Updates on the baby steps

I just thought everyone might like to see how the project is going!

1. Eliminate soda:  It's going pretty well.  Hubby brought how 5 two-liter bottles from work one day last week and I've had a couple glasses.  Both times it tasted sickening sweet and I had to have a glass of water to combat the sugar.  I'm definitely over the addiction.  I drink mostly water and tea with the occasional glass of orange juice.
2. Salads:  Still buying organic lettuce and making my own Caesar and ranch dressings.  I'm not overly thrilled with the 1000 island recipe and need to do some more searching.
3. Crackers:  I'm making all graham crackers, cheese crackers and animal crackers.  I've given up on the snack cracker for right now and I'm buying Kashi 7-grain crackers.  They are a little pricey, but so is using pound upon pound of flour for crackers that are ok, but not "to die for."
4. Eliminate GMO sugar:  I finally purged the last of my cheap powdered sugar stash over the weekend.  I am now buying evaporated cane juice (and trying to use less overall), and C&H brown sugar and powdered sugar.  Eventually I'll probably get rid of brown sugar and add a bit of molasses and extra cane juice in substitution in recipes, but for now C&H is cane sugar so no genetically modified sugar beets and that's good enough.  Down the road, when I have more money to devote to groceries, I'll buy large quanitities of Rapadura, but right now that's not an option.  I will make this change knowing that there is better, but what I'm doing is better than nothing at all.
5. Organic apples have been reasonably priced, so not buying them hasn't even been a consideration.  As of yesterday, they were within $.10/pound of conventionally grown apples.  That's not enough of a difference to justify buying the cheaper ones.
6. MSG and nitrate(ite) free meats:  I'm doing reasonably well.  Yesterday I bought nitrate/nitrite free deli meat and bacon.  I like the Hormel deli meat (if not the company), so 2-3 packages/month will work there and I bought Applewood Farms Bacon.  It's on the menu for tonight, so hopefully it's tasty.  For now, we are really limiting ham.  In the past months, I purchased a whole ham and we used it for 4-5 meals.  I'm steering away from that.  There isn't a nitrate free version that is remotely affordable, so we will still eat it on holidays or family gatherings, but not as part of our normal meal rotation.
7. Following superfoods recommendations:  Meal planning was a little harder than I imagined, but not too bad.  The food that I found getting skipped most often (and it really surprised me) was tomatoes.  Hubby's digestive system doesn't do too well if he eats a lot of acidic foods, so we try to only have tomato-based foods every third or fourth day.  Therefore, we are lacking there.  Since canned tomatoes have BPA in the lining of the cans, not consuming so much might not be a bad thing anyway.  We'll see what happens with our garden this summer.
8. Meal planning:  I did a lot better last week and with this month's plan, I tried to incorporate several easy meals and easy alternatives.  I also bumped up the budget back to $500/month (including any eating out).  If I were feeding just the 5 of us, I don't think $300 would be unreasonable.  Feeding the daycare kids and providing the variety of options is proving more difficult than I had imagined, especially since food prices have gone up even in the last month.  Additionally, I've added a consistent morning snack which increases the cost as well, but I think it helps the little ones focus more and play together better, which is important for their development.  I'm hoping (fingers crossed here) that once I start buying in bulk and get the garden going, that I can bring that number back down.  We'll see.

Overall, I've fallen off the wagon a couple times, but not too bad.  I've got to go.  I'm off to make mac 'n cheese for snack and an apple salad for dinner.

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal

Oatmeal is one of my favorite foods.  Granola bars, oatmeal cookies, or just a plain bowl of comforting warmth on a frosty morning-I love them all.  This morning as my daycare kids were all back after a few days off here and there because of snow, I welcomed them with apple cinnamon oatmeal.  As with most dishes I fix for the kids, there were mixed reviews.  One kid wouldn't touch it, one kid said he liked it but only ate two bites and a third had a blueberry Nutra-grain bar on the way to my house, so she wasn't hungry.  The other three kids had two bowls each and would've had a third, but I ran out.  Keeping in mind kids finickey natures, I'll call it a success, and besides, I liked it.

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal

Grate one or two apples into a small saucepan, add 1/4 cup water and a teaspoon of cinnamon.  I used one apple for 2.5 servings of oatmeal and adding another wouldn't have hurt.  Simmer apple mixture until the apples are soft.  I cooked mine for about 30 minutes, although 15 would've been plenty.  I just really like the apple cinnamon smell! :)

Remove from heat and dump the apples into a small bowl.  Fix the oatmeal, according to the package directions.  Mine were boil water, add oatmeal, cook 5 minutes or until thickened.  Add the apples back to the oatmeal and stir thoroughly.  Add 2-3 tablespoons maple syrup to the oatmeal and about 1/2 cup milk.  Stir and heat through.

Apple streusel muffins

Do you ever have days where those simple day-to-day tasks sneak up on you?  That certainly happened today when I went to check and see what was for snack.  At 2:30 pm, I discovered that we were supposed to have cheese quesadillas-yet I had not made tortillas yet.  Snack was not going to be served at 3:00 if I had to roll out 10+ tortillas.  It just wasn't happening.  Plan B, anyone?

Apple muffins were supposed to be Friday's snack, so switcheroo and now today is muffins and tomorrow will be cheese quesadillas.  Let just hope that I don't forget the tortillas again. :)

My favorite apple muffin recipe comes from Baking Bites.  It is for a streusel muffin that is to die for.  Who doesn't love a good streusel topping on warm, soft muffin?  Yum!  However this recipe needed to be healthified (my new made up word for the day) in order to fit in with our move towards a better diet.

These are my changes to the recipe.

Apple Streusel Muffins
Topping:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup walnuts

I pulsed the ingredients in my mini food chopper.  It worked splendidly.  I will definitely be doing that more often.

Batter:
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup coconut oil

1 egg
1/3 cup plain yogurt

2 T. honey

1 tsp vanilla
1 apple (grated, but NOT peeled) The original recipe called for 2 and I would probably use 2 if our apple consumption wasn't crazy this week.  We've eaten 15 or so apples since Sunday night.  I'm running out.

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 24 cup mini muffin tin.  Mix together all dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
Whisk together all wet ingredients in a large bowl, including grated apples. Fold flour mixture into wet ingredients until just combined.
Divide batter evenly into tins and top with streusel mixture.  To do this with the mini muffins, I used an infant feeding spoon.  It was just the right amount.

Bake 10-12 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack before serving.

My batch made 34 mini muffins.

Remember to fill the empty muffin cups with water before placing in the oven.  Also remember to dump the water before you upend the muffins on the cooling rack.  Yes, I've done this on numerous occasions!

At some point, I will get rid of brown sugar altogether, but for right now I'm still working on a 7 pound bag that I got before Christmas.  When that is gone, I'll find a decent brown sugar alternative.  I'll probably end up making my own for a topping such as this or using maple syrup or honey in baked goods.

Lastly, I would've taken a picture, but my little 1 year old day care baby was screaming for one from the high chair as they came out of the oven.  By the time one cooled enough for her to each, the rest of the kids flocked like vultures to the cooling rack.  6 kids, 32 muffins, 10 minutes.  Luckily I ate a couple that got stuck in the muffin pan, or I wouldn't have even got a taste. :)

Week 5: Apples (and a zucchini cookie recipe)

It's snowing here... a lot!  Last time I looked we had about 18".  The kids are out of school and they are bored.  In our house, bored translates into hungry.  So, every five minutes the kids have been in the fridge and wanting something to eat.  How about an apple?  This week I made the permanant switch to organic apples.  Apples have made the EWG's Dirty Dozen list for years.  The dirty dozen are the top twelve fruits and vegetables that are exposed to the most pesticides and other chemicals, therefore being the most dangerous to eat.  Organic food practices prohibit the use of chemicals on plants, so this makes certain organic fruit/veggies a better choice. 

At many of our local grocery stores, apples cost around $1/pound.  One store has organic apples for $1.18/pound.  We use about 6 pounds of apples per week, so this increases our cost by only $1.08.  This is a small increase that I think is worthwhile.  Of course, apples are in season right now, so the cost is lower.  My plan is buy them as long as they are reasonably priced and as spring comes into full swing, berries will start ripening and I can get those instead of apples.

This fall, I hope to pick a few bushel from a local orchard and make my own applesauce and dice/freeze apples for muffins and breads.  I may even dehydrate some apple rings for later use.

This week look for a couple apple recipes.  But, since I had zucchini thawed in the fridge, today I will post a recipe suggested to me by Tara after I posted my zucchini muffin recipe.  She was getting ready to make some zucchini chocolate chip cookies she saw on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  Thanks so much!  These are tasty!

Here is the recipe (I tend to paraphrase directions, so if you want the exact directions, check out the link.)

1 egg, beaten

1/2 C. butter, softened

1/2 C. brown sugar

1/3 C. honey

1 Tbsp. vanilla

1 C. white flour

1 C. whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1 C. shredded zucchini

12 oz. chocolate chips

Combine wet ingredients.  In a separate bowl comine dry ingredients.  Add dry to wet.  Fold in zucchini and chocolate chips.  Bake cookies in 350* oven for 10-15 minutes.

My changes:  I ran myself out of whole wheat flour, so I used 1/2 C. ww flour and 1 1/2 cups bread flour.  12 oz. chocolate chips is way too much for me, so I used abou 6 oz.

I used the Pampered Chef small scoop (1 tablespoon) and was sort of disappointed that the cookies didn't flatten out much, but they taste awesome.  They have a nice crunch on the outside and are cake-like on the inside.  They are sweet, but not overwhelmingly so.  I could've seven cut the brown sugar to maybe 1/3 cup.  This recipe is definitely a keeper, but I think I'll play around with the amount of butter (maybe up it to 3/4 cup) to see if I can get the cookies to flatten out a bit.  It's completely personal preference, but I like a thinner cookie.