Comfort Food

Do you see that stock? Look how thick with gelatin it is. My new goal is to ensure we all get some mineral rich, homemade stock at least 3 times a week. Daily would be best, but I might have to work up to that, it's about habit building. Baby steps you know.

There are so many good things about this homemade beef stock. It is rich in calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and other trace minerals. It is a very cheap source of good nutrition and the minerals are much more bio-available than if we were getting them in a pill or supplement. And all that gelatin will help our hair and nails grow longer and stronger, not to mention keep our joints healthier. Glucosamine and chondroiton? It's there in the broth, tasty and easily absorbed. I am hoping that regular, frequent servings of broth will help alleviate the heel and joint pain that Mike and Sierra suffer from. Another reason to work up to daily doses.

I like to keep my stock fairly neutral in taste and then season according to its use. I always cook it with onion and garlic, and usually celery and carrots, but not much else. Then I can make a quick soup, gravy, or sauce. I can use it as the cooking liquid for my rice, or just pour a cupful. I've been busy dehydrating all the bits and pieces of produce that don't get used up, and I look forward to throwing a handful of dehydrated veggies and seasonings in a cup of hot broth - cup a soup! Healthy and quick. You can bag the the veggies you like in your soup together in individual or family size portions. You can even run them through the blender or food processor and turn it into a powder if you don't like chunks. Some good ones are carrots, tomatoes, celery, onions, garlic, greens, and herbs of various sorts.

I make about 3 gallons at a time and keep some in the freezer and some in the fridge, where it will last a couple of weeks.

Enjoy!

What's Goin On

We've been busy around here between school, baby. and trying to get a bit healthier in the kitchen. Last Saturday, before leaving for my in-laws 50th anniversary party, Sierra and I made 2 gallons of lacto-fermented pickles. The old fashioned kind, preserved with whey instead of vinegar and heat. It's a process that makes food even more nourishing and digestible.



See those little valves on 2 of the jars? This is the first time I have used them, but they seem pretty cool. The let the fermenting air out while keeping out the bacteria. I forgot to fill them with water the first couple of days, so I got a little mold. But you can just scrape it off, because it's totally harmless.

I also made a really yummy no-grain breakfast cereal. It's

• 2/3c buckwheat groats
  
• 1/3c hempseed
  
• 1/2c chia
  
• 1c dehydrated peaches
  
• 1c chopped pecans
  
• 1tsp salt
  
• 4TBS sucanat
  
• 1TBS cinnamon
  
• 2 tsp vanilla powder
• You can use any kind of dried fruit and any kind of nuts. Vanilla powder is optional.

I put 4 TBS in a bowl with some milk and I really enjoy it.

I have sourdough starter fermenting on my counter and I'm also trying a method where you keep a large amount of starter in the fridge and pull chunks off to bake with. I have a loaf of bread baking in the oven right now using that method. We'll see how it turns out.

On Monday I made sourdough english muffins and they were great. Even the kids thought so.

The bread is out of the oven and the kids cut it up before I could take a picture :-) The verdict: It's amazing? Hailey says it's the best bread ever and Sierra wants it for her birthday. And it was sooo fast and easy.

I have peaches coming this weekend and lots of plans for those, and more cucumbers too, because I'd like to try a few different recipes. I'm anxious to see if these are crispy, I put oak leaves from our very sad oak trees in the jars. That's supposed to be the trick. I'll let you know.

Updated to add: Mom, Hailey says the bread is only slightly better than the lemon cake :-)

Allergy Free Cookies

The Common Room always has lots of frugal recipes (and great commentary), but this cookie recipe is really a home run for us.

Cookies that contain no eggs, wheat, or corn are expensive and I have to go to the "big city" to get them. This recipe is quick, cheap, easy, and uses things I most always have on hand. AND, he really likes them. They're also healthy enough that I can just hand him a few for a quick breakfast or snack on the run. I think we'll be making lots of these.

Super-Simple Banana Cookies

3 mashed bananas
2 cups oats
1 cup chopped dates
1/3 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350*. Mix ingredients well, and drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

This made 18 cookies for us, and I tend to make cookies a little on the large side. Your mileage may vary.


Make sure you click through to the link to see what other things she has tried. Besides, it's rude to steal a recipe and not click through :-) Here is the home page, the link above will take you straight to the recipe.

Breakfast of Champions??

Is it wrong to give your kids hot chocolate for breakfast? I mean, just hot chocolate??

Because it is quickly becoming their favorite breakfast.

What if you make it with raw milk, non-alkalized cocoa, sucanat, and raw, unsweetened whipped cream? And only use half the sucanat.

I know, better to start the day with NO sugary stuff. But it's soooo good :)

Let Them Eat Cake

The girls have been taking a cake decorating class. It's been a lot of fun and they are learning a lot.

This is the first class. I can never seem to remember my camera amidst the diaper bag, spit-up rag, cakes, frosting, baby, etc. So I have relied on the forethought of others to get a few shots.


You can buy gluten free cake mixes now, which has been a real blessing for Sierra. We are nowhere near ready to make our own gf cake, we're still trying to master biscuits :)





The second class was cupcakes, but I didn't get any pictures. They were lovely though :)

These are the cakes from the third class. We are having trouble with our frosting. We use non-hydrogenated shortening, so it is a little soft. But ours has been really soft. We're trying a new recipe next time. It's sad for them to see their hard work turning to mush before we even get home.

This one is Sierra's. Her cake cracked and she and Hailey put tons of frosting on it to fix it. See how it melted down the sides? That's after I pulled about 1/2c off of where it ran down the sides.

They choose the design themselves and I love seeing how creative they can be. I love how she added the grapes.
This one is Hailey's. Isn't it pretty? She's getting really good at the flowers. It looks like she has spring on her mind :)

Buckwheat for Breakfast

Breakfast is the most difficult meal of the day for me. I need something quick, or something that at least requires little actual time in the kitchen. Something nourishing, filling, hearty enough that everyone isn't asking for snacks by 9:30, not too expensive, and it can't contain wheat, corn, or eggs.

Oatmeal is an obvious choice, but certified gluten free oats are hard to find in my neck of the woods (read: I haven't found any), and, well, I really hate oatmeal. Unless of course it comes in those little packages with lots of sugar and pieces of what claims to be fruit. And I guess I like it okay when I make the little packages myself. But I don't bother very often.

To that end, this morning we had buckwheat groats for breakfast. It was super easy, and fit all of the above criteria. Everyone liked it except Ethan, who threw it up. He's a texture guy, things without crunch make him puke :) I should have added some nuts for him to chew on. Next time I think I will add crispy walnuts, a 'la Nourishing Traditions. I think I'll also try sprouting and drying the buckwheat for Kasha. That might be crunchier.

But this morning most of us have been warmed and filled and I thought I'd share.

3c buckwheat groats
9c water
a bit of salt

I toasted the buckwheat in the pot until it was golden and aromatic. Dump out the buckwheat and bring the water and salt to a boil. Add buckwheat and simmer until all the water is absorbed, about 15 min. That's it!

We topped ours with maple syrup, raw milk, sliced banana, and butter. But I think it would taste even better with some nuts, and dried fruit would work well also.

Oh, and I'm going to include our breakfast in the Pennywise Platter, so go check out the other links :)

Spinach Breakfast Casserole

I made this for breakfast this morning and since it was delicious I thought I would share. I got to use my cute little Christmas ramekins too :)

Saute a leek and a few crushed cloves of garlic in a few generous tablespoons of butter. The real stuff, not oil. I sliced some really yummy thick sliced turkey lunchmeat from Costco and threw it in too. It would be good with crumbled bacon, or Italian sausage too. Add about 4c of spinach, I shredded it, and cook it until it's wilted. About 5 min. Put everything into 5 greased 1c ramekins and crack an egg on the top of each one. Place them all in a 325 degree oven for about 15 min. Then remove and sprinkle with a little parmesan. So good!

I was supposed to leave the egg off of Ty's, but I forgot. So he had a banana and a smoothie :)



I also made yogurt in the dehydrator last night and it came out great. I made it the night before but it was still much like milk when I took it out, although the flavor was good. I think I just didn't leave it in quite long enough. But this morning the yogurt was thick and creamy, very much like store-bought. Yay!

Food, Sort Of

So we watched Food, Inc. the other night. Not news exactly, but disturbing none the less. I can't believe how difficult it has become to get truly nutritious food. Actually, given what Obama and company are doing to our country I can believe just about anything, but I'll spare you my conspiracy theory diatribe. (Is it still a conspiracy theory if it's true??)

Anywaaay. We are two steps forward, one step back in the healthy eating department. But we are on a forward trajectory right now and trying to get back into the swing of things :) I really want to avoid high fructose corn syrup as much as possible. This requires pretty diligent lable reading and just skipping a lot of things because it is in EVERYTHING! Pickles - check, ketchup - check, bread - check... But it's important, so we're working on it.

If you want to read a little about why it's so awful for you, and especially for your kids, you can start here.

One line in Food, Inc. really stuck out to me. There was a poor, hispanic family being interviewed. They worked long hours, on the go a lot, usually resorting to fast food in the car. The husband had deveolped diabetes and the wife said, "Before he got diabetes we never thought about whether something was healthy. We thought all food was healthy." Now they struggle to decide whether to spend their money on presciptions or vegetables. So sad.

Why to Eat Organic

My last post makes a nice segue into this one. Organic produce is often more expensive (unless you belong to a great CSA!) and can seem hard to justify.

But organic has much more of the good and none of the bad, so even if you eat less fruit because you insist on organic, you'll get a lot more bang out of the fruit you do eat. And you'll be helping to restore the fertility of our soil, something even conventional farmers agree is seriously lacking.

This is a link to a study that analyzed nutritional differences in organic vs convention produce.
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089%2F107555301750164244

And if you get get everything organic, it's important to know which fruits and vegetables have the highest pesticide load, so you can insist on getting those organic or going without. Remember, pesticides are poison and a little bit adds up over time. They don't just wash out, they are stored in our fat cells. Which means some of us have significant storage capacity :) And they compromise our immune system so that we are less able to fight off all the other nasty stuff we come in contact with. Especially the very young (including the unborn) and the old.

So, here's the chart:

http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php (mom, you just click on the link)

Eat Healthy!

Organic Eating

We belong to a great CSA. Every Saturday morning one of us heads into town to stand in line in a convenient church parking lot to pick up the weeks produce. We all look forward to seeing whats in the box. We get 2 big boxes of locally-grown, incredibly tasty organic produce. I'm talking peaches the likes of which you have never tasted. Picked by the farmer that very morning.

It's a great deal for the farmer because the stuff is sold before he ever picks it, and next year's is sold before he even plants it. He makes more money because he cuts out the middle man and sells to us for above-wholesale prices.

And it's a great deal for us because above-wholesale is still below retail, the produce is fresher than anything I have ever seen in a grocery store, there is more variety because things don't necessarily have to pack and ship well since they are hand-picked/packed, and we get to put our money where our mouth is; supporting local family farms and eating organic. It's been really great.

Here is the haul from a couple of weeks ago

This was for 1 WEEK. Those are cucumbers in the plastic bags, and red potatos in the paper bag in the rear right corner. The drawers are from 2 different refrigerators and are full to overflowing. In fact, they did overflow - right into the blue bowl.

This weeks box had eggplant, which has all the kids in tears. But I can't wait :) It's hard not to eat your fruits and veggies when that's all that will fit in the fridge, so it's been good for us.

Enjoy the bounty of summer - we are!

Kefir

So, we've all heard about kefir, right? That fermented milk drink so high in b vitamins and about 1001 other things so vital to your health. I've meant to try making kefir for a few years now and I finally decided it was TIME.

So, I go online (the only place to shop) and I order my grains. We wait with anticipation for them to arrive and finally...a little baggie of sour milk/water mixture with some cauliflower-like grains comes.

I get my pricey raw milk ready and read the directions. NO METAL. No metal collindar, or spoon or anything. Rats! I only have a metal collandar with mesh small enough for the precious kefir grains.

I send Mike to Kmart, the only all purpose store in town. No luck, so I'm off to ebay to buy "kefir accessories." A few more days and I have an appropriate collandar.

Back out with the directions. We add the milk, shake it up, and put it on the counter to ferment.

24 hours later it is thick and bubbly, fermented and... DISGUSTING!

Seriously, who drinks this stuff?!? I made a fruit smoothie with it and it tasted like rotten milk with fruit. Not a big hit. One drink made my stomach hurt, but maybe just because I was working so hard to keep it down.

UGH!

I tried again, thinking maybe I did something wrong. I'm just not feelin it.

So, unless so dedicated kefir drinker out there can give me some tips I just don't think we'll be able to be that healthy.

For the Foodies

Have you been to this blog?? It is a food lovers delight. Now, she is not a healthy cook mind you. But everything she posts looks delicious, and I have tried a few with rave reviews. I have made this and this. OOO, this bread was sooo good! And we used the leftover topping as a dip for chips the next day. Seriously, try it. You won't be disappointed.

Some Healthy-ish Recipes

I made a rhubarb compote this morning that was so good, I thought I would share it.

6 stalks rhubarb (about 3c)
2 in piece grated ginger
1/2 c maple syrup
2 TBS water

Put the ginger, syrup and water into a pan and heat on med heat about 5 min. Add sliced rhubarb, cover and simmer 10 minutes. That's it. I stirred it in to some FACE greek yogurt and it was sooo yummy. It would also be good on vanilla or plain yogurt. This made enough four about 4 servings.

Another recipe that I haven't tried but that looks really good is from Whole Foods.

Carrot Salad with Almond Butter Dressing

2 large carrots, peeled
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup creamy almond butter
1 TB fresh lime juice
11/2 TB tamari
1 tsp agave nectar
pinch red pepper flakes

Using a box grater, shred carrots and place in a large bowl. Add bell pepper, cilantro and raisins. In a small bowl whisk together almond butter, lime juice, tamari, agave and pepper flakes. Add dressing to carrot mixture and mix thoroughly. Allow to marinate for 1/2 hour and serve cold or at room temperature.

Can't wait to try it, doesn't it sound good!

Oh yea, I made a bread pudding type dish the other day that the kids and I just loved.

bread
eggs
milk
vanilla
apples

I buttered a 13x9 in dish. I used about 1 1/2 loaves of bread (not very big loaves) and 18 eggs (I was trying to use them up) and about 6c milk, 1 tbs vanilla and 3 apples.

Layer torn bread apples in the dish, begin and end with bread. Blend milk, eggs and vanilla and pour over casserole. Bake in 350 degree oven for about an hour - an hour and a half.

Enjoy!