Natural Foods

It is such a joy for me to have Eve, Grace and Jack work with me and with each other in our kitchen (or outside on our deck in this case!).  We have always enjoyed preparing our own foods and cooking together.  It is extremely important for me to feed my children the healthiest and freshest foods that are organic, free of artificial ingredients, minimally processed and without refined sugars. It is also important that they learn where our food comes from.  One of my  favorite cookbooks that I often use to support my goal is Rodale's Basic Natural Foods Cookbook. This cookbook has become a staple item in our kitchen.

Over the years I have loved watching Grace, then Jack and now Eve join me in the kitchen.  We all learn from each other and enjoy the process of preparing our food together.  We make a great team!  Right now we are so happy that strawberry season is in full swing.  This week we made a strawberry banana pie (the recipe from Rodale's cookbook is shown below).  Eve is currently working on using a knife to cut her food and she did a great cutting up (and eating!) several strawberries for our pie.        

Ever since Grace was a teeny tiny baby she has always enjoyed helping me in the kitchen.  Grace reads all of the recipes for us and she is excellent at measuring out all of the ingredients.

Jack cut the bananas into slices for the bottom of our pie.  He loves to cut with knives and he is always a very willing participant to try all of our recipes!

Here is the recipe that we used for our Strawberry Banana Pie --

Ingredients:
2-3 cups of fresh strawberries quartered
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup honey (we used much less)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large banana (we used 2 bananas)
Whole wheat piecrust

In a medium-size saucepan simmer strawberries, 1/2 cup water, and honey for 5 minutes.  Shake cornstarch and 1/4 cup water in a jar with a tight-fitting lid until smooth.  Slowly add to strawberries, cooking until mixture thickens.  Stir in cinnamon and vanilla.  When the strawberry mixture has cooled slightly, thinly slice banana(s) into piecrust.   Pour strawberries over bananas.  Refrigerate until set.