Second Lenten shop

Today I went shopping again for the next two weeks.  This time, I didn't buy any meat for dinners because I think I can get buy without making it at all -- and anyway, I've got quite a lot of meat frozen from last time.  The only exception is a box of fish sticks (in case I really don't have it in me to make dinner) and a package of pepperoni, for pizza. 

What I don't understand is how I could cut out the most expensive items and still spend $191.  Don't I usually spend more than $9 on meat?  I guess I replaced it with so much produce it came out the same.  Oh well.  At least there are plenty of healthy things to eat in the house -- nobody's going to be left eating bread and oreos.

Here are the planned recipes for this week.  This time, I'm not assigning them to specific days.  I just can't always predict which days are going to be good to make something complicated, and when I'm going to basically have to phone it in.  I felt like phoning it in last Wednesday, but I had already marked falafel on the calendar, and it was a very stressful evening.  One does not simply tell the children the plan has changed!

1.  15-bean soup
I got a mix so all I really need to do is add some veggies.

2.  Tacos

3.  Falafel
This time I bought pitas, because falafel itself takes a lot of attention and it's stressful to try to homemake pitas at the same time.  Besides, half my pitas didn't puff.

4.  Split pea soup

5.  Noodles, tomato sauce, eggplant, and mushrooms
I made this last week, worried it would be a flop, but no, the kids loved it!  I did let Marko pick out the mushrooms.

6.  Broccoli teriyaki with white beans
This was a hit last week also.  Which is weird because they don't usually like my attempts at Asian food!

7.  Lentil pot pie
This was on my list last time, but I made shepherd's pie instead because I ran out of flour.  This time I'm not going to be caught short!

8.  Hummus sandwiches/wraps
I bought premade hummus for this last time, and the kids kept whining that it's not as good as mine.   Ha!  Mine's a bit chunky because my blender is a little weak, but I guess they like that.

9. Enchiladas
I got a couple of plantains to go in these; I think that would be nice.

10.  Lentils 'n' dumplings
Basically I'm thinking carrots, celery, lentils, and broth, with my usual dumplings on the top.

11.  Nachos
These will go on whatever day the avocados get ripe.

12.  Pizza
Poor John is going to be stuck with flatbread and sauce.  Because is it really pizza without the cheese?

12.  Chili and cornbread

13.  Tomato soup

14.  Fish sticks

Greek Irish Catholic Orthodox

Today is St. Patrick's Day, and I have some feelings about it. Some of my ancestors, and fully half of John's, suffered persecution from the British in part for their Catholic faith. I feel like I have let those ancestors down by not being Catholic anymore.

But there was a way to honor our Irish heritage and keep the Orthodox fast. No corned beef or fish 'n' chips or Guinness beef stew, but I made bubble & squeak and slightly-inauthentic Irish soda bread. Everyone gobbled it up, myself included.

Falafel recipe

A reader asked for a falafel recipe and I went trawling for links, but I couldn't find one that was exactly what I do.  Mine is not authentic, but I have tried the authentic kind and failed miserably.  My food processor can't handle uncooked chickpeas, and without flour the balls fell apart.  So here is what I actually do do, which is easy and always turns out well (if I actually follow it).  You can tinker with the spices as much as you want to make them taste how you want, but don't leave out the flour.

See this shapeless mass? This is what happens if you leave out the flour.

Foolproof falafel

3 cans chickpeas
handful of fresh parsley or cilantro if you have them -- 1 T dried parsley will do if you don't
1 tsp cumin
garlic and onion, fresh or dried
1 tsp salt
sprinkle of cayenne
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda


Drain the chickpeas and grind them up in a food processor or blender.  You're not looking for smooth here.  Reasonably fine with a few chunks is good.  Process the herbs also, and then stir in all the other things.

At this point, try making it into a ball.  Does it actually hold together well and keep its shape?  If not, add more flour.  Less flour is for classier chefs.  You and I want something that'll hold together in the oil, so don't be stingy.

Heat a deep pan of oil to 350 degrees.  I use shortening because it can handle the heat and is not expensive.  Peanut is great if you have it.  Don't even attempt this with butter or olive oil or anything delicate.

When the oil is fully 350 degrees, shape the dough into balls or patties -- golf ball size or a little smaller.  Deep fry them for a few minutes, till they're brown and crispy on the outside.  Don't undercook them or you lose the entire point.  Drain them on paper towels.

The best way to serve these is in a pita with some yogurt sauce and cucumbers.  But you can also do vegan mayo or baba ganouj or whatever you want.  Or throw them on a salad.  It's all good.

First semi-vegan shop

Today is the first day of the Orthodox fast, and I went shopping.  For the most part I bought my usual things, because I'm not sure yet how the kids will like the vegan stuff and because I'm probably going to keep breakfast, lunch, and snack for the kids exactly as before.  But I didn't buy any chicken, only one package of beef and a pound of sausage for dinner meat.  I spent the extra money on more vegetables, so I came out about even.  I am pretty sure if I went more hardcore on the vegan thing I would save money, but this time I spent $200, which is my usual budget.  That's for two weeks, for a family of six.  *polishes nails*

Here's the entire haul.  I got two gallons of milk instead of three, three pounds of cheese instead of four, and only two pounds of butter.  Also two dozen eggs, one pint of sour cream, one quart of yogurt, a box of fish sticks, three pounds of baloney, and two packages of turkey.  That kind of sounds like a lot of animal foods, doesn't it?  I'm just really nervous about not having things on hand that people will eat.

On the flip side, I got fresh broccoli in addition to the usual frozen, both cabbage and celery (usually I pick one or the other), three avocados, an eggplant,  lots of carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, bagged salad, tomatoes, apples, mandarin oranges, and grapes.  Also restocked all my frozen vegetables and got lots of canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, chickpeas, and beans.  A big bag of dry black beans was 2.49, much cheaper than canned and I've already cooked them up.

One of my extra purchases was soy milk.  I've bought almond milk before, but found it disappointingly watery, and it has only 60 calories per cup.  One of the main reasons I add milk to things is to pump up the calories, so I was happy to see soy milk has 100, and a similar macronutrient balance to milk.  We'll see how the kids like it, or whether they notice if I use it in cream soups and sauces.

I also got sunflower seeds, because I love them on salad.  Meant to get some other nuts too but forgot.  I got the one variety of canned soup Aldi sells that is vegan -- minestrone, at 1.35 a can.  For a snack for John I got potato chips.

Beyond that, I got all my usual things: 7 loaves of bread, 3 packages of tortillas, refried beans, crackers, animal crackers, pretzels, cereal, raisins, noodles, popsicles, and ice cream.

So, what's on the menu?

Breakfasts: I always have bran cereal with raisins and milk.  It messes up my entire day to have anything else.
Marko likes a baloney sandwich with Frank's Red Hot sauce on it.
Michael likes cereal and milk or else oatmeal (which I forgot to buy, oh dear).
Miriam and Jackie vary.  Sandwiches or toast are popular.  Too often, I can't get Jackie to eat any breakfast at all.
John usually does not eat breakfast.

Lunches: Marko has a PBJ, pretzels and/or carrot sticks, and an orange.
Michael has a turkey wrap,  pretzels and/or carrot sticks, and an orange.
Miriam, Jackie, and I vary among bean burritos, sandwiches, eggs, grilled cheese, or sometimes ramen noodles.
John usually has leftovers.  During Lent, if there aren't vegan leftovers, he'll be having canned soup, PBJ, or salad.

Snacks

I make one snack each day for everyone.  Favorites include muffins, scones, or rolls, all of which can be made vegan with soy milk and flaxseed in place of eggs.  Or sometimes I make hummus or black bean dip and give them carrots, celery, cucumber slices, and crackers.  If I'm phoning it in, they make themselves sandwiches and grab apples.

Dinners

Monday (today): black bean tacos, with corn and bell pepper relish.  Everybody loved them.  Michael complained at first that they didn't have meat like usual, but then declared them "surprisingly good."  Miriam was happy to hear we were not eating any animals.  She believes eating animals is bad, but on the other hand "they are so delicious!"

Tuesday: Fish sticks, roast potatoes, and salad.  John can have the potatoes and salad, and make himself something in addition if he is still hungry.

Wednesday: Hummus sandwiches or wraps.  If I've got my stuff together, I'll make pitas.  Cucumbers and tomatoes will go well in there.

Thursday: Mac 'n' cheese.  I forgot until then that the Orthodox ease into Lent, and cheese is okay the first week.  Didn't want to miss the chance.

Friday: John was working late and missed dinner.  I made beef kofta. 

Saturday: Pizza.  The kids' version will have pepperoni and cheese and John's will have peppers and onions.

Sunday:   Probably pasta.  I'm torn because I want to put in mushrooms and eggplant, but Marko hates mushrooms intensely.  If they're large enough to pick out, he'll pick them out, and if they're tiny enough he might not notice them at all.  But if he does notice them, and they're too small to pick out, that's when I'm in trouble.

Monday: bean enchiladas.

Tuesday: Broccoli, rice, and white beans in teriyaki sauce

Wednesday: falafel in wraps or pitas.  Vegan mayo is the only dressing I can think of to put on it, plus lots of cucumbers of course.  (Link is to Serious Eats, which I love.  JKLA's philosophy on vegan eating matches mine exactly: no fake meat, bring on the umami and variety.)

Thursday: lentil pot pie

Friday: Corn chowder.  We haven't had that in awhile.  I think by adding some  hickory seasoning I should keep anybody from missing bacon.  Though honestly I never made it with bacon in the first place, because I never have it on hand.  The only thing I'll miss is sour cream.  But I have found potato chowders get quite a lift from a little smidge of apple cider vinegar.  You just need something sour to cut the heaviness.

Saturday: another meat meal.  I'm thinking meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and veg.  That way John can eat the potatoes and veg.

Sunday:  cabbage chili, without the meat.


Hopefully it will go well and people will eat the food!  It's taken me five days to write this post, hence the shifting tenses.  So far I've noticed that, while I planned to make meat meals twice a week, I don't want to make meat that often.  If I have a vegan recipe ready to go I'd really just as soon make that, because defrosting meat and dealing with it is an extra step.

Keep the recipe suggestions coming!

Orthodox Lent

I'm not the world's most supportive wife when it comes to John becoming Orthodox.  I don't go to church with him most Sundays, and when I do, I don't enjoy it.  I'm not sure if it's too Catholic or not Catholic enough.  Half the time I wish that, if he were inclined to woo, he could stick to the woo we're used to.  The other half, I wish that if he wanted a religion, he could have picked one that isn't homophobic and patriarchal.  It's like the worst of all possible worlds: ritual that's alien instead of comforting, and doctrines that are virtually the same as the Catholic ones.  But that was what John was looking for, I guess, and I'm glad he's happy.

The one thing I don't mind backing him up on, though, is the fasting.  The Orthodox fast the entirety of Lent, and by that they mean no meat, no fish, no dairy, no eggs, and no olive oil.  Invertebrates are okay.  I'm not ready to make vegan meals every dinner--I just don't know enough things to make that we like--but I've agreed to try for three days a week, and he can make the rest of his food himself. 

I'm excited because I desperately need to mix up our dinner menu.  We have had everything I usually make a million times.  Taking out meat gives me space to do more with the other ingredients.

So, what to make?  So far my vegan repertoire includes:
pasta with marinara sauce and spinach
falafel in a pita with cucumbers and vegan mayo
hummus wraps/sandwiches
black bean tacos with corn/bell pepper relish
bean enchiladas
minestrone soup
black bean/bell pepper soup
tomato soup with focaccia on the side
split pea soup
breakfast for dinner (vegan pancakes, homefries, baked apples)
lentil curry with coconut milk (the kids did not love this one)
tofu stirfry (nobody liked this option)

I'm a bit limited by not wanting to do much frying.  Fried eggplant, for instance, is delicious but John is watching his cholesterol and eggplant soaks up fat like a sponge.   Another limitation is that I mostly shop at Aldi and do not want to make a separate trip to the regular store for tofu, lentils, or other "odd" items.  Luckily margarine and soy/almond/coconut milk are all available there.

I can come up with endless soups but I would like more things that aren't soup.  I tried white bean "faux-fredo" sauce once and it was an utter fail . . . the noodles soaked up any liquid in the sauce, so it was just a starchy paste clinging to the noodles.  Maybe ratatouille or vegan lasagna would be good?  John also thinks there's got to be a way to make spanikopita vegan.  Honestly I would put just about any veggie into a pie.

I have no trouble getting by without meat, really.  But cheese.  Everything on this whole list would be better with at least one dairy product added.

Anyway, what are your favorite family-friendly vegan recipes?

Solstice soup and the carbon cycle

I've been celebrating solstices and equinoxes, in a quiet way, for three years now.  I know it must have been in a quiet way, because although I definitely have been posting about it on facebook, my own husband thinks "nobody celebrates Solstice."  Ha.

I like astronomical holidays because they are for everyone.  You don't have to believe any given thing; the sun still moves the way it moves.  And it brings a lot of thoughts and reflections: about darkness and light, about change, about the cycles of life.

In my epic fantasy series (still mostly a series of outlines) the people celebrate four feasts for the four elements.  Spring equinox is the Water Feast, celebrated by dancing in the fields, preferably in the rain, and announcing engagements; summer solstice is the Air Feast, celebrated by lots of singing and flute-playing, and also weddings; autumn equinox is the Earth Feast, celebrated by eating a lot of harvest foods; and winter solstice is the Fire Feast, celebrated by bonfires and staying up all night toasting things on the fire and singing carols.  I like making up fantasy religions.

Unfortunately I can't actually adopt their customs without a tribe of people to do them with me, though I still do like the idea of spending Solstice burning fires.  Our fireplace is still not usable since we need to get the chimney cleaned, so I just lit a bunch of candles.

This year my big thought was about the carbon cycle.  It's not something I really understood until recently, with the help of some science fiction books about terraforming and a lot of news articles about climate change.  What we hear in school is that plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.  But somehow I never thought where the carbon goes.  Of course the carbon, together with the water the plant absorbs, become the body of the plant, largely in the form of hydrocarbons--carbohydrates, cellulose, even fat.  That's how the plant stores its energy.  When you eat the plant (or any animal does) you release that energy again, but to use the energy you put the carbon back into the oxygen you breathe, which makes carbon dioxide.  (I'm totally leaving out the nitrogen cycle here, which is also super cool.)

But!  Not all of that hydrocarbon gets eaten by people.  Some of it decays, so that the carbon goes back into the atmosphere--that's why you can't reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere just by planting things and cutting them down.  To reduce carbon dioxide, carbon has to be sequestered--either by large living plants keeping it in use for a long time, or by burying it deep in the ground where it can't be released, as in coal, oil, and natural gas.  The stores of carbon deep in the earth are the result of millennia of carbon sequestration, which gradually reduced the carbon in the atmosphere until it reached modern levels.

That stored carbon is a mixed blessing.  On the one hand, you can get all that energy--millennia of sunshine, all stored up in the carbon.  On the other hand, you can bring our atmosphere very suddenly to prehistoric levels of carbon dioxide.  We have to be very careful and respectful when it comes to that bottled sunshine.  I wonder what colonists on another planet might think, after generations of trying to sequester carbon to make their atmosphere breathable, of the heedless way Earthers just burn the stuff up.

But this isn't meant to be a downer on fire.  Fire is awesome and powerful.  It allows us to live through the winters and make our food nourishing enough to sustain our massive brains.  It's like a little sun, because it releases the sunlight from past years.  And it echoes the way our own bodies burn carbohydrates for energy--fire breathes out carbon dioxide just like we do.  Can you picture a tiny little fire in each of your mitochondria in each of your cells?

In the summer, the earth breathes in.  It stores the sunlight in millions of plants, filling its atmosphere with oxygen.  In the winter, it breathes out--as our fires and our bodies both use up the stored energy, and release carbon dioxide.  We need both the breathing in and the breathing out to stay alive.  It's a beautiful, complex dance to think about.

Anyway, on to the soup.  This is my mother's Christmas Eve soup, which she got from her mother.  Trouble is, no one in the family agrees with me that Christmas Eve is for soup, so I thought I'd make it for Solstice instead.  As an extra benefit, it can be vegan, which was nice given Solstice was on a Friday.

Solstice Soup

1/2 yellow onion
4-6 carrots
4 stalks of celery
1 quart V8 juice
1 cup water
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 can white beans
1 can green beans
1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach
1/2 cup peas
1 tsp vegetable soup base*
1 tsp Old Bay
dash Worcestershire sauce**
salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste
dash Tabasco or cayenne if you like spice

Chop the onion and saute on medium high heat until it is starting to brown.  Add the liquid, chopped carrots and celery, and barley.  Cook for 30 minutes and then add all the other ingredients.  Feel free to sub in or out whatever vegetables you like and have.  Taste as you add the seasonings and don't stop till it tastes right.

*I used Better Than Bouillon, but a bouillon cube would also work.  Beef flavor is good if you don't have vegetable.
**This is technically not vegan because it has anchovies.  A dash of soy sauce or aminos might be good.

I served it with biscuits and there was only a little bit of whining.  At first Miriam whined because she "hates soup" (she does??) and then I told her it had green beans in it and she loved it, but then Marko whined because he does not like green beans.  Oh well.  It got et.

How to eat if animals matter

So after that rather mean post about vegans, I feel like I should say something a bit more positive.  I actually think considering animal welfare when you eat is an admirable thing to do.  I just think there are a lot of ways to do that besides cutting out all animal foods forever and shaming everyone who doesn't.

My personal view is to assign animals moral value, but less than people have.  So if I'm doing some kind of moral action, like donating to a charity, I pick human charities because there is so much need there.  Yet it's not really zero-sum; you can care about animals without taking away anything from humans.

Going vegan is one way to do that.  Now being vegan does not mean that your food choices harm no animals.  Animal habitats are destroyed to make farms.  Insects and other predators are poisoned to protect your food supply.  It's a fact of nature that everything is in competition with everything else; for humans to eat we have to take resources that animals want to use.  Perhaps at some future date we'll reach a situation where that isn't the case, but for now, perfect moral purity toward animals is not a reachable goal and I have lots of side-eye for people who think they've met it simply because they're vegan.

That said, a vegan diet causes a lot less animal death and suffering than an omnivorous diet, so that is a good choice if you think you can.

The trouble is, most people don't feel like they could be vegan.  There are an awful lot of delicious animal foods out there, and life is hard, and sometimes you just want a pint of ice cream or a Big Mac.  And I think rather than sit with the idea that we are less than perfect, we prefer to define perfection such that we're not violating it: "animals don't even matter."  Isn't it easier to eat that Big Mac if you assume they don't?

I prefer to carve a middle way where I accept that my moral actions aren't perfect, that there is always more I could be doing, but that I'm doing small things in what ways I can.  Some years ago, my big thing was to avoid cruelty to humans in what I buy, which meant no Hershey's or Nestle products and as few new clothes as I could buy.  The chocolate situation was easily solved when I discovered Aldi sources its chocolate ethically, but I'm less certain about clothes.  I am not sure which clothing companies are more ethical than others.  If I stick to used clothes as I usually do, am I sure I'm helping, or am I just preventing my few measley dollars from going to a third world country where they could do some tiny amount of good, if not as much good as if the workers were paid fairly?  I don't have the bandwidth to unpick this dilemma right now, so I'm putting it on the back burner for the moment, to pick back up later.

Where food is concerned, I've been wanting for a few years to cut back on animal products, but I've been stymied by my own exhaustion and my family's needs.  Marko badly needed to put on weight, so I was sneaking eggs and butter into everything I could.  (And then Marko wasn't eating it, so I was eating it, and that's why my gut looks like this.)  But things are getting a little easier: Marko has hit the ninth percentile in weight, which is considered healthy.  Marko and Michael have both been requesting meatless meals, because neither one likes meat, and the thought of making dinners they wouldn't whine about is a plus.  And John is in the process of converting to Orthodoxy, which means he isn't going to be eating animal products on Wednesdays and Fridays.  So it seems like a good time to try a little occasional veganism!

All right, so what sort of things might a person do, if you wanted to prevent some harm to animals but weren't interested in going completely vegan?  Here are a few ideas:
1.  Try to find cruelty-free animal products.  It can be hard to be sure of how animals are treated when you're buying something at the store (for instance, "cage free" doesn't mean the chickens are better treated at all) but often it's possible to buy things from local farms.  Eggs are the easiest thing to find this way; kids often sell them as a hobby.  The price will be higher, but you can combine this with eating less of them overall.
2.  Try one meatless or vegan meal a week.  Or make all your breakfasts vegan (avocado toast, anyone?) or all your lunches.
3.  Reduce the amount of meat on your plate at a meal--take more vegetables or serve a second vegetable dish.  Or make tacos with two cans of beans and only half a pound of beef.
4.  Give up one single animal product, like eggs or beef.  Apparently giving up beef alone would almost solve our climate problem, if everyone did it.  If animal misery is what you worry about most, I'd give up eggs.  Dairy cows are treated comparatively well, so if there's one thing you keep, I vote milk.
5.  Stop making whole meals out of animal products (e.g. a burger) but keep using eggs in recipes, chicken broth in soup, or cheese as a garnish.


For most of my life I've eaten vegetarian (not vegan) at breakfast and lunch because I don't like meat enough to go through the trouble of cooking it more than once a day.  And now that John is becoming Orthodox, I'm working in some vegan dinners to serve on Wednesdays and Fridays.

It happens that I love vegan dishes.  Only thing is, they're often not very satisfying.  I don't feel like I've eaten a meal.  However, I don't tend to have tofu or almonds or non-dairy milk around to replace animal products.  So I've been trying out different recipes looking for things that actually seem like a meal.

What I've found is that you need to replace meat with more than just protein.  Protein is only one of the things meat provides a meal.  Meat also provides
-fat
-umami flavor
-variety
-interesting textures

So when I'm looking to make a meal without meat, I can't just make my usual casserole and leave the meat out.  Instead, it's a more satisfying meal if I replace the meat with a number of different things, to make sure there is variety, umami, and fat in the finished meal.

For instance, I've started to make meatless chili, but just leaving the meat out makes it very dull.  So I make a more complicated chili with sweet potatoes, two kinds of beans, onions browned in oil, and bell peppers.  To ramp up the flavor, I make sure to put in plenty of cumin and a splash of lime juice.

Here are some things that I think are really good in vegan meals:
-mushrooms
-soy sauce
-tomato paste
-fermented foods -- miso and marmite are two I'd like to try, but even sauerkraut is a nice addition
-squash of all kinds
-bread on the side -- I feel it helps round out a meal.  Foccaccia is a yummy vegan bread.
-seeds or nuts -- sunflower seeds are great on a salad, or sesame seeds on a stir-fry
-avocados.  Yum.  Like if butter were a fruit.
-anything browned, caramelized, or smoked -- that adds a lot of deliciously complex flavor
-vegetable stock.  I got some Better Than Bouillon vegetable stock the other day and it is very tasty.  Don't cook in water if you can cook in stock!

To reward you if you've come this far, a recipe!

Black Bean Soup

1/2 cup dry rice
1 can black beans
1 can diced tomatoes
1-2 bell peppers, any color
1 onion
1/2 cup frozen corn
1 quart water or stock
2-3 Tbs oil (olive is fine)
salt, garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, all to taste
splash lime juice


Cook up the onions in the oil till they're starting to brown.  Add all the other ingredients except the corn and seasonings and cook about 20 minutes, till the rice is done.  Add the corn and season to taste.  Serve with crackers or bread.

How to fry things

I got feedback on a post and so you get more of that kind of post!  Enbrethiliel said she likes when I post recipes, so I'm going to talk about how I got brave enough to learn to deep fry, and at the end I'm going to share the recipe for the battered fish I made the other night.

For years, I never attempted to fry anything, because I was afraid I would set my kitchen on fire.  And then I did try to fry things and it turned out bad, so I quit.  My usual M.O. with trying new things is to assume that all the rules and tools are unnecessary and I can just experiment.  This approach works well with gardening, but with frying there are definitely some rules it's helpful to know.

If you don't want to make nasty food, spatter your kitchen in grease, or set your kitchen on fire, follow these simple rules:

1.  Use purchased oil for frying.  Meat drippings are not sufficient and will scorch and spatter.  So will butter or olive oil.  Peanut oil is my oil of choice, but shortening is said to be good too.  I've tried both soybean and corn oil and didn't like the taste, but they won't result in disaster and they're both cheap.

2.  Use a heavy, deep pan.  A cast-iron skillet is deep enough, but a dutch oven will spatter less and is a better choice.  You don't need a deep fryer to deep fry.  You just need a pan.

3.  Don't move a hot pan full of oil, or pour oil into a wet pan.  Start with a dry, cold pan on a cold burner, turn the burner on, and add the oil.  Turn the burner off and allow the oil to cool before you move it.   A pan of oil is heavy, and if your arm twitches or trembles, you'll spill scalding oil everywhere and may start a fire.

4.  Have a thermometer and use it.  Most frying is done between 300 and 400 degrees.  At this temperature there isn't usually any wild splattering, and any splatters that do hit you won't be terribly painful.  If you don't have a thermometer, it's way too easy to let the oil overheat.  Or if the oil is too cool, it soaks into the food and makes it nasty.  Spend the $10 or so and get a food thermometer.

5.  Know how to deal with a grease fire.  Never throw water on a grease fire.  Keep a lid handy to smother a fire that starts in the pan.  I hear you're also supposed to keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.  I've never ever had a fire start when I was frying anything, but better to be prepared.

6.  Keep kids out from underfoot.  I know, easier said than done, right?  But if they're likely to grab pans or careen through the kitchen, wait till a time when you have backup.

7.  Always fry food that is as dry as you can make it.  Battered food, of course, is a bit wet from the batter, and potatoes have a little dampness, but don't just throw in freshly washed veggies or anything.  Oil splatters aren't caused by hot oil; they are caused by water boiling under the hot oil.

8.  Stay in the kitchen while you're frying.  Things happen pretty fast.  That doesn't mean a fried meal takes less time than a baked or boiled one -- it's about the same, just because you will have to do many 5-minute batches.

All right, so you're ready to fry!  The easiest things to fry are things that don't require breading: steak fries, for instance, or potato chips.  Make sure your pan is dry and pour in oil just deep enough to submerge the food.  ("Deep" doesn't mean all that deep.  An inch or two is adequate.)  Start heating it up - medium high is good, but once it gets to temperature, you may want to turn it down a bit.  Go prepare the food -- chop the potatoes, batter the fish, bread the chicken.  It'll take a bit to heat the oil, so that's why you do that first.  Pause now and again to check your oil, and turn it down if it gets too hot.  375 is about right for most things, unless you're frying very large pieces.

Once it's hot enough and the food is ready, carefully drop it into the oil.  I tend to get nervous and want to keep my fingers far from the oil, but if you drop it in from a height, you'll get a splash.  If you lower it carefully into the oil, you're unlikely to get splattered.  But you can always use tongs or a slotted spoon if you're nervous.

Never overcrowd the pan.  There should be room for the food to move around a bit.  Better to do many batches than to eat food that didn't turn out.  Check the thermometer again.  The temperature of the pan lowers a good bit when you've put food into it, especially if the food is cool, so you may need to crank the burner up a bit.

Most food is fried within a few minutes, so stay right there while it cooks. Some things may need to be flipped over if they tend to float a bit.  Watch the food more than the clock.  If you're following a recipe, the temperature and size of the food is calibrated so that when it's brown on the outside, it's done on the inside.  If not, you'll just have to cut open some of the first pieces and make sure they're done inside.  When you find raw middles and dark outsides, that tells you your oil is too hot and you should go down to 350 or so. 

When you take the food out, it's best to put it on a rack, if you have one, with a tray below to catch oil drips.  If not, a plate lined with several paper towels will do.  If the food is going to be salted or sprinkled with sugar, do it right away, while your oil is getting back to temperature.  Then you can do the next batch.

Once it's all done, shut off the heat but leave the pan in place so you don't spill it.  Serve the food right away.  If the oil is pretty clean (i.e. it doesn't have lots of blackened crumbs in it or anything) you can use it again for another purpose.  If it's nasty and full of burned bits, pour it into an old can when it's cool and freeze it before throwing away -- it's less messy that way.  Never pour it down the drain. 

Leftovers of fried food usually isn't good. You know how it is.  Even a professionally-fried french fry is nasty by the time it's cold.  So eat what you can while it's hot.

Frying sounds intimidating, but once you get the hang of it, it's not hard.  You just have to be able to give it your full attention while it's cooking.  It also does tend to get you hot and sweaty and the kitchen smelling of grease.  So it's not something I like to do more than about weekly.  But, since frying isn't the world's healthiest method, it's just as well.  It's nice for a special occasion or to make an ordinary day special.

So without further ado, here's the battered fish recipe I made last Friday!

Battered Fish (Without Beer)

4 pollock fillets (any fish will do)
3/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Old Bay (feel free to sub your favorite seasonings)
1 cup water

Heat your oil to 375 degrees F.  Make sure the fish is thoroughly defrosted and dry it with paper towels.  Cut it into serving-size pieces -- about the size of your palm.  A little sprinkle of flour also helps dry it off so the batter will stick.  Then mix the batter ingredients together.  Dip the fish in the batter a few times, trying to get it all over.  You only need the batter to stick long enough to get into the oil -- it cooks fast.  Carefully lower the fish into the oil with your fingers or with tongs.  Try not to let the fish pieces touch each other, or they'll glue together.  My pan fits about four pieces per batch -- you'll likely need to do several batches.

Fry the fish 3-5 minutes -- until it's golden brown.  Remove it from the oil with tongs or a slotted spoon.  Let cool a bit on a rack or paper towels while the rest of the fish cooks.  Serve as soon as it's all cooked, with tartar sauce, ketchup, or malt vinegar.

The same batter can be used with other things.  I had some left so I sliced up some onion rings and battered those.  They were delicious -- the batter was light and delicate and crisp.  Definitely will make again.


Once you've got the hang of frying, the sky is the limit.  Fish 'n' chips?  Fried chicken?  Falafel?  Potato chips?  Tempura vegetables?  Doughnuts?  Deep-fried Oreos?  Whatever you want to do!  Fried food is delicious and you don't have to stick with only the offerings fast food restaurants have.

Do you fry?  What's your favorite thing to fry?

Estimated Aldi budget

I've wanted for a long time to post one of my Aldi receipts to show how much I spend shopping there, and what I spend it on.  The trouble is that every time I go, there's something unusual going on and I don't buy all my usual stuff.  This time around, I skipped buying meat because we have a freezer full of pork from my in-laws, so I found another receipt with meat prices and marked down my usual amounts.  I also left a few purchases off -- because I buy things like kiwis or little yogurt cups or fancy cheese sometimes, but not every time.

This is the amount I normally buy for two weeks, feeding a family of five.  Like I said, it's typical and not the record of any specific grocery shop, but I know I spend around $160-180 pretty regularly.  I visit my other grocery store, Martins, only in emergencies (i.e. I forgot something important at Aldi) or to get things I can't get at Aldi, like unusual vegetables or seasonings.  I also only buy diapers at Martins -- Aldi carries plastic diapers, but only certain sizes, and they're also not the world's best diapers.  So in an average month I'll end up visiting Aldi twice and Martins twice, spending $230 at Aldi and maybe $30 at Martins.  A lot more than that at Martins if I am undisciplined ... it's much easier to blow $50 and not know where it went at Martins than it is at Aldi.  I mean .... they have scones!

So, my Aldi list.  I'm embarrassed because I've gotten very extravagant in the past year or two, but I want to share the prices I'm getting because I think they're great.

First aisle: luxury items, snack food, condiments, cereal -- $28.29

Multigrain cereal x2 @ 2.29
Wine x3 @ 3.99
Natural peanut butter 1.49
Pickles 1.49
Jam 1.49
Fair trade coffee 3.99
Kettle style potato chips 1.79
Animal crackers 1.49

The cereal is a new addition because I love cereal and I'm spoiled.  It's not frugal.  Frugal breakfasts are oatmeal, eggs, toast, or homemade goodies.  But cereal is easy and I can eat it when I'm a zombie.   Two boxes is the amount I eat in the week -- the kids eat other stuff for breakfast.  The wine and coffee are for John.  I buy coffee every three or four store trips -- he only drinks coffee at home on the weekends.

Refrigerated section $43.13

Sour cream 1.29
1 qt Greek yogurt 3.69
1 lb butter x3 @2.69
Sliced turkey 3.49
Regular bologna x 2 @ .95
Cheese (half pound) x 8 @ 1.89
Eggs x3 @ 1.45
Whole milk x2 @2.61

We eat a lot of cheese, as you can see.  Bologna is awful, I know, but it's cheap and the kids love it.  I buy yogurt these days because making yogurt is just too much for me still ... it seems like it should be easy, but it's not, right now.  (See also: the more you can do yourself, the less you spend!)  We are buying eggs right now because my parakeets are on vacation with a friend while John builds me a town-code compliant home for them.  Can't remember if I told you, but they are now (with quite a few caveats and red tape) legal!  That's $4.35 I'll be happy to stop spending, when I get them back.

Produce $32.58

Bananas 2lbs @ .29/lb = .58
Apples (3lbs) x 3 @ 3.99 = 11.97
10 lb russet potatoes x 2 @ 3.99
Roma tomatoes 1 lb 1.49
Iceberg lettuce 1.49
Yellow onions 1.99
Bagged fresh spinach 1.49
1 lb. carrots 1.29
Cucumbers x3 @ .44
Cabbage 1.49
Green peppers 1.49

Sometimes they also have avocados at a good price, or I get a squash or an eggplant or something.  John loves tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce, so I really have to buy those every time.  I can't cook dinner without at least half an onion.  And of course you can see we eat a massive quantity of potatoes.

Dry goods $46.56

Dog food 8.49
Cat food 7.99
Beef Stew x 4 @ 1.75
Gluten-free chicken soup 1.69
Canned chicken 1.69
Wheat bread x4 @ .99
Gluten free bread 3.99
Canned salmon 2.29
4 lb sugar 1.19
5 lb flour 1.49
Refried beans .79
Flour tortillas 1.19
Dry beans 1.99
Tomato sauce x4 @ .25
Diced tomatoes x4 @ .59
Macaroni noodles 1.45
3 lbs rice 1.49

I put both dog and cat food on here because I wanted to show the price.  These are huge bags, though, so it's more of a monthly expense.  I don't buy sugar or flour every time either.  Some weeks I buy olive oil, which goes for 2.99.  Unfortunately I didn't get the price down for tuna, because I am really stocked up on it and haven't bought it in ages, but it's like fifty cents.  Tuna and sardines are staples when you're trying to squeeze your pennies.

Frozen food $38.00

Broccoli 1.09
Veg blend x3 .95
Corn/peas x3 .95
3-lb ground beef roll 6.99
3-lb bag boneless chicken thighs x3 6.49
Whole chicken 5 lbs. @.95/lb

Meat is a bit tough to measure.  I used to budget one pound per dinner for the whole family, but they're eating more these days as they grow.  And of course a pound of beef is not the same as a pound of whole chicken, because the chicken has bones.  A whole chicken is good for two dinners, plus two or three quarts of stock for soup.  Each week we tend to have five meat dinners, one fish dinner (tuna or salmon), and one night of soup. 

Total: $188.56

As I said, that's high because I tried to include every purchase that I generally make - I want this to be informative about the prices you can get at Aldi.  But the amounts are roughly what we eat in two weeks except where I've mentioned.

I hope this is helpful.  People ask me a lot how I manage to feed my family on as little as I do (though, alas, it goes up and up) and I wanted to provide as much detail as I can.  If there's interest, I can also put up a meal plan (or rather, meal record, because I don't plan) showing what we eat with these ingredients.

Good eatin's

Lately I've been on a foodie kick.  Translate that to, "I am actually bothering to make interesting food instead of just English muffins for breakfast, PBJ for lunch, and chicken with rice for dinner."

Here are a few of the delicious things I've made lately:

Sprouts
I have wanted to make sprouts for ages, and I heard it was really easy, but it takes an awfully long time for me to go from "want to" to "actually doing it."  I finally tried it with some lentils.

First off, yes, it's ridiculously easy.  You put the lentils in a jar.  Soak them for 12 hours.  Then drain and just rinse them morning and night till they're how you like them -- which takes about a day for little sprouts and a couple more days for long sprouts.  The longer they sprout, the less they taste like lentils and the more like .... hm.  Pea pods?  Raw broccoli?  Something fresh and green, anyway, and it's really hit the spot with my spring fever and, of course, nothing growing yet outside.

The first way I had them was as a salad: sprouts, cucumber, onion, olives, and a mustard dressing.  That was pretty tasty, and the kids kept stealing it.  I'd have added some cabbage shreds if I'd had any, but I was out of almost anything green.

Then I found that lentil sprouts are much better cooked.  Some people steam them, but I gave them a light saute and put them in a pita with kimchi.  That was pretty awesome too.  Soy sauce would have been a nice addition, but Aldi has not had any in a month.  *grumpy face*  I like Aldi's because it's made with just soy and not wheat, meaning John can have it too.


Buckwheat crepes (galettes)

I try to keep buckwheat flour around as an alternate for when I want to make something gluten-free.  In reality, its flavor and texture are so different from wheat that I mostly just use it to make soba noodles.  These are awesome; I just cook them right in chicken soup ... it makes a chicken noodle soup an order of magnitude better than the traditional kind.  Since soba noodles are dense and chewy, they don't fall apart in the soup; and they also give off starch as they cook which thickens the broth a bit.

But this time I went to the cuisine from a completely different place, Brittany, where buckwheat is a traditional staple.  I used this recipe to make crepes, but instead of stuffing them with greens and Gruyere, neither of which I had, I stuffed them with swiss cheese and sauerkraut and they were delightful.  Then for lunch I had them again with eggs, onions, and mushrooms.  I'm not sure which was better!  My philistine children had a couple with jam and then asked for PBJ ... le sigh.

Definitely want to try these again -- especially since buckwheat is so fantastically good for you.  Though I may try a more authentic recipe -- just buckwheat flour and water -- instead of the one I did, which added eggs to make them easier to make.  On the other hand, easy is pretty good, so.... we'll see.

Masa harina 

At Aldi, I got a bag of masa harina (traditionally-made corn flour) in the hopes of expanding my gluten-free repertoire.  I cannot describe how tired I am of rice and potatoes, night after night.  I think the kids are tired of them too, and that's why they keep not finishing their dinner.

The Maseca website has oodles of recipes.  On Tuesday night, I made tamale pie, which everyone devoured.  It was hard keeping back anything for John's lunch!  And it's really quite easy to make -- just my usual meat, tomatoes, and corn mix seasoned with cumin, plus a little corn batter baked on top.

Then on Wednesday I really knocked myself out and made gnocchi.  They were quite delicious and a good texture ..... though they took forever to make, and in the end I wished they tasted less like corn.  So I don't know if that's going to join the regular rotation.

I also made corn pancakes on Sunday morning, which were tasty, though I was wishing for maple syrup.  They were just like regular pancakes in texture, but that corn flavor is pretty distinctive. 

This morning, I made corn tortillas and then huevos rancheros out of them.  This was absolutely delicious, but the kids were impatient with how long it took to make them, then refused to eat them when they were done.  And then they ate mine.  KIDS!  I learned a trick for rolling out tortillas, which I've never had success with before: I folded my Silpat baking sheet in half and put the ball of dough in the middle.  Then it was easy enough to roll them out without sticking or cracking.  For lunch today, I'm going to fry up the rest of the tortillas I made for tostadas.

After that I think I might give corn a little break .... that's kind of a lot of corn!

I have it in my mind that on my dream farm, I'd like to grow an heirloom variety of corn and also buckwheat -- both grains that grow well where I live, and which are easy to harvest by hand.  So perhaps recipes like these might come in handy!


I've always felt that I couldn't eat interesting food because interesting food uses unusual, expensive ingredients.  More and more, I'm discovering that isn't so.  I might buy one new ingredient and get half a dozen new, delicious recipes, or even find new uses for things I've always had.  And there's a lot to be said for googling "what to do with _____" or "______ recipes" when you have something that you want to use, and no clue where to start.  That's how I found most of the recipes here.

Making new things is work, and it's a bit of a risk because the results might not taste good.  (I didn't even tell you about the dosas I made, because they really were not good at all.)  Or the rest of the family might turn up their noses at something you spent an hour making.  But when it does work, it's pretty exciting!  And I get to eat food that is not boring.  That's really what this is all about. 

Have you made anything exciting lately?

A better kind of lawn

There are about 40 million acres of lawns in America -- a number which grows every year.  We use 800 million gallons of gas mowing those lawns, including the amount we accidentally slosh on the ground while filling our mowers: 17 million gallons, more than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez.  The average American sprinkles 238 gallons of water on his lawn every year.  About 71 million pounds of active ingredients of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and other chemicals are dumped on U.S. lawns each year, or about 7 percent of all pesticides used in the U.S.  Homeowners use more pesticides than farmers -- in fact, ten times as many.  Many of these pesticides are potentially toxic to humans, and pretty much all of them are harmful to the environment.  We spend $30 billion every year maintaining our lawns; I have no idea how many hours, but it's a lot.

In America, we slaughter 33 million beef cattle every year.  Some is exported, but most is consumed here, to the tune of $262 a year per capita.  Though beef cows and their calves are raised on large ranches, 75% of beef cattle is fattened on feedlots before slaughter.  Feedlots receive a lot of criticism for being inhumane (the cattle weren't meant to eat that much grain, to stand on bare ground instead of grass, or to have so little space to exercise) and for harming the environment with massive manure ponds.

If very carefully managed, one beef steer needs about an acre of irrigated pasture if it doesn't receive any supplemental grain.  (Or so Gene Logsdon says in his books.)  In addition, the same acre can be stocked with chickens which eat bugs out of the cow manure along with a provided grain ration.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

It seems to me you could fit those 33 million cattle on those 40 million acres of lawn with room to spare.  The grass is already very intensively managed.  People could continue watering, but skip out on mowing, weeding, and fertilizing.  No chemicals at all will be needed in this scheme, and no petroleum.

I have knocked around a number of schemes in my head for this, considering that most families don't own enough land for one steer, and don't have the time or knowledge to be cattle wrangling either.  What makes the most sense to me is for there to be a neighborhood cattle farmer who cares for a small herd and rotates them each day, or even twice a day, into a new yard.  Frequent rotating through new pasture is the very best thing for the cattle and the pasture anyway. 

Every couple of weeks you'd have your yard full of cattle for one day.  Then a couple of days later the farmer would bring a mobile chicken coop through.  The chickens would flip over and spread the cowpies, eat any parasites or fly larvae, and move on.  The rest of the time you'd have an excellent yard for your barbecues and games of catch, with no mowing or fertilizing necessary.

I can't figure out -- since this system is so mutually beneficial -- who should pay whom.  Should the farmer hire out his cattle as a lawnmowing service, or should he rent people's yards?  Some fencing will also be required as a startup cost, and who pays for it?  Well, you'd just have to let people try it and see.  You could even run it as a co-op -- everyone pays for their own fencing and shares the purchase price of the calves, and everyone gets a cut of the beef at the end, in proportion to the size of their yard.  The farmer gets an extra-big cut which he can sell for his own wage.  The chickens are pure bonus -- you could do meat birds or laying hens, whatever you want, so there would be shares of chicken and eggs as well.

That's the sort of small-scale solution that wouldn't need to be done all at once. People who wanted to, could participate, and every person who did would be saving oil, money, erosion-prone farmland that's currently planted to corn for cattle feed, and the environment around where the feedlot used to be.  Meanwhile you'd be getting pastured beef and free-range chicken, which we know are better for you, for far less cost in money and resources than what you could buy at the store.  It's efficient in a way you never could practice on a large scale.

This wouldn't hamper anyone from having a fruit tree or two -- those would just provide shade for the cattle.  The chickens would pick up any fruit rotting on the ground, so you wouldn't have to worry about that like I do with my plum tree.  You could do your back yard in cattle and your front yard in vegetables.  If you didn't want to deal with the farmer, you could have a couple pigs in your backyard all on your own, and ask your neighbors for their food scraps for them.  There are any number of absolutely local, sustainable solutions for food production on land that is currently wasted.

And why are we not doing this?

Two reasons only.  The first is cultural, though that's beginning to change.  Some people just don't want cows in their backyard.  (What is wrong with them, I wonder!  I emphatically DO want cows in my backyard!)  And the perfect manicured lawn is something of a status symbol.

The second reason is the government.  First, they zone you residential, and then the next thing you know it's against the law to grow tomatoes instead of rhododendrons.  Why the overreach?  Pesky neighbors who think they have a right to decide what's in other people's yards based on appearance, and perhaps a little bit of fear of what can't be controlled.  Our food system, after all, is a major industry which employs a lot of people and turns over billions of dollars a year.  They have powerful lobbies and they care about beef a great deal more than you do.

However, the law isn't the same in all places, and I've heard of people renting out goats to mow people's lawns.  For real.  I hope this is a growing trend!

N.B.  In the "everything I want to do is illegal" category, look at this gorgeous earth home.  Then read how the government is ordering the family to bulldoze it.  It makes me want to cry.

Garden bounty

I have missed you guys.  I keep thinking about blogging but having no time or energy to do it!  The garden is just one of the many things that's been sapping me lately; hopefully I'll blog about the others soon too.

Ah, July.  The time when it's too hot to be outside, but suddenly you have to because the garden is producing fit to burst!

Really, I'm not picking very much -- just plums, green beans, garlic, and the occasional carrot.  Tomatoes and pumpkins are still green, no sign of cucumbers, lettuce has gone to seed, and cabbage and broccoli look like they've decided to just stay leafy forever.  Beets were a dead loss, Michael pulled up every one.

But oh, how things are growing!  Take a look:

Yeah, that whole side of the yard has basically been taken over.  I thought it would be fun for the kids to run around between the different beds, but no such luck.  The pumpkins have grown into the cucumber bed on one side and the bush beans on the other, and they are still growing!  Tendrils are heading toward the cabbage-and-carrot bed and under the fence to crawl up the hill.  All that mass of pumpkin vine is THREE plants.  Planted in May.  Those things never cease to amaze me!

The day I took this, the back corner (where it's starting to grow into the tomato bed) was looking a bit wilty.  I figured it was the heat, but the next day all those leaves were yellow, and then brown the day after.  I found out it's probably squash borers, so tomorrow I'll have to go take a look.  Basically the only thing for it is to cut off the dead leaves and slit open the stems to see if there are worms inside.  If I'd caught them at the wilty stage, I might have found a way to kill the worms without killing the plant, but at this point those leaves are dead anyway.  Luckily the rest of the vine seems unaffected.


 There are quite a few of these little green pumpkins -- perhaps a dozen.  And that's just those I can see -- it's hard to trek through the prickly vines to look for more!  Last year I had six around the end of July, and six more before frost.  This year I think the weather is too cool to get a double harvest like that -- the frost is likely to come sooner -- but you never know.


The green beans look good.  The bush beans (not shown because they're inundated in pumpkin vines) have been bearing for about two week, and the ones on the trellis just bore their first bean.  I get a handful or two every day or two.  Luckily I love green beans.  The kids don't as much ... though they do if I pickle them!

 Next is the gone-to-seed lettuce.  I was pretty good about picking it, but when it gets hot enough, it just bolts no matter what.  I let it, because I like to save the seed.  And it amuses me to have people ask what those giant things are.  They have tiny yellow flowers like dandelions which turn into balls of fluff when the seed is ready.  Both lettuce and dandelions are in the Aster family, hence the similarity.

 Can you see my poor smothered cucumbers?  My first sowing didn't work, so I planted these ones in June.  They are having trouble competing with the pumpkins that invaded their bed, but they are getting by surprisingly well despite that.  I have been carefully guiding the pumpkin vines away from the cukes so they get a decent chance.  I LOVE cucumbers, and have never grown them successfully.  Last year I got three; that was it and then the plant died.

Usually my tomatoes are the pride of the garden!  This year they've been a struggle.  My seedlings mostly died and what I did plant, I planted late.  Then I neglected them when it was time to stake them, and so they're everywhere.  But then that happens every year: I get some great new idea for how I'm going to stake them, and then I miss that crucial couple of weeks when they get tall and suddenly flop over all over everything.

And, of course, I can't really get to them due to all the pumpkins.  They do have quite a few green tomatoes though!  It seems to me not as many as past years, but maybe that's because some of the plants are so far behind they haven't set fruit at all.  The purchased seedlings are doing the best, then the homegrown ones, and last of all is the direct-seeded one.  It's fabulously healthy, but only about two feet high and no flowers even.

Here is the cabbage-carrot-broccoli-garlic bed.  Carrots are doing great, and from time to time I pull one up.  They're small yet, but delicious.  The cabbage and broccoli is just puttering along, not particularly interested in growing up, long after my neighbor has harvested his broccoli and the cabbage is all in nice heads.  Really, I think the soil here is not good -- that, and of course I put it all in very late.  The garlic which grew so fabulous for me last year didn't put on as good a showing this year.  Each plant grew a head, but a rather small one.  Probably they're disappointed at the cooler, wetter summer.  That, and the dog ran over them about twenty times too many.

I didn't get a picture of the watermelon plant.  I put it on the hillside, outside the fence.  It has a few yellow flowers and a tiny little melon, but looks rather like a bonsai plant.  Perhaps that's due to competition from all the other plants on the hill.  I didn't want to clear too large a space for it for fear of erosion.  Maybe we'll get a melon or two.

 But the real bounty right now is the plum tree.  I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the actual tree.  What you see here is one picking's worth ... considering I was picking, at that point, twice a day.  It's a dwarf plum tree, but its output is amazing.  The neighbor says it's never had a bad year.  So far I have gotten about 10 quarts of plum sauce plus all we wanted to eat fresh.  I even made a tiny batch of plum wine.

It's taken me three harvests to figure out the trick to this tree.  First, it needs to be harvested often, because the fruit ripens fast and the instant it is dead ripe, it falls off.  Then it gets a bruise and the bugs have all burrowed into it within a few hours of falling.  Second, it's okay to harvest a little unripe, for the same reason.  Third, I need to clear away all rotten fruit right away.  It discourages the bugs, and it makes it easy to see if any fruit has fallen more recently that is still good for sauce.  I threw four ice-cream buckets of rotten fruit into the compost, which is sad.  I wish I had a pig.  And fourth, I'll never get the fruit at the top of the tree (though standing on chair helps) so I just have to get out there often to pick up all the fallen fruit, cut out the bruises, and get it going for sauce.  I've been making sauce every day, because the fruit doesn't hold at all.

Neat thing about plum sauce -- you don't have to peel the fruit.  The peels actually dissolve into the sauce and turn it from golden to pink, and make it tarter.  I do have to add a bit of sugar to correct for that, but it's easier than peeling hundreds of plums.

I'm finally seeing fewer plums on the tree now, so plum time is beginning to come to an end.  I saw the first ripe plum with excitement, but I'll pick the last plum with relief.  Packing away fruit is exhausting!



There is really nothing in the world like eating out of the garden.  I feel so self-sufficient, so tied to the land, so rooted in tradition, and so ... wealthy.  I love having more than enough food to eat.  When I am worried about the grocery budget or the contents of our fridge, I invariably eat too much because I'm subconsciously afraid of going hungry.  When I have boundless quantities of plums and green beans all over the place, I feel satisfied.  I don't need to eat a lot because I know we have enough.  It's a beautiful feeling.  It also feels great to knock on my neighbors' doors and ask if they want plums, or to invite my friends over to pick them.  I feel like for once I have something of value to give.  It means so much to me.

Here are two great green bean recipes.

#1
Saute them in olive oil or butter till they're just a bit brown in spots.  Done!  But if you want to take it to the next level, sprinkle on parmesan cheese.  You can do this with almost any veggie.  Try one you don't like, and see if you now love it.  Eggplant is great this way, though you want to get it as dry as you possibly can first.  I sliced mine, wrapped it in a dishtowel, and left it in the fridge for three days.  It was kind of dessicated, but that meant it got crispy and perfect when I sauteed it.  Mmmm.

#2
Dilly Beans
Take a pint jar and a handful of green beans.  Snap off stems and rinse if you feel they need it.  Pack the beans in as tightly as you can, along with a clove of garlic and a sprig (or generous sprinkle) of dill.  Pour in 1 1/2 tsp of salt and fill the jar with filtered or dechlorinated water.  Leave the jar on the counter for 3-7 days, tasting from time to time to see how you like the beans.  When they taste like a dill pickle and have just the right amount of crunch, they're done.  The kids LOVE these -- though I have to call them pickles, not beans, or Marko won't eat them.  I just keep the jar open while I'm making dinner and when they come around begging for food NOW, I hand them dilly beans.  Doesn't spoil their appetite and it's good for them.

What's growing in your garden?  What gambles have paid off, and which have flopped?

The ideal breakfast

Awhile back I decided I needed to make actual breakfasts every day instead of just handing the kids and banana and trusting them to whine at me if they wanted something else.  That just left me at 10 a.m. trying to figure out something they (I mean Marko really) could eat RIGHT NOW, and it always ended up being PBJ.  Without PBJ my family would probably have starved waiting for me to get my act together.
So I made a schedule of seven good breakfasts that don't take too long to make.  (For the curious: pancakes, hash browns, french toast, bacon, eggs, oatmeal, and "John makes it" for Sunday.)  I stuck to it for ... a week?  Maybe two.  I hit Tuesday and thought, "But I don't WANT hash browns, they are too much work, and I don't even like them that much."  So I put it off and made nothing and there I was making PBJ at 10 a.m. because bananas (Marko's wakeup food -- he must have it as soon as his eyes open or wailing ensues) just don't cut it.

This recipe is the cure.  You can make it every day.  I know because I do make it every day.  It's sourdough English muffins.  I know you could BUY English muffins, but I'm sure these are healthier and I don't think we could afford to buy a dozen English muffins a day, which is about how many we eat.  I got the recipe from here but have changed it a lot to make it even simpler.

You have to have a sourdough starter that's at least moderately active for this.  Of course if you make it every day, that works out great.  You make the dough and then just feed it the same amount as you took out, or a bit more so you can have some for other projects.

Start the night before.  In a bowl, mix together 2 cups flour (white or wheat -- both are great) and 1/4 teaspoon salt.  Then pour in 1/2 cup sourdough starter and roughly 3/4 cup milk.  (Experiment to see what's best.  I use about 7/8 cup I think.)  You can also replace the milk with some other liquid -- water, kefir, rice milk, basically anything.  Experiment.

Mix together until it forms a dough you can handle.  If it's more of a batter, add more flour.  If it won't pick up all the flour, add more liquid (just a tiny bit!).  The exact consistency isn't important.  If it's softish or stickyish, it doesn't matter.  Cover with a lid or plastic wrap.  (I use the same piece every time cause I'm Scottish like that.  (Is that an ethnic slur?  I'm 1/4 Scotch Irish and I do fit the frugal stereotype.))  And just leave it overnight.

In the morning, heat up your skillet or griddle.  I use a cast-iron skillet and set the burner to 2 (it goes low-sim-2-4-6-hi), which is the temperature I use to brown ground beef and a little higher than what I use for eggs.  You're just going too have to experiment.  Pour a little oil on a clean cookie sheet, silicone mat, or counter, and oil your hands.  Get the dough, which will be spongy after rising all night, and pull off little golf-ball-sized globs of it.  Smoosh each one between your oiled hands into a flat disk, and plop it in the pan.  I used to lay them out for a few minutes to rise, but they seem to do fine going straight into the pan, so why add a step?  It should take 5-10 minutes for them to get brown on the bottom; if they are browning too fast, turn the pan down.  They'll also puff up a bit.  Flip them over and get the other side brown, and then they're done and you can do the rest of the batch.  I can fit four in my pan at once, so I just do three rounds.  I start eating as the first ones come off, though!

You can jazz these up all kinds of ways.  You can add pretty much anything to the dough you like -- flax seed, sesame seeds, nuts, raisins, different flours.  And once they're done you can top them with anything you like: jam, butter, cream cheese, lox, sour cream, smoked Gouda, ham, savory cranberry chutney*, cinnamon sugar, poached eggs and hollandaise (for Eggs Benedict), sandwich fixins.  You can cut them in half like storebought English muffins, or just blob the toppings on top.  We usually eat about half the batch for breakfast and then use the rest in our lunch.

So easy.  So good.  And there are two left still ... I gotta go.

*Savory cranberry chutney: equal parts raw cranberries, celery, and onions, whizzed in the food processor.  Add ginger and red pepper to taste, and 1 tablespoon salt per quart.  Pack into a jar and ferment for 2-4 weeks.  This is best with sour cream or strong cheese, atop an English muffin.  Michael eats it straight though.

The actually-eat-lunch challenge

Lately it's come to my attention that I don't eat actual meals.  I sort of graze.  I think that's fine in general, except what I was eating wasn't that good for me.  I mean, I was living off of PBJ crusts, chunks of cheese, and bites of cookie dough and wondering why I wasn't feeling quite right.  Meanwhile Marko was mainly forgetting to eat until suddenly he was starving, and then he wanted nothing other than a peanut butter sandwich because he has no imagination when it comes to food.  And then my friend's mom gave me a talking-to about how, as the mother, it's my job to take good care of myself so I can nourish my babies, and I was sold.  I decided to make a point of actually planning what I'm going to eat, and actually eating it at a relatively regular time.  In short, I am going to eat lunch.

Dinner is no problem; I always eat a good dinner because I make it for the family.  Breakfast I tend to keep light, but I do eat it -- usually either yogurt or fruit and bread.  Lunch is the clincher.  If I can eat a good lunch daily, I will actually achieve the famed Three Squares a Day for the first time since college.

Last time I went to the store, I made a point of buying things for lunch. That meant buying things that I like and will eat.  I don't generally eat meat for lunch very often.  I like my lunches to include a lot of veggies, if possible.  I don't like always eating the same thing.  It has to be fairly quick to make, but interesting and tasty.  So I stocked up on my favorite whole grain bread, tortillas, fruit, and fresh vegetables.  I purposely bought only two pounds of cheese for two weeks instead of the usual three, because I know if cheese is around I eat nothing else.

Here are some things I have been eating for lunch:

Veggie wraps: I slather a tortilla in homemade mayo and toss in whatever veggies I can find, along with cheese cubes or chickpeas to give it a bit more protein.  They usually include tomato, lettuce, cucumber, and/or purslane.  I've had these most days this week and they are YUM.  I mean delicious.

Pasta: This is a pretty easy dish to make and you can put anything on it you want.  Yesterday I had some slow-roasted tomatoes and some green beans from my garden, so I put those in some noodles along with onions, olive oil, and parmesan cheese.  So good.

Sandwiches:  I love a good tomato-and-cheese sandwich.  Bacon optional if it's available.  Other good additions are cucumber, lettuce, or spinach.  Oh, and you know what else would be good?  Sprouts!  >makes mental note<

Smoothies:  These are more of a midafternoon snack.  We always have a snack around here, and I like it best if it's not PBJ again.  Some favorites are pumpkin smoothies, strawberry smoothies, and peach smoothies.  Aldi has bags of frozen fruit which I use for the last two.  For the first, I take pumpkin from my garden, spice it up like pie filling, and stick it in the freezer till it's getting a little frozen.  Then I blend it with homemade yogurt.

Quesadillas:  With just cheese, these are a little boring and a little lacking in the veggie department.  But there's nothing stopping you from throwing in some pico de gallo (I make my own), green peppers, heck, even beans if you've got them around.  Though at that point it's easier to turn it into a burrito.

The wonderful benefit of eating lunch?  Marko sees me eating my special, delicious meal that I made just for me out of things that I particularly like, and he's drawn like a bee to honey.  He only eats a few bites, and I make sure I've made plenty so I can share.  The important thing is that he's eating nutritious, flavorful things which help make up for the rather uniform diet he eats otherwise.  (I don't need to say the word PBJ again, do I?)

What do you like to eat for lunch?

Oh no, it worked

About two months ago, Marko started having ... issues. The main one was diarrhea. I figured it was all the grapes he was eating, but when we finished the box of grapes and didn't buy more, the diarrhea stuck around.

Then the diarrhea caused a horrible bleeding diaper rash -- despite the fact that Marko wears a diaper less than half the time. Then the rash caused night waking, as he would wake up screaming for his diaper to be changed because it was hurting him. Then I also noticed a few odd welts on him, kind of like blisters -- one on his shoulder, one on his finger, one on his tummy. It was puzzling, and, to me, worrisome. I am not the type to shake off unexplained symptoms... I always want to be sure it's not a sign of anything horrible.

I thought, "Perhaps it's just because he's weaning." But at the time the problems started, his nursing had steadied out into twice per day. When he was down to once per day, he didn't have this problem.

Then I thought, "Perhaps it's all the cow's milk he's drinking. Maybe he's not really ready for it yet." So we switched to coconut milk (which he didn't like) and then almond milk. It didn't make a difference.

But I thought, "Maybe it's an actual food sensitivity." You might remember that we had that issue while he was still exclusively nursing. At least, I think we did. I went on a strict elimination diet, and every time I cheated, he had issues (screaming, diaper rash, refusing to eat). And while I was still on that diet -- down to just eliminating chicken and tomatoes -- we also went grain-free... more or less. Family meals were grain-free, but since it was for John's benefit and not mine, I did eat bread at lunchtime and the occasional cookie. Eventually I reintroduced chicken and tomatoes, and had no problem. Once he was eating solid food, I carefully tested him on those foods -- no reaction. I figured his gut had just matured and he no longer had any food sensitivities. I kept him grain-free till a year, though I've heard two years is better. I just couldn't think of what to feed him and caved to giving him crackers all the time.

But, of course, I hadn't introduced any new foods lately. He was eating what he always eats. So it wasn't a case of simply going back and cutting out things I'd lately introduced. Our diet has little variation, and there was definitely nothing new. My only recourse was to guess and check different sensitivities ... which would take awhile. Since it's him and not me, I can't cut him back to nothing but rice for a couple of days like I did with me. He demands variety, and it's hard enough to deny him even one thing he likes (which lately means a second or third banana). I had to cut out one thing a week.

First I tried to eliminate all dairy, not just his bedtime milk. But in our house, this is very hard to accomplish. I kept accidentally giving him things with butter in them, or sprinkling cheese on his noodles. I probably eat dairy 3-4 times a day -- it was hard to catch it all. But finally I did get a solid week of pretty nearly no dairy. It didn't make the slightest difference. (I did heal the diaper rash, mostly, by going almost entirely diaper-free [NOT recommended for a kid with diarrhea, but what can you do?] and slathering him with Desitin every night. But it would reappear at the slightest provocation.)

So I thought, maybe it's gluten. And then I accidentally gave him a ton of biscuits. I am so unaware of what we eat these days! And that's after all those months of elimination diets for the whole family, too. After several falls from the wagon, I finally managed to get 24 hours of giving him absolutely no gluten. (Since I am not into buying a ton of alternative flours or breads, the only grains he had were rice and a little corn.)

To my mixed relief and disappointment, the diarrhea instantly resolved. Relief, because I'm glad to know what the problem is and have fixed it. Disappointment, because I was really hoping it wouldn't be gluten. Gluten is really hard to eliminate. Couldn't it have been, I don't know, squash? I would like to believe that it just coincidentally resolved on its own, but it's been going on for more than a month. I don't think that would happen -- though I may do a gluten challenge down the road to be sure.

It's been four days, and the problems haven't returned. His diaper rash is just a pink scarified area (poor kid!) and the welts seem to be healing up, too.

He's still not sleeping worth a darn. A month and a half of trouble sleeping doesn't resolve overnight, and he has a cold, too. But his cold is getting better, and last night he only woke up twice, and for short times (though I was so exhausted I fell asleep on his bedroom floor before I found out they were going to be short times). And we have been getting him to bed before eight every night. So I guess we're making progress. I'm going to just assume his sleep problems are not gluten-related.

I've been eating less gluten, too, though still a little. Yesterday I had a PBJ ... and very quickly got a stomachache and headache. Huh. Today I had no gluten at all, and my usual gassy belly (which I thought was unavoidable in pregnancy) hasn't appeared ... despite eating plenty of chili for dinner. I do NOT want to go gluten-free. I love bread and pasta way too much. But perhaps it's just what we all need right now.

Maybe Marko will grow out of this. Many kids do grow out of their sensitivities. I sure hope so, because I hear gluten-free baking is no picnic, and I know gluten-free products are expensive. I don't want to have to plan around this forever!

And a part of me is tempted to cheat. Hey, so gluten gives him diarrhea. A little gluten should be fine, though, right? Because a little diarrhea never hurt anyone. But I'm trying to take the diarrhea (and other issues) as a sign that something is wrong. It's cluing me into something going on in his digestive system, something not good. If gluten causes a negative reaction that I can see, there may be more things I can't see, and the safe course is just not to give him any.

But so far, it's been okay. It's been pulling me out of my meal-planning rut and helping me try new things. This week we had minestrone (with rice instead of macaroni, sigh) and white bean chili. Tomorrow I'm going to make lasagna, with regular noodles for us and mushrooms for Marko. (I don't think he'll notice the difference -- he loves mushrooms.) I'm going to have to keep thinking, though, because I'm already tired of chicken-and-rice and fish-and-rice combos. I think I'd better break out the potatoes on Friday, for the sake of a change. Perhaps some oven fries?

Anyone else go gluten-free with their families? Did the kids ever grow out of it?

Liberty and food

When I met John, he was a monarchist. Now, he's a libertarian. And his views are more internally consistent than most people's. He just runs things by a basic standard: Government's role is to preserve the rights of its citizens. So a law may be made to prevent citizens from infringing on one another's rights, but a law may not be made to protect citizens from themselves. He believes the government should only ban what is harmful to others, not what is stupid, self-destructive, or sinful. That's the role of society, churches, and the individual conscience.

I talk about his political ideas because mine are still a bit of a muddle. I lay no claim to being internally consistent. And yet I think libertarian ideas are exactly what we need in one area: the food industry.

We keep hearing about food contamination. If it isn't e. coli on the spinach, it's salmonella in the peanut butter or bug parts in the baby formula. So it would be easy to say, "What we need is more government oversight."

The thing is, we have a ton of government oversight. It would just be impossible for them to test every single batch of every single product in the whole country, and without that, there is no way to be sure our food is not contaminated. Food processing plants are required to follow a long list of standards, but clearly this has not been enough to prevent contamination.

Meanwhile, in some ways we have way too much government oversight. I'm talking about FDA raids on small farms where they throw away huge quantities of cheese or raw milk, even though there is no contamination found or any report of sickness. Here in my state, it is illegal to buy raw milk at all.

You could argue all you want about the health benefits or the health risks of raw milk. But it wouldn't it be simpler to run it by John's standard? "The government's role is not to protect me from myself. If I want to risk my life or health, that's my business." The government does have a role, even according the most passionate libertarian, to prevent fraud or the adulteration of food. Raw milk must be labeled raw milk. Would it kill the FDA to slap a label on it saying, "This milk is unpasteurized and has not been tested or approved by the FDA. It may cause illness" and then let people buy it if they still wanted to?

Meanwhile, full disclosure is not required for foods the FDA approves. There is no label for genetically-modified foods. We have no way of knowing if foods are genetically modified or not. That's because the FDA is convinced they are safe, so we shouldn't need to know. But what if we want to know? Shouldn't we be provided with the information we need to make the food choices that we want to make?

Milk is also not labeled when it contains growth hormone. Currently, milk that doesn't contain it is usually labeled. But some people think that label shouldn't be allowed. Why? Some people might pick the hormone-free milk, and since we know that the hormones aren't harmful, it will harm the business of those who use the hormones without making the consumer any safer. In other words, we consumers don't know what we're talking about, so giving us more information will cause us to make choices for things that we think are better, while damaging the business of other products that are just as good.

Personally, I think we should be able to choose food with or without any ingredients we want, whether or not they are believed to be harmful. And yes, if enough people insist on GMO-free food, that will hurt the GMO business. I think that's okay. Perhaps the companies will switch to non-GMO products. That's called the market adjusting to demand. That's a good thing. I just fail to understand what would be so terrible about GMO's going out of style ... except, perhaps, for the companies that create them. But I don't think it's fair to deny millions of people a free choice just so that one company can succeed artificially.

Meanwhile, there's the issue of big agricultural companies vs. the small farm. The regulations are the same for all (more or less). But the big companies have an easier time following them. There are laws dictating the dimensions of hen houses and the design of meat packing plants, which are easy to follow if you're building a whole new place from scratch, but hard if you have a little money to start off with and would like to use your old chicken coop or pack the meat in your kitchen. This is something of a simplification. But the results are clear if you compare prices: very often it is more expensive to buy from your local small farmer than from Wal-Mart.

Regulations that favor small farmers -- or fewer regulations altogether, which would amount to the same thing -- would help a lot. Small farmers could more easily compete with big farmers. And that benefits everyone. When a single cow is contaminated with e. coli in a meat plant, its meat may end up mixed with the meat from hundreds of other cows. That's why it happens, every time there is a report of a recall, that this mean might be in dozens of states. Worse still, they don't recall "Johnson Farms Beef," they recall beef produced by some company you've never heard of, which may be labeled as Wal-Mart brand, Giant brand, or what-have-you. This is handy for the big farmers. You don't hear about a recall on the news and think, "Gee, I'm not going to buy that brand of meat anymore. I'll buy the competing brand." You would if you could, but meat is distributed under so many different labels that you have no idea which meat is produced by the recalled company and which isn't. Perhaps it all is.

With small farms and big farms competing on an even field, and each being required to be completely honest in its marketing, you would be able to choose between meat produced in Oklahoma and packed in Chicago and meat that you saw running around last month while you were on your way to work. Each would be labeled with where it came from and what company produced it. Ideally, you'd have a list of what the animal was given to eat and what conditions it lived in -- or at least be able to find out by going to the farm's website. Is that really so much to ask?

A blogger I read recently suggested eggs be packaged, not with "free range," "cage free," or "vegetarian diet," but with a picture of the henhouse where the chickens live. You could see if they're stacked in closely-packed cages with their beaks cut off, or roaming in a pleasant poultry yard and nesting in a cozy henhouse for the night. I think the battery method of chicken farming would quickly go out of business ... which is why they don't advertise their eggs that way.

Subsidies are another issue, one I don't completely understand. Basically, in an uncontrolled market, food prices sometimes fluctuate wildly based on the supply available. If the price of wheat, say, gets too high, people can't make bread. But if it gets too low, it bankrupts the farmers. So nowadays the government pays farmers for growing certain products. Corn farmers' profit, in particular, comes mainly from subsidies. As a result, we grow way more corn than we could ever need. It costs basically nothing -- because the government is paying farmers for every acre of corn they grow. We pay a small price -- much lower than what it costs the farmer to grow it -- and the government handles the rest so that farmers can survive and turn a profit.

The problem here is that we now have a huge excess of corn. Farmers in the Midwest stopped growing other things and just grew corn. So now we have to find something to do with all that corn -- make corn syrup, corn starch, corn oil, ethanol, and so forth. And that's what we do. But a lot of these foods aren't that healthy. As a result, foods like corn chips fried in corn oil and soda flavored with corn syrup are really cheap, while vegetables like tomatoes and lettuce are expensive because they have to be shipped in from California or Mexico.

I am not sure what the solution here is. Stopping the subsidies suddenly would ruin farmers across the country -- not something I would like to do! And some subsidies may be necessary to prevent bankruptcy in time of drought and things like that. But I think it's time to reassess what subsidies we really need. If more of that money could stay in our pockets (because it does come from our taxes, you know!), we could afford healthier food.

Unfortunately, the power to make these decisions is not in my hands. It's in the hands of the government, which listens to the people who are talking to it. Mostly, people who talk to the government about farming are the well-paid lobbyists of large agricultural conglomerates. It's not so likely to be you or me, and when we do speak up, we aren't heard quite as well without the deep pockets the big companies have. On the other hand, there are more of us. So it is possible that we could get our voices heard, too.

I don't have a ten-step plan for how to go about that. But I do have a few ideas:

1. Pay attention to what food-related and farm-related bills are going through Congress and your state legislature. Call your legislator and tell him what you think!

2. Find out what different elected officials think about these issues. Take it into account when you go to the polls each year! (Though I'm not saying you have to leave your other important issues to the side. It's all important.)

3. Vote with your feet. If you don't want to eat GMO's, call the companies and find out whether they use GMO's, and don't buy the ones that do. If you want raw milk, support the farms that produce it by buying raw milk or a milkshare. If you don't like hormones in your milk, buy the stuff without it. We have recently bought our first grass-fed beef and have no regrets at all. (It even cost less than Aldi beef, surprisingly!) And we're growing some of our own vegetables, buying others at the farmers' market when we can. That makes a big difference toward keeping the farms we like in business, so that they will be able to keep providing us with high-quality food.

Any other ideas? Do you agree with me, that less regulation would lead to more safety, or have I totally gone off the deep end here?