato)
optional: 1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Peel the sweet potato and chop into small chunks. Place into a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and microwave for 6-8 minutes (until you can easily pierce with fork). Set aside to cool slightly.

3. Meanwhile, combine the following into a bowl: flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, oats and the (optional) flax seeds.

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, yogurt and sugar.

5. Place the sweet potato into a food processor with 1/3 cup of milk and puree. Add the remaining milk as needed while pureeing . Fold 1 cup of the puree into the 'wet' mixture.

6. Add the dry mixture into the wet mixture and combine well.

7. Place tablespoons of the mixture about 2 inches apart and bake for approximately 8-9 minutes.

Icing: (a rough recipe as I did not write it down)

1-2 cups confectioner's sugar

Orange Juice

Water

Place sugar into a bowl; add 1 tablespoons of orange juice and mix. For more moisture, add water, a teaspoon at a time and mix well. Drizzle over cookies and allow to set. Consume and smile.

Please vote for my 'Dancing Frittata' video by rating with STARS. The dancing starts about minute 2:20.

Do you know what 100 calories looks like?

A few weeks back I typed 'food and health blog' into google and guess what I found: Food and Health.com and I knew immediately that I wanted Judy to be a guest blogger. Judy is is the president of Food and Health Communications, a private publishing company dedicated to "making nutrition science edible." She has a passion for creating healthful dishes that are delicious and easy to prepare and for competing in half-ironman triathlons! To learn more about Judy, please visit her bio.

Food and Health is wealth of information and recipes. There are even newsletters and handouts that you can download for free so head on over and learn more. Judy was gracious enough to send me some great links to share and told me to let her know which post I would like to feature so without further ado: 100 Calorie Snacks - in Pictures

"Take a look at our new poster - 100 Calorie Snack Packs. We were so surprised at the difference in size between the portions of calorie-dense “snacks” like cookies, bagels, donuts and chips, and all of the fruits and nonfat light yogurt. For 100 calories of carrots, apples, grapes, oranges, celery, berries and a banana you get to eat a larger portion than with cookies.
And here is one pic we took for fun - 100 calories of lettuce! Imagine if most people chose that more often than chips! They would not even be able to finish 100 calories of lettuce in most cases.
And that is precisely our point with this poster - which item would make you feel more full? It is not easy to eat just 100 calories of chips - but it is more likely that you will feel full after just one apple which is only 70-80 calories!"

Thank you Judy for guest blogging and educating us about what we should be eating.

Wheat Berry Waldorf Salad: An introduction to grains

My name is Janina and I am thankful for a fun and energetic friend like Jen who has let me guest-post. I have found my passion which is being a life coach! While furthering my life coaching skills, I have experienced personal growth and learned better how to serve others. I hope you enjoy my guest-blog.

What are Wheat Berries?
“Do you have a busy schedule? If you are like most people I know, there is always something going on. I work full time and don't have a lot of time to cook a nice meal when I get home. So my husband and I try to eat as well as possible but that has resulted in things that cook quickly and get wrapped up. Something we have been eating often are those faux chicken nuggets from Morning Star in a wheat wrap with some salsa, lettuce, shredded cheese and anything else are in the mood to throw in them. Or it might be soup made with a couple cans of beans, can of diced tomatoes, low sodium vegetable broth and chicken sausage. Sometimes, we make grilled tuna melts on wheat english muffins. Simple and not too bad but it's getting pretty boring. I recently hired myself a health coach named Laura Ely. I have a couple of goals: create a new attitude towards exercise so that I am active most of the time and learn about new foods (or get reacquainted with old foods) and want to choose healthier foods more often.

This month, I was introduced to grains. The list had some things I have never heard of! Buckwheat, amaranth, bulgur, kamut, millet and wheat berries were a few things on the list of grains. Brown rice was on the list but guess what? The brown rice in the microwave bag that is ready in 90 seconds doesn't count! Yes, it's better than the flavored ones which are loaded with sodium but it's not as good as real rice that has to be soaked and cooked. The thing with making recipes with grains is going for the ingredients that are close to the source. I started with wheat berries. First, I had to learn what wheat berries were!

The term wheatberry or wheat berry refers to the entire wheat kernel (except for the hull), comprising the bran, germ, and endosperm. Wheatberries have a tan to reddish brown color and are available as either a hard or soft processed grain. They are often added to salads or baked into bread to add a crunchy texture; as a whole grain, they also provide nutritional benefits since they are an excellent source of dietary fiber.

I am glad my coach showed me the wheat berries before and after cooking. It took some planning but is something I think I can do from time to time. I soaked them overnight. Then the next morning I cooked them on the stove for 50 minutes. This is a far cry from the way we prepared foods before! After they cooled off, later in the afternoon, I made a very nice and easy wheat berry waldorf salad!


Wheat Berry Waldorf Salad
2 cups wheat berries
7 cups water
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 medium apples, unpeeled, cored and chopped
1 cup raisins
1 cup finely chopped parsley
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup apple juice
1 TB salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/8 cup lemon juice

Soak the wheat berries at least 6 to 8 hours or overnight in water to cover by a couple inches. Drain the water, and set aside.

In a saucepan, bring 7 cups water to a boil. Add the soaked wheat berries and turn down to a simmer, uncovered, for about 50 minutes or until they are totally cooked through. Wheat berries retain a firm, chewy texture when cooked. Drain the water and set aside to cool.

When cool, transfer the wheatberries to a large mixing bowl and add the walnuts, apples, raisins, parsley, apple cider vinegar, apple juice, salt, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, olive oil and lemon juice. Mix everything together thoroughly. Add more salt if necessary and serve.With so many choices (of grains), I got overwhelmed. So I get very specific with an ingredient like I did with the wheatberries and one or two recipes and give it a try over a couple of weeks. I don't have to do everything all at once. I know my new habits will last longer if I am introduced to them slowly and have time to incorporate them.

My life coaching web site: http://www.janina-goldberg.vpweb.com/
My blog: http://janina-goldberg.blogspot.com/

Guest Blogger: Kath of 'I Eat Real Food'

Hello Savor The Thyme readers! I am Kath, and I Eat Real Food. While I am not a mom yet, I hope to have a real food approach with my kids one day too. Expert articles written on healthy eating for kids recommend getting them involved in shopping and cooking food so they have a connection between vegetable to table.

One of my goals as a mom will be to be as enthusiastic about vegetables as I am about desserts. So many parents are overhead saying "Now Johnny, you better eat your green beans before you can have dessert." But do you ever hear parents say, "Johnny, you must finish your ice cream before you get to have some spinach." I do think there is a evolutionary connection between kids' aversion to vegetables, appeal of sugar and taste buds, but I also think the more vegetables are praised, the easier it is for kids to at least try them.

But then again, I'm not a mom yet, so I'm sure my kids will be the worst eaters of the century! But you can be sure I will try :)

And parents must also remember that nutrient deficiency do not happen overnight. If you kid had some veggies at lunch but isn't interested at dinner, it's OK.

Here are a few recipes I've done on KERF that I think would be kid friendly and fun :)

Hot Dogs and Mango Fries

Pancake Tacos

PB&J Fries

Snail Oatmeal

Thanks for guest blogging Kath and inspiring all of us to eat healthy and have fun with our food! Also, I am so excited to find a great food blogging foodie close by (Boston).