Powernap: Quick Recipes For When Time is Limited!

Today my friend Debbie Koenig of Words to Eat By is here to share a great recipe for parents and tell us about her great new cookbook, Parents Need to Eat Too!

I love the slow cooker nearly as much as Kelsey does. Around here we call it the New Mom’s Best Friend—after my son was born my parents foisted one upon me wisely gave me one. In fact, the second post-baby recipe I shared on my blog was Slow Cooker Ratatouille. The really telling part: I didn’t have a chance to post that until Harry was seven months old.

I am in packing mode so this week is all about speed and convenience without compromising taste, of course. One of my go-to quick meals is the classic panini. There are nearly endless combinations of what can be pressed between two slices of bread and this particular recipe was inspired by a panini I ate at LaGuardia airport last November. Yes, you read that correctly, a sandwich bought at an airport inspired me. I tell you – good food can be found just about anywhere!

My friend Kirsten and I are always exchanging recipe tips on Facebook. We would prefer to chat about cooking in person, but she presently lives in Tokyo so Facebook and email are our best bet for direct communication at the moment! Last week she shared her new favorite method for making clean-eating chicken chili: adding a healthy scoop of quinoa for texture. Genius! I thought. Having recently begun to work with quinoa myself, I was excited to give her idea a shot.

Last week I noticed my stash of frozen bananas had grown a little too large. I always have at least three in there for emergency banana bread, but during the holidays I didn’t bake any so the pile had grown to nine. We were in need of some fresh snack food so this was perfect timing. Underneath the bananas I also found the last of the pecans I’d use to make Spiced Pecan Snowballs for Christmas. With these two things in hand, an hour until school let out, I decided to whip up a fresh loaf of banana and top it with an crunchy pecan streusel. I had never topped banana bread with anything before, but there is a first time for everything, right?

When I first began thinking about The Naptime Chef & Small Kitchen College Slow Cooker Challenge I knew I wanted to experiment with all kinds of dishes. I slow-cook stews and lasagnas all the time, but for this week I wanted to tackle a few less commonly slow cooked meals. Breakfast seemed like a good place to start so my first step was to remake my favorite Overnight French Toast casserole for the slow cooker.

It took me a few days to get back into the rhythm of the school year last week. I don’t know why, like most parents I was thrilled for school to resume, but the first few days were harried and off-kilter. We spent so much of Christmas vacation being sick and spending our days in jammies that getting up and at ‘em first thing was a real jolt. When it came to meal time I kept it simple and stuck to some tried and true favorites like spaghetti and meatballs and carrot souffle. I also enjoyed experimenting with a few new, quicker recipes like this Stromboli.

It was well known that I am a chocolate chip cookie fanatic. Remember my Top 10 Chocolate Chip Cookies recipes? As evidenced by that list, I like them just about any way I can find them and am always looking for new ways to doctor them up. Since I came back from our recent trip to Florida with a fresh jar of malted milk powder I decided add some to a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. My goal was to achieve the classic soda ship flavor of a malted chocolate milkshake.