Chef Meals for Kids? Alain Ducasse

People who eat at fine restaurants around the world often want to introduce their children to fine dining early, but don't know how. Famed restauranteur Alain Ducasse has a new cookbook, Cooking for Kids: From Babies to Toddlers: Simple, Healthy and Natural Food, that can help pave the way.

The cookbook emphasizes seasonal ingredients and suggests using only organic produce. Children raised on these recipes, which include a turnip, potato and parsley puree, pumpkin and blue cheese soup and hake with grapefruit and garden peas, are unlikely to be satisfied with children's meals at fast food restaurants.

You can help your children develop a sophisticated palate, and make food that even adults can enjoy, though the squid, cucumber and lime muffins may have lost something in the translation.  Simple dishes like risotto with pumpkin, polenta with zucchini and millet with turnip, zucchini and mint will please any age.

The recipe that really struck me was a simple to make yet rich onion soup, using Melba toast or zwieback. The vegetarian soup was hearty and a huge crowd pleaser.

Dinner to Go, From Far Away

My daughter with a Chilean empanada cook

My middle daughter spent her junior year in Chile, and she developed a passion for empanadas. These vegetable or meat pastries are cooked to order throughout the country, but in the US, they are not as common.

Luckily, Fairway Market

Fairway empanadas

has stepped into the fray. The stores just introduced a Latin Table with empanadas and tamales.

The empanadas are fine - as long as you haven't experienced the freshly made ones in Chile. We visited my daughter and had some straight from the oven, so you can't really compare But my other 2 daughters didn't go to South America, and they loved the spinach-Portobello mushroom empanadas.

Even better are the tamales, with black beans (there are also meat versions of both, but we stuck with the vegetarian). They all come with spicy chipotle dip and avocado-tomatillo sauce.

Fairway tamales

These are great for combo meals - a healthier than fast food treat, plus a salad and you have dinner. And next time I stay in a hotel with a microwave and a fridge, I will bring a pack or 2 along. Somehow my kids are always starving once we get to a hotel and the food at hotels is usually quite pricey.

The empanadas and tamales are $4.99 each, for 2 and 4, respectively, and filling enough for a meal.

Fit in DC: Hotel Palomar

Too cold to run outside in DC? Use the Hotel Palomar fitness center

Kimpton Hotels offer a variety of ways to keep fit, with free bicycles and large fitness centers.

We recently stayed at the Hotel Palomar, in Washington, DC, during the polar vortex. Those bicycles were hidden away (though we saw many hardy Washingtonians cycling around the city on Capital Bikeshare bikes, the bicycle sharing system) and the outdoor pool was hidden under an impermeable layer of ice.

Lots of exercise 'toys' at the Hotel Palomar

But the Dupont Circle luxury boutique hotel has an equally luxe fitness center, with plenty of floor space to spread out mats, stability balls and bosu balls, plus free weights and cardio machines.

There were also hula hoops, weight benches and strength machines.

I liked the extra touches; bananas and apples for a post-workout snack, headphones for those who forgot their own, and soft towels.

Note: we received a special media rate for our Hotel Palomar stay. Opinions are my own.

No Excuses: Keeping Fit

Discreet packaging for JustGo Pads

I am the queen of exercise excuses - it’s too hot, too cold, too sunny, too rainy.  My ankle hurts, my knee hurts, I didn’t get enough sleep, I have the sniffles -  you get the idea.

Luckily, I don’t have a problem that plagues untold numbers of women, particularly those who have had kids - Athletic Leaks™. This is urinary incontinence during high impact activity - jumping, cross fit, running long distances. And it doesn’t just bedevil moms.  Teens have it, or grown women without kids.

But a mother of 5, (!!!) Brooke Solis, wouldn’t take this problem sitting down.  The lawyer and athlete had this vexing problem and hated the choices on the market - bulky incontinence pads or sanitary napkins.

Brooke started a company, JustGoGirl and patented the term Athletic Leaks™ (there’s that legal training) a polite way to describe the seepage that can happen during high impact workouts - or, she pointed out, in a bouncy house at a child’s birthday party.

Brooke developed a tapered JustGo Pad™ that can’t be seen from behind, yet absorbs accidents like a pro. After all, if you are rocking Lululemon pants you don’t want a reverse camel toe revealing your secret.

I put the pad to a comfort fashion test in spin class - my friend claimed she couldn’t see any evidence of the pad through my spandex shorts. The pad didn’t chafe and though I didn’t pee in class, I could see how the pad would be very useful on a long cross country ski outing, or during a marathon, even if you don’t have athletic leak issues.

Although the athletic leak condition is different from the kind of involuntary pee almost every woman has experienced - when she sneezes or laughs - I could also see the pads coming in handy if I were going to a comedy show. The pads hold almost a half a cup of liquid, so technically you could also use them for your period, though they are on the expensive side.

The pads are sold on amazon and through a JustGoGirl subscription service; 10 pads for $8 if you are an occasional exercisers, $20 for 14 pads a month and $18 for 30 a month for the every day exerciser.

History, Luxury - and a Modern gym

The Dearborn Inn, on Ford Motor Company property, is not your typical Marriott, though it is owned by the chain. The hotel is across the street from company headquarters and is convenient for visiting the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village and the Automotive Hall of Fame.

The historic inn has several outbuildings with rooms, along with rooms in the main part of the hotel, where you'll also find a bar, the lobby with a fireplace and a restaurant. The fitness center is also in the main building, and if you are staying in winter, you may want to make sure your room is not in one of the outlying buildings.  I had an icy sprint, in shorts, to the gym.

But the gym offers new cardio and strength equipment, along with little touches like headphones and a stack of magazines.

There is also a seasonal outdoor pool if that's how you get your workout. But no polar bear events for me - just that short wintry run was enough.

Airport Hotel: Gateway to Fitness

Most airport hotels are dreary affairs, selected by weary travelers as a last resort, or strictly for convenience. But  the Westin Detroit Metro Airport Hotel is an anomaly, a luxury hotel with great amenities, like its gym. 

The huge gym has state of the art cardio and strength machines, free weights, stability balls and space to stretch. And you can't use the excuse that you forgot your workout clothes - the Westin rents sneakers and workout clothing for $5.

There are headphones if you've forgotten yours, nice soft towels, and chilled towels for a super cool down.

They don't rent bathing suits and there is also a pool, if that's how you like to exercise. But shopping is right at your fingertips; you can stroll into the airport shops.

The Westin has its own security line, so you can get to your gate in just minutes. If you are lucky enough to be flying Delta, the gates are literally right there, but the private security line is an amazing perk.

And with all the extra time you save, you can spend more time exploring Detroit.

French Kitchen Teaches a Thing or Two to Brooklyn D-I-Y-er

The Brooklyn D-I-Y craze has been my ethos long before porkpie hats and soul patches were required to live here (sometimes, yes, on the women, too).

I have a sourdough starter, I always make cakes and pie crusts from scratch and I infuse my cocktails with herbs from my garden.

But one thing long eluded me: puff pastry.

In a classic go-around, I just avoided recipes that called for it. Store bought dough in my homemade creations? Forget it.

Then I got The French Kitchen Cookbook, by Patricia Wells. There Is a recipe for a ‘blitz puff pastry’ that takes 2 hours to make, but most of that time is letting the dough rest in the refrigerator. While the dough recuperates, you can pickle a few artisanal carrots, or master the foam design on your milk froth-er.

Or, of course, you can explore the other hundreds of pages of recipes, including some that don’t seem particularly French – mixed nuts with kaffir lime dust (am incredibly simple stunner, once you find the kaffir leaves). Or the sautéed dates with fennel.

There are a number of vegetarian dishes, including a pear endive salad, eggplant with mint and fish sauce and some lovely fish dishes.

But I was mainly drawn to things like a homemade curry paste, and a hoisin sauce that dances circles around the commercial varieties.