Ever since seeing the movie, the kids have been curious about what Ratatouille was and what it was made from and what it tasted like. Is it made by rats? Are there rats in it? I did a search and found a pretty simple recipe for it and decided to try to make it. It sounded good. Eggplant, squash, onion, red pepper all in a tomato sauce base - this recipe said to serve it over penne noodles. It looked great and colorful in the crock pot as evidenced from the photo above. Of course as it cooked all day, the vegetables got a lot mushier and it thinned out a bit. All in all, it tasted pretty good. It was a little plain for my taste. Maybe another recipe would have it spiced up a bit, some different variations. The kids ate it. It wasn't their favorite dish but at least now they know what it is. 
Evan helping to make the Ratatouille. He was so proud!
The boys and their plates.
Hailey liked it the most. She was shoveling it into her mouth!
One of my favorite things about cooking is to see the garbage disposal side of the sink full of onion skin, celery ends, pepper stems and seeds etc. Basically showing me all of the fresh produce that is going into the meal. It makes me feel like the kids are getting more quality nutrition. I am trying to cut back on the amount of processed foods that we eat. It is a daunting task and by no means do I think I can ever eliminate all things processed. Pretty much everything has some sort of processing involved. I am more of the mindset that instead of popping a frozen pizza in the oven, I will try to buy a pizza crust and add my own sauce and toppings to it. I will not go as far as to make my own pizza sauce or crust. That is just too much time and energy that I don't have at this time. So there will always be some processed items in our diet.
Our "meal plan" has helped a lot with this. Every Sunday we try to put together a plan for the week depending on what we have going, who will be home etc. It is hard to find the time to do it. Our Sunday evenings (which seems to be the time we do it) are already so filled with homework, projects, bathing kids. When we do, it benefits us immensely because our week is much less chaotic. We base the plan on things we have in the pantry and refrigerator. We make a grocery list at the same time for the things we will need. We go through recipes to figure out ideas - mostly tried and true old favorites, but I like to try a new one at least every other week. Usually on Monday morning I will go to the store and we will have the ingredients for the whole week. It makes it hard to find excuses not to cook and keeps us from turning to takeout. It saves us a lot of money and also a lot of calories to do it this way.
1 comment:
Good job on making a menu and sticking to it. It is so much healthier than processed foods, and it is such a ball to cook with the kids. Evan looks so pround next to the dish, which looks wonderfully healthy with all that color. Yum!!!
Post a Comment