Pinvestigating Impossible Custard Pie

I must really, really love Kim.


She asked, after my last foray into the Pinterlands, if I would test the Impossible Coconut Custard Pie that has been repinned all over the place.

Image via a gratefulprayerthankfulheart.blogspot.com, as noted in the watermark

And I just happened to have all of the ingredients handy, so I thought, "Why not?"

Now, with real Ogre!

Famous last words.


We need to have a brief discussion about sweetened condensed milk.  I have become somewhat of a connoisseur of sweetened condensed milk, thanks to a pin (what else?) about making your own coffee creamer.  It's stupidly easy - just equal parts sweetened condensed milk and milk, and a little bit of vanilla extract.  I'm absolutely addicted to it, and I can't drink the Fat Free French Vanilla Coffeemate stuff that I used to be addicted to anymore because it tastes like chemicals.


A pin that really worked!  I know! 


BJ doesn't love my creamer and continues to insist that I buy him the Coffeemate (back before they made liquid creamers, my mom used to get Coffeemate and its 1980s counterpart Cremora mixed up in her mind.  She called every powdered non-dairy creamer "Creammate."  No wonder she didn't drink coffee until she was well into her 50s!).  


Be that as it may, I have learned that there is no substitute for Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk.  I am totally willing to try the generic version of any food, but in the case of sweetened condensed milk I have tried the generic brands from Walmart (Great Value), Kroger, Aldi, and Marsh, and all of the generics taste gritty.  The Eagle Brand does not.  It is well worth the extra money to not have gritty coffee.


But I digress.  And even Eagle Brand couldn't save this pie.


The recipe wanted you to mix three eggs, a 14 ounce can of (Eagle Brand, for the love of God) sweetened condensed milk, 1-1/2 cups water, 1/3 cup Bisquick (I used the low fat version, but I doubt that the full fat kind would have made it any better), 1/4 cup of softened butter (I use generic butter), and 1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract in a blender.  


I have no idea where my blender is.  I know that normal people don't lose small appliances, but that's exactly what happened.  I had a blender once, and now I don't.  My kitchen is pretty small, so I don't think it's hiding somewhere.  I think it just moved out or something.  Maybe it was raptured.  I have no idea.  The point is that I assembled the ingredients in my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer.  I'm a rebel like that.

At this point, I started to get a little nervous about this recipe, and I triple checked that it was really 1-1/2 cups of water.  That seemed like a lot.  And it looked disgusting.  But I had measured everything correctly, so I beat it for 3 minutes, as instructed.


Meanwhile I greased the pie plate.  Channeling my inner Paula Dean, I used real butter.

You can tell I'm fancy because I still haven't put away the crystal creamer and sugar from the weekend, and because I use real butter.


Three minutes elapsed, and the filling was looking slightly less vomitous:

Action Shot!

I poured it into the pan and let it sit for 5 minutes, as instructed.

It looked sort of... otherworldly...

...like the surface of the moon, after being pummeled by meteors or something.

When I start thinking too deeply about things, it's a good sign that my blood sugar is dropping.  Good thing I made this excellent skillet lasagna (from Pinterest, of course!) for dinner:

We need to talk about this recipe, though...  Meet me at the bottom of the post.

While the pie sat and made its impossible crust out of Bisquick, I nibbled on my Weeknight Lasagna Toss and tried to clean all the burnt cinnamon and sugar off of my waffle iron.  True story.


The timer went off, so I sprinkled coconut liberally on top of the pie...

...and I put it in the oven.  I put a sheet pan under it though, because I don't trust pies.  I have chiseled enough burnt sugar off of the bottom of my oven to know better.


35 minutes later, it was still liquid in the middle, so I set the timer for 5 more minutes.  That time I stuck a fork in it, and it was done.  

I let it cool while I put Jack to bed, and came back out to find that BJ had given the girls each a piece, and they hated it.  He ate theirs, though, and said it was "delicious."  (He also likes to drink chemical coffee every morning, though, and I suspect that half the time he tells me he likes something, he's just being polite.)

I guess if I had never had real custard, or if the word custard wasn't in the name of this pie, it would have been fine.  The flavor was fine.  The texture, though, was somewhere in between sweetened condensed scrambled eggs and cottage cheese.  But warm cottage cheese.  Small curd.  And sweet cottage cheese instead of salty.  (Do I know how to sell it or what?)  That's not what custard feels like.


I have a feeling that it would be greatly improved by the addition of some Reddi Whip.  It would also probably be better cold.  And it needs a name change.  Coconut cream pie would have been more accurate, except for the fact that that's already a thing that is also nothing like this pie.  There is nothing custard about this custard.  We went out for dinner at a French restaurant on Friday night, and we had real creme brulee (this is America, and I refuse to use accent marks, especially those fussy backwards ones).  Real custard lingers heavily on your tongue like a smooth, creamy bite of heaven.  If that experience hadn't been so fresh in my mind, I might have liked this.  But since I had such a recent custard experience, I knew that this just didn't measure up.


The "magic" crust sort of happened - there was a slightly thicker crust-like formation at the bottom.  It was very soggy, though.  It's possible that it was still slightly underbaked, although the filling was completely set in the middle and the soggy crust persisted all the way to the edges.  If I wanted to perfect this recipe, I might try it again with a longer bake time, but I can think of lots of things to do with sweetened condensed milk (Eagle Brand, if you know what's good for you) that are much, much better than this.


Impossible Coconut Custard Pie gets a C-.  Desserts automatically lose a letter grade when they don't include chocolate.  It lost another full letter grade for the texture, and a half for being inaccurately named.  Weeknight lasagna toss gets a solid B, mainly losing points because I had to change so much to make it yummy (see below).  Sweetened condensed milk coffee creamer gets a solid A.  Would get an A+ if the sweetened condensed milk was easier to get out of the damn can.




* Regarding the Weeknight Lasagna Toss - I used bow tie pasta (a whole box) instead of the lasagna noodles because it's similar in thickness but easier for my kids to deal with.  I had to add approximately two cups of water beyond what the recipe called for during the cooking time (15 minutes) before the noodles were done.  Also, I added a metric ton, give or take, of garlic salt and Italian seasoning, because the original recipe was meh and needed to be kicked up a notch.  Once the pasta was cooked, I added 4 ounces of Neufchatel cheese, which is hard to spell, to give it a little creaminess.  I used shredded "Mexican style" cheese (how can you tell it's Mexican, Grandpa Bob?  It has an accent!) instead of mozzarella, because in spite of the fact that I remember grabbing it off of the shelf at the store yesterday, it has disappeared from my house.  So basically this recipe was nothing like the one on Pinterest, which is probably why it was awesome.

What should I Pinvestigate next?  Leave a comment...

Good Grief, Pinterest - Cinnamon Roll Waffles

After Kim's encouragement, I decided to start documenting the recipes and whatnot that I try from Pinterest, and sharing them with you.

Boy was the first one a doozy!

You've all seen this one, right?

What could be easier?  Pop the cinnamon rolls onto the waffle iron.  You don't have to heat up the oven when it's 99 degrees outside at 8 am!  Genius!

The first thing that concerned me was that my waffle iron only has one setting - on.  There is no low setting.  I've cooked long enough to know that something as thick as a cinnamon roll is going to burn on the outside before it cooks on the inside if it's cooked at high temperatures.  The second thing that concerned me was all the loose cinnamon sugar coming off of my cinnamon rolls.

But we soldiered on.  We liberated the cinnamon rolls from their can:

Freedom!

We heated up the waffle iron, which was a wedding gift.  We tried to remember whether the ready light being on meant it was ready, or if it was ready when the ready light went off.  We decided to go with off.

It's practically an antique.

Once the light went off, we applied the cinnamon rolls to the hot waffle iron.  The kids started whining in earnest as soon as they smelled the (burning??) cinnamon that they were hungry.  We persevered.

 Then we saw this, and we started to get really nervous:
  

Ummmm....

I stood right next to the damn waffle iron the entire time, and there was never any indication that burning was happening.  Waffles are done when the steam stops coming out, right?  Well, the steam never stopped with these.  In fact, it was still steaming when I opened it up and saw this.

Yum.

Fail.

Ok, Rome wasn't built in a day.  We still have half a can of cinnamon rolls!  Let's do this!  Right?

At this point Mary Grace piped up, "Mommy, just make them the way you're s'posed to!  In the OVEN!"  

"But it's an EXPERIMENT!" I replied.

Experiments often smell bad.

 Opening it up earlier revealed doughy nastiness.

...and peeling the tops off of the other side of the waffle iron revealed that they were every bit as burnt as the first set had been.

  

My project for the rest of the day is cleaning the burnt sugar crud out of my waffle iron. 

And after half an hour of screwing around, the kids had this for breakfast:

Jack likes his with cinnamon and sugar (syrup is too messy for toddlers) so it was sort of the same thing.  Kind of.  Claire had Nutella and MG, the purist, had syrup.

Waffle iron cinnamon rolls get an F.  A big fat burnt F.

Sugar Cream Pie - for Rob

Sometimes my replies to comments turn into posts...


Sugar Cream Pie is one of those "desperation" pies from when people couldn't get ingredients like nuts or fruit.  Similar to mock apple pie, vinegar pie, etc.  There's an interesting discussion of the history here, although the true origins are lost to time.  The web seems to pretty consistently state that the pie was born around the same year as Indiana became a state (1816).

You can find lots of different recipes online, but this one is, IMHO, most likely to be historically accurate.

Picture credit:  Turkey Creek Lane 

You can buy them frozen around here, but they're hard to find elsewhere.  I was recently talking about them on Facebook with some local friends and people who had moved out of state.  The frozen ones don't have the layered quality that the one in the picture has.  It looks better than the frozen sort, to me.  To be honest, though, I don't like the pie well enough to go to the trouble of making one!

What's kind of funny is that I've lived in Indiana all my life, but never heard of sugar cream pie until I moved south.  My dad has lived here for over 50 years, and he hadn't had it before last night.  "The Region," as they call the area around Grammaland, is kind of it's own separate state.  We get most of our news from Chicago, the ethnic blend is very different, and it's just kind of its own little universe.  Sugar cream pie is more of a rural thing than a city thing, and Grammaland is definitely more urban than the rest of Indiana.  It makes sense that sugar cream pie would be rural, because the ingredients are all things that you'd have on hand on the farm, and don't go out of season.  In the city, you don't have to worry about having things on hand because it's an easy trip to the grocery store.

If you come visit we'll pick up a "Hoosier Pie" and treat you, Rob!

How to Start a Meal Co-Op

The hardest part of cooking isn't the actual warming up of food.  It's the planning - deciding what you're going to make, shopping for the ingredients, cutting it all up, measuring everything...  The warming up is the easiest part, actually.  Well, what if I told you that you could get out of all the hard work, and get back to the family table (SO important - see below) almost every night?  And you can do it cheaper (because you're buying in bulk) and with less effort than cooking every night from scratch.  Interested?

Last fall my aunt Kathryn invited me to join her Meal Co-op. I had never heard of such a thing. It turns out that joining was one of the best things I've ever done, and I think you should do it too. Here's how it works:

You find five friends who have families approximately like your own. So, if you're a vegetarian, find five vegetarians. If you have a family of 5 like me, you want to find five other similarly sized families. It won't work as well if your families are all different sizes. And if you have three growing teenaged boys in your house, you don't necessarily want to co-op with people who have empty nests (although it could work, with some extra packaging and planning - you'd just divide the empty nesters' share into two or three packages instead of putting it all in one, I suppose). You can do it with more or fewer families, but fewer and it's not as worthwhile, and more and it's going to get overwhelming. 6 - 8 total families seems to be the sweet spot where it's do-able and worthwhile.

Each month you're going to make one thing six times and freeze it. For example, I just made a drunken pork tenderloin - I made the marinade in a one gallon pitcher with totally ridiculous amounts of food - 8 pork tenderloins, 32 cloves of garlic, 2 cups of Jack Daniels (woo woo!), and so on. I put each tenderloin in a one gallon ziploc bag, then poured the finished marinade over the meat, squeezed the excess air out of the bag, and froze them.

Marinades are easy to make in huge quantities.

If I ever find my blank labels, I'll print a label for each bag.  Since my labels have disappeared, I took pictures of last month's meals for the sake of examples:

This chicken is amazing!  I got the recipe from Kathryn.

Shepherd's pie tastes better sideways, right?

I printed out 6 copies of my recipe (my local group has seven families - I made two tenderloins for myself because somehow multiplying by 8 is easier than multiplying by 7).  I often take my extra meal to friends with new babies, my pregnant sister, my overwhelmed friend, etc.  Next weekend I'll get together with the other six families and each of them will have made 7 (or 8) of something, and we'll each give each other one "copy" of the meal. So I show up with 7 of the same thing and I go home with 7 unique meals!

And my freezer will look like this!  That whole middle shelf is filled with meals, all ready to rock!

You know how everyone brings casseroles after you have a baby, and it's so nice to have all that food already made?  Well, this is exactly like that, only you don't have to have a baby!

My co-op in Grammaland (the one I'm in with Kathryn) has fewer families than my local group, but we each make two, sometimes three meals. Each month I have about 3 weeks worth of meals in my freezer - then I fill in the other week with fresh stuff, or we eat out, or whatever.

I was concerned about the money aspect of it - if I make filet mignon and someone else makes chicken soup, how is that fair? Well, it is a simple matter of filling out a template lists all the ingredients listed, figuring out a cost per entree, then figuring out the total amount spent per "set" of meals.

Google Documents makes this super easy.

Then you subtract what you spent to make your meals, and if you spent more the banker writes you a check. If you spent less, then you write the banker a check.

The entrees generally work out to around $8 each. They usually feed us dinner with plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day.

Before the co-op, I had gotten into such a rut.  I was making the same five or six meals every week, and we were all completely bored with all of them.  Well, since joining the co-op we've eaten a much greater variety of foods that we would never have tried otherwise.  (At the meeting we decide what we're going to make next time, so no one ends up with too much lasagna - as if there is such a thing as too much lasagna!)

We eat out a lot less because I have to plan ahead and get something out of the freezer the night before (generally I'll go out to the garage freezer to grab a vegetable to go along with tonight's dinner, and I'll grab tomorrow's dinner at the same time).  Since it's already thawed and almost entirely ready to go, I don't tend to get lazy around 5 pm (the hardest time of the day for parents of young kids) and say, "Let's just order pizza," or "Let's just eat out," the way I used to.

My kids are trying new things, too, which is so important.  I always make sure that there's at least one thing per meal that they will eat - so if I'm not sure that they'll like the entree, I'll make mashed potatoes and broccoli which everyone loves.  Or I'll make bread or rolls.  It's really easy to fill in and make sure everyone gets enough.  And if they totally can't stand it, there's always PB&J.

The great thing about it is that you set the rules - in my Grammaland co-op we prefer whole ingredients and meals made from scratch.  We avoid artificial sweeteners and other chemical ingredients.  We also have guidelines for cleanliness (I must have washed my hands 82 times - cooking for friends makes me a lot more careful than when I cook for my family!) that are in writing and agreed upon.  I'll be happy to email our guidelines and templates to you, if you want to start your own co-op (just email me) but the beauty of it is that you can shape it to fit your situation!

As for where to find the recipes, if you don't have an aunt Kathryn, try this fabulous cookbook (LOVE). All Recipes scales recipes up easily, too.  Or just do the math for your own favorite recipes.  Just remember that eights are easier than sevens!  Raw potatoes don't freeze well.  Undercook pasta so it doesn't get squashy.  Lettuce and banana also don't do well when thawed and heated.  But really, who eats hot lettuce, anyway?  Dairy products separate, sometimes, so be careful of sour cream based sauces and so on.  Most everything else, though, will freeze beautifully if you remove the extra air. It's easiest to freeze things flat so they transport and store easily.

My Grammaland co-op was so terrific, I started another one locally.  I encourage you to try it with your own friends.  Life changing stuff, here, folks.

From WebMD:

10 Benefits of Frequent Family Dinners

• Everyone eats healthier meals.

• Kids are less likely to become overweight or obese.

• Kids more likely to stay away from cigarettes.

• They're less likely to drink alcohol.

• They won't likely try marijuana.

• They're less likely to use illicit drugs.

• Friends won't likely abuse prescription drugs.

• School grades will be better.

• You and your kids will talk more.

• You'll be more likely to hear about a serious problem.

• Kids will feel like you're proud of them.

• There will be less stress and tension at home.

Sounds worth it to me!!

Cinnamon Dolce Latte Recipe

Wikimedia Commons

I love coffee.  I love Starbucks.  My wallet, however, does not.

So when my sister turned me on to the delicious Cinnamon Dolce latte, I had to figure out a way to make it myself.

It's ridiculously easy.

Get yourself a small saucepan and melt a teaspoon of butter.  Add a tablespoon of brown sugar and cook it until it caramelizes.  Then add 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and 1/3 cup of milk.  Cook it until the milk just starts to bubble, stirring constantly.  Take it off the heat.

Next make coffee.  I was in a hurry so I used instant.  Blasphemy!

I used one of those big travel cups.  I filled it about halfway with strong coffee, then added the cinnamon mixture, then filled the mug the rest of the way with vanilla creamer (which I've been making, thanks to Pinterest, with a 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, 14 oz of milk, and 2 t of vanilla - so easy).

It's exactly the same.  I can't taste any difference at all.  The whole thing has probably fifteen cents worth of ingredients, took less time than loading up the kids and driving to 'Bucks, and there are no delicious pastries to tempt me.

I may never leave my house again!

Wherefore Art Thou, Perry?

Tonight before bed, we were reading the girls' new Phineas and Ferb book.  If you've never seen the show, it's about two kids and their pet platypus, Perry.  Perry pretends to be a pet, but in reality he's a secret agent - Agent P.  He has a theme song, that says, "He's a semi-aquatic egg laying mammal of action..."

Anyway, we're reading the book, in which P&F build a submarine, and Perry escapes the submarine to go after the Evil Dr. Doofenschmirtz.  In the book, it says, "Perry donned his wetsuit..."

"Mommy," Mary Grace interrupted, "Perry is a semiaquatic mammal.  Why does he need a wetsuit?"

I just stared at her for a second, then I started laughing.  This kid doesn't miss a trick.

***

Earlier tonight we were telling the girls about Grandpa Bob's new job.  We explained that he's still going to be a nurse, but he'll be what's called a Charge Nurse, sort of like the boss of the nurses.

"He's going to be the brains of that outfit!" Mary Grace exclaimed.  Oh my goodness...

***

And because I love you and I want you to be happy, I am sharing the recipe that I made up for dinner tonight.  I'm proud of myself for actually writing down what I did, for a change, so that I can re-create this if I want to.  It made a ton.  BJ, Dad, and I each had one (too spicy for the girlies, they had soup and grilled cheese).  I think we'll get at least 4 more servings out of it, maybe more.  I served it with shredded lettuce and sour cream.  YUM!

Buffalo Chicken Enchiladas

3 cooked boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced

1 small red bell pepper, diced

3/4 cup Frank's RedHot Sauce

1/2 cup Ranch dressing

1/4 cup sour cream

1 can 98% fat free cream of chicken soup

Mix all above in a medium bowl. Fill large tortillas and arrange in sprayed 13 x 9 pan.

Top with jarred salsa (about a cup, give or take) and shredded Mexican cheese (two cups or so).

Cover with foil.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Serve with shredded lettuce and sour cream.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

I adapted my favorite oatmeal pancake recipe to make carrot cake pancakes this morning.  They got four thumbs up!  (It looks like a long ingredient list, but it's mostly spices).

Happy Easter!


Carrot Cake Pancakes
 
Makes about 18 pancakes

 

3/4 cup oat flour (pulse rolled oats in food processor or blender - 1 c oats = 3/4 c oat flour)
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)

1/4 tsp nutmeg

dash ginger

dash cloves
3/4 teaspoon Kosher or coarse salt
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

1 1/4 cups milk
1 cup finely shredded carrot
2 tablespoons honey
2 large eggs, beaten

 

Optional:

chopped pecans

raisins

Whisk the dry ingredients (oat flour, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, spices and salt) together in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk the butter, milk, shredded carrot, honey and eggs together until thoroughly combined. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Don't overmix.

Cook on a hot griddle or in a skillet.  If desired, spoon batter onto griddle, then sprinkle raisins and/or pecans onto the top of the pancake just before flipping.

Serve the pancakes hot, straight from the skillet or keep them warm in a low oven.  Serve with honey and Greek yogurt, maple syrup, or sweetened cream cheese.

This is the best way to get a serving of veggies in before noon!

Baby Cakes

My friend Sarah shared a VERY cute idea last time I saw her, and my friends Jim and Karen used it this weekend.

Instead of having the ultrasound technician tell them the baby's gender during their 20 week ultrasound, they had her write it in an envelope and seal it.  They kept the envelope for weeks, showing enormous restraint that I, personally, do not possess.  Finally, Jim brought it over to my house on Thursday, and I went to the nearest bakery as quickly as possible to remove the temptation to peek.  I instructed the bakery to make the filling between the layers of white cake pink for a girl and blue for a boy.

Then Saturday, BJ picked up the cake and again with the temptation!  I thought of half a dozen ways to peek, but I didn't.  Karen picked the cake up Saturday night when she dropped me off from my birthday celebration, and we waited some more (longest.  weekend.   ever...) until she cut it at her son's birthday party on Sunday afternoon.  I had sent an e-mail to the guests instructing them to wear pink if they guessed it was a girl, and blue if they guessed it was a boy.

Karen and Jim have three wonderful little boys.  And she's pregnant with...  A GIRL!

The best part was watching and hearing everyone react to the news.  Her oldest sons hugged each other and jumped up and down.  You would've thought they won the lottery!  And everyone cheered and cried and hugged and laughed.  It was such a cool moment.

It almost makes me want to have a fourth so I can have a baby cake!

Hooray babies!  Congratulations Jim and Karen!!!

Soccer!

Yesterday's soccer game was cold, wet, and rainy. BJ and Grandpa Bob took Mary Grace while I stayed home with the little ones. But we had amazing weather and a wonderful turn out today! Uncle Brandon brought Lucy and Jane, and Grandma Susan came down from Grammaland, and Grandpa Bob came again, and BJ, Claire, Jack, and I were there. All that support had an unfortunate side effect - Mary Grace was as likely to be smiling and waving at the sidelines as she was to be looking at the ball. At one point she gave us a double peace sign like Richard Nixon. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that!

Jack actually fell asleep for a while at the game. I'm looking forward to that reflex where they hold their breath when you blow on their face going away (within the next month or so). It makes it uncomfortable for him to be out in the wind.

"I... can't... breathe!"

Claire needs a little improvement as a cheerleader. I got her a pair of orange pom poms to match Mary Grace's team's shirts. She mostly likes to pick the individual strands of pom out of them.

It used to be twice that size.

All of this activity isn't doing anything for improving the girls' sleep. It's 9:30 and they're still upstairs yakking.

She's the tall one with the ponytail.

It was so cool for Mary Grace to have so much support on her first weekend of soccer!  What fun!

I feel like we've done nothing but eat and play soccer this weekend.  BJ decided that he wanted to make beignets this morning.  We started the dough last night, then put it in the fridge after it had risen.  We tried frying them in a pan on the stove this morning, but the oil got way too hot and they were burnt on the outside and raw in the center, so he ran out to Walmart to get a Fry Daddy. 

It probably would have been cheaper and healthier, in the long run, if he'd just picked up a dozen donuts instead.  I keep thinking of things I can fry.  It's a new toy!  The pamphlet that came with it had a recipe for quesadillas that I'm dying to try.  As if quesadillas aren't bad enough with all that cheese - let's deep fry them!  I told him before he left that it was kind of a foolish purchase for two people who had been dieting for a year and a half, but he was determined.

The beignets were awesome.

Next weekend I think we're going to try jelly donuts.  I remember my Grandma Betty making donuts once when we spent the weekend at her house when I was a kid, and I thought it was magical.  They can't be that much worse than pancakes, right?

What's Wrong with Food

I've read her book, The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick - And What We Can Do About It, but if you don't have time for that, here's a 20 minute summary:



Brilliant.

This is important stuff, folks. We need to start paying more attention - especially those of us who are responsible for feeding growing children!  Yes, it hurts to spend $6 or $7 a gallon for organic milk, but having my children get cancer later would hurt more. 

Jillian Michael's latest podcast talked about how (and why) to find the money to afford organic food.  If you have another 20 minutes, you can listen to it here.  (It's at the beginning of the show).

We don't do all organic food, but we do spend the extra money on organic milk and humanely raised beef (we get it from BJ's uncle).  We avoid fast food.  I cook at home using whole ingredients as much as possible.  One person can't do everything (especially when our food supply is so completely saturated with these products) but everyone can do something.  We do our best to find balance.

I strongly encourage you to look at what you're feeding your kids, and think about what small changes you could make for the better, and to remember this issue when it's time to vote in the fall.

(video via Mrs. Q)

Chai Creamer

I was surfing around this morning and came across this recipe for instant chai tea powder at Butter and Oven Mitts.  I knew it was something I had to try, ASAP.  I got into my cupboards to see what I needed to have BJ pick up at the store, and I found that I had every ingredient except the instant tea.

Hmmmm....

So I went ahead and mixed it up, and added it to a cup of hot (decaf) tea.  It's AWESOME! 

Here's the recipe I used:

1 cup non-fat dry milk powder
2 cups powdered Coffee Mate (French vanilla flavor - I didn't have plain on hand)
1-1/2 cups white sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cloves
2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp white pepper

In a large bowl, mix all of the above together.  In a food processor (or a Magic Bullet, if you're me) blend ingredients one cup at a time until it is a fine powder (this step evenly distributes the milk and sugar, and eliminates pesky chunks of Coffee Mate).  Store in an air-tight container.

To make chai, add two teaspoons (or a big ol' tablespoon full if you're crazy like me) to a cup of hot tea.

This recipe is going to save me about a zillion dollars at Fourbucks Starbucks.  Love it!  Thanks Cassandra!!

 

Organizing My Life with Evernote

(No one paid me anything to write this, although I'd happily accept a year of Evernote Premium in return for being such a nice blogger, if the Evernote people happen to find this...)

I've been looking for a solution for literally YEARS to the information overload that plagues me.  I think I've found it with Evernote.

Evernote is free.  You download the app to your phone and your computer, and you can access it through the 'net, too.  You can save images, photos, lists (with check boxes), web pages, PDF files, notes... and in the premium version you can save Microsoft Office documents.

I have to admit, I've had it on my phone for a long time without realizing its potential.  But yesterday I had some time to fool around with it, and I'm really excited about the possibilities...

One area where I have total info overload is recipes. I'll be surfing and I'll see something and think, "Gosh, I really want to try that!" but then when I sit down to plan our grocery list I have NO idea what to make.  I can't remember that there was this recipe on Allrecipes and that recipe on Pioneer Woman and so on.  Well, now when I'm surfing and I come across a recipe, I just "clip" it to Evernote.  Just this morning I made Oatmeal Pancakes from Smitten Kitchen (LOVE these) and I clipped it to Evernote (with a picture copied and pasted into the file!) so that next time I want to make them, I don't have to search for the recipe (and run the risk of finding the wrong Oatmeal Pancakes because I can't remember which blog it was, or the risk of the whole blog being taken down for whatever reason).  If the internet is down, I can still make them, because the file is mirrored on my computer.

I can scan in my own recipes and put them in the same "notebook."  Then, when I make them, I can take a picture with my phone and upload it to the recipe easily.  I can tag all of my recipes, too.  Entree, Beef, Chicken, Dessert, Must Try!, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas Cookies....  The possibilities are endless, and it will make them easy to find.  And it's SEARCHABLE!

Now, imagine I'm at the grocery store and I suddenly have an urge to make pancakes...  I can call up the recipe on my iPhone and make sure I have all the ingredients (ok, bad example, because I always have all those ingredients, but if I wanted to make some exotic recipe that didn't just use pantry staples, and I couldn't remember if I needed lemon or lime or whatever, I'd have that information at my fingertips).  If I'm up in Grammaland and I want to make a new Christmas cookie with Mimi, we can pull up all my recipes on her computer and use them there.  And since it's web, phone, and computer based, I don't have to endlessly print out the same recipes (or type up the same recipes to send to someone - I can e-mail it to you straight out of Evernote).

Ok, so beyond recipes and groceries, I have plenty of ideas for how Evernote can simplify my life.  If I'm talking to someone and they mention a book I'd like to read, I can put it in a special note (with check boxes!!) called "Books to Read" - then, 10 years from now when I have time to read again, I can call up that list and have all those book titles at my fingertips.  Ditto for movies.  How many times have we been sitting in a theater watching previews and said, "That looks great!" but then we get to movie night and we can't think of anything to rent.  Oh my gosh, that happens every time!

Let's say I'm out shopping and I see something that my mom would love.  Well, we draw names at Christmas so I don't get her a Christmas present every year... but I could put a note called "gift ideas" in my phone, and jot it down, and then if I draw Mom I've already got an idea for her.  I could also clip a website to Evernote if I'm surfing and run across something I'd like to get for her.  Awesome, right?  I can't be the only one who gets to December and draws a total blank on what to get for everyone.

We get freezer beef every year.  I am considering making a checklist of what we get, then checking it off as I use it.  With the checklist function, there is a lot of potential for inventory. 

But wait, there's more!  If I'm on the phone with someone at work, and I need to take notes on the conversation to refer to later, I have a whole notebook called "Work" where I can keep that stuff, and tag it so that I can find it.  There are about a thousand ways I can use it at work, all of which are boring because they're work, so let's move on.

Kids' sizes?  In a note so that if I'm shopping without them I can remember what size shoe they wear.  I never remember shoe sizes.  I can put BJ's sizes in there, too. 

Medical stuff that I need to remember?  Note.  Tagged with the person's name.  Magically accessible from anywhere so that if (God forbid) we're in the ER and they need to know when something happened, I can call it up and tell them exactly.

We want to build a house in a few years.  As I'm surfing if I run across an idea I like, it goes into Evernote.  If it's in a magazine I can scan in the page.  If it's at someone's house I can take a picture with my phone.  So when we sit down to design our "forever" house, I'll have years worth of ideas at my fingertips.

I can even take pictures of the kids' art projects (or scan them) so I don't have to store the originals.  Tag them with the kid's name and date them, and poof!  Instant preservation.  It doesn't get much easier.

I just couldn't wait to share this tool with all of you.  I hope you find it as useful as I do!

Wow!

So you might remember that I lost about 50 pounds prior to getting pregnant last year.  Of course I couldn't diet when I was pregnant, but I kept my weight gain under careful control.  I gained a total of 25 pounds, most of it at the end of my pregnancy.

Ever since I got home from the hospital I've been trying to screw up the courage to step on the scale and see how far I am from where I started.  Since today is the beginning of a new year, I figured that it was as good a day as any to face my bathroom scale demons.

I am four pounds heavier than I was when I became pregnant.  And to be honest, I can't really blame any of it on Jack - I blame the cookies and candy and pie and ham and turkey I've been eating for the last month!

The thing about HFCS

I've mentioned before that we actively avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup in this house.  That link contains a video which explains why in excruciating scientific detail.  Bottom line:  it's bad for you, y'all.  Now I'm reading from several different sources that they (whoever "they" are, probably the companies that make HFCS) want to change the name to "corn sugar."  You know, to show us that it's just ... sugar.  Made from corn.  Nevermind that it is not chemically identical to beet or cane sugar, and that it is metabolized differently, or that obesity and diabetes have increased dramatically since its introduction 20 years ago...

Here's the thing, even if I'm wrong - even if HFCS and sugar are identical in terms of their impact on health... by avoiding HFCS or "corn sugar," I'm avoiding things like soda, prepackaged cookies, white bread and buns, and a bunch of other heavily processed low-fiber cheap junk food.  I'm avoiding high calorie salad dressings, but I'm still eating salads.  And they taste better!  It's not any hardship to read the labels and buy a barbecue sauce without HFCS.  Heinz has even come out with an HFCS-free "Simply Heinz" ketchup.

Even if HFCS is no worse for us than sugar, avoiding it is a good way to make sure that I'm not eating too much processed, cheap crap.  So even if they change the name to "corn sugar," I'll continue to avoid it.

How about you?

School Lunch

I just found a new blog entitled Fed Up With School Lunch, which is well worth checking out.

The author is a teacher who is eating the standard school lunch that her students eat every day in 2010.  She's going back to school (and back to crappy food) any day now.  There will be pictures.

You should see some of this stuff.  Really, it's appalling.  And the amount of trash that each lunch generates is absurd.  Everything is in individual cardboard trays with plastic overwrap.  Whatever happened to hairnetted lunch ladies slinging ladels full of green beans onto plastic trays with little dividers?

When my sister was teaching first grade, I took the girls up so they could be her show & tell, and we had lunch with her in the cafeteria.  I'll never forget that they were serving nachos (which consisted of a plastic bag of chips, with 1/2 cup of nacho "cheese" (it probably bore no genetic resemblance to actual cheese), and 1/2 cup of some kind of seasoned beef (or "beef," perhaps) as an entree.  YEURGH!

When the pretty babies are in full-day school, I intend to let them choose one day per week to buy a "hot lunch" (as we called it, back in the day) and to have them pack the other 4 days a week.  One day a week probably won't kill them, and then they'll see pizza, chicken nuggets, burgers and fries, and nachos (!!!) for what they are - treats that should be eaten only rarely, not healthy, nutritious, balanced meals to fuel growing bodies!

I was talking with my mom about this issue today, and she mentioned that Michelle Obama, is working on the school lunch issue, too.  I hope she succeeds.  I didn't breastfeed these kids for 28 months and 22 months, respectively, only to have them fed nothing but crap on weekdays from the time they're 6 until they are 18. 

I just spoke with Megan, and she mentioned that her students (1st Grade) went to lunch at 10:50, and that the school required them to bring a snack to eat at 9:30 am.  Megan had to resort to rewarding kids who brought healthy snacks, because too many of them brought chips, Little Debbies, donuts, etc.  Can you imagine dealing with 25 or 30 first graders who have just pounded back 50 grams of sugar?  I sure can't.  I know I have trouble staying awake and concentrating when I eat crap...  I can't imagine what it's like for growing children!

When I was in school I had terrible problems with low blood sugar - problems that I no longer have as an adult.  I suffered from frequent migraine headaches.  (I still get hormonal migraines, but not the random ones I got back then, and not with the frequency I used to get them).  Sometimes I even got faint or loopy, depending on what I had eaten.  There's one particularly memorable occasion when I had eaten nothing but a hot fudge sundae all day (come on, I was a teenager!  I could fill a book with what I didn't know...) and I couldn't remember how to get home from work (at McDonald's, where I got the sundae).  Even scarier - I was behind the wheel of a car at the time, in the town where I'd lived my entire life, and I was only half a mile from home.  I wonder how much school food played a role in my low blood sugar and associated migraines and loopiness, and whether the lack of school food in my adult life is what has cured me.


Have you got school aged kids?  Have you given school lunches any thought?  How does the school lunch menu affect your dinner menu, or does it?  How would you rate your school district's lunch program?

(I know it's a pain to have to log in to comment, and I'm sorry...  Maybe if you're all very good and you leave excellent comments for a couple weeks, I'll turn anonymous commenting back on.)

A Funny Thing Happened...

So a funny thing happened to me last night when I was looking at the pictures from the party.  It had been a while since I looked through the pictures on the camera, and I came across one in particular that made me pause.  "Who is that with Mary Grace?" I thought.

It could be because it's kind of dark, and it could be because of the shadows, but I didn't recognize MY OWN FACE.  (The picture was taken in the Star Wars exhibit at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville).

It was kind of a Great Moment in Weight Loss for me.

I'm not actively dieting, but I've only gained a pound with this pregnancy, which means that everything is redistributing.  My arms are smaller, and my face is apparently a lot slimmer than it used to be.  It was a very strange feeling to look at myself and not see myself.


Anyway, if you see me walking around trying to find myself, now you know why.

Raising Good Eaters

(Yeah, another post about food.  Sorry.)

I always cringe when I hear mothers say things like, "Well, my oldest won't eat anything but chicken nuggets and macaroni, and my youngest won't eat anything green, so I end up making one meal for my husband and I, and a second meal for the kids every night."  Sometimes they even make each kid a separate meal!

And they wonder why they're tired!

Sisters, you've got to knock it off.  Have you looked around the playground lately?  We're not doing children any favors by feeding them a constant stream of their (HFCS* laden, fat filled, salt and sugar saturated, MSG packed) favorites.  If your kid will only eat kid food, you have one person to blame, and it's the person in the mirror.

I've heard all the excuses.  "Toddlers naturally go through a period of pickiness, we evolved that way!  It's protective!" and "It takes a dozen exposures before any child likes any new food!" and "I don't want him to starve!" and "I don't want every meal to be a battle."

Well, I'm here to tell you that you've got yourself in a power struggle and you need to stop.  Now.

To the excuses, I say #1 - most of the picky eaters I see are well beyond their toddler years, #2 - it has never taken any child a dozen exposures to like chicken nuggets, or macaroni and cheese, or chocolate, #3 - no healthy child has ever or will ever voluntarily starve himself to death, and #4 - it's only a battle if you choose to make it a battle.

Yes, it's normal to make special meals for your kids when they're infants.  Obviously your 9 month old isn't going to eat steak and baked potatoes.  But when your child graduates to finger food, you need to gradually wean them onto eating what the family eats (with reasonable modifications for spiciness, texture, etc.).  By the time my kids were two, they were eating whatever I cooked for the entire family every night. 

Here are the food rules in my house:

Breakfast:  Everyone eats what they want if it's cereal (we only buy Multigrain Cheerios in this house - none of that cartoon crap where the box is healthier than the cereal inside!) or bagels or things that are all equally easy, but if I'm making eggs or pancakes or something I make enough for the whole family and everyone is expected to eat what is cooked.  Everyone in my house likes their eggs scrambled, so that's what I do. But if one person wants toast and the other wants a bagel with their eggs, it's no skin off of my nose, so they can select what they prefer.

Lunch:  It's just as easy to make two different kinds of lunch meat sandwich as it is to make one, so since Claire doesn't like ham and MG doesn't like pastrami, I'll get out both.  But if I'm making something hot (mac and cheese, or soup, or something else that requires cooking) everyone gets the same.  I try to make sure that I have at least one item that each kid will eat, and I include a fruit and a vegetable as often as possible - it's not hard to throw the applesauce and the pickles on the table, or to cut up an apple. 

Snacks:  They choose their own, within reason.  I try to make it fruit.

Dinner:  This is the real battleground for most families.  I plan my meals to be a protein, a starch, a fruit and a vegetable as often as possible (I'll admit that I often miss the fruit, mainly because fruit is expensive and applesauce gets boring).  When all four are present, it's easy to think, "Ok, MG likes blueberries so I'll serve those, and Claire doesn't but she likes broccoli, so I'll make that..."  Everyone likes bread, but not everyone likes baked potatoes, so if I know they'll eat the protein I'll make baked potatoes, and if I'm not sure they'll like it (the chicken has a new sauce or whatever) I'll make bread.  It is very rare, cooking this way, that there's nothing on the table that a single child will eat.

I often leave extras, like sauces and condiments, off of things.  So I'll make chicken breasts, but mine will be barbecue and BJ's will be buffalo and the girls will dip theirs in ketchup (and I try not to gag).  I don't mind making burgers or hot dogs for the kids when we have steak, or fish sticks when we have the $7-for-two-servings stuffed salmon from the deli.  But it has to be similar and no more difficult than the adult alternative (I can grill hot dogs and steaks together, and the fish sticks and the salmon bake at the same temperature).  They are still given a bite of ours to try (once they're old enough not to choke on the steak). 

Everyone has to finish their vegetable and their fruit before getting seconds on any item.

Condiments are free, but we try to limit their consumption of ranch dressing, and we buy the HFCS-free ketchup (hooray Heinz!).

If someone has tried everything on their plate, and they truly don't like any of it, they can have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich AFTER I have finished eating.  Not chicken nuggets or macaroni and cheese or a happy meal, a boring old PB&J.  In 4 years of feeding toddlers and preschoolers (so far) I have made exactly three PB&J sandwiches.

Two of them were tonight because I made pasta carbonara.  It was one of those boxed meals where you add the chicken.  They'd eaten the same box as fettucini alfredo before, but adding the peas and the bacon did them in.  I didn't follow my own rules, so the pasta dish was the only thing I served.  Well, they both tried it but neither kid liked it, so when I was done eating I made them PB&J and applesauce.  Lesson learned.  But hey, it inspired this post, so it wasn't a total loss.

I didn't make a big huff over it, by the way.  Actually, my exact words were, "Great!  More for me!"  See what I mean about not making it a battle?  Eventually even the stubbornest child is going to get sick of PB&J, and he's going to learn to eat what's put in front of him.  And he'll probably even learn to like some of it. 



* HFCS - I've been looking into this stuff, and the deeper I dig, the scarier it gets.  We have got to keep this poison out of our kids to the greatest extent possible.  All this hard work and research is paying off, by the way - I went shopping for maternity clothes today and the mediums fit.  I bought the large, so I'd have room to grow with the pregnancy, but I can't even tell you how good it felt to be OUT OF THE PLUS SECTION!  Shopping for maternity clothes was such a drag when I was pregnant with the girls and I was wearing a 1x or 2x - there was nothing cute!  But now, well, all I have to say is, BJ had better take away my credit cards!

I Have Safety Fatigue

Just in time for our third child to be born, they recall every crib in the known universe.  I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to safely pick a baby up out of a crib without a dropping side - at 5'4" tall short, it's not easy.  I guess I'll get a step stool.  That should be REALLY safe at 3 am.

I've thrown out and replaced all of our plastic sippy cups due to concerns over BPA.  We also bought Pyrex storage containers to replace our plastic ones, and we use them most of the time.

At the grocery store today, I spent $7.50 for a gallon of Horizon Organic Milk.  We also buy our beef from a relative who only uses antibiotics when his cows are ill, and who doesn't use growth hormones, and who feeds the cows grass most of the year.

But I have safety fatigue.  I find myself wanting to rebel against the constant vigilance that is required of us - today's parents.  I am sick to death of having Google News Alerts for product recalls.  I'm pretty sure the bars of my crib were more than 2 inches apart AND the side dropped, and somehow my fat head and I managed to survive.  I remember riding in the back of the station wagon, and in the back window of the car, and somehow I survived.

There's a big part of me that thinks that they do this to get us to buy more stuff.  We threw out the carseat we used with the girls because it was 5 years old, and supposedly the plastic degrades after 5 years.  We threw out the stroller it came with because it, too, had been recalled, and the "fix" was a cheesy velcro and fabric cover that any baby I've ever met would rip off in about 10 seconds.

We've given up high fructose corn syrup entirely because of this video (we were on our way to giving it up because common sense says it's bad, this, and having to throw out everything in our fridge, pushed me over the edge):



I'm sick to death of anxiety.  I'm sick of worrying that everything from the milk my kids drink in the morning to the shampoo I use on their precious little heads at night is going to kill them.

I'm about ready to call it quits - to ignore the recalls and just keep using whatever works - because I don't trust the people in charge, and I don't want to spend the money, and I'm just plain tired of worrying about everything.

How do you decide, as a parent, what to worry about and what to ignore?  Do you follow every safety recall and take away the things that are "dangerous" or do you selectively ignore some?  Do you buy organic?  Where do you draw the lines?

Because seriously, sometimes my line makes me feel like a chump.