The Christian Philosophy of Food Giveaway on In a Shoe

 

I have not read The Christian Philosophy of Food by Peter Bringe, but I would like to.  I'm trying to win it over at In a Shoe and you can enter to win, too.  Just go to In a Shoe and follow the rules to enter for a chance to win this interesting sounding book.

You know I've been on a food book binge of late and I think this would be the perfect addition to my food library!

My first attempt at rendering lard.

Ok, so the new news is that animal fats are good and most vegetable fats are bad (unless cold pressed olive oil and virgin coconut oil- think unprocessed).  Unfortunately, however the lard you purchase in the grocery store has been partially hydrogenated (like margarine) to make it more solid for transportation and shelf-life.  Man-made trans fats are bad, so I decided to take the plunge and try rendering my own lard from a big bag of pork fat I purchased from the local farm where we buy our meat.

I did this for about 30 seconds and decided I didn't have the time for cutting the pork fat into little bitty pieces.

I filled my 8 qt crock pot and cooked on low.

My husband came along later and cut up the fat with scissors.  Why didn't I think of that?

Because I didn't cut the pork into litlte pieces at first, it had to cook too long and you can see some of the pieces getting too brown.

After the first straining. 

They turned out more white than I thought, but I do detect a faint odor and taste.  Not ideal for pie crusts!  Next time I'll have to cut the pork up smaller to begin with.  Next time may be today since I still have more pork fat to render.

All in all it went ok.  Our breakfast of scrambled eggs and biscuits were made with our new lard and the kids ate it up.  Big D did not like the smell, though it didn't bother me.  He said our house was beginning to smell like an Alsups!

Why we get fat... according to Gary Taubes

I had the book Why We Get Fat:  And What to do About It recommended to me, so I read it over the holiday.  Frankly, if left to my own devices, I wouldn't have bought a book called Why We Get Fat because it's always seemed pretty simple to me.  According to Gary Taubes, it's not nearly as simple as we've been led to believe.  He's not a doctor or a scientist, but a scientific journalist.  I enjoyed his book, agreed with much of it, and disagreed with some, too.  It may be a bit premature for me to respond to his more recent book without first reading his previous and larger book, Good Calories, Bad Calories about much the same thing.   I'm anxious to read Good Calories, Bad Calories, but I'm also in the middle of a 90 day Bible challenge, homeschooling, etc. and don't know when I'll finish it.  So, since I have time now to respond to Why We Get Fat, I want to do so.  I can come back later and react to Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Taubes sketches the last 200 years of obesity research and concludes that what used to be common knowledge, that carbohydrates make us fat, is basically right.  He also goes to some trouble to argue that the lipid hypothesis which states that dietary cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease and atherosclerosis, is probably not true (except for the trans fats popularized ironically because of the lipid hypothesis, aka margarine as a substitue for butter).   He has to present this dual argument because one can be true, but not both.  Either carbohydrates are good and fats are bad (as we've been taught for the last 40+ years) or fats are good and carbohydrates are bad (as Taubes suggests).  Yes, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it's basically what he argues. 

This is the food pyramid we all grew up with.  Is it backed by more scientific evidence or political pressure?

As you can see from the food pyramid above, if you're anywhere near my age, you were taught in school that the majority of your calories each day should be grains.  I took health in school, then I took physiology and chemistry and nutrition in college, then I took more physiology and biochemistry in graduate school, then I taught exercise physiology and sports nutrition in college.  So I don't take it lightly when I question whether this ideal that was taught to us, which I then taught to others, was backed by indisputable scientific evidence or whether it was more a product of political pressure and the industrialization of our food system (where big corn has more clout than say Joe dairy farmer).

Taubes is very persuasive, though it's obvious what he's trying to sell and to whom he's selling it.  He uses lots of case studies and anecdotal evidence, but it's not easy to go back more than 50 years and have a wealth of controlled studies to choose from.  For example, he argues that between 1910 and 1970 consumption of animal fats (butter, tallow, and lard) fell drastically while consumption of vegetable oils (corn oil, etc. including margarine) rose greatly.  Between 1910 and 1970 heart disease rose right along with consumption of vegetable oils.  As I said, Taubes is persuasive, so much so that I'm spending the weekend rendering lard from a 10 lb bag of clean pork fat I purchased from a local farmer, but still this argument wouldn't last 10 seconds in an academic setting.  The problem of course is there were many other changes in our lifestyle between 1910 and 1970.  I mean, that's practically like comparing the families of Little House on the Prairie with  the one in All in the Family.  Life changed in those 60 years, and most of us would probably argue that it wasn't for the better (the fat guy in the easy chair in front of the tv in All in the Family comes to mind)!  Taubes had already dismissed exercise as a factor in weight (something I'll dispute later), so I guess he thought he had his bases covered.  But, there could be a plethora of variables that could have contributed to the increase in heart disease from 1910 to 1970.  What about the mothers leaving home and joining the workforce, for example?  I'm sure this had a huge effect on our diet and other aspects of health during those 60 years. 

Taubes does cite lots of well-controlled experiments, too, but general sweeping arguments like the one above that are rooted in very little scientific evidence is what got us into this mess in the first place (if indeed we're in a mess, nutritionally).  It's hard for me to tell how much of his simplistic approach is because he wants his book to be readable and easy to follow or because he wants to sell us on the idea that fats are good and carbohydrates are bad.  (The title of his previous book makes me lean toward the latter.)

I can tell it's going to take me several more blog posts to sum up where I agree with Taubes and where I disagree with him and why.  Is this something anyone else is interested in? 

Food Book Binge

The holidays are a time for binging on food.  Well, I've been binging on food books!  It started when my friend brought over a book she had checked out from the library called Real Food by Nina Planck.  I ordered it and her other book, Real Food for Mother's and Babies from Amazon, but since I was still on the 90 day Bible reading plan and we were homeschooling, I didn't have much time for reading.  I read her latter book first and gave you my thoughts on it here.  Over the holiday I've read Real Food by Nina Planck, In Defense of Food and Food Rules by Michael Pollan, and The Dirty Life:  A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball.  I'm currently reading Folks, This Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin and it's been eye-opening.  On my nightstand are Know Your Fats by Mary Enig, The Queen of Fats by Susan Allport, Food Politics by Marion Nestle, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price.  I'm expecting Why We Get Fat:  And what to do about it by Gary Taubes to arrive today (a friend recommended it and Amazon had it backordered).  And guess who received both Barnes and Nobles and Amazon gift cards for Christmas?!  I have a feeling, I'll be adding more food books to my list. 

These books all have something in common.  As a culture, we've become detached from our food.  We no longer know where our food comes from, nor do we care most of the time.  Our food may travel thousands of miles before it reaches our supermarket.  Due to transportation time and shelf-life, more and more processed and packaged foods are filling the aisles at our grocery store and the produce that is there is often times a shadow of what it once was nutritionally.  I highly recommend In Defense of Food and Folks, This Ain't Normal for an introduction to this issue.  Michael Pollan and Nina Planck approach food from the standpoint of journalists hunting down all-too-often disturbing answers to questions about our food.  Michael Pollan, in true detective fashion exposes the root causes of and fallacy in our forfeit of real food in favor of "nutritionism".  Joel Salatin writes from the perspective of a farmer and Christian environmentalist.  I hesitate to even use the term environmentalist, but he's the real deal.  He cares about being good stewards of our environment, and he's willing to back up his talk with action.  He has many wonderful suggestions for making changes in the right direction.  He's so persuasive, we just might end up with a couple of chickens pecking around in our backyard.  Shhh, don't tell our neighbors.   I'm such a city girl and a product of my culture that I think giving up paper towels is going green!!  (By the way, my husband made me start buying them again.  I guess we couldn't live without them.)  Joel Salatin would laugh at such efforts- his solution to our trash problem is to have chickens eat our garbage scraps!  Talk about going green.  Forget the trash compactor, chickens convert food waste into eggs and meat.  Pretty cool.

And The Dirty Life was such a fun and in many ways profound read.  It ranks right up there with Better Off in the category of moving memoirs that challenge you to simplify life by turning back the clock on "progress".  (I bet you didn't know that category existed!  Well, it does for me.)  I can't wait to start The Omnivore's Dilemma, it's next on my list.  But time is getting away from me.  It's time for another 90 day Bible challenge- in TWO DAYS!  I better read fast.

What have you been reading in your spare time over the holiday?

What is up with our food?! Allergies, the disappearance of bees, and other musings.

photo credit

I was blissfully ignorant about our food situation until I saw Food, Inc.  That caused me to pause and think for a bit.   I wrote this post pondering whether we're in a food crisis?  I guess it's not a crisis in the same sense that a food shortage is. We have plenty of food and for that we're blessed.   But it may be killing us all the same.  In my previous post I laid blame on the government.  I realize everyone has his ax to grind, including the organic folks, but something just doesn't smell right with Monsanto (world's largest seed company) and the FDA.  In 2009 Obama appointed Michael Taylor, former Monsanto executive and past Monsanto chief attorney and lobbyist, as Food Czar over the FDA.  No conflicting interests there.  Then more recently, the USDA decided to allow Monsanto and other biotech firms to determine for themselves the environemental safety of their GMOs (genetically modified organisms).  Hmmm.  I'm all for the government to butt out and let companies make a profit, but it seems fishy that big oil gets crucified while Monsanto gets a pass.  I guess big oil just doesn't have enough of its executives in high places.

I'm really not a conspiracy theorist.  (Though I do blame GE and their massive bribery lobby budget for all these stupid lightbulbs I'm supposed to buy now.  If they're so environmentally friendly, why do you have to call a HazMat team when you break one instead of just tossing it in the garbage?)  I'm a normal person who shops at the grocery store and usually buys regular chicken even though I'm a bit haunted by visions of windowless chicken farms where the chickens are bred with such lopsided proportions they have difficulty standing.  I buy the cheap chicken even though I realize it's been fattened on genetically modified corn and injected with all kinds of antibiotics.  I cringe, but I buy it anyway.  Guess I haven't exactly put my money where my mouth is.  The problem is, it's a LOT more money.

But that's all old news.  Two things have caused me to revisit this food issue.  First, my one year old seems to be allergic to foods that none of the rest of us have ever been bothered by.  Why all of a sudden would our sixth child have all these crazy food allergies?  And he isn't the only one.  I know several moms with babies right now who have food allergies.  They're also perplexed.  And we're not talking peanuts, but staples like wheat and corn, milk and oats.  What's up with that?

photo credit

The second issue I've recently become aware of is the disappearance of honey bees.  I don't have all the answers, but pesticides seem to be largely responsible.  New, genetically engineered pesticides that get intercalated into the bee's DNA.  Let's see.  I realize people are not bees, but we do both have DNA and our DNA is more alike than different (compared say to bacteria).  I wonder what effect these pesticides will have on our next generation (that's where DNA mutations show up).  And though I admit I've never been an admirer of bees, they're kind of necessary to the whole pollination process.

So there you have it.  My paranoid ramblings on our food.  What do you think?  Have you noticed any of these trends?  What can we really do about it?  Have you read any good books on this topic lately?   

Weekends are for projects!!!

I awoke yesterday with one thought in mind:  clean out my storage room.  The before pictures are so embarassing.  I'm fortunate my family hasn't turned me into Hoarders:  Buried Alive, I hear they're always looking...

I clean this closet out about once a year, but old habits die hard and somehow the storage room quickly fills back up again.  As you can see, we couldn't even walk in there.  When it got so bad that the kids were risking their lives just to bring me a can of tomato paste, I knew I had to do something.  Check out the after shots. 

I drastically reduced our gift bag stockpile.  Hopefully, this way I'll actually use them!  And I do still have a few framed works of art and other assorted pictures on the floor, but I hung up five from the stash and gave away a few more.

This was a "quick" clean meaning I left the upper two, out of reach, shelves as they were.  I'll tackle holiday storage, well... around the holidays.  I accomplished my mission, which was to make our storage room safe and usable once more.

The "quick" clean didn't actually go that quickly.  It turned out that my little storage room project led to mini projects all over the house.  Each item that I took out had to either find a new home or find its way to the garbage or giveaway pile.  And often the items that found a new home meant rearranging other items in that location.  For instance, I took three large pictures from the floor of the storage closet and hung them in the "office", or the room formerly called Daddy's Special Room which has since become Mommy's special room, aka blogging headquarters.  Of course, the walls were not bare, so that meant taking pictures off the wall and finding new homes for all of them!  I like how it turned out, though.

I had to carefully angle this shot so as not to show my paper monster lurking on the coffee table.

 
The picture that this cheerful oil painting replaced was a truly ugly work of art.  What an oxymoron!  I don't know what I was thinking, but I bought this papyrus in Cairo years ago and had it framed when I came home.  I'm sure the heiroglyphic writing means something special or I wouldn't have bought it, but I've since forgotten, which pretty much means it's a meaningless ugly work of art.  Anyway, I'll probably move it to a less visible part of the house.  (Notice I didn't show you any pictures of my dining room, otherwise known as the room right next to the storage room.  Let's just say it's next on my to do list.)

And lest you think this is all I did over the weekend...

I wandered into Big D's garden to see if there was anything to pick and came back with this.

After I took this picture, my husband actually brought in two more butternut squashes and about a pint of green beans.

We chopped the bellpeppers and froze them spread out on cookie sheets then placed them into pint size freezer bags in 1.5 cup increments.  Big D cut and flash froze the green beans.  I cooked three of the butternuts, scooped out the yummy part and drained it in the fridge for a couple of hours before freezing it in individual bags for baby food.

You'll just have to trust me that this is a freezer door newly stocked with garden veggies : ).

I also canned 8 pints of dill pickles this weekend and told Big D it was the last time I was doing dill pickles... EVER.  It seemed lots more complicated and definitely took longer than doing bread and butter pickles, which we like just fine.

And finally to finish the weekend, Twinkle Toes and I made homemade pop tarts tonight.  I adapted Laura at Heavenly Homemaker's recipe.  We made a raspberry jam infused frosting for them, too, and decided to scoop it into a ziploc so that tomorrow morning we can just snip the corner and the kids can squeeze the desired amount onto their pop tarts.  Cool, huh?

Uh, you can probably tell that the chefs sampled their creation.  We felt it was our duty.

Well, it was a profitable weekend.  Now back to school tomorrow.  What did you do this weekend?  Any projects?

My first... and last day in the kitchen!

When I say "day in the kitchen", I mean ENTIRE day!  We finally broke down and bought a new AC unit.  So, I thought to myself, today, your first day with central AC all summer, would be a great day to make a bunch of dinners to freeze.  With this idea in mind, I headed to the grocery store with only Calvin in tow at 6:30 am.  It was 9:30 pm when I finally finished cleaning the kitchen.  Maybe I'm just a wimp, but I was hurting.  Bad.  Oh, and I was sweating a lot, too.  Every time I checked the thermostat it said 78 ir 79, and that was in the living room.  I bet it was about 85 in the kitchen where I was working.  I called my husband at one point and said it seemed really hot to me.  He said to call the AC guy and turns out our unit had frozen over and wasn't working!!  No wonder I was hot.  It was a scorcher yesterday and I spent all day in the kitchen cooking with no AC!  In retrospect, not a good idea.  Anyway, I got a lot accomplished thanks to the book Fix, Freeze, Feast.

I love that this book includes re-heating labels that can be copied and affixed to the freezer meals.

When I normally think "freezer meal", I think casserole.  I'm just so tired of transferring frozen block-of-ice casseroles into our oven for 2 + hrs in order to enjoy a break in the kitchen.  This book has lots of ways to use the freezer to plan ahead. Sometimes the meat is cooked and sometimes it isn't.  I don't know why, but I'm just happy to follow the directions of somebody who knows what they're doing!  It feels so good to have so many meals planned, even though I will have to do a few last minute things on the evening we eat each dinner.

 

Here's what I put away yesterday:

3 X Chicken a la King- sauce with chicken and mushrooms and also chopped bell pepper.
2 X Cashew chicken stir fry- Raw, cut chicken in marinade with veggies and cashews in separate bags.
3 X Ana's pork chops- Our local grocery store had a by one get one free on these yesterday.  The chops are raw in marinade- ready to thaw and throw on the grill. 
1 X Sticky Ribs- Actually I made two and we at the other one last night!  They were finger licking good!  Boneless ribs in marinade, ready to thaw and cook.
About 30 Beef and bean burritos, individually wrapped.  I'm hoping these will be good for an easy lunch option.  Oh, and I made my own re-fried beans.  Actually, I made non-fried smashed pinto beans.  It was my first time to work with real beans.  Measle was my official smasher.  (We don't have a food processor, nor do I think we need one with a Measle around.)

I didn't get it all finished.  I still have 6 lbs of hamburger meat in the fridge for making 60 meatballs.  I'm not looking forward to that.  Maybe tomorrow :).

Training our girls in hospitality

Let me start this post by being completely honest.  Although my mom is the "hostess with the mostest", also affectionately known as Martha Stewart on crack, something got lost in translation when it came to passing on her gift of hospitality to me.  Maybe it's because I was a tomboy more likely to be found cleaning guns with my dad than helping in the kitchen.  Maybe it's because I spent so much time at swim practice.  Maybe it's because I was a spoiled only child.  Anyway, my mom set a great example, always opening our home to others and taking such pains to make her guests feel important and welcome.  I want to follow in my mom's footsteps and I'm determined to train my girls now so that they can help me be better prepared to practice hospitality when they grow up.

1.  Encourage them to play hospitality.


Measle working in her "kitchen".  She loves making mud pies, or mud casseroles, cakes, and loaves of bread in this case.



Queen at a local children's museum setting the "table" for supper.



Cooking over the hot fire.


2.  Let them help you.  This is easier said than done.  It takes a little planning to come up with age-appropriate jobs for each of your girls.  Once you add in the demonstration and oversight it may take more time to have them help you, but consider it an investment in their future and yours.


Twinkle Toes (10) buttered and garliced three loaves of french bread and sliced the carrots for the salad we're taking to church tonight.  You see she has a little "helper", as well.



Mealse (7) washed and separated two bags of grapes into bunches and washed and tore two heads of red leaf lettuce into pieces for the salad.  Measle and Twinkle Toes added the other ingredients to the salad and tossed it.  Measle is wearing an apron that has my name on it.  See, my mom really did try!



OK, Queen (2) was no help at all, but doesn't she look cute in her apron, which was also mine when I was a little girl by the way?!


3.  Praise them.  I'm so proud of my girls and they really did help me get the meal ready for church tonight.  I put the casseroles together last night, Smockity Frock's cavatini, and the girls helped me with the fruit, bread, and salad.  As a special reward I bought my little helpers mochas from a local coffee shop.  Twinkle Toes and Measle have both asked if they can help serve the meal at church tonight.  We usually have 50-60 turn out for supper and I try to take the meal a couple of times each summer.  Our wonderful church secretary usually slaves away in the kitchen all day on Wednesdays and is such a blessing to all of us.  Her cooking is much better than mine, but I wanted to give her a little break and thought it would be a wonderful training opportunity for my girls.  You know what?  My girls didn't even know they were being trained.  They've had fun!

Losing that baby weight!

The 4 Moms of Many addressed losing the baby weight today and I wanted to chime in.  For one thing, I'm just interested in weight and fitness.  I majored in Sports Medicine, swam competitively for 15 years, and still try to maintain some semblance of physical fitness.  For another, I've survived 5 pregnancies and births!

Interestingly, I tried something slightly different after each of my pregnancies, although they all included exercise and watching what I ate.

1.  I was 26 when I had my first, a boy.  He nursed like a champ and the 40 lbs I had gained with him just seemed to melt off.  I also swam and walked whenever I had the chance.  (P.S.  I swam between 2,000 and 3,000 yards daily while pregnant with him, so that probably helped, too.)

2.  I was 28 when I had my second, a girl who was not particularly interested in nursing, though I persisted for 6 months.  I knew after Twinkle Toes that I was going to have to try something "extra" to lose the weight I gained with her.  My mom was working for weight watchers at the time so I attended meetings and weigh-ins and loosely followed the points plan (meaning I paid more attention to eating the freebies, but didn't really count every point.)

3.  I was 30 when I had Measle Bug and had not exercised much during my pregnancy with her, except for walking up and down three flights of stairs several times a day (grad school building).  So I took up running after Measle.  I ran pretty seriously for several years and the weight fell off.  (Have you ever known a runner who was fat?  Just sayin'...)  But it was tough and time consuming and eventually after spending a month in Kazakhstan where we adopted Prince, my first year of teaching college, I got out of the habit and just couldn't get back into it.  I was thinner at 31-33 than pre-kids.

4.  Queen was our first quiverfull baby and I was pretty freaked out about being an "older" mom (if you consider 35 as being older, which of course I now see as silly).  I swam and walked religiously throughout my pregnancy with her.  Surprisingly, I didn't do much after having her, though.  Maybe this is why I never lost that last 5-10 lbs.  ( I could probably also blame this on taking up blogging.  Not exactly a high caloric expenditure activity!)

5.  My pregnacy with Calvin was filled with walking, walking, and more walking.  I often walked twice a day with him and sometimes did circuit weights while waiting at the gym for my kids.  I swam a few times, but just couldn't get it in the schedule consistently like with Queen.  I even ran some at the end of the pregnancy, but am afraid that may have contributed to his tweaked head, poor kid.  Calvin nursed like a champ right from the beginning, which helped the big weight melt off.  When Calvin was 6 and a half months old I started Insanity and am 24 days in right now.  Supposedly I'll be in the best shape of my life in another 40 days, so time will tell.  I'm enjoying the challenge and am amazed at how out of shape I had let myself become.  (Guess I've been living in denial : ).

My diet hasn't changed much over the last 15 years or so.  I'm a simple person and like simple food.  Often I eat crackers and peanut butter or crackers and cheese for lunch or dinner while my family eats something else I've prepared, especially if it borders on "home cookin'".  I also eat Total Raisin Bran for breakfast most mornings even when I make the kids waffles, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, etc.  I don't buy chips or sodas so I don't eat and drink them.  A couple of years ago I started the bad habit of drinking those fancy high caloric coffee drinks like frapuccinos and mochas.  I'm trying to cut back to 3 or 4 days a week.  I also love a nightly cup of hot cocoa and if it's been a really tough day, two cups.  I joke that I drink most of my calories, but that may not be far from the truth!  I eat lots of fruit, some veggies, and gummy vites, though I'm sure I'm just paying for expensive urine (another post.)  I have started making homemade bread, bagels, etc. and do indulge in those tasty treats with peanut butter or honey when they're around.  (I try not to keep them around too much : ).  I'm also addicted to Kimberly's granola bars (though I do cut the sugar to 1/2 c) and make them at least once a week.  I also eat lots of nutty granola (WW magazine recipe) with yogurt.

All this to say that while my body has shifted here and there over the years (use your imagination), I'm still the same size I was in high school. 

Finally, I want to share a Scripture verse that has meant a lot to me in the food department through the years, whether I was struggling with not eating enough or with eating too much.

Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Mathew 6:25

How to make an apple pie and NOT see the world

Twinkle Toes and Measle Bug have gone to a mini-camp for the first part of this week so I told Prince today I'd do a special project with him.  Past projects include muffin tin crayons and homemade playdough.  Today Prince decided he wanted us to make an apple pie, since we just read a story about it yesterday that included a recipe at the end.  I've only attempted to make pie crust from scratch once before, and I think my mom had to come over and rescue me in the middle of that one, but I told him I was game. 



Stirring in the sugar and cinnamon.



Before baking.  Notice my pre-schoolers decided they'd make a pie of their own.



The finished product with the book that inspired it all!  Can you tell he's proud? 



Meanwhile, Calvin has learned a new trick.



I play, you play, we all play with dough!

The kids and I had fun making red hot cinnamon playdough on Saturday thanks to Kathi of A Heart Like Water giving me the idea and recipe.  Twinkle Toes decided afterwards that she'd try her hand at making playdough and made some purple all by herself.  Now I can honestly say it's so easy my 9 yr old can make it!

The girls and I have talked and talked about making bagels, but I've been afraid that it sounded too complicated for me.  Today we took the plunge, with the help of my bread machine, and it was almost as easy as making playdough.  I'm going to make a second batch tonight.  Yes, the first batch is pretty much gone.


Twinkle Toes, the chef.



The chef with her sous-chef.  By the way, check out the adorable aprons my grandmother made for the girls. 

She also made matching aprons for their American Girl dolls.



What's left of our bagels after Monk, Twinkle Toes, and Measle headed out the door with hands and mouths full of bagel.  Twinkle Toes insisted on adding cinnamon sugar topping to half of them.



She likes.



Prince and Queen were inspired by my bagel making to roll out some of their own using their red hot cinnamon playdough.



Calvin didn't eat a bagel, but he has been enjoying Daddy's homegrown butternut squash, and Mommy's homemade applesauce.  He's almost 4 months old and weighs 18 lbs and is 18.25 in long!  I bet he'll be eating bagels before long!



Here's the bagel recipe I used from The Bread Machine Cookbook by Donna Rathmell German.

1 c water
1.5 tbs honey
1 tsp salt
1 c whole wheat flour
2 c bread flour
1.5 tsp yeast

Let the bread machine knead the dough on the dough cycle, but only let rise 20 min in the machine.  Divide dough into 12 pieces and roll each into a rope, pressing ends together to make a circle.  Let rise on greased cookie sheet 15-20 min only.  Boil in 2 in of water in a non-aluminum pan 30 sec on each side then place on greased cookie sheet and bake at 550 for 8 min.  (My oven only goes to 500 and they were plenty cooked.)

Our $25 brownie experiment

Twinkle Toes has been learning about healthy eating this year for science using the book Nutrition 101:  Choose Life.  It's been a learning experience for all of us.  Yesterday she made some super healthy, super expensive bar cookies.  They called for organic carob chips, organic raw almond butter, and blue agave nectar.  I had to make a trip to Natural Grocers just to get the ingredients.  It called for an entire 16 oz jar of almond butter!  The verdict?  Not bad as far as taste, but my wallet took a hit.  Was it worth it?  Let's just say we won't be making them for our church fellowship this Sunday.  Maybe we can save up and make them again next month : ).  This healthy eating sure is a lot of trouble!  Are sugar and chocolate really that bad?  On second thought, don't answer that.  Ignorance is bliss.

Super fast and easy and did I mention delicious taco soup!

The 4 Moms are sharing cold weather recipes today.  This one's our favorite:

Super fast and easy, delicious taco soup

1 lb ground beef, browned and drained
1/2 packet mild taco seasoning
1/2 packet dried ranch dressing
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can pinto beans
1 can black beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can corn

Simmer until ready to eat.  You can make many different variations of this recipe.  I've doubled it for a big crowd without doubling the beef.  I've used hominy instead of corn.  I've made it without black beans.  You can make it with ground turkey instead of beef.  Last time I even used ground deer since a friend had given us some.  It always turns out good.  And it's fast enough to make that I can throw it together in no time- especially when one of my trusty assistants opens all the cans for me.

Serve with your choice of grated cheese and sour cream on top.  I like to make corn bread when we have taco soup and some of us eat the corn bread in the taco soup while others of us like it on the side with honey.

Check out all the great cold weather dishes the 4 Moms feed their families.

Raising Olives
In a Shoe
Smockity Frocks
The Common Room

Are we having a food crisis? Who's to blame?

My mom read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan a month or so ago and it's on my list, too.  My husband brought home Food, Inc. the other night and we watched it.  Are we having a food crisis?  My mom is on a histamine free diet so she can survive at night without taking drugs (histamine triggers allergic reactions, thus the class of drugs called anti-histamines).  Did you even know there's histamine in foods?  It's mainly the additives and preservatives she can't handle. 

Did you realize that not only are we having to fight superbugs in our hospitals (like MRSA, methicillin resistant staph), but that we're also fighting superbugs in our meat packing plants and chicken farms?  What are the implications?  Do we have to move out to the country and raise our own cattle and chickens to feel good about safely feeding our families?

What about corn?  Is it mostly genetically modified now?  Does that matter?

I don't have the answers, but one thing is painfully obvious to me.  The same culprit that contributed to both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the 1930s is causing this food crisis.  One guess.  Yes, that's right, it's our government. 

The Federal Farm Loan Act made low interest loans to farmers to encourage the tilling up of the land and the Federal Bureau of Soils proclaimed the inexhaustability of the prairie grassland.  That coupled with the increased efficiency of farming brought about by the invention of the tractor and other farm equipment meant that more land was being farmed than ever before by the 1920s.  Then as wheat prices began to fall at the end of the 1920s, farmers tilled up even more land hoping to make the same amount despite lower prices by selling more bushels.  Hoover decided government intervention was needed so he established the Federal Farm Board which pegged the price of wheat at 80 cents a bushel and cotton at 20 cents a bushel.  The Farm Board accomplished this price fixing by buying up huge quantities of wheat and cotton, which ended up killing our export of these crops since our prices were higher than world prices.  Meanwhile, all this turning over of the prairie coupled with drought brought about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. 

FDR arrived on the scene in 1933 on his white horse and along with the NRA immediately passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA).  According to Timothy Egan of The Worst Hard Time, "Free-market agricultural economics was over, for good."  (p. 133)  Here's how the AAA worked:  "First, some farmers would be paid not to produce on their land; second, farm prices would be pegged to the purchasing power of farm prices in 1910; third, millers and processors would pay for much of the cost of the program.  What's more, power would be centralized through the secretary of agriculture, who would set the processing taxes, target the price of many commodities, and tell farmers how much land to remove."  (New Deal or Raw Deal p. 60 by Burton Folsom, Jr.)  Due to the crop shortages encouraged by the AAA, by 1935 the US had become a major food-importing nation for the first time in its history and we're still reeling from the continued effects of the AAA.

Did you know that Mrs. Butterworth's maple syrup doesn't contain any maple syrup?  Did you know that it's made largely from corn?  And did you know the reason it's so cheap is because the government subsidizes the cost of raising corn to artificially lower its price?  Guess how much real maple syrup costs.  Ouch.  About 4 X more than the cheap stuff.

Again, I don't have all the answers, but I sure wish the government would butt out of agriculture and let the free-market determine prices.  Then maybe it would become economical someday for real maple syrup to compete against corn.  Groceries might cost more in the short-run, but in the long-run prices would equalize and we would have a healthier food supply.

Why is it that everything the government touches gets screwed up, but the government continues to stick its fingers into everything it can anyway? 

Are we ready for the government to take over our healthcare system next like it already has our food system? 

Great freezer lunches

One of the side effects of homeschooling is serving 3 meals per day to my family almost everyday.  I'm busy doing read-aloud/language arts with the kids until 11 and hate taking the time to stop and fix lunch, so I try to have things on hand they can grab for themselves to eat.  Last year I bought a lot of Lean Pockets, but I know those are full of preservatives, so I've made an effort this year to make freezable lunches from scratch.  These are my 3 stand-bys and I'd love to hear of any you make that freeze well.

Pizza pockets

First I make the dough using my bread machine.  I use the recipe for Italian bread out of my Bread Machine Cookbook, but add some olive oil and Italian seasoning.

Dough:
1.5 c water
1 T olive oil
3 c flour
1 T Italian seasoning
2.5 tsp yeast

Run dough cycle then remove from bread machine.  Do not let rise again.  Roll out into individual circles and stuff with pizza filling.

Homemade pizza sauce:
2 small cans tomato sauce
2 T tomato paste
Italian seasoning
1 T brown sugar

For pizza filling add your choices to the sauce and simmer while rolling out dough.  I ususally use 1 lb sausage, 1/2 package turkey pepperoni, 1 can mushrooms (or fresh), and 1 green bell pepper, but you can use whatever you choose. 

Directions for assembling pizza pockets:  Roll out dough into circle, place several spoonsful of filling on one half of dough, add some mozzarella cheese- just so much that you can still close the dough circle, pinch the dough around so you have a half circle shape.  Brush with melted butter and a mixture of parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning.  Bake at 350 15-20 minutes.  Let cool and wrap in foil to freeze.  Reheat either 2 1/2-3 min in microwave or 20 min at 425.

These take me a couple of hours to make so it's usually a Saturday project.  I can make 10-12 at a time this way and usually get to freeze around 8 (medium to large size) for the upcoming week.  Of course, you can make them much smaller if your kids have smaller appetites :).  These are especially popular with my 11 yr old son.

Hot ham and chili sauce buns

I can never remember this recipe and when I looked it up online I found a similar one called bunwhiches.  I guess it goes by many names.  This is my version.

Homemade 40 minute wheat buns from Lynne's kitchen adventures

Dice 1 lb ham and about 3/4 lb sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 c sliced green olives
add hard boiled eggs if you have them (I never do)
Mix 1/2 c chili sauce and 2 T miracle whip and stir into other ingredients

Fill buns with ham mixture and wrap in foil.  I freeze them directly like this and you can either microwave them individually for 2 min or place 5 or 6 on a cookie sheet and bake at 425 12-15 minutes or until warm all the way through and cheese is beginning to melt.

Chicken squares

This is really easy and my girls love them.
Separate 2 packages of crescent rolls into rectangles (so each package of 8 makes 4 rectangles).

Filling:
6 oz. cream cheese, softened
4 T melted butter
4 T milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 T chopped green onions or chives (sometimes I leave this out)
1.5 c bread crumbs
4 c cooked chicken (I stew mine either whole or breasts)

Scoop 1/8 of mixture onto each rectangle then fold up 4 corners into neat little package.
Brush tops with butter and bake on cookie sheet 25-30 min at 350.
If planning on freezing, bake first, but make sure not to get them too brown.  Then cool, wrap in foil, and freeze.  Reheat at 425 for 15 minutes (they will get brown and crispy) or 2 minutes in microwave (they will not be crispy- some of my kids don't like them this way.)

We don't eat freezer lunches everyday.  Sometimes my mom brings us lunch and sometimes my kids prefer to just toast a bagel.  Other days we eat leftovers or quesadillas, but it sure is nice to have something on hand in the freezer for those rainy days!

Easy cinnamon rolls!

Well, at least easier cinnamon rolls.  I've shared with you before that for many years I did just what I had to in the kitchen for us to get by.  Since coming home full-time to stay last year, I've started experimenting more and more- and trying to make more things from scratch.  I'm easily intimidated by complicated sounding recipes, so I usually adapt things to make them easier to make.  Last night I used my bread machine to mix up cinnamon roll dough, then I rolled it out, spread the filling over top, rolled it up, sliced it into individual buns, and arranged them in a 9X13 to let rise overnight in the refrigerator.  Then this morning I got them out and let them sit at room temp 30 minutes before baking them 25 minutes at 375.  (The aroma really helped the kids drag themselves out of bed at 6:45 this morning.)

Here they are ready to go into the fridge last night.

Here they are fresh out of the oven.

Cinnamon roll dough- (from The Bread Machine cookbook)

1 c milk

2 T butter

1 egg, beaten

2 T sugar

1/2 tsp salt

3-3.5 c flour

1.5 tsp yeast

Filling

After rolling out dough, I brushed with 2 T melted butter

1/2 c brown sugar and 1 T cinnamon mixed together

Raisins, sprinkled on top

Cream cheese glaze

1 T cream cheese

1 T softened butter

Powdered sugar and milk to desired consistency

They were a hit with the kids!

See, almost all gone!