Awesome breakfast

Pear-berry crisp.  It's quick, it's easy, it's healthy, and it's delicious.  Therefore, it's an awesome breakfast in my book.  I have been using pears and marionberries since we have a lot frozen from last summer and they aren't Matthew's favorites.  I think it would be delicious with any mixture of berries, pears, peaches, or apples that sound appealing at the time.

How to make Pear-berry Crisp
1) Fill some sort of bakeware mostly full with fruit.  Stir in some cinnamon and/or ginger to taste.  If you have super juicy fruit, you might want to toss a bit of cornstarch in to keep it from being too runny.

2) In a bowl, mix together about a cup of quick oats, around 1/4-1/3 of a cup of oat flour, and about 1/2 tsp of cinnamon.  Use your fingers to combine with 1 Tbsp of butter until the butter has been combined fairly evenly.  Pour the mixture on top of the fruit in the bakeware.

3) Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until nice and hot.  This will depend on your choice of bakeware!  A bread pan will probably take 30-40 minutes.

Local Eats - Sunchokes with Crimini Mushrooms

It's winter, and the veggies at the store seem to be coming from California more and more often.  Living in northwest Oregon, I prefer to buy foods grown in Oregon and Washington.  Enter in the sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) and mushrooms!

As a kid, when my mom made artichokes, I remember digging through the leaves with great anticipation for the best part of the artichoke: the heart.  What does that have to do with sunchokes?  Sunchokes taste a whole lot like the heart of an artichoke.  YUM.

I more or less used this recipe when cooking yesterday.  I only used olive oil, sunchokes, and crimini mushrooms though, and it was really good.

If you like artichoke hearts, you should really give it a try!  It's easy and delicious!

Canned pears

 The pears Matthew and I picked a couple of Saturdays ago finally finished ripening, so I canned 14 quarts of pears today!

The little pumpkin is an upcoming project... Matthew and I both really love pumpkin, and I always bought it in a can.  I finally realized that the canned pumpkin had to come from something I could probably buy.  Indeed, this pumpkin is a pie pumpkin.  I'm going to try using this one, and then I'll probably buy a few of them and freeze some pumpkin this year.  I read the frozen pumpkin is even more delicious than canned... Can you imagine that?

Canning tomatoes!

I canned for the first time today!!!  How exciting!  I canned tomatoes because we use crushed tomatoes fairly often, and I found a u-pick place in Corvallis.  Its website is here if you're in the Corvallis area and interested in getting some tomatoes.  We got about 58 pounds for $35, and it was really fun!  The tomato plants just sprawl on the ground, so it's like an Easter egg hunt when looking for the ripe, red tomatoes.  If you are interested in canning, I recommend the Tattler canning lids that we got because they are reusable and BPA free.  Anyway, I'm just kind of exciting about canning the first time.  It's really cool to pick our own food at a local farm and then store it away so that we can eat it over the winter.

Enjoy the pictures!

58 pounds of tomatoes

Part of my fleet of canning jars.  I only used 14 today.

Making a mess...

It's a pumpkin tomato!

Simmering away...

The 14 quarts of deliciousness...

Food - It's what's for dinner

It's also what's for breakfast, lunch, and snacks.  I'm kind of enthusiastic about eating well.  I like putting good stuff into our bodies, and I try to do it in a way that has the least amount of impact on the planet.  In this post, I want to describe what we eat.

In General...
We buy almost all of our food at our local co-op.  Most of it is certified organic, and we try to eat in season and as locally as possible.  We spend about $300 a month total on food and household items for both of us.  Usually we spend less.  This is about $5 a day per person.  We eat out about six times a year, so we really do not spend much more than this.  I try to buy every bulk item that I can to reduce the amount packaging used to get our food to us.  Bulk is also almost always a cheaper route monetarily, which is a nice bonus.  For example, to avoid canned food, I buy bulk dried beans and make batches of beans in my crockpot when I need them.  Extras can be frozen for later.  I also try to make my own foods (like yogurt) to avoid packaging.

Breakfast
We don't always have a lot of time in the morning, so it is generally cereal or oatmeal with milk.  We buy oats in bulk.  We always eat a banana at breakfast.  I make enough oatmeal on Saturday to reheat a few days during the week.  It is easy to make oatmeal exciting by adding one or more of these ingredients: frozen or fresh berries, bananas, peanut or other nut butter, spiced apples, applesauce, raisins, cinnamon, sliced fruit, maple syrup, nuts, etc.  The cold cereal is an off-brand cheerios that is not organic and comes in a large plastic bag.  I'm not thrilled with this.  I'm working on alternatives.  I'm thinking about breakfast bars or a quick bread, perhaps.

Lunch
Each week I bake either bagels or bread from scratch.  I bake enough for two weeks, so I freeze something each week.  From these, we generally eat peanut butter (ground in the bulk section) and jelly (homemade freezer jam) on bread or cream cheese and sprouts on a bagel.  I'm working on getting us to use yogurt cheese instead of cream cheese since it will be cheaper and will keep us from bringing plastic containers in the house since I make my own yogurt.  Sometimes we eat leftovers from dinner at lunch.  Additionally, we always have a fruit and vegetable (usually cut up carrot sticks).  The fruit depends on the season.  Finally, yogurt and granola or a bit of cottage cheese is often also on the menu.  I want to eventually make my own cottage cheese, too.

Dinner
Our plate at dinner is generally half to two-thirds covered in fruits and vegetables.  The fruit again depends on the season.  We have salad every day with mostly lettuce during the summer and mostly kale during the winter.  Brocolli is a favorite side vegetable of ours, but other veggies make appearances.  We eat only about one pound of meat each month between the two of us, so our meals are mostly vegetarian.  We menu plan each month, so here's a list of some of the things we've eaten in the last two to three months:

• Homemade pizza
• Potato cheddar soup
• Taco lasagna  (made with beans, corn tortillas, etc.)
• Quinoa with sweet potatoes and mushrooms
• Black bean and rice enchiladas
• Stir fry (with tofu)
• Tofu stroganoff
• Chicken pot pie
• Homemade macaroni and cheese (with brocolli added in)
• Fettucine alfredo (homemade sauce, with brocolli added in)
• Black bean vegetable burgers
• Spaghetti with tofu balls
• Crockpot chili
• Vegetarian lasagna

Snacks
We both munch throughout the day to keep our energy up.  I bake granola bars, crackers, and a quick bread (like banana bread) from scratch each week.  I also make granola in the crockpot, and we eat this with milk or homemade yogurt.  I like frozen berries on top.  We froze a bunch of berries last summer.  Sometimes leftover bagels or portions of dinners make it into the freezer, and these are available for snacking.  I also bake a big batch of English muffins once every few months, and we eat these occasionally as snacks.

Desserts
On baking day, I generally make a batch of cookies, so we eat a few homemade cookies just about every day.  I cut down the butter and sugar in my recipe, and I added more flour and oats.

What we aim for...
We try to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables.  We try mostly use whole grain flour, and we eat a lot of oats.  We try not to overload with wheat but rather eat other grains and legumes.  I make recipes healthier by cutting down on excess oils and sugars.  I generally use butter in cookies, but most other recipes I substitute in  vegetable oil for butter.  If we dislike a recipe, we avoid it because there are so many that we like!  By making so much of our own food, I have a sense of appreciation for my food that I didn't have before.  I enjoy my food.  In the future, I really would like to grow a lot of my own produce.  I want to can, freeze, dry and store food to eat throughout the winter.  I'd also like to make more of my own dairy products directly from milk.  I'm excited to try some new things and see where things go!

Tortilla Recipe

It turns out that making tortillas is actually really easy.  They taste better, and they are less expensive.  Plus, it's one less plastic bag brought into the house.  I found this recipe here and only changed it a smidge.

Ingredients
4 cups flour (whole wheat and/or white)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp butter
1 to 1 1/2 cups water

Instructions
1) Thoroughly mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.
2) With your fingers, work in the butter until there are no more lumps.  (Until it resemble cornmeal.)
3) Add enough water to make your dough come together but not become too wet and sticky.  Then pour the dough onto a floured surface and knead for a few minutes until smooth and elastic.
4) For medium to large sized tortillas, divide the dough into 10-12 balls.  Use your rolling pin to roll each ball into a circle as flat as you can.  If you have a pastry cloth, it would be good to use here.  I don't, so I rolled my dough on top of a cut-open ziploc bag that had developed holes and become useless for holding food.  If you do this, you don't have to struggle with peeling the dough off the counter.
5) Cook each tortilla in a skillet on medium heat.  Cook each side until it is lightly browned.  I found that I could roll a tortilla out while another tortilla cooked, so the process went pretty quickly and efficiently.

Yum!

How to eat less meat

Matthew and I started eating less meat for a few reasons.  First, the life animals live on factory farms is torturous, so we are trying to avoid supporting this practice.  (Please read books like Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser or Food, Inc. edited by Karl Weber for more information about this and other food issues worth knowing about.)  Second, even animals that are raised in a more healthful, kind way are still expensive both to the consumer monetarily and to the environment.  Our response to all of these issues is to each eat less than a half of a pound of meat per month.

Whatever your reason is for wanting to cut some or all meat out of your diet, here's what has worked for us!

Attitudes
1) Know why you are doing what you are doing.  Whether it is for health, for the animals, or for the environment, know your rationale so that you can stay motivated.  Additionally, decide exactly how much and what type of meat you are willing to purchase and/or eat.
2) Learn about how you will make up for the nutrients that you once got from meat.  The American Heart Association has a nice page about nutrients that a vegetarian (or near vegetarian) should watch out for.
3) Recognize that "meat substitutes" (tofu, tempeh, etc.) will not taste or feel like meat.  Your experiences eating food will change!

Steps to Take
1) Decide what you will actually eat that will keep the right nutrients in your diet.  It is certainly possible to do, but you should be careful to make sure that you are eating foods that give you the nutrients that you need.  As mentioned above, the American Heart Association has a page about these nutrients.  After seeing the key nutrients listed, do a search for foods that contain them and make sure that you will eat some of them!
2)  Figure out a list of go-to breakfast, lunch and dinner ideas.  Many of your old meals can be made vegetarian.  For example, make tacos out of pinto beans instead of ground turkey or beef.  Make a veggie lasagna.  Make burgers out of black beans.  I think I will be posting in the near future about the food that we currently eat...
3) Make your food, and enjoy it!  It's really not so difficult, and you can still eat a lot of delicious food.

I do want to add a note about eating socially because the issue pops up with us since we eat with others regularly.  When eating with others, I avoid eating meat when there is an option.  However, I don't ever make a fuss because, in my opinion, my eating meat one day will not be as harmful as my being insensitive to the hospitality of whoever is offering me the kindness of a meal.  How you handle the situation is your decision, but I think it is worth mentioning that if you act judgmentally, you have a good chance of scaring people away from seeing your point-of-view in a positive light.

Eat well!

Bagels

I'm going to be completely honest. Homemade bagels fresh from the oven actually taste even better than homemade bread fresh from the oven.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

2 1/2 cups warm milk (110-115 degrees F)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp salt

1 egg

7 cups (approximately) all-purpose and/or bread flour

cornmeal and any addings/toppings you want

Instructions:

1) Stir the yeast into the warm milk. Add the vegetable oil, sugar, salt and egg, and mix well.

2) Add enough of the flour to form a soft dough. Turn out onto a surface and kneed until smooth and elastic. Add flour as necessary is you find your dough remains sticky while kneeding.

3) Place in a greased bowl turning once to grease the top. Let rise for an hour.

4) Punch down and shape into 16 balls. Press through the center to create the bagel hole. Cover and let rise for 10 minutes.

5) In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil. When boiling, drop bagels into the water for around 3 minutes. With a slotted spoon, flip each bagel partway through the boiling time. Meanwhile, place cornmeal onto a cookie sheet where you are going to place each bagel. When the bagels finish boiling, using the slotted spoon, place them onto the cookie sheet an inch or two apart.

6) Bake at 400 degree Fahrenheit for about 17 minutes.

Note: The bagels in the pictures are cheddar cheese bagels. We place bits of cheese on top after boiling the bagels. You can also add other flavors like raisins, cinnamon, blueberries, sesame seeds, etc. I've added them while shaping the bagels, but if you want only one flavor perhaps you can add it before the dough rises? I haven't tried that yet.

Baking Day!

Our oven was broken for three weeks, and today we had our first baking day since it got fixed. It seemed like a good time to celebrate on the blog! You can see the banana muffins, chocolate chip cookies (about to go in the oven as the picture was taken!), honey wheat bread, cup pies, wheat crackers (hiding in a tupperware in the back), turnip casserole, and chicken pot pie!

I hope that you agree that cup pies are pretty much just adorable. They are also a great way to use up the trimmings of pie crust so that you don't have to throw anything out.

Homemade bread... Enough said.

Thanks for celebrating baking day with me!

How to make your own yogurt

I've mentioned homemade yogurt before, but I figured that it deserves it own post. Here's where I got the original instructions.

What you need:

Thermos

1 Tbsp of your old batch of plain yogurt

An amount of milk that fits into your thermos

Pan or Pyrex to heat milk

Thermometer

How to:

1. Bring the milk to a boil either on the stove or in the microwave.

2. Let the milk cool to 50 degrees Celsius (about 122 degrees Fahrenheit)

3. Put the tablespoon of yogurt and the cooled-down milk into the thermos.

4. Close the thermos and let sit for 8-14 hours.

5. Open up the thermos and be amazed! Scoop your yogurt into a container.

6. Add any flavors (like berries) or sweeteners (like honey) that you want, but make sure you always have some plain yogurt around for your next batch!

Note: You might want to allow some of the whey to pour out before scooping out your yogurt. Additionally, if you like thicker yogurt, you can strain more whey off by using cheesecloth or a wire sieve. Save the whey! You can use the whey in baking, soups, etc.

We've been doing this for at least a couple months now, and it has worked great. However, here are a few pointers to keep you from having the same little pitfalls in the beginning. First, the milk really does need to be heated to boiling. It denatures the proteins so that the bacteria can make the milk into yogurt. Second, the thermos is necessary. The bacteria need the milk to stay warm so that they can keep doing their work. Third, the yogurt tends to stick to our thermos, but I found that letting it soak in some water with vinegar and baking soda before scrubbing it helps.

Enjoy!

Popcorn!

I don't know about you, but I think popcorn is pretty great. However, the price, amount of packaging, and nasty stuff added in when you buy bags of microwave popcorn is not great!

I looked around online, and I found out that you can pop bulk popcorn in the microwave really easily. What I do is put a couple tablespoons of seeds and a bit of olive oil in the bottom of a large-ish Pyrex bowl, cover it up (with something that vents air), and put it in the microwave for a few minutes until the popping slows way down. It's super easy, and super fun to watch if you easily entertained like I am! :)

One benefit to this is the lowered cost. I can buy two cups of organic popcorn seeds for about $1. Yeah. I think that's good too.

I really like that I control what goes on top of the popcorn, too. I always put seasonings in a little bowl with a bit of olive oil and then drizzle it onto the popcorn so that they don't just fall to the bottom. I haven't been too adventuresome yet... We've just added a little salt, garlic powder, or cinnamon sugar so far. I can imagine that there might be some yummy flavor ideas out there though. Dried basil and parmesan? Maybe...

Other ideas?

Crockpot Granola

I have been eating this for a snack all week with frozen blueberries and milk. This stuff is AMAZING.

Ingredients:

5 cup Oats

1/2 cup Coconut oil

1/2 cup Honey

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 tsp Cinnamon, Ground

1/4 cup Coconut, Shredded -- unsweetened

Instructions:

Mix in the crockpot, and cook until brown (3-5 hours) on low. Stir occasionally.

Note: This is adapted from http://homewithpurpose.blogspot.com/2009/10/crockpot-granola.html

I tend to not bother to measure things when I'm cooking, and I think I probably use a little less honey and coconut oil than listed above. It's a pretty flexible recipe... Find what you like!

Parsnip Fritters

This is a recipe as found in a email from the First Alternative Co-op of Corvallis. Parsnips are a root vegetable that grows in the Willamette Valley during the winter. We're doing our best to eat more local food, so I had to try this out. It has an interesting mix of flavors that I enjoyed and Matthew was fairly ambivalent about. We used a large egg, slightly less milk, and 1 1/2 tsp of dried rosemary, and it turned out fine. I hope you enjoy the recipe if you try it!

Recipe: Parsnip Fritters

1 medium egg

1 pound parsnips, grated

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup feta

1 tbsp fresh rosemary

2 tbsp butter or oil

Lightly beat the egg and milk in a mixing bowl and add grated parsnip, rosemary and feta. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl and stir into the wet ingredients. Put the butter in teaspoon-sized pats on a medium-hot griddle and scoop 1/3 cup of batter on top of each butter pat. Flatten slightly to form six 4” cakes. Allow the fritters to sizzle gently in the butter or oil until they are well-browned and crisp on the underside, about 5 minutes. Flip and cook 3 minutes more or until cooked through. Serve with homemade aioli & try adding your own fresh herbs for variations!

God is in the Everyday: The Kitchen

I like to make food. It started in high school when I set out on the noble journey of creating "the best chocolate chip cookie." No more flat, greasy cookies that were the result of following the recipe on the chocolate chip bag for me, thanks. In case you're curious, I have settled into a variation that is my own. Are they the best? Well, that just depends on who you ask. :)

God made us into incredible food eaters. It is something most of us typically do at least three times a day. Food is something that satisfies and nourishes, and I think that God made us with the capacity to enjoy eating.

I like making food because it is downright important. What we eat affects how healthy we are. It also affects our mood and our energy level. Our food is what makes us the physical being that we are. This is why I like to make our food from scratch as much as possible. I like to know what we are eating, and I like the ingredients to be fresh and simple.

I also like making food because homemade food tastes amazing. I dabbled with bread making a couple years ago, and there came a point when there was no turning back: I really didn't want to buy bread anymore. There's something to be said about the flavor and substance of home-cooked food made with fresh ingredients.

It is when kneading bread dough that I am most reminded of the magic in making food. I hold in my hands that which will provide us sustenance that week, and as I push it and stretch it, it turns into a healthy dough.

My kitchen is small, and once a week it gets sticky with honey and streaked with flour as we make our food. It is an exciting time to see all of the different creations formed and baked. There is blessing in it.

I cook to provide good, healthy food for my family and anyone else who happens to visit us during a meal. I am thankful that God has given us what we need to eat, and I believe that He is blessed by each lovingly made loaf of bread that comes out of the oven.

Karen's Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar (not packed)

2 eggs

1 tsp of vanilla

3/4 cup white flour

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 dash salt

1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

1 3/4 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla. (Feel free to add a smidgen of extra vanilla here!)

2. On top of the wet ingredient, pile the flours, baking soda, and salt. Mix it all together.

3. Next stir in the oats and the chocolate chips.

4. Bake at 375°F for 8-10 minutes. (Try the shorter time first. If you bake these too long, they will be dry!)

I often estimate when I add ingredients, so it is difficult to write down a recipe! If you like these at all, feel free to change them and make them to your taste. :)

Simple Living - The Great Food Adventure

About two months ago, Matthew and I started shopping differently. In my post on July 30th, I described the beginning of that change. At that time, I was expecting to do a fairly small fraction of my shopping at the co-op and most of the rest of it at Winco because I didn't think we could afford to buy much of the more expensive, organic goods. However, that's not how it turned out at all! I'd like to share my findings before school starts and things get crazy, so here we go!

First of all, in full disclosure, the budget that Matthew and I set was $300 a month for groceries including household items like dish soap, toothpaste, and the like. In August we easily met this budget (well, we spent less than $225 since we were at camp for the first week of the month). It is also looking like we are going to succeed again in September. Here's what we have been getting for our money...

At the co-op we buy all of our produce except when organic produce goes on sale at Fred Meyer. What we buy is organic, and a lot of it comes from the six counties surrounding and including our own. We also buy a lot of (mostly organic) bulk items including flour, oats, pasta, rice and beans. We buy cage-free eggs and milk from a local dairy farm. We find that we rarely need to buy packaged goods like canned food, but when we do, it is done at the co-op.

At Winco we mostly buy things that are carried at the co-op but are cheaper at Winco. For example, we get Nancy's yogurt and Tillamook cheeses. We also still buy cereal here because we buy big bags cheap, and the co-op unfortunately does not have this type of thing available. Besides an occasional item that the co-op does not carry, this is pretty much all we get here.

If you think that $300 is still a lot of money for food, realize that we only spend about $5 a day per person for all of our meals and snacks. For the quality, reduced exposure to dangerous chemicals, support for the local farmers, good treatment of the livestock that produce the food, support for environmentally friendly practices, and support for fair wages for anyone involved in the process of making products... I think that $5 is pretty amazing.

As a note, one big reason that we can afford to do this is that we cook much of our food from scratch. We generally make two different meals each week, and we eat a lot of leftovers. I also make home-baked breads, and we bake muffins or something else for snacks. However, I did this all before switching to the co-op... Even during the school year when spending 60-80 hours a week working. Admittedly, I do like cooking...

A second reason that we can afford to do this is that we have started to eat less meat. Currently, also at the co-op, we have decided to buy a small amount of lunch meat and 1 to 1.5 pounds of chicken each month. I have successfully used tofu as a substitute a few times, and I also have found a bunch of good vegetarian recipes.

I don't know if more than two or three people read this, but I wanted to share my experiences because I feel like a lot of people would love to eat healthier, organic, local foods but don't think that they can afford it. I encourage you to try it out if you have ever wanted to. I'd be more than happy to share recipes, advice, or any other information that may be helpful.

Thanks for reading!