Broccoli and Cauliflower Salad

This salad is a staple at family gatherings on my side of the family.  My Mom is allergic to dairy and many salads are out for her.  Since this is one she enjoys (and can have without her throat swelling shut, which is always a plus), we always indulge her!  LOL (I'm sure that if she read my blog she would appreciate that. )

Recipe:
1 head of cauliflower, cut in bite-sized pieces
2-3 broccoli florettes, cut in bite-sized pieces (we tend to go for more broccoli, but that's a personal preference)
8 oz. bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled (I used Hormel Natural preservative free bacon.  While I'm not a big fan of Hormel's business practices, they're nitrite free bacon is the best I've tried so far.)
1/4-1/2 cup finely chopped onion (really depends on how strong the onion is and how much you like it as to how much you want to add)
2/3 cup mayo
1/3 cup sugar
1-2 Tbsp. white distilled vinegar

In a large bowl, put the first 4 ingredients in and toss together.  In a small bowl combine the mayo, sugar and vinegar.  Stir to make a dressing.  Pour over the veggies and stir to coat the broccoli and cauliflower. 

In my opinion, this is best served the same day that it is made.  I think that the longer it sits, the bacon gets chewy.  The crispness and saltiness of the bacon against the sweet-n-sour of the dressing work well togther.  Once you have soggy bacon, it's just not the same.

Rice-A-Roni: Only Waaayyyy Better and 1000 Island Dressing

When I was thinking about what I was going to do this week, these recipes didn't come to mind, but as I was getting lunch ready today, I knew I had to share.  Food this yummy is too good not to share with friends.

Let's start with the rice.  It is a seasoned rice that tastes much like chicken flavored Rice-A-Roni. It has a very similar taste without all of the yucky preservatives.  I made it with brown rice, but I'm sure that white rice could be used too, if desired.  The original recipe came from Taste of Home as a prepared mix where you just pull out what you need.  I don't eat it often enough to need to have the mix prepared ahead of time, so I just pare down the orginial recipe to make what I'm needing for that meal.  I used 2 cups of rice today and it made enough for the daycare kids' lunch, my lunch and I'll have plenty to repurpose into Spanish rice tonight to have with our nachos.

Here is my version of Chicken Rice-A-Roni

2 cups brown rice

2 Tbsp. dried parsley flakes

1 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

dash of dried thyme

4 1/2 cups chicken broth

1 tablespoon butter

Mix all ingredients in a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat to a simmer.  Cook 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.  After 45 minutes, remove from heat, keep covered until serving.  Fluff with fork and serve.

1000 Island Dressing

I worked on this a bit duing Salad Week (Baby Step 2), but wasn't super thrilled with the results so it went on the back burner.  I've been skipping salads lately because I was out of dressing and I finally got annoyed with that so I cranked out a batch of Caesar dressing and tried this 1000 Island recipe.  I'm not sure where the original version came from.  It was cut and pasted and tucked in my recipe book.  I can't even tell you how old it is.  But I made a few changes to it and have come up with a dressing that I like very much.

1/2 cup mayonnaise

2 T. Ketchup (I used a store brand organic, but I will experiment with tomato paste at a later time.)

2 tsp. sweet pickle relish (I had some I canned last summer.)

1/8 tsp. salt (I just used a pinch.)

1-2 shakes of pepper

1 finely chopped hard boiled egg

Mix all ingredients together.  Keep refrigerated as this contains eggs.  The dressing in the photo does not have egg in it.  I ran out of time to boil and egg before lunch.  The dressing is ok without the egg, but I like it better with egg.

You'll notice that with the rice and salad are 2 wedges of a cheese quesadilla.  Yeah, they're made with white flour tortillas.  I keep trying different wheat tortilla recipes and while they all taste good, I can't get them rolled thin enough.  Mine end up looking like tortillas on steriods-too much bulk for the amount of cheese.  They do not make good quesadillas.  So, I'm  back to square one with those. :(

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.

Caesar salad dressing-the quest is finally over!

Week 2's challenge was to healthify (is that even a word?) my salad.  I switched my lettuce from regular to organic romaine.  I made my own croutons from leftover French bread, but my biggest feat was to find homemade versions of my family's favorite dressings.  The thousand island one is ok, but when I use it up, I'll probably be looking for something else.  The ranch dressing recipe is a hit!  My husband didn't know it was homemade until I asked him how it was, and he said, "It's good.  Why?  Did you make it?"  Score one for me; actually, score one for Katie at Kitchen Stewardship.  But I did read the recipe correctly and dump everything in the blender.  That has to count for something.

The last thing I wanted to do to completely revamp my salad was to come up with a homemade Caesar dressing.  I really enjoy Caesar salads and don't want to have to wait to go out to a restaurant and pay $5.15 for a plate of salad to go with my $12.99 meal.  And, yes, I just did this on Monday!  If it helps at all, I did use a coupon!

Last week I had tried a couple recipes and the first one didn't make it past the smell and the second one faired only slightly better.  Since the ranch recipe from Kitchen Stewardship went over so well, I thought the Caesar would be a hit too.  But, my first attempt was a miserable flop.  It tasted horrible, and I was sort of sad about the whole thing.  Later that day I was fixing dinner and sauteeing onions in extra virgin olive oil.  When I poured it in the pan, some got on my finger and I licked it off before washing my hands.  It was the same icky taste.  Come to find out, I don't like olive oil.  Evidently up to this point, I've only had it cooked in food and never noticed that the oil itself has a taste.  It's fine in cooked food, but not in my Caesar salad dressing.

I remade the dressing using the recipe from Kitchen Stewardship again, this time using canola oil instead of EVOO.  Soooooo much better!  I'm sure this is a personal preference thing, but for me, I've got my dressing!

Caesar Dressing
1 egg yolk, from pastured chickens, room temperature
2 tsp apple cider vinegar (raw is best)
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1 Tbs (or a little less) lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, crushed (I used minced as that is what I had)1-2 tsp Worcestshire sauce (I used 2 tsp.)
2 Tbs (or more) Parmesan cheese (I used more! :)  )
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Blend up the egg yolk and everything else but the Parmesan and the oil with the stick blender, then stream in 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (or canola oil, if you are like me).  It should thicken up into a creamy consistency, which is SO FUN to watch!  Stir in the Parmesan cheese at the end.

Getting closer-a quest for Ritz

I am officially a nerd.  Of course, anyone who spends more than 5 minutes with me can tell you that.  I am on a quest to make my own Ritz crackers.  It isn't really that big a deal.  I mean I have made several kinds of crackers that were all pretty good, so if occasionally I want to buy a box of Ritz, I'm sure it won't kill me.  However, this has become one of those "gotta do it" sort of things.  Last night I spent about 2 hours pouring over the internet finding thousands of recipes for using Ritz crackers and very few for making them.  At about 10 pm, I came across one that looked particularly interesting.  It was a batter that you poured in the pan and smeared around until it was level and then baked it until crisp.  SHUT UP! (said in my best Stacey London voice)  Crackers are supposed to have stiff dough and you roll them out as thin as possible and then a little thinner still.  I was intrigued.  So at 10:15 I was in the kitchen whipping up some batter crackers.  They came together very easily and although I think my dough was a little thick I spread them out and stuck them in the oven.  After 8 minutes I pulled the pans out and cut the cracker glob into squares and stuck it back in for 20 minutes.  I didn't check them at 15 minutes like I was supposed to because I didn't think they would be very good.  Oops-I should've watched them closer.  I found that 20 minutes was a bit too long, as my edges were really brown, but they were crispy and tasty.  Surprise, surprise!  I made mine plain, but the actual recipe had several spices and I think they would be even better this way.  No, these crackers aren't like a Ritz, but they are sturdy (good for dipping), have a good flavor and go well with cheese.  I think I might not need a Ritz cracker in my collection.

Just a side note, I didn't originally save the blog that I got the recipe from.  All I could remember is that the post I read talked about the lady baking crackers all night long and playing parcheesi with her husband.  Like any good detective, I googled "baking crackers parcheesi" and found the link to the blog immediately! LOL!

From what I've read so far, the blog, Choosing Voluntary Simplicity, has great stories and an awesome cracker recipe.

Ingredients
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup oats
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup water
1 cup milk
1 heaping tablespoon dried basil
1 scant tablespoon dried oregano
5 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
2 cloves garlic or garlic powder to taste

additional butter for brushing the tops of the crackers in the pan

Put first 6 ingredients in a food processor.  Pulse several times to break up the oats into more of a flour consistency.  Add butter and pulse until the mixture resembles cornmeal.

I added 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup water.  I used less milk because I wasn't adding all of the herbs, so I didn't need as much liquid.  In hindsight, I should've added a bit more milk as my batter was probably thicker than it should've been.  If using the herbs, use the full cup of milk.

I lined 2 jelly roll pans with parchment paper and divided the batter between them.  Then I spread the batter around and shook the pan trying to even it out.  Because my batter was a bit thicker, it did not completely even out.  I put the pans in a 350* oven for 8 minutes and then pulled them out and used a pizza cutter to cut them into squares.  I brushed the top with butter and returned the pans to the oven for 15-20 minutes.   I waited 20 and should've checked at 15.  Oh well, there's always next time, right?

Update on Ceasar dressing-finally perfected that-I'll leave you in suspense until tomorrow!  Ha!  I'm sure you'll lose sleep over it!

Today's lunch-Ranch dressing

I am gettin pretty frustrated with my cracker experiments, %$#@ Ritz crackers!  Why do I have to like them so much?  Anyway, I decided to focus on something that was going better.  I was planning salad as part of lunch today and noticed that my dressing bottle was almost out.  Since I vowed that I wouldn't buy more, I had to make ranch dressing from scratch today.  The verdict... it was a hit (at least with 3 and 4 year olds).  I used the recipe from Kitchen Stewardship and I think it tastes much like what I'm used to buying.  Keep in mind that I absolutely cannot stand ranch dressing, but I tasted what came from my bottle and what came from my blender and they tasted very similar (gross in my opinion, but similar!).  The only noticeable difference was that the homemade version wasn't as thick.  If that becomes an issue for my older children, I'm thinking that I might be able to add cornstarch or maybe dry milk.  We'll see.  I filled the bottle I had and used it on the salads for lunch.  No one noticed and even when they later had carrot coins and broccoli with the ranch as a dip, it was eaten without question.

Here is the recipe I used.

3/4 c. mayo (I used store bought mayo.  I have a whole jar and the ingredients seem ok, but I'll make my own when I run out.)
1/2 c. sour cream or plain yogurt (I used all plain yogurt.)
1 Tbs red wine vinegar
2 cloves crushed fresh garlic (I only had the jar of minced, so that is what I used.)
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/4+ tsp. each: dried parsley, dill weed, chives (I didn't have dried chives, so I doubled up on the parsley.)
a few shakes cayenne pepper
black pepper to taste, preferably freshly ground
salt to taste (I threw in a couple shakes.)

I tossed the mayo and yogurt in the blender and thoroughly blended it and then added everything else and blended more.  It filled my bottle about 3/4 full, so that should be enough for a week or so.  I'm thinking that this will keep as long as your yogurt is good-maybe 2-3 weeks.  I'm big on the taste and see method of deciding if foods are good or bad. :)

As for the rest of lunch, we had homemade hamburger helper with wheat pasta, steamed peas and an oatmeal animal cookie.  Of course everyone ate their salads and wanted more.  I didn't feel like cutting up a whole head of lettuce for 2-3 salads, so I offered carrot coins and small pieces of broccoli.  That encouraged 2 more kids to wolf down their salads so they could have carrots with ranch.  Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing!

While I was making the ranch, I figured I would make a batch of Caesar.  That was a disaster.  I'm searching for another recipe!

Week 3: Cracker attack!

I love crackers.  Mmmm... cheese and crackers, radish dip and crackers, peanut butter cracker sandwiches.  Anybody got a cheese ball?  Over the past year or so, I've been able to rid my house of most boxed food ( ie. processed food), crackers and cereal are the exception.  So, this week we are tackling the cracker.  I will be making my own versions of animal crackers, graham crackers, cheese crackers and ritz-type crackers.  First up-animal crackers.

I started with a recipe from Taste of Home for Oatmeal Animal Crackers.  It seemed like it would taste good, but there were a few things that I didn't like about it.  The recipe called for too much sugar, used shortening and called for white flour.  I halved the recipe, because if it ended up a flop, I didn't want to have 5 dozen gross animal crackers.  Here are the changes I made.

1/2 c. sugar

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter, cold and cut in cubes
1/4 cup hot water
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup white whole wheat flour

In a food processor, add the first 4 ingredients and pulse to combine.  This will also break down the oats into more of a flour consistency.  Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles course cornmeal.  Add the hot water and vanilla and combine.  Slowly add the flour and continue to pulse until the mixture forms a stiff dough.  Let rest 10 minutes.  Divide into 2 batches and roll the first half to 1/8" thickness.  Cut with cookie cutters or use a pizza cutter.  Bake at 350* for 8-10 minutes until golden brown.  Repeat with second half of dough. 

Keep in mind this was only half a batch and I ended up with about 4 dozen 2 inch heart cookies, so if you double the recipe for a whole batch, you had better like these crackers!  :)

I was worried that I'd rolled them too thick and that they would be too "cakey" and not "cracker-y," but they all seem to have a decent crunch and this afternoon, there's only a dozen left, so they are kid approved!

Updates:
Soda-had a sip or two at a ball game b/c I was too lazy to hoof it to the water fountain.  It was gross and when I got back to the car, I drained my cup of ice water.  And, when I walked down the snack aisle to pick up some pretzels, I wasn't even tempted to put anything in my cart.  Definite progress has been made!

Salad Dressings
I found a very promising recipe for a Caesar dressing as well as a ranch.  I'm waiting for a bottle to be empty to make more.  That will probably happen this week sometime.  I'll post results! :)

1000 Island Dressing

This week I'm making over my lettuce salad and definitely couldn't do that completely without addressing the salad dressing.  Thousand island dressing is the dressing I grew up on.  I have fond memories of going to Golden Corral on car trips and making myself a huge salad topped with chopped eggs, ham, turkey, bacon bits and lots of thousand island dressing.  Looking at that list, I think I might be the only person who can turn a lettuce salad into a full serving of protein!

As I researched different dressings, it became pretty obvious that one of the easier dressingsto make from scratch would be thousand island.  I finally settled on this recipe from allrecipes.com.  It only had three ingredients:  mayonaise, chili sauce, and pickle relish.  The recipe got great reviews.  It seemed like a no brainer-until I went to the store to get chili sauce.

I should've known better than to think that I could walk into the grocery store, pick up a bottle of chili sauce and walk out.  That would've been entirely too easy.  My store of choice had 4 different kinds of chili sauce, and all of them had ingredients that I'm trying not to buy.  Most notable among them are high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), corn syrup and corn syrup solids, and partially hydrogenated anything.  So, that was a bust, although I did pick up some organic cornstarch that will pop up in a post later on.

At home, it was back to allrecipes.com to find a recipe for chili sauce.  After looking at several, I chose this one.  It was simple enough to whip up, but I found myself with a real problem.  I don't eat chili sauce.  I can't recollect a time when I did.  That makes it very difficult to taste something and know if it's "right."  I plodded on and used it in the dressing recipe.  The results were so-so.  I have discovered that I don't really like mayonaise in a lot of things, and I could pick out the mayo taste right off-not good.  This is where the tinkering begins.  I added more chili sauce, a bit more vinegar and a little lemon juice.  It is still sweeter and had less zip than my $.99 bottle from Aldi's, but it will do.  Once I have used this up, I think I will try the second runner up and see if I like that one better.  It didn't get chosen originally because it calls for ketchup and my ketchup right now still has HFCS in it.  Since my goal is to get more natural ingredients, using the ketchup would have been counter productive.  But, I think I'll still make it with my ketchup and see how it is.  Then I can keep the recipe for when I buy better ketchup.

Sorry I took so long posting this.  I wrote my post on a different computer than where the picture was, so I thought I'd wait and put the pic on before posting-then I forgot.  Oops!  Tomorrow I'm going to try a Caesar dressing and maybe a Ranch one too (we're having guests that like ranch).

Week 2: The Salad Makeover

I love salad.  It's one of the few veggies that I really enjoy and I eat a lot of it.  My two favorites are chef and Caesar salads.  Both have several ingredients and I figured that since I eat so much salad, this would be a good place for a healthy makeover.  "But, it's salad," you say, "isn't it healthy already?"  Yes and no.  Vegetables, of course, are a cornerstone of a healthy, well-rounded diet, but it's all the other junk I throw on a salad that lessens the health value.

My makeover starts with the base-lettuce.  I found that organic romaine hearts were only $.50 higher than the non-organic ones I was buying.  That's not a terrible increase, even if I pick up two packs, that's only $1-no big deal.  So, organic lettuce went into the cart.  I did price several other veggies and, not only were they quite a bit more expensive, but I already had broccoli, onions, carrots, and celery at home, so I didn't see any sense in buying more just for the organic factor.  We probably wouldn't be able to eat it all before it went bad and that's being wasteful and not at all thrifty.

I also like cheese and ham on a chef salad and diced chicken on a Caesar salad.  Those are areas that I have to work up to changing.  Meat and dairy changes will happen later in the year once I have a good momentum going.

But, croutons are easy.  I make a great french bread with a recipe that I found on the Towards Sustainability blog.  It is a breadmaker recipe.  However, my breadmaker died a while back and it's really easy to make by hand.  The recipe makes 2 loaves.  One gets used for it's intended purpose with pasta or as french toast.  The second loaf gets cut into cubes for croutons  I cut the bread into approximately 1 inch cubes and leave them on the counter overnight to dry out.  The next morning I melt a stick of butter (real, not margarine) and mix in 1-2 teaspoons of garlic powder and 1 teaspoon of oregano.  Put all of the bread cubes in a large mixing bowl and dump the butter/seasoning mix on top. Stir well to mix the butter and seasoning throughout the bread.  If you want, you can also add 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese and stir it in as well.  Spread on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Spraying an unlined tray would work too, I just like parchment paper!  Bake at 400* for 10-12 minutes stirring after 5 minutes.  Start watching them closely after 7 or so minutes to make sure they don't burn.  When they are golden brown, remove from the oven and allow to cool and a cooling rack, wax paper, or whatever.  Store in an air tight container.  I don't really know how long they last, but by virtue of the fact that it is stale bread to start with, I would think a long time.  I eat them too fast to know!

Tomorrow's post:  1000 island dressing.  This one is proving to be a challenge!

Update on week 1:  I had not had any soda until Sunday afternoon.  We went to visit our friends for the afternoon.  She served a mixed drink that had Diet Coke and black cherry rum in it.  Oh my, it was yummy!  I ended up having two mixed drinks with glasses of ice water in between.  What I noticed was that I wasn't craving it, and I had no desire to drink just a can of Diet Coke.  I chose that drink because it sounded the tastiest of what was offered, not because of the soda.  I didn't make a social outing plan at the start, so I feel like I handled the situation reasonably well.  And, like I've said before, everything in moderation. :)