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Author: Mary | Just Take A Bite

Soaked Date Scones

I tried a Nourishing Traditions recipe this morning for date scones. These were really easy to make since the food processor does most of the work. And they turned out great!! Mildly sweet. A nice crust. A definite keeper.

This recipe is a great base for any flavor scone. I used dates and raisins today. I’ll have to play around with other flavors.

This post is linked to Fat Tuesday at Real Food Forager.

 

Soaked Date Scones

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (or spelt or kamut)
1 cup buttermilk (I used a little over 1 cup of a combination of yogurt and kefir.)
4 Tbsp. melted butter or lard
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
2 tsp. baking soda
3 Tbsp. rapadura or coconut sugar
1 cup chopped dates (or any dried fruit)

Mix flour with buttermilk (or yogurt) to form a thick dough. Cover. Let soak for 12-24 hours.

Place dough in a food processor. Process several minutes to knead. Melt butter with rapadura. Add butter mixture, salt and soda to dough. Process until mixed. Add dates and pulse a few times.

Remove dough to a well floured board. Roll dough to about 3/4 inch thickness. Cut into rounds with a glass or to any shape you like (I just cut odd shapes with a pastry cutter). Place on a buttered or parchment lined baking sheet. (I sprinkled a little extra sugar on top at this point.)  Bake at 350 for 35-40 min. Serve warm with butter.

The Letter X

I didn’t have time for posting our weekly letter yesterday. We did the letter X last week. I wasn’t very creative with it. I mostly did things that started with the X sound.

The Letter X

charcter – good eXample
misc. – lots of workbooks (Rebecca is working hard to get another Lego…if she completes all of her workbooks she can pick one out)
family fun – eXercise. We talked about the importance of exercise and did some simple things like stretching, jumping jacks, sommersaults, lots of dancing, etc. Justin also has started to exercise in the mornings (first day today! Good work, sweetie :). I love being active so I like how Rebecca is really getting into this. But she also thinks it means she should run through the house at all times now 😛
outings – Kindermusik, MOPS, Impressions 5 children’s science museum, out for dinner
baking – blueberry ice cream!

Make Your Own Babylegs

I made 2 pairs of babylegs for Abram this morning. They only took about 5 min. each! Who knew it was so easy to make these yourself? And so much cheaper!! These basically cost us  nothing since I use Justin’s old work socks to make them. He gets holes in the toes of his socks pretty quickly, so I have a never-ending supply 🙂  You can, of course, go buy some cute socks to make babylegs too. I found a tutorial for how to make these at Everything Your Mama Made and More. I didn’t take pictures of each step. Check out Kymy’s site for the detailed steps. I’ll just give the basic process here.

Babylegs

1 pair of long socks (men’s dress socks, women’s knee socks, etc.)

Cut out the heel and cut off the toe of the socks. Fold the bottom part of the sock into itself and line up the frayed edge. Pin this “cuff” over the bottom of the other part of the sock (3 frayed edges lined up). Sew around the edge. Fold the cuff down.

Here is the end product.

 

 

Meal Plans Week of 3-4-12

The start of a new week. I’m praying it ends better than it’s starting.

We kept pretty busy last week with milk pick up, Kindermusik, groceries, MOPS and a trip to Lansing to see my family yesterday. Abram is also keeping us busy as he has just started walking! I had to hold off on a few baking projects early in the week since I didn’t have any flour. But now I have flour and 25 lbs. of wheat berries!!! Thanks so much, Sara! In the kitchen I was busy making yogurt, kefir, blueberry ice cream (oh my, this is good!!!), soaked cold cereal, soaked granola and regular granola.

So far this week appears to be a bit more low key. Today is church. Monday I need to make a run to Harvest  Health to stock up on some things. Rebecca and I also have our Mommy/daughter date! We are getting our hair cut and then going out for dinner. Tuesday is Kindermusik. We actually don’t plans the rest of the week aside from swimming on Saturday. I am kind of excited about that 🙂  There is a chance we could have a play date (waiting to hear back from a friend). There is a chance we could go to the library.

Not sure about all of my food adventures this week. First I need to grind flour! 🙂  I would like to make a new batch of soaked bread and also some soaked pretzels. I will need to make a soaked crust for our pot pie. And I might make a new batch of ice cream (maybe strawberry this week). I’ll make the usual yogurt and kefir. I also need to make a new batch of mayo and some salad dressing. If time allows I’d like to do more sewing. I have a decent stock of cloth wipes now. So I can move on to something else.

A new addition to our weekly routine…Justin will be joining me in the basement to exercise some mornings.

My update – not good. I’m not sure exactly what happened last week, but things went downhill…fast. Power outage, anxiety, messed up routines, Abram up early every day, busy week, wrong foods (no, Mary, you can NOT eat regular (unsoaked) granola…you couldn’t before and you still can’t…it’s not worth the pain), lowering miralax. All kinds of stuff. And today I’m back at square one it seems. Very frustrating. I was doing so well with anxiety, mood, digestion, everything for the last month or so. I couldn’t believe how good I felt. And it came crashing down last week. About as bad as it can get for me. I even had a mini anxiety attack yesterday. This morning is still the same. I’m not even sure I’m going to make it to church today. I’m praying for some improvement soon. Right now it’s hard to eat…and I’m guessing I’ll have lost a couple pounds the next time I weigh myself. I’m sure I could say a lot more, but I’ll stop there. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to eat at the moment/what will help me. And I’m still trying to figure out what works best for me in the long run. For now I need to stick to only grains that are properly prepared. I need to avoid sugar. And I need to make sure I’m getting enough protein, fat and veggies in my diet.
On to the menu. Here’s the plan so far. Things could change depending on our activities later in the week.
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S (church)
  B – oatmeal muffin, lemon yogurt, banana
  L – sausage and veggie soup, crackers w/ cheese
  D – leftover cheeseburgers, fries, milkshake (Justin), misc. (me)

M (soak flour, HH, hair cut, out to eat)
  B – cold cereal with milk, banana
  D – take out (me/Rebecca), restaurant leftovers (Justin)

**sick baby – lots of tweaks in our menus and daily plans

T (make scones, soak crust flour, skim cream, make yogurt, boil eggs, make mayo, KM, prep smoothies)
  B – date scones, fruit
  D – egg salad sandwiches, roasted brussels sprouts broccoli, cauliflower

W (prep crust, soak flour, HH, make ice cream, library/playdate)
  B – smoothies, granola bar
  D – chicken pot pie (w/ soaked crust), sauteed kale chicken and mixed veggie quiche (w/ soaked crust), peas, soaked donut, applesauce

Th (make bread and pretzels, make dressing, make ice cream?, Dr.?, HH?, grind flour, soak flour)
  B – hard boiled egg, toast smoothie, toast w/ pb, banana
  D – chicken caesar salad, soaked soft pretzels, squash and chicken soup

F (clean, HH?, chop veggies Dr.)
  B – smoothie, fresh fruit hard boiled egg, toast, fruit
  D – soaked buckwheat pancakes w/ blueberry topping, homemade sausage, beans

S (laundry, swimming, clean)
  B – pancakes
  D – leftover pot pie, leftover quiche, leftover sausage, roasted brussels sprouts, roasted squash

Soaked Cold Cereal

I finally got to the store and got some more wheat flour this week. So I can start trying more soaked recipes again 🙂  This week I made cereal. It is another recipe from the KS e-book. The original recipe is from Sarah at The Healthy Home Economist . This recipe is very simple, but it does take a couple days to make. So be sure you start in advance if you want to try it/have it planned for a specific day. There isn’t much hands on work. It just takes time to soak and dry. The final product…great!! This is so good. I have to keep myself from munching on it constantly 😛  You can use it like cold cereal/serve it with  milk. Or you can use it like granola – plain, as a topping for yogurt, etc. It makes a great snack for kids too! I’m so glad I tried this. We’ll see what Justin thinks when he has some for breakfast today. The flavor kind of reminds me of Wheaties. I might play around with the recipe a bit to see if I can make it more like flakes instead of crumbles. I only made a half recipe this time. I had to use more yogurt than the recipe calls for. And mine dried faster. I was surprised how quickly it dried.

Soaked Cold Cereal

6 cups flour
3 cups plain yogurt, kefir, buttermilk or clabbered milk (I would increase this to about 4 cups)
3/4 cups coconut or palm oil (melted)
1 cup maple syrup or honey (I used syrup this time)
1 tsp. sea salt
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. maple flavoring (I don’t have this, so I just skipped it)
1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon

Mix flour and soaking medium in a large glass bowl. Cover. Leave on the counter 24 hours.

Mix remaining ingredients well into the soaked batter. Pour into two 9×13 pans and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes (I think this would be good eaten as a cake too with some dried fruit or nuts added. Just stop at this point and enjoy :).

Let cool and crumble the cake into small pieces. Dehydrate at 200 degrees for 12-18 hours (I did about 150 for 9 hours in my dehydrator). Store in airtight containers in the refrigerator or freezer.

Meal Plans Week of 2-26-12

It’s almost March! Which means spring is right around the corner…at least I hope it is 😛  I never actually expect nicer weather until April here in Michigan. But I can hope. We got another round of snow on Friday. It didn’t last, but it’s a good reminder that winter isn’t over yet. Hopefully we don’t have to worry about any blizzards this week.

Last week we kept pretty busy. Some of the highlights of the week were a good 9m check up for Abram, our Mommy/daughter date to the children’s museum (Rebecca had so much fun!) and a 2nd M/D date as we had an impromptu trip to the mall yesterday. Justin insisted that I go shopping and actually spend my gift cards that I’ve had for months and buy some new clothes 😛  So I did. I’m excited to have a few new things to wear. And some jeans that fit!!

I stayed busy in the kitchen too. I made soaked chocolate chip cookies, two loaves of soaked whole wheat bread, homemade soaked ravioli, soaked quinoa, yogurt, mayo, chocolate mint ice cream (Rebecca came up with the flavor), cream cheese, pesto, waffles and soaked biscuits. I also finally started a little bit of sewing. I got a few cloth wipes done. Not much, but at least it’s a start. It’s been almost a year since I’ve touched my sewing machine. So it was good to at least sit down and figure out how it works again 🙂

This week is a busy one. Today is church. Monday is milk pick up. Tuesday is Kindermusik and voting. And we might stop by a friend’s house to drop off a baby gift. Justin also has orchestra rehearsal. Wednesday is Meijer. Friday is MOPS, and Justin has an orchestra concert. Saturday is swimming, and we might meet my family for some type of kid’s activity (museum) and to go out for dinner to celebrate my mom’s birthday (it was last week).

Unfortunately the first few days of this week will have to be free of much baking…I’m out of flour!! I have no boughten flour. And I have about a half cup of wheat berries left. So until I go to the store (mid week) I can’t really bake. I will be getting a new load of wheat berries soon. Until then I’ll have to buy flour. So that dictated my early week meals a bit. I would like to make a batch of granola this week (that doesn’t require flour, so no big deal). And possibly a new batch of soaked granola. I’ve been eating that stuff all the time 🙂  It’s a great snack. I want to try a soaked cold cereal this week (didn’t get to it last week). I would also like to make a new batch of ice cream and yogurt.

On to my never ending updates 😛  Each week I seem to find new info and see different things going on with my body. Last week I was reminded that I need to be careful about consuming too many nuts, especially peanut butter. Since I ate a lot of toast for breakfast I tended to eat a lot of peanut butter and almond butter. When I do that for a few days it causes inflammation (probably due to high omega-6) and messes up my digestion. I also ate a bit too much raw food. Certain things are still tough for me to digest. And I end up in pain. I’m finding I need to eat plenty of carbs with moderate protein and fat. And I can tell when I don’t eat enough. It’s important to not be underfed. Limiting food can lead to bad moods, anxiety, poor digestion, weight gain (yes, gain!), all kinds of stuff. I’m trying to eat a little more in the mornings and less in the evenings. Kind of the opposite of how most people eat. And the total opposite of how I used to eat (a few years ago) when I would eat practically a half gallon of ice cream right before bed 😛  But it’s good to fuel your body well in the morning and lighten up by the end of the day so your body isn’t trying to digest a lot of stuff all night. No wonder I used to wake up with a stomach ache. That being said, I’ve been starting my day the last few days with a big dish of…ice cream! Yes, ice cream for breakfast. Homemade ice cream of course. It is actually very healthy and possibly a super food (check out Sarah’s post on it…real ice cream is the closest food we have to breastmilk :). Plus it helps boost metabolism. Which I’m finding is what we should be striving for. Boosting metabolism is what keeps our body temps up (I’m the ice queen…I really need to work on this) and keeps our system working well (digestion, endocrine, everything). So I’m trying ice cream for breakfast for a few days to see how it goes. I need to make a new batch, so I may have to substitute sour cream/yogurt with some add ins for a few days. I still think it’s very important to avoid refined carbohydrates (white flour, white sugar). And I need to make a point of getting variety in my diet. I know I’m still far from where I want to be, but I can tell something is happening lately. I think my hormones are changing – hopefully for the good. As I no longer underfeed myself, add back plenty of good quality carbs and try to listen to my body I notice changes. I think it is helping with my adrenals (I definitely have more energy now than I did for a while). My acne has had a small flair. I think that is my body adjusting. And I have periods of being quite warm and quite cold during the day. This is related to body temp and blood sugar. Again, my body is adjusting and trying to figure things out/trying to get back on track. I continue to look more into 180 Degree Health and the RRARF (Rehabilitative Rest and Refeeding) program (I’m kind of half doing it now…but definitely not fully at this point. I did finally read through the free e-book.). If anyone is still wondering what to get me for my birthday (hint, hint 😉 I’d LOVE a copy of Matt Stone’s new book Diet Recovery. His 180 Degree Digestion book would be great too. I’m starting with looking into RRARF. After that I may look into his information on RBTI. That stuff is fascinating. You mean I could actually not have to pee constantly by eating the right way? And it would improve my hormones, my body temps, everything? That would be the answer that I’ve been looking for since I was about 4 years old and my anxiety started due to what I thought was my abnormally overactive bladder…that I’ve lived with my whole life. Anyway, I have a lot to learn yet. But I can tell my body is changing for sure. I seem to be out of the bad mood, low energy, underweight slump I was in a few months ago. Praise the Lord!

That got a little longer than I had intended. Here’s what’s on the menu this week. No idea if we’ll do any letter related food stuff since we have the letter X. What do you do with X??
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S (prep lunch, church)
  B – waffles, fruit
  L – cp pork steak, potatoes, carrots and onions (Justin), salad w/ pork (me)
  D – leftover cheeseburger cups, corn, salad, apple slices

M (milk)
  B – soaked donuts, smoothies
  D – tacos w/ guacamole, salsa, cheddar cheese, raw sour cream, lettuce, soaked ww tortillas (from freezer)

T (skim cream, make yogurt, make granola, prep dinner, KM, vote, CCS, soak grains)
  B – packed breakfast for Justin – granola bar, apple
  D – cp pea soup w/ ham, bread or crackers w/ cheese

W (Meijer, make ice cream, make soaked granola, prep smoothies)
  B – yogurt, granola, fruit
  D – cheeseburgers, chips, beans

Th (soak grains)
  B – breakfast cake, smoothies
  D – pepper steak, mashed potatoes, corn (Justin), leftover pea soup (me)

F (clean, make cereal, MOPS, concert)
  B – cold soaked cereal w/ milk
  D – croque-madame, roasted squash

S (swimming, I5, out for dinner in Lansing)
  B – TBD, smoothies
  D – out to eat – Cheddar’s

Soaked Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rebecca and I had our Mommy/daughter date last night. And we had to pack a picnic dinner. When I asked her what she wanted to pack one of her requests was chocolate chip cookies. I decided to make a healthier version for us to make/take. I used the breakfast cookie recipe as a starting point and made a few modifications. The cookies turned out quite well. They are softer than a “normal” cookie. But they taste great! And I felt good about us eating them. We actually had some with lunch and dinner!

This post is linked to Fat Tuesday at Real Food Forager.

Soaked Cookies

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
3/4 cups butter, divided (1/2 cup melted, 1/4 cup softened)
1/2 cup buttermilk, yogurt or kefir (I used whole milk yogurt)
1/2 – 3/4 cup honey (sweetened to your liking)
1 egg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips (or any add in you like – nuts, raisins, etc.)

Combine flour, oats, yogurt and melted butter. Cover and let sit at least 7 hours.

Add softened butter and honey to flour. Blend with mixer until creamed. Add remaining ingredients (except chips). Blend well. Stir in chips.

Drop by spoonful onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Homade Soaked Cheese Ravioli With Creamy Bacon Pesto

I saw a recipe the other day for soaked noodles and it mentioned using it for ravioli. I thought that sounded like fun. So last night I made ravioli for dinner. I didn’t actually use a recipe for any of it! I’ll try to remember what I did for each component. This turned out really well. And it made me feel good eating such a homemade meal. All three of us enjoyed it. I served it with sauteed mushrooms and sugar snap peas (in coconut oil and butter). I was in heaven last night 🙂  Plus I learned that Rebecca likes mushrooms…and Justin doesn’t think they are quite as bad as he had previously thought 😛  Maybe, just maybe he’d be ok with a few mushrooms in dishes once in a while. As a mushroom lover that NEVER cooks with mushrooms that is music to my ears.

This post is linked to Fresh Bites Friday and Real Food Wednesday.

Soaked Noodles

2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 – 1/2 cup yogurt (preferable raw, homemade)

Combine all ingredients, using enough yogurt to make a soft dough. Knead for a few minutes. Cover and let sit at least 7 hours.

When ready to use, roll out the dough on a floured surface as thin as you can. You can cut it into any size/shape you want or you can add ravioli filling and cut and seal raviolis. Cook for about 20 minutes in boiling water.

Cheese Ravioli Filling

1/2 cup homemade cream cheese
1 egg
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
seasoning to taste (I used garlic powder, salt and a little homemade pesto)

Combine all ingredients until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Creamy Pesto

1 cup peas
1/4 – 1/2 cup EVOO
salt, garlic powder to taste
(optional – crispy nuts)

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup heavy cream

cooked bacon (optional)

Blend peas, olive oil, seasoning and nuts until smooth (adjust consistency to taste with oil). When ready to use warm pesto in a pan with cheese and cream. You can add crumbled bacon to the sauce or just sprinkle the bacon on top of the ravioli after assembling.

Cheese Ravioli with Creamy Bacon Pesto

Roll out dough. Place 1 Tbsp. of filling on dough spaced about 2 in. apart. Fold dough over, press around filling. Cut out ravioli. Seal edges well with a fork. Cook in boiling water about 20 minutes.

Drain ravioli. Top with creamy pesto, grated parmesan and crumbled bacon.

Soaked Bread

Yes, it is another soaked grain recipe from my Kitchen Stewardship e-book 🙂  This bread recipe comes from Kelly the Kitchen Kop (a fellow West MI blogger and WAPF chapter board member!). I’ve done quite a bit of experimenting with bread making over the last few years. Some hits. Some big misses. Considering I still haven’t perfected regular bread baking I wasn’t sure what would happen with a soaked version. Would it taste good? Would the texture be ok? Well, I’m glad I gave this a try. It’s great!! And it was super easy to make. As usual I scaled the recipe back to only make one loaf on my first attempt (I hate to make a big batch and then not have it turn out). I wish I would have made the full recipe now 😛  I don’t think this loaf will last long now that I can eat it 🙂  This bread is super soft and has great flavor. All three of us really enjoyed it with our soup last night. And I had some for breakfast today. Tastes great toasted with butter or nut butter.

This recipe does use some AP flour. I’m starting to think it’s pretty tough to make a really good loaf of bread without a little AP flour. I still like to use mostly freshly ground whole wheat. But just a little bit of organic AP flour really does wonders for the texture.

I really like that you can freeze this bread at the dough stage. Then you can have freshly baked bread ready in no time. I’ll have to try that the next time I make this…which might be very soon 🙂  Kelly’s recipe suggests using a Bosch mixer. I used my Kitchen Aid. It worked just fine.

My timing on this wasn’t the best since it was ready to be baked right at nap time. So I stuck it in the oven and started walking with Abram. When it was done I was able to get it out of the oven with him still asleep in the Moby. But I couldn’t take it out of the pan right away. It did get a little soft having to sit in the pan. But I just stuck the loaf back in the oven (not in the pan) for a few min. and it firmed back up.

Soaked Bread
makes 3 loaves

4 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups spelt (or you can just use more whole wheat) (I used whole wheat)
3/4 cups buttermilk (you could also use whole milk yogurt, or kefir. or use an equal
amount of water + 1 T. lemon juice, whey or vinegar) (I used yogurt)
2 cups very warm water
1 egg (when I did 1/3 of the recipe I just used the white of one egg…kept the yolk to use in our lunch 🙂
3 cups Bob’s Red Mill white unbleached flour
1/4 cup warm/hot water
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 1/2 Tbsp. yeast
1/2 cup local raw honey
1 Tbsp. sea salt

The night before, add wheat and spelt flour, buttermilk, and water to your Bosch Kitchen Mixer. Mix just until all the flour is wet. Put the lid on the Bosch, and let set at least 7 hours but 12 or more is even better and you may even have a nice sourdough taste.


The next day, or whenever you’re ready to finish your bread, add the egg and white flour to the Bosch. Measure a 1/4 c. hot water in a measuring cup…don’t put it in yet…but add to the hot water (so it melts) 1/4 c refined or unrefined coconut oil. (If it’s warm in your kitchen and the oil is already melted just add these two ingredients.)  Once it’s melted, add it in, and start mixing on the lowest speed.


Add yeast, keep mixing on lowest speed. Add honey and seal salt.


When the dough has cleaned up the sides and middle of the bowl, check how the dough feels and see if you need a bit more water or flour (you’ll know if it feels too dry or wet), and then set the timer for 14 minutes and continue mixing on the lowest speed.

Meanwhile, butter your bread pans. (Butter up and over the lip of the bread pan, so it will come out easily after baking.) When the dough is done, use buttered hands to split it into 3 equal pieces (some weigh it out, but I just guess), shape them into a loaf, and press into the pans. Be careful not to fold it over itself and leave big air pockets.

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VARIATION FOR FREEZING THE DOUGH:

At this point you could shape the dough to fit in your pan (or shape into buns to use in the fugure), then freeze before letting it rise. When it’s frozen, transfer it to a freezer baggie. Now you have homeade bread all ready to thaw, rise adn bake someday when you feel like fresh-baked heaven right from the oven. Or keep reading if you plan to bake them all at once and then freeze.

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The rise time depends on the temp in your kitchen – usually 2-3 hours. When it’s the height you want (don’t wait too long or it will fall), carefully place the bread pans into a cool oven (if it is electric) and set it for 350 degrees. Bake 25 min. For a gas oven preheat to 350 and bake for 20 min.

When you take it out of the oven, immediately (carefully) take it out of the pan and cool on a wire rack, otherwise condensation builds up in the pan and makes the bread soggy.