Catherine McCord Dishes on Cooking with Kids : Bay Area Bites

Catherine McCord. Photo by Jonathan Gordon

New mom Catherine McCord didn?t set out to become a food blogger. But after her son was born she had a hard time finding healthy homemade baby food recipes. So she started doing research and recipe testing and began posting her own creations on the web. Fast forward five years and McCord is the voice behind the popular site weelicious, which focuses on family-friendly dishes that are quick and easy to prepare, nutritious, and packed with flavor too.

?Even though I?d been to culinary school, worked in restaurants in New York, and cooked for myself and friends from a young age, when I had my son I wasn?t sure where to start,? says the Institute of Culinary Education graduate who has a crew of in-home taste testers: son Kenya, 5, daughter Chloe, 3, and husband Jon. McCord, who recently taught a ?picky eater? cooking class for Sur La Table in Palo Alto, plans on returning to the Bay Area in early 2013.

McCord?s food philosophy is simple: She favors recipes that use just a few wholesome, fresh ingredients and can appeal to a range of ages ? from toddlers to teenagers ? and adults as well. ?As a parent you don?t have to be a short-order cook preparing four different meals for four different family members,? says McCord, 39, who lives in Los Angeles and is the author of the new cookbook Weelicious: One Family. One Meal.

McCord, a contributing editor at Parenting magazine, advises that one of the best ways to raise an adventurous eater is to involve children in all aspects of the meal-making process. Go food shopping with your kids. Farmers? markets are a great place to take young ones to learn about smart food choices, she says, and there are plenty of healthy, free samples to savor.

Talk with your children, McCord says, about what food you?re buying: ?What should we do with this sweet potato? Could we mash it?? And invite them into the kitchen to help. ?My son loves peeling bananas and pouring frozen fruit and rice milk into the blender to make his own smoothies,? she says.

The former model, actress, and athlete credits her own family background for her healthy attitude towards cooking and eating. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where her mom taught her the importance of eating nourishing food for well being. ?I also learned from my grandparents about gardening, composting, and canning, and these are traditions I?m passing along to my own children,? says McCord who also contributes to Babble, which named her one of the top 100 food mom blogs of 2011.

And there?s one more: Eat together as a family. ?I know it?s tough with everyone?s hectic schedules but if your kids see you eating and enjoying broccoli, then there?s a good chance they?ll learn to like it too,? she says.

Case in point: McCord recounts a story from a frustrated mother whose daughter wouldn?t eat much besides plain noodles with butter ? except for something she calls ?Nana juice? ? a breakfast drink she makes with her grandmother that includes kale, fruit, and flax. A little girl who hates almost everything drinks raw green smoothies? ?The fact that that drink is her favorite breakfast tells me that kids take their cues about food from their family.?

Catherine McCord shares her Quinoa Pudding recipe families can make together, below. Oh, and just a heads up: This is the sort of dish a toddler may enjoy but, in this writer?s experience, it?s also a hit with teens and makes a nice change from porridge for breakfast for any age.

Banana Quinoa Pudding. Photo: Catherine McCord

Recipe: Banana Quinoa Pudding

This light, creamy concoction is a play on a rice pudding, with quinoa ? a grain-like seed rich in protein ? taking the place of rice. Makes a flavourful and filling after-school snack, dessert, or special breakfast treat. Can be served warm or cold.

• Cook Time: 20 minutes
• Total Time: 1 hours, 20 minutes *(One hour for chilling pudding)
• Serves: 4-6

Ingredients
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 14 oz can light coconut milk
• 1 cup milk (2 percent fat or higher)
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preparation
1. Place the quinoa in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse with water.
2. Put quinoa, coconut milk and milk in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
3. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Stir in the remaining ingredients and cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes stirring continuously until thickened.
5. Pour into individual ramekins and chill for at least one hour.*
   * The pudding can also be served warm.

Kids Turn: There?s lots of opportunity in this recipe for a child to lend a hand, says McCord. Young children can rinse quinoa in a strainer under running water, shake the coconut milk can (the fat and milk content sometimes separate on the shelf), and peel and mash bananas. Small children can also measure ingredients and pour them into the pot ? and can stir the saucepan while cooking, with adult supervision. Older elementary age children may be comfortable making the whole dish ? with some encouragement and under the watchful eye of a grown up. ?Cooking in the kitchen with your child is an opportunity to talk about where food comes from, what?s in it, why it?s good for you, and what happens when you add heat, spice, fat, or liquid,? says McCord. ?It?s also a chance to work in concepts like math, science, and geography. And it?s fun to taste test together, admire the fruits of your combined labor, and eat them too.?

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Tags: Banana Quinoa Pudding, Catherine McCord, Cheryl Sternman Rule, cooking for kids, featured, food blogger, kids, quinoa, weelicious

Category: cookbooks, food and drink, food bloggers and social media, kids and family, recipes

Source: http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2012/12/03/catherine-mccord-dishes-on-cooking-with-kids/

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Jake Pavelka and Kristin Chenoweth: Dating?!

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States wary of trade-offs in accepting Medicaid expansion for millions of low-income uninsured (Star Tribune)

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The Slate Book Review Top 10 of 2012

Illustration by Lilli Carr?.

New Yorker?staff writer Boo ?has many ways of illuminating the people she writes about,? Elaine Blair wrote in February. ?The most important and obvious is that she listens closely and intelligently.? For this, her first book, which recently won the National Book Award, Boo spent over three years listening to the residents of a Mumbai slum.

The young men of Bravo company visit Cowboys Stadium in this funny and wrenching novel, which is seeded ?with finely honed insights that reflect the hypocrisy and jingoistic thinking that dominate discussions about the country's wars,? wrote Jacob Silverman in September. And Fountain?s writing is ?head-shakingly good.?

The sequel to Wolf Hall (both books won the Booker Prize), this story of Thomas Cromwell, according to William Georgiades? May review, chronicles ?the careful, patient rage of the consummate professional in a world of highborn twits who never see him coming.? The worst you can say about Mantel, he adds, is that the book ?makes you angry, because you want more.?

New Yorker writer Max?s sympathetic biography of David Foster Wallace is ?one of the saddest books I?ve ever read,? wrote Mark O?Connell in September. The book offers both illuminating discussions of Wallace?s editorial life and harrowing depictions of his depressive end. ?I?m having trouble remembering when I was last so consumed by any piece of writing, fiction or non.?

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

This thriller about a marriage gone toxic was the book that everyone you know took to the beach this summer?and this best-seller lives up to the hype. ?This is not the kind of book that sits on your bedside table unread,? said Emily Bazelon in the September Audio Book Club. Instead, it?s a book that readers refuse to put down?and that wraps them up in its seductively corrupt worldview.

This collection of comics journalism, which tells stories reported in Iraq, Chechnya, and other nasty places, makes a case that our best war correspondent might just be a cartoonist. ?Sacco grants dignity to his subjects?the petty tyrant and the suffering victim alike?simply through the meticulousness with which he renders them,? Campbell Robertson wrote in July.

The Lifespan of a Fact by John D?Agata and Jim Fingal

In this ?enraging, fascinating, singular book,? according to Dan Kois? February review, a journalist and a fact-checker go to war about whether the falsehoods incorporated in a magazine story matter. The result is a Talmudic debate about storytelling, truth, and lies that spills off the page.

This novel, set in and around a council estate in northwest London, is remarkably perceptive about female friendship, race, and class. But it?s also ?an argument,? Hanna Rosin noted in the December Audio Book Club, ?between two different ideas of what a novel should be??part lyrical-realistic storytelling, part modernist deconstruction of the very idea of story. As a whole, it?s a masterful, emotional portrait of a city as seen through four of its residents, striving and failing to move beyond the neighborhood where they were born.

?There is no better spirit in all of American letters than that of Ursula Le Guin,? wrote Choire Sicha in November. This two-volume collection of her masterful short stories ? one book of science fiction, the other of the mundane ? ?guns from the grim to the ecstatic, from the State to the Garden of Eden, with just one dragon between.?

Strayed?s chronicle of her 1,100-mile trek along the Pacific Crest Trail is ?by turns both devastating and glorious,? wrote Melanie Rehak in March. The memoir?s value isn?t in oh-so-wisely answering questions ? it?s in asking ?many, many new questions far more valuable than any platitudes about self-discovery.?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=0d44e1c6ef487fc69da4d2de22fb4acf

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German Parliament voting on Greek debt deal

BERLIN (AP) ? Germany's finance minister is urging lawmakers to support a deal to trim Greece's debt load and keep the struggling country afloat financially.

The deal reached by European finance ministers Tuesday paves the way for Greece to receive ?44 billion ($57 billion) in critical rescue loans. It also includes measures including a debt buyback program and an interest rate cut on loans to reduce Greece's debts.

Germany's Parliament has to approve eurozone rescue measures. Bailing out Greece and others hasn't been popular in Germany and there has been growing unease in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition, but a solid majority is expected Friday. Two opposition parties are expected to vote in favor.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says blocking loan payouts would have "consequences not just for Greece but the whole of Europe."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/german-parliament-voting-greek-debt-deal-082808904--finance.html

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The 15 most overpriced gadgets of all time

45 min.

Avram Piltch , Laptop

There?s nothing wrong with charging a lot of money for your gadget.?Some of the best things in life are the exact opposite of free; a truly superior product is definitely worth spending more.?Unfortunately, sometimes tech companies think too much of their wares and too little of your intelligence. The result is a product whose price is out of whack with its real value in the marketplace.

Here are 15 truly outrageous offenders, the most overpriced gadgets?of all?time:

Microsoft Surface with Windows RT ($629 with Touch Cover)

At its $499 base price, Microsoft?s first tablet costs the same as the fourth-generation iPad, the well-established leader in the tablet market. The attractive Surface has a screen that's worse than?the iPad's, it lasts 5 hours less on a charge, and at launch time, had only a handful of decent apps for its nascent Windows RT operating system.

How would you like a brand new convertible with a one-of-a-kind retractable roof for the reasonable price?of $22,000? There?s just one catch. You must pay an extra $10,000 for the convertible roof you saw highlighted in all the commercials.

However, you may want the Surface because of its heavily-advertised Touch Cover keyboard, a must-have accessory that will set you back an extra $119, even though it costs Microsoft only $16 to manufacture. That?s $629 for a new, unproven tablet that trails the $499 market leader in most ways.

MORE: ?12 Hottest Holiday Tablets

Voodoo Envy 133 ($2,099 - $3,299)

One of the most anticipated products of 2008, the 0.7-inch thin Envy 133 notebook was supposed to inspire its name in all of your friends. But at a starting price of over $2,099 that jumped up to $3,300 when fully configured, this 3.4-pound notebook was far too light on performance and specs to justify its heavy price.

The high-end Envy 133 configuration featured a modest 1.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, just 2GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal Flash storage that copied files so slowly it was more of a Solid State Park than a Solid State Drive. Worse still, the notebook lasted just 2 hours and 32 minutes on a charge, making this ultra-portable not very portable at all.

MORE: ?Top 10 Ultrabooks

Cisco umi ($599 Plus $24.99 a month)

Psst. Come over here. I have a copy of this week?s "Village Voice"?newspaper that I?d like to sell you for just $25. What? ?It?s free,? you say? Well, my version has slightly sharper print so I?m sure you and millions of others will be more than willing to pay my premium.

Cisco applied this perverse logic to its 2010-era umi home telepresence system, which cost an eye-popping $599 for equipment plus $24.99 a month to provide a slightly better video chat?service than competitors like Skype and Google offered for free. With the umi, which was short for You / Me, you could hook up a camera to the top of your TV and either talk to one of the five other umi users--or with your friends on Google Talk who were paying nothing at all.

MORE: ?8 Sweet Cameras for Every Shooter

Sony VAIO P series ($899)

Back in 2009, netbooks were as hot as the Jonas Brothers, and everyone wanted to get in on the action. On the low end, non-computer companies like Sylvania (yes, the light bulb people) were making their own versions of netbook. On the high end, Sony tried to reinvent the genre with its 1.4-pound, 8-inch VAIO P.

At first glance, the VAIO P was an engineering marvel. The system was thin and narrow enough to fit into an overcoat pocket while providing premium features like a bright 1600 x 768 pixel display and 3G connectivity. However, with super-sluggish performance, mediocre battery life and a stiff keyboard, the notebook?wasn?t good enough for extended use. At $899 and up, the value just wasn?t there when the best premium netbooks at the time cost $499.

MORE:??Longest Lasting Laptops

Apple Lisa ($10,000)

In the early 1980s, few people had seen a computer?with a graphical user interface. Xerox had been experimenting with GUIs since the 1970s and launched its Xerox Star 8010 in 1981, but it was Apple?s Lisa that finally brought windowed operating systems to the mainstream in early 1983.

Unfortunately, for the privilege of rolling a mouse around Lisa?s 12-inch, 720 x 360 black-and-white screen, you had to pay a cool $10,000 ($22,000 in 2011 dollars) and put up with a pair of unreliable ?Twiggy? floppy drives that used their own proprietary 860K disks. At the same time, you could buy a brand new Apple IIe, the leading home computer, for just $1,395, a Compaq Portable PC for $3,590 or an original PC for far less.

MORE:??7 Things Apple Must Do to Get Its Swagger Back

Nokia Booklet 3G ($1,720 over two years)

Subsidized netbooks with two-year 3G contracts were always a bad idea, but never more so than with the 2010 Nokia Booklet 3G. For $299 and a commitment to give AT&T $60 a month for two years ($1,720), unsuspecting shoppers got an attractive but incredibly incapable 10-inch netbook.

Perhaps Nokia and AT&T thought the Booklet?s Macbook-esque aluminum chassis would distract consumers long enough that they would make it through the return period without noticing the system?s glacial 4,200-rpm hard drive, painfully slow Atom Z530 processor or cramped keyboard.

MORE:Top Windows 8 Laptop Gifts

DIVX ($499 plus $4.50 per disc)

How would you like to pay $500 just for the right to pay another $4.50 every time you want to rent a movie? That was the premise behind DIVX, a late-1990s movie rental system designed by someone who had watched too many episodes of Mission Impossible and loved the idea of self-destructing media.

After buying a $500 DIVX Player, you could then purchase any of about 400 movies on disc for about $4.50. A mere 48 hours after you watched the film, it would expire and you would have to throw away the disc or pay another $3.25 for another 48 hours. Circuit City, the leading seller of DIVX players and discs, touted the new technology??as a convenience that would help you avoid late fees. However, the player was $100 more than a regular DVD player and the discs were more expensive than renting a film at the store.

MORE: ?Best Smart TVs

BlackBerry PlayBook ($499)

Research in Motion Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie must have been eating some psychotropic Blackberries when they laid out the MSRP for the company?s first tablet in spring 2011. At $499???the same price as the industry-leading iPad 2???the BlackBerry PlayBook provided a significantly smaller screen and an operating system so half-baked that it didn?t even include native email support at launch.

Within a few months, the price of the PlayBook had dropped dramatically. Today, you can get one for just under $180, which is still too expensive. Much-better 7-inch Android devices like the Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire cost around the same price and have a far better selection of apps.

MORE:??Essential Tablet Accessories

Motorola Laptop Dock ($499)

A dual-core smartphone is already more powerful than an older PC, so why not use it as one? That was Motorola?s thinking when the company launched the Laptop Dock, a keyboard/screen combo that turned the Atrix 4G handset into a notebook running the browser-centric Webtop OS.

At $499 by itself, or $300 when bought together with the Atrix, the 11.6-inch Laptop Dock cost the same or more than a full-fledged Windows 7 netbook that could run all of your software. Considering that its cramped keyboard was worse than those on most netbooks, Motorola?s dock was one of the biggest rip-offs of 2011.

MORE:?10 Hottest Holiday Smartphones

AT&T VideoPhone 2500 ($1,599)

Today, anyone can conduct an online video chat for free, using Skype, Google Talk, FaceTime or any of a dozen other solutions. But back in 1992, we didn?t have broadband Internet or HD webcams. So when AT&T released the VideoPhone 2500, a standard landline handset which could send and receive video, the world took notice . . . of its whopping $1,599 price.

Considering that it both sent and received video on a sluggish 19.2bps modem, the VideoPhone 2500?s 10 frame-per-second performance was pretty impressive for the time. However, to use the device, you needed your friends and family needed to buy it too, something few consumers were willing to do.

MORE:??Best Bluetooth Speakers

Apple Macintosh G4 Cube ($1,799)

How much extra would you pay for sexy? If you were a Mac maven in 2000, Steve Jobs thought you would spend $1,799 for the PowerMac G4 Cube, a tiny cube-shaped version of Apple?s PowerMac G4 desktop. Unfortunately, at that price, the Cube was a square peg trying to fit into the round hole of Apple?s product line.

At the time, consumers could pay $1,000 less and get an iMac,?which came with a monitor included. Creative professionals who had the money to spend preferred to buy a PowerMac G4 tower with better performance and the ability to upgrade.

MORE:??Alive and Booting: 8 Reasons The PC Still Matters

Motorola Xoom ($1,079 over two years)

When they released the first true Android slate in early 2011, Google and Motorola were a year late to the party and yet they wanted hundreds of dollars more than Apple?s belle of the ball. At a time when the iPad 2 cost $499 with Wi-Fi or $629 with contract-free 3G service, the Motorola Xoom launched at $599 and required you to sign a two-year contract with Verizon at a minimum of $20 per month ($1,079) or $799 sans contract. While the cheaper iPad 2 had access to thousands of apps, at launch, the Xoom had a measly 46 tablet-optimized apps.

MORE:??Top 10 Tablets to Buy or Avoid Now

IBM PCJr ($669 to $1,269)?

A stripped-down chip off the old block, 1983?s IBM PCJr (PC Junior) would have been overpriced at any cost. At $1,269 with the absolutely necessary floppy drive ($669 without), the PC Jr. was quite a bit cheaper than full fledged IBM PCs of the time, but about on-par with the Apple IIe and far more expensive than home-computing competitors like the $200 Commodore 64 and $150 TI-99/4A.

Unfortunately, with its horribly?stiff chiclet keyboard, slow performance, and a slew of compatibility issues that kept it from running popular PC programs, the Jr wasn?t worth the premium. That year, I arrived at?camp earlier than the other kids, just so I could grab a seat in front of a real PC rather than this awful offspring.

MORE:??Essential Tips for Gifting a Tablet

OQO Model 01 ($1,899)

In launching the world?s first 14-ounce Windows PC, OQO?s 2004 Model 01 was a true trailblazer. However, even by early 21st-century standards, the lilliputian laptop?s 1-GHz Transmeta CPU, 20GB hard drive and?256MB of RAM provided sluggish performance. Meanwhile, the tiny keyboard just felt awkward.

Considering that you could get a fully?functioning laptop for hundreds of dollars less, it was hard for most consumers and business users to imagine buying this severely neutered novelty for such a high price.

MORE:??The 12 Best Gadgets You Didn't Buy

Newton MessagePad 2100 ($1,000)

By 1997, Apple had improved the software and solved a lot of the handwriting recognition problems on its Newton PDA. Perhaps because of these improvements, the company felt it could price its grayscale handheld at a whopping $1,000, more than some PCs cost.

At the same time, the PalmPilot Personal cost just $299. Yes, the Newton had a better processor, more ?storage?and a larger screen, but none of these features justified spending $700 more, even during the Internet bubble.

MORE:??Top Android Tablets for Kids

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/15-most-overpriced-gadgets-ever-1C7354819

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Colony behind big real estate buy

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