I love this recipe for a few reasons. It is easy to make. The kids love it, but seriously who doesn’t love ice cream. And it is a project that kills some time. Perfect for when the kids are driving you up the wall on those long summer days or when they have friends over and you hear the dreaded, “We’re bored.”

Aside from the rock salt, you probably already have everything you need at your house right now.

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Fire up your grill. Grab your slabs of meat. Summer is here.

Does that chicken make your mouth water? All you vegetarians can just pretend it is some sort of chicken shaped tofu.

You will need:

2 cans coconut milk
2T curry paste (I only had powder so I used that instead and it was fine)
4 tsp orange zest
1 1/2 cups of orange juice

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 mangos cut into 1 inch chunks (I cut up 4 mangos)
1 pineapple cut into 1 inch chunks (I used canned)
Mix of salad greens

Mix together the coconut milk, curry paste, orange zest, and orange juice together in a small bowl with a lid.

Take the chicken breast and fillet it. That means cut the thickness in half. If you don’t do this when you grill your chicken it will be raw on the inside and burned on the outside. When you reduce the thickness it will cook evenly and still be tender.

Put the chicken into a large ziploc bag. Pour about a third of the coconut milk mixture into the bag. Allow the chicken to marinade for at least 30 minutes. Mine actually sat in the marinade for over 24 hours since we had a huge thunderstorm roll through and I didn’t feel like standing out in the storm waving my grill tongs like a lightening rod.

The rest of the marinade you will reserve for dressing the salad. Cut up the mango and pineapple. Or open the can if you are also using canned. Dump these into the bowl with the marinade. The recipe I had followed suggested grilling the mango and pineapple and I tried that the first time I made this recipe and decided that it wasn’t really worth the effort.

Here is a fun trick for cutting up mango. Slice the mango in half to the pit and pull it part. Cut the mango in a criss cross pattern down to the peel, without going through the skin.

Then flip it inside out.

This is a great way to give mango to the kids to eat. They can eat it right off of the peel like watermelon. And doesn’t it look cute enough to serve at the breakfast table?

Cover the bowl and put it in the refrigerator.

When you are ready cook your chicken on the grill.

After it is done cooking, slice the chicken into strips.

Cut up the salad greens. Toss with the reserved dressing. Add the grilled chicken.

Delicious. The perfect combination of grilled meat and sweet fruit, perfect for summer. I serve this with a nice bread. My kids like to eat the chicken and lettuce on bread like a sandwich.

And best of all? The kitchen has not been heated up by using the stove.

Now that Spring is here it means one thing in my family– baseball, baseball, and more baseball. Which in turn means I have less time to prepare dinner, often we arrive home at 8:30 at night and still have not eaten. I hate resorting to fast food, but sometimes I feel like I have no choice.

I have discovered that with a little advanced preparation I can have food ready that is quick to eat and to clean-up. At 9:00 at night who feels like eating a 3 course meal and then cleaning up after it? Not me.

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Aren’t these so yummy looking?

I call these cream cheese and jelly turnovers for the lazy among us who are feeling wracked with guilt and trying to buy their children’s love via their stomachs. But that seems a little long for the name of the recipe so I will just call them cream cheese and jelly turnovers for short.

This is actually the first time that I am away from my kids for something that is solely work related, with no fun factor built in. No catching up with friends. No drunk karaoke. No sightseeing. No subtext of I deserve a break from my children.

I was also just away last week and when I returned home Sunday evening my daughter gave me a drawing she made. It was of her crying because I was away. It would have been less painful had she reached into my chest and torn my heart out.

So when my kids requested this yesterday morning as I was tossing random crap into my suitcase packing, I couldn’t refuse.

This recipe is fun for kids to do themselves. It uses premade pie crust (I know. But let’s just all get over it.) You certainly can make your own pie crust if you are so inclined, but then it becomes a much more involved recipe that might not be accessible to the 6, 7, 8 year old set. It also would take much longer. The entire recipe from taking the ingredients out of the refrigerator to putting it on a plate to eat is under 30 minutes.

It is a nice addition to brunch or even just as an afternoon snack.
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Today my fourth born son turns nine. NINE?! When did that happen? I told him this morning that this is it; I will not tolerate anymore of this growing up.

He too wanted to make his own cake. By himself. With no help or interference. Luckily he picked Monkey Bread, which is as simple a recipe as there could possibly be. And in spite of what the name might suggest, is NOT made of monkeys.

My children have different theories on why it is called monkey bread. The dough in the finished product looks like monkey poop. It is easy enough for a monkey to make. You eat it with your hands like a monkey.

Your guess is as good as theirs and probably less gross.

Is your mouth watering? It should be.
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I have one son who is not a big fan of sweets. I know, I don’t understand where he came from either. He likes the idea of sweets, but more often than not he will pass them by.

Every year for his birthday he requests carrot cake. The past few years he has baked it himself. Everyone loves this cake.

This is his recipe.

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Generally speaking, I prefer ribs cooked on the grill. But the fact that my grill is currently buried under a foot of snow and whipping winds that produce a negative wind chill temperature in the air have hampered my outdoor grilling.

I pulled out an old crock pot rib recipe that I have made in the past and tweaked it a bit. This time I decided to brown the ribs first. And then I forgot to put in two of the ingredients, having lots of little “helpers” will do that to you. (IKNOW one of you will ask what ingredients did you forget so I will tell you, dry mustard and vinegar. Okay?)

The results were amazing. All of the kids loved it and declared that they were the best ribs they had ever tasted. And that I should make these every day! We will be rib-atarians.

Hello, gorgeous.

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I have a pet peeve.

Really, Chris? Just one?

Okay, I have more than one pet peeve. I have a whole trunk of them, but the big one is my disdain for junk food pretending to be “real” food.

The granola bars, breakfast bars, “fruit” snacks, “made from 100% fruit” juices, go-gurt, to name a few. Those tubes of yogurt make me want to gouge my eyeballs out. No really. Those and the single serving sized soups that you drink out of the can. Personally I think if you can not find time to use a spoon that you don’t deserve to eat. No soup for you!

I have no problems with eating or serving my children the occasional donut, candy, ice cream, or even Oreo. But the difference is I harbor no illusions that it is anyway good for us.

I read a great article by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in the New York Times recently where he wrote:

Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

But we are all busy. How do you fit the time in to make healthy foods a priority?

Last year I had undiagnosed food allergies and episodes of anaphylaxis that forced me to be a more vigilant label reader and in the process learn how to cook. If you had told me a year ago that I would enjoy cooking, I would have laughed at you. But now I do enjoy it.

Along the way I have discovered that making good foods also nourishes your soul. And that children already know this. They love pouring and mixing. They delight in handling fresh produce. It all seems magical to them that seemingly random ingredients come together to form food. Getting over the feeling that it is an awful chore that must be suffered through is difficult.

And so I am choosing to view the past year as a gift. Although now that I have learned my lessons I am so ready to pass the gift one. Any takers? No? I’ll throw in a couple of Epi-pens? No takers, huh?

Breakfast is always one of those meals that gets the short end of the stick. Lots of sugars and prepackaged, processed foods. Most of us don’t have the time to make healthy home cooked food in the mornings.
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Happy Valentine’s Day.

My children have eaten sweethearts, chocolate, and cupcakes for breakfast. Apparently Valentine’s Day is the national holiday for putting yourself into a sugar coma.

I am not going to write about making cupcakes today. Instead I am going to share our family’s beloved chili recipe. Because let’s face it, nothing says I love you like a meal that requires beano. Flatulence: the gift that keeps on giving.

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I have been over run with recipe requests! I have to say that I am not a chef. My method of cooking is generally to throw whatever I find in my house into a pan and cook it all up. I don’t even know all the right terminology so I can’t even passably play a chef on the internet.

But I am more than happy to share some of the recipes I have in my arsenal.

This recipe is a chicken and white bean chili that you can make in your crockpot. It is also really good leftover for lunch, for those of us working at home.

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