Vegan Strawberry Curd

Curd is an intensely-flavored soft, thick sauce, most commonly made with a lemon, lime, or orange flavor.  Originally curd was spread on scones or bread as an alternative to jam for afternoon tea, but much has changed since it's 19th century use.  While curd is still great spread on scones, bakers of today use curd in endless ways.  Fillings for cakes, tarts, and cupcakes, flavoring for frosting, and additions to coffee cakes and muffins are a few common uses.  In my family, curd is also used for topping pancakes, spreading on English muffins or inside crepes, and adding to vanilla ice cream.

I also suggest that you try curd for advancing your picky eater's diet.  Curd is good for picky eaters because it's texture is in between jam and jelly, but with the same sweet taste.  If you have a picky eater, then you already know how difficult it is to switch and/or change any of the foods he/she will eat, but using sweet food items are easier than almost any other.  I am generalizing, but most picky eaters over the age of 2 will eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Change the type of jelly used in their sandwich, and they may not eat it.  Change to jam, and forget it.  In order to help picky eaters advance their diet, we need to find ways to slightly alter the food they already eat, and curd is a nice middle ground.   I've said this many, many times before, but it's worth repeating; one of the key components to helping your picky eater is to get them to a point where they trust your cooking from scratch.  From the foods you make, there is more room to manipulate ingredients at the pace that your picky eater can handle and slowly advance his/her diet to include more variety, more textures, more quantity, and more quality.

This recipe is for strawberry curd, but it can be changed into a variety of other flavors as well.  In addition, it is a vegan recipe, omitting the eggs and butter that are common in other curds; items that I assure you will not be missed in this recipe.

Spring Vegetable Pasta

Spring marks the beginning of my favorite season for vegetables.  Peas, asparaus, artichokes, leeks, lettuce, sweet onions, and scallions to name a few.  Using the tender and fresh produce of spring is a welcome change from the root vegetables of winter, and I want a little taste of all of them.  Jasper White wrote in FtLeavenworthLamp.com that fresh, locally grown produce is the holy grail of cooking.  His figure of speech couldn't be more true.  Fresh, in season produce is the most coveted component of cooking, and that is because in season fruits and vegetables not only look better and taste better, they also provide a better final product and are more reasonably priced.

This pasta dish incorporates some of my favorite spring produce:  leeks, peas, asparagus, lemon, mint, and chives.  The recipe uses vegetables that pair well with each other, following an old rule of thumb, if it grows together, it goes together.  The outcome is fresh and light, yet saucy, using no heavy cream, butter, or half and half.  It tastes like it came straight from the farmer's market.

Oatmeal Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

Last week I chaperoned a field trip to the Oregon Food Bank.  I spent roughly three hours with an ambitious group of fifth grade boys trying to separate bulk raw oats into family-sized quantities. The kids were grouped into teams of three to weigh and box oats into 2 pounds bags, and almost immediately they naturally started to compete to see who could produce the most bags, the quickest, and with the least waste.  It was hilarious watching these kids turn an ordinary service project into a head-to-head competition.  And I'll admit, I had fun.  The time was enjoyable and moved quickly since we laughed our way through the process.

What I found even more hilarious was the boys' conversation as they were separating all the oats.  It very quickly turned to discussions of oatmeal cookies, oatmeal muffins, and all things oatmeal.  The smell of the raw oats did circulate around the room as we worked, and for foodies, aromas often trigger food memories and food thoughts, but what was fun for me was to see and hear average 10-year olds doing the same thing.

After the field trip, I went straight home and began searching for oatmeal cookie recipes.  I wanted to reward the kids for not their effort, but for their joyful and exuberant attitude while serving others.  I was proud of these kids and what better way to say, 'job well done' than to provide them with the a small taste of what they had been talking about for hours...an oatmeal cookie.