Usher in fall with late summer happiness

Veggie surprise

What do you share when you want to extend thanks, help warm a new home, or brighten someone’s table? Flowers nearly always get the job done, and  chocolate works any time of year.

Have you tried a basket of apples or platter of fresh veggies? I loved this gift of late summer and I’m passing on my veggie surprise for your fall harvest — guaranteed to make someone happy at your table or theirs.

Kids ramp up healthy cooking quotient

Think your healthy cooking quotient is higher than a middle schooler’s? Read about young students who are helping America kick the junk food habit and cooking real food.

To your heart . . .

Here’s a quiz for your heart health:

is your heart health important . . . or urgent?

important . . . or urgent?

Hopefully, you’re living it well, but if not, you can start something today.

Love your oatmeal. It may be certain that heart disease takes many lives, but heartbreak leads to another deep loss. Love others, love your heart, and be well.

Dodge cholesterol and keep a distance

Designating a month for causes must be getting someone’s attention, and if that’s what it takes to turn heads to healthy living, I’m flying the flag for Cholesterol Awareness Month. Give yourself or someone you love some space from bad cholesterol and keep the distance. It seems as if we should all know by now that it’s better to reach for an apple than a fatty food, yet many munching Americans are still measuring disappointing cholesterol levels. Want a closer look at what’s good and not so good in your lunch box? Capture product barcodes with your phone camera and review nutritional details with an app from Fooducate.

Nourish . . .

You may not be baking the daily bread or growing your own bounty to harvest, but if you’re trying to serve up nourishment with a healthy perspective, you’re helping light the way to better nutrition.

I’m marking another year at The Cookery (three years this week), and applauding all who are trying to sustain and nourish . . .  in their homes, schools, and communities. There’s room at the table to get healthy and move forward.

Bento Box filled with healthy fun for one

Yum-Yum Bento Box

How long does it take to fix a school lunch? For the experienced parent, good at keeping chips or the equivalent, fruit and veggies, a sandwich and a treat, maybe two minutes. That’s unless the peanut butter has separated or the jelly cowers at the unreachable bottom of the jar. It’s a daily task, done with a kind of slapdash love. But other folk have other ideas. The Yum-Yum Bento Box, a delectable little cookbook is a case in point. Crystal Watanabe and Maki Ogawa introduce the art of designing lunch in a bento, a box-for-one popularly known in Japan.

The colorful pages display elegant or humorous lunch ideas that are sure to be the envy of everyone else in the cafeteria.

Full-color photographs show folktale and fairytale characters, holiday symbols and creatures created almost wholly with snippets of fresh vegetables, molded rice, and nori (dried seaweed). The ingredients are mostly at your regular supermarket though it might be tricky to find quail eggs if you are dedicated to copying the bumblebee creation!

Yum-Yum Bento Box: Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches, By Crystal Watanabe, Maki Ogawa, Quirk Books, 2010

© 2010 Jane Manaster. All Rights Reserved.

While you’re gathering ideas for young palates, consider Silly Snacks by Favorite Brand Name. Silly is the key ingredient in this snack helper filled with clever creations. I received a copy of this cookbook several years ago from the queen of kid pleasers, our “90-something” great-grandma to my kids. She sent copies around to many of her loved ones and we keep ours at the ready when meal time calls for fun. We love the Tic-Tac-Toe Tuna Pizza.

Best price on pomegranates

Crimson beauty

If you can beat this price on pomegranates — $1.50 each — please put your hands in the air. Pomegranates do seem like a luxury of rich comfort, but Sprouts makes them look affordable in Austin this week. I love adding pomegranate to salads and spiking sauces with pomegranate juice. But the real reason for this week’s haul is kid friendly.

Pomegranate rewards

My kids love to tap the seeds (we call them seeds!) out of this succulent crimson fruit. Fun, healthy, and this week . . . affordable.

Wanted: Big Food Fix

I’ve been away for a stretch, and my family and I haven’t missed the pervasive environment of junk food back home in the USA. Health experts and concerned citizens have discussed the matter in detail while offering ambitious solutions, but without wide-scale environmental changes, junk food will continue to dominate much of our food landscape. Natasha Singer condenses the realities today in The New York Times.

Get fresh . . . with organic fruit

We’re winding down from a week laced with chocolates, hearts and flowers, and Mardis Gras temptations. It’s certain we’ve indulged, and I can say I’m feeling slightly on the puffy side. But thanks to a bowl full of fresh organic fruit that a smiling neighbor delivered, we’re trying to regroup. When was the last time you dropped by a friend’s with a basket of assorted fresh fruit? I’m latching on to this gift-in-hand alternative for my next drop-in visit. We’ve all but finished the fruit, with two apples still up for grabs.

Soup’s on . . . Spicy Egg Drop Soup

Drop this

True to our word, The Cookery won’t pass on recipes that we haven’t tested. I fell for this Spicy Egg Drop Soup last fall when my cousin prepared it here in Austin. Kathie keeps a busy schedule with a daily train commute on the East Coast, and when she returns to the nest at the work day’s end, she occasionally recovers with this Spicy Egg Drop Soup. Provided ingredients are on hand, you can prepare this real meal from stovetop to table in 20 minutes. I’ve adjusted Kathie’s recipe for our family table. Tested. Tasted. Recommended.

Spicy Egg Drop Soup

2 cups water

6 cups broth (chicken or vegetable)

2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger root

1 teaspoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 cups fresh spinach leaves

5 eggs, lightly beaten

1 pound cooked tail-off shrimp

3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms

½ cup sliced scallions

In large soup pot, mix water, broth, ginger root, sesame oil, fish sauce, salt and cayenne. Cook over medium heat two minutes. Stir in spinach. Gradually add egg and gently stir one to two minutes. Add shrimp and mushrooms, and cook 10 minutes over medium-high heat. Ladle soup into serving bowls and dress with garden green scallions.

Yield: Eight servings