Did You Know? Bad carbs.....

bad carbs make us crave sugar! I didn't know that. Am I the last one to know that? It makes total sense though! Why didn't someone tell me this before???? Glad I know now. =0)

Blogging Fast

I'm taking a blogging fast for a week. I need to be spending some extra time in prayer over some things and so I thought it would be good to remove the distraction of blogging. I'd also like to focus on my family more through Thanksgiving week. I hope you all have a wonderful week of giving Thanks! I'll return next Monday (Nov. 30th).

Looking for a way the little ones can help with the Thanksgiving feast? Let them make the butter.
A yummy Thanksgiving dessert for the kiddos- Frost on the Pumpkin.
My Thanksgiving post from last year...which includes lots of fun treats to make with the kids and some easy and inexpesive centerpieces for your Thanksgiving Day table.

Flubber

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 cups white elmer's glue (not washable or school glue...just all purpose)
food coloring (optional) use one drop till desired color

mix together in a bowl and set aside

1 1/3 cups warm water
2 level tsp borax

mix together in a different bowl until borax is dissolved

Pour the borax solution into the glue solution while stirring. Flubber will instantly form leaving excess water. Pour excess water out and kneed flubber with hands till smooth. Store in a class jar.

I have THREE fun ideas for this stuff:

1. This fun project makes flubber for kids to just play with like they would playdough or clay. It makes a great stocking stuffer and can be made into pretty colors.

2. For the magician in the family, you can place it in a glass jar as a magic trick. "Unspillable milk" in a jar can trick even the smartest adult if it's left white and no food coloring is added. Let the flubber settle into the glass for a day and it will look just like shiny liquid milk.

3. If you aren't too strict when it comes to laughing about gas (I've had to learn to pick my battles) then you can make your own "toots in a jar". I'm sure you've seen this stuff before where you stick your finger into the can and it makes wonderful toot noises. Ya, boys get a kick out of these silly things. Be sure to tint your toot flubber green. I don't know why, that's just the color it comes in at the store. This is another great stocking stuffer. Tie a little tag on it saying what it is with instructions to push your finger into the jar.

Chicken Stock

After you've cooked a whole chicken, let it cool and pick all the meat off of it. Place the carcass into your crock-pot with:
a carrot or two
1-2 celery stalks
a half of an onion
a bay leaf
a few garlic cloves
1 tsp Italian seasoning
a few dashes of pepper
then fill the crock to the top with water

Turn it on low and let it "cook" over night. In the morning, turn it off and let it cool. Once it's cooled (completely) strain it and ladle it into canning jars leaving about 2 inches from the top free, and freeze. I make mine with no salt and add salt to my cooking later. You could also can this so that you could store it on your pantry shelf.

You can use your broth/stock for any recipe that calls for it. It works great for soups, rice, gravy, etc.

Did You Know- Sugar consumption slows the ability of white blood cells to engulf and destroy bacteria.

read this post about it.

Answering Questions- Roast Chicken in the Crock-pot and Apple Butter

There have been some good questions about the roast chicken in the crock-pot and the apple butter and so I thought I'd answer them here for everyone's benefit.


Do you add the veggies in the a.m., too? Or do they go in later in the day? It depends on your crock-pot and the size of your veggies. I know that in my big crock-pot a whole potato can cook on low all day so I go ahead and throw in the whole potatoes in the morning with the chicken and then I cut fairly large carrots only in half and put them in as well. But if I'm doing quartered potatoes and smaller cuts of carrots then I add them at noon. If your slow cooker doesn't cook very fast then you for sure want to throw them on top in the morning. The ease of using a crock-pot for me is being able to throw it all in first thing in the morning and not tending to it the rest of the day so for that reason I put my veggies in whole or almost whole so that they can be in there all day.

Do you put the veggies on top of the chicken? Yes. I put the chicken in first, breast side down. Next I sprinkle with herbs and seasonings. Then I add the potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion and sprinkle again so that the veggies get some seasonings as well. Putting the veggies on top helps them cook slower. Apply these same methods when cooking a red meat roast.

After you put the apple butter into jars, do you freeze them? What are some ideas of how you use your apple butter? Yes, I do freeze them but you could can them for storage on your pantry shelf if you wanted to. If freezing them, be sure to leave about a 2 inch space at the top for expansion. I forgot to do that the other day and had two ruptured jars in my deep freeze. Oops. We love apple butter as baby food, on toast, bagels, English muffins, with scones, pastries, as an ice cream topping, in recipes that call for applesauce instead of oil, served over cottage cheese, served over yogurt, and spread on a graham cracker or cookie. It can also be used as a cookie filling, a pastry filling, a tart filling, etc. Anything you use jam for you can use apple butter for.

Roast Chicken (in a crock-pot)

I like to make roast chicken but in the crock-pot. This way if I'm gone all day I don't have to worry about cooking the meal, it's ready for me when I get home. For the roast chicken in the pictures I actually did two small chickens in the crock-pot. One was for dinner and one was to use the meat for other meals throughout the week.

Put chicken whole (innards removed), skin on, in the crock-pot. Give a good sprinkling of seasonings like:
rosemary
Italian seasoning mix or oregano, basil, etc...whatever Italian seasonings you have on hand
salt and pepper
and a swirl of olive oil
(I'm always asked if you need water. NOPE, it will make it's own juices, no water needed.)


Then throw in a few whole or minced garlic cloves. Cook on low from morning till dinner. If you are having company and want a fancier presentation, you can remove the chicken (carefully) and place under your broiler for just a few minutes to brown the skin on top giving it that oven roasted texture and look.

You can cook veggies either with it in the crock-pot or you can cook them on the stove top till crisp tender.

The basic veggies I do with roast chicken are
carrots
potatoes
celery
onion
but sometimes we throw something extra in too like broccoli.

Don't throw the carcass or leftovers out! You can make quite a few things with what is left over in your pot.

chick broth (instructions coming next post)
chicken noodle soup
chicken rice soup
chicken and dumplings
and more

got thyme on your hands?

(disclaimer* I'm trying to use the new blogger editor and as you can see so far I'm not very good at it. That or it doesn't work all that well. Sorry my post is a little jumbled, hopefully I'll get the hang of it soon.)

I don't know what it is about drying my own herbs that I love....mmmm, maybe it's because store bought herbs are so expensive and growing my own herbs is so cheap! Ya, I think that's it. Well, it's easy and if you've got some time/thyme on your hands that's about all you need. Seriously! I grow lots of fresh herbs in my garden through the year and use them as much as I can fresh. Once the season is over, I harvest everything that is left over and dry it for the winter. My favorite herbs to grow and dry are:

thyme
basil

parsley

lemon balm

lavender

oregano
rosemary

Here's how ya dry them.

1. pick them
2. wash them
3. dry them
you can either dry them in a dehydrator but if you don't have one (that would be me) then you lay them out on cookie sheets and cover them with paper towels to keep them clean. You leave them out somewhere dry (your oven when not in use, your laundry room, your kitchen if you've got extra counter space, the top of the fridge, just about anywhere warm and dry) for several days (if not a week or so) until they are dry. When I say "dry" I mean CRUNCHY dry.
4. crunch them. Yep, with your hands over a bowl or in a large ziplock (to contain them). Start crunching the leaves only. You don't want the stems or any of the flower buds...just the leaves.

5. store them in a small jar.

It's a little messy but it produces so much that you'll have plenty to give away even as gifts most likely. It should also be enough to last you through the year if not through two years depending on how much you dry and how much cooking you do.

Easy Apple Sauce/Butter

I got this applesauce recipe from my friend, Katey but made changes. I try to simplify things as much as possible. I also love apple butter so my version is more like apple butter. Yum. When I was making it I felt like Diane Keaton in Baby Boom making Gourmet Baby Apple Sauce.

1. I core my apples and cut them in half.
2. I fill my crock-pot with them till it's full to the top.
3. I turn on the crock-pot on low for about 8 hours.
(I often do this before bed and let them cook all night.)
4. Then I sprinkle a heavy amount of cinnamon. (you can add as much as you like to your own taste.)

5. Once cooked, I puree the apples and then ladle it into jars.

That's it. I leave the skin on for extra fiber. I use gala apples which are a dessert apple and so sweet I don't need sugar. I don't add water because I want it to be thick like apple butter. I don't add lemon because I'm happy with my apple butter color (and the skins make it a dark apple sauce.

You can by all means peel the apples first.

Here is Katey's original recipe. Thank you for sharing it Katey!

4 lbs tart apples, cored and sliced thin

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

1.       Mix apples (about 12 cups) with cinnamon and sugar and put into crock pot.

2.       Pour water and lemon juice over apples. Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3 hours.(I cook them overnight and we have it for breakfast, yum!)

3.       Dump apples and juices into food processor and puree well.

Favorite Gadget Thingy- Plate Warmer

I know you'll probably laugh at this one....but it's really not a gadget at all, in fact, it's my stove top. Now, here is my disclaimer, you have to know your own stove very well to do this. DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT do this unless you totally know each burner well on your stove. I have a glass top stove and my burners get just warm on LOW. They make the perfect plate warmer. I don't want to be responsible for anyone breaking their dishes though so please don't do this unless you know your stove well.


I usually place a whole stack of plates on the burner, turn it to low and then rotate the stack so that all the plates get warm while I'm making breakfast or a meal. I like to serve food on warm plates to keep the food hotter longer instead of on cold plates. In the picture, I keep a warming plate on the stove to put the done pancakes on which keeps the pancakes warm till we are ready to serve them.



If you don't know your stove top well or if you aren't brave enough to give this ago I'd like to suggest other ways to keep warm plates:
1. turn your oven on low (200 degrees or so) and place your plates in there. This works well in the winter when turning the oven on is a bonus not a curse.
2. run hot water over the plates in the sink or put them in a plugged sink of hot water. But you'll need to dry them when you are done.

Featured Product- Blue Moon Pumpkins

This is my something pretty to show you. Isn't it lovely? I love these blue moon pumpkins! They are my new favorite pumpkin. They are a sage green with a light blue tinge to them. They look awesome with the colors in my house and I can't wait to grow more next year! I'll be collecting and drying the seeds out of these. For those of you who live near me, I got my seeds at Zamzows.

These aren't that great for cooking with though....word to the wise.

Featured Product- Heirloom Squash

My parents planted this heirloom squash in their garden and it was so good. See the bulb at the bottom? That's where the seeds were so that long swan neck had no seeds in it, just thick butter flesh. It was amazing and it made great soup! It's great in lasagna as well. No stringy middles, no big seeds, just nice meaty flesh! (Actually there are seeds in the bulb at the bottom but the long neck has no seeds.) It didn't have a name other than "heirloom squash" on the seed packet. They purchased the seeds from Azure Standard. I hope to plant these in the future.

Does anyone recognize this squash? We are calling it the swan squash.

*UPDATE: I finally found out the name of this squash. It's a variety of zucchini. It's called ZUCCHINO RAMPICANTE. It is one of my very favorites now! Yum!

Soaking Beans

I borrowed my mom's copy of Nourishing Traditions since mine is packed away in the garage....and I read page 495 so that I could better answer Amy's question from way back. And here's what I learned.

In addition to what I said here about soaking beans for the benefit of avoiding unwanted um, ur, gas and for the sake of speeding up cooking time, soaking beans also aids in making them easier to digest.

One thing I didn't know is that you should always skim off the foam that appears while cooking them. Discard the foam.

Another tip is to soak them always using lemon juice when soaking.

Soak for 12-24 hours in a warm place to make them as digestable as possible. (this fits in with Nourishing Tradition's practice of fermenting foods so that they are easier to digest.)

Here is the basic recipe in NT:
2 cups beans
warm water to cover

If making black beans, mix in 2 tbsp whey or lemon juice. Whey is the liquid that separates from yogurt. You can either buy it in specialty health stores, pour it off of your yogurt or make it by hanging your yogurt in cloth over night and letting the whey drip out of it into a bowl. Your yogurt will now be cream cheese. The whey is the basis for most fermenting methods.

Leave in warm place for 12-24 hours depending on the size of the bean. Small beans 12 hours, large beans 24 hours. Drain, rinse (don't skip this part), cover with fresh water and cook either in a pot on the stove simmering for 6-8 hours or in a crock-pot on low for 8 hours. Add more water if needed. Skim foam off of the top as needed. Do not salt until they are done cooking. Salt slows down the cooking process.

The best seasonings for beans are:
salt
garlic
onions
taco seasoning

I should mention that if you sprout your legumes/beans even for a day or two that it will increase their nutrition emmensly but it can also alter the taste as well. I have not experimented with sprouting beans that I use for cooking yet.

I hope this post was helpful when it comes to soaking legumes.

November

Well, that was fun. I hope you got something out of that series. All good things I'm happy to pass down to my children.

Some things I have planned for this month:
- some more "do you knows"
- some featured products
- some favorite gadget things
- applesauce/apple butter recipe
- roasted chicken crock-pot style
- making chicken stock
- something pretty to show you
- herb drying instructions and pictures
- and more

Attention all Ohio residents

An important issue concerning our healthy foods to vote on! See here.

Series- Making Organics Affordable Conclusion

Well, October has come and gone quickly and so has my little series on making organics affordable. But before it's totally over I just wanted to see if anyone had ideas that I didn't post about? I'd love to hear what you are doing to be frugal in the kitchen or around the house. So, post a comment and let me know your thoughts.

In the meantime, it occurred to me that even when we try to do lots of frugal things like we've talked about here over the past month, that sometimes we seem to still be going over our food budgets. Assuming you aren't wasting food, throwing out leftovers, etc. it's a good idea to track what you actually spent each month on groceries. You may need to up your food budget a little. If your food budget isn't realistic then maybe it's time to re-evaluate your budget.

Our basic human needs (physically speaking) are food, shelter, and clothing. When it comes down to what we really need these are the three most important. And food is such a big one! Of those three, food would be number one, right!?!? Shouldn't our budgets reflect how important food is for us? Not only is it the number one basic need but it's also one that is crucial to our health. Don't make food low on your budget priority list. Instead give it the priority that it should have. Make sure your budget is realistic. In a day and age where cheap food, processed food, and couponed food is ever so popular and our nation's health is declining at the same rate that these things are growing in popularity, it's worth investing in quality food.

Evaluate your budget if you need to but keep being frugal and don't waste food. One hidden result that I've noticed is that when we invest our money into the food we eat, we eat healthier, and then we don't get sick as often, don't have huge doctor bills, and don't have to pay lots for prescriptions. It could save us thousands in the long run and we'll feel better the whole time too!

Don't forget to leave any comments about other ways to make organics affordable....

a taste of victory

My husband just said one of the best things in the world to me today!

"After eating home cooked meals all the time fast-food doesn't even sound good."

be still my heart. One word. Victory! It's been a longggggggggggggggggggggggggg road when it comes to the husband eating healthier issue, as I'm sure it is for a lot of men. Let me say that again, it's been a LONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG road but the taste of victory is so sweet! I had to record his quote here so that when I get discouraged with the cooking healthy for my family (who can be picky sometimes) I'll remember this.

Tomorrow

Don't forget about these for tomorrow....
our family doesn't do Halloween but we do celebrate Reformation Day! I think we'll be painting pumpkins tomorrow (our tradition is to paint them instead of carve them) and possibly making some kind of new reformation day dessert. We haven't made dessert in a long time around here so I think it's due time! Usually we go out to a restaurant of our kid's choice and sometimes they wear costumes out to dinner since you can get away with that on Oct. 31st. but we'll be hanging out with Grandpa and Grandma who are coming for a quick visit.

Series- MOA Make homemade household products

We've talked about making homemade food from scratch, homemade snacks, homemade ready made foods, but now let's talk about homemade for out of the kitchen. One of the ways that I've made more room in my grocery budget for organics is by making homemade products for the rest of the house. I'm still experimenting in this area of more natural living but for over a year I've been making my own laundry detergent and using my own homemade reusable dryer sheet.

I've also experimented quite a bit with using vinegar as a cleaning product around my house. It's great because it's safe and natural. It does smell though so that is a down side.

I've been reading recipes about making your own dusting product and furniture polish. I can't wait to try those as well.

I've made my own pest repellent for the garden and the flower beds.
-Cinnamon and cayenne pepper for the garden.
-A few drops of dish soap in a spray bottle of water for the flowers.

It can seem so strange to use every day natural products but to our great-grandmothers it was normal I'm sure. Isn't it amazing how marketing has convinced us that we have to buy it in a bottle at the store with a pretty label rather than just make it ourselves with basic ingredients and it does just as good of a job if not better and we don't suffer the chemical affects?

What wonderful ideas do the rest of you have in the area of making your own products? Have any recipes for making your own products that you love? Do you feel challenged to try something new? I hope so.

Farming methods

Joel Salatin I think is one of the farmers interviewed on Food Inc. He calls himself a "Christian Libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer"

"Yes, the prices are higher, but it's because all of the costs are in the price of this chicken and you are paying it here at the cash register, not paying it in sickness and disease and pollution and stink," he explained.

Read here for the full article

Polyface Farms link

Organic is a step in the right direction but it would be great if all farmers practiced these same methods of farming.

"We are beyond organic," exclaimed Salatin

His books:

~EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IS ILLEGAL: War Stories from the Local Food Front

~You Can Farm

~Salad Bar Beef

~Pasture Poultry Profits

~Holy Cows and Hog Heaven

~Family Friendly Farming

~and the Polyface Farm DVD