My daughter is now 15 months old and entering into that very independent stage where she wants to do it all herself, her way, with no help whatsoever. This involves food as well!

She wants to feed herself with her own bowl and her own spoon, which is great… but messy. Another issue with toddlers is that when they’re hungry, they’re hungry. They haven’t quite learned how to wait for a full meal to be cooked- they want to eat now.

Ready made baby or toddler meals are very expensive, but it’s often hard for my daughter to wait while I cook for her. Instead, I keep filling and frugal food on hand and ready to go, which helps her wait for dinner.

The key is preparing everything in advance, so that it can be quickly heated if necessary and served in a flash. I also try to avoid things that are too messy, so she can feel good about feeding herself and I don’t have to give her a second bath!

Here are some of the frugal finger foods I give my toddler.

• Chopped ham or chicken breast
• Chunks of tuna
• Cheese, cubed in advance
• Sauteed zucchini
• Cooked cubed carrots or potatoes
• Diced beets
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Green beans
• Garbanzo or kidney beans
• hot dogs or sausage

What do you feed your toddler?

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Cauliflower is one of my favorite vegetables, and has been since I was a kid. It is flavorful on its own, tasty in other dishes, and can be disgused in endless ways to fool children into thinking their eating junk food. Not to mention that it’s cheap and laden with vitamins, which makes it a fantastic frugal food. Here are some of the ways I like it best:

As an ingrediant in vegetable curry, steam first, then mix with steamed carrots, chopped tomatoes and garbanzo beans and your favorite Indian sauce (I like Pataks). Serve with cool yogurt sauce.

Roasted, à la Mandajuice. Yum.

In cauliflower cream soup; a creamy mix of cauliflower, onion, cream cheese and horseradish. I promise to publish the recipe before winter’s up!

As a secret ingredient in mashed potatoes.

As a secret ingredient in chili. Yes, chili! I oversalted the pinto beans, and in an effort to save the batch, I added steamed pureed cauliflower while I was cooking the chil. You couldn’t taste it, but it added a touch of creaminess and yes, absorbed the salt.

Steamed, then served cold, with a nice vinagrette, as the French do.

Or, in a gratin, a creamed casserole. Steam, then place in a buttered bakin pan. Smother in white sauce, then sprinkle with grated cheese; cheddar or jack are best.

How do you like your cauliflower?

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I am not really a fan of turkey- it tastes too gamey for me. So this year, for Christmas dinner, I made roast chicken in my new Christmas crockpot.

I first heard about the idea on A Year of Crockpotting, an absolutely genius cooking blog. She swears it’s very tasty, and although I didn’t follow her recipe at all, I have to agree.

I seasoned the chicken with some olive oil, lemon juice, dried herbs and garlic, and cooked it on high for about five hours. I basted it a few times- there was quite a lot of juice. When I took the roast chicken out of the crockpot it was perfectly cooked and very tender- it gave a new definition to the description of meat falling off the bones.

What I liked about this recipe and method is that to use the leftover meat I don’t need to boil the carcass to get the leftover meat- I could literally pick the meat off the bones. I also loved how low fuss the process was- I could have left it alone all day and I’m sure it would have been fine. The meat was very tender, and the juices were more concentrated than they would have been for a regular roast chicken.

What I don’t like is that in cases where presentation is important, this method won’t cut it. I’m also not sure about how well stock would turn out, were I to want to make soup. All in all however, I’m going to be using my new crockpot a lot more, especially for roast chicken.

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For Christmas dinner this year, I wanted to try a bunch of new dishes, having gotten my fill of my favorites at Thanksgiving. So, for a dessert mixed with the cheese course (we live in France, after all) I tried a variation on the baked brie topped with cranberry sauce, wrapped in a flaky pie crust.

This is quite easy to make. I centered a wheel of brie on a pastry crust, then covered it with some cranberry sauce. I folded the rest of the pastry over the sauce and baked it for about 30 minutes at 350°.

This is a rich, rich, rich thing to eat… and I think it would have gone down better had there been more mouths to feed. After all, we were only six, including two little kids and a baby. But it was a delicious idea, and I’m sure I’ll make it again. Only next time, it won’t be after such a rich meal. Instead, this would be the perfect side dish with just with a green salad and grilled chicken breasts.

I’ve also read variations on this dish, like topping the brie with sliced toasted almonds and chopped, cooked chicken breast. Or using apricots (dried or jam) and crumbled bacon. I think there are a variety of ways to serve this, and you could be as creative as you want. Because after all, what’s better than melted brie?

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Thanksgiving is over (sigh), not to be repeated for another year. And we still have some time before Christmas and we break out the cranberry sauce again. But once Christmas is over, and there are eleven months until we have another occasion to eat cranberry sauce, we need to find a use for the bit that’s left. Here are five ways to make sure your leftover cranberry sauce doesn’t go to waste.

I like to freeze cranberry sauce in my little tupperware containers from Ikea. I find that it gives me the perfect amount for when I want to use just a bit. Not to mention that cranberry sauce, at least the homemade variety, freezes really well.

Sometimes, when I’m in the mood for a nice, fruity cake, I whip up a perfect cake and add some of that frozen sauce to it. If you put in about 1/2 a cup it gives just the right flavor.

Cranberry sauce is good with poultry, of course, but it also goes well with darker, rich meats like beef or venison (not that anyone can afford to eat venison these days, unless they hunted it themselves). I particularly like making a sort of beef bourginon in the crock pot, and adding cranberry sauce for the last few hours. The acidity helps to tenderize the meat, and it loses its sweetness during the cooking.

Cranberry sauce as jam on buttered toast is a treat worth having!

A lovely, English dessert, is topping a round of brie with cranberry sauce and then baking it. Just cut the top rind off the wheel of Brie (Carefully, so as not to remove the cheese, just the rind). Then spread with the cranberry sauce. You might want to wrap some tin foil around the cheese, so that when it melts it retains it’s shape. I love this dessert, and it is so good spread on fresh French bread.

How do you use your leftover cranberry sauce? Please don’t tell me you throw it away!

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Hanukkah is the Jewish winter holiday, the Festival of Lights. It’s a relatively minor holiday, but due to the time of year it occurs (right near Christmas) it has gained importance in many Jewish households.

As with many holidays, one of the shining stars is the food served. Because Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of oil, many of the traditional dishes are deep fried. Can we say yum (and bad for your arteries)? Sephardic Jews (those from Spain, the Middle East and North Africa) tend to eat lots of donuts, but Ashkenazi Jews (whose families come from Europe) eat latkes: fried potato pancakes.

It’s hard to measure quantities for this recipe; you need lots of potatoes, one or two eggs, salt, onion, some matzoh meal or flour and gallons of oil. I’m not kidding about the oil. The trick is to make sure that the potatoes are as dry as possible, then you won’t have to add much matzoh meal or flour. The more matzoh meal or flour you add, the gummier the finished product will be, and that’s bad. The joy of latkes is in the crispy, fried potato goodness.

Grate your potatoes, and some onions as well. If you’re really adventurous, you could toss in a zucchini or two, or maybe a carrot, but I prefer the classic potato and onion version. Dry the grated veggies well by squeezing them in paper towels or cheesecloth, or letting them sit in a colander (not the best option, but it will do in a pinch). Mix with the egg(s) and a little bit of binder (one or tablespoons at a time). Heat the oil in a large pan (or two) and drop the potatoes by large spoonfuls into the hot oil. Fry until crispy brown and let cool (a little) before eating. I like to test the first two or three to make sure they’re edible before feeding them to my family.

Serve with sour cream and applesauce. If you’re a purist you won’t serve meat with this dish, but some honey roasted carrots and baked salmon would go down wonders. Enjoy!

Here are some more latke recipes from Epicurious and from All Recipes. This recipe is part of the final round-up in the Holidays *by hand* series, hosted by Ann of Vintage Mommy and One Bag Nation.

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This recipe works really well in two different versions- one for vegetarians, the other for carnivores. It can be served as a main dish, hot or cold, in the summer or winter, with fresh spinach or frozen. It’s downright adaptable!

• 1 cup defrosted drained chopped frozen spinach or
• 2 cups fresh chopped spinach
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 cup crumbled blue or feta cheese
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup finely chopped white onion
• 1 large flank steak (meat option)
• 1 sheet puff pastry (veggie option)

Preheat oven to 400°. Mix the first five ingredients together. If using flank steak, split it through the middle so that you have half the thickness and twice the width. Spread the filling on the steak or the pastry and, starting at a short end, roll carefully so that all the spinach filling is contained. Bake until cooked through, about half an hour. Serve with rice.

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We had a picnic yesterday, probably our last picnic of the year. It was a potluck picnic, and I brought several things to share. One of the dishes that I brought I had been craving for a long time, and so was excited to have a chance to make! That was a perfectly creamy potato salad, and here’s how I make it.

You need:

• an equal number of potatoes and eggs (ie, 1 potato+ 1 egg, 2 potatoes+ 2 eggs: this gives you the right proportions)
• fresh parsley
• celery
• mayonnaise
• sour cream
• good dijon mustard

Dice the potatoes and cook them until tender in lightly salted water. Hard boil the eggs. I usually cook the eggs and potatoes together. Drain well and put the potatoes in a large bowl. Peel and chop the eggs, add to the potatoes. Chop the celery and parsley finely and add to the potatoes and eggs. Mix equal quantities sour cream and mayonnaise and then add a few large dollops of mustard, depending on how spicy you like it. Mix well and chill. Delicious.

I also brought ham and cheese pockets- the perfect picnic sandwich in my opinion. You can even make it the night before.

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This is a recipe that I tore out of a booklet being given away at the grocery store. It’s a fairly standard French recipe: vegetables, yogurt… baking…

• 1 Cauliflower
• 5 Tomatoes
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh chives
• 2 tbsps butter
• 1 small container plain Greek yogurt
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 4 tbsps grilled sliced almonds
• 4 tbsps fresh parmesan
• salt, pepper

Cut the cauliflower into small pieces and steam until soft. Cut the tomatoes into small pieces and put into the bottom of a buttered baking dish. Stir the yogurt to soften it and then pour over the tomatoes, then add the cooked cauliflower ontop. Sprinkle with the chives, almonds and parmesan and salt and pepper if desired. Bake at 350 for about fifteen minutes.

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Endives are a very French vegetable. I didn’t eat them often, at least not knowingly, when I lived in the United States. But they seem to be a staple winter vegetable in most people’s diets, both for the variety of ways they can be served and their price; you can often find a bag of six for less than €1. People certainly don’t eat them at first for their taste, which like many good things in life (spinach, strong coffee, red wine) needs to be acquired, they’re rather bitter raw or cooked.

Often times I steam them, then refrigerate overnight and serve cold with a tangy sauce for a simple salad. Or there’s always the preschooler’s soup I’ve already talked about.

This recipe might not be the most child friendly recipe, but it’s certainly very French. My kids will eat the ham and rice soaked sauce and pick at the endives which is all I really ask. After all, I have heard that it takes up to twenty exposures to a new and suspicious food for a child to like it- we’re only at about exposure number eight. it’s best to cook the endives in advance, otherwise you have to wait a long time for them to be cool enough to handle. Then again, you have to wait for the rice to cook. This is not a meal to make on a night you get home late, not unless you’ve prepped it all in advance!

Endive Ham Gratin (Gratin just being a fancy work for a baked casserole)

• 1 endive per person
• 1 slice of good ham per person
• rice
• bouillon cubes (vegetable flavor is my favorite)
• 1 cup heavy liquid cream
• 2 tablespoons good mustard
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds

At some point long before dinner time, it can even be the day before, cook the whole endives (don’t trim the ends) in boiling water seasoned with the bouillon cube for at least half an hour or until done. Then drain well, standing on their end, and put aside to cool.

When you are ready to put the dish together, start by cooking a pot of rice, about half the quantity you would normally prepare for the number of people you are serving. Then put the cooked rice into a buttered or oiled baking dish. Wrap each endive in a slice of ham, and place it on top of the rice, with the open ends of the ham down. Mix the last four ingredients together, and pour over the endives and rice. Make more sauce if there’s not enough. Bake in a 375° oven for about 30 minutes, or until the ham is crispy and the endives are hot. Serve to acclaim.

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