Another crazy day around here yesterday.  The twins decided they didn’t need a nap, so, of course, nothing got done in our house.

I had big plans for making a quiche with the swiss chard that’s coming up in the garden, but no time to make it.  So, we had one of our favorite easy dinners.  Lentil Sloppy Joes.  The “joes” need to spend a bit of time cooking on the stovetop, but they require very little hands-on time.

I wish I had a picture for you, but the kids ate it too fast!  :)

Lentil Sloppy Joes

1 cup lentils

2 cups water

3 medium carrots, diced

4 stalks celery, diced

1 medium onion, diced

1/2 cup ketchup

2 tbsp sugar/evaporated cane juice

1 tbsp molasses

2 tbsp soy sauce

Combine lentils and water in large sauce pan.  Bring to a boil and then cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  Add remaining ingredients and continue to simmer on medium low heat for about 30 minutes more until lentils are soft and no liquid remains.

Serve on pretzel rolls!  Yum!

Summer is definitely in full swing around here.  As I was dodging sprinklers while out running with the jogging stroller last week, it occurred to me that summer must be one of the worst seasons for water usage.  So, I thought I should say a few words about how we try to conserve water:

* We don’t water our lawn.  (I know this is shocking in suburbia to not maintain a pristine lawn, but to me it’s just grass.  It might turn brown during the hottest part of summer, but it always comes back.  So I have to deal with a less-than-perfect lawn for a few weeks.  I’m ok with that.)

* Rain Barrels.  (If you have a garden (flower or vegetable), you spend a lot of time watering.  We’re having a bit of a dry spell now, but in a normal summer we get plenty of rain to water our gardens and we never have to use the hose!)

* Public beaches/splash pads. (While I do occasionally fill up the baby pool or put on the sprinkler, I try to take the kids to the public beaches/splash pads to cool off in the summer.  It’s a much more efficient use of water.)

* Washing Vegetables/Fruits.  (Eating lots of fresh fruits in vegetables is great, but you can use a lot of water washing that produce.  Try washing your produce in a bowl of water instead of a stream of water from the faucet.  You can reuse that water for your plants!)

If anyone else has suggestions of ways they save water, I’d love to hear them!

Snack foods continue to be the hardest to live without in our house.  People have this idea that I’ve always been a health-nut.  And while that may be true in a lot of ways, I have always had a guilty habit of eating a small bowl of chips… daily.  I eat very healthy at meals, but I enjoyed having a few doritos or ruffles every day.  So, you can imagine how hard this year has been so far.

I think I may have found a snack to get me through the rest of the year: Kettle Corn.  While I have made my own potato chips, they take some time and they require using the oven, which I hate doing in the summer.  Kettle Corn takes less than 10 minutes and can be made in the microwave!

Kettle Corn

popcorn kernels

paper bag (regular lunch sack size)

1 tbsp butter

1-2 tbsp maple syrup (depending on how sweet you want your corn)

1 tsp salt

Pour kernels into a paper bag so that you have a thin layer covering the bottom of the bag.  Fold the top of the bag over a few times and put in microwave.  Cook on high for about 3 minutes.  It may take less than 3 minutes, so listen for when the corn stops popping.  Put butter in a small microwaveable dish.  Melt on high heat for about 30 seconds.  Stir in your maple syrup and pour over popcorn.  Sprinkle with salt.  Enjoy!

Just finished reading another great food book:

Wildly Affordable Organic (by Linda Watson)

Sometimes I feel like I should take a course on nutrition.  There’s just so much information and it’s so often conflicting.  It shouldn’t be this hard to make good decisions about nutrition!

Right now I’m reading What to Eat by Marion Nestle.  It might be a while before I finish that one!  It reads a bit like a text book.  There’s an overwhelming amount of info in there.

Linda Watson’s book was great, though.  Very easy to follow and lots of helpful suggestions.  She even gives you menus according to the seasons and lays out exactly how you can afford to eat well and find the time to do it!  And she is strongly in support of no processed foods.  In all of the books on healthy eating that I’ve read (and I’ve not even scratched the surface of all the books out there), that seems to be the standard recommendation.  Eating healthy isn’t about eating organic “snack foods” or diet foods.  If you are making your own food from scratch, chances are it will be healthier than what you could buy in the store.  (Unless all of your cooking is done in a Fry Daddy.  :) )

I found the menus in the WAO book a little limiting.  I get bored easily, so I like to have more food options, but she does an amazing job of showing that it is possible to eat healthier.  And as the title suggests, it is possible to do so frugally.

And if I ever get through Marion Nestle’s book, I’ll let you know what I find out from that one.  :)

A lot of people consider pizza junk food.

And a lot of pizza is terribly bad for you.

But it’s also a food that most kids love.  So, go ahead and give your kids pizza!  Just make it healthier!

Pizza is a surprisingly good way to use up any vegetables you have on hand.  We had some beets, peppers and onions from the farmer’s market that I wasn’t sure what to do with.  So I roasted them in a little oil and voila, a perfect pizza topping.

Roasted Vegetable Pizza

2 cups mozzarella, grated

1/4 cup asiago, grated

olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

basil and oregano (fresh if you have it)

beets, peppers, onion (or whatever vegetables sound good to you!)

one batch of pizza dough

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Chop your veggies into bite-size pieces and toss with a little olive oil.  Spread on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until tender and carmelized, stirring occasionally.

Form your pizza crust and brush with a little olive oil.  Sprinkle with garlic and herbs.  Spread veggies over the crust and then top with cheese.

Return pizza to oven and bake for 15-20 minutes until cheese starts to brown.

Enjoy!

Got a kid who will only eat veggies with a dip?

I know it might seem easiest just to give them the ranch dressing, but this dip really isn’t much work and it’s so much better for them.  No questionable ingredients in here!

Beaneriffic Ranch Dip

1 cup white beans (I used great northern)

1/2 cup sour cream

1 clove garlic (or 2 if your cloves are small)

2 tsp dill

2 tbsp milk

salt, pepper to taste

Peel your garlic and place in food processor to mince.  Add your other ingredients and process until smooth.  Add more or less milk depending on how thick you want your dip to be.  If you add more milk than sour cream, it’ll be more like ranch dressing.

No monosodium glutamate or disodium guanylate in this ranch dip!

I had a request for a week’s menu a while back, so I thought I’d post our dinner plan for last week.  I try to stick to a plan so that I only go to the grocery once and I’m prepared when it comes time to make dinner.  As I mentioned before, I tested some recipes for OnceAMonthMom so I was happy to have some of these meals ready from the freezer.

Sunday: French Onion Soup, toasted bread with swiss cheese, fruit

Monday: Vidalia Chipotle Burgers, broccoli salad and banana cupcakes

Tuesday: Spaghetti Pie* with Veggilicious Sauce* and garlic bread made from french bread*

Wednesday: Mac and cheese* and veggies

Thursday: Tofu-Vegetable Stir Fry (a great way to use whatever veggies you find at the farmer’s market) and brown rice

Friday: Pizza* and crudite

Saturday: Thai Pineapple Rice and spring rolls

* These recipes can be found on my recipe page.*

I’m not a nutritionist, so I can’t say whether this meets everyone’s dietary needs, but if it helps anyone with their menu planning, feel free to use it.  And, if people are interested, I’d be glad to post our weekly menu more often.  The OnceAMonthMom site is a great resource for freezer ready dinners.  I often find that I have no time to make dinner around dinnertime, so it’s nice to have something I can make ahead of time.  If you don’t have time for one big cooking day, just double one or two recipes a week, so you can build a stockpile for busy days.  I’ve frozen all of these meals, except for the pizza, but you can freeze the dough to save time another night.

Of course I’ll add here and there to this menu with things we find at the farmer’s market.  This week we picked up some carrots, golden beets, kohlrabi and raspberries. I would share a picture of our veggies, but we’ve already eaten most of them.  :)  I’ll be quicker with the camera next time!

Whole wheat sandwich bread that doesn’t taste like cardboard?

And doesn’t come from a package that says “all-natural” yet contains high-fructose corn syrup.  (It doesn’t seem fair that you can find those ingredients even when you think you are buying the right things for your family.)

Making my own sandwich bread was one of my least favorite parts of this process.  All of the whole wheat bread recipes I tried came out hard and dense.  So, I decided to try a recipe for white bread.  And just switch the white flour with whole wheat flour.  Add a little extra rising time and it’s bread that I actually like having a sandwich on!

Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

1/2 cup milk

3 tbsp honey

2 tsp salt

3 tbsp butter

2 pkg active dry yeast (I like the Hodgson Mill brand made for whole wheat flour)

1 1/2 cups warm water

5-6 cups whole wheat flour (or a mix of whole wheat and white whole wheat)

Combine milk, honey, salt and butter in a small saucepan.  Warm until the butter melts.

Dissolve yeast in warm water in a warmed mixer bowl.  Add milk mixture and 4 1/2 cups flour.  Mix with a dough hook for about a minute.

Continue mixing and add remaining flour and mix until dough forms a ball on the dough hook.  Knead about 2 minutes longer.

Drizzle a little olive oil over the dough and turn a couple of times in the bowl so that all of the dough is coated.  Cover bowl with a towel and let stand for 90 minutes.

Divide dough into 2 pieces.  Roll out into a rectangle and then roll up into a loaf shape.  Repeat with second half of dough.

Place in greased loaf pans and cover with towel.  Let rise for 90 minutes.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes.  (Loaves should sound hollow when you tap on them and be golden brown.)

Recipe adapted from “Instructions and Recipes for your KitchenAid Stand Mixer”

First day of summer and we were out of the house earlier than we ever left for school.  You have to get to the farm early if you want to get the best strawberries!  We spent an hour at the farm and came home with 9 lbs of strawberries and 4 lbs of snap peas.  I probably shouldn’t say that we got “the best strawberries.”  The older kids did most of the picking while I tried to keep the twins from eating all of the strawberries.  I noticed some rather small, not-quite-ripe berries in our baskets when we got home.  Oh well, they worked just fine in the strawberry shortcake we made for dessert last night:

While it may be tempting to just pick up those spongy yellow cakes and a can of whipped cream, it’s so worth the extra time it takes to make it from scratch.  You’ll know exactly what’s in there.  Homemade organic whipped cream, fresh picked berries and whole wheat short cake.  Doesn’t that sound good!  (I think I’ll have to go make another!  ;) )

Strawberry Shortcake

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 cup evaporated cane juice (or white sugar)

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup butter, cut in small pieces

3/4 cup milk

Combine dry ingredients in a food processor.  Add butter and process until you have a crumbly mixture.  Add olive oil and milk and process until dough forms a ball.  Spoon into a greased 8×8 pan and flatten with a spatula.  Bake in a 450 degree oven for 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool and then cut into 9 squares.

4 cups strawberries

1 tbsp evaporated cane juice

Wash and hull the berries.  Mash 3/4 of the berries with a potato masher.  Slice the rest and mix those in with the sugar.

1 cup heavy cream

2 tbsp confectioners sugar

Whip cream with sugar until stiff.  I used a mixer with a wire whisk attachment.  (I find it’s helpful to chill the mixer bowl in the fridge before whipping.)

Split cakes in half.  Lay one half in dish and top with berries.  Cover with remaining half and a few more berries.  Add a dollop of whipped cream.

Time-saving tip: Double the shortcake batch and freeze half for the next time.  We made enough to have this dessert two more times.  It will only take about 15 minutes to get the berries and cream ready next time!

The end of the school year is upon us.  To celebrate the kids’ “graduation” to second and fifth grade, we made these cute graduation hats:

There are a lot of recipes out there for making similar graduation hat treats, but most are loaded with sugar.  If you want to give your kids something healthier, try these.

Healthier Graduation Caps

1 mini muffin/cupcake (I used the banana bread donut recipe)

1 chocolate covered graham cracker (recipe found here)

quick chocolate glaze (see instructions below)

embroidery floss or string for the tassel

Cut the rounded top off of your muffin so that it sits flat on the plate.  Coat the top and sides with chocolate glaze.  Top with a chocolate covered graham cracker and stick a little tassel on the top.

Chocolate Glaze

Melt a couple of tbsp butter in a small saucepan.  Stir in honey and cocoa to taste.  (Sorry I don’t have measurements.  I just added until it tasted right.  I recommend this method for everyone.  It involves a lot of chocolate tasting.  :) )

Congratulations to all of the graduates!