New Greener Family

photo credit: Fergus Randall

I missed posting my menu last Sunday, but that’s not something I plan to do this week. I’m looking forward to trying some new recipes this week, stepping out of my comfort zone to try some hopefully exciting flavors.

Vegetables are hard to come by cheap right now. I keep hoping to find a good greenhouse near me that is selling, but so far no luck. Instead I’m skipping some of my favorite outside treats to afford a few extra vegetables. I also skipped the fresh fruit for bags of frozen. Not as delicious, but much cheaper. Here’s what I’m making for dinner this week: Read more…

Related Books:

Everday Foods in War Time

Superfoods: The 101 Best Foods to Live Longer and Feel Younger

California and New York moving toward requiring calorie counts on menus.: An article from: Food & Drink Weekly

photo credit: ellievanhoutte

A few weeks ago I picked up a box of jars for canning at a garage sale for only $1. I would have grabbed two boxes, but a feisty old woman snatched the second box up before I could reach for it. I thought about following her and asking for tips, but something told me she would have taken my box from me and ran off cackling. I only hope to be half as scary when I’m her age.

Sadly the jars have been sitting on a shelf in my garage. I have a ton of good reasons for that. One being that it’s absolutely freezing outside and just the thought of walking to my garage makes me put on another sweater. Second is that I don’t yet have all the supplies I need. In trying to be both frugal and small I am avoiding buying new lids and rings and other such supplies at the big box store. Instead I keep putting feelers out on Freecycle and Craig’s List, hoping someone will take a bite. Read more…

Related Books:

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

Better Homes & Gardens Can It!

photo credit: lilivanili

I am trying to cut out meat from our diet. Maybe not entirely out, and I’m still not ready to give up milk and cheese, but replacing many of the typical meat dishes with vegetable ones. This is a two-part idea, based on both my desire to stay away from cruelly treated meat animals and to keep the man I love living for a few more years.

So I plan out a vegetarian menu, I buy the food, I cook the meals, we all eat it as a family. Sometimes it’s a hit, sometimes it’s not. But I try to always make it as healthy as possible. So when I found out that there was a parenting poll about feeding kids a vegetarian diet and that most of the people who responded thought it was cruel to do to kids, I got a little peeved. How in the world is making an effort to feed your kids a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables cruel? When did fruits and vegetables and beans and grains become close to child abuse? Read more…

Related Books:

Coolest Chapter Books for Kids Sample

National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Animals

Quick-Fix Vegetarian: Healthy Home-Cooked Meals in 30 Minutes or Less

photo credit: VirtualErn

A few years ago there was an episode of Wife Swap that involved a family who ate raw meat. Yes, all of their meat was eaten raw. Uncooked. Straight from the animal.

Go ahead and cringe at that thought for a moment.

Last week I joined in a conversation on Twitter about real food, and in the talks managed to have won a copy of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, a cookbook that I’m really enjoying. Until I got to the chapter on eating raw meat. Apparently it’s not a totally outlandish food fad.

OK, so maybe eating raw meat isn’t really that bizarre. Plenty of people around the world enjoy Steak Tartare and Sushi, both of which involve raw meat. So maybe it’s just my suburban North American worldview that burgers should be grilled and fish should be baked that’s preventing me from what could be an enjoyable meal. Read more…

Related Books:

Raw: The Uncook Book: New Vegetarian Food for Life

Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking

The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition

photo credit: timbr00

I’ve started reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and if I didn’t already want to cut my meat intake down to zero I certainly would now. Pollan follows the commercially grown corn so common today, from it’s farm beginning to the dinner table. One stop along the way is being dumped by the barrel into the factory farms.

It’s a bit disturbing to read. I’ll admit, I was fooled by all the “corn-fed beef” signs and labels, thinking that meant it was better beef. Turns out “cord fed” actually means sicker cows, sicker people, and better bugs. Bugs that can kill us quicker than before. All because of corn being the staple of their diet. Read more…

Related Books:

Superfoods: The 101 Best Foods to Live Longer and Feel Younger

Observations on the effects of the Corn laws: and of a rise or fall in the price of corn on the agriculture and general wealth of the country.

Stuck in the Middle (Thorndike Press Large Print Christian Fiction)