Recipes For Families - Lisa Wong Jackson

Photos Courtesy of Modern Kids Photography

Food

Real Mom, Real Recipe: Black Sesame Ice Cream Sandwiches

Written by Katie Hintz-Zambrano

Photography by Photos Courtesy of Modern Kids Photography

Oct 17, 2014

Feeding little mouths day in and day out is not an easy parenting task, which is why we’re always looking for inspiration in this department. And that brings us to our new series, Real Mom, Real Recipe, in which we tap a mother and have her invite us into her kitchen and show us what she’s got cookin’. First up: Lisa Wong Jackson, owner of stationery company Good On Paper Design, and a senior graphic designer at an engineering/environmental firm in the Bay Area. Here, the Berkeley-based mom of Lucas, 4 1/2, and Theo, 2, serves up a drool-worthy plate of Black Sesame Ice Cream Sandwiches to her adorable fam. Hear what mealtime and motherhood means to her in the slideshow below.

: "Keep it simple, fresh, and organic as much as possible. Try it once and you might like it—and if you don't like it, you don't have to eat it (until we try it again on another day!), but at least you tried it. I always try to feed my family something homemade and healthy if possible, but oftentimes dinner comes out of the freezer and into the toaster oven and I'm totally okay with that."

: "For breakfast, we all drink a green (sometimes pink) smoothie, whether it's with oatmeal, scrambled eggs and veggie sausage (we love the Trader Joe's brand), yogurt and homemade granola, cereal, or toast. On weekends when I have more time in the morning, I like to make waffles, banana pancakes, or French toast with orange zest, or my husband will make amazing omelets. For lunch, we like simple quesadillas, grilled cheese, or PB&J's. Our dinner rotation usually includes this Lemon Olive Chicken recipe, Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce with angel hair pasta or ravioli, Roasted Broccoli (organic broccoli florets from Trader Joe's + olive oil + salt/pepper in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes), tofu slices dipped in egg, pan fried, and eaten with brown rice and crispy seaweed, or simple udon noodles in chicken broth with baby greens and pot stickers. For dessert, I love making popsicles either from leftover smoothies from breakfast or my other favorite recipe, Tropical Pineapple Coconut (a can of coconut milk + ice + frozen pineapples + a pinch of salt). I love to bake, and my favorite recipe to make is Banana Bread from the Flour Bakery cookbook."

: "Any kind of fresh fruit, pistachios and almonds, dried mango, Kind bars, Happy Baby fruit and vegetable pouches, Snyders gluten-free pretzels, hard boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, dried seaweed, homemade granola, and lentil curls from Trader Joe's."

: "My Le Creuset round French oven, cast iron skillet, KitchenAid mixer, VitaMix, bench scraper, and lemon zester."

: "We try and sit down for a family meal together every night as often as we can. We like to play this game my friend does with her family. It's called Good Thing, Bad Thing where we go around the table and each person tells something good and something bad that happened during their day. It really helps with keeping everyone sitting still while eating. And that doesn't last very long!"

: "We all love sushi so we will get take out from Mitama in Oakland or pick up vegan sushi from Cha-Ya in Berkeley. And if we want something faster and cheaper, we will get crispy tacos from Cactus in Berkeley. And the occasional Round Table Pizza delivery."

: "Cactus, Picante, Bowl'd, Zachary's, Little Star Pizza, 900 Grayson, Summer Kitchen, and Noodle Theory."

: "I subscribe to Tasting Table and when I saw this recipe for Black Sesame Ice Cream Sandwiches in my inbox, I printed it out right away. Since I love to bake, I thought this would be the perfect recipe to try out. After thinking it through, I decided to make the chocolate cookies and ice cream ahead of time and have the kids help assemble it. The chocolate cookies were super easy to make, while the black sesame ice cream was a little more complicated. But they were oh-so-fun to assemble and eat! As you can see, Theo dove right into them whether they were assembled or not. He went back for thirds without even finishing his first or second!"