Szabo Dinner

Should have taken a picture with the chefs. They were even more wonderful than the food!

Didn't get a shot when they came here for fish dinner a month or two later either!

Too True!

Our Ladies' Book Club is reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, and it is a fine specimen of nineteenth century British humor along the lines of P. G. Wodehouse.  In plugging along through the book yesterday I was struck by a passage that I would not have understood nearly so well before we shifted our dietary habits around last summer.

We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach.  Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgement.  Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father--a noble, pious man.  (Chapter 10)

Of course, it is overstated and simplified for the sake of humor, but we have found those statements to be much closer to the truth than we would have ever dreamed a year ago!

Sharyl's Spinach Salad

A recipe in high demand after last Sunday's potluck: Spinach Salad  Dressing 1 C. extra virgin olive oil 1/2 C. raw apple cider vinegar 1 med. onion - chopped 1/2 C. sweetener of choice or stevia to taste 1 teas. worcestershire sauce 2 teas. soy sauce 2 teas. salt 1/2 C. catsup Blend in blender and chill. Salad 1 bag of baby spinach 1 can water chestnuts 1 can bean sprouts 4 hard boiled eggs - chopped 1/2 pound fried bacon 1/2 C. chopped peacans Mix with desired amount of dressing and chill. ~Sharyl

A Little Extra Real Food Motivation

Krispy Kreme Deconstructed

Isn't it amazing how photography can make the mouth water?  Scrolling down, however, makes me more motivated to make our own--once we're finished with this candidas diet, that is.

A Chef's Perspective on Dining Out

Below I've quoted the intro and conclusion of a guest post on Healthy Home Economist. What this chef says here is exactly why eating out is an extremely rare event in our household.  For more of Emily Duff's story, go to the HHE blog here . 

Joke: What does a chef make for dinner when she has the night off?

Answer: Reservations!
It’s true. Most working chefs rarely cook at home. Perhaps that is because we have been told that it is not healthy to take our work home with us at the end of the day.
I am an exception. I am a retired NYC restaurant chef, cooking instructor, wife and mother and I prepare all of my family’s meals at home. That’s right, breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week, at home. I prefer it that way. I know what we are eating and we always feel good after a meal.

The Real Truth About Eating Out

After all these years, I know the bitter truth about what you are getting when you dine out.
Let me enlighten you.
Most cooking oil in professional kitchens is a mix (25/75) olive oil to cheap canola oil. Most frying oil is made from GM soy and practically all corn products: tortilla chips, soft tacos, polenta, grits, etc. are GM as well.
Seafood is mostly farm raised. Eggs and poultry are rarely pastured unless noted on the menu and then the entree is at least $30. All bacon has nitrites/nitrates and dairy is unfortunately pasteurized (the occasional raw milk artisinal cheese will find its way onto the better menus). Pork is seeing a change since you can’t throw a ham hock these days without hitting a menu that features a pork belly dish on it (thank you Momofuku).
Most produce is conventional which means that 85% of the mashed potatoes in restaurants today are toxic from pesticides living in the mineral depleted soil.
Grass fed beef, thank goodness, has become the new darling of the restaurant world and is finding it’s way onto many café menus, NYC lunch trucks and even in new fast food burger joints (elevation burger).
When they bring tallow back to fry the chips, that’s when I’ll think about giving them my business. On a recent trip to The Strip House (I was taken by a friend for my birthday who knows I love steak), I ordered the special grass-fed Delmonico rib eye, crisp goose fat potatoes and black truffle creamed spinach. Sometimes you can hit it bang on the head. The steak alone was $42 but boy oh boy was it GOOD!
When you dine out, Real Food costs big money.

Is It Possible to Eat Out Safely?

My simple advice is to stick to the more expensive restaurants and the ones that offer better, Real Food choices on their menus.
If you can’t afford them, stay home and cook!
Once upon a time restaurants were only for the rich and famous. I assure you that you are not missing much. I send my family off each day with food that I lovingly prepare. I do not believe in letting anyone else feed and nourish my family. That is my sacred right as a wife and mother, which is hilarious considering that I fed people for a living for many years, and I thank you all for trusting me. Someday, I sincerely hope to have the privilege to do it again. But not in NYC. My restaurant space that was once renting for $3,000 a month is now going for $14,000 and those numbers just don’t add up.

Born and raised in NY, Emily Duff has been cooking professionally in NYC since 1988. Emily worked for farmers Wilklow, Bradley and Dent from 1989 – 1991 at the Tribeca Washington Farmers Market and Brooklyn, Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. Her café Henrietta’s Feed & Grain (1993) was one of the first eateries to employ a completely seasonal menu based on the bounty of local growers from NY and NJ. The Feed & Grain earned her a reputation of being a chef true to flavor and respectful of ingredients while creating and serving honest, delicious, healing food. Emily enjoyed cooking in restaurant kitchens all over NYC until she retired in 2002 to continue her work in private catering and plan a family. In 2005, after giving birth to her daughter, Emily set forth on a dedicated path of learning in the field of Traditional Nutrition and Natural healing.  The birth of her son solidified her dedication and saw a marriage of her passions: Health & Wellness, Food & Family. Family2Table is her vehicle for sharing all that she has learned in her 20 plus years of work. You can read her blog at family2table

Into the Wild Movie Review and an L.A. Times Nutrition Article

Titus and I finally got around to seeing Into the Wild last night after first hearing about it a couple years ago (see March 2009 story telling).  The occasional nudity, foul language, and general adult foolishness keep it from being appropriate viewing for children, but we think it is indispensable for young adults (still skipping the nudie parts).  So much fodder for discussion there!  We fully intend to view it with our children as they enter adulthood in order to help them understand more fully where certain types of folly lead.

In other news, L.A. Times  just printed an article that confirms what we've been learning around here about the benefits of orienting our diets in a high healthy fat, low carb direction.  Several months ago,  Bee Wilder helped us pull together various things we've been learning over the past few years and focus on candidas control in a specific way using the type of diet described above.  We've been making focused efforts in that direction since August and have seen numerous benefits in our family's health.  There are lots of success stories on Bee's site where people have written in to describe their progress in everything from diabetes to fibromyalgia, which serves as further confirmation that this is a good way to eat for many reasons.

'Tis the Season . . .

. . . to enjoy a bit of history.  Since I probably fall into the categories of both amateur foodie and amateur history buff, I liked this overview of the background of the gravy packet (and other mixes, too):

It's All Gravy: The Industrial History of a Thanksgiving Favorite

HT: Rick at Dry Creek Chronicles

Peanut Butter Crunch Bars: A Junior-Chef-Friendly Sweet Treat

Ian and Anna both love to whip out this no-bake dessert---and Lewis keeps asking us to let him do it.  The rest of us are just glad to finally have homemade dessert on hand more often! 

Peanut Butter Crunch Bars

1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter
16 oz peanut butter
3 c. bran flake cereal (though grape nuts work pretty well, too!)

chocolate chips to taste (We prefer the bittersweet and do roughly 8 oz per recipe.)

Melt butter.  Mix in peanut butter and sugar; then stir in cereal.  Spread evenly into a 9x13 pan.  Melt chocolate chips over low heat, and spread evenly over bars.  Refrigerate to cool.  Cut into bars. 

These are also great crumbled and stirred into ice cream, and I'm sure there are lots of other creative applications for this recipe yet to be discovered!

Foodie Link for Vitamins and Minerals

I have a cute video of a couple budding musicians in our household if blogger ever decides to enable me to post videos again.  Until then, I wanted to note this helpful resource for figuring out  which foods to focus on if trying to increase certain nutrients in your diet.  It's nice to have things listed so clearly and concisely.


http://nourishedkitchen.com/best-sources-vitamins-minerals/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nourishedkitchen+%28The+Nourished+Kitchen%29

Kitchen Fun

Inspired by a kids' magazine, Anna enthusiastically donned her chef's hat and whipped up a bunny salad.

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Then, since the first was so much fun, she willingly turned out four more:

Any guesses as to why there are only three bunnies in the picture?

Another Milestone: Independent Chocolate Gravy Consumption

I finally let go of the reins--I mean, the spoon. I suppose at nineteen months it's about time. Like the rest of the family, Eva took to feeding herself with gusto, and though the pictures may seem to imply otherwise, she does remarkably well with keeping her hands out of the bowl and hitting her intended target with her full utensil.

I've had a recipe request for Chocolate Gravy (which really does taste better than it looks mixed with eggs in a baby bowl or smeared all over Eva). I keep the version my Grandma Sanders used on hand for sentimental/historical reasons, but the recipe I currently use was passed along by a friend after hearing me lament the difficulty of achieving a proper consistency with the old recipe. The secret is in the butter, which was completely absent in the family recipe.

*************

Chocolate Gravy

1/2 c. butter

4 T. cocoa

1/4 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 c. sugar*

2 c. milk

Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add cocoa and flour, stir until a thick paste is formed. Stir in sugar and milk. Cook, stirring constantly, until thick. Serve over baking powder biscuits and top with whipped cream. **

*I now skip the sugar and stir in agave nectar to taste at the very end.

**I also like to make a triple batch in my Bertha "skillet" and chill the leftovers for pudding.

Easy Chocolate Truffles

16 oz. chocolate pieces (I used Ghirardelli's dark chocolate most recently.)
1/2 c. butter, cut into cubes and softened
1/2 c. whipping cream
2 T. dark rum (I substituted coffee liqueur.)
Sifted cocoa, finely chopped nuts, flaked coconut, etc. for coating

Melt chocolate in a heavy saucepan over low heat; remove from heat. Add butter, stirring until smooth. Stir in whipping cream and alcohol. Cover and chill 2 hours or until firm.

Dust hands with cocoa, and shape mixture into 1" balls. Roll in coating and place in an airtight container. Store in refrigerator. Yield: about 3 1/2 dozen.

Goop

Anna made lunch today. She started bragging about knowing Grandad's secret recipe for goop right about lunch-prep time, so she was assigned "cooking" duty. She did a great job mixing the proprietary blend of butter, molasses, and peanut butter as she toasted bread on which to put her mixture. She was very specific in instructing us on the right way to consume her masterpiece: "No spreading; just put a blob on your plate and use your utensil to put some on your bread right where you're about to take a bite." It was a hit. We briefly considered saving some for Daddy to try when he gets back from his trip, but we didn't manage to have any left over.

Cocoa with No Regrets

We tried Mightly Recipe Hunter Sara's hot cocoa recipe this morning and thought it was just the thing. Here it is again:

For every 8 oz. cup of warm milk, add 2 Tablespoons each agave nectar and cocoa. (Sara's tip for mixing the latter two ingredients together before adding to the milk worked like a charm.)

Her recipe called for vanilla, (1/2 teaspoon, I think), but I forgot to do that part and we still thoroughly enjoyed it. It's tasty cold, too! Titus just brought in glasses of the leftovers from this morning for a bedtime treat.

Now, if I could just get her to post the recipe for that wonderful wassail we had last night . . .

A Fun Change of Pace

Breakfast Balls

2c. old-fashioned oats
Up to ¾ c. chunky natural peanut butter
Up to ½ c. honey

Stir above ingredients together in medium-sized bowl. Then select add-ins from the list below or from your own inspiration:

¼ c. raisins or currants
2 bananas, mashed
2-3 T. finely shredded coconut
¼ c. chocolate mini-chips
1-2 T. unbleached flour to help hold mixture together
1 T. or more sesame seeds
2-3 T. raw wheat germ


Stir each optional ingredient into the first mixture, adjusting the amounts until you like the consistency. Form tightly packed but chewy balls in any size you wish. Makes a great lunch or snack, too!

Gracie's Spinach

This recipe originated with a young friend of a friend, so we don't know the namesake personally. However, we all think she's a whiz with spinach! Not only does it taste great, but it goes together very quickly and is easy to multiply for a big batch. My kind of recipe all the way around.

20 oz. frozen chopped spinach, thawed and slightly drained
(no need to squeeze all the liquid out)
1 stick butter
1 teaspoon salt
15 oz. ricotta cheese
1/2 c. milk or half and half
1/2 c. parmesan cheese
1/4 t. nutmeg

Cook spinach in the butter and salt until bubbly. Add remaining ingredients and heat through, but do not boil. Serve over spiral pasta or baked potatoes.

Incentive

Several months back, I jokingly remarked to my husband that I needed an incentive program to help me lose those extra inches that came along with Eva. He thought that was a great idea and offered me cash prizes to correspond with the number of inches I disposed. I ended up making a decent amount of money off that deal, and I used it to expand my existing collection of plateware. My dishes arrived last week, and I am very pleased. This is a great company with an amazing selection and excellent customer service.

http://www.replacements.com/

Chillin' with Agave

All the real cooks out there may already know this, but around here, we just recently discovered that agave nectar does great in the freezer. It keeps homemade popsicles from freezing into an ice block and makes slushies more spoon-friendly. We're also having good success thus far with replacing the sugar in our ice cream recipe, though we haven't yet completely substituted one for the other.

Dinner

Dinner tonight was a big deal. It started first thing this morning with boiling three chickens. By mid-day, Anna had asked several times if she could help "peel the chickens". (We'll get the term "deboning" added to Anna's vocabulary some other time.) She and Lewis did a great job of that, after which they scarfed the skins for an afternoon snack--bleh! I proceeded to make a huge pot of chicken and dumplings with some of the resulting meat and broth.

However, the crowning element to our meal is pictured here: Titus's first cucumber! (And I don't mean of the season; I mean of his gardening career.) He's very proud of it, as are all the kids, and we all think it's the best tasting cucumber we've ever had. May all those to follow live up to this precedent. And there are watermelons and cantaloupe in the boat garden, so stay tuned!

Family Favorites

Time to start that other list. Here are some of the things I make regularly. None of them take too terribly long, but they're a little more involved than those on the previous list:

BBQ Mini-Meatloaves
Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes
Shepherd's Pie
Lasagna
Chicken Lasagna
Chicken-n-Dumplin's
Cranberry Pork Roast
Fish, Rice, and Veggies
Roast
Smothered Steak
Spaghetti Sauce
Chili (in season)
White Chicken Chili (in season)
Beans (brown, white, or red)
Sauerkraut/Kimchi

We do brunch for lunch on weekends and brinner for dinner occasionally on weeknights when I need to restock the freezer with Sunday morning fare:

Sausage Hashbrown Bake
Baked Oatmeal
Spinach Quiche
Sausage Gravy over Hashbrowns
Pancakes
Chocolate Gravy over Baking Powder Biscuits

Method to My Madness Note:
Most of the above I make in big batches for stocking my freezer. I'm finally catching on to tricks like browning extra sausage or ground beef to stick in the freezer before making things like spaghetti sauce or sausage gravy. I've also recently learned to boil 2-3 chickens at a time, reserve some broth for other uses, debone the birds, and put part of the meat in the freezer before making chicken and dumplings or chicken soup with the remainder. Having things ready and waiting in the freezer is not hard when it's incorporated into dinner prep.

So that's what I can think of for our current "regulars." More listings will likely show up as they occur to me. Again, any suggestions for healthy, tried and true family favorites that don't take a week to prepare would be more than welcome.