Category Archives: recipes

Once a month shopping

Intentional Spending, recipes

Have you ever heard of once a month cooking?  Basically, you prepare a month’s worth of meals in one day, then stick them in the freezer and just pull one out every night.  This isn’t realistic for me because of the logistics of doing this on the scale necessary for a family of our size, but a couple of months I started doing something different with my shopping that reminds me of this basic idea.

And that is – once a month shopping!  I’ve drastically cut down on my shopping by only shopping at the beginning of the month for staples, plus once every two weeks for veggies.  This has been great!  Here’s how it works: I start the month by buying all the chicken and meat I need (whatever is on sale that week is what I use for the month).  Then when I get home I roast all of the chicken and freeze it in meal size pans.  I bag the fresh meat into meal sized portions and put that in the freezer, so I can pull out one package to prepare a meal without needing to defrost the entire family pack.  This is where the biggest part of my food expenses go.

I buy a month’s worth of eggs (around 18 – 20 dozen) at the beginning of the month, and keep it in an unheated room in the basement where they stay very cool.  This might not work as well in the summer, but for now it’s good.  I go to as many as 3 or 4 stores in two separate shopping trips within the first four days of the month, and buy lots of whatever staples they have on sale that week, so that eliminates the need to keep a weekly eye on the sales flyers.  I suppose basic staples are always on sale, because I haven’t had a problem finding what I need at sale prices on this schedule, with the exception of cheese.

As far as vegetables go, I can’t do all of that once a month for obvious reasons.  So I go twice a month.  I get about 100 lb of potatoes, a bunch of onions, and maybe 30 lb of sweet potatoes close to the beginning of the month.  Then I buy the perishable type veggies like tomatoes, peppers, cukes, and I use them within the first week after I buy them, since they don’t stay fresh very long.  I also buy lots of squash and cold weather vegetables (carrots, turnips, rutabagas, beets, turnips, parsnips, cabbage) that stay fresh longer.  These are also kept in the basement room along with the eggs.    I make some of these into jars of lacto fermented veggies, and I use these more the second and fourth weeks of the month, when the less hardy veggies are used up.  I buy several bags of romaine hearts each time and find that they easily stay for two weeks, so I use that as the basis for daily salads with whatever veggies I want to throw in.

Cabbage has become very popular here because it’s so versatile and stays fresh a long time; I can do so many things with it!  (And at 3 lb for a dollar, you can’t beat the price!)  Lacto fermented sauerkraut and cortido, coleslaw and other salads, sauteed in stir fries – today I made a lunch dish called colcannon that the kids enjoyed.

Colcannon:

Simmer 1 1/4 lb chopped green cabbage in 2 c. water and 1 T. oil.  Saute 1 c. onions/leeks in 1/2 c. butter until translucent. Add 1  1/4 lb. cooked potatoes, quartered and 1 c. milk to the potato mix and simmer it all until warm.  Then puree this mix -but I just quickly mashed it because as you know I like to save time – and add it to the cooked cabbage.  Mix it all together, season with salt and pepper and top with some more butter if you like.  Filled with protein, carbs, healthy fats, and veggies -a balanced meal and cheap to boot!

Carrots are also great – the kids like carrot sticks and I shred and then bag a large amount of carrots so I can add them to fresh salads.  This is in addition to all the other veggies they eat, but carrots are easy to always have around.

I used to shop weekly to stock up on the sales for whatever the three main supermarkets had that I wanted.  Now it’s just the main shopping the first week, two trips to the vegetable market, and that’s it for the month.  The hard part about this is that I use about two thirds  of my monthly food budget within the first few days and that leaves the much smaller amount for the remaining 27 or so days!  After years of budgeting equal amounts per week, I sometimes feel momentarily nervous.  Then I remind myself that I have lots of food and I’m certainly not going to run out before I replenish my budget.  After my shopping trip last week on the 4th, I had $7 remaining to last for eleven days (my shopping cycle begins the 15th of each month).   As meager as that sounds, my fridge, freezer and pantry are all full, even now, in the last few days before the month runs out – I have at least 50 lb of potatoes, many pounds of oats, rice, wheat, a freezer with poultry and lamb, lots of canned goods, plenty of milk, butter, and eggs, and some root veggies and lettuce so I’m nowhere near suffering any lack!

I’m very disciplined about sticking to my food budget so I don’t give myself leeway by shopping a day or two earlier or spending a penny more than I allocate each month.    I have had to raise my food budget in the last year, since staples have gone up significantly in price (and my kids keep getting bigger and bigger!), and now spend about $540 a month; that includes everything.  I choose to be disciplined, because I don’t think I could maintain my budget without this discipline.  Since I spend less than half of what is typical for a large family, I know I could easily significantly increase my monthly expenditures without having any qualitative improvement to show for it, and this discipline guards me against that.

So this new approach has benefited me by saving lots of my time, gas, and energy, leaving more time to enjoy my family, while spending the same amount as before, and feeding my family as well as ever!

Avivah

Snacks for kids

nutrition, Parenting, recipes

So you might be thinking after all my talk about nutrition that my poor kids have a deprived diet and that you feel pretty bad for them.  Don’t they ever get snacks?  Well, yes.  But not much.  Yep, they’re deprived.  But don’t tell them, because they don’t think so. 🙂

I make treats for the Shabbos meals, but during the week they mostly stick to three meals a day.  I try to make nourishing meals and make sure that the quantities are sufficient for them to really be full when they are finished.   I want my kids to recognize when they are hungry and not constantly graze.  Too often, we eat because we are bored or out of emotion, and that’s a damaging habit that kids can too easily get into.  I can’t ensure that they won’t become emotional eaters when they are older, but I don’t have to set them up for it from a young age.

I differentiate between special desserts I make for our weekend meals and weekday snacks.  Usually if I make a snack, it’s because dinner is delayed and I don’t want them being hungry while they’re waiting for dinner to be ready.  Here are some weekday snacks I periodically make for my kids:

– popcorn (popped in coconut oil or butter)

– celery with peanut butter

-trail mix/nuts

– soft pretzels/breadsticks

– veggie sticks/fruit

What kind of things do I make for Shabbos treats?

– fruit – but usually something different than what I give them for breakfast, like grapes, fresh pineapple, melon – usually cherries wouldn’t be on this list because of the cost but after yesterday’s big bargain, they’re getting cherries with their breakfast until they’re gone!

– dried fruit

– nuts

– home baked goodies – made with nutritious ingredients like coconut oil, honey/sucanat, etc.

– carob chews/ fudge

Last night I made a note to myself to try some new recipes this week for snack/desserts: sprouted grain crackers and sunflower seed brownies; if they turn out well, I’ll add them to my culinary repertoire.  🙂

Avivah

How to easily skin tomatoes

Homemaking, recipes

When I was in a dorm, my roomate taught me about how to skin tomatoes.  She would always keep some in the freezer, and then pop them into boiling water for a few seconds, and then the skins would peel right off. 

It’s honestly not something I ever thought justified keeping tomatoes in the freezer all the time, so I only tried it once in over 15 years of marriage.  It was easier to just leave them with the skin on regardless of what the recipe called for.  But I’m always open to an easier way to do things, and I’ve discovered that you can get the same result by putting fresh tomatoes in boiling water for just a few seconds.  Though the instructions I followed last time said to put them in one by one for five seconds each, I decided to see what would happen if I put about 15 or 20 in at a time (because I’m always looking for a simpler way to do things :)).  It worked fine, though I had to leave them in slightly longer. 

This was especially useful today when I needed peeled tomatoes for the tomator and pepper relish.  And next time I make tomato soup, I’ll be able to do it properly.

Making lacto fermented vegetables

food preservation, lacto fermentation, nutrition, recipes

This was a new thing that I started doing about three weeks ago, and it’s been very successful.  Like the sourdough bread, I thought it would be a big deal to make, and it’s amazing how incredibly simple it is.

Let me backtrack a minute and say what lacto fermented vegetables are, and what the benefit of them is.  It’s a natural method of pickling that was used by traditional societies throughout the world until vinegar was created and replaced lacto fermentation because the results were easily duplicated and consistent.  But vinegar kills all the microorganisms, while lacto fermentation enhances the nutritional value of vegetables by enhancing the growth of lactobacilli, which enhances the vitamins, aids digestion and helps produce other helpful enzymes.  Lacto fermented veggies are a good addition to any meal because they help all the foods be better digested.

So here’s how incredibly easy it is: you take a quart sized jar, chop or shred up the vegetables you want to ferment, and pack it in as firmly as possible so that the juices of the vegetable(s) cover the top.  If there isn’t enough juice for that, you add some filtered water to cover.  Add some spices if you want.  Put in some sea salt at the top (I use Celtic sea salt for this), close the lid, and voila – after two days to three days your veggies are ready.  That’s the basic process in a nutshell. It took me making about six different recipes to realize that it was all this basic process, since there were little variations of ingredients and spicing for all of them.

Using this basic process, we’ve so far made: cucumber pickles (my 5 and 7 yo kids did these), pickled tomatoes and peppers, ginger carrots, kimchi (so far the favorite), beets, roasted red peppers, turnips, sauerkraut, preserved lemons, salsa, horseradish, garlic, daikon, and a veggie mix of my own creation (second favorite).  A bonus is that they look very attractive lined up on the kitchen counter.  🙂

Though they can be ready in as few as 2 – 3 days, they can stay out for lots longer than that.  That’s nice because there aren’t suddenly lots of pickled vegetables that all have to be eaten at the same time.   And I don’t know about you, but I often find that I don’t serve as many salads or fresh veggies at mealtimes because of the time it takes to prepare.  Now even at my busiest, I can whip out two or three of these at mealtime – no preparation needed but to put it in a serving bowl!

I’ve also made pineapple vinegar, but have yet to use it for anything.  I’m planning to use it for salad dressing and for some of my next batch of fermented vegetables, but I still have about 8 jars on the counter, fermenting away, so I’m not rushing to make any more right now. I combined the two quarts of preserved lemon into one jar when it was finished and drained out a bunch of the liquid for salad dressing – it’s delish!  I’ve been using it every day by itself as dressing for my lunchtime salad.  Since I poured it into a salad dressing container (there was just a little of the original stuff left so I poured it out to make room for this), everyone, guest included, has been using it on their salads and is none the wiser.  🙂

Yummy Cinnamon Rolls

recipes

We made fresh cinnamon rolls for breakfast, along with eggs and rice.  They were delicious – isn’t everything especially good when it’s fresh from the oven?  I made this same recipe a week or so ago and wasn’t thrilled with it.  So I eliminated the overly sweet maple topping (I didn’t share that below), replaced the white flour with freshly ground white wheat, and used sucanat in place of the sugar.  Very yummy and it was fairly healthy!

This makes a large recipe so be ready with about six pie pans, and you can pop them into the freezer for another day or can share them with someone else and brighten their day. So here it is:

Yummy Cinnamon Rolls

  • 4 c. milk
  • 1 c. oil (I used coconut oil)
  • 1 c. sugar (I used sucanat)
  • 2 pkg. dried yeast (I think I used 2 T.)
  • 8 c. flour

Mix all this up, let sit covered for an hour.  Then add:

  • 1 c. flour more (I had to add more than this to get it to a good consistency for rolling)
  • 1 t. baking powder
  • 1 t. baking soda
  • 1 T. salt

Once all this is mixed, your dough is ready.  You can start to roll it out right away, or you can leave it covered in the fridge for a day or two. That’s what we did, which is why I had the dough ready to work with in time for breakfast.

Okay, now roll it out on a floured surface into a huge rectangle.  On top of that spread 1 1/2 – 2 c. melted butter (I used coconut oil the first time but preferred the butter flavor), then 1 c. sugar, and last a nice big sprinkling of cinnamon.

Roll up the dough so that you have a long skinny roll (not short and fat). Then cut through the dough at about 1 inch intervals.  Butter the pans, and place about seven rolls in each round pie sized pan in a circle, six around and one in the center.  (That’s not really important, it’s just how we do them and they look pretty.)

Let them rise for 20 – 30 min (it was cold today so I put them in the oven on ‘warm’ to hasten the process), and then bake at 400 degrees for about 15 – 18 minutes.  It’s important that you take them out when they are light golden brown.  Another batch we made was taken out when they were golden, and they were good but on the dry side.

These are especially good served warm, and if I hadn’t served them this morning, would have had some ready for the kids when they came in from playing in the snow.

If you wanted to make this as a rich dessert, you could add a glazed topping, but as I said, we all felt that was way too sweet.

Enjoy!

Avivah

No bake cookie recipe

recipes

I’ve had an ongoing challenge with mornings for months now – I wake up in the earlier hours of the morning, too early to feel like waking up, but feeling really awake.  I finally get back to sleep, and when I wake up again, it’s much later than I like.  This morning when I woke up the first time, I decided to just get up.  It’s not even so early, it was 5:30 when I fed the baby and it was after 6 by the time I got out of bed.  But since at this stage of my life I’ve become a night person, this is early for me!

 Last night ds8 and I made a no bake cookie recipe that we tried for the first time on the weekend.  I recently copied this one into my notebook, thinking it sounded vaguely familiar, and then found I had already copied the exact same recipe down another time from somewhere else!  I guess it shows that I have an idea of the kind of thing that I like, since I don’t copy large numbers of new recipes.  🙂   It’s a great recipe to make with your kids, and so I’m sharing it here with you:

No Bake Oatmeal Cookies

  • 2/3 c. maple syrup (I used honey)
  • 1/4 c. coconut oil (butter would be fine, too)
  • 4 T. cocoa
  • 1 t. cinnamon
  • 1/2 c. peanut butter
  • 2 c. rolled oats (I used organic)
  • 1 t. vanilla

Melt maple syrup with cocoa over low heat, then pour over other ingredients and mix well. Drop onto wax paper in small teaspoon size blobs.  Refrigerate 30 min.  Keep stored in fridge or freezer.

This recipe was so delicious (and healthy!) that it immediately made it onto the list of ‘must make again very soon’.   Last night I decided on the spur of the moment (at 9:30 pm) to make them with ds8, who I decided needed some extra mommy time.  It’s a quick and easy recipe since there’s no baking and you basically just mix everything into the pot that you heat up the sweetener and cocoa.  Because I have a large container of blackstrap molasses, which is lots less expensive than honey, I decided to try substituting it for 3/4 the amount of honey, still using honey for the other 1/4.   It came out….well, they’re okay.  Blackstrap molasses has a strong and distinct flavor, so it didn’t add much to this recipe.  I won’t do it again next time (I will try using regular molasses, though), but I still think that the kids will be willing to eat it.  I’ll see when they wake up.  I’m having a few of these for breakfast while I write this; it’s a good high energy breakfast, with good healthy fat, fiber, and iron.  

Avivah 

Egg substitutes

nutrition, recipes

For many years, I thought that being a vegetarian was a healthier way of eating, and that being a vegan was an ideal.  Fortunately, I never quite managed complete veganism (except for a two month period), but we usually used animal products only once a week.  I was easily able to go for weeks with no eggs in the house since I virtually never used eggs, just substitutes for eggs.

 Well, I’ve continued to learn about nutrition and no longer believe that removing animal products from the diet is beneficial.  Actually, I now think it’s harmful.  But I’ve watched the price of eggs go so drastically high that I decided it’s time to dig out my old egg replacer recipes.

You can buy egg replacers, but they’re usually pretty expensive.  Whether you are a vegan, looking to cut down on cholesterol, or just looking to cut your baking costs, here  are some egg substitute recipes that you may find useful. 

My favorite is the first, which my 7 yod whipped up a large batch of today- this is a substitute for what is sold in the stores as Ener-G Egg Replacer, and you can use it for any kind of baked goods.  We were able to make quadruple the recipe for under $4, which should last us for months:

1 c. potato starch

3/4 c. tapioca flour (sold in health food stores)

2 t. baking powder

Mix it all together, store in an airtight container.  Lasts for ages!  (With this in the pantry, I always appreciate that’s it not a problem to realize in the middle of a recipe that I don’t have enough eggs.  :))  To use, mix 1 1/2 t. of the mix with 2 T. water – this replaces one egg in a recipe.  1 1/2 t. mix and 1 T. water = 1 yolk.

Some more substitutes:

1 T. cornstarch + 2 T water = 1 egg (good for quick breads, but not cakes)

1 T soy flour + 2 T water = 1 egg

1T. oil, 1 T. water, 1 t. baking powder = 1 egg (good for quick breads, but not cakes)

2 t. flax meal + 2 T warm water = 1 egg (beat until consistency of an egg)

 Avivah

Organizing recipes

Homemaking, recipes

It seems that no matter how busy I stay, there’s always some kind of organizing project waiting around my house to be done!  No sooner did I reorganize all the kids clothes in storage than it was time to reorganize all the coats.  Finished that, and then had a pile of sewing repairs to do.  Did all of those repairs (which is disproportionately rewarding since my kids think I’m the best seamstress in the world even though I just do basic stuff – they say things like, “Wow, this is so perfect, your stitches are so even/tiny!”) and then realized it’s been a while since I organized my recipes.  That’s what I did a bit today, so I thought I’d share the system I use that works well for me. 

 I used to often cut out or copy recipes, stick them aside somewhere and then never think about them again.  Or if I did think about them, could never find them when I wanted them.  I have a recipe box that I regularly added recipes to for years but never used; it just wasn’t efficient.  A couple of years ago I finally thought of a solution, inspired by my son’s baseball card collection, which he impeccably kept in order. 

I bought a couple of packs of baseball card protectors – they’re clear plastic sheets with nine pockets on each page with prepunched holes for a three ring looseleaf.  Then I bought some unlined index cards and cut them down to fit the pockets. 

Each plastic sheet is two sided, and I can fit nine recipes on each side of a page.  I copy the recipes onto the index cards, and just slip them into a pocket.  Each page (or more) represents a different category – breakfast foods, quick breads, yeast breads, ground beef, chicken, beans, hot dogs, dairy, etc.  With this system, when I’m planning my weekly menus, I can easily take in a page at a glance using whatever kind of food I want to include, and all of the recipes are ones I’d be happy to use.  If I want to change the order of anything, add a new recipe or get rid of one that no longer works for us, then it’s super easy.

I use this looseleaf now more regularly than any of my cookbooks, even my most favorite ones.  What I’ve been thinking of doing is going through some cookbooks that I’ve used for years (one is especially in awful shape) and copying the recipes I like into my recipe looseleaf, then getting rid of the cookbook.   That’s a long term project, though, one which I’m not rushing to put onto my list of things to do! 

Avivah

Baked Oatmeal

Homemaking, recipes

Yesterday was a busy morning in and a busy afternoon out, and because I couldn’t exercise earlier in the day, I ended up exercising before bed instead of prepping for this morning’s breakfast.  So this morning I changed around the order of this week’s breakfasts to make something quicker than what was planned.  Schedules are very helpful, but a person shouldn’t be a slave to the schedule – the schedule is just intended to be a tool to help us, not to make us feel guilty!

While I was in the kitchen, I took some time to prep for a few breakfasts – I ground the flour for the biscuits, washed the potatoes for the farmer’s casserole (will shred them later on today and mix up the rest of ingredients to prepare for baking), and prepared the rice pudding (yum!).  Since today I made baked oatmeal, I thought I would share the recipe with you.  Oatmeal is a great food, but it’s often hard to get kids to eat it.  This is a nice way to prepare it, and my kids enjoy it.

My recipe makes 2- 9×13 pans (I use one for breakfast and freeze the other to use for another week), so you’ll want to adjust for amounts accordingly:

Baked Oatmeal

  • 12 c. rolled oats
  • 2 c. brown sugar (I use sucanat)
  • 4 t. salt
  • 2 t. baking powder
  • 4 c. milk
  • 2 c. oil (I used coconut oil)
  • 8 eggs, lightly beaten

(Optional: soak the oatmeal overnight in 2 c. milk.  Continue next morning, adding in all other ingredients and remaining two cups of milk.)

Mix all ingredients, bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 – 35 minutes until set.

Also, some of you may have wondered about what seems to be the high carb content of our breakfasts, and a number of items that look like they aren’t so healthy.  Most of them call for eggs and or milk in the recipes, which balances the meal.  The eggs are often (though not always) free range, and the milk is raw.  We use freshly ground whole wheat flour and coconut oil for any shortening/oil that is called for.  Yes, there is still sweetening in some of the baked goods, but I try to minimize the sweeteners and use high quality alternatives when I can.

Have a great day!

Avivah

He’s here!

pregnancy, recipes

I’m delighted to share the wonderful news with you all that our newest blessing has arrived!  He was born at 1:41 am yesterday morning (Weds), and weighed in at 7 lb, 6 oz – a very nice weight, especially considering that he was three weeks early!

The birth ended a pregnancy that’s been different than my norm very appropriately – with a labor and delivery that were very different than my norm.  🙂  My water broke three days before I actually gave birth, early Sunday morning, but since that happened last time, I wasn’t too anxious about it.  My midwife had told me then that most women will deliver within 72 hours of their water breaking.  There aren’t studies or statistics available on this, though, since most women have hospital births and are put into a situation of needing to deliver within a shorter time frame than many would  if labor was allowed to unfold naturally.  My midwife has been in the field for 13 years and has only seen this situation 4 or 5 times prior to me – and here I change her ratios by presenting her with the situation two times in a row!!

 I really believe that alot of the labor process is a mind game, and how well prepared you are mentally determines a lot of what you experience in the birthing process.  So when so much of this birth contradicted my past experience and expectations, it left me mid-labor feeling like I didn’t know the rules of the game.  For example, I had very strong transition like contractions, but only about every 8 minutes.  I told my midwife I didn’t know how to handle contractions like that so early on, since usually there aren’t more than just a couple like that at the very end.  She thought they were closer together than I thought, and that I might be much further along than I thought.  But they never got more than four or six minutes apart.  The unusual labor pattern was followed by an equally unusual second stage – you have to understand that after seven births (and being present for at least forty births of others), you get a sense that you know what to expect.  So when something is drastically different the eighth time around, it’s probably not a surprise that it caught me unaware!    

 But as different as this labor/birth was, it resulted in another beautiful baby.   The minute the baby is born, it always amazes me how quickly your mind shifts out of the laboring zone and into a totally different space of just being in the present with your newborn.  And for me personally, no matter what labor has been like, it all feels worth it the instant the baby is there (though five minutes before that I was wondering why I thought another baby was a good idea!).

This time I drank a strong raspberry leaf tea (two doses, since one didn’t seem to be helping), which is supposed to make labor much quicker and less painful.  I can’t know what the effect was since I don’t have another birth like this to compare to, but I have to think it was beneficial.  I’ll try it next time around and see how it works then.  :))  For those who want the recipe, it’s very simple.  Take one ounce of red raspberry leaves, and pour two cups of boiling water over it.  Let it steep for 30 minutes, strain, then drink as hot as possible once labor has begun.  (My personal tip – add honey so that the strength of the flavor doesn’t upset your taste buds.)  You can get the herbs from your local health food store, though I buy mine in one pound bags online since I get terrific bulk prices and enjoy the tea throughout pregnancy (when I remember to make it).  Raspberry tea is a great uterine tonifier during pregnancy and after birth, as well, but in regular tea-like amounts, not in this kind of strength.  Sometime in the future I’ll share the recipe that I have for pregnancy tea (I planned to share it with you when I made it for myself this pregnancy, but making the tea was one of those things I didn’t get around to doing). 

 I haven’t yet taken any raspberry leaf since the birth, though. My midwife has a wonderful (in results but absolutely disgusting in taste) Chinese herbal mix that is great for easing afterpains.  I used to have such horrible afterpains that I always felt that they made labor seem minor – they went on for two weeks and are the only thing I’ve ever taken any pain medication for.  The last birth was the first time I used this midwife (since it was my first birth in this area), and the cramping didn’t last more than three days after using this herbal mix plus the tincture she recommends, which is an amazing difference.  I unfortunately don’t know the recipe, because it’s a special mix that is made privately for her to give her clients, but the tincture that she recommends is called Afterease.  The bottle is upstairs so I don’t remember exactly what herbs are in it, but the company that makes it is called Wish Garden.  She also recommends taking liquid calcium, which I haven’t had, but I’m sure is a good idea as well.  So far the cramping has been very manageable, and it’s less than 48 hours after the birth.  I’m hopeful that by tomorrow there will be just minor twinges left. 

 My mom came by and gave me a massage, which was nice, since my ‘sit’ bones are seriously sore from the posterior presentation of the baby.  But even that is feeling much better than last night.  Isn’t it wonderful how quickly the body rejuvenates and heals itself? 

Now I’m gratefully off to bed!

Avivah