Healthy & Homemade Granola

I've made other granola's before but nothing compares to the flavor of the one I found at The Kitchen Sink. Kristin's whole site is FULL of wonderful mouthwatering recipes so be sure to visit and see what she's been up to recently! The photo below shows the version I came up with but check out the link above for the real deal. I do have a few recipes posted on this little ol' blog - pie, chili, chicken pot pie, beef barley soup, and probably a couple of others. It's nice to know that I can always look up the family favorites on my blog when I can't find them in the recipe drawer.

Do you make granola too?




Mix & bake at 375 degrees, stirring every 10 minutes. (I cooked mine 25 minutes, but should have only cooked it 20) Kristin suggests a foil lined pan but we don't use aluminum at our house so I sprayed a little olive oil on my Pampered Chef roasting pan and that worked like a charm!

Tasty Tuesday - Homemade Taco Seasoning

Lindsay hosts Tasty Tuesday over at Our Lives in a Nutshell...you know, when she's not on bed-rest or dealing with the worst flood in over a hundred years. So far their basement is staying dry, but one look at the pictures she's posted and you can see first hand that her town has quite a fight on their hands. May God continue to protect your precious family Lindsay!

We are slowly but surely trying to weed out the additives, preservatives, and unpronounceable ingredients from our diet. When it came to Taco Tuesday* night I was dropping the ball. The packets of taco seasoning you buy at the store have MSG in them. It bugged me that I was knowingly putting it into my family's bodies.

So on my last trip to the grocery store I bought a few new spices and tried making taco seasoning from scratch. It wasn't hot by any means, but it was certainly tasty enough. I think next time I mix a batch I'll add more cumin and possibly more chili powder. Don't want it to get too spicy with little kids in the house and all.

This recipe is the equivalent of 2 store bought packages of seasoning.

Taco Seasoning

1 T. chili powder
2 t. onion powder
1 t. cumin
1 t. garlic powder
1 t. paprika
1 t. sugar
1 t. salt
1 t. powdered oregano (no need to use powdered if you ask me - I didn't even notice the bigger bits)

* I plan our menu with a specific type of food for 6 days of the week. It helps me not feel so overwhelmed when I sit down with my cookbooks. We don't necessarily eat the meal on the 'correct' day, but at least all the ingredients are in the house for 6 dinners. Rather than say "what are we going to eat this week?" I say, "Ok, time to find a chicken recipe."

Monday - chicken
Tuesday - Mexican
Wednesday - Italian
Thursday - Breakfast foods
Friday - Homemade pizza (still searching for the perfect crust recipe)
Saturday - Crock Pot meal
Sunday - leftovers

Next on my recipe wish list is a substitute for "Cream of (take your pick) Soup" Anyone out there know a good one?

For my other Tasty Tuesday posts click here.

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Tasty Tuesday - Beef Stew

My blogging friend Lindsay hosts Tasty Tuesday and I have a beef stew recipe to share. A winning combo if I've ever seen one!
After taking the kids skiing yesterday we enjoyed some leftover stew. (That's the secret.) It gets thicker after you reheat it. We almost always make a double batch so we are guaranteed to have leftovers.


Taken from my More With Less Cookbook:

Oven Beef Stew

Shake in Bag* - 2 T flour, 1 t salt,
1/4 t pepper, 1 lb beef cubes
Heat in skillet - 2 T shortening (I use olive oil instead)



Brown beef cubes, then place in greased casserole dish (I use a glass dish that doesn't need to be greased.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Add 2 c. tomato juice**

1 onion, chopped
1/2 t. dried basil


Cover and bake 1 hour

Add 4 small/medium potatoes and 3 carrots, cut into 1" pieces (This is a good point to reevaluate whether there is enough liquid in the dish. Lots will cook away so add more juice at this point to stretch the recipe further if you want.)

Bake 1 hour longer or until tender.

* I've found that using a large yogurt container works just as good as a bag, is reusable, and provides an easy place to toss the veggie peelings.

**I never ever have tomato juice in the house. I have always substituted tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce by putting 1 cup sauce and 1 cup water in instead of juice. I've even gotten away with adding pureed spinach without anyone catching on.

More with Less - easy no-knead whole wheat bread

Jenn hit the nail on the head with her comment on my previous post. The beauty of this recipe is that it only dirties the mixer, bread pans, one kettle, and the measuring cups/spoons.

Here's the recipe straight out of the More with Less Cookbook:
(I'll add my two cents at the end.)

Combine in large mixer bowl:
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 T salt
3 pkg dry yeast

Heat in saucepan until very warm (120-130 degrees):
2 cups water
2 cups milk
1/2 cup oil

Add to dry ingredients:
warmed liquids
2 eggs

Blend at low speed until moistened. Beat 3 minutes at medium speed. Stir in by hand.

Add 5-6 cups white flour

Use enough flour to form a stiff batter.
Cover and let rise until double.
Stir down and spoon into 2 greased 9x5 inch bread pans.
Let rise 20-30 minutes.
Bake at 375 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

I wouldn't consider this a true whole wheat recipe since there's more white flour than wheat. At the point where you add 5-6 cups white flour, if I have enough wheat flour I use 2-3 cups wheat flour instead. It never hurts to sprinkle wheat bran in either.

The first thing I do is start heating the milk, water, and oil. While that's heating I combine the first ingredients in the mixer. That way I don't have to wait for the liquids to warm up.

When we are out of milk or running low, I use powdered milk. Works like a charm and is cheaper.

Happy baking everyone!

What My Kids Learn From Making Bread

During the summer (when these pics were taken) we spent part of Mondays making bread in an effort to eat healthier and save money.
I wish I could say I kept up with that tradition, but alas, I've returned to buying bread from the store. (We still make these muffins though.) Without any good way to store the loaves they were getting moldy too fast and I've yet to figure out a way to slice the bread so I can use it for sandwiches. It probably has something to do with the recipe I use, but I don't have a bread board either so I can't use a recipe that requires kneading. Does anyone have a good sandwich friendly no-knead recipe?

It was fun while it lasted and I think the kids got a lot out of it.

They practiced taking turns.
They worked on motor skills when they dumped the ingredients.
They learned that you have to work for what you want.
They practiced their math skills.
They learned to be patient.
























They learned that things you make yourselves always taste better.



If you are new to my blog this post also talks about why we made our own bread and the cookbook that has inspired me.

Home Grown Goodness

Hi.
My name is Carrie and until last week I'd never cooked a whole chicken before.

Phew! That felt good to get off my chest!
I felt like the only woman in her thirties who hadn't plopped a bird in a giant pot of boiling water before. If you were like me, let me be the first to tell you that there's nothing to it! Don't be a chicken!
Buy yourself some bone-in chicken (or in our case, thaw a bird given to us from Brian's cousin's farm), control your gag reflex as you cut it into manageable pieces, and prepare yourself to eat some of the most delicious chicken. All you have to do is keep an eye on it so it doesn't boil over and when the meat is no longer pink and is falling off the bone, times up!

I strained the broth, let it sit in the refrigerator for a day so the fat would harden at the top, and picked the meat off the bones to use in various recipes throughout the week.
Brian made a big pot of chicken noodle soup a couple days ago and I swear it tasted better knowing that it was homemade stock and not from the store.
There's just something about the change in seasons that makes me want to hurry up and make all the comfort foods we don't eat in the summer.


Another thing we'll be eating a lot of this winter is apple pie. A couple of weeks ago I discovered that there is an apple tree in the park. We have no idea what kind of apples it produces except to say that they are ginormous.
We haven't taken out the big ladder from the shop yet to pick the apples way up high. Instead, we settled for shaking the lower branches until a few apples fell to the ground. Even using this method requires the little ladder and establishing a safe distance away for the kids to watch.

We haven't eaten very many apples this year because of rising food costs and the fact that they are on the dirty dozen list of fruits and veggies we should buy organically. Now we've been blessed with FREE ORGANIC apples!

Here's the recipe we love for French Apple Pie (tastes a lot like apple crisp, but with the bonus of a bottom crust)

FRENCH APPLE PIE
1 pie crust (9 inch pie)
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 cups cored, peeled and thinly sliced apples
1 c flour
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c butter

Prepare pie crust according to directions on package for a filled one-crust pie.
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix sugar, cornstarch, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt into bowl. Stir in sliced apples.
Spoon apple slices into pie plate.
(I like to sprinkle extra cinnamon and nutmeg on top)
To prepare crumb topping; mix together flour and brown sugar. Blend in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle crumb topping over pie.
Place pie on sheet pan on center oven rack.
Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes.
Enjoy!

More with Less - potty training

We're potty training Julia almost a year earlier than Sam and to be perfectly honest it's because we are trying to cut our expenses as much as possible. More than ever before I'm glad we invested in cloth diapers to fill in the gaps while she's training. So where does the More with Less lesson come in? Instead of buying candy as a reward for going in the potty I bought a bag of these TollHouse treats. I get more candy and spend less money AND I indulge my sweet tooth at night with a small handful.
I'm also getting more with less by using the old fashioned Gerber plastic pants instead of the fancier diaper covers. For less than the price of one cover I get three (better fitting) ones.

Other reasons we've decided to start potty training is that she talks so well and it's much easier to train in the summer months. It would be silly to wait until next summer. She's totally on board now so why wait?
With the warm weather we're having she simply runs around naked (less laundry!) when we're downstairs on the hardwood floors and wears a cloth fitted diaper when we're upstairs.

Today marks end of the first week of training. How is she doing?
1 accident in 5 hours this morning
8 times peeing in the little potty chair (I'm a big fan of the chairs where kids can go by themselves. It only took her a day to learn the cues that she needed to go so now any time she has the urge, she simply runs over and goes. It also means less times in a day that I have to ask her if she needs to go.)

My goal for the upcoming week: For her to be able to stay dry when she has undies or a diaper on. She wets her diaper more than she has accidents and considering that she's not wearing a diaper very often, that's an area we need to work on. All and all I am very happy with how well she's doing. We aren't in a hurry, we don't go out much, and she likes going on the potty.

What hints have you found helpful in training your kids?

More With Less - Refrigerator Bran Muffins

A few weeks ago I did a post about how my family has made some significant changes to our diet, to what food we choose to buy, and how to get/do more with less. Other than my persistent sweet tooth (see yesterday's post), I'm happy with our new lifestyle. Sam is eating veggies like he hasn't since I made homemade baby food for the first year of his life, nobody is eating processed crackers or snacks anymore, and the kids are learning how to bake. (I think they are learning more from the process but that's different post.)
Besides our weekly bread making ritual we've made Refrigerated Bran Muffins from my More with Less Cookbook.

Place in bowl:
2 c. ready-to-eat bran cereal
Pour over:
2 c. boiling water
Set aside to cool





Cream together in large mixing bowl:
1 c shortening 1 1/2 c. sugar
4 eggs
Add and beat in:
1 qt buttermilk* soaked bran mixture

*If you're like me and don't keep buttermilk on hand you can make your own





For each 1 cup buttermilk called for in a recipe, use 1 cup plain yogurt or sour cream;

OR

1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough milk to make 1 cup;

OR

1 cup milk plus 1 3/4 tablespoons cream of tartar;

OR

1/4 cup buttermilk powder and 1 cup water.


Sift together:
5 c. flour I use at least 50% whole wheat flour in all my baking.
5 t. baking soda
1 t. salt








Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and fold until flour is moistened




Fold in:
4 c. additional dry bran cereal

I told you it was a giant batch!

Store batter in covered containers in refrigerator.
Keeps 3-4 weeks.





When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees and fill well-greased muffin tins 2/3 full.

I like to use the paper cups especially since my muffin tins have toxic non-stick coating on it. If you don't know this already, Teflon is terrible for you.

Bake 20 minutes.

Enjoy!!!!



Bonus Material -

* You could always use powered milk to save even more money.
* Until we ran out of mix (took two and half weeks) we made six muffins every morning for breakfast

* It was nice to know that the mix wasn't going to go bad if we didn't eat any muffins one day.

* My oven must run hot - it only took 14 minutes to bake a batch every time
* You could mix in raisins and/or nuts just prior to baking if your family would eat them (mine wouldn't).

* To add a touch of sweetness - add a sprinkling of brown sugar and nuts or granola before putting them in the oven.

I'd love to hear from you if you try these. :)

The summer of [fill in the blank]

There are things that are unique about this summer that I don't want to fall between the cracks in my memory.

For the fun of it, what are some of your favorite memories of the summer so far?

Here are mine:

This is the summer of getting back on the water after 2 long years.


...watching Sam get the hang of tennis (and baseball)


the summer the kids became playmates instead of just siblings


The summer we went to the beach almost every day


The first summer we had friends over to frolic in "our" lake


The summer it was a real treat to go anywhere because of $4 a gallon gas
(Como Zoo)


The first summer that I was home with only my kids. Stay at home mom? Not even close. Photography or park work keeps me hopping.


The summer we had cool weather well into June

the summer Sam flew a kite all by himself

the summer we got extra time with Daddy now that he works 10 minutes from home


* The wedding anniversary we celebrated at a bar...with the kids


* The summer of two playgroups at local parks and hosting regular playdates at our house


* the summer I could let Sam be more independent


And while I don't have the pictures to prove it, this is also the summer we got back to basics. No more satellite TV, no more store bought bread or crackers, no more land line telephone, and no more high speed Internet.

penny pinchers and picky eaters...

...don't go well with rising food prices. At the beginning of the month when I swore off a diet consisting almost entirely of processed foods I didn't realize the scope of the challenge I was taking on. I knew it would be hard to give up the junk food, but what I didn't realize was how difficult it would be to find a variety of healthy alternatives that we could fill our tummies without emptying our bank account. Over the past three weeks I've picked up a few things that I thought I'd share with anyone else out there who's looking for healthy and affordable options. It's nothing fancy, but what do expect for a $50 a week food budget? Please keep in mind some items carry over from other weeks shopping trips. The goal is to coordinate meals that will use every last mushroom, green pepper, and leaf of lettuce before they go bad in my crisper drawer AND to make things my picky children husband will eat.

Spaghetti with whole wheat pasta.-
I buy one of the big jars so I can stretch it for two meals.
Any leftover veggies from earlier meals get thrown into the sauce or put in a toss salad.
I have a bag of ravioli in the freezer that I alternate with the regular spaghetti noodles to mix it up from week to week.

Tacos
Flour tortillas last for a number of meals around here especially since we switch it up with mulit-grain tortilla chips for taco salads. We get a good helping of lettuce and tomato with this meal too (getting more fresh fruits and veggies into our meals is a priority)
It also helps that we have a farmer in the family who sells us fantastic hamburger at an unheard of price.
My friend Jennifer gave me a recipe for seasoning that is tasty, doesn't have the bad stuff in the store packets, and is more affordable. I've also made chicken fajitas by marinating the chicken in Italian dressing for 30 minutes prior to sauteing and then adding some chili powder to the oil in the pan before tossing in the veggies.

It goes without saying that buying in bulk and freezing dinner size portions of meats can save money too. It's so nice to pull out a Ziploc baggie of brats instead of having to buy them in small packages each time. If I buy buns for burgers or brats I feel OK about paying extra for the whole grain kind since we get two meals out of a package of eight. Brian will use the left over bun for his tuna salad sandwich during the week or I'll slather them with PB&J for a picnic at the beach.
We're also not above eating brats on hamburger buns or hamburgers on brat buns.

A staple meal around here are chicken kabobs with mushrooms and green peppers. Brian has a secret ingredient that makes these kabobs my favorite meal next to a steak from Biaggi's. While he's outside grilling the chicken to perfection, I'm inside making couscous. Notice who gets the easy job. :)
Sam doesn't like peppers or mushrooms so we always have a bag of baby carrots on hand.
If there's extra chicken Brian will grill it with the kabobs so we can have Chicken Cesar Salads the next day.

I follow the dirty dozen list and purchase organic peppers and strawberries, but conventional bananas, kiwi, mushrooms, and carrots.


Speaking of bananas...
My kids get their fill of potassium everyday for sure.
They eat them as snacks at the park.
They eat them for breakfast (or lunch) sliced with peanut butter on them.
In fact, that's exactly what they had for lunch today. As well as this concoction:
I steamed frozen veggies (Brittany's family uses frozen berries a lot, - another great money saver).
And then use that water (where some nutrients escaped to) to make my couscous. Two servings filled the kids and I up - something that's hard to do sometimes. These kids are bottomless pits!
Sam only likes carrots right now and I'm OK with that. This was the first time he's tried couscous and I'm thrilled that he likes it.
I had no doubt that Julia would dig right in and sure enough, that's exactly what she did.




You wouldn't know it by the way they are eating, but they both had huge bowls of Grape Nuts with fresh strawberries for breakfast.

Another breakfast food that we actually rarely eat for breakfast is eggs. Last night I made scrambled eggs with green onions, mushrooms, green peppers, and tater tots for Julia and I, plain scrambled eggs for Sam, and sunny side up eggs for Brian. For the most part I don't consider myself to be a short order cook kinda mom, but plain ol' scrambled eggs gets boring for most of us.

The tater tots were originally purchased for Tater-Tot Hot Dish as were the veggies from lunch today. I love Tater Tot Hot Dish! I also love that it's easy and filling. I recently found my box of cookbooks and am anxious to try out a homemade white sauce from my More With Less Cookbook. Here's my current recipe for the hotdish if you aren't familiar with this Midwest Meal:

Brown 2 pounds of hamburger, drain
Add 1 can cream of whatever soup
Add one bag of frozen mixed veggies
Transfer to deep baking dish and top with tater tots
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes
Enjoy!

I think I've covered the main things we eat around here... Oh wait! How could I forget pancakes!?!!?!?! When we get to the end of the week and our fruit bowl and crisper drawer are getting bare I pull out the pancake mix. The kids gobble them up faster than Brian can make them on our little frying pan.

While this particular brand of pancakes is delicious, I won't be getting any more when it's gone. Instead, I am going to make a batch of homemade mix from my More With Less cookbook. My family has prepared foods from the cookbook for decades. I "borrowed" my mom's copy years ago but lost it during a move. A few years later my cousin, Deb, gave me a new copy for Christmas (along with homemade bread, organic chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, a spider plant descendant of our great-grandmother's plant which was planted in dirt from the family cabin in Northern Minnesota). The cookbooks is perfect for families who are trying to get away from processed foods and save money at the same time. I've already tried a few of the recipes and will share the results in upcoming More With Less posts.