Two of our index cards combine in this
salmon-avocado salad. Photo courtesy Whole
Foods Market. Get the recipe.

You can search, and you can buy healthy recipe cookbooks.

But you can also invent your own recipes; and use the occasion as a teaching game for the family. (Plan now to start playing next weekend.)

Here’s the game:

1. Announce the rules: First, each family member develops a list of healthy foods. (If your children are old enough, they also need to know why it’s a healthy ingredient—as do adult participants.) The person with the most gets a prize, to be determined by you. The family will gather on [date] and [time] for the next leg.

2. Next, everyone brings his or her list to the dinner table (or other place and time you designate) and take turns reading them out. You place each new food item on a separate index card. (For example, only make one card for brown rice, even if everyone has it on his/her list.)

4. Now that you have ingredients, it’s onto the next leg: creating recipes from them. Spread the cards out on the table so everyone can see them. Go around the table, asking each person in turn to suggest a combination of ingredients and a recipe (for example, grilled fish, grape and red onion tacos). Write the suggested recipe on a pad, along with the name of the person who suggested it.

5. Finally, you get to make the recipes. Print out a calendar and place the recipes on specific days of the month (it’s easier to plan the meals).

6. After each healthy recipe is made, vote on whether it goes, stays or needs to be revised. Take the time to reinforce why the recipe is healthy, and which ingredients are the healthiest. Mark on the calendar which recipes are “winners.”

7. At the end of 30 days, tally the winning recipes and declare a winner. Now, you can start the process over again.

When you make brown rice, make double the amount you need. That way, you’ll have leftover brown rice, a very versatile food. It can be used for everything from stuffing burritos and omelets to bulking up soups, salads and wraps to creating a flavorful main or new side dish.

If you don’t have any leftover brown rice on hand, you can quickly microwave a package of frozen cooked brown rice, or cook brown rice from scratch in 12 to 15 minutes in a pressure cooker.

This recipe, from Whole Foods Market, creates an elegant Chinese-inspired rice side, enhanced with fresh pineapple and edamame and flavored with grated ginger and cilantro. (Get the recipe.) Serve it as a vegetarian main course or as a side with steamed fish or roasted chicken.

Photo courtesy Whole Foods Market.

Nachos and tequila shots may rule at many Super Bowl parties. But for your consideration, we present tequila lemonade, courtesy of the producers of 1800 Select Silver Tequila.

(The celebrity spokesperson for 1800 is Michael Imperioli of “The Sopranos,” as the fictional Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) of “Entourage” is endorsing Avion and Justin Timberlake has Sauza 901. Details.)

1800 Select Silver Tequila is an unusual tequila, even in the superpremium category. It’s 100% blue agave, of course; that’s required by law. But it’s really a new category of silver tequila, with features of joven and reposado tequilas. (See the different types of tequila.)

But, using two proprietary distillation, it’s also distilled at 100 proof instead of 80 proof. The result: a very smooth tequila, crisp and clean, that showcases the sweet, fruity agave flavor. And it’s 25% stronger than other silvers.

Second, it’s partially aged to add complexity (silver tequila typically is bottled immediately after distillation).

Third, it’s blended with a bit of aged tequila—also unusual for a silver tequila, and one that, along with the aging, provides even more complexity.

With a tequila this interesting, you might want to snuggle up to the bottle and drink shots from the stopper. But the producers suggest this tequila lemonade recipe:
 
1800 TEQUILA COOL LEMONADE RECIPE

Ingredients Per Cocktail

 
Preparation

1. MUDDLE the mint and simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Add tequila, the lemon juice and ice and shake vigorously.

2. STRAIN over fresh ice and garnish with lemon wheels.
  

The Cocktail Tree was developed by SushiSamba to enable patrons of the fusion-cuisine restaurant chain (a meld of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian influences) to enjoy tasting portions of different fancy cocktails.

It is popular at SushiSamba restaurants nationwide (Chicago, Miami, New York and Las Vegas) as a fun way to sample the restaurant’s extensive beverage menu.

You now can have a tree of your own.

It isn’t inexpensive, but you get what you pay for: a memorable experience for $250 (the price includes the 12 glasses).

Each handcrafted tree is made from forged steel, with a blackened patina and satin lacquer.

Get yours at SushiSamba.com.

Try different drinks from the tasting tree.
Photo courtesy SushiSamba.

Oh my darling clementines: The sweetest
mandarin orange is also the juiciest.
Photo courtesy Del Monte.

What are those cute little oranges that have been in the produce section since the holidays?

They’re clementines: botanical name Citrus reticulata, for its pebbled skin.

Why should you get to know them? They’re a very sweet, juicy, healthy portable snack. But buy them now: The season is over by March.

Seedless, thin-skinned and very easy to peel, clementines are a user-friendly variety of mandarin orange. They’re the smallest member of the mandarin family, and the favorite variety for their sweetness, juiciness and thinner membranes.

While they have their own distinctive flavor, clementines can be substituted for oranges or tangerines in recipes.

Tangerines (Citrus tangerine), also a member of the mandarin family of citrus, has a thicker, tougher peel and seeds.

The clementine is believed to have originated as an accidental hybrid between a sweet orange and a mandarin orange, planted in Misserghin, Algeria around 1900 by Father Clement Rodier. (It has also been called the Algerian tangerine.)