Parmesan Garlic Broccoli Butter

A couple of years ago I found a Rachael Ray recipe for Green Goblin Bread that had a green butter made by adding spinach. Perfect for Halloween and my family really enjoyed it. We don't hide veggies from our kids but I love getting that extra boost of nutrition any way we can so I am always looking to add extra vegetables into our meals. So this week as I was deciding what to do with the veggies I had on hand, I decided to try this same butter concept but with broccoli.
I am going to share the exact recipe that I made...it seriously made a lot of butter so I would recommend cutting it in half. But if you decide to go full-bore, I will also share a couple of different ways we used the butter in this week's meals.

I started by chopping up 2 small heads of broccoli (the one pictured plus a slightly smaller one) and put the pieces into the food processor. Now I did this with raw broccoli which left the butter both smelling and tasting pretty strongly of broccoli. If you want a more subtle taste, maybe try steaming the broccoli first. Pulse up your broccoli until it is in teeny tiny bits:

From there I just added the rest of the ingredients on top of the broccoli - 2 sticks of butter (softened), 2 cloves of garlic (put them in raw but you could roast them first if you prefer that flavor), 1/2 cup grated Parmesan. Give it a good whirl until everything is nicely blended. Then you are ready to use it or cover and store it in the refrigerator.

Want some ideas how to use this? Here's what we had it on (all these pictures are before they were cooked, so hard to snap that after picture when trying to get dinner on the table for 4 hungry guys!):

Spread on homemade french bread slices and warmed in the oven

Cut up some potatoes for homestyle fries, melted the butter and tossed the potatoes in the butter before cooking at 425 degrees for 25-30 minutes (this was my favorite!)

Hobo fish packets...if you do this, spread the butter on the fish first. It all melted and left a glob of broccolit bits on top of the zucchini.



I am sure you can come up with a dozen more creative ways to use this butter. If you try it out, let me know how it turns out! Enjoy~

Roasting Vegetables

One of my favorite ways to prepare vegetables is to roast them. This creates such a unique flavor and can turn vegetables you and your kids aren't particularly fond of into your favorite healthy additions to any meal.

Some of the veggies I roast I do so for the purpose of pureeing and adding to other foods. We love roasted butternut squash in homemade mac n cheese and in turkey meatballs. Roasted beets along with shredded apples and ricotta cheese make for amazingly sweet and delicious pink pancakes. Roasted red peppers can be pureed to make this Roasted Red Pepper Macaroni with Smoked Gouda Cheese I created or can be sliced and used on everything from pizza to chicken sandwiches to pasta.

One of the veggies I have never liked before I roasted it was cauliflower. In roasting it a nutty flavor emerges and is so delicious. I often do this as a side but it is also amazing in this recipe by Rachel Ray, Roasted Cauliflower Penne with Rosemary Cream Sauce. Broccoli is another great roasted veggie that we eat as a side, sometimes along with the cauliflower.

Because I had such great results with the cauliflower, when I read about roasted radishes in a recent edition of Whole Living magazine, I was open-minded about it even though I don't particularly care for radishes. We hit up our local farmers market and got a great price on several bunches of radishes. I prepared these to go with our BBQ last night and even roasted the leaves. Both turned out great so I thought I would share the recipe with you all:

Roasted Radishes and Greens
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Separate 1 bunch radishes (halved if large) and their greens and arrange on two rimmed baking sheets. Drizzle each with 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss to combine.

3. Bake, until radishes are tender and caramelized and greens are crisp, 15-20 minutes. Let cool. (This was perfect for the leaves but I had to go quite a bit longer with the radishes..you really want them soft and browning to get the good roasted flavor:)

What is your favorite roasted vegetable and how do you use it in your meals?

You don't like it? You make it!

These past two weeks have been pretty rough for Nathan (our 4 year old). He has been full of attitude, defiant and complaining about everything. We think he is just really needing some one on one time. He is the most dependent of the 3 and this works against him as far as getting mommy and daddy's attention. This weekend Jeremy is planning an outing for just the two of them so he can get some of that attention he seems to be craving. Another thing we are doing is letting him get more involved in helping out. Not just "Grab Isaiah's binky, please" or "Can you go shut that door or turn off that light" but things that give him responsibility as well as time with one or both of us.

One of his big complaints this week has been dinner. He has not been pleased with what I have been serving and has made no effort to hide that. In this house we do not cater at mealtime, I take into consideration what everyone likes and dislikes but we have one meal and if you don't like it, you don't eat. I have followed through with this all week but have decided in an effort to give him some sense of control (as well as a taste of what I go through to put dinner on the table) I am going to let him start being in charge of one meal every so often. So I sat him down while I was doing the meal planning and told him what day he was in charge of. His responsibilities included planning a dinner menu, helping do the shopping for it and then helping me prepare it.

His dinner night is going to be Friday. What are we having you ask? Spaghetti and Meatballs with broccoli on the side. I thought that was a reasonable choice. And for dessert: his major requirement was that it had whipped cream and he finally settled on putting that on top of brownies.

 

On the menu!

So Friday came and Nathan was actually super excited about getting to help at the grocery store. I let him pick out the head of broccoli, which kind of pasta sauce, the brownie mix, etc. He had so much fun that he helped me with my entire list and did a great job at it. I think I found a new shopping buddy!

As soon as we got home and got the groceries put away we decided to get the brownies going. So he donned his new chef ware that he got as a Christmas present and jumped right into baking.

Doesn't he look so excited?

Who needs a Kitchen Aid when you have a 4 year old?

As soon as that came out of the oven it was time to start making the meatballs. This is where things took an interesting turn. First off, he didn't realize what I put in my meatballs. "Squash...I don't like squash!" he whined as I explained that he loves my meatballs and that is what has always been in them. Then when I told him we mix up the ingredients by putting our hands in he wasn't all too thrilled either. Ummm, this is a 4 year old boy we are talking about, right? I thought he would be thrilled to play with his food but not so much. So I talked him into putting his hands into it and that is when all heck broke loose. He was thoroughly disgusted and was begging to wash his hands. I told him I wanted him to make one meatball to see how it was done and I pretty much had to force him to do it. I think the pictures say it all:

Disgusting!

Mean old mommy made me make a meatball (try saying that 3 times fast!)

As this was going on he realized that one of his favorite shows was on tv and he wanted to quit all together to watch tv. This is where the lesson came in. I told him that being responsible for making dinner isn't always fun. That besides the planning and shopping, you also have to stop what you are doing and sometimes miss out on the fun stuff to get it done. This is why it hurts mommy's feelings when you complain about what I make. While I wanted this entire experience to be a fun bonding moment between us I am glad this life lesson was incorporated into it as well. This was the backbone to the whole idea and I am glad it came about naturally so that he could truly get the point. After some time in his room following a full on meltdown (and a mini mommy meltdown), we got back to cooking and everything turned out great. His favorite part was serving everyone and getting to choose how many meatballs went on his plate. I told him one of the perks of being the cook is deciding how much you put on your own plate. I then asked if he wanted two or three meatballs to which he replied, "I think I need four, I have a really big mouth!"  Four it is Nathan. Four it is.

Enjoying the fruits of his labor