Avivah Werner

Author: Avivah

  • Honey Baked Lentils

    I made these last week, after many months since last having served it.  When I served it then, my son’s friend was here for dinner and kept exclaiming at how our food was so much better than theirs (this had my kids looking skeptical, since his family often goes out to eat and a lot of what they eat is processed healthy food, the kind of food my kids know of as ‘treat’ food).  We served it at that time with soaked cornmeal corn cakes and several kinds of fermented vegetables – so it was a thoroughly healthy meal.  I don’t know why it took me so long to put them on the menu again!  My ds10 enjoyed them so much last week that he asked me to put them on this week’s menu, too!  It’s a quick, easy, and inexpensive dish, so I’m sharing it here with you.

    Honey Baked Lentils

    • 1. c. dried lentils
    • 2 c. water
    • 2 T. honey
    • 2 T. soy sauce
    • 2 T. olive oil
    • 1/2 t. ginger
    • 1 clove garlic, minced
    • 1 small onion, chopped

    Put everything into a covered pan, and bake at 350 degrees until tender.  I’d estimate this serves about 4 people; I think we use four cups of dried lentils for our family.

    * I start preparing for this dish a couple of days in advance, by soaking the lentils overnight.  Then I drain the lentils off, and let them sit in the bowl for the rest of the day.  Before I go to sleep, I rinse them in a strainer again.  Even in this cold weather, they started to sprout within this period of time.  If you do soak your lentils first, you won’t need nearly so much water, since it’s already absorbed so much water through the soaking – we cut it down drastically, to maybe a 1/2 c. for the entire quadrupled recipe.  Though this isn’t necessary, it’s what I try to do with bean and lentils to maximize the nutritional value. 

    Avivah

  • Dealing with sibling rivalry

    >>Here is my question for you if you have time to answer it:  How do you handle sibling rivalry?  Your kids sound so amazing, like they always get along and are all best friends.  Do you ever have issues with fighting?<<

    For some reason, it seems alot of people assume this about my kids, but I don’t know why – I’ve even had people tell me that they don’t look as if they ever fight, that they’re ‘such angels I can’t imagine it’.  LOL.  Kids are kids, and though the kids do get along well for the majority of the time and I love it that they are good friends, it’s inevitable that there are going to sometimes be personality conflicts and disagreements. 

     We’ve been able to keep this pretty mild for the most part, and I think that keeping this particular aspect of child raising under control is a huge part of why I enjoy having a big family and would love more kids.  Dealing with constant sibling squabbles is draining and wears you down emotionally, and having more kids only exacerbates whatever the current situation is by adding more voices to the fray.  If more kids meant more screaming, fighting, and constant stress, I don’t think I’d so positively anticipate (or even want!) each new arrival.

    I don’t have a perfect answer to this because I still have my moments of irritation and so do the kids, but I’ll share what we do (and maybe that’s enough, to know that you can get good results without being perfect!).  First of all, I definitely encourage my kids to be friends.  I stress relationships within the family and minimize relationships outside of the family that would compete (that’s another huge topic).  It’s generally harder to be friends with your siblings than with people outside of the family, because you don’t get to choose them.  So they need time daily to learn to get along with one another; if they spend most of each day in some kind of school setting, followed by playdates, they won’t have the opportunities to get past being constantly annoyed with or provoked by their siblings.  But just being around each other all the time isn’t going to automatically make them friends.

    Regarding dealing with rivalry itself:  From the time they’re born, I assume that they love each other and want to get along, and respond to anything that some people would call ‘rivalry’ or jealousy with an attitude that it’s not intended as such.  And it’s not a big deal.  It’s too easy to start looking for signs that a young child feels threatened, jealous, hateful, etc of a new baby or younger sibling, and to focus on that causes it to escalate.  When I hear mothers verbalize the negative feelings they think they very young child is feeling (‘oh, you’re jealous of little Mikey because Mommy holds him all the time’), I cringe because I think it’s building up the negative way of looking at it.  We don’t need to make our kids’ negativity bigger than it is, and we can reframe it for them in a positive way.  (I’d rather say something like, ‘Aren’t you lucky that you’re so big and we can do this together; little Mikey is too tiny to have this special fun with us.’)

    As they get older, when they disagree I step in to moderate the situation and guide them to appropriately resolving it, using words and not hitting.  Sometimes this has meant very long sessions of having kids sit down and really listen to one another (when they’re older) and phrase what they want to say respectfully and appropriately, which can sometimes take a lot of time when they’re feeling hostile.  If one person wrongs another, I usually insist that an apology is made (I don’t accept a sullen ‘sorry’), followed by an act to show they’re sorry.  I think action is important in creating an impression on the brain, and training a child how to handle these situations.  When they’re little, like with my toddler, there’s very little discussion – I’ll say something like ‘we don’t hit, we don’t say things like that’ and tell him to go and hug the person (which honestly isn’t always wanted but is something the other child has to tolerate for the sake of the 2 yo learning proper behavior).  When they’re in the 6 – 10 year old range, they generally have to play a game with each other or do something else together.   With the oldest kids, it’s mostly verbal disagreement and resolution.  

    As far as fighting goes, I decided to have a low tolerance level for it.  In general, my approach is to respond quickly to provocative situations before they escalate.  I don’t like being a referee, and I don’t think there’s much to gain from trying to reason with kids that are already emotionally stressed out.  They just can’t hear you at that point.  And whatever you do, someone ends up feeling victimized.   So it’s really important to step in early.  I don’t believe in letting kids ‘work it out’.  If they haven’t been taught the tools to work it out, that generally results in whoever is stronger or more powerful winning. 

    But that doesn’t mean that I’m constantly getting involved in every little thing.  As they get older, they become more and more able to resolve their issues appropriately without my intervention or assistance.   I’d step in immediately for children under 6 or 7.  For kids a little older, I’d be aware and listening actively to what was going on, but not necessarily saying anything unless it was necessary.  Once they’re about 11 or 12, I’ve seen from experience which kids are challenged in what ways, and trust them to resolve most things on their own unless I know it’s a situation they are still finding frustrating.  In that case, I listen and step in when I think it’s helpful (ie, when I see that their communication with one another is becoming negative or unproductive).   

    I hope this is helpful.  I’ve written in generalities, so feel free to ask something more specific if I haven’t addressed your particular concern. 

    Avivah

  • Homemade Strawberry Jam

    We made a delicious experiment last week that was so simple that I had to share it with you, a sugar free strawberry jam! It’s slightly softer than a jam, so maybe to call it a fruit spread would be more accurate.

    Here’s the proportions we used:

    • 3 lb. frozen strawberries (you can use fresh, too)
    • 1 can frozen apple juice concentrate
    • 1 box powdered pectin (use the pectin intended for low sugar recipes)

    Put the strawberries and concentrate in the pot.  Cook on low, covered, until the strawberries are soft.  Mash the strawberries using a fork while keeping them in the pot.  Add the pectin, thoroughly mixing in so that there are no lumps.  Cook on medium-high for another few minutes, and then pour into jars.  It won’t look as if it’s at all jelled by this point, but don’t worry about it – it will continue to set after it cools.  If you cook it until it looks thick, it will be overdone and hard to spread once it cools.  (That’s what happened to our first batch.)  This recipe yields 7 half pint jars of jam.

    If you’re not going to be canning it, you can store it in glass jars or empty peanut butter jars.  We canned ours in 1/2 pint jelly jars, processing for five minutes in a boiling water bath.  Once it’s canned, you won’t need to keep it in the fridge or freezer.

    For one batch, we added blueberries; for another we used a different flavor juice concentrate.  All of the batches turned out well.  I think if you keep the basic proportions the same (7 c. fruit to one can concentrate), you’ll find you can successfully experiment with different fruits.

    Avivah

  • Dehydrating frozen carrots

    When I last went shopping, I got a huge amount of frozen vegetables.  One of the things I ordered for the first time was frozen diced carrots, and when I got there to pick up my order, the woman in charge of the frozen section told me that I was in luck, since the manager told her to mark the frozen carrots down fifty percent that morning.  And even though I placed my order the week before, that applied to my carrots, too.

    That made the diced frozen carrots 25 cents a pound, which is very, very cheap, especially considering that the peeling and chopping has been done for you.  When I saw them marked down, my first instinct was to buy a bunch more than the case of 24 pounds that I already had ordered. But my rational brain took over after taking a second look at the industrial sized cart she had wheeled my order out on, and I wondered what I could possibly do with more, since as it was I didn’t have room in the freezer for everything.  I briefly considered canning them, but I prefer not to can vegetables and knew that I would be creating a lot of time pressure for myself if I had to can everything before it defrosted.  So I reluctantly stuck with just 24 pounds.

    Then later that night, eight hours later to be precise, it occurred to me that I could have bought them and then dehydrated them.  I felt like smacking my forehead when this occurred to me, but there was no way I was driving two hours in each direction just to go buy some more!  I had never tried it before, which is why it didn’t occur to me in the store. 

    I was very lucky in that the weather has been so cold that nature has been keeping several cases of veggies frozen for me, so I didn’t have to rush to deal with them. But I can’t rely on it staying this cold forever, so I decided yesterday would be a good day to dehydrate some.  My dd8 and I did this together – it was pretty easy since there wasn’t much prep work, just separating the pieces that froze together after she took the bags out to defrost and spreading them evenly on the trays.  We took out three bags of 4 lb. each, and that was one load in the dehydrator.  It took most of the day (I’m estimating about twelve hours, though I wasn’t watching the clock), since there was so much moisture from the ice that had to melt first – I turned it off before I went to sleep and the last of them were finished by then.  It always amazes me how compact everything becomes once it’s dehydrated.

    Today, I plan to do another load, since there’s no advantage to keeping them frozen over having them dehydrated.  In fact, the opposite is true – they will take up lots less space when dried and free up freezer space for something else.  Since I plan to use them in stews, chili, pot pies, etc., they’ll be rehydrated as a natural part of cooking and dehydrated works just as effectively as frozen for my purposes.

    Avivah

  • Weekly menu plan

    Here’s the menu for this week:

    Sunday – breakfast – eggs, fried potatoes; lunch – rice crackers, butter, homemade jam; dinner – chicken lima bean stew

    Monday – b – oatmeal muffins; l – broccoli-zucchini quiche (plan to double this and put one in the freezer); d – minestrone soup, corn cakes (made double last week)

    Tuesday – b – fritata ranchera; l – minestrone soup; d – vegetarian meatloaf

    Wednesday – b – pumpkin streusel muffins; l – colcannon; d – honey baked lentils, cornbread

    Thursday – b – traditional pancakes; l – vegetable chicken stew; d – CORN

    I try to plan not only with what’s in my pantry in  mind, but with my leftovers in mind.  That avoids lots of leftovers at the end of the week, and it also turns something old into something new and different.  For example, when I made the chicken lima bean stew for dinner tonight, I decided to use the leftover cholent in place of the potatoes it called for.  The stew doesn’t look anything like cholent, but it used up something that otherwise could have sat around all week and then gotten thrown away on Friday.

    Avivah

  • Very Easy Vegetarian Chili

    Chili is one of those flexible things that works well for improvising with whatever you have on hand, so you don’t have to be exact.  But I’ll share a couple of the recipes that I initially based mine on (and mine varies every time I make it, depending how much I have of what in the fridge :)).

    Very Easy Vegetarian Chili

    • 1 c. chopped onion
    • 3/4 c. chopped carrots
    • 3 cloves garlic, minced
    • 1 c. chopped green pepper
    • 1 c. chopped red pepper
    • 3/4 c. chopped celery
    • 1 T. chili powder
    • 1 1/2 c. chopped fresh mushrooms (I don’t think I ever used mushrooms)
    • 1 – 28 oz. can whole tomatoes, chopped, or 1 – 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
    • 1 – 19 oz. can kidney beans (I cook them from dry, so about 2 cups cooked)
    • 1 – 11 oz. can corn (I use frozen, about a cup and a half)
    • 1 T. cumin
    • 1 1/2 t. oregano
    • 1 1/2 t. basil

    Saute the onion and garlic until tender, add the carrots, celery, pepper, and mushrooms, and saute until all are soft.  Stir in the remaining ingredients.  Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer twenty minutes more until done.

    Here’s the next one – it has fewer ingredients and that makes it quicker and easier:

    Vegetarian Chili

    • 4 potatoes, chopped
    • 2 onions, chopped
    • 2 yellow bell peppers, chopped
    • 2 – 15 oz cans garbanzo beans (4 c. cooked)
    • 2 – 15 oz cans kidney beans (4 c. cooked)
    • 2 – 28 oz cans whole tomatoes, undrained
    • 2 T. chili powder
    • 2 t. cumin
    • 2 zucchini, sliced

    Cook everything except zucchini until tender.  Add zucchini and cook ten minutes more.  Serves 8.

    I prefer the second recipe, but combine elements of both.  For example, I use carrots (like the first) and potatoes (like the second) when I make vegetarian chili.  I tend to leave out the zucchini, especially since I make chili much more frequently in cold weather, when zucchini isn’t seasonal.  I also like to use stock instead of water (which doesn’t make it vegetarian), but it tastes good, or the pan drippings from Shabbos chicken.

    Avivah

  • Pumpkin Bread

    I realized last night that I never posted two recipes that Dina requested a few weeks ago  – I’m sorry about the oversight!  So I’m posting them now. 🙂  The adaptations I make are in the parentheses.

    Pumpkin Bread

    • 15 oz canned pumpkin, or 2 c. cooked pumpkin
    • 4 eggs
    • 1 c. oil (we use coconut oil or butter)
    • 2/3 c. water
    • 3/4 – 1 c. sugar (I use sucanat and usually reduce the amounts of sweeteners called for, so I wouldn’t use more than 1/2 c. probably)
    • 3 1/2 c. flour (whole wheat)
    • 2 t. baking soda
    • 1 1/2 t. salt (sea salt)
    • 1 t. cinnamon
    • 1 t. nutmeg
    • 1/2 t. cloves
    • 1/4 t. ginger

    Mix the pumpkin, eggs, oil, and water.  In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients.  Then mix the wet and dry ingredients together until just mixed – quick breads will be tough if they are overmixed.  Put in three greased loaf pans.  Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. 

    Avivah

  • How to find good books for read alouds

    >>I need more read aloud ideas.  Where do you go for titles?<<

    I find books that are collections of reviews of good books useful – the two that come to mind most immediately are Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook, and Honey for a Child’s Heart, by Gladys Hunt.  I don’t own either of them, though, so every couple of years I check one out and get some new ideas.  I also own a book called Books Children Love, by S. Wilson, which is also good.  Honey for a Child’s Heart was especially valuable in choosing good quality books for my younger kids. There are a lot of kids books out there that just aren’t so good, and it’s annoying to read them repeatedly when you can hardly stand to read it the first time!

    I also look at online book recommendations, at the Sonlight catalog, the Robinson book recommendations, and the Newberry Honor and Newberry Medal lists.  The classics can be good, too, though you have to be careful that they’re age appropriate.  Because the language of the classics tends to be written in a literary style that is unfamiliar, kids can easily get turned off if introduced to them too soon.  I try to look for books that are engaging, well written, and fun to listen to together.

    I’ve thought that it would be fun to make a list of all the books we’ve read aloud over the years to share with you (just chapter books, not picture books), but the idea overwhelms me and I don’t know how I could possibly remember all of them!

    Avivah

  • Stainless steel baking pans

    Woo hoo!  I am so excited by my newest kitchen additions!  I’ve been wanting to get stainless steel baking pans for ages, but they are sooo expensive.  Several years ago, I bought a number of baking pans at Walmart, not realizing they were aluminum.  I soon discovered they were terrible quality (they left black marks on the bottom of the food cooked in it, through the parchment paper) and after a while I threw them away (and I don’t recklessly throw things out – they were really horrible).  And I went back to using disposable aluminum pans lined with baking paper. 

    But I really don’t like using them.  I don’t like the wastefulness of having to periodically buy a large stack, and then having to throw them out (I rewash and reuse them, but they still don’t last long).  Pans are something you should be able to buy once and then have them.  And I don’t like the health concerns associated with using aluminum (even though I line them before using).  And my kids really don’t like washing them, since they have those difficult to clean ridged sides. 

    But I haven’t been successful in finding affordable alternatives.  I looked at Sam’s Club, to see if they had some decent quality pans, but they were all aluminum.  My husband checked prices from restaurant suppliers for stainless steel pans a while back, and they were out of my budget.  Periodically I think about where and how to get good metal baking pans (not glass because glass doesn’t last long around here), but I  haven’t had any luck finding anything suitable in mainstream stores at reasonable prices. 

    On Weds. night, I was totally out of disposable pans, once again unexpectedly (it happens when you discover all the pans you have have teeny pin sized (or bigger) holes on the bottom and have to all be thrown away unless you want a burnt-on mess in the bottom of the oven at the end of the cooking time from the leaks).  And the pan I borrowed when I was given the meat from a restaurant a while back (the meat was in it) happened to catch my eye.  It’s been put to the side for ages, waiting to be returned, but hasn’t quite made it out of the house yet.  I figured since it was the only usable pan in the house and the people I borrowed it from wouldn’t mind, I’d use it for our honey baked lentils last night, and I did. 

    Then this morning, I finally took out the Lehman’s catalog that came along with my oil lamps a few weeks ago.  I was flipping through, and in the kitchen section, I looked to see if they had any stainless steel baking pans.  They had one baking pan with a lid for about $35.  The pan I used the night before from the restaurant suddenly flashed into my mind, and it occurred to me that I could ask the owners if they had extra pans like that which they might be willing to sell me.  If they had more than they could use, they’d make a little money and get rid of pans they weren’t using, and I’d be able to buy some more cheaply than I could buy them new.

    Yesterday I asked my husband if he could speak to them, since he’s the one who has more of a relationship with them than I do.  He said he’d try, and I figured within a few days, I’d hear if they would sell them and what the price would be.  When he came home several hours later, he brought a surprise for me – nine stainless steel pans!  All of them were 9 x 13, six were standard depth, and three were like the one I didn’t yet return, about double that depth.  So now I have ten strong pans that will last me forever, enough for whatever cooking I do at any given time.  Bye, bye, disposable pans!

    And guess what?  They told him we could have them for free!!  Can you believe that?!  I wasn’t expecting it AT ALL.  I would have gladly paid for them and counted myself very lucky to have them at less than the retail price.  (I think the only reason they did that is they like my husband. :)) Isn’t that a nice way to go into Shabbos?  And my ten year old son, whose turn it is for dishes, is very happy about them, too – he hates washing the disposable pans, and just in the nick of time, he’ll have something much easier to wash this Saturday night! 🙂

    Avivah

  • Finding buckets for grain storage

    I’ve written about how I find it most effective to store the bulk grains that I buy (http://vibrantmoms.com/food-preservation/storing-bulk-grains/), but since someone recently mentioned to me that they planned to buy buckets, and someone else called us a couple of days ago to ask us about where we got buckets (and I know many new blog readers don’t go too far back into the archives), I thought it would be helpful to share again on this.

    You can find 3 – 6 gallon food grade plastic buckets for free or a nominal cost at many restaurants.  Restaurants buy lots of foods that come in them, and usually don’t have a need for them when they finish.  Ask around at local restaurants, and let them know you’d love to take the buckets off of their hands when they have extra.  You may have to wash them out yourself (or you may not – I’ve been lucky in this regard, since they very generously wash them for me), but since it costs about $6 for a five gallon bucket, and $10 for a six gallon bucket, the savings in spending five minutes washing each bucket are justified.

    You can also ask at ice cream stores and bakeries.  Frosting buckets can be a pain to wash out, but other than that, they work as well as anything else.  I don’t recommend using the buckets found at stores like Home Depot, which aren’t intended for food use. For the same reasons, I wouldn’t use empty drywall compound or paint buckets.  They could be useful for other things, though.

    Because there are so many similarly sized round buckets but the lids vary slightly from one company to another, you might get some buckets and lids that don’t perfectly match up.  My choice was to accept whatever buckets and lids they had, and then keep the ones that didn’t match up for the next time around when I picked up buckets.  Over a period of time, I got lids to match almost everything, and even when I didn’t have the perfect fitting lids for my buckets, they were still adequate to cover the top.  When I put another full bucket on top of it, the lid was held down and pretty effectively sealed against insects or other intruders for all intents and purposes. 

    Another option is if you are able to get the buckets but still need lids, you can buy the lids separately online.  Look for gamma lids, which are better than the regular lids because of ease of use.  If you have tight fitting lids, I wouldn’t personally suggest going to the extra expense.  But it can make it possible to take advantage of the free buckets that you otherwise might not think usable.

    Avivah