Food Dehydration Ideas

On Saturday, I helped at an Emergency Preparedness Fair with the Red Cross. The event was hosted by a local Mormon church. The information tables were provided by organizations and individuals. This is the second year and I have been both times. It's a great program. One table was an older couple who were sharing information on dehydrating foods and sprouting. He had made this huge dehydrator that looked like a cupboard and was nearly as tall as me. I stopped and talked to the woman when I noticed her collection of dehydrated foods. She had glass jars of all sorts of things from cheeses to vegetables to fruits to other stuff. She told me that she dried everthing. Her husband told us about her jar of vegetables that they used for soup. When items came out of the garden they went into the dehydrator and then were mixed in a gallon jar to be turned into soup and it was the best soup ever. I believe him but I was just stunned by the cheeses and the soup starters. She told me that when she has left overs such as split pea soup - she dehydrates on sheets of plastic (like you would fruit leather). She reconstitutes it later. What an amazing idea because dried foods take up less space and are so versitile. Lately I've been loving my dried oranges in my tea. I drink my first cup and then keep refilling with cool water so I can enjoy those oranges all day. Last night, I started a batch of tomatoes in the dehydrator. The woman told my husband that she dries her tomatoes and then grinds them into a powder with seasonings. When she wants spaghetti sauce she mixes the powder with water and voila - she has sauce. I can see so much potential. Ground tomato with a little water easily becomes tomato paste. More water and some chucks becomes canned tomatoes. I have 25 pounds of romas and this one batch barely touched the surface. I will can some but I can't wait to see what I can do with the dried tomatoes. I picture quick soups and sauces in our future.

Lamb Ribs and Dandelion Greens

Last night my husband made lamb ribs (as I mentioned yesterday). He made a sauce with molasses, soy sauce and something else that I can't remember. I sauteed our dandelion greens (maybe 1/2 a pound) in 2 tablespoons of butter and about that much garlic. The scent was heavenly. The ribs were barbaric - meaty and greasy. I told my son I had this urge to yell out "Wilma don't spare the spare ribs" - they were that good. My husband and son felt they were too greasy. I loved it. I just loved the whole idea of them. They were not easy to eat. My first one I ate with my hands so the second one I tried using a knife but they were so tight and so many bones that it was an impossible task. I still loved them. As for the dandelion greens - I loved them less but they were tasty. Slightly bitter, as expected, but not as bitter as eating them raw. A cup of dandelion greens has about 25 calories. I did cover them in butter but not so much that they were calorie prohibitive. For survival, I'd need a lot more butter to keep the weight on but for a spring low-cal treat they were good. It didn't take me long to gather the leaves and I did have to wash them (and pull out several stray grass bits as I was cooking) but all in all, I found them worth the work. I keep seeing dandelions everywhere. It makes me excited because there is a food. I don't have a ton of root but I can't wait to play with that either. I, also, keep finding more and more oregon grape plants. I can't wait for the berries. The berries are not tasty (the books say) but they are high in pectin so will be a great addition to making jellies. I'd love to be able to stop buying pectin and use the berries. I thought about juniper berries yesterday as I was walking. I'm going to look that up and see what I can do. I would love to harvest some berries since I come across recipes that use them every now and again. I've been adding some dehydrated oranges to my tea every morning. I really like it. When I finish the tea, I pour water over them and have a great treat. I've been drinking so much water, I might just float away. It's good though, the temperature went from 50 to 80 practically overnight. We got a good season this year if the warm weather holds. I hope to get my garden started. I'll be putting in some zucchini seeds and the like, saving the plants for a little while longer to make sure they are hardy enough for the weather. I did see a wonderful idea for protecting your plants outside - surround them in hay bales and cover with windows. I might just use plastic or pick up a piece of Plexiglas. I do recommend going out and trying dandelions - bitter greens are supposed to be great for digestion. Supposedly the bitter causes the stomach to produce more acid (heartburn is actually caused by not having enough acid not an excess as we have been lead to believe). The added acid helps the body be more efficient, reducing problems like heartburn.

Apple Cinnamon Roll Cobbler

There are changes coming in the next few months and this blog will be moving. I don't know if I have shared this before, I apologize if this is a repeat, but I recently re-opened my business. Years ago, I started making soaps and home made bath products. I eventually turned it into a business I called Sara's Soaks. Life constantly changes and soon Sara's Soaks was gone. This year I decided to bring it back from the dead. I opened an Etsy store and started doing some promotions. My life has often felt pulled in so many directions. I didn't feel like I had focus or a real dream to work towards. The reason I felt this way is because I didn't really believe that my big dream was something I could do. It was too big, too unrealistic, too expensive and so on. So I broke it up into little easy bits. I think it made it harder because I felt like I was being divided and I couldn't focus on anything. I had no clear goal any more. This blog shows that more than anything because every few months I announce how I am changing my focus on the blog. It's not because I am wishy washy (okay maybe I am, just a little) but because I can't seem to figure out how to make this blog work. It goes back to my being divided. I'm in the learning stages of my dream but the real focus has always stayed there in the back of my mind. This week, a friend of mine asked for a few volunteers because she wanted to experiment with helping artists with branding (marketing sort of branding not hot iron branding). I jumped up and said "pick me, pick me" because I am struggling. She sent me a questionnaire which asked me what I wanted in the big picture, what I wanted from her and where do I want to go. My first response was "I don't know" and then I proceeded to tell her exactly what I wanted. I didn't know I had a clear picture, it wasn't until she wrote back to say that starting with "I don't know" holds me back because what she saw was someone with a clear picture of what she wanted. I was shocked, I cried. I was the one holding my self back - I'm the one who didn't feel like my dream was feasible so I sabotaged my dream. She said she gave me permission to dream but what she did was allow me to accept what I want as something I allowed to want. I can't say for certain that I will live my dream but I won't know until I try. As part of the work she is doing for me, she is going to help me build a website that allows me to consolidate all the parts of my dream which will include this blog. I love this blog and now that I have a clearer picture of where I want to go, I should be able to be more clear with this blog. Not much will change but the blogs location. I will still share recipes and my foraging experiments. I will still work on offering natural, inexpensive alternatives. However, I will change from trying to come up with a plan for where this blog is going to knowing where this blog is going. My ultimate goal in life is to have a small sustainable farm, to live off of the food I grow or find in nature and to teach others how to do that. I'm going to go back to herbology and maybe even work towards some certifications but I will share that with you. I will share more failed experiments (there are so many that I keep to myself but could be a good lesson for others). More importantly, I will share more of me with you and my dreams. You'll discover that I am absolutely nuts about highland cattle and had a heartbreaking affair with two beautiful nubian goats (and I can't wait to do it again). I currently live in an apartment but I keep trying to figure out how to convince our manager that chickens can be pets or at least beneficial to our complex. I'm a terrible gardener with dreams of having acres of gardens (I think I have some sort of disorder). With all that said, I did have a recipe and some experiments I want to share. I've been working on making my own chocolate chips. They are not working. I found a recipe which made me so happy but the chips are too soft and when I made cookies all the chocolate melted. The cookies looked severely burnt and there were puddles of unsweetened chocolate left behind. My first batch I tried making with sugar to have the sugar sink to the bottom of the pan leaving really bitter chips. I loved them but my family was not impressed. I made a second batch with corn syrup but they are still not very sweet and too soft for chocolate chip cookies. I don't really like the idea of corn syrup and I think I need to add some wax. I will share the recipe once I get it to where my family will eat them. I have been dehydrating fruit. I saw a blog post about dehydrating fruit and the woman dehydrated beautiful slices of orange. I wasn't sure about that but we had some oranges that no one was eating so I dried them. They are amazing. I cut the oranges in half because I didn't think anyone wanted to eat through the rind before getting to the dried pulp. They are really tasty. I figure they would make a fun treat but also would be great for cooking with. I also made a batch of granny smith apples (half sprinkled with cinnamon). My remaining granny smiths went into this cobbler. I saw a peach cobbler that was covered in cinnamon rolls made from biscuit mix. Since we already make our own biscuit mix and have made cinnamon rolls from it before, this seemed like a no brainer. It's so good and we have no whipped cream (or Cool Whip). Apple Cinnamon Roll Cobbler 5 granny smith apples, cored and sliced (because I used the leftovers from the apples I put in the dehydrator this is just a guess, the apple parts filled a 9x13 pan) lemon juice 1 cup sugar 2 Tablespoons flour 2 cups baking mix (with shortening like Bisquick, if none add 1/4 cup shortening) 3/4 cup milk 1/2 cup butter 1-2 teaspoons cinnamon 1-2 teaspoons sugar After cutting apples soak in water with lemon juice while prepping the dough. Mix together the flour and sugar in a small bowl and set aside. In a larger bowl dump the baking mix (cut in shortening if needed). Pour in the milk about 1/4 cup at a time until you have a stiff rollable dough. If the dough gets too wet sprinkle in a little extra baking mix. Roll the dough out into a large rectangle (about 9 x 13). You want it as rectangular as possible and it no more than 1/4 inch thick. Melt the butter. Brush butter on rolled dough until it has a nice smooth layer. Sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar until a nice thin crust forms. Roll the dough along the long edge until cinnamon roll like. Cut into 1/2 inch disks. Drain apples and layer in a 9x13 pan. Sprinkle over sugar and flour mix. Pour over remaining butter. Top with cinnamon rolls. Bake at 350 for up to an hour, checking every 15-20 minutes. The cobbler is done with the cinnamon rolls are fully cooked and the apples are soft.

Saving Money and Frustrations

Living on a budget and trying to save your health and the environment can get to be frustrating. Last year we invested in a big bag of soap nuts. The price was reasonable when you considered all it was replacing. For $35 we had laundry soap, bath soap, shampoo, etc. The only problem was we didn't like it. My family hated the feel of the soap on their skin and hair. I hated that it went bad so I had to constantly make fresh batches and keep them in the refrigerator (which meant remembering to take it out and using really cold soap on our bodies). Eventually, it just became laundry soap. Our laundry grew dimmer and dimmer over the months until one day my husband announced he had had it. He does the laundry in our home and he just couldn't do it any more. I was so grateful because I could stand the fact that my clothes looked awful and the static was enough to kill us all. It just didn't work for us. The worst part is I still have half a bag of soap nuts that I have to figure out what to do with (supposedly they make great insect repellent so that's what we'll be using it for). This is just one example of how hard it is to do the right thing. Last night was grocery night. There were sales we didn't want to miss so mid-week shopping was what we had to do. I can't control when the food stamps arrive or when pay day is - fortunately they are on the same day. That meant late evening shopping which is frustrating enough. We started at our Co-op. The plan was to buy the hamburger there. The price has been $2.89 and if you buy three packs you get it for $2.59. The meat department was dark by the time we made it there (that in its self is a long terrible story but not all that important except to say I was already tired). The hamburger was $3.39. What!? My mother was there on Sunday and it was $2.89. After a time and me nearly leaving without hamburger. The lovely man that was helping us had finally found someone who knew something about the deal. We got 30 cents off a pound and bought the last four packs (two for us and two for my dad). We ended up paying $3.09 a pound. It's still a better deal but 50 cents in two days is a huge price jump. I did find a huge container of plain yogurt for just over $5 which was great because I wanted to start adding yogurt back into my lunch. This will get me a months worth and then I can save some to make my own (I forgot to save some from my last batch). On to store number 2. I had 2 things I wanted to get there - butter for $1.69 a pound and milk. Before we gave up milk we bought it there. The milk was from a local(ish) farm and was amazing, except I can't remember the name of the farm. There were three choices at the store - generic for $2.49, Dairygold for $2.99 and one organic brand for over $6. No local farm milk. I did peek at the milk at the co-op and there was nothing there for less than $6 a gallon. I can't do it. I remember the milk we bought wasn't that pricey, when did organic milk become over twice the price of the non-organic milk. No organic milk for us this month. I head for the butter. It's a generic brand for $1.99 with a coupon for 30 cents off. Not bad, except I forgot this is Idaho and even if you use food stamps, they tax the coupons. I didn't even think about it. As we were checking out, my son was going on about how he wanted some change and I hadn't even brought in my purse so I had nothing. That's when the girl at the counter asked if we had 12 cents to pay the tax. I understand that 12 cents is not much but it's inconvenient. I think it's horrible and the state's way of preventing those who use food stamps from using coupons. It's nearly a scam - the food is not taxed because of the food stamps but the coupons are. It's the whole reason I refuse to use coupons. I know if I think about this rationally - I saved $1.80 and they only want me to pay 12 cents but I have to tell you - I never have change. Change is what my son always takes. He loves the change, always had and I don't have a problem giving him the pennies and what not I find. But I, also, rarely deal in cash so change is not something I always have. By this time we had spent most of our food stamps (down to $18) and had 6 different foods to feed my family - hamburger, yogurt, milk, eggs, butter and flour (my wonderful husband had picked up the flour earlier in the day). For those who are keeping track - we started with $92. I'm fully frustrated. I don't know how I'm going to feed my family. Our cupboards are getting barer and barer each month. I still have a ton of applesauce but that's not any good if I don't have more to go with it. We're working our way through the grains we have in the pantry and the beans but I still haven't got a plan in place for when they are gone. I still have the option of going to the store right now but it makes me think of what will happen if I don't have that option. What if the world really does end? I worry about the economy and the environment. I've always been a nature lover but over the past few years I have been learning about what nature really provides for us. I get to thinking about the weeds - there's food and nutrition out there but there's also pesticides and herbicides and natural poisons. This winter has opened my eyes. I have to learn more, be vigilant in finding free or inexpensive sources of food, and find ways of preserving that food without coating it in sugar or salt. I know I'm not alone in this. I'm finding a growing community of people who want the same thing - sustainable sources of healthy food. That I am grateful for.

Monday Morning

I thought I had a recipe in mind for today but I can't remember what it was to save my life.  I'm having a braindead sort of day.  Tomorrow is grocery day which means things are a little tight in the kitchen.
Yesterday I made graham crackers out of nothing but graham flour since I had no other wheat flour in the house.  They are good.  Have a sort of coconutty texture and flavor to them which was weird since I had only thought about adding coconut flour.  I'm guessing that the graham flour lends a sort of coconut feeling.  I left out the spices so they are rather plain and cracker like but we were going to make s'mores (until we discovered the buckets of candy my dad brought for Easter).  I did make marshmallows, opting to use frangelico in place of the vanilla.  It didn't really change the flavor but we'll see how they roast. 
Let's see what else do I have to share.  My dad made an amazing ham for Easter.  I'll get his glaze and share.  He always uses a recipe so it's easy to get them from him.  I know the glaze had mustard and maple syrup.  I used the drippings on my mashed potatoes - what an amazing meaty sweet sauce it made.
Speaking of ham, that's got some good prices right now.  All the Easter sales carry on until tomorrow so we'll be shopping in the evening of a work night.  I prefer shopping on the weekend so I have time but we want to hit the remaining sales.  One store has butter for $1.69 a pound so we'll be stocking up.  We're moving away from the Nucoa.  We're reinvestigating my husband's dairy allergy since he hasn't gotten any healthier staying away from the dairy.  We'll be on the lookout for a local milk that I know has been sold in the area before.  I just can't remember the name so that's my mission for tomorrow.  We'll be buying hamburger from the co-op.  It's local beef and ground there at the store.  If you buy 3 packages it's $2.59 a pound.  Slightly higher than my $2 a pound limit but I have discovered that it's not working.  We are so sick of chicken thighs.  We're also worried about all the new discoveries they are making when it comes to meat products.  The co-op also sells chickens for $1.99 a pound but at the moment it's whole chickens so we'll look into that next month.
Still working on researching foods and I think we're moving in the right direction.  We're back to butter and getting rid of the plasticy Nucoa.  We've been investigating coconut oil.  At this moment, we haven't switched because the best price is mail-order and I'm just not ready for that yet.  I make lotions and soaps so having large quantities of coconut oil is good (the stuff I have now I'm not sure is good for eating so when that is gone, we'll be buying new stuff that will be food-grade).  I'll share more on that when we get around to the order.
Safeway has the whole white wheat flour on sale for $4.69 (new regular price $4.99) until tuesday.  My son didn't think 30 cents was much of a sale but when we started explaining that last month we paid $5.09 but prior to that we paid $5.39, it feels like a much better sale.  Still not $1.99 like white flour but we'll take what we can get. 
We're skipping the bountiful basket this week because of the season.  It's just hasn't been a great selection and we're so full of apples and pears that we want to wait to get into a new season of foods before buying again.  We may get one next week or wait until towards the end of the month.  We've gotten a little back-up with some of the produce so it gives us a chance to use everything up.

Apple Harvest Cake

We had a busy weekend. Saturday my son and I spent the day in Moscow, Idaho. We started by dropping off our Farmer's Market prototypes for a jury process and spent the time wandering downtown before going back to pick the items up. We came up with some great ideas and found some wonderful stores (the buy local promotion was hosting a scavenger hunt to find local businesses). We tried kumquats for the first time and something called a mandinquat (or something like that). We aren't fans but I'd still like to try making jam or something from kumquats. While out and about we stopped at the Co-op and checked out the meat department. I like stopping in grocery stores to browse because it helps me plan my next shopping trip and there's no real pressure at that time. The guy at the meat department was more than willing to give me a tour of their products. He gave me more information than I could possibly hold but what I learned most was how affordable the prices were. The hamburger is $2.89 a pound and he told me if I buy 3 family packs I can get them for $2.59 a pound. What a bargain for locally grown meat (some is organic but I can't remember what). I rarely stop in the meat department there because I knew I couldn't afford it but taking the time to learn about their meat I discovered I could afford it and I'm happy.
For lunch I made bacon fajitas. We had bacon in the fridge so I thought I'd chop that up with some onions and peppers and serve in corn tortillas. I dowsed the filling with lime juice just before scooping it up into warm tortillas.
We made popcorn for a snack. My mom had this idea of using a spray bottle for me to add butter to my popcorn. I decided that using oil would be better because all I really want is a way to get the seasoning to stick. It worked wonderfully. I air popped the popcorn, spritzed it with oil and sprinkled on some msg and cajun seasoning. I like the flavor of the msg but I over guessed on the cajun seasoning and ended up with spicy popcorn which was really tasty.
Sunday I spent baking. I do have lots of recipes to share. Today I'm sharing the Apple Harvest cake - what a great moist cake. It's not a huge cake - makes 1 pan but it's tasty.
I substituted the egg for 3 tablespoons applesauce, mostly because I had some leftover applesauce and I wanted to try using the oil instead of butter in a cake. I did make the rum glaze with whole milk and nucoa (since that's all we have). The only problem was it kept seperating. I don't know if it will have that problem with butter and half n half but I just had to make sure to shake the container before pouring it over the cake. Also, I didn't have any nuts.

Apple Harvest Cake with Rum Glaze
2 c. Chopped peeled apples
1 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Oil
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg (or 3 TB applesauce)
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 c. chopped nuts
1/2 c. flaked coconut
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. half & half
1/4 c. rum (spiced is better)
Cake: Mix together apples and sugar, let stand a few minutes until juice forms. Sift together dry ingredients and add to apples. Mix in oil, vanilla, egg, nuts, and coconut. Bake in a greased 8x8 pan at 350 deg for 40-45 minutes. Serve warm with rum glaze. Rum glaze: Heat sugar, butter and half & half on stove, stir until smooth then add rum.

Weekend Planning

I had to come up with something. I've been terrible this week. Menus for yesterday - Breakfast was grits with bay seasoning, Lunch was hash browns with eggs and tortillas and carrot sticks. Come the evening, my dad invited us over for Pizza. He was out and about and decided to get Papa Murphy's but he can't eat the whole thing. I know he could buy smaller but he likes the company. We talked him into coming over to our house so I could work on stuff that didn't happen (we ended up with more company and it was nearly nine when everyone left - oh well).
The thing about the weekend is that it's a chance for me to play with recipes and work on projects. I like going into the weekend with a plan. Maybe not concrete because things happen but a list of recipes I can play with.
Tonight is movie night so it's spaghetti night with my dad. Saturday will be different since my son and I will be in Moscow all morning. I have a craft jury to attend (cross fingers because this could be a good money maker for us and an opportunity to do something fun). While there, we plan on spending our time doing the community scavenger hunt. If you get 15 items, you get a $5 gift certificate. I think I might use that to buy us something for lunch since we'll be there a long time.
My husband already has dinner ideas - we're doing stir fry with barley. Barley has become his favorite grain. Maybe we'll make the hulled barley and see how that compares.
Sunday brings Sunday dinner. We try to attend church but I haven't been feeling well and my husband is working all weekend so we'll be staying home. A great time to cook up those pears and lemons that I want to work with. Next week, I should have great recipes to share. I'm thinking a lemon focaccia and more pear breads (oh and lemon curd of course).
We're not great with our meal planning and that's something we need to work on. Maybe we'll sit down and plan the weeks meals. I hope to make up some pizza dough. Dough freezes well so I could mix it up ahead of time and have it ready. I could bake it too and have it be completely ready for use - so many ideas, now I just need the time and energy to follow through.

Menu for Wednesday

I've been feeling poorly lately. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure last October and have been struggling to balance all the things I need to for my health. We think my feeling poorly is due to the medication but I don't know. What I do know is that I am exhausted all the time which makes keeping up with this blog tough. I don't have enough energy in the evening to experiement with recipes nor do I have much of an appetite lately.
I'm grateful that I have such a wonderful husband who is willing to take over the cooking part of the household. He's doing a great job, now I just need him to read my mind about what recipes to experiment with and how to do it and I can keep up with this blog without a problem.
Yesterday, we had fried eggs on homemade brown bread (toasted). I love starting the day with a fried egg. Because we use cast iron we use very little oil to fry the egg so it's not a bad food to eat. We always eat the whole egg because research shows that the two parts of the egg balance each other perfectly. I know there is concern about cholestoral and the egg has gotten a bad reputation but science is always proving that whole foods are best.
Lunch, I opted not to eat the beautifully packed lunch my husband made me. I just wasn't up for it. My stomach was a little queasy so I got soup at the local cafe, along with a maple bavarian doughnut because those are my super weakness. I was sorry later because all that sugar made me feel more sick to my stomach. This doesn't affect my budget because I work hard to earn points for various programs to earn free gift cards. My soup and doughnut were thanks to a gift card from my insurance company.
Dinner my husband made chicken thighs with cornflake crusts. I'll have to get the recipe to share because it was wonderful. Then he made mashed potatoes (he calls them boiled potatoes) with garlic and a lovely salad from our bountiful baskets. It was so good I was a little sad there were no leftovers for my lunch.
We finished the night with a little homemade cocoa. We've gotten this down to where it's almost healthy. Last night, he added a splash of the irish cream coffee syrup which did increase the sugar content slightly (we've got it down to 1/4 cup for 3 servings). We like cocoa on cold snowy nights - did I mention it snowed yesterday? So much snow and I so desperately want spring.

Potato Candy

Yesterday we had leftovers for breakfast and lunch - nothing interesting there. For dinner my husband made a rice dish. He sauteed a head of cabbage with a polish sausage (we picked up four packages on a really good sale). He added the remaining onion soup that I turned into gravy and some leftover plum sauce and served it over brown rice. It was good. A bit on the gooey side but the brown rice offered a nice firm texture under the saucy cabbage. The flavor was amazing. It's fun to clean out the fridge sometimes and dump extra sauces in dishes. Sometimes it's the seasonings that make the dish.
I promised a potato candy recipe - the actual recipe will be at the end of this post.
My son has this deep love of potato candy and, to him, it's the ultimate St. Patricks Day food. He requests it when he has a function at school during the holiday.
I started with having him peel 6-7 small potatoes (I thought they were small, in hindsight they may have been closer to medium). I wanted him to have enough but I also thought it made sense to use up the bag. I didn't realize this was far too many potatoes. I boiled the potatoes until they were soft and then ran them under cold water to keep them from being to hot to handle. I mashed them with a stick of Nucoa and then set them in the freezer to cool. It took a little work but by the time I added the sugar they were cold. I mixed in slowly an entire 2 pound bag of powdered sugar. This was when I realized I was in trouble. I didn't have anything resembling a dough - this was a definite soup of a mess. I couldn't run to the store - I didn't have time since I left this to the last minute so I did what any great cook does, I substituted. I added some regular sugar, maybe 2 cups but that didn't really help and the texture went from smooth to gritty. I needed something that maintained the current flavor and yet thickened it. While thinking on that, I added the vanilla which was not enough and my homemade version wasn't strong enough. Being of quick mind, I grabbed a rather dusty, forgotten bottle of Irish Cream coffee syrup and added that to the mix. It was perfect, the flavor complemented nicely and may become the new flavoring for this particular candy. I decided that coconut flour would be perfect since I finish off with coconut. I like coconut flour, it adds a nice nutty flavor to baked goods and was my go to GF flour (I started using it long before going GF though because it's high in fiber). About 1 cup of the flour and the dough was good to go. I finished it with about 2/3 of a bag of sweetened coconut and put the whole thing in the fridge. By this time I was too tired to spend time rolling it into balls and then in the remaining coconut.
My son and husband did that before his party. He said the kids were skeptical at first but then ate them all up. I want to note that they only rolled a portion of the dough. I still have a ton of it in my fridge that I need to come up with a plan for. The gritty texture never really went away but the flavor only got better. I may be coming up with a way to use the dough as a filler in cookies.

Potato Candy
1 large potato - peeled
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
4-5 cups confectioner’s sugar
5 cups sweetened coconut flakes
Boil potato until soft Mash until smooth and add butter. Let cool completely. Mix in vanilla and slowly add sugar. (if the potato is still warm it will melt the sugar so make sure it is cool). Add sugar until you have a stiff dough. Knead in half of the coconut. Roll the dough into small balls and roll in remaining coconut. The dough gets soft when warm so may have to refrigerate it to make it workable.
Can add green food coloring with the vanilla.

Confessions

I have the hope that this blog will keep me honest but also encourage me to be an example. The same idea is behind a food journal - being honest helps you understand why you are eating what you are eating.
I forgot to mention that one reason for sharing my menus was to keep me thinking about the image I want to present. I want to be a beacon of light in these dark times. Show how one can eat healthy on a very tight budget. Stand up for those who can't, speak out on the real issues when it comes to food.
Then last night the worst thing happened. My husband and I didn't have a dinner plan. Our son was going to out that evening having dinner with a group so it was just us - us and no plan. Not a problem, we'll come up with something but it didn't work out that way. The overstuffed refrigerator was just overwelming. Normally, it would feel like a blessing but last night, tired and hungry, it was just too much to think about. So I mentioned pizza and my husband jumped at the idea.
We snuck down to Little Caesar's and picked up a $5 pepperoni pizza. We topped it with fresh tomato at home but then panic struck. How was I going to explain this on the blog? Maybe I could just pretend to forget to post, could I dangle something better to make you not notice that I didn't post my menu. No - I had to be honest. The truth is - this happens and it happens a lot for some families. Not having a dinner plan leaves the family rushing out for something less than nutritious. Now we have about $10-20 in our food budget for these moments. We spend our $90 in food stamps and $30 (most months) on bountiful baskets so we're not actually spending the $150 food budget I mentioned so there is still some leeway for a pizza or two.
However, I felt guilty. I knew I had done something wrong. What does that say about our view of food. It was just my husband and I so one pizza was more than filling. We got our basic food groups - cheese, bread, tomatoes and pepperoni. It might not have been the healthiest choice but we didn't go hog wild. The money made us feel a little guilty but we had it.
For the two meals prior - we ate leftovers. Leftover scones for breakfast, then leftovers from sunday dinner for lunch. We had the same for breakfast today and I will have the same for lunch as well. So where did the guilt come from?
That's something I'll have to ponder and get back to you with an answer. Tomorrow I'll share my recipe for potato candy. I may have shared it before but I made some this week for my son's get-together yesterday and made some changes (not ones I had intended to make either). The result was a really tasty treat.

Menus and Peppered Bacon and Pear Scones

I was talking with my mother on Friday and we got to talking about keeping a record of what we eat especially when it comes to how we use the foods we forage. I've been struggling a little with this blog because I haven't found a good way to share how we survive the month with our food budget. I have shared recipes and grocery budgets but that doesn't touch the day to day ways we stretch our food and the mistakes we make. Starting this week, I will be sharing our daily menus as well as recipes and tips. It may need some tweaking so please be patient while I figure out how best to share this information.
Sundays are a family dinner day and consists of a sort of potluck centered around a theme or main dish. Currently, we are down to just us and my dad. Sometimes we get more family and weird combinations as people just bring something to share.
This Sunday we wanted to do something Irish in honor of St Pat's day but no corned beef. My mother had given us a roast that she found in her freezer - she wasn't quite sure what it was or what condition it was in but we're forever scavengers so we gladly took it.
We got our Bountiful Baskets on Saturday. In the basket we had - romaine lettuce, tomatoes, spring onions, some kale looking leafy green (that no one was able to identify), potatoes, granny smith apples, 2 english cucumbers, carrots, oranges, melon, and 2 cabbages. I think that was everything.
We centered our meal around the roast and his basket (since it's really just him, he likes to use it when we eat with him). We cooked the roast in the crockpot for 6 hours. We had covered it onion soup I had made weeks before (we froze the excess). It was amazing. My dad made a salad of lettuce, shredded carrots, chopped cucumbers and tomatoes. Then he grated Cougar Gold Cheese over the top. Then he chopped up a cabbage and sauteed it with garlic and soy sauce. We microwaved some potatoes while I made a gravy out of the onion soup (1/2 stick butter, 1 cup flour and all the soup). We finished the meal with some cupcakes my father made (cake mix, frosting and grated coconut).
That was dinner. I had made breakfast late in the day so we only had the two meals.
Breakfast was Peppered Bacon and Pear Scones. We have some overly ripe pears that need to be cooked so you'll be seeing a lot of pear dishes this week. I had come across a recipe for Peppered Pear Scones and thought they would be wonderful with the peppery bacon I had purchased this month. These have no added sugar and just a touch of fat making them fairly healthy and super tasty.
Peppered Bacon and Pear Scones
2 cups chopped over-ripe pears (removing core and seeds but leaving skin)
2 cups whole wheat white flour
2 teas baking powder
1/4 teas baking soda
4 slices thick cut peppered bacon
2 eggs
1 TB Molasses
1/4 cup milk
Bake bacon in the oven (lay bacon on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet) at 350 until crisp. Meanwhile make batter. Add flour to a bowl with baking powder and baking soda. Beat in eggs and molasses. Mix in pears, taking care not to break them down too much. Using scissors, cut bacon into 1/4 inch pieces and drop into bowl. Add 1 tablespoon bacon grease, try to get the meat drippings and extra pepper in the process. Mix thoroughly. Drizzle in milk, 1 tablespoon at a time until the batter is wet. Pour onto a baking sheet and smooth out until an even 1/2-3/4 inch. The batter will be rather wet.
Bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes or until cooked through. Serve warm with butter.

Why breakfast is the most important meal of the day

I've been struggling this week. It's such an off week and I'm rather tired. I was going to share the cute cupcake things I made for my son's birthday but I forgot the pictures at home so I'll share those tomorrow. The idea was cute the execution not so great but I'll explain more later. I promise I will have some recipes soon, we're just not creating anything new.
Well, this blog post came in my email last night and I decided it was one that needed to be shared. Let little otter explain to you why breakfast is the most important meal of the day - I promise you won't be disappointed with his logic.

L-cysteine

I wasn't sure what to share today until I came across a blog post about L-cysteine. You should recognize that word if you read the ingredients in your packaged foods. L-cysteine is an amino acid that our body creates. When pulled out of protein sources, it becomes a dough enhancer and flavor additive.
The problem - well 2 things really: the source and the process to remove it. L-cysteine is pulled out of hair and hooves. In some cases, the hair was recycled from barber shops (yes I am talking human hair). In other cases it was removed from left over duck feathers and hair from pigs or cows.
For those who believe in eating the whole animal or reducing waste, this sounds like a good idea. Did to me, a little. Why not use something that is just waste, even though it sounds unpleasant.
The big problem - it's not easy to remove the amino acid from the protein. Think back to high school science - an amino acid is a building block for protein. Essentially, they have to break down the protein to remove the L-cysteine.
In doing the research, I discovered that L-cysteine is a popular supplement as well.
Hmm - that makes me wonder. Our bodies make L-cysteine so we don't need it from outside sources so why would we take the supplements. L-cysteine is also found in high protein foods.
A quick search says that L-cysteine is good for athletes and bodybuilders.
I'm still not making the connection - maybe I'm not well versed but it would stand to reason that if you are someone who needs L-cysteine then you would just eat extra lean proteins. That way you are getting it from a natural source.
Personally, I can't move away from the original source of L-cysteine. It's just too gross and knowing that they have to chemically alter the hair and feathers to make the additive/supplement really grosses me out.
Add to that - they've discovered how to make an artificial L-cysteine as a food additive. Why do we need an artificial version of something that we can get naturally? We don't need L-cysteine in our non-protein foods. I know that it doesn't really make the food taste better but maybe it covers up those off flavors of eating artificial ingredients. I don't know but what I do know is the list I have of ingredients I want to avoid just gets longer everyday.

Grocery Shopping for March

Partway through February we knew we had to do something different so we started looking at healthier ways to eat while still maintaining our budget. It's a tough juggling act because healthier feels so much more expensive.
We started our shopping trip at the Co-op. I don't shop much at the co-op because it just feels too expensive but I had earned a free loaf of bread. My son's birthday was this past weekend and he wanted stroganoff for dinner. My husband thought a nice loaf of french bread would be nice. The co-op offers a punch card for bread and we had been saving our cards for years. While there we looked in their bulk bins. I bought organic popcorn on sale for $1.09, the normal price $1.29 (a pound). Walmart's price - $1.48 a pound and it's not organic.
We picked up some organic couscous which was still cheaper than buying it in the box anywhere else and some hulled barley. The hulled barley is something we haven't been able to find. Pearled barley is everywhere and cheap. The difference is as if pearled barley was white flour and hulled barley was whole wheat. Hulled barley is less processed and has more nutrients.
The last thing I found was whole white wheat flour for $5.09 for a 5 pound bag. That's still significantly more expensive than white flour but it was $.30 lower than the best price we had found (and it wasn't even on sale).
Then on to our favorite discount grocery store. The prices weren't as great as I had hoped. We started in the bulk bins and I have to say that really is where everyone should start. Ironically, we found popcorn there for $.80 a pound but I was still happy with my $1.09 for organic. Next time we'll buy the non-organic if we don't see a difference. We picked up legumes and brown rice. I even found instant potatoes which was perfect because we only needed 1 cup for a particular recipe. That saved me not only the discounted price of buying in bulk but I only had to buy about a cup. I was even able to get a small amount of green split peas so I could make some fun St Pat's cupcakes. I sometimes forget how wonderful bulk bins are.
The only meat we bought was chicken thighs at $1.18 a pound, bacon for $2.49 a pound and one steak for X's special dinner. We bought tofu and lots of beans and legumes. This will be a month of vegetarian dishes or limited meat dishes. We broke the package of chicken into freezer bags of 3 thighs (with one bag having 4). For just over $5 we will have 4 meals of chicken. The bacon was thick cut peppered bacon which was broken into packages of about 4 strips each giving us 7 meals.
Cabbage is on a good sale right now - we picked it up for $.48 a pound and bought 10 pounds. That is a minimum of 4 meals depending on how we prepare it. We could stretch it to 8 meals if necessary. We love bacon, onion and cabbage on rice.
We set aside some "money" to see if corned beef goes on sale this week. The best price we found was $1.99 a pound which just wasn't quite low enough for us to feel it was a deal. We love corned beef and the idea of buying a tiny little one just seems so sad. I might pick up a little one anyway and use it in a hash like dish so we can feel like we got some.
I was just thinking, Sunday we went over to my mom's who gave us some odds and ends meats to clean out her freezer. This helps her reduce waste and gives us some extra meat for the month. Included was a whole chicken and a roast. Both of those will feed us for more than one meal so it helps stretch the budget some.
Our son took his birthday money to the store and bought peanut butter because I had forgotten to pick some up and we try to do a once a month shopping to keep a tight hold on the budget.
Ordering a bountiful basket today so we'll have fresh fruits and veggies this weekend. We'll get another basket in 2 weeks, after payday.

End of February Experiment

So we decided to change our diet to meet our budget instead of meeting our budget to fit our diet. The result was that we actually saved a good deal of money but that was really the only positive result.
We had a lot of the same dishes over and over. I can tell you I am glad to be on a pasta hiatus after this month and I love pasta. At the end of the month, the meals got tougher and tougher to prepare because we had planned for quick meals - spaghetti and sauce, creamed soups, lots of soups. We thought we had planned for a month but the food went faster.
Since we are used to once a month shopping it didn't really occur to us to go to the store to buy more food. We did stop in for milk and bread but even that seemed to go faster.
Aside from that, we all felt awful. Come towards the end of the month we were so cranky and exhausted. I can't say that it was 100% related to the diet but it was not a fun month to have to live through.
For March, we have decided to try to return to the diet we ate before moving to the city and going gluten free. We ate nothing made of white flour and sought out whole grain foods instead of just whole wheat foods.
It's a more expensive diet but whole grains keep us full longer. We, also, recently got rid of our cable. As strange as it sounds, we no longer feel the need to snack at night and we're going to bed earlier. March looks to be a warmer, sunnier month (in between the rain). It might mean actually having the chance to spend time outside. It might mean some early foraging. If the weather stays nice we should have mushrooms after all the rain.
The other thing we might start this month is organic milk. That will depend on the cost of the whole grains. We might have to alter our diet one item at a time.
On another note - March is National Nutrition Month. I should have mentioned that earlier to explain my reasoning behind all the website reviews. I have one more site I want to share with you but since it's geared towards kids I want to get my son playing on it before I write the review.

Gardening

One way to extend your pantry is to grow your own foods. This is not always the easiest thing to do. We live in an apartment and are lucky to have a complex with garden plots. For the last two years these have not been the most successful plots but I think I have finally figured out how to fix the problems. Our weather has been rather uncooperative with late starts. Last year we had frost into June then the weather turned amazingly hot and we didn't see rain for the entire summer. I lost the plants I started because I started them too late and they were not hardy enough to survive. I bought plants but they were in the ground too late to really produce well.
We have two plots, each 6x6 raised beds. One is our "permanent" plot that we filled with herbs and berry plants. This year I plan on adding a comfrey plant. The other is our veggie garden.
Our plants for the year - zucchini, watermelon (because we had seeds from the year before - watermelon is hard to grow in our area), pie pumpkins, tomatoes, jalapeno and sweet peppers, spinach. I think that's everything. I do plan on buying an additional blueberry plant to add to the permanent plot. It does cost to use the plots - $20 per plot per year.
I started plants a week ago - everything but the spinach and the zucchini. The zucchini I purchased is a 60 day crop meaning that they'd be producing before I got them into the ground and I don't want that. I might start them in May so they have a little time to grow before I plant but that all depends on the weather.
Knowing your weather and what grows best is a trial and error process but you can ask your neighbors. I never rely on USDA charts because I know they are for more professional growers. That doesn't mean they aren't useful but I find talking with people who are actually growing food in the area are better resources. Here in the Palouse region of Washington, I have found that tomatoes, peppers and zucchini are almost fool proof plants.
Now things to look for when you plan your garden, especially if you are "unseasoned" - I swear by growth dates. Each packet of seeds comes with a number of days. Ideally this is the amount of time it takes to produce a crop. If you've lived in your area awhile then you have an understanding of your growing season. Here, up north, this is the time between the last frost in the spring and the first frost in the fall. Some plants can tolerate some frost but it's best to use those dates when planning your garden. I know that we often have frost and snow up to May (on average not on odd years like last year). This tells me that I can plan to plant in May (or gives me a time to start looking for the end of frost). Some plants such as peas and potatoes prefer the cooler weather and can be planted in April (my mother says the rule of thumb is to plant them on Good Friday). Peas don't really do well when the weather gets hot. As much as I love fresh peas - I don't bother with them because I, personally, have not had good luck with them.
I know that the first snow fall often comes at the end of October but that the frost can start early September. Reoccuring events help. Our county fair is in September and that gives me an indicator for weather patterns. We can easily get really cold weather during that week and some years the fair just wasn't worth braving the cold for. Other years, the weather is beautiful.
In a perfect year, I can get my garden prepped in May and my plants planted. I have until the middle of September before the frost can potential kill my plants. That gives me a growing season of approximately 120 days. I work to avoid anything that takes that long, instead opting for plants that mature in 60-90 days if I can get them. As I said some plants, such as pumpkins, will tolerate the cold and many will not have numbers lower than 100 days. I still seek out the lowest number I can.
There are tricks to extending your growing season such as using greenhouses and frost protectors. This year I plan on experimenting with them but at this point I can't share any experience with you.
Now, on another note, I plan on growing some plants on my balcony and in my apartment. We have limited space so I can't go hog wild but I will be planting the spinach indoors - for longer growing season and convenince. I will be using containers to grow peppers and tomatoes as well. For me, this is a back up plan in case something happens to my garden. I'm thinking about making or purchasing one of those topsy turvy tomato hangers for my balcony (probably making). The trick here is to purchase good soil for the plants I keep close to home so they have the best possible chance of survival.

Building Healthy Habits for Kids

I was reading a post on eating from a toddler's perspective. It got me thinking. I have raised a good eater. My son is rather open to foods and will choose healthy over unhealthy more often than not. He still likes treats such as soda, chips and candy but he will choose to eat air-popped popcorn and fruit if I offer them. I can't say I have the perfect advice for raising healthy eaters since we still have our share of unhealthy habits but I do know I did somethings right.
Plate Rule: In our house the rule is you don't have to clear your plate but if you want seconds you have to eat everything on your plate. That includes later. You can't scrape your salad into the trash and then decide 30 minutes later you want more pasta. There have been nights when my son's plate has sat on the counter half eaten while he decides whether or not he's still hungry.
New Food Rule: You have to try one bite of a new food. If you don't like it then you don't have to eat it (but the plate rule is still in effect). My personal belief is that if it's healthy and I still don't like it then I eat it fast and I eat it first. If it's not healthy then I pass on it.
Those are the only two rules we have about eating but we have some guidelines about snacking. The biggest guideline is - if we shouldn't eat it then we shouldn't buy it. On occasion, I buy a junk food something - box of doughnuts or oreos, a bottle of soda. These never last long in our house and they are a rarity. That doesn't mean we don't have snacks. We keep popcorn in the house and my son is quite familiar with the air-popper so he can make his own snack. We set limits to how much nucoa he can use and he stays within those limits. He's free to experiment with seasonings and other ideas. (He's put barbeque sauce on his popcorn.) We keep instant coffee, tea and individual packets of crystal light available for drinking. I, personally, don't like the crystal light but my husband does and if it keeps him away from soda I'm all for it.
Another thing I did was taught my son to be self-reliant in the kitchen at a very early age. I worked the evening shift when my son was two and I hadn't met my wonderful husband yet. My son was an early riser. I was already exhausted and I couldn't keep getting up with him every morning. So I taught him how to make breakfast. We designated a drawer that was his. I filled it with breakfast bars and snacks. He knew that when he was hungry he could make his snack. It wasn't long after that that I had him making real food. By the time he was five he could make his own packaged mac and cheese. I know it's not the best food but it taught him valuable skills in the kitchen. Now at 15, he can cook just about anything. He's been creating his own recipes for the past 5 years and has even entered contests.
I keep him involved with the whole process. We talk about what we want to eat, how do we want to prepare it, what sort of vegetables should we have. I ask for his input when I go grocery shopping. When we have extra money, we talk about what would we like to try. With the bountiful baskets we get lots of interesting fruits and vegetables. He's very honest. He'll talk about what he didn't like whether it was texture or flavor. We talk about our food as we eat it especially if it's new.
I have made mistakes - I will be the first to admit that. My favorite mistake story happened when my son was about 4, I think. He was going through a phase where he just wouldn't eat his vegetables. I kept trying to think of creative ways but I didn't want to deceive him - he's a smart cookie and figured out I was slipping cauliflower into the mac and cheese. After that he was suspicious and I didn't want to make him hate vegetables. So I thought I'd get creative and make a Bob and Larry salad. For those who don't know Bob is a tomato and Larry is a cucumber on Veggie Tales. When I served it to him, all beaming because I was an awesome mom, he started crying - you killed Bob and Larry. It was an absolute failure and I had to give back my mom of the year award. He got over it but he still remembers it. I still can't get him to eat raw tomatoes but atleast now we can talk about why.

It's all in the juice

Knowing where your food comes from sounds easy. Orange juice comes from oranges - end of story. That's not true. Understanding the processing of our foods gives us better perspective of what we are putting into our bodies.
Oranges are a one season crop - they are prolific in the winter in the Southern states. That means one harvest for juice manufacturers. However, the demand for orange juice is year round.
The solution was easy - juice all the oranges, place them in large vats, suck all the air out and wait for the supply to dwindle before filling up more containers. The problem with this is the juice lost it's flavor with the air. Well that, coupled with the American public's need for consistency.
You see, not all oranges taste the same. Some are sweet, some are a little tart. Each vat would have it's unique combination of oranges but that's not good for a company - they need each bottle to taste the same.
Enter flavoring. After sucking all the life out of the juice, the companies add flavoring to the orange juice to make it taste like their orange juice should. That makes for a consistent product. The really tricky part - they don't have to label the flavoring on the package. Due to the type of flavoring they use, the FDA does not require it to be disclosed.
I learned this a few weeks ago from an article on secret ingredients in our food that we don't know are there. Every time I learn a new trick that manufacturers use on us to make the food less expensive to make it confirms my need to eat more natural and to produce my own food.
So I juiced oranges this weekend. I have, now, just over a gallon of orange juice in my fridge.
Back in January, I bought a box of tangerines from bountiful baskets. The cost was $15 for about 40 pounds of oranges (if I remember correctly). It was a great deal and I thought it would give my teenager a healthy snack. Well, we didn't count on getting more oranges and citrus from the baskets over the next three baskets. Pretty soon, I have a huge bowl of oranges/tangerines on my counter and over half a box of tangerines on my porch. We were getting sick of them. I ate an orange a day for most of February and the pile never seemed to go down.
I borrowed a juicer from my mother and went to work.
Before I cut up the oranges for juicing, I zested about 20 of them, giving me about 1 quart of large zest pieces. I saved about another quart of peels (2 quart sized bags full of large peels) to put in the garbage disposal or for potpourri. Then I juiced. The hardest part in juicing oranges is peeling them. All in all, it took me about an hour.
I made orange tapioca. It didn't come out perfect but it was fun and I'll try it again tonight to see if I can make a shareable recipe. However, I did learn something - cheap canned orange juice tastes a lot like homemade orange juice. Which got me wondering - are they actually 100% natural with no added flavors? That just might be true. That flavor we associate with cheap orange juice might actually be the true flavor of orange juice. I may have to contact Western Family and ask them.
I will say - I won't be buying any orange juice in the bottle or carton any more. It's time to learn to appreciate the fruit as nature intended.

New Diet Drug

For some, this is a repetition of every arguement I have ever given for weight loss and the obesity problem in the US.
This morning on GMA, they were discussing a new weight loss drug that has been approved by the FDA. Apparently it was not approved and then they changed their minds. The list of side effects from this drug are severe but they felt that losing weight was more important because of these this drug is to only be used by those morbidly obese. If you look up what is considered obese - it's not that much weight. It doesn't take long before the charts list someone as obese and even shorter to go from that to morbidly obese.
It makes me crazy when this subject comes up and people start saying things like - all it takes to lose weight is xyz. The truth is - it's not that simple. I am a fat person and I will admit that my weight has steadily gone up over the years. Four years ago, we lived in the country. To eat out was a major affair so I had to make every meal. We rarely purchased quick foods because our life allowed me to stay at home most of the time. We grew a decent garden and I canned or froze the excess. We had neighbors with gardens so we could swap with them. I walked because it was easy.
Then we moved to the "city". We live in an apartment. I can have a small garden plot for a price but the last two years have been fairly unsuccessful (the first year due to poor soil conditions, the second to poor weather conditions). I no longer have a large pantry space so I have to be careful of what I store and our budget has reduced drastically due to the extra cost of living in the city. I, also, don't walk much any more.
The other problem was that we now had easy access to fast food. In fact, I can feed my family more food at a fast food restaurant than I can making something from scratch on some occasions. That's where the real problem lays.
I have to depend on my grocery store for food at this point in time. I have $100 a month that we get in food stamps. Our income is so tight that we are struggling to come up with the extra $30 a month to purchase a bountiful basket so we can have produce. We have very little extra funds for groceries.
I go to the store with my $100.
I prefer whole grain bread to white bread. I can buy a loaf of white bread for $1. If I am lucky I can purchase a healthy loaf of wheat bread for $2.50. Note that I said healthy. I can buy a wheat bread for $1 which is usually the same brand as the white bread but the ingredients tell me it's not really wheat bread. I struggle to find a wheat bread that has whole grains not just a little wheat flour so they can call it wheat bread. Some of the best breads can cost up to $5 for a loaf.
I can make bread at home. I can usually find all purpose white flour for about $2 for a five pound bag. Wheat flour - no less than $3 and I have paid up to $7 to have a five pound bag.
Let's talk salad. I can pick up a bag of iceburg lettuce salad for $1 on many occasions. If I find a good sale I can pick up spinach or romaine salads (which are more nutritionally dense) for $2.
The leaner the hamburger - the higher the cost. A store, not in our community, is currently advertising their great hamburger price for 81% lean hamburger - $2.49 a pound. Chicken thighs and drumsticks have been about $1.25 a pound (don't even ask about boneless skinless chicken I cry every time I want to buy some).
Then add the research that everything we know about diet food is wrong. Skim milk is actually causing people to gain weight (or not lose it) because they add stuff to the milk to make it more appealing to the public. Artificial sweetners actually increase appetite and prevent the body from knowing it's full. Low fat diets actually cause people to consume more calories.
Most diets fail because they are meant to fail - that's how they make money. If everyone who tried a weight loss product lost all their weight and stayed thin - they wouldn't need diet products any more. Add that to the lack of access to inexpensive healthy foods and that's why we have an obesity problem.
It's hard not to be fat when your diet makes you feel sluggish and tired. You work harder so you can provide better food but then you are over stressed and have no energy. We have a society set up to make us fat and until that changes, I'm sorry to say, we will continue to be fat.

Dinner for Mama

I ended up all alone at home on Saturday evening. With a free evening I thought about all the things I could do but the first thing I did was made myself a beautiful dinner. There's something about creating a meal that does more than provide calories to the body. I offered up something that nurtured my soul as well.

I started with two boneless skinless chicken breasts. I knew going into this meal that I would have more than enough food for me but I wanted to have extra. I sliced the chicken into medallions. In my cast iron skillet, I heated oil from lime pickles, extracting about five slices to chop up for the meal. I masticated most of the pulp of a lemon (I reserved 4 thin slices to garnish the dish).
I fried the chicken in two batches in the oil so that they were a lovely yellow-brown (the oil contained turmeric which turned the chicken yellow).
I added the lemon and the chopped lime pickles and let the whole thing cook until fragrant and done thoroughly.
For the side dishes, I peeled the bottoms stalks of a bunch of thick asparagus. Laid them out on a baking sheet and drizzles sesame oil over them. I then sprinkled on a little kosher salt (more than actually stuck to the asparagus). Roasted them at 350 until they were tender.
As the chicken and asparagus neared done, I realized I needed something to balance the dinner. The chicken had a bitter, sour sort of taste to it (there are 4 main tastes - sweet, sour, salty, bitter). The asparagus would offer a salty taste so I needed something sweet. I did plan on serving pineapple but that can be sweet and sour and at this point I wasn't sure what I was getting.
I decided to chop up 2 small apples. I poured a thin layer of water in my saucepan and added the remaining orange glaze from cookies I had made earlier (just orange juice and powdered sugar). To that sauce I added the apples and cooked them on the stove, covered, until tender.
I, then, cut up the pineapple.
The end result was a meal that was more than satisfying, it felt elegant. My mouth delighted in the variety of tastes and flavors. The smells were amazing - sweet orange and apple, the bitterness of the limes mixed with the charred smell of meat (smelled better than it sounds), the sour tang of lemon and pineapple, and the salty spicy smell of asparagus in sesame oil.
I was so full but not painfully so.
It was a nice reminder to take time to cook a meal that satisfies more than hunger. My plate was filled with such beauty and love. A reminder that I need to do more for myself, take time to create and nurture.
The boys were a little disappointed but they had gone out for pizza and much needed boy time so they weren't too sad.