I took Brett to his first Vietnamese restaurant in 2003, and he was hooked. Our favorite menu item is “bun” which is a noodle bowl, nothing involving a bun. This seems fairly straightforward – some kind of grilled meat or tofu on rice noodles, but the magic is in the sauce. Sweet, tangy, spicy.

A few years ago, I was able to track down a good recipe from an unexpected source. Emeril Lagasse – BAM – apparently makes a lot of Vietnamese food. So I’ve been making his sauce for years with a couple alterations. This link is to his sauce on the Food Network, here’s my version:

Nuoc Cham Sauce

• 2 small garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp. crushed red pepper
• 2 Tbs. sugar
• 2 Tbs. fresh lime juice
• 1/4 c. rice vinegar (or whatever you have on hand)
• 1/4 c. fish sauce
• 1/4 c. water
• 1/4 c. shredded carrot

Combine all ingredients in a glass container and mix until sugar is dissolved.

The noodle bowls are good with meat, but I usually just do tofu because it’s a great blank canvas for the yumminess of the sauce. I get vermicelli noodles from the Asian foods section (also where you can find the fish sauce).

I topped the cooked noodles with some stir-fried tofu, cilantro and green onions, and plenty of the magic sauce. For Hannah, I just mixed some noodles with shredded carrots and topped with tofu. She ate half the tofu and liked playing with the noodles, then we gave her the leftover cheeseburger from lunch.

This is fun to do for a “homemade take-out” night or just something to mix up the menu plan.  And it was a great, light dinner after stuffing myself with a double cheeseburger and french fries for lunch.

It’s a winter picnic. Chili dogs, potato salad and brussels sprouts (like winter coleslaw?). We had our favorite Hebrew National hot dogs covered in vegetarian chili. For the potato salad, I did “baked” potatoes in the microwave, let them cool, peeled and sliced them, then tossed them with mayo (we get the olive oil kind), sour cream, green onions and some spices.

The chili is an easy way to stretch a pack of hot dogs. When one hot dog may not usually fill you up, one hot dog (on a wheat bun) under a mound of chili will probably do the trick.

Vegetarian Chili

• 2 c. pinto beans (or one can)
• 2 c. black beans (or one can)
• half a jar of salsa
• 2 Tbs. chili powder
• 1 Tbs. cumin
• 1 14 oz. can tomato sauce

Everything goes in the Crock Pot for several hours. The end. Super easy. Healthy, too, except I put some nacho cheese on the top. I did get Newman’s Own “All Natural” nacho cheese, but sorry, Paul, that stuff is not exactly health food. (by the way, “all natural” is an unregulated marketing term that can basically be slapped on any product, including ones with high fructose corn syrup, but that’s a post for another time)

For the brussels sprouts I tried this recipe entitled The Very Best Brussels Sprouts Ever. How could I not try it with a title like that? It was really easy and seriously good. I don’t know if they’re the best; I think they’re tied with roasting. The recipe says 4-5 hours on low, but they were done after 2 1/2 and got a little mushy, so if you try it (and you should!) cut the cooking time way down.

And that was dinner!

When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. ‘Hey, ladies,’ it said to us, ‘go ahead, get liberated. We’ll take care of dinner.’ They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply. . . . But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families’ tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable.

Now I don’t make my own bread (yet) and I have honestly embraced the minivan, but I heartily agree that women made a destructive choice to punt the kitchen duties in favor of convenience and “progressiveness.”

Lest anyone think this is some sort of ultra-conservative, repressed, homemaking drivel, the quote above is actually from author Barbara Kingsolver who happens to be a liberal, feminist atheist.

In the past few years, we developed a personal family food plan based on our priorities, and when I started clicking around to blogs, I found others that shared this foodstyle, and they called it “Real Food.” Basically, this means “whole foods” – foods that grow and occur naturally and can be bought in their original form or as close as possible. This eliminates most processed foods, things with artificial sweeteners, most preservatives, and ingredients that were created in a laboratory.

Real foods take a little more preparation time since you are starting with the actual ingredients instead of a processed head-start from a box. Homemade macaroni and cheese takes about 45 minutes for me to make, the stuff in the blue box takes around 15. But I can tell you exactly what’s in mine, and I can’t pronounce a lot of things on the box (though I can pronounce Yellow 6). Oh yeah, and mine tastes better.

I certainly do not proclaim myself any kind of food expert or nutritionist, but in some following posts I’ll outline several of our intentional food goals and what that looks like on a practical level. I’m also going to have some guest posts by my awesome mom who shaped the way I look at food.

In July, Brett and I will be attending a conference in San Antonio entitled “The Reformation of Food and the Family.” We are excited to learn more about food choices and hospitality in the context of a Christian family. So I’ve got food on the brain! Stay tuned for more of Why We Eat What We Eat (WWEWWE) and more food topics in the next month.