Whole Family Cookbook Review & Giveaway (recipe: A-B-C Frittata)
Every so often you meet a person with whom you see eye to eye on many important topics. Thanks to online connections, these encounters happen more and more frequently. Michelle of What’s Cooking with Kids is one of those friends. Even though we have never met, her philosophy and well-researched posts often have me nodding my head in agreement and occasionally giving her a virtual high-five.
Michelle recently penned “The Whole Family Cookbook
” and I knew from the onset that this was going to be a resource I could get behind. Without question, Michelle is an expert in her field of teaching children to cook and instilling a healthy food culture in a new generation.
The Whole Family Cookbook lives up to its reputation with the tagline – Celebrating the Goodness of Locally Grown Food. With gorgeous photos and over seventy-five creative recipes, it grabs our attention instantly and practically cajoles us into the kitchen – with kids in tow.
Kids in the kitchen is yet another topic Michelle and I agree on! The first chapter of the book, Raising Young Locavores, dives headfirst into this topic, where Michelle’s passion shines through beautifully. She gives her expert tips on engaging children of all ages in the kitchen – right down to the toddler.
And then there are recipes! Creative, organic, and family-friendly, Michelle’s recipes focus on sustainable ingredients and simple techniques. My favorite section – Mom Approved Treats – has got so many fun treats, we’ll be busy cooking from it for a while!
Handy tips, solid environmental practices and good plain fun is just a sample of what you’ll find in The Whole Family Cookbook.
It’s a cookbook for the modern, eco-conscious family that enjoys the simple pleasures of home cooking.
Recipe: ABC Frittata (Apple, Bacon, Cheddar)
Our boys enjoyed this with whole grain toast; Danny and I preferred ours on a bed of lightly dressed baby arugula. A perfect plate for brunch, lunch or a light dinner.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 2 egg whites
- 8 whole eggs
- 1 cup cheddar cheese, grated
- Salt, to taste
- 3 slices bacon
- Ground Pepper, to taste
- 2 apples, Fuji or Gala
- 1 Tablespoon butter
method:
Put the rack in the upper third of the oven. Preheat oven to 450°F.
Crack the eggs, one at a time, over a small bowl. After checking for stray shells, pour each egg into a medium bowl. To separate the egg whites, crack the egg over an egg separator or someone’s clean hands. Carefully let the egg white slip through the fingers into the bowl, with the yolk remaining. Discard the yolk or save for another recipe. Using a whisk, beat the eggs until the yolks and whites are thoroughly combined.
Grate the cheese. Younger children can help you use a rotary cheese grater (which protects their skin). Older children can use a box grater. Add half of the grated cheese to the egg mixture and stir to combine. Add a pinch of salt and pepper, to your liking.
Cook the strips of bacon. You can fry them in a skillet (watch out! They can splatter.) Or, you can bake them in the oven on a cooling rack over a rimmed baking sheet. We like this method because we don’t have to turn the bacon over and the kids stay safe.
Once the bacon cools, crumble the strips with clean hands. Use a vegetable peeler to peel the apple. If you have an apple corer, you may use it. Or, simply cut up the apple, leaving the core behind. Slice the apple pieces very thinly. As you are cutting, be sure to put the flat side of the apple pieces down, so the chunks don’t wobble on your cutting board.
In a medium cast-iron or nonstick ovenproof skillet, heat the butter over medium heat. Add egg mixture to the skillet. Sprinkle the bacon crumbles evenly over the eggs. Gently arrange the apples on top of the egg mixture, in a circular pattern. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.
Move the skillet from the stovetop to the upper rack of your oven. Bake until frittata is firm in the center and cheese is browned, about 20 minutes. Use a flexible spatula to loosen the frittata from the pan. Carefully slide it onto a cutting board. Allow to cool for a few minutes before slicing into wedges.
Recipe from The Whole Family Cookbook, Used with permission, of course.
My first memory of the kitchen is being told to double everything on a recipe, and calling my Mom because I could not get the oven to go to 800!
My first kitchen memory is my grandma teaching me how to make pie in her kitchen. Every time I make pie I can feel my grandma there with me.
This is a tough one, but I remember a day of cooking some sort of cookie with my grandma and cousin when I was maybe six years old. The feel of the butter and sugar melding together, the patience needed to gingerly pick out egg shell bits with my pinky finger from the silver bowl, and hand-mixing, hand-mixing the batter til ALL the flour was combined (and how much my wrists hurt and I couldn’t believe my grandma could mix this stuff so fast!). And then once each ball was cooked and slightly cooled, we sat down with a glass of cold milk to enjoy the warm morsels–it was heavenly!
My first memory is baking playdough with my mom! I can smell it and feel it all these decades later!
My first kitchen memory is making rice crispy treats with my grandma. She gave me my love of cooking, but unfortunately also gave me a love for desserts. 🙂
I used to love when my mom made broccoli with cheese sauce. it is still one of my favorite things to eat.
My mom told me to make a batch of cookies and handed me the recipe card. I still have no idea why she did this because I’d never made anything before. Her recipe card was brief – as in it had the ingredients listed, the directions to mix together and the baking temperature and time. That was it. So, I dutifully dumped everything into the mixer and turned it on. It was a dry and crumbly mess! I asked my mom if she was sure the recipe was right because it seemed like there was too much flour. She came into the kitchen and after one look started laughing. I had no idea you were supposed to cream some ingredients first! No cookies for us that night.
My Mum and I have always spent time in the kitchen together and one of the first memories with her is making some kind of cookies. In my little girl mind, as I stood on a chair next to my Mum, I thought the dry ingredients looked like a little island in an ocean of the wet ingredients in the bowl and that it was so exciting to stir them all together!
Baking with my mom…
I remember trying to make brownies by myself when I was probably 13 years old and I used olive oil rather than canola oil and it tasted horrible! I had no idea the difference between oils but learned my lesson from that incident.
Wow this book looks amazing. Thanks for the opportunity to win a copy. My first kitchen memory is helping make and decorate Christmas cookies with my mom.
Helping my Aunty Sharon make gingerbread men and getting flour everywhere.
Baking chocolate chip cookies in my parents kitchen with my mom – they’re my dad’s favorites 🙂
My first memory is of large gatherings in my grandmother’s house – with my mom and aunts cooking up Korean feasts in the tiny kitchen.
My mom used to make home-made chocolate covered marshmallows from scratch. They were SO GOOD. My mom is an amazing cook, and she inspired me to love cooking, baking and food in general. I would be so happy to win this cookbook.
My first kitchen memory is either making and decorating sugar cookies with my family at Christmas time or decorating easter eggs… I remember doing both for such a long time and am not quite sure which one actually happened first 🙂
Licking beaters! My mom didn’t care if we ate the chocolate chip dough batter or any other thing she was baking, eggs or not. Yum!
My first memory:
Sitting on the countertop asking my mom for a peanut butter, jelly and cheese sandwich!
I have a couple…
The first is kneeling on my paternal grandmother’s counter trying to see into the pot as my grandmother cooked down the apples we had picked and peeled that morning.
The other is working the crank on my maternal grandmother’s meat grinder the day after Thanksgiving when something like a dozen women were making pasteles. I don’t they ever made less than several hundred when they got together.
Making Christmas sugar cookies with my aunt and spilling sprinkles all over her floor 🙂
My first kitchen memory is standing on a wooden step stool at my grandma’s yellow counter so I could help her cut and decorate Christmas cookies.
Licking the beaters is my first memory, Noone cared about salmonella when I was a kid so everything was acceptable, but whipped cream was my favourite!
I remember baking cookies with my mom, which is funny because my dad did most (well, all) the cooking in our family and my mom only baked every now and then. Love it! I get our 20-month old daughter in the kitchen every chance I get in the hopes she likes to cook as much as her momma does. 🙂
ah i have so many! i remember helping my mom with dinner when i was very little
Playing with the pots and pans on the floor of my great-grandmother’s kitchen while she made meals for the inmates of the city jail (she was also the jailer)!
About 5 years old making cookies with my mom….or licking the spoon =)
My first kitchen memory was making dandelion salad with my mom. We went out in our backyard to pick dandelions together. My dad was not impressed with her experiment! 🙂
Helping my mom make brownies!
When I was 4 we moved into a new house AND got a kitten. It sounds weird, but my first memory is trying to coax the kitten out of a little space he had crawled into under one of the kitchen cupboards! That, and my mom serving snacks of carrot and celery sticks with peanut butter to our playgroup.
My very first kitchen memory is helping my Grandma bake and decorate Christmas cookies the night before the family’s Christmas get-together. 🙂
The first memory I had was standing on the stool and helping my mom make tacos. My job was stirring. The hot-pad I was holding kept feeling like it was so hot, and I would move my hand more and more up the handle. Come to find out, it was on fire and I was terrified that I had almost burned the house down. At least that was my perception. Took me a little while to help with any cooking again, but I was back at it, and always more careful of the gas stove.
It was probably making no-bake cookies with my mom! 🙂
My first kitchen memory is baking a blueberry pie with my mom. We set it on the counter to cool. About an hour later, I crawled up on the counter to get plates out for dinner. Yes, I accidentally dumped the freshly made pie face down on the floor! My mom cried.
I remember my mom baking bread almost every week, and I would watch and get to help put in ingredients or get my own piece of dough to knead when it was time.
Mine was getting to “cook” and making “fruit salad” for my family. My fruit salad included milk and bread too – and even I didn’t want to eat it. But, I will NEVER forget it! I was maybe 3 or 4?!?! Thanks for the chance to win this – exactly what my family needs!
Probably baking cookies and muffins for 4H projects.
My very first kitchen memory is watching my mom make Thanksgiving dinner and smelling the turkey roasting in the oven…mmm. In my memory she’s wearing an apron and heels – not sure how accurate that is 🙂
I have a lot of memories, but the first one stands out. I feel the need to preface this story by saying that my mom is ornery but she has a great heart. I was young, probably 5 and a half and my mom and I were baking cookies. As she was putting the vanilla in, she said, “Oh, smell this! Doesn’t it smell great? Do you want to taste it?” Of course, I was nodding my little head rapidly, hardly able to wait to get that delicious smelling stuff in my mouth. So she gave me a small spoonful! Needless to say, it was awful! It was the first day that I learned things aren’t always what they seem!!!
My mom apologized through her laughing fit and now I love to cook! 🙂
My first memory would probably be making chocolate chip cookies and getting to lick the beater.
My first kitchen memory of many memories I have cooking and baking with my mom was when she was teaching me and a friend how to make meatloaf. We put in all of the ingredients and then she said ok, reach in a start mixing it with your hands – we said “ewwwww, no way!” but we did and it turned out better than we thought it would!
I can remember helping my Dad make spritz cookies, probably around Christmas time, and I think I was about 4 years old – a long time ago!
i wasn’t cooking in the kitchen much as a kid, but i do remember helping my mom make our birthday cakes for the family! and doing dishes…:)
Helping my mom prepare a Hawaiian inspired meal- one that I was in charge of! One year my mom let my sisters and I each have a turn researching, planning, and helping to prepare a dinner made of foods from a different culture. I loved the idea so much, that I plan to do the same with my own children!
Baking chocolate chip cookies with mom!
Licking the beaters after my mom made frosting for the cinnamon rolls! I can still taste it!
i remember making bread with my mom at around 2 yo.
My first kitchen memory is watching the dough rise on my moms home bread and after she’d always make a caramel type topping with butter and syrup mixed together and then drizzled on the warm bread. Was a favorite treat for us!
Being in my grandmother’s kitchen and watching her cook for her big family. She makes the best biscuits!! My children are now enjoying being with her in her kitchen too.
I know it is far from healthy, but my first kitchen memory is my great-grandmother teaching me how to mix up peanut butter and syrup. It may not have been good for my tummy, but it was good for my soul. Sometimes when I miss her I still eat a little.
Mama pulling a stool up to the kitchen sink so that I could help wash dishes as one must first understand what is involved in cleanup before one is allowed to make a mess in her kitchen. 🙂