If you had asked 8-year-old me if I wanted turnips for dinner, something like “eww, no” or  “grossssss” would have been the answer. Sadly, the same question posed to “adult” me would probably get the same response. But if the turnips were tucked into macaroni and cheese? Well, that’s a much more interesting proposition.  I imagine there are plenty of parents that are looking for clever ways to slip a few extra veggies into their kids’ (or their own) diet, so check out this recipe from Andrea Chesman’s Recipes From The Root Cellar…you won’t be hearing words of protest when this dish hits the table.

Cheesy Mac With Root Vegetables

In this dish, any of the root vegetables you happen to have in the house will work well, though turnips and rutabagas are favorites. If you have a pasta pot with a colander insert, you can easily cook the vegetables in the same boiling water as the macaroni.

Serves: 6

1 pound elbow macaroni
4 cups peeled and diced mixed root vegetables (carrots, celery root, golden beets, parsnips, rutabagas, salisfy, and/or turnips) or winter squashes
6 tablespoons butter
1 shallot minced
2 garlic cloves, minced (optional)
6 tablespoons all-purpose unbleached flour
3 cups milk
2 cups lightly packed grated sharp cheddar (8 ounces)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/3 cup dried breadcrumbs

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Lightly butter a large casserole dish.

2. Bring two large pots of salted water to a boil. Add the macaroni to one pot and cook until al dente. Drain well. Transfer to the casserole dish.

3. In the second pot of boiling water, cook the vegetables until fork-tender, about 10 minutes; the vegetables should still hold their shape. Drain well. Transfer to the casserole dish.

4. To make the cheese sauce, melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic, if using, and sauté until limp, about 3 minutes. Stir in the flour to form a smooth paste. Stir in the milk and bring to a boil, stirring to prevent lumps. When the sauce thickens, add the cheese, stirring until melted. Remove from the heat and season with salt and pepper.

5. Stir the sauce into the macaroni and vegetables. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top.

6. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the sauce is bubbly and the breadcrumbs are browned. Serve hot.

Kitchen Notes: You can vary the vegetables as you please. A sliced leek or one-quarter of a yellow onion can replace the shallot. If you only have carrots on hand, you can simply grate a couple of them and add to the cheese sauce with the milk. Or you can add 2 cups shredded root vegetables (any type) to the cheese sauce and add 2 cups frozen vegetables (any type) to the pasta, 1 to 3 minutes before the pasta will be done.

Do you ever feel like a short-order cook as you prepare school lunches?  Requests coming from every direction, and no one likes the same thing?  Well, here’s a recipe from Be Thrifty via Storey’s Kathleen Cannata Hanna that kids, teens and grownups will all appreciate. In this build-a-lunch model, he who hates olives can simply leave them out.  Lunch nirvana….

Make-Your-Own Pasta Salad
This pasta-salad recipe functions like a deli counter, a blank slate that will please the vegetarian and salami lover alike. Just prepare the pasta, present the ingredient options, and let everyone go to town. (Serves 4-6)

1 pound short pasta, such as corkscrews or farfalle
Salt
Italian, Caesar, or Greek salad dressing

1. Bring salted water to a boil for the pasta.
2. Meanwhile, choose desired topping ingredients (see below) and toss gently in individual-size to-go containers.
3. Cook the pasta in the boiling water until al dente. Drain and rinse briefly under cool water; drain well. Add to the individual containers with chosen ingredients; drizzle with enough dressing to coat everything well.
4. Serve warm or chilled.

Possible toppings:

Marinated artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
Roasted red peppers, drained and sliced
Thinly sliced salami
Thinly sliced deli ham
Canned tuna in vegetable oil, drained and flaked
Thinly sliced red onion
Chopped tomato
Broccoli florets
Pitted green or black olives
Cubed provolone cheese
Grated Parmesan cheese

For more money-saving school lunch tips, check out yesterday’s post–”Cheap Lunch 101“

It’s that time of year…fall is almost here and the kids are back to school, which will prompt the inevitable push and pull of what goes in the proverbial brown bag for lunch.  You want to give them a piece of fruit….and they want the tiny bag of cookies with their favorite cartoon character emblazoned across the package.  But maybe both sides can have their way, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Courtesy of Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross, Be Thrifty offers up kid-tested tricks  for packing economical school lunches that will be the envy of the cafeteria.

Cheap Lunch 101

• Create a budget target, and do the math. First determine what you think is a reasonable per-day amount to spend on a school lunch. Use the shelf labels in the supermarket to help you compute the per-unit cost of prepackaged foods and snacks. Figure out how much meat, cheese, fruit, bread and peanut butter you’ll use in a given week, then divide the total by five to see what each day’s lunch costs.

• Invest in an insulated thermos. They are perfect for keeping soup and leftovers hot and yogurt, Jell-O, and fruit salad cold.

• Ask for feedback about what your kids are and aren’t eating in lunches packed from home. There’s no reason to send apples at 50 to 60 cents each if they’ll be thrown out.

• Kids love small cups and tubes of food, but unfortunately, these items are the most expensive way to buy food. Take small, reusable plastic snack cups and fill with applesauce, peaches, pineapple and raisins.

• Look for reusable drink cups that don’t leak and are sold with a built-in straw. Add juice from a large bottle to the cute cup for an individual serving that costs pennies.

• If you need to send plastic spoons and forks to school, buy heavy-duty utensils and ask your kids not to throw them away. They can go through the dishwasher and then be reused.

Check back tomorrow–we’ll be posting recipes for a build-a-lunch system that will satisfy all your picky eaters, and work for grown-up lunches too!

I don’t remember being into car games as a kid, mostly because I was too busy thinking up subtle ways to tick off my sister, and not get caught by my parents. But now that I’m older, I find them endlessly amusing. And unlike some of my more clever peers, I like the silly, mindless games. Somehow being stuck in traffic on the Jersey turnpike doesn’t make me want to get all high-brow and problem solve, I want to be entertained.

Leigh Anderson’s The Games Bible, which is true to its title, offers more games than you can imagine – outdoor games, party games, Victorian parlor games, right-brain games, kid-approved games – with choices for everyone at any skill level.  So if you’re stuck in a car over the long weekend, here’s an easy way to break up the time:

Band Name, Album Name, or Boat Name?

A quintessential road trip activity, it keeps you alert to your surroundings, your creativity pumping, and the conversation flowing. Created by Thi Nguyen, the game’s participants keep an eye out for any unusual words or phrases seen from the road that could be a band name, album name or boat name.  The words can come from anywhere: signs, advertisements, bumper stickers, etc. As you see a word or phrase that catches your fancy, you point it out to your companions, and decide which of the three categories it would best suited.

As an example, on Thi’s road trip, it was decided that “Dave’s Laundry” would be an album name, “Your Money or Your Life” would be a band name, and “Loading Zone” would be a boat name. Your companions may disagree, but mild disagreement can only improve the discussion.

We’re celebrating wine and cheese this week within the Workman family with the publication of two new books–The Guide to West Coast Cheese and Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest. Learn even more about the delicious marriage between dairy and grapes at the Timber Press blog and Story Publishing blog.

Cheeses, as Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home points out, are infinitely nuanced, with a complex range of flavors and textures. Cheese can be explored the same way you might explore new wines, so go to a local purveyor and sample until you find your favorites. But you may want a little background about what you’re trying:

• Cheese can be made from cow, sheep or goat’s milk.

• A cheese rind can be described as bloomed, washed or flavored.

• For a bloomed rind, mold spores are sprayed on cheeses, where they develop a soft white exterior (think Camembert).

• A washed rind indicates a cheese that has been bathed, often in wine or beer, facilitating the growth of beneficial bacteria. Washed-rind cheeses are typically very pungent, such as Taleggio.

• Cheeses may also be coated in ash or herbs to introduce different flavors.

Now that you know a little about what you’re eating, here are a few of Thomas Keller’s suggestions on how to pair your cheeses:

• Try a pungent cheese with something savory, such as prosciutto or salami.

• Sweet, creamy cheeses go well with some form of fruit – fresh, dried or cooked.  You can try pears, apples, grapes, apricots, peaches, tangerines, dates and raisins.

• Think about including a crunchy component with your cheeses. Toast, flatbread, or nuts (candied, herbed, toasted) all work.

We’re celebrating wine and cheese this week within the Workman family with the publication of two new books–The Guide to West Coast Cheese and Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest. Learn even more about the delicious marriage between dairy and grapes at the Timber Press blog and Story Publishing blog.

Selecting wine at a restaurant or for a dinner party can be an intimidating process, especially if you’re not familiar with the lingo. I’ve been asked if I like my wine to be bright? Tannic? Round? Complex?  Um, well, I’m not really sure. Thankfully, Pia Catton and Califia Suntree’s Be Thrifty includes a concise chart outlining which wines will pair well with different types of food.  Here are some guidelines to use as a shortcut:

• Match delicate to delicate, robust to robust. A delicate red burgundy will taste like water beside a dramatically spiced curry. Dishes with bold, piquant, spicy, and hot flavors are perfectly cut out for big-flavored wines.

• Saltiness in food is a great contrast to acidity in wine. Think about smoked salmon and champagne or parmesan cheese and Chianti.  Asian dishes that include soy sauce often pair well with high-acid wines like German Rieslings.

• Saltiness is also a stunning contrast to sweetness. This is the principle behind that great old European custom of serving Stilton cheese (something salty) with port (something sweet).

• With desserts, proceed with caution. Sweet desserts can make the wine they accompany taste dull and blank. The best dessert and wine marriages are usually based on pairing a not-too-sweet dessert, such as a fruit or nut tart, with a fairly sweet dessert wine.

When the dog days set in, you just don’t feel like standing over a hot stove. Or even if you do, the air conditioning can’t keep up and you pay for it later. In the summertime, the staples of my diet tend to switch to salads and something off the grill (and perhaps a potato chip or two if I’m being honest), so when I saw Andrea Chesman’s Recipes from the Root Cellar, I realized that many of my favorite summer foods (potato salad, coleslaw, chicken salad, baked beans) actually contain what are considered “wintery” vegetables.  And since fish tacos are one of my all-time favorite meals, this is what I’ll be topping them with next time….

Chipotle-Cabbage Salad

Designed to replace the lettuce, tomato, and sour cream topping on tacos, this cabbage salad is creamy and mildly spiced to act as a foil for spicy meat or bean topping. But don’t restrict this delicious salad to a single role; it can be eaten on its own or used as a topping for a turkey or roast beef sandwich. If you’re not using this salad to mitigate the heat of another dish, ramp up the chipotle and lime juice for additional flavor.

3/4 cup mayonnaise
3/4 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons lime juice, or more to taste
2 tablespoons minced chipotle canned in adobo sauce, or more to taste
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 small head green or savoy cabbage, thinly sliced or shredded (6-8 cups)
1 carrot, peeled and shredded
1/8-1/4 red onion, thinly sliced

1. Mix the mayonnaise, sour cream, lime juice, and chipotle in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper and additional lime juice and chipotle, if desired.

2. Combine the cabbage, carrot, and onion in a large salad bowl. Add the dressing and toss to coat. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

3. Let stand for at least 30 minutes before serving. The salad holds up well in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours.

Kitchen note: Chipotles in adobo sauce are smoke-dried jalapeños in a vinegar sauce, usually found in cans wherever Mexican food is sold. A single can will hold more than this recipe needs, but you can store the leftovers in a glass or plastic container in the refrigerator, where they will keep for months.

Whatever you’re doing this July, you can pretty much count on it being hot. Some people love the heat, but I’m not one of them, so when I saw Sherri Brooks Vinton’s recipe for Cucumber Agua Fresca in her book Put ‘Em Up!, I thought “now that’s right up my alley.”  I could see this drink being a delicious addition to the standard barbecue/beach type activities, and it just sounds so cooling.

So make a pitcher and have it on hand, it’s certainly an interesting way to spice up the standard summer fare. And if you like a little extra “whoop-de-doo” (as my grandmother used to say) in your drink, use it as the base for a cucumber martini.

Cucumber Agua Fresca

4 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and roughly chopped
1 cup water
2 tablespoons sugar
Juice of one lime

1. Set a fine-mesh sieve or colander lined with dampened cheesecloth over a bowl. Purée the cucumbers in a blender or food processor, working in batches as necessary and transferring the purée to the sieve or colander as you go. Let drain fully, 10 to 15 minutes, pressing on the pulp to release all of the juice. Compost the solids.
2. Pour the cucumber juice into a pitcher. Add the water, sugar, and lime juice and stir to dissolve the sugar. Serve over ice, adding a splash of seltzer to each glass if you like.

Cucumber Martini

3 ounces Cucumber Agua Fresca (above)
1 1/2 ounces vodka
Ice
Cucumber slice, for garnish

Combine the Cucumber Agua Fresca and vodka with the ice in a cocktail shaker and shake to chill. Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with the cucumber slice. Makes one serving.

You might not be a huge fan of the summertime heat and humidity, and working in the garden under the blazing sun may not be your idea of fun. But as Stephanie Cohen and Jennifer Benner’s The Nonstop Garden points out, with a little planning and ingenuity, you can get a garden that blooms continuously throughout the season, allowing more time to sit back and enjoy and less time toiling in the backyard. So get going with these tips:

Knit combinations together with a theme: If you feel overwhelmed stepping into your local garden center, try going in with a plan. One of the easiest ways to stay on track is by choosing a color theme and sticking to it. Also because leaves last longer than flowers, choose a mix of foliage plants that match your motif.

Select a succession of perennial blooms: Because summer is a season loaded with flowers, it’s easy to have a non-stop flower display throughout the season. Pick strong performers that peak at different times throughout the summer to have an endless parade of blooms.

Have fun with see-through plants: Bed and borders do not always have shorter plants in the front with taller in the back. Taller plants that have an airy habit (such as tall verbena) can be placed closer to the front, yet still allow you to see the plants in the back. The effect can be dramatic and playful.

Give it up to summer-flowering shrubs: A fair share of shrubs give a good floral show in the summer. Try Virginia sweetspire, clethra, bigleaf hydrangea, or sun-loving butterfly bush.

Choose partners that “pop”: To create unforgettable combinations, choose plants that contrast in color as well as texture. A splash of deep burgundy or bright yellow foliage really helps to make neighbors stand out. Or the combination of small and large leaves and flowers provides extended interest.

You’ve probably heard the expression, “You can only make a first impression once.” Well, whether you are actively networking, leading a team, negotiating or interviewing, learning how to forge an instant connection, and make people remember you for the right reasons are imperative skills to master.  Nicholas Boothman’s Convince Them in 90 Seconds or Less points out that there are three really useful attitudes that successful leaders have in common: enthusiasm, curiosity, and humility. In the right combination, these three attitudes can create an irresistible presence…Do you have the right attitude?

Be enthusiastic: Enthusiasm is hypnotic, magnetic, unstoppable. You can’t buy it—you can only reveal it. It infects others with feelings of excitement, energy, and vitality.

Stay curious: A businessperson who is hungry to learn more about what’s going on around them is someone who is evolving, moving forward and making connections. Always be open to your natural-born curiosity.

Embrace humility: Most successful people have large egos and a flair for self-promotion, yet manage to contain them and display a public persona rooted in modesty and service to others. When a large ego is generously wrapped in humility, it is a handsome package. An ego that’s not tempered with humility is arrogant and ugly.