On My Nightstand

It looks from my recent posts like I haven't been sewing or crafting for months, doesn't it?  Well, I have, but nothing's quite ready to be revealed yet.  Let's just say that one should try the dress on along the way, instead of waiting until one has finished it only to realize that the blasted thing is so small it won't button in the back.

But I have been reading lately.  Jonathan and I love to have long discussions, which we would like to think are intellectual.  Are they?  I don't really know, but we feel smart while we're having them.  As far as gathering information, we are polar opposites, so we always have interesting tidbits to pass to one another that the other has never heard of.  Jonathan loves the news media, especially anything to do with national politics.  (As a rule, he doesn't usually discuss politics with people other than me, but I get to hear a lot of hypothesizing about whichever election is upcoming.)  He is also an avid magazine reader.  I, on the other hand, have a life-long love affair with books. Being around books makes me happy.  When meeting in someone's office (think the typical pastor's study), it is almost impossible for me to engage in conversation because I'm covertly reading the titles of their books.  The last time we moved, we had 27 boxes of books.

So my latest book obsession has been about real food.  This is partly because all of our "intellectualizing" leads me and Jonathan to make change very slowly, with lots of discussion, planning, and information-gathering along the way.  The idea that we will change our entire diet and shopping habits is a hard pill to swallow, no matter how good an idea it seems. 

So on my night table right now is the neighborhood library's real/whole foods section.  It's not as much as it seems, since most of these are cookbooks.  Did I mention that I love to read cookbooks?  This is something that continuously baffles Jonathan.  ("What are you reading?  The ingredients?  The directions?  Is that even interesting?")

I'm also reading the Bible...yes all of it.  Our church is reading the entire book over the course of a year.  Now, we're in the middle of the Psalms.  I have to admit, I'm glad that we're through Kings and Chronicles.  I'd much rather read cookbooks than the history of war.

And to round out the pile, two books I've just begun because I acquired them yesterday.  Next time we move, there will be 29 boxes of books because we picked up two more yesterday at a pastors' book giveaway.  So I've been trying, in between washing diapers and trying to cook more vegetables and dealing with a little girl with a cold, to read this Marva Dawn book.  She is an author I admire.  You might have to be a little bit of a church nerd to love her, but if you are, I think you'd love her.  This book, Unfettered Hope, looks so interesting.  I'd like to tell you about it, but so far, I've read the introduction and am now on page two.  So I don't think I'm qualified to say anything at all!

And just for laughs - because not much is simple in my life right now - Six Weeks to a Simpler Lifestyle.  Now that's exactly what I need!  Maybe things will get simple enough that I can read it...

Oh yeah, and there's a little book of fingerplays in there.  Because even if I think I'm a nutritionist/chef/theologian/idealist, the truth is that right now, I'm mostly a mom.  Which encompasses all those other things, but you've got to have a nice new song to sing every now and then.

Real Food...Really?

As the first two months of 2012 have flown by, I've been slowly trying to work on the items from my New Year's To-Do List.  Some things have been accomplished.  For example, we haven't used any paper towels in about a month.  (Well, Jonathan used some to wipe the grout from a tiling project, but none has been employed in the kitchen at all!)  Some are in progress, like organizing the house.  (Notice, "organizing the closets" turned into the whole house.  And I wonder why things don't get done.)

But one item on my list is shaping up to be quite the project.  It is focusing our family's diet more on "real foods."  Although I've read a couple of books, many of my ideas about this have come from some helpful websites, like this one and this one.  A basic definition of real food, as I see it, is to limit processed foods and eat more natural stuff.  One way to think about it is, if your great-grandma would have eaten it, then it's a real food.  Great-grandma didn't have all those ingredients that you can't pronounce and sound like they were created by scientists.  (Although I was searching through my own grandma's spice cabinet about a year ago and found an honest-to-goodness jar of MSG in there.  It said on the label "makes everything taste better!")

After much discussion - like the last two months - Jonathan and I decided to take the plunge into more healthful eating.  We already eat most of our meals at home.  We pack our own lunches, and eat out for supper twice a week: once at church , and once at a restaurant.  Our fast food intake is limited to three or four times a year, when we are making a road trip.  So the biggest changes we are faced with making are simply choosing different ingredients from the grocery store. We decided that to keep our budget in mind, we wouldn't do an all-out purge of all the "not-real" food, but replace things like crackers and chips as we ran out.  We made a commitment to eat more vegetables, and decided that eating organic meat and dairy would be a good idea.  Since great-grandma used white sugar, but for mostly special, home-baked treats, we decided to still have a small amount of sweets, like our regular ration of chocolate chip cookies.  (With the exception of the very occasional Oreo, we haven't had store-bought cookies in probably two years.)

Today I went to the grocery store, ready to come home with my reusable grocery bags full of wholesome goodness.  But our grocery budget is quite limited.  For our family of four (and would you believe it, but Lydia is eating table food now!), we spend between $75 and $100 a week on groceries.  So I breezed through the first part of the grocery store, carefully read labels to find a kind of sausage without high fructose corn syrup in it, and purchased some wild caught shrimp. 

Then I got to the meat case.  There were the whole roasting chickens, sitting in a row.  The "regular" chickens, the kind I usually get, were $.99 a pound.  The organic chickens were $1.98 a pound.  I picked up an organic chicken.  I admired the nice green color of its label.  I put it in the cart. 

My eyes strayed to the conventional chicken.  Its label was red and blue.  The entire chicken cost $4.11.  I looked back to the organic chicken in my cart, which was over $9.00.  I put the new chicken in the cart, and replaced the organic chicken in the meat case.  I just couldn't do it. 

The same thing happened in the dairy aisle, when I deliberated, and then put a gallon of regular milk and a dozen non-organic eggs in my cart.  I just couldn't pay double. 

And the bread?  I have a hard time paying $3 for a loaf of bread in the first place, so the organic, whole wheat bread in the "health" section of the store just about gave me an anxiety attack.  I decided that I would bake my own bread this week.

To make up for all of this, I went back to the produce section and bought twice as many veggies and five extra pounds of apples.  At least we can be healthier by having less of our conventional meat and an extra serving of greens on the side.

I guess the bottom line is this: I am just not convinced that the organic food is worth the price.  Anyone care to convince me?  I'm open to persuasion (and maybe some grocery store scholarships), but for now, I guess I'm going to have to do some more research and start reworking the family budget a little...

Mixing It Up

I have a secret love.  Well, maybe not so secret.  Wanna know who?  It's my stand mixer. 

We go way back.  It was a wedding present.  I've used it probably twice a week - or more - since I first opened the box.  It turns out lovely cakes and every more lovely icings.  It mixes up regular batches of chocolate chip cookies, and less regular loaves of bread.  It mashes potatoes, whips cream, and even shreds cheese. 

Funny story: when Jonathan and I got married and this beauty went on our registry, we had a long discussion about what color it should be.  Jonathan imagined that I would want a pink one.  (I was thinking red, but we were in love and trying to work hard at compromising, so I didn't say so at the time.)  He thought stainless steel would look nice in any kitchen - and match the toaster over, besides.

But I've always kind of wished for red.  So even before I bought my Silhouette cutter last fall, I knew that this was going to be one of my first projects: to add a splash of color to my mixer. 

The hardest part was choosing a design.  Inspired by this, I chose a kitchen utensil theme. 

It's cute.  It's red.  (It's cleaner than it has been since I took it out of the box that first time.)  It's dying to mix up some chocolate chip cookie dough, so I'd better start measuring some ingredients...

A Row of Holiday Houses

I love Christmas.  This is why I've been making myself scarce in blogland during December: I'm too busy doing Christmas to write about it!  (Maybe I'll do a major recap in January...)  So I volunteered to host our play group's Christmas party.  I was all about low-key, low-stress.  I even volunteered to make mac and cheese for the potluck supper.  Easy, right?

Then the December issue of Family Fun magazine came in the mail.  And all that went down the tube.  I didn't even read the magazine.  I just saw the pictures of the gingerbread house decorating party, and went into overdrive.  The result?  Mass-produced graham cracker houses (at least I didn't make real gingerbread, right?).  Add eight kids, three babies, and bags and bags of candy and icing, and this is what you get.

Some kids let their moms help with the icing.

Some are quite independent.  (Wonder where that comes from?)

And some very symmetrical.

For some, there's no holding back!

A little icing was eaten along the way...

This was too cute: her head is barely above the table!

Long after everyone else finished, Hannah was still putting "just one more candy" on hers.  Or at this moment, dousing the thing with sprinkles.

"What kind of sugary goodness did you put on yours?"

And then there was shameless snitching of the candy.

And I mean shameless!

In the end, they all came out beautiful, and good enough to eat.

After all this creativity, we settled down to supper.  Stuffed full of marshmallows and gummy bears, most of the kids couldn't care less about their supper.  (But take a look at all those sippy cups...so funny!)

I have to say, a good time was had by all.  As the Facebook updates rolled in after the party, it seemed like most of the kids had the appropriate post-sugar crash just in time for bed.

Tiny Pies and a Big Girl Sous Chef

Hannah and I made some mini pies to take to a Thanksgiving celebration.  More on those later, but bear with me while I wax sentimental for a few minutes.  Baking together has been something that we Hannah and I have enjoyed since she could stand on a chair at the kitchen counter.

Her participation has evolved from banging together her own mini utensils, to actually participating in the making of things.

Of course, licking the beater has always been part of the bargain.  (I'm going to have to buy another stand mixer when Lydia is big enough to help.  Whoever made those with only one beater must have been an only child.)

But yesterday, I realized that Hannah was really helping.  She knows how to level the top of the measuring cup with her finger.  Although, because her finger is so tiny, using her whole hand works better...

She can stir things, using a full-sized spoon.  And most of the time, most of the ingredients stay in the bowl.

When I was chopping the apples, Hannah helped.  Look at her dice: not too shabby for a three-year-old, huh? 

Well, all of this, as I said, was to make some mini pies.  We made pumpkin and apple.  I looked at many recipes online for pies in muffin tins, and finally used the pumpkin pie recipe on the can of Libby's pumpkin, and my favorite crumb-topped apple pie recipe.  I baked them according to the temperatures and time listed in the recipes, and even though they're miniaturized, they came out just right.  One hint I picked up from reading other's experience is to liberally grease the muffin tins: a big help in getting the little guys out.

I also used pre-made crust - pie crust is not my forte.  With that confession out of the way, I will say that this is the first time I can remember using canned pumpkin.  I am in the habit of roasting and pureeing my own pumpkin, then keeping it in the freezer to use throughout the year.  But last year's pumpkin is gone, and as you can see, this year's pumpkin is still adorning the kitchen counter.

The little pies look lovely, and Hannah and are very excited to share them with our friends this afternoon.  

Chicken Enchiladas with Green Sauce

Have you noticed how much Mexican food I have posted on Wee Warrens?  It must be because I really like making it.  Some people are Italian buffs, or grill masters.  I guess my favorite food culture is Mexican.  Especially things wrapped in tortillas and covered in cheese.  What more could you want in a meal?

Hands down, the favorite Mexican-inspired dish at our house is chicken enchiladas.  It's comfort food for me and Jonathan, and Hannah likes it too. (Keep in mind that this is a kid who started eating salsa straight out of the bowl at 8 months.  And not just any salsa, this stuff would have made some grow-ups cry.  That being said, this really is only as spicy as the sauce you use.)

This is also a super way to use up leftover chicken.  My mom makes turkey enchiladas after the holidays.  If you don't have any cooked chicken on hand, an easy and tasty way is to simmer a couple of chicken breasts (or whatever pieces you have on hand) in just enough water to cover, with a little onion and oregano. 

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked chicken, diced or shredded
12 corn tortillas (if you want to do it the "real" way, you have to use corn and not flour)
Sour cream
Cheese that's melty (If you want to be really authentic, skip this "authentic" cheese blend I bought and use Monterrey Jack.  If you want to be frugal, buy what's on sale, like I did. You could also use queso fresco, which is really yummy, but it doesn't melt at all.  So I would use queso fresco in the enchiladas and put the melty cheese on top, to make it look prettier.  Because isn't melted cheese all over your dinner pretty?!)
Green enchilada sauce (My "secret ingredient" is this kind of sauce: Herdez Salsa Verde, which is not enchilada sauce at all.  It's tomatillo salsa, but it has a nice tangy flavor, and just the right amount of spice for our family.)

Step 1: Heat your tortillas.  This keeps them from crumbling when you fold them.  If you don't do this, you're going to get super frustrated, and just have a big tortilla mess on your hands. 

I have this nifty tortilla warmer, that you use in the microwave.  Alternatively, you could use my mom's tried and true method: take the tortillas out of the bag and wrap them in a couple of damp paper towels.  Microwave them for 30-60 seconds.

Step 2: Working with one tortilla at a time, spread lengthwise down the middle: about 2 Tbsp of sour cream,

and 1-2 Tbsp of cheese (this depends on how cheesy you want it, or whether or not you're going for low-cal.  Based on the picture above, it looks like I used a little less than a cup.)

and a nice handful of chicken.

Step 3: Roll up the tortilla.  This is where you'll find out why it mattered to heat the tortillas first.  If they're not hot (or not hot enough), they'll break and crumble.

Step 4: Put them in a 9x13 baking dish, making sure the "seam" side is down.  This keeps all the good stuff in while they're cooking.

Step 5: Cover it up with enchilada sauce.

Make sure you get all the edges, or they'll get crusty and dried out.

Step 6: Top the whole thing with some more cheese.  Again, it's good gooey, and it's nice with just a little for decoration for the diet version.

Step 7: Bake it at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes, until the cheese is melted and it's heated all the way through. 

Usually, one person would eat 2 or 3 enchiladas.  So this recipe would serve 4, and you might even have leftovers for lunch the next day.

Cooking Something Pinteresting

Are you a Pinterest addict?  I am.  Pinterest is a site where you can waste hours of time doing two things.  One: create a virtual bulletin board of pictures and websites you want to remember for later ("I love the cute hair bow tutorial I saw online.  I'm going to 'pin it,' so I can find the instructions later.") Two: look at the myriad of stuff other people have pinned, then re-pin it to your own board ("Oooohhh... it never occurred to me that you could deconstruct Baby's crib and make a bench out of it, and I never would have read the kind of blog that talks about this, but now that I see it, I have to do it!!!!")  I've seen so many good ideas on Pinterest that I decided I can't look at it while I'm up at night with Lydia.  I get so excited about the possibilities that I literally can't go back to sleep.  I know...I can't help it.

(By the way, want to follow me on Pinterest?  Click the big, red button on the side bar.)

The folks at Pinterst have helpfully created some umbrella categories that one can peruse, like fashion, food, crafts, photography, and travel, just to name a few.  I spend most of my time looking at kids, crafts, and food - and I mean this virtually, not just in real life.  Let me tell you, seeing row after row of beautiful photographs of really nice food just does something to me.  My mouth waters as soon as I log in.  (I don't want to hear your remarks about Pavlov.)  I got so many cakes going on my food board that I even created a separate cake board.

So after weeks of looking at all these pictures and accompanying recipes, I decided to get out my mixing spoon and make a few.  Some are wonderful.  Some look good and taste mediocre.  I figured that I'd try my hand as a food critic; that is, of my own cooking, based on recipes I find on Pinterest.  Interested?  Then read on...

Just before Halloween, there were a plethora of pumpkin recipes making the rounds on the Food Boards.  I really like cooking with pumpkin.  I always buy several pumpkins, which I roast, puree, and freeze to bake with throughout the year.  So I was looking for ways to use up the end of last year's pumpkin.  And this Pull-Apart Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Bread showed up over and over again.  This is from a beautiful and yummy-looking food blog called Sunny Side Up in San Diego.  It looks amazing, doesn't it?  I had just made pumpkin muffins, which Jonathan and Hannah both devoured (and these are people who turn up their noses at banana, blueberry, or chocolate muffins).  So I was ready to venture deeper into the realm of pumpkin breads.

One afternoon last week, Hannah and I gathered the ingredients and went to work.  This is a yeast bread, so it was a lesson in delayed gratification for daughter and mother alike.  Hannah especially enjoyed cutting the strips of dough to make the pull-apart bits.  It baked up into a nice loaf, which looked almost as lovely on our plate as it does in the original picture.

Hannah and I sat down to take our first bites.  She liked it okay, but unlike the magic pumpkin muffins, only ate a few bites.  (This is normal for my non-sweet-tooth.  I don't understand how she is related to me, but I guess it's for the best.)  I, on the other hand, was hugely disappointed. 

I don't think I've ever said this before in my whole life, but there was too much sugar.  The entire bread tasted like sugar: cinnamon sugar coating each piece of bread, and then a very sweet glaze drizzled over the entire thing.  (By the way, I left the rum out of the glaze.  Maybe that was the problem.)  It did not taste one bit like pumpkin. I was sad that I used my second-to-last cup of frozen pumpkin on a bread that didn't have any pumpkin flavor.

Bottom line: this one's not going in the Keeper File.  As a cinnamon sticky bread, it was just fine, but for a pumpkin bread, it missed the mark for me.

Pumpkins

We're having a ball this fall with all things pumpkin.

First, check out these jack-o-lantern fruit cups we brought to our Halloween party. There were so easy to make, and super cute. The kids loved them!

I made them by cutting the tops off of oranges (it helped to first find the end of the orange that sat best of the table, then cut off the opposite end). Next, I cut out most of the orange with a knife. I didn't worry about scooping out all the pulp, just enough to make a cup. Then I chopped the removed orange, added some other fruit, and filled them back up. The faces were drawn on with permanent marker. This was actually the hardest part because the oranges weren't completely dry. So some of them are augmented with a regular ball point pen.

And we made our now-annual visit to the pumpkin patch. (This time we drove instead of hiked...uh...walked.)

These girls are just so stinking cute!

Grapes!

Last week, our friends Marcia and Paul invited us to their place to pick grapes. Hannah and I were so excited about our outing that we even convinced Jonathan to tag along. What a time we had!

Paul told us that the best of the crop was over. I told him it was okay, that we were mostly there to spend the morning outdoors and to take pictures. (Marcia said with the three 5 gallon buckets Paul picked before we came, she made something like 46 quarts of grape juice and pints and pints of jelly. The Warrens are not quite so ambitious...)


So we set out to the beautiful little vineyard in the back yard. We ate a few grapes,


picked one or two bunches,


posed for the camera.


Paul, meanwhile, had picked a gallon bucket full, and went by muttering, "You weren't kidding about being here to take pictures." Nope!

Paul and Marcia have several varieties of grapes, the names of which I don't remember. There are purple ones


white ones


and big muscadine grapes (I guess I remembered something.)


After we filled our bags and buckets (and chased the cat for a while),


Marcia shared with us some of the grape juice she made, along with the recipe for making our own.


Back at home, we washed and sorted the grapes, preparing some for making juice and some for grape jelly.


For the juice, Marcia said to fill the jar half full of grapes,


add half a cup of sugar,


fill the rest with boiling water, and then process the jars for 10 minutes. (I later learned that one shouldn't can on a glass-top stove because it could break the glass. Lucky thing it didn't because the grape juice was a maiden voyage for our brand new stove!)

The jelly we made using this recipe, which called for squeezing the grapes out of the skin. Boy was that a job that a two-year-old could really get into! (Mama thought it was pretty fun too.)


Finally, after the juice sat for a few days, we cracked one of our jars open and enjoyed it.


It was pretty sweet for me, but Hannah was a big fan. And let me tell you about how these grapes tasted. This might prove my fruit-ignorance, or maybe the part of the country I'm from, but I always thought that grape-flavored stuff - candy, medicine, whatever - was really fake tasting. Grapes don't taste anything like that. Well, now I've amended that opinion to say that grocery store grapes don't taste like that. These real grapes tasted just exactly like grape. What do you know? The grapes I've been eating all these years are pale imitations of the real thing.


Thanks, Marcia and Paul, for sharing your grapes and giving us a wonderful morning - and some tasty souvenirs!