Sometimes the aim of a dish is simply to get something on the table that everyone will eat.  Add-in that you have a house full of kids who cringe at the thought of anything made with vegetables and it can become an issue.  The answer?  Cover those veggies in something they’ll gobble up so that the dog doesn’t get fed under the table.

This is one of those dishes that has its roots in necessity more than any plan of culinary greatness.  it was designed to be something that my whole family would eat with a minimum of funky faces or groans about how nobody in the house but me likes broccoli or mushrooms. (They do like mushrooms, but not if they know they’re there.)

The simple solution was to smother everything in a nice, creamy Alfredo sauce, with the addition of some lightly sauteed mushrooms for some extra body.  Not only did the kids eat their vegetables, but they asked for more!

This recipe was created for the FoodBuzz Family Bites series, sponsored by Newman’s Own products, so the sauce used was not my usual classic Alfredo, but in this case I don’t think that was an issue at all.  The kids loved it, from the 11 year-old picky eater to the 3 year-old with a diet of four items total, all enjoyed this dish. (And the sauce was pretty darned good for a cream based Alfredo.)

In the end, i’ll give this meal a 5 for creativity, but a 10 for kid-friendly, and that’s what it was all about.  Give it a try with your picky eaters and I hope you get the same results!

What’s your favorite simple kid friendly meal?  We’d love to hear about it. (Especially me, because my kids are extremely picky!)

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Simple, quick and tasty.  That’s what comes to mind when I think of this salad.  The sweetness of honey, the tang of mustard and a good hearty blast of sweet red grapefruit make this a sure-fire winner on even the hottest day. It puts a smile on my face every time I make it.

It only takes a few minutes to put this together, which makes it a great choice for a quick lunch.  Alternately, just pack up the ingredients separately and assemble it right at your desk in a few seconds for a light alternative to a standard office lunch.

This recipe was created for FoodBuzz Family Bites. The ingredients used were provided by Newman’s Own, which is why there is a brand specified, but any Honey Mustard dressing that you love, whether home made or store bought will work wonders here.

On a final and unrelated note, my recipe for Chili Stuffed Cornbread is a finalist in the RO*TEL Across America recipe competition.  I’d love it if you could pop over and vote for it.  I’d love for it to end up in the top three places. (Winning would be nice, too!)  You can vote once per day up until June 30th, Show some love!

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Summer dishes should be quick.  Who wants to stand in a hot kitchen when you could be out enjoying the weather or escaping the heat in the pool?  There are other, better uses for your time in the long days of summer than standing in front of a stove. (Unless you happen to be a food geek like me of course.)

Heavy meals and warm weather make for terrible bed fellows. A great warm weather meal should also not weigh you down and make you feel sluggish, it should entice the palate and nourish both body and spirit. I think this dish manages to do all of these things.

This dish mingles the heady flavors of fresh baby bell peppers and tomato with the light texture of gently poached cod and just enough rice to make it a more than substantial dinner or with a bit less rice, a great lunch.  It’s a simple meal to make but tastes like something that has had hours of love and caring poured into it.  It’s definitely something I would be happy serving to friends or family on any given day.

Poaching the fish directly in the sauce brings everything together into one unique whole, but still allows the individual flavors of the ingredients to stand out. If you love fish, peppers and tomatoes, this is one dish you really must try.

This dish was prepared as part of the FoodBuzz Family Bites series, so be sure to go check out what others came up with in their series of family friendly meals.

What’s your favorite fish recipe?  Do you prefer smoked, grilled, poached or fried.  We’d love to hear about it.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

With temperatures in the high double and low triple digits, it’s time for lighter meals that pack a ton of flavor without being heavy.  This dish provides all the flavor you could ever want and mingles it with an abundance of color and simple preparation.  From idea to plate in less than five minutes and no stove required.  It’s the perfect summertime snack.

I made this dish as a part of the FoodBuzz Family Bites series featuring Newman’s Own products, and as part of the program, I dressed these lovely veggies in some of Newman’s own Olive Oil and vinegar salad dressing that they provided, but any good vinaigrette will do marvelously, especially if it has a good bit of zing to it.

While a three ingredient salad may seem a bit minimal, I promise that this dish is perfect summer fare.  It’s light, crisp, cool and flavorful.  All things that appeal to me when it’s blazing hot outside, but don’t let the lack of ingredients stop you from adding anything else that makes you smile to the dish.

Goat cheese would have been a welcome addition, as would queso fresco.  A little green onion or red onion would have been nice as well, but they aren’t necessary.  If you’ve got a few fresh tomatoes hanging out, they would add a wonderful acidic note to the party as well.  Have fun with it!

What’s your favorite summer salad?  Is it a classic slaw or an iceberg salad?  Do you prefer potato or macaroni salad as a quick summer snack?  We’d all love to hear what you crave in the summer months.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

It’s grilling time here in Northern California. While this normally means making up a batch of burgers or dogs to appease the always-starving hordes of small people running around our house, every once in a while it’s also time to get seriously creative and try something new and completely different.

This recipe is inspired completely by my wife.  We were discussing her preference for thinner burgers vs. the thick ones that my boys and I generally prefer when she stated matter-of-factly “If they’re stuffed I like them thick!  you should have tried the feta stuffed lamb burgers I had the other day. “

I couldn’t argue that feta stuffed lamb sounded amazing.  In fact, since I had a freezer full of ground lamb that had been diverted from another recipe I wasn’t equipped to handle right now, it sounded absolutely perfect.  Feta is always on hand and low and behold, I even had some buns tucked in a corner.

Armed with the most fantastic method from Savory Sweet Life on how to form the perfect patty (which is also the ultimate method for making a stuffed patty) and a circle cutter just slightly larger than the buns I was using, I set out.

This method of forming patties is remarkably simple and yields absolutely perfect, uniform patties every time.  My circle cutter is pretty tall, so we ended up with 4 very substantial patties.  If I’d used a lid as suggested in the original article I probably would have ended up with 6 or 8 but big is good when feeding pre-teens and I was happy with the results.

I decided that I needed something besides the standard lettuce, onion and tomato topping and opted for thin slices or cucumber and radish.  The boys still went for lettuce which is fine by me, but for my tastes these toppings were perfect.

Note, there were no condiments used here. These burgers were more than juicy enough to stand without them.  If you really must have some kind of sauce, try tzatziki or some yogurt with a squeeze of lemon juice and dill or mint.  You definitely don’t want to overpower the burgers themselves.

What’s your favorite grilling recipe?  Are you a burger and potato salad type or do you go for chicken, pork or ribs?  Have you ever made a stuffed burger? We’d love to know!

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Before anyone starts anything, I know that you probably have your own ideas on what makes the perfect grilled cheese sandwich and I’m pretty sure that this one isn’t it. For me though, nobody will ever make a more perfect grilled cheese sandwich than the one I’m discussing here.  Why?  Because my son made it and you can’t top my son’s very first grilled cheese sandwich for the perfect sandwich.

Sure, I helped a little and I stood by while he made it, but this is Lil’ E’s moment, not mine.  this almost 12 year-old is taking his first steps towards learning to be independent (and avoiding the pitfalls of an all fast food diet in college).  It’s an amazing thing to be the one teaching him  some of the skills that will help him through life. And he did a pretty darned good job for a first try, don’t you think?

Please be aware that I’m all for a panini-pressed masterpiece of good aged cheeses and all varieties of additions from ham to prosciutto or veggies and tomatoes, but around the Russell house a grilled cheese sandwich has a few well defined criteria:

1. It’s cooked in olive oil, not butter.  This makes for a crisp sandwich that isn’t slathered in butter.

2 .It must be over-stuffed with cheese.  Cheddar cheese. sharp cheddar is preferred

3. It also must be messy, gooey and dripping copious amounts of cheese all over the eater and the plate.

In all, you are free to have your grilled cheese in any manner you choose.  This particular sandwich will stand out in my memory as the best I’ve ever seen for quite some time, I’m sure.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Sometimes I think that a dish I make is going to be far too humble to find its way here, but then I do a double take and scramble for my camera gear.  This is one of those cases.  A simple fillet of fish nestled in greens with a bit of dressing.  It’s so uncomplicated and unassuming that it nearly escaped my attention yet in its own way it’s the perfect dish, especially if you’re in a hurry.

As with anything, there is a story behind this little bit of perfection.  Our two oldest boys had joined some friends at a Wednesday night church function, which left just the littlest and myself at home for dinner.  Since his idea of a good dinner and mine differ wildly (Chicken!), I decided to let him have his favorite dish (Chicken!) and fend for myself.

The freezer did not disappoint. It yielded a bag of almost-forgotten mahi mahi fillets that had been hiding behind something far less nutritious (Chicken!) so while I finished getting the little guy’s dinner ready I tossed a few pieces of fish under cold running water to defrost.

By the time Ll’ B. was done eating his gourmet meal of chicken strips with a side of grapes and bananas and was safely tucked off in his room the fish was ready to go.  The weather has been foul here for the past few days, so I decided that perhaps I could trick nature into bringing summer our way by making something light; a salad felt like just the thing, but with a bite.

So toss some arugula with some greens, season and cook the fish and plate, drizzle with Italian dressing… And realize that from the aroma alone, this dish just had to have a place in the spotlight.  So scramble for the camera, the EGO light and reflector so that I can share something simple and perfect with the world:

My plea to nature must have worked, because today is bright and sunny.  Birds are singing, the squirrels are playing in the back yard and the temperature is comfortable.  It looks like summer may finally be on its way.  All because of a piece of fish, some greens and a little house dressing.

And that’s the story of the simplest dish I’ve made this year.  Cook time about 6 minutes, total prep 10 minutes.  Perfect flavor and buttery texture: Priceless.  This one is a winner for any time you need a great meal in a huge hurry without having to do any planning, and it’s perfect for summer as well… Now that it’s here.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

For my family cornbread was a staple food.  It was served with beans and potatoes, with fish, for holidays, at parties and often just as a snack.  It was always served with a bowl of chili.  There was no question that chili and cornbread were meant to go together.  If anyone had suggested to me as a kid that you could just bake the chili right in to the cornbread, I would have called them crazy.

Yet here I am today, telling all of you that you can do just that.  Not only am I telling you that you can do it.  I’m telling you that you should do it, and you should do it as soon as you get to the recipe below.  It might just be a life altering experience for you.

I don’t say that lightly.  The dish pictured above and below these words has changed my perception of a dish I’ve known and loved all my life.  It has opened new possibilities to me in very much the same way that Martin Yan, Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse or Alton Brown ever did.  It twisted my “normal” on its ear… And that, my friends is a very good thing.

It also opened my kids up to something new.  I’m not going to lie when I say that there was a fair amount of resistance to trying this dish.  At one point there were cries of “I’d rather go hungry.”  Thankfully it never came to that. Once they took a bite, it was all over.  They loved it, and I think your family will too.

Have you ever had a dish that changed the way you thought about an ingredient?  If so, did it change for the better?  I’d love o hear about it, so drop a comment below.

Now get your oven ready.  It’s time for some vittles!

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Popularity: 3% [?]

The weather here in far Northern California is finally edging to warm and sunny, soon to be followed by blazing hot.  Along with the rise in temperature comes a steady decrease in the desire for long cooked, slow braised or even warm foods.

To put it simply, we’re entering the salad, ice cream and smoothie months of the year around here.  Milkshakes have replaced cakes, cookies and brownies as the dessert of choice and the kids clamber after the ice cream truck in the afternoons.  Summer is coming to the North State and there is just no better afternoon pick-me-up than a frosty glass of silken fruity goodness.

Smoothies are a good way to get more fruit into my kids’ diets as well, since only my youngest will readily choose a banana, apple or any other fruit in favor of something else they probably shouldn’t have been going after. (Dad needs to stop buying that stuff…  I need to talk to him about that.)

Most smoothie recipes call for banana, but  my kids despise them in their smoothies.  This recipe is all about the berries, but without the sweetness of the banana a little sugar may be needed to get the smoothy sweet enough to be drinkable.  Fortunately that usually translates to less than they would get in a soda, though this particular batch of berries was pretty tart and required more than usual.

Do you have a favorite smoothie recipe?  A favorite flavor combination?  Is there something that you add that you don’t let your kids know about?  We’d love to know, so drop a comment and let us in on your little tips for healthier snacks.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

No matter what skill level you attain as a cook or what triumphs of culinary complication you manage to master over the course of a lifetime it’s a plain simple truth that sometimes simpler is better.  I feel that the simplest of dishes with the fewest ingredients actually takes more skill to master than dishes with complex ingredient lists and prolonged methods.

In a simple dish there is no room for error.  You can’t cover a mistake with another layer, or a touch of this or that.  This dish is like that.  It has just 5 ingredients and takes less than 15 minutes to prepare.  A novice cook can easily make this dish and make it well. To make it perfectly every time is something that I strive for… And so far have not mastered.

My kids don’t mind that I keep trying.  It’s one of their favorite dishes, whether as a side dish or as a meal in itself.  My wife fell in love with it on her last visit as well.  Both of these things make me push myself to make it better every time I cook it.  To add just a little more care.  To be sure the pasta is perfectly al dente.  That there isn’t too much or too little of any one thing. Because there’s no place to hide if I screw it up.

Do you have a simple dish like this in your arsenal?  Is there something that you feel could always be just a little better than it was the last time?  For me this is that dish..  But then, it’s so delicious that even if I’ve never achieved its pinnacle, the other versions are incredible, too.

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Popularity: 16% [?]