Apple Season

Last week, I got my first experience with canning. My friend Melody invited me over to help her can some apple pie filling. It basically involved making the delicious sauce, preparing the apples (made much easier with her handy peeler/corer/slicer tool) and canning them. Her parents have apple trees so that made the filling very inexpensive. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I expected and I am excited someday to do canning myself.

On Friday, I got some fuji, gala, and braeburn apples for $0.50/lb from Tacoma Boys. I used them to make homemade applesauce for the first time. It was fun and easy! Just peel, core and slice the apples. Put them in a pot and cover them with water and a lid, then boil them for about 10 minutes until they’re soft. Puree them in the blender, adding the juice from boiling them as needed. I ate some warm with cinnamon. Mmmmm.

Now I really want some apple trees! I want to can an abundance of apple pie filling, apple sauce and apple butter. My own apple trees would make that much more economical.

A Muffiny Day

Lately I’ve been wanting to make a bunch of healthy muffins for the freezer to use as quick breakfasts or snacks. Yesterday I was finally able to! First, I made a batch of low fat blueberry bran muffins (recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/low-fat-blueberry-bran-muffins/detail.aspx). I used all whole wheat flour rather than using half white flour. They turned out great…lightly sweet and very hearty! I also made a batch of raisin bran muffins (using a recipe my mom used when I was a kid). I substituted applesauce for the oil the recipe called for and used all whole wheat flour. I even over-cooked them slightly and they still taste fabulous! I wanted to make some banana nut muffins but I didn’t have any walnuts which the recipe called for. So I made up a recipe for whole wheat banana almond muffins! Yes, I made it up! Huge success, here is my recipe:

Whole Wheat Banana Almond Muffins

1/2 cup applesauce

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

1 cup mashed banana

1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup ground almonds

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 375. Spray muffin pan.

Mix the applesauce, honey, brown sugar, vanilla and egg in a large bowl. Mash the bananas with a fork; add to applesauce mixture.

In blender, grind whole plain almonds until they form a fine powder; pour into a separate bowl. Add the whole wheat flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Mix. Add to the banana mixture. Mix.

Pour into muffin pan and bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until done.

I like to use the muffin pan that makes 6 bigger muffins rather than 12 small ones. That way one muffin is enough for breakfast. After they were completely cool, I spread them out on plates and put them in the freezer for an hour or two to get hard. Then I put them in freezer bags and tossed them back into the freezer…that way they shouldn’t stick together. Happy muffin making!

Spinach: Surprisingly Scrumptious

I don’t recall a single time I ever ate spinach in my childhood. I don’t think my mom used it very much, although maybe she snuck it in without the family knowing it. If it was ever offered, I claimed that I didn’t like it. When I went to college and started cooking for myself, I always used iceberg lettuce as my green leafy vegetable of choice, and I kept using it after I got married.

Around a year and a half ago, on a church women’s retreat, someone put on a demonstration of how to make smoothies using fresh spinach. Of course the demonstration included samples, which were delicious and exciting. When I got home from the retreat, I bought spinach for the first time ever so that I could make my husband a spinach smoothie. He’s always up for trying new (even green) foods, and he enjoyed the smoothie very much. Ever since then, spinach smoothies have been a fairly regular treat in our home. But for a long time, I didn’t try using spinach in any other way.

When I was pregnant, we took a childbirth class which met once a week and included dinner.  The teacher used dinner as a way to teach nutrition, which was a big focus of the class. One of the first meals she cooked for us was tacos and instead of lettuce, she offered spinach to use as a topper. I hesitantly put some on my tacos and was surprised to find that it didn’t make any difference! This opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of spinach. We now use it for pretty much everything we used to use lettuce for…salads, sandwiches, whatever! I also mix it in to eggs, pasta dishes, and soups. When you puree it and add it to a white casserole, it turns the casserole a beautiful pesto green and doesn’t change the flavor at all!

Spinach is one of those ridiculously nutritious foods. I just looked up the nutrition facts for it and was going to list all the good vitamins and minerals spinach contains, but there were so many of them that it would have looked silly. It is also very affordable. I normally buy the 1 pound tubs of organic baby spinach from Costco which cost $3 or $4 because I don’t have to worry about washing it. And of course the non-organic kind is even cheaper.

Here’s a couple recipes for you:

Spinach smoothies

1 orange

1 banana

~10 strawberries

2 big handfuls of spinach

1 cup water

Blend together. Use frozen fruit or ice if you want it to be slushy. There are a million variations…I also love using fresh mango or peach or pineapple!

Spinach salad

6 cups of spinach

½ cup pecans

½ cup dried cranberries

½ cup crumbled bacon (I cook it in the microwave)

Croutons

Toss together with your dressing of choice. Add whatever you want…I like these ingredients because there is no chopping required! It’s super fast and delicious.

Being Poor: Meal Planning and Going Without

Here’s a couple humorous thoughts I’ve had in the past couple days:

-You know you’re poor when you go to Target just to get a free box of mac n cheese. The checkout guy rolls his eyes and informs you that your total savings was $1.19!

-You know you’re poor when your husband (being romantic and thoughtful) brings you a fun-sized kit kat for a surprise gift... and you are genuinely thrilled!

I think we’re adjusting pretty well to life on one income. My husband and I have been very blessed so far in our marriage, not only with each other and our family and friends, but also financially. We’ve always had some money in savings so even now we don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. It’s humbling to see how well we are able to live here in America. We are poor by our country’s standards and our standards and we like to joke about it, but we both have traveled to real poor places. We’ve seen the shacks and mud huts. We’ve smelled the filth and the sewage. We know how blessed we are and we are thankful. So when I say we are poor, I know we aren’t really. If we ever need more money for food or electricity, there are plenty of things we can give up so that we’ll get what we need. However, I see it as my job to make my husband’s income go as far as it can. To do that, we live on a very strict budget which we stick to down to the penny.

The grocery budget is less than $300 per month. Let me tell you…it is HARD to feed a 6’ 2” 260 pound husband (who has a labor intensive job) on $300 per month! He eats a lot. And I want to make sure he gets good, wholesome food. I recently started meal planning and when we get to the end of the month, it becomes a real challenge. This week, I had $19 to purchase groceries for the last week of October. Yesterday I bought a whole chicken from Albertsons ($.79 per pound) for less than $5. It was dinner last night (with mashed potatoes (peal on for extra nutrition) and green beans) and was my husband’s lunch today. It will be dinner tonight (chicken casserole) and the leftovers will be his lunch tomorrow. And it will be dinner tomorrow (chicken soup) and the leftovers will be his lunch on Thursday! That $5 chicken sure goes a long way when you meal plan!

Another new experience for me is “going without.” My $19 of grocery money this week went to the chicken, milk, bread, carrots and a few other necessary things. When the money was gone, we were still out of coffee creamer and cheddar cheese. In the past, I would just buy those things because we like them, even if there wasn’t money in the grocery budget. But we don’t need them and now there simply isn’t any wiggle room in the budget. So, this week we drink our coffee black and we don’t get cheese on our sandwiches! That’ll just make us appreciate it more come November 1^st when the budget starts over. J

Homemade Deodorant

I was reading something the other day that made me say “hmmmmm.” Unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was. But it made me question my deodorant. Apparently deodorants are made with lots of nasty chemicals and metals…who woulda thunk it? This is particularly concerning for breastfeeding mothers whose babies undoubtedly take in some deodorant residue. Also concerning is the fact that antiperspirants may increase the risk of breast cancer. I have a strong family history of breast cancer, so anything that might increase my risk of developing the disease is something I want to avoid.

I did a quick google search on homemade deodorants and got some interesting information. The most exciting-looking recipe I found called for coconut oil though which I didn’t have on hand and I wouldn’t even know where to find (would it be by the coconuts in produce, by the vegetable oil and Pam spray, in the natural foods isle or where?). So I decided to whip up something on my own as an experiment. I didn’t measure how much I was using, but I think I mixed ~1/4 cup baking soda and 1 cup water, then added 3 drops of tea tree essential oil. I put it in a little plastic travel bottle and just shake it, splash it in my hand and rub it under my arms after a shower.

I’ve only been using it for a few days, but so far I am very impressed! I think it actually works better at preventing odor than the store bought deodorant I was using. It isn’t an antiperspirant (which doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem for me) so you might experiment with adding corn starch to the mixture if you are a heavy sweater.  

I am excited about saving money on deodorant (this homemade stuff is way cheaper than store bought) and I think it may be the most extreme step I have taken yet towards being natural. If people start avoiding sitting next to me or I hear whispers of BO, I promise to post an update. J

Bountiful Burritos

My friend Audrey recently showed me how she makes big batches of breakfast burritos and freezes them for her husband. I was very inspired. They are inexpensive, super convenient, nourishing and taste fabulous! I’ve already made one batch of breakfast burritos and one batch of regular burritos and my husband could not be more thrilled. Here’s what I do:

Breakfast burritos (made 17 at a cost of ~ $.50 each)

-Cook a lb of turkey breakfast sausage. While that cooks, beat a dozen eggs.

-Set aside the sausage. Scramble the eggs.

-Combine the sausage, eggs and some cheese (I used ~2 cups of pepperjack). I also added a cup or so of spinach ripped into small pieces.

-Spoon the mixture into tortillas, fold them up and roll them each in a paper napkin or aluminum foil. Store in large ziplock bags in the freezer.

Regular burritos (made 16 at a cost of ~$.50 each)

-Cook a lb of ground turkey.

-Add a can of refried beans, a cup of water, half a pouch of burrito seasoning, and some cheese (I used ~2 cups of cheddar). I also added a cup or so of spinach ripped into small pieces. And you could definitely season them yourself…I just happened to have half a pouch I needed to use.

-Spoon the mixture into tortillas, fold them up and roll them each in a paper napkin or aluminum foil. Store in large ziplock bags in the freezer.

Viola! Super quick meal or snack. And they’re so much better (in every way) than store-bought frozen burritos. And you can make them a million different ways if you like variety. I’ll definitely be making these regularly!

Homemade yogurt?

I have never liked yogurt, even the sweetened fruity kind. I’ve tried to like it a few times over the years, but only succeeded in making myself gag. I recently read “Super Baby Food,” by Ruth Yaron (fabulous book, by the way), which dedicates an entire chapter to yogurt. At first I just skimmed over this section because I had no intention of including yogurt in my family’s diet. But I got interested when she said that she never liked yogurt either until she tried making it homemade.  Who knew you could make yogurt at home? I didn’t know that it was possible! But it sounded like fun, is insanely cheap (store-bought natural yogurt is 5 or 6 times more expensive than homemade!), and extremely good for you. Seriously. Extremely good for you. So, using Yaron’s yogurt chapter as a guide, I have successfully made yogurt 4 times in the past 2 weeks.

Here’s what I do:

-Fill 4 half-quart jars (I use La Victoria salsa jars) with milk (I use 1% but you can use fat free or whole or whatever you prefer). Leave a little room at the top for stirring. Put the jars in a large kettle and fill the kettle with water, to about an inch below the top of the jars.

-Put a meat thermometer in one of the jars. Bring the water to a boil and keep it there until the milk reaches 185°. While this happens, put some water in the crockpot and turn it to the “keep warm” setting.

-Take the jars out of the boiling water and set them aside to cool. They need to cool to around 110° (no less than 90° and no more than 120°). This takes around an hour. Keep the jars covered and stir them occasionally with the thermometer or a sterile spoon.

-Check the temp of the water in the crockpot. Make sure it is between 90° and 120°, 110° is ideal.

-Stir about 1 TBSP of starter yogurt into each jar. Make sure your starter is plain and make sure it has live bacteria in it! Most yogurt from the store is pasteurized so the bacteria are killed. If it has live bacteria, it will say on the package. I used Oikos for my first starter.

-Cover the jars and put them into the crockpot of warm water. Leave them to incubate for 4 – 5 hours. Check the temperature periodically to make sure it’s in the right range.

-When the yogurt is done, put it in the fridge to cool. If you want thicker yogurt, pour off the whey after it cools.

How fun is that?? It takes some time but most of it is hands-off…you don’t have to be in the kitchen with it. Mix in vanilla and fun fruits or chocolate or whatever you want! But before you flavor it, make sure to save enough out to use as a starter for your next batch. It tastes great (even I think so) and is so super easy. And if you haven’t looked at yogurt nutrition facts lately, you should. It’s crazy how healthy it is. There is a lot of variation to yogurt making, depending on how you incubate it and what texture you’re going for, but these steps are working for me so far.