Two simple ways to make foods you're already feeding your kids more nutritious

Sep 22, 2009 by Anna Migeon

Do you ever wonder how recipes and food processes were first developed? Take pickling, for example. Did one prehistoric day someone discover a stray cucumber that had fallen unperceived months before into some casual vat of brine or vinegar and say, “Say, this thing has been in here since the last harvest was brought in! It actually smells good! It seems crispy! Say, this tastes good!” Or what?

How did people first discover how to make dough rise? Or how to make cheese and some of the more surprising variations thereof? And how about those real-life dramas we’ll never hear about how early peoples figured out what was poisonous or not?

Fictionalized accounts of these accidental or ingenious food discoveries would fascinate me. Maybe that’s where my buried fictional talent lies: the untold imagined stories…

Poached Eggs with Peach Salsa

Jul 20, 2009 by Anna Migeon

Eggs with salsa was a new concept for me. I lived much of my life without ever hearing of salsa—all those wasted years! It offers unlimited variety and is the perfect partner to lots of foods. Salsa with eggs is such a great idea for an inexpensive, super easy, super quick, super healthy meal. It’s tasty as well, of course, and makes for an impressive and appetitizing presentation.

Rub or spray a little olive oil in small dishes for poaching eggs. I used little glass dishes. My mom has special stainless steel ones. Crack an egg (truly free range farm egg if you can get it)…

A Perfect Kid Meal: Snow Crab Legs & Raw Vegetables with Red Pepper Garlic Mayonnaise

Jul 9, 2009 by Anna Migeon

I’m all about mayonnaise now.  I pretend that all mayonnaise, even the cheap store brand, is mayonnaise in its ideal form, like I once made from freshly laid raw eggs from our backyard, free-range, happy hens (who are no more), with a little lemon juice, Dijon mustard, good olive oil.  There’s nothing you can say against a little mayonnaise, at least in its ideal form. Good egg, good oil—it’s health food.

I made this mayonnaise-based dip the other day and served it with raw carrots, cucumbers, jicama (a crisp, fresh Mexican root vegetable), turnip and radishes, along with some ready-to-eat snow crab legs I found on sale for $5 a pound. I had never served crab legs…

Following the Caveman Part II: The Verdict on Fish

Jul 3, 2009 by Anna Migeon

Only a little damned if you do, much more damned if you don’t

Before I knew better, I idealistically thought fish farms would probably use their ability to control the raising environment to create a cleaner, healthier home for our finned friends than the polluted oceans offer them.

I now scoff at my innocence. I look with cynicism at the cheerful stickers on fish labels at the store that declare "farm raised" as if it were a badge of honor. I now know that farmed fish are probably about as ready–and as better off–as whitetail deer would be to give up their liberty and sometimes scarce foraging in exchange for regular meals in a pen.

Eating fish and seafood is as much a minefield, and for many of the same reasons, as…