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:

Sunday: Mashed potatoes, homemade chicken noodle soup. The man has been begging for some old fashioned chicken and noodles, so I’m obliging a small pot of it. I love mine poured over a heap of mashed potatoes with garlic and real butter. Yum!

Monday: Roasted green beans and peppers, homemade mac & cheese, veggie burgers

Tuesday: Sesame carrots, pasta with walnut-pesto, salad

Wednesday: Oven fries, roasted vegetables, pasta

Thursday: Roasted vegetable and feta sandwich,

Friday: Spaghetti, salad

Saturday: Caramelized Onion & White Bean Flatbread, homemade coleslaw

Check out the Mindful Menu at Chive Talkin’ and read the other menus people are sharing.

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.

Thirdly, and probably most important, is that I do not have anything to can just yet. I have not yet begun to really garden, outside of composting and hammering together raised bed boxes. I am trying to plan out indoor container gardening for the winter, if I can find a spot safe from curious cats and kids. Something tells me I’ll be scooping a lot of soil up off the carpet. I need to buy a cheap thermometer to hang out in the garage and see just how cold it gets out there. If it isn’t too bad I will try to grow some cold hardy plants on there.

I hope that soon I will have shelves that look close to Amber’s. Jar upon jar of goodness ready to be eaten.

My plan is to start with salsa. It’s something that we eat quite a bit of, is easy to make, and we don’t eat enough tomatoes to really take care of a plant any other way. After that I am looking at making some jams and jellies. After reading how easily Amy made homemade strawberry jam I can’t get the thought out of my mind. Plus it will be a great way to get out of the grape jelly rut Michael insists on sticking to.

So, now my question is this: any tips for a would-be canner? What books, recipes, products do you recommend for beginners? Fill me with your canning knowledge!

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?

Multi-Minding Mom was the first blog I read talking about this horrible poll, and she made some great points about feeding kids and giving them food choices.

What is cruel is feeding your child a diet of highly processed foods, laden with fats and refined sugars, high fructose corn syrup, and dare I say free-flowing juice boxes.* Cruel because not only is there a correlation between negative behavior and highly processed food, but you are also setting them up for a lifetime of obesity and a higher chance of becoming a Type 2 diabetic. There are even instances of children being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes which should never happen

So what is so cruel about feeding kids a vegan or vegetarian diet? What exactly is the cruelty of it? Do they assume the food is awful, that the kids could never enjoy it, that there is just no flavor without meat? If so they must really be bad at cooking. Even before I started changing our diet, my kids were already in love with eating fruits and vegetables. There’s usually not a day that goes by without them begging for a green smoothie for a snack. Do they think kids absolutely need meat for a healthy diet? Have they not seen the approved Food Pyramid where meat, nuts, seeds, and beans occupy a small space together. You can get protein from all of them, not just meat. Protein does not have to come from animals only, especially with today’s advances in fake-meat.

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.

According to the book:

Pyridoxide or B6 deficiencies are widespread in America, partly because our traditional source of this heat-sensitive vitamin – raw milk – is no longer sold commercially. It requires some courage to consume the best source of B6 – raw liver. This leaves raw cheese, meat and fish as the only sure sources of B6 available to most Americans. When B6 is lacking, the pathways for use of vitamins B1 and B2 may be less effective, leading to widespread symptoms of B vitamin deficiencies. Deficiencies of B6 have been linked with diabetes, heart disease, nervous disorders, carpel tunnel syndrome, PMS, morning sickness, toxemia of pregnancy, kidney failure, alcoholism, asthma, sickle cell anemia, and cancer. B6 supplements have been shown to be highly effective in preventing blindness in diabetics. Americans would be wise to include raw meat or fish on a frequent basis to avoid these debilitating conditions.

When I read a huge laundry list of “symptoms” that include almost everything that everyone has suffered or known someone who has I get skeptical. Especially when a couple of those things include alcoholism and sickle cell anemia.

Sickle cell anemia is an inherited, lifelong disease. People who have the disease are born with it. They inherit two copies of the sickle cell gene—one from each parent.

There are quite a few recipes in the raw meat chapter of Nourishing Traditions that don’t sound half bad, except for the whole raw meat part. The book claims that you only need to freeze the meat for 14 days to kill any potential parasites. Then your raw meat experience is ready to begin. If you can get past the mental block of eating raw meat. Something that I simply can’t. Despite the health claims, I actually feel a little nauseous thinking about it.

Of course, I’m not ruling out the entire book. There are plenty of other recipes that involve actually cooking your food first. The day I received it we tried the Stir-Fry Chicken Stew and it was delicious. And involved actually cooking the chicken first.Yay fire!

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.

Here’s how it works. Corn is cheap, so it’s pushed at the preferred feed for cattle. And because it’s cheap to buy, more cows can be raised. So instead of 50 cows stuffed into tiny pens, you can afford to shove in 100. Imagine eating a burger from an animal that only recently was standing knee deep in it’s own crap. There’s all kinds of bacteria floating around in there, and like crowded cities of years ago disease spreads quick and easy.

And then there’s the fact that cows are not designed to eat corn, it’s not what their bodies were made to eat. It would be like suddenly switching your diet to 100% Fruit Loops. Sure it’s edible, but how healthy are you really going to be? The corn also changes the ph in a cow’s stomach, which allows newer strains of E. coli to grow there. Strains that can kill us.

So to combat all of that, factory farmers have to pump the cattle full of antibiotics, antibiotics that gets passed on to us in the meat. What happens when you flood an area with antibiotics? It kills 99% of the bacteria, leaving the top 1% to flourish.

If the bacteria doesn’t kill us, the meat itself will. Slowly, but surely. Corn-fed beef is higher in the unhealthy fats, the kind that leads to heart disease among other things.

I would love to cut out the meat entirely from our diet, but I know I’d have a revolt on my hands if I did. I’m going to go slow, try to cut our meat down to only once a week. I want to make our diet more vegetarian, whole foods meals. Maybe even try a raw dish now and then. It may require dragging the other half kicking and screaming, but I’m going to move us into a healthier world of eating.