Recently in cooking class, we enjoyed a giant pot of Hoppin’ John: black-eyed peas cooked with onions, celery, carrots & veggie sausages. Served over brown rice, it’s a variation of a Southern specialty, symbolizing prosperity & luck for the New Year. The kids loved it! My version is health-ified with lots of veggies, vegetable broth, and smoky “Field Roast” sausages. Tip: you can use Trader Joe’s Mirepoix instead of chopping the veggies yourself. It’s definitely going into the meal rotation here!

In honor of Mardi Gras, the festival in New Orleans that features parades with floats, masquerades, oodles of music and merrymaking, we cooked up some traditional Southern Red Beans and Rice this week. The recipe features smoked sausage, (spicy andouille sausage if you like!) celery, peppers and onion (a Southern cooking triumvirate) some broth, and of course, red beans. It's served over rice. We used brown rice for a touch more nutrition. The kids went wild for the flavor, thanks to smoked paprika and those cute little chicken-apple appetizer sausages.

Some recipes blow us away with how deliciously simple they are. This vegetable soup was like that - everyone loved it and wanted seconds. We read the story of stone soup (in which some tired soldiers come to a poor village, and start heating a big soup pot with only water and a big stone in it. Curious townspeople come by and add a carrot, an onion, etc. and then everybody has a feast.) Each child had something different to chop up and add to the pot. Recipes abound for this great vegetarian soup, but we made up our own delicious version and here it is:

The fun "action" part here is breaking up the uncooked spaghetti noodles to put into the soup.  And the kids love all the chopping and dumping things into the pot. This recipe can be made in the time it takes to look through a cookbook. You can, of course, change up the ingredients to suit what you have on hand or what you prefer. Mushrooms, anyone?

Have you seen the movie? Well, here's a recipe for Ratatouille - a flavorful vegetable stew - that comes with two thumbs up.  It is SO colorful and delicious.  Your kids asked for THIRDS. That usually only happens with baked goods. It started like this: My friend Joy, who was out of town, gave me her weekly CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) box. It was packed full of farm-fresh goodies, including eggplant, green, red and yellow peppers, onions, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, and basil. What I loved about sharing this with the kids is that the veggies come  super-fresh, straight from the ground -- with some roots, flowers, and dirt still attached.  How shocking- real food without wrappers and plastic boxes! We soaked and washed and chopped the heck out of that nutritious pile of colorful stuff.  This recipe made the most of the bounty and I hope you will try it! It's going into the menu rotation at my house.  You can put ratatouille over rice, quinoa, on a tortilla, in a crepe, or serve it over pasta.  You could even use it in an omelet. No wonder they made a movie about it. ;)

Well! Simple roasted veggies, including sweet potato "fries," red peppers, carrots, and leek rings were a great hit.  And the scent of roasting veggies - like nutrient-rich french fries - permeated the rooms at CATS and brought more kids over to taste the glistening, caramelized veggies. Hooray, a cooking teacher's dream! This is something great to do with your kids at home - even the smallest kids can wash, peel and slice the veggies, toss them with a little olive oil, and enjoy spreading them on cookie sheets.  They can sprinkle on salt and pepper, and then it's the parent's job to put them in the oven, rotate the trays once during roasting, and then remove the hot pans from the oven.  But don't expect the product to last very long!

This was SO MUCH fun to make... then we were delighted to realize they tasted wonderful, too. I based this recipe on one from emilybites.com (Spaghetti & Meatball Cups) -- I definitely recommend her blog.

The CATS kids loved putting all the cans of beans and tomatoes together with the fresh veggies, and adding all the spices.  (We always pour out a little sample of the herbs/spices to pass around first, to smell.)  The scent of this cooking wafted through the building, bringing more kids into the class. Everyone thought we could add even more veggies, such as mushrooms, or celery, and they loved topping their bowls off with grated Parmesan.

No kidding -- whole wheat, low fat, veggie-rich, and delicious.  That's what these pizzas are. Just ask your children! The CATS kids made these pizzas right after Halloween and there were still a few Jack-o-Lanterns to be seen.

This delicious side dish (or veggie main course) is based on a recipe for a Vegetable Tian from Martha Stewart Living.  It contains savory sauteed leeks (like onions) spread in the bottom of a pie plate or deep round dish, with sliced veggies arranged like petals on top.  You can change up the veggies, but we used zucchini, yellow squash, plum tomatoes and eggplant.  (Yes, many of your kids like eggplant!) These veggies work very well -- but also try small red potato slices and/or mushrooms.  It's easier than it sounds, and looks gorgeous! The kids made them very quickly once the order of the colored "petals" was established.