Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

That nothing goes wrong and everything else can wait when my children and I are together in the kitchen, cooking together, eating together, and learning together.

Rustic bread with dark chocolate, olive oil & sea salt. It's the easiest thing to throw together when I need a quick chocolate fix at the end of a long day. And it's pretty stinking impressive.

I cut not.

I made these today and love them. They're actually borderline addictive. I greased the pan, but skipped the parchment, and they came up fine. (Of course, I thought they were a little too healthy and so added 1/4 cup of white chocolate chips, too).

Bruised, soft bananas are perfect for banana bread. The more bruised and nasty-looking, the better. Peel them, freeze them, and then defrost into moist mush to make the richest-tasting banana bread ever.

As for eating them out of hand, blech.

Sauteed Swiss chard, or a ginormous salad in a bowl big enough to swim in.

Mmmm. Stuffed portabellos maybe, or Pizza alla Margherita. Total toss-up between the two.

I love the taste of plastic in the morning.

I think we all lost weight this week. Biting one's nails while watching election coverage certainly counts as a diet aid, hmmm?

I found the CSA to be a better deal financially than going to the farmer's market (though I do supplement by going to the market as well). I, like many others, freeze what I can't eat. If there is anything that I don't want, I trade it to friends or to other CSA members for items I want more of.

I followed this same theory with my two children (one of whom is 12-months old now), but I didn't bother with a food mill. When she was 6 or 7 months old, I plopped her into a high chair and started letting her dig around in a tiny bowl of whatever we were having. If need be, I smashed it up with a fork or chopped it with a knife, but for the most part, she happily gummed away at beans, pasta, grilled veggies, whatever.

Feeding kids isn't rocket science. It has just been turned into a commercial endeavor, like everything else.

I have a reliable recipe that I use for granola, and I have found that cooking on convection helps the oats to cluster better (though still not quite as much as the stuff in the stores). The amount of honey and oil has an effect as well - the more you use, the better the cluster.

http://postmodernfeeding.blogspot.com/2008/09/granola-girl.html

A spoon stuck into a raspberry-filled, maple-iced doughnut, which, if you ponder on it too long, will make you hurl.