food Archives - Nesting Story

Easy to Bake Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

With autumn here and colder days fast approaching, it’s always nice to get cosy and eat some delicious food. It’s my belief that your soul needs warm yummy food at this time of year!

Having always had a sweet tooth, baking is something I’ve enjoyed since I was little. Cookies and biscuits are something I haven’t attempted to bake for a long time, but as the chilly autumn evenings have begun closing in, I’ve been called to bake something warm, chocolatey, and delicious!

These are easy to make for even the novice baker, and having not made any type of cookie for years, I was skeptical at first how they would turn out. Not only were they mouthwateringly good, they were also surprisingly simple to make. You can even include your little ones while baking, and have them help stir the ingredients.

Baking cookies is fun for kids! — **Willow is always so excited and happy to help me in the kitchen**

I’m always on the look out for delicious recipes, that are also healthier. With the rolled oats in this recipe you can rest assured that your little one is still getting a healthy dose of protein & other essential nutrients from their chocolate chip cookie after dinner!

So read on and learn how to bake the most delicious, crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, melt in your mouth oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes around 16 cookies

Dry ingredients:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, cold (can sub for vegan butter like Earth Balance)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips (can sub for vegan chocolate chips, or switch for raisins)

1. Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl (little hands can help stir!) Heat the oven to 350F (180C).

2. Cream the butter and sugar together until combined, and resembles a smooth thick paste. If you have a hand blender I recommend using it, as the cold butter does take some working to combine with the sugar.

3. Mix in the vanilla extract and chocolate chips (or raisins).

4. Mix dry and wet ingredients until a dough forms. Add 1 tablespoon of water at a time if the dough isn’t sticking together. The goal isn’t to have one large thick ball of dough, but rather test you can work the dough into balls and they stay together.

oatmeal chocolate chip cookie batter — **This crumbly consistency of dough will combine easily. Be careful not to add too much water**

5. Take roughly two tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball, place on an overproof tray. Lightly press the top of the ball to flatten slightly.

6. Bake for 14-18 minutes until the cookies start to brown around the edges. The cookies will still look raw and be soft, but TRUST ME, they will firm up as they cool. I’ve ruined batches by cooking longer than needed thinking they weren’t ready, only to find that when they cool they’re overdone and too dry.

waiting for cookies — **Our house was filled with chants of “cookie cookie cookie” until they were done**

Let me know how you get on with these cookies! They make a great desert alone or with ice cream, or as an after lunch treat in the school lunch boxes. Enjoy!

Roseanne is the blogger behind the honest and inspirational personal blog Roseanne Writes. Native to Scotland and now calling Canada home, Rosanne helps mothers navigate motherhood while remaining true to themselves. You learn more about Roseanne and follow her personal blog here.

How To Up Your Toddlers Daily Fruit & Veg

It’s the eternal struggle of parenthood; how to get your kids to eat enough fruits and vegetables.

Willow hasn’t been a particularly picky eater. As an infant, she would devour whole avocados, eat cucumber sticks and happily gobble down broccoli. But as she’s gotten older, and is learning to think for herself, she sometimes refuses point blank to eat what we put down in front of her.

Meal times have become a complicated dance of bargaining and trying to convince her how yummy her food is by eating some myself, which usually backfires as she starts to feed me instead.

She is hard to convince sometimes, so there have been many days she misses out on some aspect of her meal.

I know lots of kids, especially toddlers, can go through this phase and thought I’d share two fruit smoothie recipes I like to use to sneak more fruit and veggies into Willow on days when her eating is erratic.

These recipes make roughly one glass, and can easily be split into two servings for little ones. They are such a great snack or drink to accompany breakfast. It’s also a nice way to include toddlers in the kitchen as it’s easy to measure out ingredients and let them tip fruit into the blender. Willow absolutely loves doing this and takes her smoothie making duties very seriously.

Pineapple Strawberry Slushy Smoothie

1 cup water

1 cup spinach/kale

1 cup frozen pineapple

1/2 cup frozen strawberries

1 tbsp ground flaxseeds

1 tbsp chia seeds

Green Pineapple Mango Smoothie

1 cup water

1 cup spinach/kale

1 cup fresh (or thawed) pineapple

1/2 cup frozen mango

1 tbsp ground flaxseeds

1 tbsp chia seeds

Blend water and greens first until you have a green juice and there are no large chunks of spinach/kale left.
Add in your fruit, ground flaxseeds, and chia seeds.
Blend and enjoy!

These recipes are two of our quick and easy go to smoothies, but the fruit combinations are endless. We’ve had days of greens, strawberry and blueberry smoothies, greens, mango, banana and strawberry smoothies…

Whatever you decide to add into your smoothies, I recommend keeping the frozen fruit to 1.5 cups. Any more and it’ll be too thick to blend. However if you’re using some fresh fruit or thawed frozen fruit, then you can play about with the ratios of water to fruit to see how you like it.

Blending greens with fruits make a delicious smoothie any picky eating toddler will love. — ***Willow has always enjoyed her regular smoothies, here pictured devouring one at 18 months old***

As you can see I’ve used frozen pineapple for one recipe, and fresh for the other. Using frozen pineapple or fresh (or thawed) pineapple will change the texture of the smoothie. If you want a more frozen “slushy” texture, then keep it frozen. Want something a little thinner and more like a thick juice? Then opt for fresh pineapple, or simply pop a bowl of your frozen pineapple in the microwave to thaw it out before adding.

Pineapple is a great fruit to use as it’s so sweet and can make the smoothie taste more like a treat than a healthy glass of spinach for those skeptical toddlers. It also creates a nice thick foundation to add more fruit to, and I like to use it as my main fruit in smoothies.

Whether you have a picky eater, or simply want to up your kids fruit and veg intake, a smoothie is easy to make, affordable, nutritious and delicious! — ***I often make a double batch so we can all enjoy smoothies together!***

I either use spinach or kale (or both!) to give a good serving of greens alongside the fruit. A great tip for keeping greens from wilting, is to pop your fresh clean greens in the freezer! This seriously improved my smoothie game as I was never having to rush to make smoothies before our produce went off, and I always have fresh greens on hand for when those smoothie cravings hit!

Buying large bags of frozen fruit from Costco is extremely cost effective and last quite a while if you buy a few different fruits and like to mix up your smoothie flavours as we do.

I also use flax and chia seeds in every smoothie our family drinks. If you’re unfamiliar, flax and chia seeds are nothing short of a magical superfood.

Both are loaded with nutrients and antioxidants, a great source of omega-3 fats, full of fibre, protein, and lower the risk of stroke, heart disease, cancers, and all sorts! They don’t taste of anything, and can be added to just about everything! They’re an effective way of incorporating a nutritional boost for your little ones without any effort.

Whether you have a picky eater, or simply want to up your kids fruit and veg intake, these two smoothie recipes are easy to make, affordable, nutritious and delicious! Comment below and let me know what your favourite fruit smoothie combinations are!

Summer Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

When summer rolls around and berries are finally in season, this Summer Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp recipe is my go to dessert.

Raise your hand if you have a specific food that when you smell it, it immediately brings you back to your childhood days.

Smells trigger memories for me…turkey on Thanksgiving, pasta sauce simmering, but my most favourite is the smell of strawberry rhubarb crisp It screams summer to me. So light, so fresh, and oh so delicious. It takes me back to my carefree (before having kids)…summer days.

But wait …it’s healthy too!! My love language is definitely food, eating it yes, but more than that, preparing it for my family.

So when summer rolls around and berries are finally in season, this Summer Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp recipe is my go to dessert. I even requested my mom plant rhubarb in her garden this past summer and it grew like crazy!!

Lets bake.

Summer Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

Filling:

6 stalks of rhubarb, cut into ½ thick pieces

2 cups of strawberries, hulled and sliced

¼ cup of sugar (optional, I actually cut out the sugar because the sweetness of the strawberries is enough)

Topping:

1 cup of all purpose flour

½ cup of rolled oats

⅓ cup of sugar (again optional, i deleted the sugar here too)

⅓ cup of firmly packed brown sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon of salt

½ cup of butter, melted

Instructions:

Heat your oven to 350 degrees and use a 9 x13 baking dish (if the baking dish is smaller that’s ok, it will be a thicker slice of heaven)

In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together using a fork. Then slowly add in the melted butter creating a crumb like mixture.

Spread the crumb mixture over the berries

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until you see the berries bubbling. Bake it a bit longer if you like the crisp even crispier.

Best served warm with vanilla bean ice cream

Another yummy way to enjoy this is with vanilla Greek yogurt. My kids have been eating it cold for breakfast with yogurt all summer long

A delicious fresh strawberry crisp is the perfect summer dessert.

Enjoy!!!

Tip ** buy the rhubarb in bulk and freeze it in batches of 6 stalks, that way it’s ready to go for this recipe

Lori is a thirty something year old mom of four, living in the little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Her passions include her family, fashion, and food. She loves preparing simple and delicious recipes that both kids and adults will enjoy.

The Easiest Tomato and Avocado Summer Dip

Growing up in an Italian household, we were lucky to have parents that poured, and continue to pour their heart and soul into harvesting a garden from spring into fall. Fresh vegetables and herbs were only a few minutes walk away, which at the time we didn’t realize how spoiled we actually were. Tomato and cucumber salads were a daily staple in our kitchen….and the juicier the tomatoes, the better. The combination of vegetables, extra virgin olive oil and feta-such simple ingredients, but a flavour explosion in your mouth!

My father would stop and pick up fresh Italian bread on the way home from work for us to tear apart and dip into the juices.

Fast forward to my kids, they love it and request it just as much as my siblings and myself did, and it being so healthy and simple to make, I can’t say no.

I’ve done a few different variations of this recipe but my most recent has turned into a new favourite of my families. Combining our two favourite dips, guacamole and tomato salad seemed like an obvious recipe to create. It really couldn’t be easier to make and I guarantee people will be asking you for the recipe. The sweetness of the tomatoes, the creaminess of the avocado and the saltiness of the feta-magic. Best served with a chilled glass of white wine or a delicious margarita.

You can use corn chips to dip into this variation of guacamole, as a side dish, or my personal favourite, spread on toasted sourdough bread.

Now that we are into the warm weather of summer, the vegetables are local, fresh and easily accessible. What’s better then sitting in your backyard during our long summer days and nights enjoying a healthy dip that’s bursting full of flavour?

Tomato Avocado Dip

2 Roma tomatoes, chopped

1/4 cup onion, choose your favourite, red or yellow

1 clove garlic, minced

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 Tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 Tablespoon Basil, chopped

4ounces feta, crumbled

2 avocados, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

This dip is best made ahead of time, stored in the fridge, allowing the flavours and dressing to marinate. Chop and add the avocado just prior to serving the dip. Turn up some latin music, pour yourself a refreshing drink, and just sit back and relax. Maybe even close your eyes and pretend you’re on a beach in Mexico.

I hope you guys give this recipe try and love it as much as I do.

Lori xo

That time Chef Chuck Hughes taught me how to cook

This post was created in partnership with LG.

I’m not a great chef. But I’m trying to be. In fact I’ve made the decision lately that it isn’t too late to learn to cook, improve my tidying skills, de-clutter my house and truly reclaim my home.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the LG Kitchen in the Chatelaine offices, where I spent the afternoon with celebrity Chef Chuck Hughes and Rick Campanelli, or if you grew up in the 90s in Canada like I did, you’d know him as Rick-The-Temp.

I walked in, looked around and thought, “Be cool Joanna, no one has to know that you are a terrible chef.” It turned out that I wasn’t expected to cook, but instead Chef Chuck Hughes would be teaching us three delicious meals. Dodged that one!

In the midst of learning how to create a delicious spin on bruschetta by grating your tomatoes, yes, you heard me right,

baked Lake Erie Pickerel and Local Strawberry Fluff (I have shared the recipe with you below), I was able to take a sneak peek at LG’s InstaView™ Door-in-Door® Counter-Depth Refrigerator,

By a simple two knocks, it is easy to check on the items through the transparent window without opening the door.

and LG QuadWash® with TrueSteam® dishwasher.

High-temperature steam removes baked-on, caked-on food from your dishes, sanitizes and reduces excess water spots.

It was an amazing afternoon spent with some very talented and amazing people.

Here’s Chef Chuck Hughes’ recipe for Local Strawberry Fluff.

Ingredients
2 egg whites
1 cup sugar
2 cups strawberries, hulled and crushed
Sugar cookies, crumbled
Stemless wine glass or glass fruit nappe
Cut fresh strawberries for garnish

Instructions

Place egg whites, sugar and hulled and crushed strawberries in a stand mixer.
Mix on medium-high speed for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is fluffy and smooth.

Presentation
In a stemless wine glass layer crumbled sugar cookies, fresh berries, fluff, repeat.

To learn more about the LG QuadWash® or the LG InstaView™, head to LG’s website here: www.lg.ca

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by LG Electronics Canada Inc. While compensation was provided, all opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily indicative of the opinions of LG.

SaveSave