Category Archives: recipes

Let’s talk about fish, baby…

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I love fish. I’m an unabashed, unapologetic omnivore, and I have no desire to cut fish out of my diet. Trouble is, between PCBs and other contaminants on the one hand, and overfishing devastating future fish populations on the other, it’s hard making educated decisions about how to get some yummy fish to the table on a regular basis.

Our first stop is the Seafood Watch program offered by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They have guides available for all areas of the US, and you can even get apps for mobile searching on your iPhone or Android device. Their guides (whether browsed on their web site or in the printed guide, or browsed via the mobile app) can help you identify which varieties of fish are the best to get, from both a health and viability perspective.

For example, I love salmon. But, up here in New England, the most common salmon you can get your hands on is the Atlantic salmon. At this point, these salmon are all farmed, and there are known issues with the PCB content (high levels of contaminants in the fish) and with dumping of farm waste directly into the ocean. So, Atlantic salmon is pretty much off our menu until something big changes. Sockeye salmon is still okay, and anything that’s labeled as “long line caught” is often more sustainably fished.

Not sure if your fish at the grocery store or fish market has been sustainably fished? Best thing to do is to ask. If the fishmonger isn’t sure, or is cagy, then the odds are that they weren’t. Our grocery store has gotten A LOT better about trying to acquire sustainable fish, and they are in the process of overhauling their entire fish program to eliminate sales of any non-sustainable fish. Lest you think that I have to go to a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s or other specialty grocer to get this…let me assure you, I go to a mass-market grocery store. A chain, even! (gasp) My point is, it’s possible to get fish that you won’t have to feel guilty about – and an ounce of education on this may ensure that you can continue to have yummy fish for a longer stretch in the future.

Other issues that parents often run into with fish: bones and mercury. Bones are easy enough to avoid if you remember to purchase fillets; fish steaks often have bones in them (although larger fish, like tuna or steak, would have bones that are large enough to be more easily spotted and avoided). For mercury, the key issue there is that adults can handle the mercury in fish far more easily than kids can; mercury poisoning in a kid can create developmental problems in addition to illness. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) came out with some nice recommendations about what to do with respect to fish and mercury a few years ago, and the advice is still good. Note that their recommendations apply to pregnant or nursing women, as well as young children.

So, the bottom line is that you can have sustainable fish, healthy fish, and generally guilt-free fish as part of a healthy diet for you (and your kids), with only a modest amount of up-front research.

Remember to consult with your doctor or your pediatrician if you have any concerns about adding/increasing fish in your diet, and certainly take plenty of precautions if you have family allergies to fish and/or shellfish. 

The wherefors and whyhows of crock pot cooking

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They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. That may be true, but I’d like to think that the crock pot is a mom’s best friend. You fill it in the morning with ingredients in as short a time as possible, and dinner miraculously appears ready for the table without your having to stand in a kitchen for hours on end. Even better, it’s a great way to make dinner during the summer months without heating up the kitchen.

So, what are the basics of crock pot cooking?

  1. Figure out what types of things you want to make: soups and stews can go in any shape crock pot, but turkey breasts or whole small chickens require oval pots. Even the old faithful, pot roast, can easily fill a round crock pot and perhaps require an oval.
  2. Think about how many people you’re trying to serve with your dishes: 4qt crock pots are perfect for making dishes that run in the 4-6 serving range, but you’ll want to step up to a 5 or 6qt crock pot if you want to make a meal for more (or generate a load of leftovers).
  3. Consider what features you want: simpler crock pots have only three settings (OFF, LOW and HIGH); fancier ones may have a KEEP WARM setting and/or may have a timer to switch from your cooking temp to the warm setting.

Beyond that, it comes down to the basics of what you want to make and how to fit that into your schedule. With perhaps a few exceptions, cooking on LOW should be about twice the amount of time you need to cook on HIGH. So, if you suddenly realize at 2pm that you forgot to start your crock pot (and you’re home, not at work or out), you can probably kick that puppy up to HIGH and let it go until dinnertime.

Cooking times are also usually heavily related to the type of thing you’re cooking. Meats vary wildly (often 6-9hrs for chicken breasts or thighs, 9-11hrs for turkey breasts or whole small chickens, 10-12hrs for large cuts of beef and/or ribs).

What about the safety of cooking meats? Will the crock pot heat evenly? Will my meats dry out or possibly not cook thoroughly?

OK – all good concerns, but the typical cook-the-tar-out-of-it style of crock pot cooking (where you leave something in to braise for anywhere from 6-9+ hours) will generally handle this. You can help things out by defrosting meats before they go into the crock pot. You don’t have to defrost all the way, and some things can be put in as frozen bricks…but doing at least some defrosting can help a ton. In my many years of crock pot cooking, I have yet to run into any kind of illness related to meats being improperly cooked. I can say that meats can dry out, so maintaining an appropriate moisture level is really important. And, as they say, YMMV, so make sure that you see crock pot cooking as experimental. It’s like cooking with any other recipe. Why not add fresh mushrooms? Why not add a little hot sauce?

Consider the crock pot yet another way to shave time less-well-spent off the day if you’re already in a hurry (or just need to keep a meal really low-key). Most of the crock pot recipes I plan to post require less than 15mins of prep time. Honestly, I just don’t have the time to prep things for an hour…at that point, I’d rather just spend the time cooking and get my Julia Child on, if you know what I mean.