Y’all know that the FoodieTots family participates in Meatless Mondays. Today on NPR, you can hear more about the movement and hear an interview with yours truly, cooking my quinoa-stuffed zucchini boats.

And if you’re looking for more family-friendly Meatless Monday recipes, visit our new Meatless Monday resource page.

What are you cooking for Meatless Monday? And if you’re new here, welcome! Click here to receive new recipes by email as soon as they’re posted, or “like” us on Facebook.

Have you heard of Meatless Monday? We don’t eat meat every night. When do eat meat, it’s local, hormone-free, free-range/grassfed, etc. So on the whole I’m not too concerned about the carbon footprint of our protein choices, but I do think it’s important to have a varied, balanced diet and would like to expand my meatless repertoire beyond pastas and quesadillas. So I’ll periodically be posting Meatless Monday recipes that emphasize beans, whole grains and other (soy-free) forms of protein. Please suggest your favorites, too!

This week’s recipe was inspired by the beautiful piece of fresh ginger and two small acorn squash we got in our CSA bag from Potomac Vegetable Farms. Butternut squash would be a little easier to work with here, as its smooth skin can be easily peeled eliminating the extra cooking step with the acorn squash. But use whichever you prefer. If you do use the acorn squash, reserve the shells for a fun serving dish with high kid-appeal.

Recipe: Curried Squash, Potato and Bean Stew

• 2 medium-sized acorn squash
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 small yellow onions, chopped
• 1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped (about 1 tablespoon)
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup water
• 8 fingerling or banana potatoes, chopped
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans,* rinsed and drained
• cilantro, optional

Instructions:

If using acorn squash: Halve squash and remove seeds. Place cut side down on lightly-oiled baking sheet and roast at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, until slightly soft. Cool, then scoop flesh out and cut into 1/2-inch chunks.

If using butternut squash: Peel, halve and remove seeds. Cut into 1/2-inch chunks and add to stew with the potatoes.

Heat olive oil in dutch oven over medium heat. Add garlic and onion and cook 4-5 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add ginger and cook 1 minute. Stir in seasonings and cook 1 additional minute. Add water, stir, then add potatoes and coconut milk to pan. Cover and simmer 20 minutes, until potatoes are fork tender. Add beans and acorn squash to pan and cook another 10 minutes. Makes 4-6 servings.

Notes: I served this stew over brown rice. I intended to use garbanzo beans, but didn’t have any on hand so navy beans stood in instead. You can garnish with cilantro, but it’s actually some spinach from our CSA in the picture.

Get more Meatless Monday recipe ideas from Kim O’Donnel at True/Slant … and please leave a comment with any meatless recipes you’ve enjoyed recently!

FoodieTots @ the Farmers Market Week continues with some background on why we love the market for teaching healthy habits. This post was originally a guest contribution at Food with Kid Appeal ~ visit Jenna’s blog for more tips to inspire healthy eating with your kids.

This weekend, my son rediscovered his toy shopping cart and insisted on hauling it out for a pre-bedtime grocery shopping trip. He proceeded to entertain us by driving back and forth across the living room and kitchen, visiting the orange juice guy, the ketchup guy, the jam place, and returning his empty milk carton to the door for the milkman to refill. I love that he thinks we have “a guy” for everything!

My son has been shopping our weekly farmers market since he was an infant in a baby carrier. At the time, it was the perfect Saturday morning outing when he woke up at the crack of dawn and nothing else was open. At two and a half now, his tastes are still fairly fickle but he generally will at least try a bite of anything that comes from the market. By engaging my son in the shopping experience, and the sensory wonderland that is available at a farmers market rather than a grocery store, I have found that he is genuinely curious and excited about food.

Shopping at a farmers market or organic grocer provides you with a much wider array of fruits and vegetables than what are generally available at the big box grocery. From heirloom tomatoes in shades of yellow, green, red and purple to orange cauliflower and purple beans, they provide a rainbow of choices that appeal to kids visually. My son was never a huge fan of green beans, but the day we brought home purple beans from the market, he was enthralled. One day this past fall I asked him to bag some beans, giving him the choice of yellow or green. To my surprise, he chose to take some of both, and when we had them for dinner he proudly held them up to his dad and exclaimed, “I picked these yellow and green beans all myself!”

I also find that while my son may look skeptically at a new item placed on his dinner plate, he is almost guaranteed to sample something handed to him by a vendor at the market. Our neighborhood market’s cheese man is his favorite, no doubt due to the generous sample of cave-aged cheddar he receives each week. My son devours it, exclaiming to everyone in sight that, “Tom the Cheese Guy gave me this!” (He now asks at home, “Are those Tom’s eggs? … is that Tom’s cheese?” before determing whether to taste something. Heaven forbid we run out mid-week!) One of our favorite fruit vendors will sometimes slip him a perfectly toddler-sized Seckel pear, which he enjoys with relish. A while back, I was checking out something new to me, sunchokes. When the farmer handed me one to sample, my son demanded a taste as well. He declared it “too spicy,” but I can guarantee that he never would have been interested in trying it had I tried to slip it onto his plate at home.

As parents know, kids love to feel like they are in control, so empowering them to choose their favorites while you shop is a great way to get them engaged in what they are eating. By shopping at a market or organic grocer where virtually all the options are healthy, it helps reduce the temptation of processed foods and gets them excited about healthy foods. My son will often request fruit or cheese as a snack, which I hope will remain a habit as he gets older. When he’s older, I plan to use the market as an opportunity to teach him about money as well, by giving him his own budget and letting him determine what, and how much, to buy. And of course I will be encouraging him to join me in the kitchen as much as possible to learn how to cook his healthy selections, too.

Shared with Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade — check out the round-upround-up!

Calling all farmers market fans! One Local Summer returns in June. If you’re up for the challenge of cooking one all-local meal each week, click the image above to sign up. Here’s a reminder of some of the Chesapeake Bay foodshed meals we enjoyed last year.

We were one of the lucky few, er, 30,000 people to get tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll yesterday. As promised, it was full of activities to promote healthy, active kids lifestyles. From yoga lessons, soccer, jump roping and basketball activities to cooking demos from District and White House chefs (Art Smith, Jose Andres, and Spike Mendelsohn), First Lady Michelle Obama certainly did her part to shift the focus away from Easter candy binges to healthier living.

Of course, the traditional egg roll took place with enthusiastic children rolling, tossing and/or flinging their hard boiled eggs across the finish line. But beyond the egg roll and photo ops with favorite PBS characters* and a posse of Easter bunnies, other activities kept kids busy and moving around the South Lawn. (*I’m proud to note that the boy identified SpongeBob SquarePants as “Giant Cheese Man!”)

Sam Kass, assistant White House chef and gardener, proudly presented a fresh-picked rosemary sprig for a curious family to sniff. Standing watch at the temporary fencing, he answered questions about the White House organic garden, with herbs, rhubarb, chard and fennel plants springing up behind him. (The beehive was nearby, also fenced off from the crowds.)

Jose Andres (and daughters?) was his usual charismatic self, extolling the virtues of summer’s fresh tomatoes and demonstrating how to make gazpacho. (You can find Jose’s gazpacho recipe – which is actually his wife’s – here. It’s one of my favorite dishes at his local Jaleo restaurants.)

Among the crafts was a recycled egg carton decorating station, and the souvenir egg we took home was green too, and not just in paint color. According to the White House, they were made from FSC-certified wood and the ones available by mail order come packed in eco-friendly paper packaging. (Not sure how sustainable the hard boiled eggs were — a volunteer told us they cooked 100,000, though the White House fact sheet says only 13,000 — and the one commercial product placement came from the “Incredible Edible Egg” people, aka American Egg Board.)

There was an Easter candy display, but no candy available. No food at all, actually — nor were you allowed to bring food or drinks in. They seemed to only be confiscating open packages at security though, as we made it in with a few small snacks. Thank goodness, because five hours without a meal (after our original group was oversold, we had to wait an extra two hours(!) in line to get in) the toddler was feeling more than a little crabby. (More pictures here.)

If your new year’s resolutions included healthier eating, you’re probably looking to include more fish in your diet. It’s one of my goals, anyway, but a trip to the fish counter is often headache inducing as I try to remember which fish is “safe.” Sustainable seafood guides look at several factors, and unfortunately it’s not as simple as “farmed fish = bad, wild-caught = good.” Wild-caught salmon is good, yes, but some farmed fish also get the green light from the Blue Ocean Institute and other guides. We often hear about the health benefits of fish, particularly the omega-3 fatty acids that are important for brain development and heart health, so it’s important to make smart choices to make sure the health benefits are not out-weighed by the risks.

Health and sustainability issues surrounding seafood tend to fall into two general areas:

1. over-fishing, ocean health and species survival
2. health risks from mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)

1. Ocean Health: Our oceans are over-fished and too many countries do not adequately regulate fishing practices. Fishing techniques for certain species also endanger other species. We all remember the dolphin-safe tuna campaign of the 80s, and while “dolphin-safe” labels now appear on tuna cans, other dangerous fishing practices are still in use. Blue fin tuna and Chilean sea bass top the list of endangered species to avoid. For more on the problems of over-fishing, see the Environmental Defense Fund on “Fishing Responsibly.”

2. Human Heath Risks: Pollutants in water are ingested and stored in fish. Certain fish retain a higher concentration of mercury and PCBs, chemicals from fertilizers and industrial waste which pose brain development risks, particularly to developing babies and young children, and are linked to cancer. These toxins build up and are stored in fat cells, so choosing less fatty fish and using cooking techniques that reduce the fat (avoid frying, drain fat during cooking) will help reduce your exposure. For more on issues surrounding farmed food, particularly the fish meal feeding that concentrates toxins in certain species, read this informative post on the Green Fork Guide.

Sustainable Fish Resources: The guides produced by the Blue Ocean Institute and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafod Watch rate fish by their sustainability index, and they offer on-the-go tools that are a lifesaver when your mind goes blank in front of the seafood display at the store. You can download an iPhone application from Seafood Watch or simply text 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish in question for an instant response from the Institute’s “Fish Phone.” “Organic” seafood is going through its own challenges, but you can look for fish with the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. Using the Environmental Defense Fund’s lists of most and least-contaminated fish, narrowed to highlight the more commonly found, here are the “top 5″ best and worst to remember:

Top 5 Fish To Look For: Wild Alaskan Salmon, Yellow-Tail Snapper, Tuna – Albacore or canned light, Black Sea Bass, Tilapia – US farmed.

Top 5 Fish To Avoid: Blue fin Tuna, Striped Bass – wild, Salmon – farmed/Atlantic, MackerelSwordfish

We tend to eat a lot of Alaskan salmon, as it happens to be my favorite as well as one of the safest. My husband is a reluctant seafood eater, so finding types he will willingly eat is another challenge. Tilapia was a recent success, though, and this week’s Sustainable Family Supper (below) features this nutrient-rich, easy-to-find and affordable fish.