Here’s what will be cooking at our house the rest of this week:

 Wednesday:

• breakfast-quiche and grapes
• lunch- sausage, applesauce, and carrots
• dinner-fried rice

Thursday:

• breakfast- porridge
• lunch-leftovers
• dinner-out

Friday

This day we leave for a mini-vacation so it’ll be clean out the fridge day full of wierd combos of food and no two people eating the same meal.   Speaking of leaving on vacation here is my list of what to pack in the car with us food-wise:

• milk
• meat, frozen and packed tightly into a cooler with the milk and some frozen ice jugs
• crispy nuts
• p.b.
• sprouted bread
• fruit that is in our fridge that won’t last until our return
• jerky (if I get the time to make another batch)
• rapadura
• oil (coconut and olive)
• popcorn
• flour (also in cooler)
• broth (frozen in cooler)

I am hoping that with the above I can supplement with things I get at the store.  So far meat wise I have a beef roast, ground beef, chicken, pork loin, turkey (already cooked and chopped for lunches) and sausage.  I’m thinking to add some potatoes, fresh fruits where we lack, veggies, and a few other odds and ends and we should be able to 3 square meals for about 4 or 5 days.   I like being able to drive for vacation so that we can pack food. 

Yes, it is way to close to Christmas and I am MIA.  Here’s what we’ve been eating lately in lieu of my menu post:

• omelets
• congee
• burritos
• beef skewers with veggies
• pudding
• spaghetti
• roasted chicken

In case I do not make it back for another week, here is wishing you a very Merry Christmas!

Well, here we are…smack in the middle of Christmas and Thanksgiving.  I try not to worry, we survived Thanksgiving without having to feed the kids a bunch of processed junk.  Christmas is right around the cornere though and for us that means at minimum 5 family get togethers.  Of those 5 family get togethers, I can only count on two where I know I’ll be able to find food for the oldest (I worry about her the most seeing as she really has a bad reaction to sugar, msg, grains un-sprouted, etc.)   One, in fact, I can count on having to watch her like a hawk as there are a couple family members that think their purpose is to tricking her, an almost 7 year old, into eating cookies and such…flat out lying and saying there is no sugar in it.  Yeah, looking forward to it.  My solutions thus far: 

• host the family get together with the biggest offenders
• bring more food to get togethers than normal
• volunteer for food other than relish or cheeses (there is a good chance someone will bring these things and that means even more options!)
• being less strict on it and encouraging everyone to stick with my “sweets” and not the sugar cookies (goodness is that one hard!)

For sweets I’ve been making the Easy Peanut Butter Cookies,  Date Nut Balls (dates, honey, pb and nuts into a food processor and rolled in chopped nuts), and merangues.  Favorite take alongs have been meatballs, veggie dishes, fruit bowls, and the like.  Any ideas are always welcome.   It’s gonna be a rough couple of weeks!

I did find ways to avoid the candy trap in stockings, but I did that a few years ago.  My kids always get a toothbrush, orange, chapstick, pens, fancy paper, etc in their stockings and love it.  I try to pick up little things here and there all year long for them.  Even their grandparents have started doing this.  It’s very nice to not have a big bowl of candy at the end of it all.  The girls usually end up with enough mini-tablets and travel pencils/crayons/markers that it takes them quite a few months to lose them all at Dr. offices or grocery stores.   Other neat things they have gotten in their stockings:

• silverwear (usually a character they like)
• underwear (all girls age 7 and under…it’s still fun to get underwear!)
• calculators
• clay
• paints
• music

Once Christmas is done I have two birthdays in two weeks….turning 6 and 7!  Better start now trying to figure out cakes and the like.  Thankfully we made a HUGE thing of ice cream a couple weeks back and packed it into the freezer for just such occassion.   AND, yes there’s more (feeling like an info-mercial here.)  We have two vacations coming up.  A New Year’s trip to Williamsburg (driving so we’ll take milk, broth, meat, etc with us) and the girls’ Christmas present from their Grandma is a trip to Disney toward the end of January (flying, so I’m in a total food panic on this one!) 

Being smack in the middle of Christmas and Thanksgiving isn’t looking so bad right now.

I am already missing our CSA box of fresh produce.  The farm we work with is hoping to do winter shares next year and I can not wait.  A fresh salad, some tomatoes that resemble tomatoes…it’s hard planning a menu when all I want is something fresh.  Guess I’ll have to take some of my favorite fresh veggies we froze out and make some great dishes with them.   In addition to meals, we tend to eat fruit, nuts, cheese and the like for snacks as well as drinking either water or raw milk…sometimes tea.

Monday

• Breakfast-oatmeal
• Lunch-out
• Dinner-Spaghetti

Tuesday

• Breakfast-eggs and bacon
• Lunch-eggs, cheese, fruit
• Dinner-Tacos

Wednesday

• Breakfast-pancakes
• Lunch-leftovers
• Dinner-Sausage, Zucchini Patties

Thursday

• Breakfast-oatmeal
• Lunch-hot dogs with carrot sticks
• Dinner- Fish, Rice, Squash

Friday

• Breakfast-Squash pancakes
• Lunch-?
• Dinner-out

Saturday

• Breakfast-oatmeal
• Lunch-Mini Quiches
• Dinner-Apple Pork Chops with broccoli

Sunday

• Breakfast-cereal
• Lunch-leftovers
• Dinner-out

Ok, I’m a few days late so I will go back and try to figure what we ate and add it all in.  I plan on posting this on either Sunday or Monday every week.  I also plan to include a recipe or two every week.

Monday

• breakfast-scrambled eggs and bacon
• lunch-out
• dinner- crockpot chicken breasts with stock rice and peas

Tuesday

• breakfast- bananas with cheese
• lunch-beans and rice
• dinner-pork chops with oven potatoes and lima beans

Wednesday

• breakfast- I can’t rememeber?
• lunch- PB and banana sandwiches with grapes, cheese and an Easy PB Cookie
• dinner- pancakes and sausage

Thursday

• breakfast-cereal
• lunch-oven eggs with fruit and toast
• dinner-sausage and caramelized onion calzones

Friday

• breakfast-eggs and fruit
• lunch-fajitas
• dinner- out

Saturday

• breakfast-biscuits and fruit
• lunch-chili
• supper-fish, mashed pototaes, butternut squash

Sunday

• oatmeal
• leftovers
• out

Recipes:

Oven Potatoes

• 6 potatoes sliced fry style or cubed
• 1/4c butter
• 1/4c olive oil
• celtic sea salt

preheat oven to 350

melt butter and mix with olive oil.  Drizzle some onto your pan (I use a stone with a 1 inch edge on it, bar pan)  put potatoes onto pan and drizzle on reamaining butter/oil.  Toss to coat and salt.  Bake for 45 min to an hour, turning mid way to help with browning.   These are also great with a couple sprigs of Rosemary in them, some fresh Parmesean grated over them or chopped fresh parsley.  Easy to throw together and forget while your fixing the rest of the meal.

Oven Eggs

• 2 eggs per person
• salt, pepper, herbs
• cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter a muffin pan and crack one egg into a cup.  Top with your favorite seasonings (snipped dill and salt, yum!)  Bake for around 25 minute or so, until the yolks are done to your liking.  This is a good way to get kids used to a runny yolk.  There are lots of good stuff in that runny yolk and you can slowly change how much you are cooking the eggs so that they are slowly introduced to “dippy eggs”

Did I ever mention that I love my crockpot.  Chicken, Beef, Pork..doesn’t matter.  You put the meat in, some broth or sauce and let it cook and cook until its all tender and juicy!

Oops, guess it’s been three months.  What happened?  Homeschooling   We are in a routine now though and I keep thinking it’d be nice to start this blog back up…why not start now

What we’ve been up to.  Still trying to find my way around traditional foods.  I think it is safe to say I have cooking down.  I can modify recipes, I can make broth, my freezer is full of produce and my fridge is full of fermented foods.  Baking….yeah, um, let’s just say that my old love of baking and my desire to bake traditionally are really butting heads and the end products are no where near tasty.  HELP!  Any and all advice welcome.  

I did find this recipe somewhere, not even sure if it follows traditional guidelines but I serve it with a glass of raw milk and call it close if not on:

Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

• 1/2 c Peanut Butter (natural (peanuts and salt) of course)
• 1/2 c finely ground Rapadura
• 2 eggs, beaten

Combine until well mixed.  Drop by Tablespoon-fulls onto cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes being careful not to overbake. 

My girls really like these and they are easy enough that they can make them pretty much on their own.

The holidays are upon us and our tree is up, the lights outside twinkling in the snow, Christmas is coming.  What on earth am I going to offer my family in place of the sugar laden stuff we will encounter for weeks on end?  I am glad to have the above cookies under my belt, I’ve found a hot cocoa recipe that I’m still thinking needs something (butter?), but what about the cakes, candies, desserts?  What should I have my parents fill the girls’ stockings with (food=love…they own a restaurant)?  Here I say not only is advice welcome, but PLEASE send advice my way! 

In exchange I promise to start blogging again on a regular basis.  As in, every few days you will find a post from me.  I promise to start blogging what we’ve been eating the past few days, even if we’ve slipped and it’s embarrassing to admit.  I promise to post recipes my family loves for you to try.  I also promise that I still have a lot to learn! 

Things are chugging along as usual here at the household.  Our fridge is filled with fresh salsa that has been lacto-fermentated.  Combine that with the beets, saurkraut, and sourdough starter and the bottom half is full.  Add some milk in on herd share day and we have no room for other food!  I think it might be wise to gain another fridge, even just a college sized one for the milk and some salsa. 

We leave for vacation soon, I’ll try to blog how that goes.  We are doing Disney traditional food style (strict for the one with food issues, loosely for the rest of us.)  I have a phone number to call and they will make sure there are meals for us at the different restaurants we have reservations at.  They really have been very accomodating so far.  I hope it goes well.  We have a cooler of milk packed and ready to go for the drive.  The twins are lactose intolerant so if need be we can do rice milk, but for our oldest the raw milk is about her best option.  Hopefully we  can keep it cold enough for the journey.

Foods we have been eating lately: spaghetti squash (with some cream and garlic, yum!), salsa, salmon, roast, zucchini (anyway you can think to cook it), oh and how can I forget acorn squash with apples chopped and roasted in it with some maple syrup.  More later.

Right now we have produce coming out our ears!  I read somewhere how you can turn cantelope into push-up pops…do you think I can find it?  We’ve been fermenting salsa as soon as we have enough on hand to make a double batch.  I am sure that by the end of the growing season I’ll be glad to take a few months off of peeling and chopping tomatoes.  My biggest nemisis right now is cucumbers.  I have cucumbers in the fridge, on the counter, and now a fresh batch from this weeks CSA.  Anyone have any ideas on what to do with these things?  Can I make pickles with them, relish? 

Getting ready to start homeschool up again next week, in case readers are wondering where on earth I have been.  It takes some set up and re-organization.  With little ones crawling around it has been even harder than last year.  Soon we will be up and running again (if we can dig out of the mound of cucumbers!)

So I am doing so well eating how I should.  Then last weekend hit.  Birthday for the twins, running here, there and everywhere.  Well I went  on white carb/processed sugar overload.  It didn’t taste as good as it used to, and my head is still feeling the effects a day later.  From here out, I think I have learned that perhaps a little here or there is ok, but a 2 to 3 day binge on sugar laden foods along with white breads and other no-no’s is not the best option for me.

So I had this dream last night that we bought this cow, I can’t tell you what she looked like though I do know I could milk her (I’ve NEVER milked a cow!)  I had her staked in the front yard and was milking right into a gallon glass jar.  She had more than a gallon though so I had the kids go in and get me another dish, the dog was wanting some of the milk.  The neighbors didn’t find it odd and I really was wanting Brian to build a small shelter in the back yard behind the shed for her, I think I was calling her Daisy, so that the whole neighborhood didn’t know we were drinking raw milk.   How’s that for a look into my thoughts.  I really do not want to own a cow right now, I could use more glass jars though.  Daisy is my favorite store brand of sour cream?  I prefer when I don’t remember my dreams as they can be so odd and real.

Does anyone that is on a traditional diet  have some weight loss advice?  I would really like to lose 20 lbs but want to take a sensible approach to it.

I adapted this from a recipe I found online.  They are simple to make and a very filling sweet-tooth cure:

Pecan Pie Muffins                                   makes 9 very filling (but short) muffins

1 cup pecans, 1 cup rapadura, 1/2 cup flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup melted butter

Chop pecans in a food processor, add rapadura and flour and pulse to combine.  Beat eggs until frothy, add in melted butter.  Combine until all of the dry ingredients are moistened.  These will stick to the pan, so use your favorite methos (papercup liners, stonewear?)  and fill cups about 2/3 full.  It should make about 9 or so muffins.  Bake at 350 for 15-18 minutes.   Wonderful with butter!