Who doesn’t love a pickle? Summertime always buries us in cucumbers, between the ones we grow in our garden, the ones that show up in our produce box and the ones that are given to us by friends with cucumber plants. Luckily we pretty much never get sick of cucumbers around here. Neko...

I am super lucky. My kid has always liked asparagus. Asparagus has a strong flavor, so it can be an acquired taste for some. But Neko took to it instantly. The only problem I have when I cook asparagus is trying to prevent her from shoving the whole stalks in her mouth all at once, especially...

When it’s 100 degrees outside, I make dinner one of two ways. I either make something like a cold main course salad that requires no actual cooking or I go outside and grill. Our utility bill is running high right now and turning on the stove and/or the oven just heats up the house...

This is another one of my delicious failures. Delicious to me, delicious to Eric, but apparently inedible to Miss Neko. I previously thought that I could get Neko to eat anything as long as I served it with goat cheese on top, but I proved myself wrong with these grilled figs. I even tried...

If you want your kid to like okra, fry it. That’s a no-brainer. Who can resist, crispy, crunchy okra? My hope is that by exposing Neko to fried okra at a young age, she’ll be more likely to enjoy okra in other delicious forms later in life. Because roasted okra is just as...

I recently discovered that Neko loves eating soft tacos. We were out at a taqueria and I ordered Neko a bean and cheese soft taco. She picked it up like an expert and went to town, not even pausing to set the taco down until she was full, about three-quarters of the way through the taco. The...

While Mother’s Day seems to be the holiday for breakfast in bed, I think most dads end up getting a steak and potatoes dinner on their equivalent holiday. I offered to make Eric a steak this year, but he requested something lighter. So he got quail. I’ve only recently started...

Ripe Texas peaches are an excellent summer treat. It takes a good rainy winter to get a decent peach crop, so this year there are peaches everywhere, whereas last year, Texas peaches were hard to find. To make up for all the peaches I didn’t eat last year, I’ve been tearing...

Every other week, a box of local, organic vegetables shows up at my door. I love it, but sometimes planning what to do with all that produce can be … like work. I dig through my cookbooks, search epicurious.com, flip through my recipe folder, and sometimes I come up with some good ideas....

Chicken and waffles is one of those combo dishes that has always appealed to me. I love waffles and I love fried chicken, so why not put the two together? And yet I realized recently that I had never actually eaten chicken and waffles. The thought of topping a waffle with hot and crunchy...

My kid likes tofu. A lot. I know processed soy is under a lot of scrutiny for various possible health effects, but I am not too worried about it in our situation. We eat tofu maybe once a month and that’s it.* We really don’t eat any other processed soy foods, and we don’t...

Kohlrabi is one of those vegetables you don’t see around much. It’s not on a ton of menus, and you can’t typically find it at most grocery stores. I first made a kohlrabi salad a year ago when I saw the vegetable for sale at the farmers market. And then I didn’t see...

Guess who ate poultry … willingly? Ravenously, even! That’s right, my normally protein-adverse kid! Want to know the secret to my success? I handed her the meat on the bone, and just like a little caveman, she went to town. It shouldn’t surprise me. Eating meat off the bone is...

Neko has finally started eating chicken. She still turns her nose up at poultry most of the time, but at least it’s a start. The first recipe I found that got her to consume poultry was this one. It took some convincing to get her to try it, but I had two things working in my favor:...