Going (kind of) organic

Well, we are about three and half months into this little real food lifestyle of ours and I must admit...this is hard work! Don't get me wrong, we are still enjoying the process and learning a lot, but it was a lot easier to live my blissful processed life than to pay attention to all the details.

When we started this process back in January, one of our biggest concerns was budgetary. We talked to a lot of health-conscious friends and every single person recommended some combination of organic chicken, meat, cheese, milk, eggs, snack foods, fruits or veggies. However, everyone seemed to do their own special combo (meat and chicken but no eggs, fruits and veggies but no meat, etc.). There seemed to be absolutely no consensus as to what the "best" thing to do was, which was refreshing and overwhelming all the same. So Trey and I started evaluating prices and researching the rationale behind all the organic offerings to determine the best plan for our family.

When it came to fruits and veggies, Trey and I agreed that paying attention to the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 lists published by the Environmental Working Group was a good place to start. Unfortunately, all our key produce options seem to fall on the dirty dozen list, and going 100 percent organic on all things produce just isn't financially possible for us these days. We plan to start a garden this summer to grow some things ourselves, but I also need to be able to buy strawberries, grapes, blueberries, etc. in bulk at Costco to feed my fruit-loving girls.

So what's our solution when I can't find a good enough price on organic fruits and veggies? Homemade fruit and veggie wash. While I agree it may not be as effective as buying organic, I feel it's better than nothing and it's what we can do right now (not to mention it's really easy and cost-effective). Here's my step-by-step process:

Fill a large mixing bowl about half full of cold water. I have a colander that fits perfectly inside the bowl (not necessary but saves a step if you have something that works similarly).

Add 1 cup of white distilled vinegar and 1/4 cup (4 Tbsp) of lemon juice to your water. I generally take a wooden spoon and stir the solution up a few times just to make sure it is mixed well.

Add your produce to the bowl and let it sit anywhere from 2-10 minutes, depending on the fruit or veggie. For something like strawberries or blueberries, I tend to stick to the lower end of the scale (2-3 minutes) since they absorb so much water. For grapes, I soak them for the full 10 minutes.

When the time is up, either remove your colander or gently pour your produce into a separate colander.

Rinse produce with cold water, moving it around as much as possible to ensure everything gets rinsed.

For strawberries, blueberries and other fruits that soak up the water quickly, I lay them out in a single layer between paper towels and allow them to dry for a bit. For storage purposes, I remove the stems, hull them and put them in a Tupperware container. Disclaimer: berries don't last as long if you rinse them on the front end. However, this works best for me because I don't have time to wash my produce every time the girls need lunch or a snack.

You can do this with anything - sweet peppers, cucumbers, lemons and limes, etc. 

Do you buy organic? If so, what are your organic "must haves?" We are still finalizing our plan, but for now this seems to be working well for us! 

When life gives you peanuts...

So when it comes to condiments around here, we have a slight addiction. Ketchup, salad dressings, barbecue sauce, peanut butter, honey mustard...our refrigerator door runneth over. Well, it DID runneth over - until the massive purge of February 2014 occurred. We started reading the backs of bottles and realized we were in an extremely unhealthy relationship with corn syrup and needed to break up STAT. So with feet dragging and heads hanging low, we begrudgingly tossed half-eaten bottles of preservatives in the trash and filled donation bins with stockpiled containers of coupon-acquired condiment goodness. Remember when I told you how frugal Trey and I are? Yeah, this was hard for us. Really, really hard.

The first thing I had to figure out how to replace was peanut butter, because it's a staple in our world. We use it in smoothies, on English muffins and waffles, on sandwiches, on crackers...breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner, it's consumed in mass quantities. But most peanut butter is far from being just peanuts. The jar of reduced-fat "all natural" peanut butter in our pantry listed corn syrup solids, sugar, salt and hydrogenated vegetable oils as four of the top six ingredients. If that's "all natural," I'm afraid to see what processed looks like!

A few minutes of quick research and I learned I can make peanut butter in my Vitamix. And the ingredient list included one thing - 3 cups of unsalted, roasted peanuts. Thus was born the great peanut shelling project of 2014. Did you know you can buy a MASSIVE bag of unsalted peanuts at Costco for $5.99? You can, but they are in shells. As we stood in the aisle debating what to do, sweet Trey said, "I can shell those, that's no problem." I looked at him a little quizzically but took his word for it and home came the peanuts. A couple batches of peanut butter later I'm not so sure he is sold on his new-found hobby, but he will be the first to tell you this homemade peanut butter is amazing.

So how in the world do you make peanut butter? One very important thing to know: IT'S EASY! Any food processor or high-powered blender should be able to handle this task, just consult the manual so you don't burn up the motor! And if you don't have one of those handy kitchen appliances, I'm betting your local grocery store has a machine that will do it for you. Here's the step-by-step process for those of you that like pictures:

Shell your peanuts (or purchase them shelled - just make sure you are getting unsalted!). You will need 3 cups, and our blender manual is very adamant on not using more than that amount to avoid burning up the motor. So please consult your manual!

Load up the peanuts directly into your blender or food processor container.

Start blending! For our Vitamix, we started at 1 and gradually increased to 10, then flipped to High. You have to keep pressing the peanuts into the blades using the tamper, and about a minute later smooth, creamy peanut butter will start flowing.

And there you go...the smoothest, creamiest, yummiest peanut butter ever.

The shelling process takes some time, but the actual peanut butter-making process takes about five minutes flat. One batch makes a little more than a jar of store-bought peanut butter and lasts us about 3-4 weeks depending how often we are using it.

If you have a peanut allergy in your house, you can do this with all kinds of nuts. Nut butters tend to be a staple for so many of us moms, and this is an easy, affordable way to give our kids that protein in the healthiest way possible. Let me know if you try it and how it turns out!

Getting back to keeping it real

Greetings from the land of the sugar coma!

C turned four a couple of weeks ago and we celebrated in a real way. And by real, I mean real sugary. We did our best to stick to our "no processed" way of life, but low sugar became something of a joke. We indulged in everything from brownies to rice krispie treats to cookies and cakes, and besides gaining two pounds in the course of 10 days (no exaggeration, it happened), I felt TERRIBLE after eating like that! It might taste good on the front end, but it definitely showed us that desserts in moderation are the way to go and we will not be returning to our sneaky snacking way of life. Except for birthday weeks. Because everyone deserves to celebrate their birthday with a little sugar. :)

We have spent the last week or so gradually getting back into the swing of things, and I must say I'm really enjoying the re-discovery process. My energy levels are up (last week I was exhausted, and I am totally blaming sugar for that!) and overall I just feel healthier. Plus C's behavior is back on track (lots of sugar leads to lots of energy...and lots of misbehavior).

Our newest tasty discovery comes to us courtesy of one of my favorite blog finds of 2014, Chocolate Covered Katie. Katie takes delicious recipes, cuts out sugar and replaces them with healthy alternatives, and makes them taste equally as yummy...it's fabulous. I was perusing her blog one day and came across her recipe for a modified version of Disney's famous Dole Whip. Trey and I both LOVE these but I'm quite sure the original version isn't nearly as healthy as Katie's. As is always the case, I modified it slightly to accommodate what I had on hand, and I must say this will definitely become a standby on our menu. Best part: it's healthy and I have no problem giving the girls some when they want a treat. 

Frozen Pineapple Perfection (original recipe found here)

Makes 2 mug-sized servings

1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk (you can use any milk you have on hand)

1/2 Tablespoon lemon juice

Pinch of salt

2 cups frozen pineapple

Throw all the ingredients into your blender (in the order listed if you're using a Vitamix or other high-powered blender). Blend until smooth, using your tamper to push ingredients into the blades if needed. 

We ate it straight out of the blender and it was the perfect consistency, but if you don't have a high-powered blender you may need to increase the amount of liquid and/or freeze it for 20 minutes or so before eating.

A few helpful tips on the preparation process:

• Make sure you are using frozen pineapple in order to get the "ice cream" consistency. Not sure where to get frozen pineapple? Costco sells fresh pineapples for $2.99 each and it takes about 15 minutes to slice one up into chunks. Lay the chunks out on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and flash freeze them for about 45 minutes, then throw the chunks into a ziplock bag and let them freeze the rest of the way. Flash freezing keeps them from freezing together in one large pineapple ice cube.

• Don't keep almond milk on hand? Substitute with whatever you have! Katie suggested using coconut milk for a pina colada type of flavor. I prefer unsweetened vanilla almond milk simply because there aren't any added sugars and it only has 30 calories in one cup.

Hope you enjoy these as much as we have!

The hunt for the perfect granola recipe

If you saw my post a couple weeks ago about breakfast, you already know we eat a lot of yogurt in our house. Not only do the girls eat it daily, but it's also the "go-to" breakfast choice of Trey and me. And what is better with yogurt than some granola and fresh fruit?

I have spent the better part of the last year searching for the perfect granola recipe. And I'm really not exaggerating - it's hard to find a great one! Some are too salty, some are too sweet, some include really odd ingredients or things I don't have on hand (if it isn't easy for me to replicate on a regular basis, I don't even need to try it once). But thanks to Pinterest, I recently stumbled across My Kitchen Addiction's yummy take on granola incorporating dried blueberries and flax seed. Of course, because I can't leave well enough alone I had to tweak the recipe for my own liking...and thus was born what I now affectionately refer to as my Go-To Granola recipe.

Go-To Granola (original recipe found here)
Makes about 10 cups

6 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup chopped almonds
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the oats, almonds, pecans, walnuts, flax seeds, salt, cinnamon and ginger.

In a large measuring cup (makes it easier for pouring, although a bowl would work fine), whisk together the honey and olive oil until well combined. Pour the honey/oil mixture over the oats mixture and stir to evenly coat everything.

Transfer to two large jelly roll pans (read: baking sheets with sides) and spread the granola into an even layer.

Bake for about 45 minutes total, stirring every 10-15 minutes with a spatula. Make sure to watch it the last 10-15 minutes because it can burn easily (thanks to the addition of honey).

Allow the granola to cool completely on the pans, then transfer to an airtight container. I make this batch at the beginning of each month and it easily lasts me close to four weeks. My favorite way to dish it up is with some plain Greek yogurt and frozen blueberries (they thaw quickly). Healthy and delicious!

And here are a few tips on the granola preparation process:

• I totally cheat on the chopped nuts, because buying them chopped is so much more expensive than buying the massive bags of whole nuts at Costco! So here's my super fancy way of chopping nuts...it involves a kitchen mallet and a ziplock bag. :)

Add whole nuts directly into the ziplock bag and seal tightly...

And start pounding out your frustrations with a kitchen mallet! Works perfectly :)

• I also buy my flax seed in bulk at Costco - it's organic and lasts forever. My sweet E has had a hard time with the whole milk transition, so I tend to add flax seed to a lot of stuff (smoothies, oatmeal, baked goods, etc.). It's a great food to have on hand!

• The original recipe called for maple syrup instead of honey, but I modified it to use what I usually have on hand. You could also substitute for a smaller portion of agave if you typically keep that in your pantry - play around with it!

Hope you try it out and enjoy it as much as we have! We'll be taking a brief sugar hiatus hiatus this week as we celebrate C's 4th birthday, but we'll check back in after we resurface from the sugar comas to talk again about real food some more. :) I'm experimenting with ways to make her birthday treats a little less processed this year, so fingers crossed that works...but I'm sure I'll have some disasters to share in a week or so! 

Thanks for reading!

Tackling the yogurt cup

As long as I can remember, I've operated under the philosophy of breakfast being the most important meal of the day. We try desperately to have good, hearty, well-balanced breakfasts before we head off to preschool / work in the morning, and I'm always on the lookout for the next best breakfast option to offer the kiddos. I'm not going to lie - when we decided to tackle this "real food" challenge almost a month ago, I figured breakfast would be our easy meal...until I started reading labels.

My goal for breakfast is pretty simple: serve the girls a dairy/protein, grain and fruit serving every morning. This is based off the recommendation from my pediatrician and I like the basic principle behind it. It leaves us some leeway as to what each day looks like (because variety is the spice of life when you have two kids under the age of four), but the framework is there.

Our fruit most days ends up being a banana - E gets 1/3 and C gets 2/3, and they are both happy. Bananas are packed full of vitamins B6, C, potassium and fiber, so it's a good start to the day. For our dairy, we have historically split a cup of Greek yogurt between the girls. However, now that I'm on this whole label-reading kick, I realized the yogurt I've been feeding my girls is packed full of sugar (15g in one 5.3oz cup!). Naturally, yogurt does contain some sugars (called lactose), but this particular brand also listed additional sugars in the ingredients (evaporated cane juice is indeed sugar with a fancy name).

So once we finished up the yogurt cups we had, we decided to try our hand at making our own "fruit on the bottom" Greek yogurt. I used Costco's Kirkland Signature plain Greek yogurt (two 32oz. containers for just under $7) as the base, which contains all natural ingredients:

We have a lot of fresh fruit that we picked and froze last summer, so logically I thought that was the best place to start with fruit topping. C chose blackberry for our first flavor test, and I was really pleased with the results! I used about two cups of frozen blackberries and stuck them in the microwave to defrost for about four minutes (if I had planned ahead, I would have thawed them in the fridge overnight). Once they had softened some, I added a tiny bit of water to the bottom of the blender, threw in the blackberries, and pureed it on medium-low speed for about 30-45 seconds (just until all the chunks were broken up and the consistency was pretty smooth). I added some plain yogurt to the bowls, added a spoonful of the topping, mixed it up and voila...fruit on the bottom yogurt that only contained natural sugars from the blackberries and lactose!

The two cups of blackberries made more topping than I needed, so I took a cue from a friend of mine and froze the extra into ice cube trays for future breakfasts:

My plan is to go ahead and puree some peach, strawberry and blueberry topping as well, and pull a different one out each night to thaw in the fridge for breakfast the next day. Honestly, it isn't any more time-consuming than the store-bought yogurt cups, plus it ends up being cheaper. The two cartons of Greek yogurt make approximately 12 small cups of yogurt, and I was paying at least $5-6 more for that same amount packaged in smaller portions. And two cups of fruit made eight days worth of topping, so that ends up being pretty affordable as well.

Best part of the whole thing...my girls ate that yogurt faster than I have seen them eat yogurt in weeks. Turns out eating healthy isn't all that bad. :)

The underground breadmaking secret society

Once upon a time, there lived a girl who was married to a boy and they had a bread machine. Said machine lived on a shelf at the top of their guest room closet until one fateful day the girl said to the boy, "we should try and use this thing." So they hooked it up, made a loaf of bread, it tasted terrible and they gave it to Goodwill. The end.

Fast forward six or seven years: I just found myself hunting down a bread machine on our local buy/sell/trade site because I was silly, gave ours away after one failed attempt, and now have decided to start reading ingredient lists on packaged foods and sent myself into a tailspin over my latest loaf purchase.

Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on the back of your bread? I mean, really looked at it? Because I have to admit that I had not. I mean, I had glanced at the nutritional chart before but never really paid attention to that LONG list of additives, preservatives and other ingredients. My preferred loaf of bread (100% whole wheat, mind you) contained such delicacies as high fructose corn syrup, sugar, soybean oil, calcium propionate, citric acid and soy lecithin...what is all this stuff? And 4 grams of sugar in a single slice of bread? That means my kids are getting 4 grams of sugar before I even put peanut butter and jelly on the bread, and 8 grams if I give C a whole sandwich instead of a half sandwich.

To really understand why I'm shocked by this, I'll break down the math for you - according to the American Heart Association (AHA), children ages 4-8 with a daily caloric intake of 1,600 calories should consume no more than about 3 teaspoons of added sugar a day. One teaspoon of sugar equals about 4 grams of sugar, so C should be consuming no more than 12 grams of added sugar A DAY. And if she's hungry and I give her a whole sandwich, I'm giving her 2/3 of that intake before I even put anything on the bread! Add in the peanut butter (look for an upcoming blog about this favorite spread in our house) and jelly (even a low-sugar option), and her sandwich itself has used up her entire sugar allowance for the day.

Enter our new favorite kitchen appliance - the bread machine. I was totally intimidated by this thing when I brought it home a week ago, but after playing around for a few days I've mastered such yummy creations as 100% whole wheat bread, whole wheat pizza dough, whole wheat crescent rolls, whole wheat bagels and most recently, whole wheat flaxseed bread. It's easy, cost-effective and quick, and the results are AMAZING. 

The newest member of our family

So here's the best part - I'm now part of this underground club of bread machine owners that I didn't even know existed. I got this thing, told one or two people, and suddenly homemade bread recipe swapping has become a daily occurrence in my world. Apparently everyone has a bread machine but no one talks about it (at least that's my latest theory), but I'm refusing to not share the knowledge with everyone - IF I CAN BAKE A LOAF OF BREAD, ANYONE CAN DO IT! For real, it's SO easy to do and the results are delicious. Plus, I know exactly what I'm feeding my family now, and that's worth every minute and dollar spent.

Today's lunch delicacy - whole wheat flaxseed bread

Do you have a bread machine? If so, what are your favorite recipes? I'll be posting a few of our new favorites in some upcoming blogs when I start to delve into what in the world I'm feeding my family that doesn't include sugar. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you if you're already a member of "the club." And if you aren't, head over to your local thrift shop, Goodwill or buy/sell/trade site - membership is only about $15 and well worth the initial investment.

P.S. In case you are curious about recommended added sugar intake for adults, the average woman should consume no more than 6 teaspoons (24 grams) a day and the average man should consume no more than 9 teaspoons (36 grams) a day. So next time you bite into that turkey sandwich, you may be using up 1/3 of that intake in bread alone. Food for thought!

Our chicken addiction

I have a confession to make: we love Chick-Fil-A. A lot. So much so that in the first 17 days of our little real food experiment, we've gone three times. Yes, three times in 17 days. I would love to use the playground as a reason but C has actually only been with us one of those times. Quite frankly, I think it comes down to three things: the employees are beyond helpful, the restaurant not only tolerates kids but embraces them with open arms, and my children will eat their food without grumbling. Three pretty good reasons if I say so myself. 

So what's a mom to do? Realistically, not going to Chick-Fil-A is just not going to happen. I'm a stay-at-home mom, it's cold outside, and we need kid-friendly outings. But it doesn't exactly fall within our 2014 goals of "eating real." I decided in cases like these, we moms just need to do a little homework and make smart decisions with what we have rather than boycotting altogether.

First, I downloaded the Chick-Fil-A app this morning (which is great if you don't have it). I spent a few extra minutes actually researching our typical orders and their ingredients, sugar and sodium content. And I did the best I could. 

So what did we end up with today? I had a medium bowl of chicken noodle soup (plenty filling, I might add) with a mere 3 grams of sugar, E had grilled nuggets (no sugars although more sodium than I prefer), and C opted for the regular nuggets (1 gram of sugar and definitely a lot more filler ingredients than I prefer, but we choose our battles and this wasn't one). Fruit cups and milks were the sides of choice for both girls, and I brought along some Annie's organic cheddar bunnies to round out the lunch.

The aftermath of a successful CFA outing

Was it the most "real" lunch I could possibly serve my kids? No. Could I have taken the time to pack healthy lunches and bring them with us today? Absolutely. But is that realistic? Not at all. And that brings me to my next point: just because it's real, doesn't mean it is always going to be "real." We are moms and a lot of times we are in survival mode. And you know what? If a breaded nugget keeps C from refusing to eat her lunch today, I'm always going to choose the breaded nugget. Because sometimes my sanity is worth that extra gram of sugar.

We did keep our books today though instead of trading for ice cream. So there, sugar. Take that.

Heather