Thank you to Hunt’s for sponsoring this post and encouraging my culinary skills! Visit Hunt’s Signature Recipe Collection to find tons of delicious ideas for using Hunt’s tomatoes in your meals.

I’m can’t put my finger on exactly what’s changed this year, but now that Wyatt is in second grade we are really busy during the week. PTA, play dates, scouts, work projects — we’ve been doing all these things for the past few years, but suddenly we’re finding that we have something going on almost every day. I’ve always been about fast and easy for our week night meals but now I’m really about fast and easy.

Chicken with tomatoes and olives is one of my favorite meals to throw together when I have to make dinner quickly. I’ve been making this dish since I was a bachelorette living over a bakery in Berkeley  (say that three times fast) and it continues to be delicious and satisfying almost 20 (!!) years later.

You only need three ingredients to make this dish: kalamata olives, canned, diced tomatoes and chicken breasts or tenders. I like to use tomatoes that are pre-seasoned with basil, garlic and oregano, but you can use plain canned tomatoes and season them with spices you have on hand if you like. You can also sub green olives for the kalamatas if you prefer. And come to think of it, you can sub chicken thighs for the chicken breasts. This recipe is totally flexible!

Start by cooking the chicken over medium high heat in enough olive oil to coat the pan. Chicken tenders will only need 2-3 minutes per side. Breasts or thighs will take longer. Once the chicken is cooked through, remove it to a plate.

Next, dump in two cans of diced tomatoes and as many olives as you like. I used the entire jar of olives pictured above. Drain the juice off the olives before adding them to the pan, but be sure not to drain the tomatoes because you’re going to use that juice to make a little sauce. When the tomatoes start to bubble, scrape up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan and stir them into the sauce until they dissolve. They’ll give your sauce extra depth and flavor. Continue to cook the tomato mixture at a steady bubble until the juices have reduced and thickened to your taste.

To serve, put the chicken on a plate and top with the tomato mixture. I usually serve a steamed green veggie and some rice on the side and sometimes I sprinkle a little crumbled feta on top of the chicken which is extra delicious. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should tell you that when I make this my kids eat the chicken and sometimes eat the tomatoes, but they always pick the olives out complaining bitterly the whole time.

What do you cook for a fast dinner on school nights?

Thank you again to Hunt’s for sponsoring my post. Find more ideas for cooking with tomatoes at Hunt’s Signature Recipe Collection. I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #HuntsRecipe #spon

Thank you to California Grown for encouraging me to connect with California growers and encouraging California consumers to “Choose California Grown” when they can.

There are a lot of things I like about living in California — my husband, the weather, the ocean — but the fantastic local produce is really high on my list. I grew up in Iowa where the farmland is excellent to be sure, but the midwest has a hard time competing with the amazing fruits and veggies that are grown year round in California. Even after living here 20+ years, I am often amazed by the beautiful food I find in the markets.

I love so many California crops: artichokes, peaches, cherries! But avocados are the absolute best — so creamy, so smooth, so yummy! 90% of the U.S. avocado crop is grown here and I love that when I buy them I am supporting my state’s economy. I also like that I’m eating a locally grown food and all of the benefits that come with that. This is important enough to me that when I’m at the grocery store I seek them out — sometimes even going so far as to ask the produce guy which produce is California grown.

Yes, I sound like a commercial. Yes, I’m being paid to write this post. But I would say all this anyway, I can assure you! My love is real, the money a bonus.

Here are three of my favorite ways to eat avocados:

Out of Hand with a Spoon

This is how we usually eat avocados in our house. Cut an avocado in half, pop out the pit, sprinkle with salt and dig right into it with a spoon. The skin acts like a little bowl. When my husband and I are mad at each other (like say, when we’ve been yelling at each other about the Christmas tree…hypothetically), I can make things right by bringing him half an avocado and a spoon.

On Toast with Cream  Cheese

I love avocados. I love cream cheese. But putting avocado and cream cheese together is magical. I don’t even understand how the two interact to become so phenomenally delicious.  This is one of my favorite breakfasts in the world.

Mixed with Mangos

Dice an avocado and a mango, stir together with a little orange juice and a sprinkle of garlic salt. I eat this on crackers, plopped on a salad or just straight out of the bowl.

The avocados in these photos were grown by a Alex MacLachlan, a farmer based in Bonsall, California. Here is a little more about him and his farm:

How do you eat avocados? Do you manage to keep them around long enough to cook with them? Or is your house like mine where they get gobbled up plain?

Thank you again to California Grown for sponsoring this blog post. Please click here to learn more about all of California Grown growers. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own. #CleverCAGrown #spon

Thanks to Duncan Hines for sponsoring my writing. There’s no limit to the baking possibilities, so grab your favorite Duncan Hines mix and Comstock or Wilderness fruit fillings and Bake On! www.duncanhines.com.

My husband and I are horrible entertainers.

It’s not that we don’t like having our friends over — we do! And it’s not that we don’t like cooking or anything like that — we love cooking! It’s just that we can never seem to get our act together to invite people over. And when we do try to invite people it always seems to be a major ordeal to find a time when everyone is available at once — especially in December. Either one family is out of town, or someone has a school program they need to attend or someone has to work that night or whatever! It’s just complicated enough that we never end up inviting people over.

I’ve decided we need to rethink the idea of “having people over”. Instead of planning a multi-course dinner that four adults and 3-5 children will enjoy, we need to keep it simple. My brilliant-to-me-but-probably-totally-obvious-to-everyone-else idea? Have friends over for dessert!

Here’s my plan:

1. Bake a batch of brownies from a mix. Easy!
2. If you want to make the brownies fancy, bake them in a fluted pie plate. Or not — no one will really care because they’re brownies.
3. Set out a tub of vanilla ice cream and a few toppings. In my cupboard right now: chopped nuts, mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips, an unopened jar of hot fudge (hmmmm…not sure how old that is — better check before giving it to people!) and a boat load of sprinkles.
4. Plop a fancy (or not-so-fancy) brownie into bowls and let people add toppings as they like.

It’s so easy that we can do it on a school night. We could even do it on the spur of the moment! And if we put out red and green sprinkles and tune Pandora to a Christmas station we can even call it a Christmas party. Ooh la la!

Honestly, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Do you entertain? What do you do to keep it simple?

Remember to check out Duncan Hines’ website www.duncanhines.com to find some great recipes for your holiday get-together! I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective.

A few weeks ago, I attended an event at my local Safeway store centered on winter health and wellness. Along with a few other bloggers, I walked the aisles of Safeway with a pharmacist and a registered dietician who offered us tips on how to avoid catching winter colds and flu and how to recover more quickly when we did get sick. Some of the information they provided us with was common sense — wash your hands frequently, sneeze into you elbow so you’re less likely to spread germs, stay hydrated — but there were quite a few gems that I hadn’t heard before tucked into the presentations. Here are some of the things I learned:

• Vitamin D! We are big fans of vitamin D in this house. I’m not a supplement kind of gal, but this is the one exception I make. Since my husband and I started taking vitamin D regularly, we have barely been sick. In addition to supplements, most dairy products are fortified with it.
• Throw used tissues away immediately. OK, I know this one is probably a no-brainer to most of you, but this something I never thought about much. When I’m sick, I let used tissues pile up on the table next to me as I lay on the couch blowing my nose and then I throw them all away when I get up to get a drink or something. Even worse, when we’re out and about and I wipe one of my kids’ noses, I often stuff the tissue in my purse until I can find a trash can. I inevitably forget them there and then they roll around in my purse rubbing germs all over my wallet, my phone, my pens — everything! Gross! No more though — those babies are going right into the trash from now on!
• Stay hydrated when you’re sick. We all know we’re supposed to stay hydrated, but I never knew exactly why. Aside from the general health benefits of proper hydration, if you keep your liquids up it can help to thin mucus which in turn keeps you from getting too stuffed up and keeps coughing to a minimum.
• Ask your pharmacist questions! I’ve never hesitated to talk to my pharmacist when I’ve had questions about prescription medications, but it never occurred to me to ask her about over-the-counter products. I was truly shocked when Dr. Vatanka (the pharmacist giving us the tour) told us that more than half of her time with customers is spent answering questions about over-the-counter medications. Since so many products are designed to treat multiple symptoms — fever, cough and stuffiness, for example — she recommended that we check in with our pharmacists when taking multiple OTC medicines to make sure that there won’t be some sort of harmful drug interaction. I will absolutely be doing this from now on.

On to the giveaway!

Safeway has generously donated a $50 gift card to one Wendolonia reader! Woo hoo! This gift card can be used at: Safeway, Vons, Dominick’s, Genuardi’s, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Pavilions, and Carr’s stores.

To enter:

• Leave a comment on this post offering up your best tip for avoiding or dealing with winter cold and flu. I’ll close comments on Friday, December 2, 11:00 am PST and randomly select a winner shortly thereafter. If you win and you haven’t included your email address along with your comment another entry will be selected, so be sure to enter one on the form. The winner must contact me within 48 hours of being notified or another winner will be selected.
• Sorry, this giveaway is limited to winners with U.S. addresses only.
• I’m only counting comments as entries, but if you wanted to follow me on Twitter or Facebook I would think you were extra cool.
• I hope you win!

Disclosure: I received a Safeway gift card and a grocery gift bag from Safeway in exchange for hosting this giveaway. I donated all of the shelf stable groceries to a local food bank, but we ate the perishable items. Have you donated to a food bank this year? I hope you’ll consider it!

Thanksgiving is just a few days away and I think it’s fair to say that the holiday baking season has officially started. For me, the only acceptable Thanksgiving dessert is pie. PIE, I say! And with all this pie baking going on in the States right now, I want to be sure — absolutely sure — that everyone knows about pie treats!

“What in the heck are pie treats?” you ask. Pie treats are only the very best way to use up the extra scraps of pie dough you cut off the edges of your pie after you crimp the crust. My mom used to make them for me, and my Grandma made them for her. I looked forward to eating them every time she made a pie and now I’m equally excited every time I start rolling out my own crusts.

They are ridiculously easy to make:

Gather up your scraps and roll them out into a disc about an eighth of an inch thick. Spread the disc evenly with butter and then sprinkle with a thick, even layer of cinnamon sugar. You should put on more cinnamon sugar than what is pictured in the photo up above. I ended up adding more after I took it.

Roll the dough up jelly roll-style and then cut it into 3/4 inch slices. You probably won’t get very many — I usually get about 5 or 6. Scarcity is part of the reason these are treats! You can put them on a baking sheet however you like — either standing on their edges or swirly side down like a cinnamon roll. I baked mine in our toaster oven for 5 minutes at 350 degrees. You can also slide them into the oven with your pie. Either way, keep a close eye on them because the sugar can make them burn really easily.

After a few minutes they’ll be light, flaky and cinnamon-y. Yummy!

Do you make pie treats? Is there another tiny little holiday treat that brings you joy?

Autumn in the San Francisco bay area is weird. We typically spend much of the summer pretending it’s warm while we shiver in sweat shirts, and then just as the kids go back to school and the leaves start to change we’re hit with a spell of warm weather. In the last three weeks the temperature has hovered around 75 degrees with a few big chunks of days in the 80′s. Meanwhile, the stores are packed with fall jackets and porches are decorated for Halloween. Having grown up in the midwest where the seasons are very distinct, I suffer from cognitive dissonance this time of year!

One of the outward signs of autumn is that the stores are stocked with big displays of pumpkin. I love pumpkin treats so I’ve been buying a couple of cans of pumpkin puree every week. I’ve been enjoying pumpkin cake and pumpkin pie smoothies but both of those recipes only use part of a can of pumpkin, so I’ve been looking for ways to use up the leftovers. The other day I hit on the idea of making pumpkin pie-flavored oatmeal and I was thrilled with how it turned out on my very first try. It’s healthy, fast and so very yummy and I have to share it with the world!

Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• a generous shake of pumpkin pie spice
• milk to taste (optional)

Directions:

Combine oats, pumpkin and water in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on 50% power for 5 minutes or cook according to package directions on the oats. Stir in brown sugar and a generous shake of pumpkin pie spice. Add milk to taste. I use about 1/4 cup of milk and stir it in really well to add creaminess and cool down the oatmeal.

What pumpkin treats are you enjoying this fall?

I’ve known Omega-3′s are good for you for a number of years, but I must confess that until recently, the how’s and why’s haven’t really been on my radar. When I started working with Horizon Dairy as a community leader in their Healthy Families Community they gave me a quick lesson on why these fatty acids are so important. Here’s a short overview of what I learned:

There are 3 types of omega-3’s: ALA, EPA and DHA. DHA is considered to be one of the most important of the Omega-3’s and is a major structural fat in the brain and eyes. Consuming food rich in DHA — mainly fish and fortified foods like milk and eggs — contributes to brain and eye health.

Here’s the thing that really got my attention though — most adults only get about halfof the recommended amount of DHA per day (160 mg), but the average child only gets 12% of the recommended amount. Sheesh!

I buy fortified milk and eggs as a matter of course, but I’m sure my family still isn’t getting enough DHA most days so I’ve resolved to make fish a more frequent part of our diet going forward. Here’s one recipe that we all enjoy: Honey Mustard Salmon. It’s based loosely on a recipe from Aviva Goldfarb’s wonderful cookbook SOS! The Six O’Clock Scramble to the Rescuethat I’ve tweaked a bit over the past few months to suit my family’s taste.

Honey Mustard Salmon

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lbs. salmon filet
• 1 1/2 tablespoons grainy mustard
• 1 1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1/2 teaspoon honey
• 1/3 cup panko (or regular) breadcrumbs

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray a baking dish large enough to hold the fish with spray oil, then place fish in the dish skin side down.

In a small bowl, mix mustard, mayonnaise, and honey. Spread evenly over the top of the fish. Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the top.

Bake for 10-20 minutes (depending on the thickness of your filet) until salmon is cooked to your liking.

Share how you sneak Omega-3’s into your family’s diet for a chance to win a $500 Grocery Shopping Spree!

DHA belongs to a category of healthy fatty acids known as Omega-3′s. DHA is a major structural fat in the body, and has been shown to support brain, heart and eye health. Not only is DHA found in foods like salmon and eggs, but it can also be found in Horizon® Organic Milk enhanced with DHA Omega-3. Learn more about Horizon’s commitment to healthy families at http://www.horizondairy.com/everyday-nutrition/dha-omega-3/

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon. The opinions expressed by me do not necessarily reflect the view of the Horizon Organic brand.

Wyatt turned seven years old yesterday and we had a Star Wars birthday party for him on Saturday to celebrate. This was the first time he’s had a “friends” party at our house and it went really well. I think the kids (and I!) all had a really good time! Here are some of the details:

Invitations

I made the invitations myself and I was super happy with how they turned out. In fact, this might have been my favorite thing I made for the party. The Clone Trooper was from an official Clone Wars desktop wallpaper that I downloaded (unfortunately, I can’t find the original source, but I’m pretty sure it was from lucasarts.com). I cut him out, flipped him and resized him to fit the card. I used a free font called Star Jedi for the Star Wars-y looking headers.

I’d love to make this available as a download, but because I used a copyrighted character, I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to do so. From what I’ve been able to gather, it’s OK to do something like this for personal use, but not OK to distribute it.

Activities

I planned three main activities for the party. The first was a craft project where the boys assembled paper Star Wars characters. I printed and cut the figures out before the party to save time and then coached the boys through the process of folding and taping the figures. It was a little tricky for some of them but we managed to make it work. The figures we used can be found here:

• Yoda
• C3PO
• Boba Fett
• Storm Trooper
• Darth Vadar

The highlight of the party for the boys were these homemade light sabers. I saw a lot of suggestions online to use pool noodles but they are almost impossible to find in late September so I had to search out a substitute. I finally found the brilliant suggestion to use pipe insulation on the fowlerfam blog. I bought six 6-foot tubes at Home Depot for about a dollar a piece and cut them down to a manageable length. Then I decorated the ends with duct tape and colored electrical tape.

I had planned to bring these out in the last hour or so of the party but Wyatt announced that we had light sabers in the first five minutes so I handed them out right at the beginning. The boys loved them and immediately started wailing on each other. In fact, they were hitting each other so hard that I felt like I needed to double-check that the light sabers weren’t hurting the kids. They assured me that they didn’t hurt at all though so I let them carry on.

I had also planned to have the kids play a couple games of tag but they were having so much fun with the light sabers that I couldn’t tear them away. The first tag game I had planned was Star Wars Tag, a variation on TV tag where you can prevent the person who is It from tagging you by yelling out the name of a Star Wars character and touching the ground. The other game was Dark Side Tag. In this game, one person is selected to be Darth Vadar. When Darth tags someone, that person has to “join the Dark Side” by linking arms with the person who tagged him. As more people are tagged, the blob of kids who are It gets bigger and bigger. I thought they would be fun, but alas! — it wasn’t meant to be.

Cake

The idea for Wyatt’s light saber cake came from Make and Takes. I baked a batch of cupcakes, then frosted some with grey frosting and others with green frosting and arranged them in a line.

Wyatt wanted red velvet cupcakes, so I baked up a batch with Martha’s recipe. While I was putting them together, he asked if I could make them green instead, so I swapped in green food coloring for the red called for in the recipe.

They stayed really green even after baking, which looked pretty cool. The boys labeled them “Yoda cupcakes” and made a number of jokes about Yoda’s butt being an ingredient. Not to surprising coming from a group of 7 and 8 year olds.

We also served “Milenneum Falcon” pizzas (just regular pizzas with a silly name) and “Yoda Sodas”. The Yoda Sodas were lime sherbet and Sprite floats. The kids were doubtful at first but once they tasted them, they were won over.

My big takeaways from this party:

1. Star Wars parties are really easy to put together because there are so many fantastic ideas out there on the internet already. The hardest part is picking your favorites.
2. If you give 10 little boys foam light sabers they will whack each other with them for 2 hours straight and will only stop to eat if you make them.

How about you? Have your thrown a Star Wars party? What fun stuff did you do for it?

When I saw a recipe for biscuits and gravy in the most recent issue of Family Fun magazine they looked so yummy that I wanted to try them immediately. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any sausage in the house so I couldn’t make the gravy, but we did have all the stuff for the biscuits, so I decided to make those. Don’t they look fluffy and yummy?

The article showed a kid making the biscuits and my boys are always game for a baking project so I put them to work.

First, I had them stir together the flour and baking powder with a couple of whisks. Augie decided to pretend his was the claw from Toy Story 3 and he raised it up in the air over his head.

He got flour all over his head and shirt, but that’s to be expected when you’re baking, right?

After the dry ingredients were mixed, I had the boys cut the butter up. They very much enjoyed using the knives, but when I asked them to try to cut the butter into the flour, they lost interest and took off to play Beyblades and scream. I quickly finished putting the dough together, cut the biscuits out and threw them in the oven.

This is how they came out:

Do you remember that picture of the fluffy biscuits from up at the top of the post? Let me refresh your memory:

I think it would be fair to say that I NAILED IT! Don’t you?

OK, so maybe I didn’t.

They were a lot more like crackers than they were like biscuits. At first I thought the problem was that my baking powder was old, but I tried again yesterday with a brand new container and they came out only slightly fluffier.

They tasted really good though. Wyatt was especially fond of them and he ate at least half the batch with blackberry jam on top. In fact, mid-way through his second one he said, “Mom, you know what you should do for your job? You should be a baker!”

Bless his little misinformed heart!

So tell me biscuit bakers? What the heck am I doing wrong? What do I have to do to get fluffy biscuits?

Inspired by my biscuit failure, I started a conversation over on the Horizon Back to School Community about cooking failures. Come tell us about your most recent flub!

I am compensated for my time as a community leader for the Horizon BlogFrog community, but I assure you they did not encourage me to screw up my baked goods.

If you were to only look at the photos of my children’s lunches on my blog you might think that they looooove healthy food. And they do…sort of. They love some healthy foods — apples, corn on the cob, bananas, tofu, berries, grapes — but others… Well, let’s just say that there are a lot of foods that inspire whining, complaining and the occasional humongus tantrum at our dinner table.

So how do I get my kids to eat all those good for you foods? I’m hardly an expert and I don’t have a magic formula but I can tell you what my husband and I have done to encourage good eating habits. Nothing on this list is particularly ground-breaking but it all kind of works together.

Set a Good Example

My husband and I both enjoy cooking and we eat a wide range of different types of foods. We read cookbooks for fun, make food from all over the world and we’re positively giddy when artichokes and asparagus show up in the markets in the spring time. Because food is such an important part of our lives, we love sharing it with our kids and we’ve given our children the same foods we eat since they first picked up a spoon. I can’t help but think our attitude has encouraged them to try new things. By eating a variety of healthy foods — and talking about how much we like them — we send a message to our children that eating good-for-you food is pleasurable.

Don’t Force It but Ask That They Try Things

I generally subscribe to the school of thought that you shouldn’t force your children to eat something they don’t like. First off, I think that leads to a battle of wills that has very little to do with food. Another reason I do this is that I don’t want my kids to associate any foods with very negative experiences. And finally, I know I would find eating a plate of onions — the food I hate most — to be complete torture and I just can’t do something like that to my kids.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Wyatt and Augie can just say no to eating anything they don’t feel like eating. We do have a rule that everyone has to take at least one bite of every food on their plates. My husband refers to this as a “No thank you” bite, but I prefer to call it a “Try it” bite because it seems more positive to me.

Make it Fun

Coaxing that “Try It” bite out of our kids can be tough, but I’ve found that doing a little bit to make eating fun can go a long way. I try to arrange food to look attractive on the plate. I cut food into shapes and draw smiley faces on them. And I’ve had more than one long conversation about the types of foods that Batman likes to eat. (In case you’re wondering, he prefers vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean proteins.)

Take What You Can Get

If your child only eats a few healthy foods embrace the things he likes. Despite all my efforts, there was a time when the only vegetables my oldest child would eat were peas, corn and sugar snap peas (a variation of item #1 on this short list, you might notice). What did I do then? I fed him peas, corn, and sugar snap peas. Sure, there wasn’t a lot of variety in those veggies, but they’re still healthy and they helped him grow. I also continued to serve him other vegetables and lots of varieties of fruit along-side those three vegetables and hoped for the best.

Keep Trying

Which leads me to another point: Never give up! My seven-year-old ate anything and everything I gave him when he was a baby and then when he was around two-years-old he started dropping foods from his repertoire. For three years, the number of foods he’d eat kept getting smaller and smaller and then finally one day when he was almost five, he tried salsa. And he liked it! And he ate a whole bunch of it! And since then, he’s steadily added more foods to his list of things he likes. If I had stopped serving him salsa, he never would have tried it and he’d still only eat peas and corn.

Don’t Beat Yourself Up

This last point isn’t really a tip or a technique, but I think it’s important to mention. If you feel like you’ve tried everything to get your kids to eat healthy foods and you never seem to get anywhere, don’t beat yourself up about it. I truly believe that whether or not your child is a “good” eater has a lot to do with luck or genetics or some other factor that we have no control over. My two children have had food presented to them in a very similar manner their entire lives. One of them eats just about everything we put in front of him, the other eats significantly fewer foods. Likewise, I have friends who I would describe as “foodies” and their children only eat things that are white. As parents, I think it’s important to expose our children to a variety of healthy foods but whether or not the kids eat what we give them is really up to them. They’re little individuals and we can’t force them to do anything. Not really.

Share how you get your kids to eat healthy food below for a chance to win a $500 Mom’s Getaway Spa Day from BlogFrog!

Want to exchange more healthy snacks ideas, money saving tips and back to school shopping advice with other moms? Visit the Horizon® Healthy Families Back to School Community!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon. The opinions expressed by me do not necessarily reflect the view of the Horizon Organic brand.