Wild About Greens by Nava Atlas: This Book is Incredible

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collard greens, green juice, green smoothies, nava atlas, wild about greens

The brand new Wild About Greens by Nava Atlas

Although I had read about the new Nava Atlas book, Wild About Greens – 125 Delectable Vegan Recipes for Kale, Collards, Arugula, Bok Choy and Other Leafy Veggies Everyone Loves, my husband was the one who surprised me with the book on a recent trip home from the library.

If you are interested in adding more greens to your diet like we are, this book should be on your “to read” list. I paged through it for about 10 minutes and know I’ll be digging deeper with my sticky notes handy.

Unless you’ve grown up with a parent or grandparent who made greens a lot, chances are you are just like me and are new to these nutrition powerhouses.  There are many greens I’m not even familiar with, yet.

We do eat our fair share of greens (read about the greens we eat here), and have for a while since we changed our diets, but I know we can eat more.

The most common question I hear when I pick up my CSA share each week is “what do I do with these greens?” Greens are also the most left-behind vegetable.  Last week we scored an extra two bundles of collards, for a total of three, because so many people left them behind.  Tonight we cooked two of those bundles.

Two bundles of collards, fresh from our CSA, cut into ribbons – before cooking

Ask my husband, I ate about five servings.  It’s not because I’m a good cook (I’m just a home cook that cooks A LOT), it’s just because the recipe was so simple and the greens so fresh.

This book will tell you exactly what to do with all greens – and make them taste good.

Our collards after cooking (you can see how they shrunk)

See the word “Vegan” in the title and think this book won’t be for you? Don’t worry one little bit! There are no strange, unusual ingredients in the book.  Ms. Atlas uses the freshest whole foods ingredients in her greens recipes.

There are also several green smoothie and green juice recipes that I’m bookmarking!

Let’s Talk About Greens:  What are your favorites? And, which do you stay away from at all costs?

Our Favorite Pancake Recipe: 5 Ingredients; Dairy-Free; Egg-Free

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breakfast for kids, dairy free, egg-free, raising vegetarian children, vegan pancakes

Peanut Butter Banana Hotcakes with Fresh Local Berries

I have made a lot of pancakes in my life.  I started making them when I was a teenager at home using Bisquick pancake mix.  When I went away to college and started my independent life I tried making them, only to have one disaster after another.

When my daughter was born, I wanted to make light and fluffy whole grain “from scratch” pancakes.  I tried many, many different recipes and settled on one that required buttermilk or kefir and whipped egg whites.  The recipe worked really well.

However, as we changed our diets, I wanted a recipe with no eggs and no dairy.  Since then, I’ve tried about 6-8 more recipes…some were delicious, but flat; others were gummy and didn’t cook.

About a year plus ago, I read the book Raising Vegetarian Children by Jo Stepaniak and Vesanto Melina and found a bunch of wonderful, highly nutritive recipes in the back of the book – all very kid-friendly!

One of the recipes was Peanut Butter Banana Hotcakes and I thought – what could be better than peanut butter AND banana in pancakes?!?

Well, these pancakes are a winner and definitely our favorite.  I cook them in a stainless steel pan with a light layer of coconut oil.  They are light and fluffy with a nice crisp outer, and taste delicious.  The bananas make them slightly sweet so there is no need for maple syrup.

I contacted the authors of the book and asked for permission to reprint the recipe here on kidoing!, so here you go!

Peanut Butter Banana Hotcakes

copyright © Jo Stepaniak and Vesanto Melina, Raising Vegetarian Children, reprinted by permission of the authors

Makes about 18 pancakes

• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 small, ripe bananas, mashed (about 2/3 cup)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
• 1 cup fortified vanilla nondairy milk

In a medium bowl, combine flour and baking powder.  In a separate bowl, cream together banana and peanut butter; stir in milk.  Pour banana mixture into flour mixture and stir until well combined.

Oil a large, heavy skillet or griddle and place over medium high heat.  When hot, spoon in batter using 2 tablespoons for each pancake.  Spread out using the back of a spoon.  Cook until bottoms are brown, adjusting heat as necessary.  Turn over and cook other side briefly; just until golden.  To prevent sticking, oil skillet well between batches.

Here are my notes on making this recipe:

I use whole wheat pastry flour and unsweetened almond milk (without vanilla flavor).  If I remember, I add a splash of vanilla extract, although the pancakes are still delicious without.  I use a large stainless steel saute pan with a coating of coconut oil (either Nutiva or Vitacost brand) and reapply the coconut oil in between each batch.  Make sure your baking powder is fresh so they rise like they should (I use Bob’s Red Mill and have good results).  The peanut butter and banana flavors are slightly detectable to me; not overpowering at all.  The bananas are mashed so they are unlike those diner banana pancakes with the sliced rounds of bananas in them.

If you are cooking for someone with nut allergies, replace the peanut butter with sunflower seed butter (found in the stores until the name of Sunbutter or make your own by taking sunflower seeds and grinding them in a food processor until creamy) and use a different nondairy milk (such as hemp, oat, soy, etc.).

Give this recipe a try! I think you’ll love it as much as we do.

Sprouted Brown Rice: Gentle on the Stomach & Nutritious

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GABA, lundberg brown rice, phytic acid, sprouted brown rice

In the pan, before the sprouted brown rice was cooked

I’ve had this love/hate relationship with brown rice for as long as I can remember.  I love the taste, however I hate how I makes me feel (bloated with indigestion).  Sorry; I needed to get a little personal because I wanted to be clear about my symptoms after eating brown rice.  I have a hunch that I’m not the only one impacted in this manner.

Recently, I had stopped making rice because the discomfort was just too much.

Then, I stumbled upon sprouted brown rice, also known as GABA brown rice (for the amino acid gamma-aminobutyric acid).  What I have read is that it has a much higher amount of gamma-aminobutyric acid (which helps lower blood pressure, improves kidney function, and reduces sleeplessness) and a much lower amount of phytic acid (inhibits nutrient absorption of calcium, iron, zinc and magnesium and may cause indigestion).

Sprouted brown rice can be purchased in health food stores, but it’s really expensive.  This is just one brand, but you can see the cost.

Or, you can make your own – which is what I did.

I used Lundberg Organic Short Grain Brown Rice.  I buy this at a natural foods store in the bulk section.

Steps to Sprout Brown Rice:

1.  Measure out how much you want to sprout.  (You can cook it all at once and use or freeze, or you can refrigerate it after sprouting, but cook it within a couple days.)

2.  Add it to a sprouting jar.  I bought mine at a local health food store – Arrowroot in Bryn Mawr for $5.

3.  Rinse the rice in the sprouting jar, then fill up the jar with filtered water.

4.  Let sit overnight, then drain the next morning.  Rinse the rice and turn the jar upside down on a cloth to catch any remaining water at an angle so the mesh lid can still get air.

5.  Let sit the entire day (you can rinse at the end of the day if you want, but you don’t have to).

6.  The next morning rinse again and by the evening or next day you should see tails on your rice, which means it has sprouted and is ready to be rinsed again and cooked.

See the tails? This is right before I emptied the rice from the sprouting jar.

When you are ready to cook the rice, you can cook it as you normally would.  I used a sauce pan on the stovetop, but you could use a rice cooker or a pressure cooker.  Since this rice has been soaked and absorbed some of the water, it requires less water to cook and a shorter cooking time.  I had two cups of sprouted rice and used two cups of water.  I brought to a light boil, then simmered for about 20 minutes, took the lid off to simmer another five minutes, then let it sit for 5 minutes.

Just-cooked sprouted brown rice with dulse flakes, kelp flakes and gomasio

It turned out nice and fluffy with individual rice grains.

I am no expert in this process.  I have pieced together information from a lot of different web sites while I was doing research.  I left the rice on my countertop to sprout and had no issues.  Everything went just how I had hoped and I think I was successful.  My house was probably 70-75 degrees.

Now, here’s the best part:  I have eaten the rice three times – once right after it was cooked with dulse flakes, kelp flakes and gomasio, once with a vegetable coconut curry and once in a bean burger.

I did not experience any gastrointestinal upset. 

No bloating at all! Victory!!!

I am elated, not only because I can comfortably eat brown rice again, but also because of all the extra nutrients I am getting from the increase in amino acids and reduction in phytic acids.

Reheating Rice Tip:  I learned this awesome tip from a fellow 30 Day Vegan “classmate”…use a steamer basket to reheat rice just as if you would steam broccoli.  Nothing gets stuck and it provides the perfect amount of moisture and heat to the rice!

I’m excited to move on to quinoa and chickpeas (which also hurt my tummy), but in the meantime all my rice is gone and I need to sprout more!

If you have any sprouting tips, I’d love to hear…or if want to try sprouting your own rice, please stop back and tell me how it goes!

Spring/Summer Eats: Sundried Tomato & Basil Quinoa Patties and Our New Favorite Salad

Tags

balsamic dressing, farmers market recipes, quinoa, quinoa patties, summer salad

Pictured above is a sundried tomato quinoa patty that was so flavorful I wanted to share the recipe with you! I’ve been making quinoa for a while, and have overcooked it to mush way too many times.  Recently, I’ve found a better way to cook it that has resulted in perfectly cooked quinoa – every time.  So that cooking technique (and the salad recipe) will also follow.

Sundried Tomato & Basil Quinoa Patties (makes 8 medium patties)

• 2 cups cooked quinoa
• 2 cups garbanzo beans
• 1/2 of a small sweet onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• handful of fresh basil
• 3T nutritional yeast
• 2T soft sundried tomatoes
• 3/4 tsp salt
• black pepper to taste

In the bowl of a food processor, add the onion, garlic, basil, nutritional yeast and sundried tomatoes.  Process until finely chopped, almost pasty.  Add the garbanzo beans, salt, and black pepper and process until well combined (mixture will form a ball).

Transfer to a bowl and add the quinoa.  Mix well until you can form a patty.  If it’s too wet you can add a little bit of oats.

Form into patties and refrigerate (if you have time) for 30 minutes.

Heat olive oil, or oil of your choice, in a large skillet over medium heat.  Pan fry until brown on both sides.

How to Cook Quinoa

• 1 1/2 cups of quinoa (rinsed really well, or as I prefer – soak for five minutes in a small holed strainer and rinse well)
• 5 cups of water
• 1/2 to 1 tsp sea salt (your call)

Add the water and salt to a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil.  Add the quinoa and simmer for 11 minutes.  Drain the quinoa in a small-holed strainer.  The result is quinoa that still has texture (no mushiness).

The salad (also pictured above at the top) is inspired by a salad my friend Casey recently made.  I don’t know why I never put this combination of veggies together, but now it’s a house favorite! I guess I will call it Delicious Chunky Salad (with Balsamic Dressing) and here is the way I’ve been making it.  You’ll have to forgive my measurements on the Balsamic Dressing – I never measure, so they are estimates (and you’ll probably have some leftover)!

Delicious Chunky Salad (with Balsamic Dressing)

• 2 ripe avocados, chopped
• 1 large cucumber or 1/2 large english cucumber, peeled if not organic, cut into quarters lengthwise and then cut into chunks
• 1 large ripe tomato, chopped
• 1/2 head broccoli, steamed or raw (your choice)
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• sea salt to taste
• black pepper to taste

Add first four ingredients to a large bowl.  Season each ingredient with sea salt to taste.

Pour extra virgin olive oil and vinegar in a small bowl.  Add sea salt.  Whisk well until the oil is emulsified.  Drizzle dressing over salad and mix carefully.  (Save remaining dressing for another day!)

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do!

My First Artisan No Knead Bread ( plus thoughts on Bread Machine Vs. No Knead)

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artisan bread in five minutes, healthy bread in five minutes, jim lahey, no knead bread, whole grain bread, zojirushi bread machine

A while back, maybe over a year ago, I stopped buying store bought bread (with the exception of Ezekiel Organic Sprouted breads from time to time).  Even breads from Trader Joes and other natural foods stores had a long list of ingredients including soy derivatives and fillers that I didn’t feel were necessary in the food I was feeding my children.  My goal for them is fresh, whole foods with minimal fillers and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives (and non-GMO as much as I can discern).

So, we bought a Zojirushi bread machine and started making sandwich loaves.  Most of the loaves were 60% whole wheat and 40% white until I found a 100% whole wheat bread machine recipe that worked.  It was still a little dense, but wholly palatable and actually quite delicious (what freshly made warm crusty bread isn’t?).

At the same time, Marc and I had been reading and watching videos on artisan bread making, specifically the no-knead methods made popular by Jim Lahey and the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes book series.  We ultimately chose to take the bread machine path first because we wanted an easy and foolproof way, with little effort, to make sandwich loaves.

But, oh…, those free-formed crackling crust loaves kept us desiring to make them.  And, so over the past couple months I’ve been reading more books and watching more videos in preparation of taking the leap to make the artisan loaves.  So, we took all the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes books out of the library (there are three now), ordered the 6qt tubs to store the dough in the refrigerator, and gave it a shot yesterday.

I started with the 10 Grain Bread from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes (the second book in the Artisan Bread series), which required two cups of 10 grain cereal, three cups of white whole wheat flour and two cups of all-purpose flour.  Our regular ongoing loaves will be 100% spelt from a 25lb sack of organic spelt flour we recently purchased during our trek to Lancaster County.

It was a warm and humid day, so the 10 grain dough rose nicely.  I decided to bake a loaf from the freshly risen dough and found that it was very sticky and hard to handle without heavily floured hands.  But, I formed a small loaf that grew a little as it rested.  I baked the loaf and was a little disappointed that it didn’t rise in height, so now this newbie needs to figure out what went on.  (Any readers have some insight on what may have happened?) I put the remainder of the dough (pictured above) in the refrigerator and will try baking another loaf when it’s about 48 hours old (you can use the dough up to two weeks after it’s been mixed).  I think the cold temperature of the dough and the fermentation time might help the shape and height.

The taste result of the bread was fabulous.  It had a full flavor – nutty and balanced.  The crust was crispy and the crumb on the inside was full of the perfect amount of holes – not too light and not too dense.

So, here are my thoughts on both methods (subject to change as I get more comfortable with making artisan bread):

Zojirushi Bread Machine

Pros:

• Incredibly easy to make.  Dump all the ingredients in the pan, set the machine and turn out fresh bread a few hours later.  The machine does all the work for you.
• Makes great sandwich bread.  We eat toast with nut butter or coconut butter for breakfast several days a week; this bread is great for that.

Cons:

• Only the top of the loaf is crispy.
• Uses a nonstick pan.  I’ve had no problem with the material degrading yet, and hope it continues to hold up.
• Bread will dry out in a few days and require toasting.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes Method

Pros:

• Dough is super easy and fast to mix up.  Recipes are short on ingredients.  Dump them into the tub, mix and let rise.
• No sugar or sweetener is required for the basic whole wheat recipes.
• Bread is perfectly crispy with a beautiful crumb – very tasty.

Cons:

• After the first rise, there are several steps to be executed to guarantee good final results.
• There are several supplies (pastry brush and seed mixture, pizza peel, baking stone, cornmeal or parchment, broiler pan, hot tap water) needed, which as a first timer was a lot compared to the bread machine method, but once you’re set up I think the process will become second nature.
• One loaf just feeds our growing family of four in one sitting.  I’d make two loaves next time to have one for another time.

My Conclusion:

• There is a time and place for each method in our home.
• The sandwich bread made in the Zojirushi machine is a no brainer.  It takes five minutes to measure the ingredients and the machine does everything else.
• I love having a supply of dough in the refrigerator with the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes method.  It just takes a little bit of planning to execute baking a loaf.
• The Artisan bread complements many meals beautifully…loaves look like they came from a bakery, and taste just as well.
• I am not sure how the Artisan bread measures up to the bread machine bread over time.  The one loaf that I baked was eaten in mere minutes at dinner last night, so I don’t know how long it would stay fresh.
• A small part of me misses the kneading in more traditional homemade bread recipes.  I haven’t experimented with those types of recipes (Marc has been the bread man who has), but think I’ll get to that some day.  I think the kids would enjoy kneading the dough.

I’d love to hear from you.  What has your experience been baking bread? Do you prefer the ease of a bread machine or a more traditional baking method?

A Recipe For Pampering All the Moms, Grandmas, Caregivers…

Tags

do it gorgeously, homemade sugar scrub recipe, hopewell furnace, jenkins arboretum, mother's day, sophie uliano

Happy Mother’s Day!

We took a trip to Lancaster County yesterday to our favorite natural foods store, a really large greenhouse to pick up the rest of our garden plants, a quaint little town for lunch and then to an historic site, Hopewell Furnace.  It was a full day and we all enjoyed a day away from the mundane stuff at home.  It was a beautiful day full of sun and blue skies, perfect for a spring adventure.

During our trip in the car, I noticed while wearing sandals for the first time this season that I had some rough patches on my toes and that my calves were really dry.  I had been putting off making a homemade sugar scrub since before Christmas-time (that I knew now that I really needed!).  Luckily, over the past couple weeks I had been preparing to start making some homemade body/cleaning products by picking up a few extra essential oil scents, carrier oils, and also some cleaning supply ingredients.  At the sight of my feet and legs, I realized that there was no better time that last night to make my scrub and pamper myself (just a little!) on Mother’s Day.

The recipe was so simple and took all of four ingredients. Don’t delay in making this like I did.  It’s so simple, smells wonderful and does a great job removing dry skin.

Lavender Sweet Orange Sugar Scrub

• 6T organic cane sugar
• 2T olive oil (regular, not extra virgin)*
• 15 drops of lavender essential oil
• 10 drops of sweet orange essential oil

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix.  You may need to use more or less sugar – that will depend on how much the sugar absorbs the oil (start with 4T and go from there; I ended up at 6T).  Transfer to container (I used a small glass Pyrex bowl with plastic cover).  I’m keeping mine in the shower where it’s pretty dark, but if you are keeping your scrub where it’s always exposed to light, you may want to use a dark container so as not to damage the essential oils.

*You may also use another carrier oil.  Sweet almond, grapeseed or sunflower oil would work well.

If all goes well, in the coming months I hope to have some more recipes, or at least show you what I’ve been making.  I have been devouring Do It Gorgeously by Sophie Uliano, which has a wide number of recipes for homemade eco-friendly body care and cleaning solutions.  (Oh, and I do have a neat trick to share that my husband figured out trying to unclog sinks and tubs!)

I hope you enjoyed the flowers.  These pictures were taken this morning at one of our favorite places to take a walk, Jenkins Arboretum.  It’s a beautiful property and a meaningful way to spend Mother’s Day morning.

With love to you and your families,

Jennifer

Cooking In Season: Bok Choy (A Transformational Experience)

Tags

bok choy, The Kind Diet, Ume plum vinegar

Freshly picked bok choy is popping up everywhere this spring and I encourage you to take some home! Bok choy can have a bitter taste if cooked too long, but when prepared properly it is a life force full of amazing vitamins and disease fighting properties.

I read about a bok choy recipe in Alicia Silverstone’s book, The Kind Diet.  She raved about her love of it and so I gave it a shot last year.  I can’t really explain how delicious it is, or how it makes me feel when I eat it.  But, I can tell you that I ate that whole plate!

Here is the recipe and some of my notes.  One word of caution:  do not add salt! The Ume Plum Vinegar has sea salt in it.  I recommend baby bok choy because it’s a little more tender.  Pictured above is “infant” bok choy that we get in a bag from our CSA.  I don’t have a better name for it, but the pieces were really small, about the size of my thumb.  I used a combination of flax oil and extra virgin olive oil and the result was so buttery!

Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that this dish takes all of just five minutes to prepare!

Have you tried this recipe before? If not, what is your favorite way to prepare bok choy?

Spring Eats and Finding Our Way to Less

Tags

csa, feeding the whole family, le bus, mark bittman potato pizza, minimalism, simplicity parenting, strawberry salad, vge cafe

Strawberry Spinach Salad with Sweet Poppyseed Dressing*

Spring is here! The growing season has started and our first CSA pickup was today.  It’s a little earlier than last year due to our mild winter, and that makes me a happy girl.  Kids eating fresh greens, scallions and radishes directly from our CSA bag.  Fresh salads every night with tasty dressings.  All our dressings are homemade, really easy and so delicious that the kids eat two, three and four servings of salad each night.  The picture above shows a strawberry spinach salad with sweet poppyseed dressing that was inspired by a new restaurant in our area, Vge Cafe.

Vge Cafe is a vegetarian restaurant, with an environmentally-conscious message.  All the food is fresh (never frozen or canned) and the trash can be composted.  I am a little particular about my salads when eating out; the salad greens need to be fresh and not processed and bagged (to me there is an unpleasant sweet flavor on bagged lettuces).  The salad greens at Vge Cafe were definitely fresh.

We ate a nice lunch:  gluten free & vegan mac and cheese (a sophisticated version that was full of flavor), cream of tomato soup (using cashews as the creamy base), lentil veggie burger (on a beautiful Le Bus whole grain artisan roll), Caesar salad, and strawberry spinach salad with a balsamic vinaigrette.  After two little monkeys ate most of my spinach salad, I knew I had to remake my own version at home.

My salad (pictured above) was made with baby spinach, chopped strawberries, cucumbers, lightly roasted walnuts, and a sweet poppyseed dressing (from Feeding the Whole Family – a great cookbook for all ages).  The only thing I left out of the dressing recipe was the dill…because I really wanted to add fresh mint from my garden sprinkled on top! I just love strawberries and mint!

Speaking of our garden, I am sure I will post pictures soon, but we finally planted everything.  I’m sad it happened a little later than I wanted, but we’ve got a really nice amount of seeds in the ground:  beets, bush beans, carrots, kale, scallions, snap peas, snow peas.  And, we’ve already got strawberries, garlic, rosemary, mint, spinach and lettuce growing!

Peek into our first CSA share of the 2012 Season

For a while now, I’ve been purging.  Our living space is somewhat uncluttered, but the basement…that’s a whole other story.  It’s a holding cell for things we will need in the future, storage area for overflow of what we can’t fit in our kitchen, storage for almost every single outgrown child toy and children’s clothes from infancy, going back nearly seven years.  Sure, every family has needs and the more children the more acquired.  But, this is excess.

We have an extra washer and dryer. Yes, extra.  We added a laundry room on the first floor when we moved in this house and kept the old washer and dryer (which we still use on occasion to be uber productive with laundry).

We have a stand up freezer, a treadmill, a workbench, all our household paints, nostalgic items from our childhoods…

Maybe our basement space is not too different from yours?

For me, it’s a weight, though.  I walk into the basement and find piles and piles of things – some things are very neatly organized, but then there’s all the “stuff in transition”.  Stuff that needs to be fixed.  Stuff that needs to be opened and assembled.  Stuff that I’m saving for a friend, for goodwill, or stuff that I’m compiling for an upcoming yard sale.

We had plans to use the basement as a painting studio for the kids.  We also wanted it to be a place where they could use riding vehicles on stormy days.  We were on a great path organizing the space with shelving systems and bins, then fell off the wagon.

But, now I have a renewed sense of this mission to purge.  For the last couple years, I’ve been reading about minimalism.  Some of my favorite blogs include Becoming Minimalist, Be More with Less, Frugal Babe, Loving Simple Living, The Minimalist Mom, Miss Minimalist, and Zen Habits.

Potato, Rosemary and Olive Oil Pizza (inspired by Mark Bittman)*

For all of my life, I’ve been governed by things.

• What things do I want to buy next?
• Which is the best of those things?
• I have some things that need to be fixed.

“Please don’t break my things.”  (to my three brothers and now my children)

While I will be the first to say that I value quality over quantity, the emphasis in my life on things has been damaging and stressful.  It’s time to make some changes.

Recently, I’ve had a challenging time with my children.  We are homeschooling and, therefore, home a lot of the time using toys, games, books, etc.  Staying on top of cleaning up can be tough.  So, after feeling a sense of defeat, I grabbed one of my all-time favorite parenting books, Simplicity Parenting, and reread the part about toys.  As a result, I removed about half of our toys/books/games.

Leftovers for the kids’ lunch – strawberry salad, quinoa, baked tofu and black plums

And, here’s the funny part.  The kids didn’t mind at all.  They actually handed me more things to take away.  And, they haven’t asked for them since they were removed.

They are playing better together.  They are more imaginative.

And, so my realization is that while games and toys can be fun, massive amounts of them (or even more than a few out at a time) are completely unnecessary.  (And, to me they are suffocating.)

Sure, things have a place in our lives.  They create convenience, delicious food, art, provide entertainment, teach us, etc.  But, what I’ve learned is that the emphasis should not be on the things, we need to have less of everything, and that my goal is to focus more on my relationships with people I love.

I’ve felt really inspired lately to share all of this with you.  If you stuck with me until the end, wow.  Thanks.  And, as always, please feel free to share your thoughts.

*If you get a chance, watch Mark Bittman’s video on making a potato pizza.  He shows how easily and quickly you can make homemade pizza dough.

Dough: For Cookies and For Creating

Tags

buckwheat pecan thumbprint cookies, essential oils, homemade play dough, whole life nutrition kitchen, wooden dough tools

Anytime I happen to view a picture of cookies on a blog with little ones peering over my shoulder, I know I’ll be baking soon.  This morning, it took just a five second view of these cookies on the Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen blog and the kids were begging to make them.  With our homemade applesauce frozen in the freezer and no jam, I had to think quickly and make that grocery trip I’d been putting off this morning.

These Buckwheat Pecan Thumbprint Cookies are gluten free, vegan, and refined sugar free – an overall excellent cookie that made a great health(ier) treat.  I had never baked thumbprint cookies before and made a tiny blunder:  I filled the thumbprint indentation with a little too much jam (the kids chose raspberry).  As they were baking, some of the jam overflowed onto the cookie sheet.  But, no worse for the wear were these cookies.  They were still delicious…very light and fluffy with a nice crumb – not too sweet – and you could never tell there was applesauce in them.

The best part was watching the kids use their thumbs to make the little indentations.  And they were little! I had to make them bigger with my thumb.  But, they sure did enjoy it.  Anything that involves dough is a kid-pleaser in our house.

Speaking of dough, I have given up all the canned commercial Play Doh in our house and transitioned to homemade dough.  Using this recipe (top recipe called PLAYDOH RECIPE THAT WILL LAST FOR 3 – 4 MONTHS), we made two batches of three different colors and scents of “play dough” this week.  Had I known how easy it was to make I would have done it years ago.  The kids love the scents (lavender and lemon essential oils) and ask to play every day.  While I kept just a few of our plastic play dough tools (most will be either sold at an upcoming yard sale or donated), I added some wooden dough rolling pins and stampers to the mix.  I decided to simplify the dough tools for a couple reasons.  I found that we had so many plastic tools – from “cookie” cutters to stamps to vehicle accessories – that the kids fought more over the tools than spent time creating with the dough. (I’m also not fond of anything plastic, so this was a good excuse to add a few beautiful wooden tools to the mix.)  Now they have 1/10 of the tools (less clutter to overwhelm them) and already seem to be happier and much more creative.

Now, my question to you…if you make homemade play dough, what is your favorite essential oil to scent it?

The Many Lessons of Lemon Rosemary Potatoes

Tags

cooking with kids, dreena burton, koh-i-noor pencils, lemon rosemary potatoes, nurturing creativity, side dishes, vive le vegan

Do you ever feel like you are holding your children back? This is a hard thing for me to admit, because I do try to evaluate so many opportunities for them and choose activities that they are interested in, while nurturing any inherent talents.

My daughter, who is 6, asks to cook all the time and yesterday I let her have a go at it.  As I mentioned in this post, sometimes it’s just easier to do all the cooking myself and encourage the kids to play.  But, who is that really helping in the long run? Actually, it helps neither of us – there are missed opportunities for skill development and also for some relaxation time in the future for mom when my daughter is cooking for me!

So, yesterday, she asked me if she could make some soup.  I told her that she was welcome to look through some cookbooks to find a recipe that could be made from ingredients we had.  After paging through a couple books and not finding anything that appealed to her or that we had ingredients for, she settled on Lemon Rosemary Potatoes from Vive Le Vegan by Dreena Burton.

I thought – “perfect!” We had the potatoes and everything else needed, the recipe was on her level and would give her a lot of steps to show her how much goes into a single recipe.

She started by running out to our garden and picking two sprigs of rosemary (the same rosemary from last year that was still thriving!).  She scrubbed all the Yukon Gold potatoes with our veggie scrubber, then chopped them up using my small 5″ santoku knife (which happened to be the perfect sized knife for her).  As she was chopping the potatoes, I taught her hold to hold the knife and her fingers.  I told her that her knife skills are going to be amazing by the time she’s my age since I only really learned how to use a knife well 10 years ago.

She is learning knife skills at 6.

She cleaned the rosemary, then I explained to her how to pull all the leaves from the stem.  We chopped the rosemary together, talking about how we wanted the pieces to be fine since rosemary can be very woody, overpowering and a little much to chew.

She washed and squeezed the lemons, making sure that the lemon seeds didn’t get into the juice, then we measured the correct amount together.

We measured the olive oil together, then she chose the correct measuring spoon for the salt and even cranked the pepper mill.

After tossing everything together with her hands, we put the potatoes on a parchment lined baking sheet.

I showed her how to preheat the oven and how to handle our oven door (it’s heavy and can slam if you’re not careful).

So many lessons in one little recipe.

Well, the result of her efforts was simply perfect.  I have to say these were the best roasted potatoes I have ever eaten, period.  Loads of flavor with caramelized edges.  Crispy on the outside and tender and soft on the inside.

Yes, it was a great recipe, but it wouldn’t have been successful without everything she did.

On another topic, I just have to share how inspired I have been since reading Renee’s ebook, Nurturing Creativity.  We’ve always had art supplies on hand, but after a few years of using lousy quality supplies I have decided to invest in better quality – some professional – supplies.

After a trip to a local arts and crafts store yesterday, we came home with a nice start to our new collection.  We’ll add a few new things every week or couple of weeks.  See the colored pencils? While I do love Prismacolor, I used these Koh-I-Noor Woodless Colour Pencils at a friend’s house recently and fell in love.  They have rich colors that are solid throughout the pencil.  Now, we’re just waiting for the revered book Drawing with Children to arrive (I found a used copy on amazon).

Please share what’s new with you – what are your kids cooking up these days? Do you have any beloved art supplies you think we’d love, too?