Garden Update!

Seeds have been bought! we have pumpkin, cucumbers, winter spagetti squash, and green beans (along with two tomato plants my mom had previously bought). Hopefully  tomorrow the ground will be dry enough to till and my dad ready to help me get that done!

Lasagna Anxiety and Left Overs

Today I made lasagna. Let's just say it was not fun. I realized half way through that my lasagna noodles were no boil noodles and that made things go to pieces. Besides, how much more processed can you get than no boil noodles? On top of that, I still had to use cans because I didn't make tomato sauce and we still don't have tomatoes, so both of those came from a can. Also my recipe didn't tell me how long to bake my lasagna. Sounds like a field day in my kitchen, right? Apparently these days happen. If you are embarking on this journey with me, I am sorry for the day this happens to you, but I made it through, most everyone got seconds and there are only two servings left. Considering that there were probably 10 servings in the pan and there were only 4 people, I'd say that speaks for itself. We also had the last of yesterday's salad and the asparagus casserole of a few days ago.

The recipe (follow at your own risk!)
9 lasagna noodles
1-1 1/2 lb ground beef
1 large can of tomatoes, drained (and rinsed!) and cut up
1 cup chopped onion (I just used a fairly small onion, didn't actually measure)
15 oz can of tomato sauce
1/2 tsp oregano
1/8-1/4 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 c mozzarella cheese
1 (12 oz) carton of cottage cheese (I did not use this because I hate cottage cheese, but good thing or my dad probably would have pulled out some lunch meat...poor Dad probably will hate meal times by the end of this)
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Brown beef and drain. Boil some water for you (boil requiring) noodles. Add onion to the beef along with tomatoes and tomato sauce. Mix well, cook on low heat. Add salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic powder. Simmer. Boil noodles as directed on package. In 13x9" greased pan add some tomato sauce or meat sauce and spread evenly.

Add layer of noodles, 1/3 of meat sauce, 1/3 of cottage cheese, 1/2 cup of mozzarella (or just 1/3 of what you have--I only had 8 oz). Repeat 2 more times.

Sprinkle Parmesan on top and bake 30 min. (So it did tell me how long to bake, but I see this now...10 hours after the fact. It's been one of those days.)

I hope your lasagna goes better than mine, even though my family did eat it quite happily and I'm hankering for some right now...

Salad

Yesterday for dinner I made a chicken salad. Ingredients were lettuce, boiled chicken thighs, strawberries, blackberries, celery, and asparagus. nothing special except that this is the first salad I've made where the fruits and vegetables worked well together.

The real thing about this meal (and the salad was a meal) was that I made a vinaigrette salad dressing. Here is the recipe:

1 cup salad oil (aka any kind of vegetable oil, I used regular vegetable oil)

2/3 cup vinegar (we only had an apple vinegar, but it didn't mess it up)

2 teaspoons snipped fresh herb (or 1/2 teaspoon dried herb, I used oregano, but you can use thyme, oregano, basil, taragon, dillweed, or chives)

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoon of paprika (optional, and we were out or this)

In a screw top jar combine all ingredients. Cover and shake well. Chill. Shake again just before serving. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

And that's it! No reason to ever buy salad dressing again, it is just too simple to make it at home. Once I figured out the ingredients and whether or not we had them, this took 5 minutes to make and even my 13 year old sister loved it. Dad, on the other hand, wasn't a fan, but he couldn't handle the vinegar, so it didn't matter anyway.

 

Soon I plan on making mayonnaise and french dressing (for dad, that's his favorite) because it is so simple to make the condiments and I'm sure it's a fraction of the price at the grocery too.

Shake it!!

How to Mircowave an Egg

At my house we like to eat egg sandwiches... a lot. It takes 3 minutes to make and you can eat it as a sandwich, out of the bowl, crumble it and use it for a salad, or any number of creative foods.
Get a microwave safe bowl and spray it with canola oil or your preferred cooking spray. Crack one or two eggs into the bowl. Use a fork to break the pouches or membranes in the egg. This is very important to avoid explosion. Spend about a minute swirling the egg to make sure this is done correctly. Next put the egg in the microwave for two minutes. You might want to cover it with a paper towel in case of an explosion. Check to make sure there are no yellow liquidy bits, if there are put it in for an additional minute or thirty seconds. Be careful when removing the bowl because it might be hot--microwave safe is supposed to eliminate that concern, but caution is best regardless. Now you're ready to make the sandwich or whatever you decided you wanted. I have found that this is improved by adding pieces of meat or cheese (though the cheese might make it difficult to see the egg is done), or a tomato. Usually if I am doing this for a meal I just raid the fridge and make it into a sort of omelet. Lemon Pepper is a good seasoning, but you should try your favorite seasonings and spices to find what you like.
Happy microwaving!

The First Experience

     I was not able to start any part of the project until today because everything in my house when I returned from school seemed to be processed. Also, I hadn't been able to start on the garden because it needs to be tilled and I didn't have and seeds yet.
     Today my dad asked me to make a grocery list, so I seized my chance to get started and we went crazy on the vegetables. Making the list was really hard though. I've been living in a college dorms, so my lists for the last few months have consisted of little other than crackers and a few produce things that I could eat by themselves. For actual cooking though, I had no idea what I needed. I pulled out a couple recipes and looked over somethings that sounded doable and wrote some things down, but I still felt like I only had stuff to make a couple dishes. On a side note, I am not making my family adhere to my no processed foods rule, so as we were heading down the aisles my dad put at least one processed food in the cart for every unprocessed ingredient I chose. All I could do was shake my head and marvel at the polarised collection in our cart.

     At home, for lunch I made rice with a sauce, asparagus casserole, and a childhood finger-food, which I fondly refer to as "Ants on a Log". Have a look:

The whole meal took 2 hours to prepare, but I'm hoping that has more to do with this being my first time preparing a meal than that it actually takes that long. Really you could do a meal similar to this and have it take half the time or less. The casserole was supposed to take half an hour (but I had to leave it in for an extra 10 minutes) the rice takes about the same amount of time in a rice cooker, and the "Ants" take just a few minutes. The sauce was what took most of my time. Below are descriptions of the recipes, I'll highlight the food in blue, so if you are not interested in a certain dish, you don't have to read that paragraph.

     In the sauce I put a can of diced tomatoes and a can of mushrooms--I realize both are processed, but rinsing them in the sink before hand makes them a lot less unhealthy, and you can do this for just about any vegetable from a can, just put it in a bowl and run some water, strain the water out, and repeat a few times. There were also half a chopped onion, a third(ish) of a chopped green pepper, a stick of chopped celery, Worcestershire Sauce, and a few spices. My dad directed me in the preparation of this sauce because he usually makes one rice sauce a week, at least, and the recipe is really not that important, making a sauce is more of a philosophical thing and I don't have a philosophy yet, so the second party was appreciated. The sauce didn't turn out bad, but my dad's are usually better. Chopping all those vegetables took at least an hour, so I will be on the lookout for an easier way to flavor the rice. The rice was just put in our rice cooker, with twice as much water as rice, two tablespoons of butter, and a teaspoon of salt. The cooker did the rest. If you do not have a rice cooker and need directions for cooking rice, click here.

     The asparagus casserole was probably the most useful dish in this meal. It was fun, good (if a little hot because of a substitution I made), nutritious, and pretty. The recipe calls for 2 cups of chopped asparagus (I only used about 1 1/3 cups), 1 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp pepper, 1 pimiento, chopped (I used 1/3 cup of of chopped, pickled banana peppers, but a red bell pepper might have been a better choice), 3 eggs, beaten, 1 cup of grated sharp cheese (I used Mexican Cheese, from Kroger, since that was what we had already shredded), 1 cup of cracker crumbs (half Ritz and half white square crackers were my choices), 1 cup of milk, and 1/4 cup of butter. Mix them all together (except for the butter), spoon into your dish, then melt the butter and pour it on top. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes (though mine did take 10 or 15 minutes longer). The eggs are a source of protein, and there are also vegetables and calcium and this was a fairly easy dish to make, the most time consuming step was chopping the asparagus.

     The easiest dish was the "Ants on a Log." I just cut a few sticks of celery into manageable strips, slathered on some peanut butter, and added a few raisins. This is a great dish for kids--I know my sister found the crunch every time she took a bite to be hilarious. I also had her to help in the preparation, so when it came time to eat she was really excited about those "Ants" and she ate more of them than anyone else and she didn't even think she liked celery before this meal. The peanut butter is also another source of protein. I felt fine not including meat in this meal since there were the eggs in the casserole and the peanut butter in this dish. It is good to look for ways to use less meat in your diet, as seen in the research done for "The China Study," and substituting eggs, peanut butter, or beans is a good way to make this change.

     This meal was definitely a success, though probably too time consuming for a regular dinner. Once I start learning more about this cooking thing, and once I start working and have less time myself, you can definitely expect to see faster, easier meals, but there are some useful aspects to this meal. A few of these are, the "Ants on a Log" option is fast and easy, you can use canned foods sparingly, but rinse them first to remove some of the extra preservatives (frozen foods are another great option since they are frozen right after harvesting and shouldn't have preservatives added), and getting your kids involved in the preparation might make them more willing to try a new food. 

     I had also planned on making a lasagna this evening, but I had been awake for 21 hours by the time lunch was finished, so I ended up not making dinner, but my family was just fine and they had left over asparagus casserole and some microwaved eggs for dinner. I expect things like this will happen to other people who want to change as well, but you just do what you can. If you can only afford canned food, buy the cans, but please rinse the food before you cook it. If you only have time to make one unprocessed dish a day, make that dish because at least your diet will be that much more healthy. We are talking baby steps here. I just want to inspire you to make any small change you can so that you and your family can be more healthy. Look for an update tomorrow to see how the Food Revolution is going in my family's kitchen.

     Please let me know if there were bits of this post that you found tedious or uninteresting. I want to give you the information you need to be more healthy. If you find something to be useless or counter-productive I need to know. I do not want to waste your precious time!