Cliff and Laura's Family Blog

Way too much has not made it into the blog this summer... but until I update for reals, here is a little animation of Maddy's awesome dance move!

Now that it's been nearly a month... I finally got pictures of Maddy's birthday uploaded for your viewing pleasure!

This blog is turning into a food blog.

Last night we had Pad Thai, and Maddy was up all night crying and kicking and just being generally uncomfortable. She had a rash on her butt which can only mean one thing: she wasn't ready to digest something. The likely culprit: peanuts. She'd had peanut butter in very small amounts before, from begging bites of peanut butter sandwiches off of me or Cliff, but this was more peanut butter than she'd had before. So that's it, no more peanuts for a long time. It's not too difficult.

The day before, a local mama had a brand new baby boy! As is custom, we like to prepare meals for those with new babies. Now here is a mama who really has to deal with allergies. Not only is she allergic to soy, which is in everything, but her sweet older daughter cannot have nightshades, corn (also in everything), gluten, eggs, dairy. It is complicated, but not that complicated to cook without all these things. It's a challenge I decided to take on. Of course, I had to do a little research so I could make some substitutions and make sure not to include any hidden corn or soy additives.

I decided to make a little recipe called, "Yam fritters," from my favorite cookbook, except I happened to have sweet potatoes so it will be sweet potato fritters instead. The side dish is coconut rice with red beans.

I started with the coconut rice. I looked at my can of coconut milk, and it said "coconut, guar gum." What is guar gum? Is it ok to use? I had to find out. Turns out, it's an iffy one. I researched it, and here's what I came up with. That article, and by extension that site, is fascinating. There are a few great recipes I will probably go back to the more I accommodate the food intolerances of people in my life. So my can of coconut milk was out. No big deal, I've always wanted to try a real raw coconut! I picked up a coconut at the store and after I got home, I did the hammer and nail method of opening the coconut. Ideally, I would shove the pieces into a juicer and get nicely separated pulp and cream, but I don't have a juicer (yet). So I put the the coconut water and meat through the blender, and then pressed it through a sieve. Let's just say it was coconut milk "lite." But it was good enough to cook rice, since you'd need to water it down to cook rice anyway. I cooked up some basmati rice in the fresh coconut milk and a little salt, and it came out just like my coconut rice made with canned coconut milk does! Maybe better.

I had soaked red beans the night before and cooked them as usual, in plain water, adding salt at the end.

I peeled and chopped up the yams while looking at my recipe for the fritters (which I'll be making tomorrow). The main problem I saw was nightshades and eggs.

Here are the original ingredients:

1-1/2 lbs yams
milk, for mashing
2 small eggs, beaten
3 tbsp chopped tomatoes
3 tbsp chopped scallions
1 green chili, seeded and finely sliced
salt and freshly ground pepper
flour, for shaping
3 tbsp white bread crumbs
vegetable oil, for frying

After looking at how the ingredients are used, I came to the conclusion to use the following ingredient list as a substitute:

1-1/2 lbs sweet potatoes (not due to allergy, but due to what I have on hand)
almond milk (homemade, no additives)
soaked flax seeds, as the eggs are simply a binding agent
3 tbsp chopped carrots? celery? nopales? still unsure
3 tbsp chopped scallions
1 clove garlic
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
rice flour, for shaping
3 tbsp rice flour (for breading/frying)
olive oil, for frying

Now I'm toying with the idea of doing a special flavor combination that is different than the intended tomato/onion idea in the book. Like perhaps lemongrass and ginger. I'll have to make some test amounts once I cook up the sweet potatoes. I have 2 lbs to work with, after all. Since they are meat eaters, I think I'll make some simple ginger-lime chicken breasts as well. That would go well with lemongrass-ginger if the flavors work right with the sweet potatoes. I'd love to not only give the gift of a meal, but the gift of a new meal to add to the rotation as well. It has to be hard to come up with new things with such strict limits and under-labeled everything. If anyone has any additional ideas on how to make this recipe P-family friendly, do comment!

Meanwhile, check out this blog. Bread made with beets! Now that is some MASTER substitution. I'll have to make that when my garden is bursting with beets (as it seems that every single beet seed I planted has sprouted!).

I don't have any food allergies. I may have some mild intolerances, who knows? I know gluten intolerances have so many symptoms that are such common ailments that I'm sure I have a few. It's just not strong enough for me to do anything about it. Cliff doesn't have any food allergies either, and neither does Maddy... nothing terribly dangerous anyway. Peanut intolerance at this age is normal. I can see how if I were to continue to give her peanuts (isn't it great we have this kind of info so I could make such a quick evaluation?), I could see it becoming a full-blown dangerous allergy. That's the thing with allergies, they can be accumulative. They can pop up suddenly due to new life stresses or any amount of intestinal distress. A lot of foods labeled as allergens actually affect more people than the clearly allergic, because they are by nature difficult to digest. I think having all this information is valuable so that I don't become dependent on certain foods and use them to the point that they become problems. Variety is very important to me, and knowing which foods are easier on the digestive system (and therefor have more available nutrients for our bodies) is important as well. I want to be able to eat fresh tomatoes off the vine, enjoy a warm slice of wheat bread, and eat ice cream (or non-dairy alternatives) without worrying about the emulsifier.

When I was a little girl, I was really into cartwheels. I feared breaking a hand or an arm, because I wouldn't be able to do cartwheels (well, and the pain). I practiced one-handed cart wheels often, with either hand, so I would be prepared. Then one day I happened to get my finger caught in a see-saw, and got stitches for the split in my finger. It was all wrapped up in gauze for about a week. I tested my skill with the one handed cartwheel, holding my injured hand safely off the ground, and voila! success! I had prepared for it. That's sort of how I feel about this cooking thing.

Another reason I'm digging deep into the challenge of cooking for allergies: Just like art can be made with any medium, and fun can be had in any weather: Good food is for everyone, and can be made with any ingredients. Especially fresh and organic ones!

We've all seen our grocery costs go up in the last year. Some of it is just off-season items, like tomatoes... but even when things are in season and you expected prices to go down, they didn't. It wasn't that long ago that organic spinach was $.99 a bundle. Now it's $1.99 average price. I never did see artichoke prices go down at the end of January; they remained over $3 each. Is it the weather? Is it fuel costs? Is the government giving less and less money to small farmers, the ones who supply a great deal of our specialty items? As a small-time gardener, I'm well aware of the "riskier" crops. They tend to be the ones we love, like tomatoes and peppers. I watched a documentary once about a Mexican farmer who ran the risk of replacing an easy-care, sure-profit crop of corn with peppers, because peppers make more money if they are successful. The weather wasn't perfect that year and his entire crop was hit with blight, destroying his last hopes for his farm. He eventually died trying to enter the US illegally.

Why is feeding the world such a gamble? Why are there no protections for the people who put their whole lives into bringing us food, worldwide? Even locally, our small organic farmers depend on people being willing to pay more for local, organic produce. But with the cost of supplying food going up and up, affecting all levels, more and more people are sacrificing their higher tastes in lieu of keeping their grocery bills down. What's to become of these under- (or un-)subsidized farmers, just when we need them most? The fuel costs are starting to displace the low prices garnered from mass production thousands of miles from us. But is there enough food grown in Oregon to feed Oregonians? Are Kansans going to have to live on corn, and Floridians on oranges? We need our local farms and we need variety that doesn't only include "safe" crops. We need protections for those farmers who step up and grow the riskier stuff to suit our tastes.

Additionally, our tastes will probably have to narrow down to be like the times when an orange at Christmas was a wonderful surprise. For people who eat locally as much as possible, pizza is made with a squash based sauce in the winter. Can you imagine trying to convince the clientèle of Domino's Pizza to eat squash from November to May? Not only that, but less cheese and meat?

A paradigm shift on the way we look at food would be an ideal solution, one that would transition us to find new ways to get food in a very smooth and enlightening way. But we're back on Domino's Pizza clientèle... or the idealization thereof. There are billions of people who do not want and will not change. They will just shop at Walmart and scrape by tooth and nail to eat the same overseas over-processed food they are accustomed to. I personally love my tomatoes in December. This year I hope to can and freeze as many tomatoes from my garden as possible, and even make that switch to squash on our pizza.

My new food-season resolutions (and dreams) follow:

Eat locally and in season.

Make myself a pantry.

Can, freeze, buy bulk as much as possible. Treat the winter season as it is, the time when we eat our stores of food from our bountiful Autumn harvest.

Grow a garden year-round. Lettuce and brussel sprouts are just two things that grow fabulously in the winter time. You can have fresh produce in Oregon in the winter! Did you know kiwis ripen in January, here?

Go to U-Pick farms and pick foods I'm not growing, myself. Preserve, preserve, preserve.

Find mouse and moth proof containers for everything!

Learn to make basic cheeses, mill grains, and all those other traditional food making skills that enhance the food experience and cut costs.

Find a source for local eggs and milk that doesn't require a long gas-guzzling drive.

Drink more water with meals instead of other beverages.

This two week's menu has been delicious so far, so here it is:

(I'll add my comments as I make them)

Thai mussel soup
Delicious! Of course. I don't remember where I the exact recipe anymore, but it had chopped carrots, peppers, and tomatoes in a base of spicy coconut soup. The mussels were put in last and cooked for about 4 min, until they all opened. Maddy loved the mussels! She's a little seafood lover like her parents.

pizza with olives, sausage
I didn't have any sauce so I made a quick sauce with chopped garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, and basil. I used the crust recipe from my last blog menu. I had some sweet basil sausage from Trader Joe's that I cut up into little cubes. I made a second pizza for a mama who recently had a baby and she and her husband loved it!

spicy mushroom risotto
Risotto is so cheap and delicious, I should make it more often! We had gotten free garlic bread with our outlet bread store purchase, and it went well with the risotto. I used this recipe as a reference. I didn't have chicken broth, but I did have some innards I'd saved in my freezer and a chicken breast, so I filled a pot with water and chicken parts, chopped carrots, and celery, and let it simmer for about 30 min. I only used half the broth so I saved the rest for another night and let that simmer longer. I chopped up the chicken breast and added that to the risotto. I made it with pepper flakes instead of thyme, for a different effect. I also made it creamy with some half-n-half. I buy frozen mixed mushrooms which is way cheaper than fresh and just as good if you are cooking them anyway.

hot n sour chickpeas w/ fish
I have a recipe in my favorite cookbook for this dish. I de-boned a whole trout before salting it, and then putting lime slices and chopped mint, cilantro, and jalapeño peppers inside it. I got the spice combination from an Indian chutney recipe. I wrapped the fish in foil and baked for 20 min at 400 degrees. Pretty simple, very good! The dishes complimented each other nicely, mainly because they both had a little bit of spiciness and both used cilantro.

lemongrass beef skewers w/ lemony salad
That was the original plan... but it turned into a lime-y salad with sliced lemongrass beef on top.
I'm into salads these days for the loads of fresh vegetables. Instead of making the skewers (recipe from a Martha Stewart recipe card), I pre-marinated the beef chunks in the marinade from the recipe (vacuum packed and frozen with the marinade) and then put them in a shallow pan with water and stewed them. This was because it was some cheap beef chunks that Cliff had bought and they were very gristley and tough. The cooking method worked and I sliced up the chunks to put them over the top of the salad. The salad consisted of chopped romaine and butter lettuce, cilantro, basil, mint, tomatoes, cucumber, and carrots. I try to use the herbs I buy as much as possible so they won't go to waste! This summer I won't be buying any herbs, they'll all grow in my garden. I made a simple dressing from a juiced lime and some canola oil and pepper.

fried prosciutto and basil, mozzarella pasta
Well... that was the recipe anyway. I used bacon and white cheddar, because that's what we had. I made it a little fancy with fresh basil and sundried tomatoes. Easy and good.

bacon lettuce tomato walnut salad
This was my idea to use a combination known in a sandwich and put it in salad form! But we had so much bread that I made sandwiches instead. Yum.

ethiopian mushroom beef stew, mustard greens
I've made this before. I barely rescued the mustard greens before they went all bad. They were a nice tangy contrast to the spicy mushrooms and beef. This was some more of that cheap gristle-y beef that Cliff bought, so I stewed it for a long time and it worked alright.

london broil, broccoli
We had fries instead of broccoli because I forgot to buy broccoli and we had plenty of potatoes. The steak was insanely thick and I had to bake it for a while after the broiling burnt the outside. It was of course delicious, medium rare.

chicken, lima bean, pesto pasta
Cliff thought this was great! I liked it alright. The lima beans were something new for us. I know I've had them a long time ago but I never actually bought them myself. I got the recipe from my favorite vegetarian cookbook and added the chicken... sneaky.

chicken fajita salad
I used this recipe as a guide, and it was delicious! A total hit.

pad thai
I made a very peanut-y pad thai and it was good, but I regretted it later. Maddy was up and cranky all night long. I guess it was a bit early for so much peanut, so we'll wait a good 6 months before making something like this again.

mushroom gougere
This was out of my favourite vegetarian cookbook, and I loved it! I had never heard of "gougere" before this book, and had certainly never tried it, so this was a stretch but not too much of one. It was surprisingly easy to make. It was basically a mushroom stew baked in the middle of a "choux" pastry; another new one for me. I will definitely make a gougere again, mushroom or not! It was very filling and the leftovers were like fancy comfort food.

I'd say the biggest challenge of housekeeping (my main job aside from child-rearing) is remaining driven. One essentially does the same thing every single day. Cook, wash dishes, pick up stuff off the floor, vacuum, laundry, more cooking, more washing, cleaning food off the surfaces around Maddy... thrilling, huh? Sure, I can mix it up with an awesome varying menu (it helps that I'm hungry all the time) , my housekeeping binder, taking Maddy to the pool or park. But with Cliff sitting on the couch with his laptop and the TV on most of the time, it's easy to sucked into the vortex of soft couch and mindless entertainment. Not to mention Mothering.com forums.

I have a few mind games I play to get things done. For instance, if I'm thinking about it, I do it. If I think about doing laundry long enough, I felt like I did laundry... and then I gotta do it again?! It's best to do all chores just ONE time... you know, the productive time. Therefor, if I'm nowhere near the laundry, like when I'm knitting in the coffee shop, I'm most definitely NOT thinking about laundry. I'll have plenty of time to think about laundry when it's time. As for watching TV, I don't care what happens next. The minute my mind is wandering to the kitchen or the laundry, I know it's more important to go do that. If I really want to see a whole movie, I save it until late in the evening when all that's done is all that's going to get done. In fact, I often to a quick run-through of the house to make sure it's acceptable to quit for the day (not necessarily done, just acceptable to leave until the next day).

I tell myself, "I'm the kind of person who can't sit for long," and eventually become that person

I make a mental list in the morning of what I absolutely want to get done that day. I keep it short. For instance: today I want to get all the clean clothes folded and put away. Then the next day I'll make the goal of further cleaning and straightening the space that has been uncovered by those clothes. My jobs are big these days because between the morning sickness, the other illnesses, and the general doldrums of winter, the house has been barely presentable to our closest friends. We just recently started having dishes done every day and always having clean towels. My big goal is that as soon as the big jobs of this weekend are finished, I'll have the space to get back to my housekeeping binder, which designates a room a day. Then maybe I'll get time to sew? Pretty please?

Changing your mindset takes a long long time. It took me at least 3 years of actively working on this to get where I am now. Having a demanding child helps somewhat. Having to be ready to jump up at any given moment for whatever minor emergency is going on makes it not that hard to get off the couch and put a load of dishes in.

Everything is urgent, and nothing is urgent.

A few other things I do in my house that make things more enjoyable or easy:

Dinner starts at 4 even if it's not served until 6. That's because dinner involves cleaning the kitchen first and cleaning throughout, the occasional trip to the laundry room to switch clothes from washer to dryer, and possibly eating early if it doesn't actually take 2 hours. I start preparation by making a little something for Maddy to snack on while I'm cooking, usually just using dinner ingredients. That way she is not sticking her fingers into what I'm doing quite as much. If there is a job she can do, like tearing up herb leaves, then I set her up with that activity and she's content with that or she leaves the room to play with dolls or books.

Cleaning the bathroom is a fun activity to share with Maddy. We share the tub cleaning job until it's clean, and then she continues to smear bubbles around the tub while I clean the rest of the bathroom. It takes longer but then I don't have to spend energy (and probably more time) on a restless cranky toddler.

I use scent-free laundry detergent and add essential oil drops to make it smell the way I want to. Cliff's pants get a nice manly scent called "Czernobog," towels and bed linens get lavender, Maddy's clothes get "ginger lily" and my clothes get "fig." If the clothes are mixed, majority wins.

To wash Maddy's stinky pee laundry, I throw them in a cold soak load with bac-out. Then a little later I run the spin cycle and then about 15 minutes later I go run them on normal wash cycle with laundry soap and EO.

I put a layer of baking soda and cinnamon in the tray under the stove so when it catches all the spills it's easier to clean. And when the oven is on there is a pleasant warm cinnamon smell emanating from the tray.

If I'm going to the kitchen, I do a room scan for dishes, garbage, anything I could take with me.

I enlist Maddy's help in anything she can reasonably do, like put her socks in the sock drawer or get forks out for dinner. If she doesn't help, no big deal, I do it anyway. But when she does, it's nice to do something together and she likes to know she's helping. Whether it's really helpful to me or not, it makes me feel good that she wants to help me!

I shower, dress in something I could go outside in, and even put on moisturizer and makeup every morning, no matter what I'm doing that day. I'm less of a slob when I don't feel like a slob! I just plug up the bathtub at the end of the shower and then leave Maddy to play in the water while I get ready. She loves to get all that extra time in the bath, and by the time she's done, I'm done! Works for now.

I recently started making better breakfasts. Eggs benedict, french toast, mexican brunch eggs this morning. The creativity is the hard part, not the cooking. Since I've been exercising my creativity in the kitchen lately, it comes easier and has now branched out to breakfast time.

Here's the Mexican Brunch Egg recipe from this morning, from a cookbook I own that is really hard to get.
Per person: 2 fried eggs, 1 corn tortilla, chopped tomatoes, slices of avocado, and couple of pickled jalapeños, and a sprinkling of cilantro leaves. Arrange eggs on top of corn tortilla, and veggies in between the eggs, and cilantro just sprinkled over it all. I added some sour cream as well.

Last night I was looking up recipes and found the blog, Dinner Diary, that had some great gourmet meals that don't follow a budget and are perfect for two people in a city with unlimited food resources... but it was so pretty I just couldn't stop clicking! Not all good meals are expensive, though, and I bookmarked a few that looked like they would fit into my menu easily. They make a lot of Thai and Southeast Asian food, which is good. Now that I can finally get lemongrass in the store again, I'm planning on making more Thai food, which can be made pretty cheaply when you are using rice and chopped veggies, coconut milk, some spices, and a small amount of meat that goes a long way.

It was a far cry from the Frugal Food blog I was poking around in the other day... frankly uninspired by the Walmart purchases and multi-can recipes. I like to find a balance between eating cheaply and eating GOOD, which for me involves variety, freshness, and organic as much as possible. It's our health plan at the moment.

I have to link this page because it leads me to the next link. But do browse around that site if you are looking for some creative spice ideas, or just new meals in general. Yes, that is an egg shaped like a fish! I had seen the cute Japanese bento box lunches before, but hadn't seen the egg shaping contraption, so then I just had to look up LunchInABox.net. What should I find there, but this awesome organization tool: Magnets to track freezer inventory. The start up is a little time consuming and delicate and daunting... but I bet once those magnets are done, it works out well, given I'm not tracking ice cream and juice cans, the two things that get removed my someone other than me. Then I don't run the risk of opening the freezer (which also wastes energy) in front of Maddy and showing her the "freeem!" (ice cream).

Onto the bento boxes. I want one. I want two! I want to get out of the house on a regular basis this summer and being able to pack fancy little lunches could very well be a major motivation. On top of that, "Biggie," of lunchinabox.net, provides a lot of tips on how to reuse leftovers in appealing ways, make lunch components en masse ahead of time, and even a recipe for healthy(er) jello, which uses plain gelatin and 100% fruit juice. Maddy is really into "My Neighbor Totoro," right now, and so I looked up Totoro bento boxes, and it's around $20. Hmm. I'm still considering it, but there are plenty of cute and cheaper bento boxes. Plus they don't fall in the category of "we know these are PVC and lead free." Maybe I could get a plain bento box and paint a little Totoro on it for her.

Maddy was looking especially cute in her new smock and ponytail today. I suggested to Cliff that we go out for lunch... turned out to be closer to dinner, since we got up late today. I brought along the camera and got some cute pictures! You can see them in the right column flickr photo preview.

Despite the bizarre occurrence of snow today, I was thinking about my garden. I've been making and remaking lists of what I want in my garden for months, ever since I got my first Spring Territorial Seed catalog. I like Territorial because they are local and they test a lot of plants specifically for the Northwest. They give a lot of detail in the descriptions that are specific to this region. Also, since they are close, they ship fast! The only thing I didn't order was my seed potatoes, since I'd rather just buy those in person.

I hope to get a nice day to do my pre-planting next week! Those little seed packets add up fast, so I tried to stick with things I would use often and love. Here's my final list.

• Alibi Cucumbers
  Good for pickling or snacking... multipurpose is good for something that has a history of becoming boring mid-summer!


• Amy Melon
  Small and sweet. I had to grow some kind of fruit. Plus if I get ambitious, I could train this up a trellis.


• Bulgarian Carrot Pepper
  Fruity and fiery, my favorite!


• Chocolate Cherry Tomato
  These just looked so delicious in the picture.


• Isis Candy Tomato
  Territorial swears these are delicious, and I trust them! With "candy" in the name you can't really go wrong.


• Kestrel Beet
  I'm not totally sure about these since we don't eat beets a lot normally, but they are small for easy pickling. We should eat more beets.


• Mars Onion
  Sweet, pretty, and stores for 4-6 months. Sold!


• Mokum Carrots
  These delicate carrots need great care in digging up, but they are delicious enough to be worth it! I grew these last year but planted them too late and didn't have carrots until November. This year will be better.


• Nantaise Carrots
  Classic easy-harvest carrots. Maddy could probably pull them up by the tops pretty safely.


• Nugget Bean
  Buttery yellow wax beans. Need I say more?


• Oregon Sugar Pod II Peas
  Perfect straight off the vine (very important in a garden) or lightly steamed.


• Pineapple Ground Cherry
  I never ate or grew these before, so it's my "wild card." Supposedly they make an interesting salsa. Worth a try!


• Pineapple Tomato
  These are 1lb rich yellow heirloom tomatoes; couldn't pass them up!


• Purple Beauty Pepper
  I wanted an interesting thick-walled sweet pepper, and this is what I chose. Deep purple beauties.


• Purple Calabash Tomato
  The catalog described the flavor as being as complex as a fine wine. Plus they look amazing sliced open. This is what heirloom tomatoes are all about.


• Super Gourmet Blend Lettuce
  You can't not grow lettuce! Buying a mix was an easy way to get a tried and true variety of leaves.

I just realized I didn't pick out a squash. Maybe I'll pick up a plant start at a farmer's market. They usually have a nice variety. Something like "carnival," single-serving sized and sweet. I also just realized that if I make a salsa with those ground cherries, tomatoes, peppers, and onions, I'll have a really unusual and colorful salsa. Yellow with touches of orange and purple and red. Wild! I just love growing things you don't find in stores, or if you do they are really expensive. My total cost in seeds was $52 including shipping. Add potatoes (typically around $15), squash, and herbs, and it will probably round out at $80. Then when I have a successful garden, I'll have hundreds of dollars worth of produce, much of which is storable into the winter months. Totally worth it!

Maddy has been eating and eating and eating! Yesterday we went out to breakfast and she ate a whole sausage link and about 20 of my fries and plenty of beloved ketchup. She also ate half a piece of toast, and drank her whole kid cup full of cranberry juice. Then when we got home, she wanted to eat some more! I gave her some fruit leather ends n pieces (TJ's sells them in a bag) and she gobbled them up. Then she ate a whole banana. Finally after I cut up an apple, she ended up leaving a lot of the apple behind. Not long after that she was hungry again, and so was I. So we ate some chili and she did not leave a bean behind. It was kinda spicy, too! She has been refusing eggs and cheese, which used to be big favorites. Now she loves meat, fish, rice, and fruit, and anything with tomatoes.

When I put her to bed, I went to make myself a sandwich. I was not halfway done when she woke up, grabbed my sandwich, and ate the rest! I had to make another sandwich. After some goofy time with Daddy, she finally went back to sleep and slept a good 8 hours before waking to nurse. Then she slept 2 more hours. Then she wanted a banana. She ate the whole thing, then some apples again, and now she is going crazy over chips and salsa. Wow, it's one o' clock already! I've got to put away the meat in accordance to the menu of the last post, and then it's off to a baking party! I'm making pumpernickel bagels.

Once in a while I get inspired to create a menu for myself, complete with either links to recipes on line or page numbers from various cookbooks. This menu is completely online recipes, so I thought I'd post it here. BTW, my New Seasons cost for this menu (pdf) is just over $100. There are a few items I prefer to get at Trader Joes: tomato sauce, rice noodles, black bean garlic sauce (instead of making the sauce on the szechuan salad), bell peppers, butter, eggs. Then I'll get bacon and smoked ham at my local German deli. It should total around $150. This is accounting for the fact that I have many things from the menu in my cupboards, and fresh parsley, sage, and rosemary in my garden. I generally choose 14-15 meals, and other days are filled with leftovers or quick TJ's meals, and maybe we'll go out to eat the night of the paycheck. I don't stick to an order, just follow a natural order to keep up the variety and use things before they go bad, and go with how we're feeling like eating that day.

veggie chili

This was delicious! I actually followed a very similar recipe from the February Martha Stewart Living. It had chopped canned chipotles in it, and garbanzo beans, kidney beans, and pinto beans. I cooked the beans from dry beans before making the chili.

composed greek salad, pitas, lamb patties

I just used this recipe as a reference point. I laid out a big platter of red and yellow sliced bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, slices of feta, olives, butterhead lettuce, cucumbers, dolmas, slices of cooked spiced lamb patties, and hummus. I put out warm pitas sliced in quarters, and we had a very hands-on meal.

chicken parmigiana

I had never made this before, and it was delicious! I made impromptu breadcrumbs by toasting some slices of bread and running them through the blender until I had enough. The sauce I used was just Trader Joe's Italian Starter Sauce. I did happen to have fresh mozzarella, so the rest of the recipe was just as the recipe said.

rice noodles with scallions and herbs

I used soy sauce instead of fish sauce. There was way too much sauce, I could have cut the water in half and I think it would have been better. I didn't use fresh lime juice, but I used the next best thing: Santa Cruz Organics lime juice. I could drink that stuff out of the bottle! I had some beef cubes in the freezer, so I made beef kebabs to go on top of the big pile of noodle salad, first marinading the chunks in a mixture much like the sauce in the noodle recipe.

kroppkakor

This was really good. It was also really heavy. The dumplings were a dense layer of potato with meat inside. Cliff loved the inclusion of bacon. I made a bechamel sauce with allspice, as suggested.

spinach and ricotta gnudi w sage butter

This was easier to make than I thought it would be. It was lighter than I thought it would be, too. I don't have a food processor for the spinach, so I used my blender. It didn't create the ideal consistency, but it worked! I used sage from my garden, and served french bread on the side. Maddy loved it!

szechuan chicken salad

I've made this before, and it's on my "make again!" list. Last night I roasted a chicken for the family (with explicit instructions to leave half of it intact) while I went to a Mom's Night Out in Rebekah's honor. So today I used the breast for this recipe. I ran out of apples because I just had to make an apple pie today, but with just the pear it was still yummy. I made it even easier by using Trader Joe's Gyoza dipping sauce instead of the recipe, because it's cheap and pretty much the same. And after a loooong day of kitchen time (pre-making a few things for this week), it was easy to throw together.

maple bacon quiche

I made this ahead of time and we had it for breakfast. It's enough that we'll have it two mornings... or morning plus afternoon snack! I ended up using half the bacon only because it was a pretty shallow quiche and you could see plenty of bacon poking out when it got to the part where you add more bacon. It turned out perfectly! More bacon would make it more delicious... but also heavier and fattier. I would add another egg if I added more bacon, however.

chicken quesadillas

Not much to say about these... I didn't actually follow this recipe, just included it in the blog for reference. I put sliced avocados in them and Maddy peeled hers apart to eat that first. "More cado! More cado!" I used Zuniga fresh salsa, which is how Id make salsa if I had a food processor or were less lazy. Then again, with the prices on tomatoes these days, I probably saved money buying the salsa.

manti

I forgot to mention I was inspired to make this from Martha Stewart Living, but couldn't take the magazine home so I just looked for the recipe online. The MSL version was made with lamb, so I used lamb instead of beef of veal (which I would never use anyway). These were easier to make than I thought they would be. I was concerned about the lamb cooking through since it's just boiled in the little dumplings and that's it, but it wasn't a problem. I had enough for Maddy's all night snacking, and for leftovers the next day. I used sweet paprika and cayenne pepper in place of the Aleppo pepper. It was a little time consuming for not a whole lot of payoff. It was good but not amazing.

corn dog muffins

This was total comfort food. I don't have a muffin tin... I thought I'd get one by now but I didn't. So I used a shallow pyrex dish instead, and made half the recipe with 4 hotdogs. I sliced them length ways to accommodate the shallow pan, and had to turn the temperature down to 350 and let it cook about 20 minutes so it would cook all the way through without getting burned.
I served mac-n-cheese on the side, homemade with twisty noodles, a little rice milk, 2 tbsp butter, grated mozzarella dusted with corn starch, and chopped celery. I cooked the noodles first, put the celery in at the end just to lightly cook it, and then drained most of the water out. Then I put the pan back on the stove with the burner turned off, and added the other ingredients and stirred vigorously. Perfect and easy. When I eat it, I splash some habanero sauce on it, too. Yum!

cupcake-tin pork pies w/ apples or potatoes ?

I still didn't get my muffin tin, so instead of this recipe I used my pie dough I made earlier in the week to make english pasties, similar to a calzone but filled with meat and potatoes. I rolled out two circles of dough and spread raw bulk country sage pork sausage in a thick layer in the middle. Then I put a big scoop of finely chopped potatoes, celery, and shallots in a heap in the middle. Then I folded them in half and crimped the edges, and baked them in a 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes. I found a recipe that said 50-60 minutes, but they were clearly done before then. The meat was cooked through, the potatoes were soft, and the outer shell was golden and crispy. Instead of a customary egg wash, I brushed the outsides with olive oil just before removing them from the oven. It gives a similar but less shiny effect. I served it with some hot mustard, which I've been told is the customary way to enjoy them, and it was perfectly delicious. A definite "make again!" dish, as it was really easy, filling, delicious, and didn't take too long. I had some leftover meat and veggies that I just fried up in a pan for Maddy, who couldn't wait that long.

pizza

I only linked the recipe for the crust because I wanted to try a thin crust and this was PERFECT. Exactly what I was hoping for. I dug around in the veggie drawer and came up with a red pepper, a tomato, some basil, some spinach... all things I saved a bit of on purpose knowing this pizza was coming up. I also put on some mixed marinated olives (I had to pit them first) and some feta. It was a little much for such a thin crust, but it was delicious! I think this will be my main pizza crust recipe from here on out. The recipe made enough for two large pizzas, so I saved half the dough and it rose in the fridge overnight. Pizza two nights in a row!


Previous menus

garbanzo stew over wild/brown rice
curried vegetables with dal, flat bread
indian beef stew with potatoes
asian soup with shrimp
artichoke olive pesto pasta
ethiopian mushroom beef stew with mustard greens and injera
caprese mini paninis
chicken sandwiches with salad
spinach feta pizza
thai pumpkin soup over mixed veggies and potatoes
pepin's chicken nuggets with potatos/leftover pumpkin soup
beefy chili with corn scones
sausage, scalloped potato casserole
tarragon chicken with potatoes
burritos with sunflower seeds, eggs, beef

This one was a 9 day plan, not my usual 15 day plan...

tuesday mac n cheese
wednesday chicken soup
thursday grilled cheese/ soup
friday beef enchiladas
saturday vegetable barley soup
sunday chicken asian soup
monday pizza
tuesday african beef stew
wednesday chicken stirfry

It's been over a month since I last posted, so here goes...

Maddy is 22 months old now and we are already looking forward to her birthday. I have a list of things I want for her.

• kettler tricycle


• stockmar crayons


• stockmar modeling beeswax


• puppet theatre (homemade)


• wooden catapult

I still can't tell much of what she says, but she puts two words together quite a bit. The other day I watched an 18 month old at work who was saying simple sentences! It blew me away. I guess every kid has her own pace. Maddy is very sweet with the babies. She smiles at them and is fascinated by their little features. She loves to rock them in their carseat buckets and we play a game where I say, "Maddy rocks the baby gentle," and she rocks very gently, and then I say "Maddy rocks the baby fast!" and she goes to town. The babies usually love it. If not, we stick with gentle! This baby time is encouraging because...

I'm pregnant! Yikes! Almost three months along. I started with VERY mixed feelings, a lot of negative feelings of being not ready yet for another, not wanting to lose my special one-on-one time with Maddy, and just plain not wanting to put my body through that just yet. However, the positive feelings have been taking over as I realize that this is it, however unplanned it was, and I will love this new addition to our family.

This past month has been full of us all being sick repeatedly (food poisoning, flu, cold... plus morning sickness for me), enjoying our living room, and turning our focus back on the yard. Even cooking dinners has been interesting, as some days I can hardly stand to eat anything I had planned, and other days I'm going through more food than I had planned. Maddy has been eating more food and I always have to have some snacks available for her.

Speaking of which, she's begging for mac and cheese right now!

I've been thinking a lot about how a big pinnacle of child development and child sensitivity lies in their perceived ability to communicate. Of course I refer to my personal experience of how I've developed my own communication skills. As a child, I rarely felt heard. Whenever I would try to express a difficult feeling or unrest with a situation, or a need, I would be accused of "whining." I remember a very disheartening conversation when I was trying to express a need and was told to "quit whining." I tried desperately, again and again, to change my tone of voice, change my words, anything so I could be heard. Finally, I was met with: "it's not how you're saying it, it's what you're saying; I don't want to hear it." I was taken to various psychologists and psychiatrists as a child; ideally so I could learn to communicate my feelings, but apparently so I could just tell someone else how I felt. It didn't change my ability to communicate at home.

For years I was sensitive about how my voice sounded, thinking there was something wrong with me. If I felt self-conscious, wrong in anyway, or even just upset, it felt physically impossible to speak above a whisper. I still get very quiet when I feel upset, much to the annoyance of others around me, thus escalating the upset and making it harder for me to communicate.

Consequently, and I'm glad for this, I am very sensitive to how Madeline feels about being heard. I know that she is limited in how she can express herself, and so any time she is actually heard is a boost of confidence to branch out in her communication tools. If her initial attempts are shut down, then how will she know if she has the ability to try other attempts? Many times, I have no idea what she's trying to communicate, so I just have to make my best effort to work with her, to show her I really want to know what she is communicating. I want to know how she feels, what she wants, what she is uncomfortable with, and what she loves! If I can maintain to her that her ability to communicate is fully functional and powerful, she will be able to assert herself down the road. She will be able to avoid conflict through words, tell me when someone makes her uncomfortable or scared, and utilize her creativity in powerful ways.

Imagine you got a new telephone, and you called your best friend in the whole world, and she said, "hello?" and then you said, "hello! I'm calling you on my new phone, blah blah blah..." and then got nothing but silence on the other end. Surely your friend isn't the problem, your connection is! You'd try again and again. Met with the same results, you'd think about taking the phone back and getting a new one. The phone is an analogy for a voice (manual or vocal), and we only get one. If you don't think your voice works, you are sorely cut off from humanity in a big way. I know that's how I felt for a long time. It's taken me years of not wanting to accept this handicap to find ways to improve my communication ability. Sometimes all I need is a shot of confidence. Other times I need to find the words, expressed as I feel them, from another person. I may just need time to form my thoughts into words. Other times it's because I have a gap in my knowledge that I need to fill.

The greatest gift we can give our children is an open ear and an open heart. Add in the guidance to explore as many avenues of communication as possible, through art, music, dance, writing, and plain ol' make pretend games, and you've helped set up a very self-fulfilled whole person. I only hope I can keep my heart open and not miss the opportunities to broaden Maddy's voice. I very much want her to have everything I didn't have, everything I enjoyed having, and more.

We decided to paint the living room. No big deal, just pick the color, move all the furniture out, get to painting... right? Wrong. Nothing is ever that simple in our house. We noticed that the wall was peeling around the door frames. So Cliff pulls on a piece, and voila! A whole sheet of wallpaper comes down, layers of paint carried with it. OK, looks like we have to strip the walls. So we spend about a week of intermittent stripping, when finally we realize that much of the walls are damaged. Some of the wall was replaced (badly) with drywall, and some of it is the original lath and plaster. So then, a lot of hard work went down in some fine demolition work. Then we figured, what the hey? We have some walls down, let's insulate! Which led to demolishing the rest of the walls, the rest of the past week's work. Only one wall remained, and now we question our judgment on it, but it's too late now. We're not doing any more walls.









The worst part of the job was after the new drywall was up, it was time to mud and sand. Mud and sand. Mud and sand. Ad infinitum. Dust tracked all over the house, a week's worth of laundry piled up daily, and Cliff got sick from ingesting too much of the stuff, despite our respirator. So now that we are done mudding and sanding, we look at that remaining wall that we should have replaced, shrug our shoulders and say, "too late now." Well, it isn't. BUT IT IS. IT SO IS.

Here we are with the walls just about finished being prepped. It's been like two weeks and the walls have not seen a drop of paint. These pictures were taken after we whisked Maddy off to the neighbor's house and did some serious cleaning up of dust. Any pictures taken before that would have just turned out white, anyway.








We actually went to buy paint twice for this room. First we went to Rodda and got red paint. They actually didn't have very good color selection there. We like Miller better. We went to Miller and got brown paint. Then we decided maybe we should try mixing the paint and finding out if we liked a color in between. Thus we found a huge disparity between quality of Rodda vs. Miller. We will forever more be loyal Miller customers. We ended up going with the brown anyway. See how the red (left) barely covers, and the brown (lower right) is nice and opaque? That's what you're paying for, folks. Except they both cost the same... don't go to Rodda.



We haven't started painting yet, but half the primer is up and we're feeling giddy. I'll post pictures when we actually have our living room back.

I make a lot of pancakes. I make everything from crepes and palaczinta to german pancakes to buttermilk pancakes. Lately I've been making some wholesome high-fiber pancakes, using whole wheat flour (stoneground, always), and Bob's high fiber cereal. I've never actually made the hot cereal; it's exclusively a pancake ingredient for me.



I hardly ever use a recipe, unless I'm making something fancy that has to be just right, like a german pancake. Pancakes all pretty much have the same ingredients in different proportions. This morning I made a note of my proportions for these fibrous pancakes so I could share it here.

3 eggs
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4-6 tablespoons Bob's Red Mill High Fiber Hot Cereal with Flaxseed
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp sunflower oil (melted butter or other vegetable/nut oil works too)
2 tsp Bob's Red Mill Baking Powder (you can use less if you don't like to taste it, but they will be less fluffy)

Note that I specified the Baking Powder brand. This is because I used to use the standard Clabber Girl for years, and then recently I tried Bob's and it made a huge difference in the integration and fluffiness of the pancake. I'll never use Clabbler Girl again.

Put all the wet ingredients in first, then the dry, ending with the baking powder. Whisk as you go. Let the mix sit while you turn the stove on and wait for the pan to get hot. The Baking Powder reacts with acids in the mix to make bubbles. This is the idea behind buttermilk pancakes, but I suspect that almond milk has enough acidity to do the trick. You can add a tsp of cider vinegar to intensify the bubbles if you want that buttermilk effect.

I turn my electric stovetop to the line between 4 and 5. It's important that you find your ideal stovetop temperature for pancakes, because you want to cook it through without burning the outside, and you want to cook it quickly so it doesn't turn rubbery. The pan should be very lightly oiled. My pan actually dips down around the edges, so I put a little more oil in so I can recoat the center just by shifting the pan around. If you don't have a pan like mine, keep oil handy to recoat the surface when needed.

I use my 1/4 cup to dip into the batter and pour a nice circle. You can spread it out a little with the bottom of the cup if you do it right away, to thin out the pancake a little. If you wait more than a few seconds to spread it out, you'll probably ruin your pancake. Thick is not bad!



And flip it!



Maddy loves these pancakes and eats them cold later as well.