Okay, breast feeding mamas: how many of you have heard about lactogenic foods? As someone who struggled to maintain a steady supply of breast milk, many lactogenic foods—foods said to possibly help boost milk production—became my go-to ingredients in those early months following each of my sons’ births. While there isn’t much research on the impact that specific foods have on breast supply, there’s strong anecdotal evidence that they work, and good old fashioned passed down wisdom, too. So much so that many professional lactation consultants and doctors believe that lactogenic foods can be helpful.

If nothing else, lactogenic foods happen to be plain good for you (and baby!). They include barley, almonds, oats, buckwheat, fennel, ginger, legumes and nutritional yeast, all of which can be used to make nutritious snacks for the whole family, even when mom isn’t breastfeeding.

I recently whipped up these super natural Cowboy Cookies for a breastfeeding mama friend who’s just had a baby. Most cowboy cookies are super sweet treats hefty enough to fuel the Wild West on sugar alone. They are usually packed with coconut, nuts, chocolate chips and loads of butter and sugar.

My delicious and totally satisfying version swaps coconut oil for part of the butter, is lower in sugar and has fewer chocolate chips than most traditional cowboy cookie recipes. I also pack mine with super healthy fixin’s including high-protein hemp seeds, lactogenic oats and nutrient dense walnuts.

There’s certainly no guarantee that these delicious sweets will improve milk supply but, if you’re going to make cookies for a new mom in your life or, really, anyone, you might as well make it these healthier treats. And, bonus: kids love them, too!

Keep in mind that the most important thing for breastfeeding mamas to do is maintain a balanced diet that’s high in protein, calcium, vitamins and minerals and drink lots of water. I’d say that they should get lots of rest too (because they should), but we mamas know how that goes! Also remember that most women only need 500 extra calories to support breastfeeding.

I love having people over to eat. Dinner parties were my specialty until I had two children! Now, brunch is the ticket at my place. I start the day with a bang and can still get to bed at a decent time.

Given how early my children wake up, I have plenty of time to put together a brunch for friends the day of, but I’d much rather sit and sip coffee before my guests arrive. So make-ahead brunch recipes have become a bit of a specialty. This easy brunch menubuilt around a spinach and cheese strata was my go-to until I recently came up with these Baked Egg and Kale Cups.

Making these is simple business: steam a bunch of kale, use it to line the wells of a muffin tin, crack an egg inside each well (right on top of the kale), bake and eat. If you feel fancy, sprinkle grated Parmesan on top. Otherwise, salt and pepper will do. Think your kiddo won’t eat kale? Think again: these are like those surprisingly popularkale chips you’ve surely heard all about, with an egg. Even better! If your little one isn’t into kale chips, you can always use a piece of lean, organic ham or all-natural organic bacon in it’s place. Either way, you end up with a scrumptious little egg “muffin” that’s easy to make on the fly or can be made ahead of time—whatever works for you.

If you’re looking for something to go with these Baked Egg and Kale Cups, look no further than this effortless Maple Yogurt Mousse. It is unique, easy to make, made with healthy plain Greek-style yogurt and, most important of all, out of this world delicious. It makes a perfect brunch sprinkled with granola and served alongside these eggs. Also keep these in mind for an afternoon snack or packed lunch! Simply replace a hard boiled egg with one of these “cups” whenever you have them on hand.

Nearly two years ago I made an important decision to eat only organic, local and/or ethically raised meat. Even in New York City, it’s a tall order. At first, I was tempted by convenience to grab chicken from the market instead of making my bi-monthly trip to the butcher where I could request healthy meat. I stuck with it though and, after a couple of months, something amazing and unexpected happened: I started saving money.

You might be wondering how that’s possible when organic meat is more expensive. The simple answer is that I learned how to stretch my meals. To get my family on board with the change, I focused hard on making sure that even though we were eating less meat, it didn’t feel like we were eating less meat.

One of my favorite tips for stretching meat is to skip the supermarket chicken (unless your market has a butcher and carries organic, naturally raised chickens) and go to a butcher where you can request a whole chicken cut into pieces. If you want any of the pieces deboned, just say so. You’ll get what I call the “sexy” pieces—wings, thighs, legs, and the split breast—which will make a solid dinner for 4-6, depending on what else you serve. You’ll also get the neck, innards and some other parts that will make a mean chicken stock, a base for a second meal.

One chicken, two meals. This is how we get more bang for our buck and make pricier—but healthier!—meat worth it.

Here’s an example of my trick at work. I recently used the “sexy” pieces to make this Coconut Mango Roasted Chicken (pictured) for dinner #1. The next day, I threw the leftover meat and bones from our roast chicken dinner into a stock pot with the rest of the chicken pieces from the butcher, two big carrots, two stalks of celery, a roughly peeled and chopped onion, two cloves of garlic, a couple of whole coriander seeds and black peppercorns, a bay leaf and a few sprigs of fresh thyme. This made a lovely, simple stock that, once strained, of everything but the carrots and celery, which I chopped into bite-size pieces, became broth for dinner #2. I served the broth with a pile of buttered egg noodles and a big salad. (If your kiddo doesn’t eat salad yet, you can toss anything from chopped broccoli to peas with the buttered noodles.)

I paid more for an organic chicken, but got two chicken dinners out of it. Both served healthier, modest portions of meat, but they were meat-based dinners nonetheless. It’s a win-win so long as we stop thinking that our budget limits our ability to get healthy. Our budget is there to support our healthy and, with a few good tricks up our sleeves, we can get great value out of healthy meat despite the greater upfront cost!

Though I’m known for healthy cooking, I’ve got to be honest: my idea of healthy baking is simply to stick to whole ingredients that are organic and as unprocessed as possible.

Organic butter, check. Organic sugar or local honey, check. Organic all-purpose or whole wheat flour, check.

Rather than experiment with substitutes, I usually follow baking recipes as written, just choosing the best, most healthy versions of the ingredients called for. This holiday season, though, when I was baking more than usual, I decided to try something new: use higher-protein Greek-style yogurt in my baking.

At first, I substituted Greek-style yogurt in my baking as an attempt to balance our holiday diet. Yogurt is, after all one of our healthiest foods! It worked out so well, though, that it’s become part of my regular baking repertoire. I encourage you to give it a try—I have a feeling you’ll find yourself making the same decision that I’ve made.

To make it easier for you to start experimenting, here’s a quick reference substitute chart:

1 cup sour cream = 1 cup Greek-style yogurt
1 cup oil = ¾ cup Greek-style yogurt
1 cup butter = ¼ cup Greek-style yogurt + ½ cup butter
1 cup cream cheese = 1 cup Greek-style yogurt
1 cup buttermilk = 2/3 cup Greek-style yogurt + ¼ cup buttermilk

If you’d rather start with a tried and true recipe, give this Vanilla Cardamom Olive Oil Pound Cake or Blood Orange Yogurt Cake a try. When you’re sold—which you surely will be!—then you can branch out into adapting your own favorite recipes.

Serving global cuisines at the family table is more than just having fun with food. Beyond it being an opportunity to expand your children’s palate, serving global foods is an opportunity for them to build an understanding of the larger world around them. An openness to global cuisines creates a range of experiences from a willingness to try new flavor combination to a curiosity about other peoples and cultures.

How to Serve Up New Foods If your child has grown up in the United States and has never global foods, chances are that new, ethnic foods will seem strange at first. That’s okay! We can respect our children’s preferences (after all, we helped form them) and also challenge them to try new dishes and ingredients. Research shows that it can take upwards of 12 attempts to get a young child to try a new food. If we’re consistent and steadfast while also showing our kids how much we love trying new foods, they will come around—even the picky eaters!

Think about parenting your way through the introduction of new foods the same way you’d parent your way through any new change at home. You’d be patient, clear, excited and supportive, but also consistent and disciplined. Some kids respond quickly, others slowly, but when we’re serious and in charge, they all eventually come around.

Here are some of my favorite tips for starting to bring new, international foods into your home:

• Experiment with the time of day when you introduce a new food. Some young children are cranky and tired by dinner and may be more receptive at lunch. Older children may have a harder time trying new foods at school where their peers have more familiar foods.
• Start slowly. Add one or two foreign elements to your child’s favorite food as opposed to serving up a wholly unfamiliar dish out of the blue. If your child loves spaghetti, try making it with udon or soba noodles. Add freshly grated ginger or lemongrass to chicken soup for a Southeast Asian twist.
• Engage your child in cooking. This makes the new dish a complete sensory exploration and gives your child an opportunity to process the new sights, smells and flavors. Talk about what the ingredients look like, how they smell and how they taste when tried alone (versus in a finished dish). Pride in the finished product can also go a long way to getting a child to try a new dish.
• Consider a “try it once” rule. While this doesn’t work for everyone, many parents have success with this approach, but it requires a great deal of patience over a long time. What we love most about this rule isn’t so much that we think it will change your child’s mind, but rather that it sends a clear message that we don’t judge food before tasting it. Many kids will say that they don’t like the food even if the one bite is surprisingly good, and that’s okay. Either way, it will have made an important impression.
• Never assume that your child won’t like something. This attitude, which usually stems from a parent’s own dislikes, sets your child up for failure. You are the most powerful influence on your child. If you act like something is unlikable, your child will think it’s unlikable. Open yourself up to the surprises that come with feeding kids new foods.
• Start young! When kids are young, every meal is a new adventure and an opportunity to influence their palate. As children get older, their preferences settle in. That, combined with naturally occurring picky phases (every child goes through them to some degree or another), can make it hard to change a child’s eating habits.
• Don’t give up, especially if you didn’t start when your children were young. “Hard”does not mean “impossible.” Yes, it’s a challenge to transform a picky eater from someone who eats only macaroni and cheese to someone who will ask for Green Beans in Sesame Dressing. However, the research is clear: food preferences are not hardwired and can be changed! It just takes time, love, patience and consistency. Maybe it also takes a willingness to say, “This is what’s for dinner tonight. If you don’t like it, you can be excused from the table.” That helps, too.

 
I hope that this inspires your cooking, or at least inspires you to try something new. Feel free to start slowly: this Quick Indian Style Spinach with Chickpeas is a super simple and quick meal. For you meat eaters, it goes great with these Indian Spiced Meatballs, one of my favorite One Hungry Mama recipes of 2012. My Jamaican Curry (pictured) is another great option that allows you to experiment without too high a time investment.