A Rainbow of Possibilities

I feel like every post I write these days starts off with "things are really crazy right now," but they are. We are smack dab in the middle of lots of summer travels, which means that my days are filled with trying to catch up with/get ahead of work so I can enjoy our trips with nothing hanging over my head. This, of course, means that the garden is chock full of weeds, the flowers are dead, and if I'm not careful, we'll be eating a lot of short-cut foods.

So this weekend I decided to get ahead of the game and make a bunch of freezer dinners that I can just pull out and warm up and not feel guilty about what I'm feeding my family. I made 18.5 quarts of "the sauce", complete with enough meatballs and sausage for at least 6 dinners. It felt really good to use homegrown onions. We have a bunch of Swiss chard in the garden that is standing up very well to the sweltering heat, so we picked a bunch of it and used it in 2 different dishes for the freezer.

For those who are unfamiliar with chard (as I was before I planted it), it is a green with a yummy buttery flavor and the highest vitamin A content of any vegetable on the planet. We've had it sauteed with a touch of butter and I've been able to freeze some of it for later. It works well in place of spinach, which is what I did in the first dish:

I made 4 lasagnas with whole wheat pasta, organic lamb sausage, homemade sauce, local cheeses, and swiss chard leaves. I probably could have made 5, but I kept tasting the flavor combos to make sure they worked...and...well...they did.

The firm, brightly colored stems leftover after the lasagnas took the place of celery in some homemade chicken noodle soup:

I chopped these down, added stock, homegrown carrots, onions, fresh herbs, and whole wheat egg noodles. The result was a hearty, low-calorie, SUPER vitamin-packed soup:

I'll definitely be eating this to mitigate the effects of eating an entire pan of lasagna by myself.

Method to My Madness (and Fish)

My refridgerator has some weird stuff in it, lately. Besides a whole shelf in the door devoted to grains (whole red wheat flour, ground flax seed, wheat germ, vital wheat gluten), there is also a shelf for stuff I never plan to eat (used coffee grounds, cracked eggshells, veggie scraps). The grains I use for breads. The used stuff is for the garden; grounds for the berry bushes and acid-loving plants, eggshells as a general soil amendment, and veggie scraps for the bunnies and ultimately for manure.

Between these two categories of unusual fridge contents is the little container of crumbs. I used to buy breadcrumbs (Italian-style, of course) which I used in meatballs, meatloaves, on fish*, etc. Since I've started baking my own bread, it's only natural for me to save the ample amount of crumbs. Weird? Maybe, but have you ever sliced up a loaf of fresh bread? There is a LOT left over.

Lately I've been topping my sandwich bread with a mixture of oats, flax, and wheat germ. A lot of it falls off when I slice.

I usually leave the crumbs to dry out a bit for a few hours on the cutting board. Just ask my husband and babysitter how upset I've gotten over them trying to clean up the kitchen.

When they're dry, I scoop them up and put them in an airtight container in the fridge until I'm ready to use them.

Usually there are enough crumbs from just one loaf to make dinner. Now, I'm sure lot's of people have been doing this for years and are rolling their eyes at me and my newbie homemaking status, but this is just how I use them.

I add some melted butter, some fresh or dried herbs (above is fresh basil from the garden), and a little garlic and salt & pepper. I like to top fish* fillets and then bake.

The result is a crunchy topping that actually has a more complex flavor and texture than store-bought crumbs because of the mix of grains. And even with the butter, this is a massively more healthy and tasty alternative to fried fish dishes.

*Mom, I know you're shocked about the fish. Yes, for a good 24ish years I wouldn't touch the stuff with a ten-foot pole. But I can't deny that the stuff is actually GOOD for me, and after a few dishes with salmon and tilapia, I realized I could stand the stuff. Then I was introduced to sushi and halibut**, and realized they are super tasty. Baby steps.

**The above-pictured is halibut, which I found at Walmart in the frozen fish section. It's a brand (Fishin) that actually adverstises it's sustainability efforts which are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council and the fact that the fish are caught wild and not farmed. AND Walmart often puts them on sale: two 3-packs for $7. In my house that's 3 meals for around $1.17 per plate (including the free bread crumbs and free veggies from the backyard to complete the meal). Fishin also sells Wild Salmon and Tilapia at my local Wallyworld.

It's Not Delivery...

There are LOTS of things going on at the WatRanch this week, and I promise updates later this evening. In the meantime, I want to share one of our newest family traditions with you, since we've been keeping this one up pretty well: Friday night pizza!

When we moved to OK almost 2 years ago, we immediately realized we'd moved to a "pizza desert." I never realized how fortunate we were back East to have access to some fantastic pizza (oh Little Italy in Baltimore! I miss you!) until we moved here. There are exactly 2 pizza vendors in our small town, one that specializes in obscene amounts of grease and one that is located in a gas station. I'm pretty sure the cardboard box is tastier than either option, and neither deliver. Our local grocery store carries frozen pizzas, but only the frost-bitten Tombstones with the weak plastic wrap and red and green cubed "toppings." No thanks.

We also have the option of driving 30 minutes into the bigger town to pick up Dominos, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar....you get the picture. As if those choices weren't tantilizing enough (blech) we get to look forward to another 30-minute drive back home where we have the privilage of enjoying lukewarm mass-produced pizza. Hooray!

Ahem. Suffice it to say that we have gone without pizza for quite a while. Pretty much a travesty for a Yankee like me. An ITALIAN Yankee, at that.

About 3 weeks ago (after The Making of The Sauce) I realized I had all the tools necessary for an attempt at scratch pizza-making: homemade sauce, local mozzarella & parm, new-found knowledge of dough techniques, a pizza peel, and a baking stone. At about 2pm that afternoon (a Friday) I decided, what the hey, I'd throw some flour and yeast together to mix up a dough (I used 1.5 tbsp yeast, 3 cups warm water, 1 tbsp salt and 7 cups of flour--half whole wheat and half all-purpose--then tossed in some oregano). It rose for a few hours and at dinner time I broke off a hunk,

and rolled it flat,

and tried to make it as circle-shaped as I could. Then I sprinkled corn meal on my pizza peel to make it easier for the whole pie to slide off into the oven, and laid out the crust. I loaded up with sauce, cheese (blend of mozzarella and parmesan), and toppings (I LOVE spinach on pizza. And artichokes. Seriously, the best pizza I've ever had on this planet was the veggie pizzas in Italy--better than the meats). I also throw on some herbs for an extra kick.

The oven is cranked to 550 degrees (as high as it will go) and the pizza slides right onto the baking stone. It only takes 10-15ish minutes to cook, and seconds for my family to devour. When I say that this is the best pizza we've had in Oklahoma, it's not because I'm so great at cooking: it's because we haven't found a decent pizza that is as convenient as this is. Not counting the 2-3 hour rise time (which I was busy doing other stuff during), the whole process took about 20 minutes to prep. I portioned out 2 more balls of dough from what I had left over and froze them, though I probably could have made 4 total balls if I was being more precise about it. On Thursday night (or Friday morning if I forgot) I take one of the balls out of the freezer and let it defrost in the fridge until just before dinner time.

Oh yeah. That's the stuff.

Spaghetti With Loveballs

On Sunday I gathered some of my local food purchases and several thousand cans of tomatoes and endeavored to make my Big Nonnie's spaghetti sauce with meatballs. As you might imagine, this dish is one that I grew up eating every time we visited Nonnie or she visited us. It wasn't until she and Grampa came to visit us here in Oklahoma this past spring that I realized what a huge chore it was to put on the extravaganza of the sauce, but man is it appreciated. As I cooked it this first time by myself (and yes, I had to call Nonnie to ask several questions as I went), I realized that one thing I'll never be able to replicate exactly is the feeling of family I get when I eat it. I'm sure every family has some dish like this; you can taste a lazy afternoon, hanging out with cousins, getting underfoot trying to take a taste, aunts and uncles laughing and talking, and culminating in a meal where we're all crammed around the kitchen table, extra chairs brought in from the bedrooms, and you know you're growing up when you want to linger afterwards at the table to talk with the adults instead of making a beeline for the living room and the library of Disney movies that Nonnie has on hand.

The best I can hope to do is cook it with as much love as I know it was cooked for me in the past, and hope that my own little family can taste it.

As for the actual ingredients, here goes:

Meatballs (makes about 30)

8 slices dry bread

2lbs ground beef

4 eggs

1c grated parmesan cheese

2t salt

1/4c parsley

2 cloves minced garlic

Dash pepper

 Soak bread in water for two or three minutes, then squeeze out moisture.  Combine bread with beef and rest of ingredients.  (You do this with your bare hands, wearing all of your jewelry. This is how Nonnie always did it and it's an art form.) Form small balls.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and bake balls at 350 degrees for only 20 minutes. They will finish cooking in the sauce.

 

Spaghetti Sauce (makes 4qts)

½ medium onion (~1 1/2c)

Olive oil (enough to coat pan ~ 1/3c)

2 cloves minced garlic

2 #2 ½ cans (7c) tomatoes

4 6oz cans (2 2/3c) tomato paste

2c water (use the water to “wash” the tomato cans)

2T sugar

1T salt

1/2t pepper

1T crushed oregano

 2 bay leaves

Cook onion and garlic in hot oil till tender but not brown.  Sir in the next eight ingredients (you're going to need a big pot).  Simmer, stirring occasionally for 30 minutes.  Remove bay leaves.  Add meat balls.  Continue cooking on low for another 2 hours.

What is missing from this original recipe are the following notes that were passed to me orally, and really, the dish isn't the same without them:

*Braise 2 bone-in pork chops (I used pork neck bones) and add to sauce with the meatballs.

*Add several Italian pork sausages (mostly cooked) to the sauce. 

*Add several hard-boiled eggs (peeled) to the sauce if you are serving that day. (If you haven't had spaghetti with hard-boiled eggs simmered in the sauce, YOU SHOULD.)

*Remove all meat and eggs prior to storing extra sauce (it freezes beautifully).

Be sure to have plenty of fresh Parmesan cheese on hand to dump liberally over the spaghetti, and enjoy as often as possible with good company. We recently fixed this dish at the One Acre Homestead across the street using a camp stove during the big ice storm, and then ate it by candlelight. It might have been the way we sort of improvised and gathered around the table together after a long, crazy day that really made it taste just right.

Soup Saturday

Things are CRAZY at our house this time of year, especially since our Christmas guests are going to start arriving on the 17th--5 days! And with this being Joe's first Christmas, I want to make sure we (meaning me) have plenty of time to soak up the family time and not worry about cooking or chores. I'm splurging to have my house professionally cleaned and I'm stocking the freezer with lots of homemade soups for lunches.

Today I'm cooking up a beef & barley vegetable soup in the crockpot. It's fairly self-explanatory: beef, barley, carrots, green beans, onions, garlic, and whatever spices and herbs I have handy.



On the stove I have a new favorite cooking: butternut squash w/bacon soup. This soup proves the rule that you can add bacon to anything and my husband will eat it. But despite the tasty baconness, it's also low-calorie and nutritious. I can't find the original recipe I used, so I'll reproduce here.

Use 2 large halved butternut squashes with the pulp and seeds removed. Cook covered in the microwave in an inch of water for 15 minutes, until soft.

Meanwhile, cook 6-8 slices of bacon in a large pot and remove. Set aside for later. In the bacon grease, saute an onion and 3 cloves of garlic. Scoop out squash flesh and add to pot. Add enough water (or chicken stock, but this adds sodium and calories) to cover and let simmer until the flavors are blended. I usually take a potato masher to this to help integrate the flavors and break down the squash, but you can skip that.

Pour the soup into a large blender and pulse until smooth. If you will be freezing the soup, add the bacon back in so this gets chopped up into the soup. If serving immediately, then just crush the bacon on top of the soup.


This soup freezes so well and is very hearty. You can add things like cream or other seasonings to it when served, but I keep it simple to keep it diet-friendly. Yes, it's hard to imagine anything cooked in bacon grease as diet-friendly, but this is only 77 calories per 1-cup serving. Can't beat that!

Okay, back to the kitchen I go. Besides baking for gifts, I still need to stuff some peppers for the freezer and I'm running out of thyme!

Get it? Just a little kitchen dork humor for you.

The Midnight Society of Applesauce

Who lurks in the shadows of the kitchen late at night, hunched over a bubbling cauldron? What is that intoxicating spicy sweet smell in the air? Why are all of the doorknobs sticky?

Ah, welcome to the the Midnight Society of Applesauce! You can find us peeling and chopping cheaply-wrought apples deep into the night, long after attention-demanding babies have retired to their cribs. Why do we toil into the wee hours, night after night, concocting these addictive brews?

Well when else do we have time? Applesauce making is a new hobby of mine, which is super convenient since applesauce eating is a favorite hobby of Joe's. Unfortunately, it takes several hours from peeling to canning, and it kind of has to be done without stopping; i.e., without baby. It's all worth it, though, because this tastes SO MUCH BETTER than the yellow goop you buy from the store.

We go through so much of it, so I don't make small batches here and there--I've been learning how to can my wares the old-fashioned way. I love PickYourOwn.org for canning instructions and all of the great advice (and gifted tools) from across the street at the One Acre Homestead.

So far this year I have made around 7 or 8 gallons of applesauce (I've lost track because we've been eating it along the way and using it for baking), canned in quart-sized jars and freezer containers. I don't have any dedicated canning tools yet, other than the gifted funnel and jar tongs from my sweet neighbor, but they are definitely on my wish list for Santa this year. For those of you who haven't canned before, it involves packing hot sauce into a hot jar and then submerging the jars in boiling water for a certain length of time.


I like to throw some cinnamon in when the sauce is cooking. You wouldn't believe how great this makes the house smell.



Needless to say, after an evening in the kitchen with all this steam, my skin looks fantastic. Once removed, the cool air outside the jar does some suction magic and the jars seal. They make an awesome "PING" sound when they're sealed up.

A magic potion? A mystical elixir? Freakin' delicious? You too can strive to join our secret society...or you can be really nice and I might share a jar.

Pumpkins!!

Part of being environmentally responsible AND being healthy is eating seasonally. I've been trying to actually start watching the weekly sales ad from the local grocery store for produce sales. Late summer and early fall seems to be the best time for fresh local produce, so I've been trying to stock up on fresh veggies and batch cook meals for the freezer.

I've never really cooked squash before, and I experimented with it a bit to make some baby food for my son. When it went on sale for $.55 per lb, I got as many different kinds as I could. The pumpkin is what I experimented with the most. It's very important to get "pie pumpkins" or small, dense pumpkins--NOT the big carving pumpkins. Pie pumpkins are full of flavor and nutrients, whereas the carving pumpkins are not good for cooking (though you can roast the seeds--I like to toss mine in Old Bay, cuz I'm a good MD girl).

I started by breaking down the pumpkins, scooping out the pulp and seeds, and roasting them in an inch of water in my Dutch oven for about 45 minutes.



Scooping hot pumpkin flesh out of the skin is not quite something I've mastered, so I am open to suggestions. After the flesh is scooped out, I mash it with a hand mixer and then it is a ready ingredient for a number of tasty dishes. I'll talk about the top three below.

Spiced Pumpkin Butter with Pecans

Using this recipe from cooks.com, I attempted to try a butter full of autumny flavor, even though I've never cooked or eaten pumpkin butter before. It was not an awful first try, but next time around I'll follow the directions regarding the orange zest, instead of throwing all of it in.

First, I added spice, honey, and orange zest/juice to the pumpkin mash and put the whole mixture in the crockpot.


I let it cook down all day. The house smelled AMAZING--I'm telling you, even if you don't end up eating this stuff, I recommend making a batch the morning of a holiday get-together just for the awesome smell. At the end of the day, I added a bit more mash to freshen up the pumpkin flavor. Check out the color difference after a day of cooking:While the fresh mash was being integrated into the mixture, I toasted some fresh pecans. The place to get these is in the PRODUCE SECTION of the grocery store, not in dusty, old bags that they put in the baking aisle.
These got chopped and mixed into the butter (those that survived my munching--so good right out of the oven!). I think if you're going to do something with the butter right away, definitely reserve some of these as a topping.

Current wisdom says that you can not home can pumpkin because there is not enough acid to keep bacteria from growing. However, pumpkin (and pumpkin butter) can stay refrigerated for up to 6 months and frozen for up to a year (so sayeth the internet). So far my favorite use for this stuff is as a spread for fresh, warm brownies:
The chocolate compliments the pumpkiny-citrus flavor SOOOO well. Yum!

Pumpkin Ravioli


So, after eating a million pumpkin-butter-topped brownies, it may be time to cut back on some calories, right? This recipe for a pumpkin-stuffed ravioli is very healthy and is a few hundred calories less than a traditional stuffed pasta dish. Because it's made with the flavorful parmesan (albeit a relatively small amount), it takes on a cheesy flavor and the texture is similar, too.

I made a huge batch using soy wonton wrappers (found in the refrigerated section of the produce aisle). I mixed up the pumpkin mash, parmesan cheese, and a bit of black pepper. I spooned a heaping teaspoon onto each wrapper:
Then I moistened the edges:

And I folded the whole thing into these cute little envelopes, placed on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper:
Granted, there are many different ways these can be folded up, and these need to be tight or they come loose while being boiled. I was able to throw the baking sheet in the freezer and then transfer the raviolis into a freezer bag once they were hardened. I made about 100 raviolis. A moment or two in a pot of boiling water is all it takes to cook these, toss in a little herb butter, and you have a healthy, seasonal, original dinner!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins


Perhaps the simplest, tastiest use for the pumpkin mash has to be this awesome recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. There are 2 secret ingredients that make a huge difference. Secret flavor: cinnamon. It perfectly complements the chocolate so that you don't have to overwhelm the muffin with them. Secret texture: yogurt. It makes these muffins so smooth and velvety without the fat of oil, and adds a nice boost of calcium and protein, too.


I used half white flour and half wheat for an extra nutritional boost, and broke out my mini-muffin pan for built-in portion control. These freeze beautifully, if they last long enough to make it into the freezer. I actually handed these out on Halloween (to families we know) and they were much more popular (and healthier!) than candy.