Christmas eats

Christmas eve dinner

Bread bowls, using Peter Reinhart's hoagie recipe from ABED (best bread bowls ever!) with creamy chicken-wild rice soup

Fresh fruit, green salad, and homemade personalized Christmas ornaments for name plates :)

Christmas morning

BBA cinnamon rolls and a sausage-cheese-egg bake

(based off of this one, halved and baked in an 8x8 casserole dish)

Christmas snack

Hot cocoa (made from this mix) with marshmallows and almond tea bread (made by my dad)

Christmas dinner

Ham from the co-op (made from this CI recipe), au gratin potatoes (made with gold potatoes and half cheddar, half gruyere), broccoli slaw, honey wheat dinner rolls, homemade applesauce, sugared cranberries, and pumpkin custard made by the kiddos for dessert (pumpkin pie without the crust, baked in ramekins)

Hope those who celebrate it had a very Merry Christmas...and Happy New Year to everyone!

Homemade ranch dressing

I have a fairly easy time when it comes to salad dressings during our unprocessed months. I'm easy to please with good ol' oil and vinegar.

The winters are hard for me, though; when it's cold, I crave soup, chili, stew...I have a really hard time eating salads. Of course, especially after indulging in a meal like Thanksgivinukkah, salads are especially important!

The one dressing that can make me eat a salad even in the winter is ranch; I love the stuff in the green and white bottle. Look at the ingredient list, though, and it hardly counts as unprocessed. (Although Unprocessed October is officially over, we have been trying to stick to most of rules.)

I found a lot of recipes online that claimed to taste "just like the real thing - or even better!" but couldn't find one that sounded just right. So I looked at what we had...thought about what we liked...and came up with this recipe.


Abby's ranch :)

1/2 c mayo
1/2 c sour cream
1/4 c homemade kefir
1 tsp dill
1 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp garlic flakes
1/2 tsp onion flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Whirl it all up in a blender! (Still loving my Vitamix.) :)

Many of the recipes I saw called for fresh chives, so I may try adding them next time, but this dressing was pretty perfect as-is.

Leftovers and homemade frozen burritos

One of our family's favorite go-to lunches are frozen burritos. During our unprocessed October, we had to give them up; their ingredient list reads like this:
WATER, WHEAT FLOUR (ENRICHED WITH NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID), BEEF, BEANS, VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN, SUNFLOWER, CANOLA AND/OR CORN OIL), CONTAINS 2% OR LESS TEXTURED VEGETABLE PROTEIN (SOY FLOUR, CARAMEL COLOR), ISOLATED PEA PRODUCT, SALT, RICE FLOUR, YEAST, CELLULOSE GUM, GUAR GUM, WHEAT, SODIUM BICARBONATE, WHEAT STARCH, FOOD STARCH, DOUGH CONDITIONERS (SODIUM METABISULFITE, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, L-CYSTEINE, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, DICALCIUM PHOSPHATE), MICROCRYSTALLINE CELLULOSE, SILICON DIOXIDE (TO PREVENT CAKING), CHILI PEPPER, YEAST EXTRACT, MALTODEXTRIN, FLAVORS, SPICES, SOY SAUCE (SOYBEANS), AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, LACTIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVOR, CALCIUM LACTATE. ALLERGENS: WHEAT, SOY.

Yikes!


At the beginning of October Unprocessed, I saw this blog post on Good Cheap Eats about making your own homemade frozen burritos. I finally tried them at the end of the month (the process, not the actual recipe), and we were big fans. I heated up a little olive oil and sauteed some onion. Then I added a bit of spice (cumin, salt, pepper), a defrosted jar of chicken meat from the freezer, and a defrosted jar of black beans from the freezer. I cooked it until everything was warm, dolloped the filling on large flour tortillas, added some cheese (cheddar for the kids and me, pepperjack for the hubby) and wrapped them up. Onto a tray, into the freezer, into a baggie. The next weekend, we threw them into the microwave, just like our old processed kind, and they were soooo much better. Best part about it - it's such an easy process, you can adapt it to such a wide variety of fillings…spicy salsa for the hubby, nothing added for the kiddos….


Well, last night, as I looked into the fridge, there were way too many leftovers...especially considering that we only need lunches for a few days this week...and that there's a fairly big holiday coming up that's going to make quite a bit of leftovers on its own. :)

I'd tried two new recipes from this month's Cooking Light over the past couple days: Slow-cooker Cuban pork shoulder with beans and rice and Chicken and mushroom empanadas. The pork shoulder was ah-maze-ing! We loved it, and it made an absolute ton. The empanadas were good (I hear)...hubby liked them, but they were too spicy for the rest of us. Thus, a lot of leftovers.

So then I thought, why not turn the leftovers into more frozen burritos?! And now we have a freezer full of easy, healthy, and delicious weekend lunches. :)

Meat pies with whole wheat pie crust

Do you read Terry Pratchett? We love his Discworld series. We try to get one or two of his novels on audiobooks for our summer travels each year...we just love his dry sense of humor and all of the off-beat culture references.

Anyway, one of his characters is a fairly unsavory fellow, and he pops up selling yucky meat pies in many of the books. Every time I make these pasties, my hubby calls them Dibbler's meat pies. These, of course, are way better. :)

As promised, I took our leftover potroast, and used it to make these pasties. (Hubby was thrilled to discover that after taking out the three cups needed for the pasties, there was still a lunch of meat leftover for him.)

This is a Cook's Country recipe. It was published with their Joe Booker stew as a way to use up leftover stew. When I made the recipe several years ago, we thought the stew was okay, but the pasties were divine. Since then, I've made them with all sorts of similar left overs: stew, pot roast, brisket, etc. They're always amazing.

One of the biggest changes I've made since we began our unprocessed journey is my attempt to eliminate white flour. So, knowing these pasties were on the menu, I went in search of whole wheat pie crust recipes. There weren't that many out there. I found two from Bob's Red Mill, and eventually settled on this one. The other one was 100% whole wheat, and I just wasn't sure I was brave enough to try 100% my first time out.

I had also read recently that you can substitute coconut oil (which is used a lot in unprocessed baking) in place of shortening in pastry recipes. I never buy shortening and usually just replace it with butter, but I have a big tub of coconut oil, and so I was happy to try it.

The crust was easy to work with and absolutely delicious - flaky, buttery, a tiny bit sweet. You would never know that it had coconut oil in it, or that it was made with over 50% whole wheat flour.

Anyway, dinner was amazing. Hubby said he would be willing to eat it every night of the week. Here's what I did:

Whole wheat pasties
pasties adapted from Cook's Country, pie crust adapted from Bob's Red Mill

for the pasties
3 T unsalted butter
1 onion, diced
1/2 pound ground meat (we usually use pork, but only had turkey this time)
1 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp ground allspice
3 cups leftover pot roast or stew (meat, veggies, broth)

for the crust
1 c (4.5 oz) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 c (6.75 oz) whole wheat pastry flour
1 T sugar
1 tsp salt
7 T solid coconut oil
12 T unsalted butter
8 T ice water

1. Melt the butter in a large skillet. Add the onion and saute for a few minutes until softened. Add the meat and spices and cook until the meat is no longer pink, about 8 minutes. Add the leftover pot roast or stew and cook until the liquid has evaporated, 5 - 10 minutes. Put the mixture in a medium bowl, mash it up, and set it aside to cool.

2. For the crust, put the flours, sugar, and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse a few times until mixed. Add the coconut oil and pulse a few times. Then add the unsalted butter and pulse about 8 times, until the mix is coarse, but you can still see chunks of butter. Dump the mix into a medium sized bowl.

3. Add the ice water, 2 tablespoons at a time, and press the dough together with a rubber spatula until the dough starts to hold together. You still want to have sandy parts falling off. Divide the dough into two equal portions, each on a piece of plastic wrap. Use the plastic wrap to fold the dough over on itself several times until it holds together. Then wrap each piece up and put it in the fridge to chill.

4. When ready to make the pasties, preheat the oven to 450, and put a silpat or a piece of parchment on a baking sheet.

5. Roll out the dough and cut it into pieces twice as big as you want your pasties to be. I make different sizes: big ones for the hubby, medium ones for me, and little ones for my little ones. :) Put a large scoop of filling in the middle of the dough (again, the size of the scoop will depend on the size of the crust -- experiment). Then paint the edges of the dough with water, fold the dough over, and use the tines of a fork to crimp the edges. Cut a few vent holes on the top of each.

6. Bake the pasties for 25 minutes. (You can also freeze the pasties on a tray before baking; wrap them in foil, and when you're ready to bake them, just take them out and throw them on a baking sheet. You may need to increase the baking time slightly.)

Enjoy!

We have meat!

I've mentioned a few times in my unprocessed posts that one of our biggest challenges in our unprocessed journey has been meat. We are big meat eaters...hubby grew up in a Western Kansas meat-and-potatoes family, and while I wasn't always a big meat-eater, I have become more so in the past few years. (Starting when I was pregnant with my little guy and developed an absolute obsession with hamburgers...something I'd never really been fond of. Must've been low in iron, or something. Anyway, the obsession lasted throughout pregnancy, and never really went away.)

So while I liked the idea of eating less meat, and eating more lean meat, and eating only free-range grass-fed organic meat...I couldn't really figure out how to manage it. For one, good meat is just so expensive. For another, I didn't really know where to find it. We'd pick up some whenever we went to the farmers market, but we don't go there every week. And our grocery stores don't have the best selection.


In our first attempt at going unprocessed last April, I didn't meet our meat goal at all. This past October, we did better. I was able to find some organic free-range chickens at a couple of stores, and we hit the farmers market a couple of times. We still defaulted to grocery store meat sometimes, though.

Well, how excited was I when I was contacted about getting a meat share from a local farm?! One of my mom's good friends was planning to split a share of meat with another coworker; when that coworker backed out, they were looking for someone to share with, and she asked my mom, "Would Abby be interested?" She sure would!

We got our meat a couple of weeks ago. It took some rearranging in the freezer, but we were able to clear a shelf for our bounty: 13 pounds of ground beef, two roasts, six steaks, and one rack of ribs.


I defrosted the first roast this week and made my favorite pot roast recipe.

I was a little nervous when after the two and a half hour cooking time, the meat was not fall-apart-tender. With the grocery store roasts, you usually just have to touch it with a fork and it falls to pieces. With this roast, I still needed to work to separate it into servings.

I needn't have worried. I don't normally think of myself as having that discerning of a palate, but I just could. not. believe. the. difference. The meat was so incredibly tender...almost buttery...with the most delicious flavor. It was like a completely different food from the grocery store roasts. The little ones gobbled up their servings and asked for seconds: "Veggies, too?" "NO! Just meat!" I admit that the hubby and I had seconds, too. :)

The leftovers are reserved for tomorrow night's dinner: pasties, and we are so looking forward to it. We'll be using our first package of the ground beef for dinner this week, so I'll report back on that.

If you live in the area, I strongly recommend checking out Rising Moon Farms. I have eye-witness reports that they have very happy cows, and we can attest as to the quality of their meat!

Last night of October Unprocessed

After a loooooong day at work and a quick trip to the grocery store, I came home to make Halloween dinner. We always like to fill our tummies with warm, healthy food before we go out to trick-or-treat.

I pulled some beautiful chicken stock out of the crockpot, grabbed yesterday's crockpot chicken out of the fridge, mixed up some noodle dough, and made chicken noodle soup. Then chopped some apples and made some quick applesauce. Pulled out some broccoli slaw from a few nights ago. Unprocessed. Delicious.

The kiddos made it through about two blocks before wanting to turn around and come home. They happily passed out tiny lollipops, then picked out a few pieces of candy to eat and set the rest out for the Switch Witch. Wonder what she'll bring!

Crockpot chicken magic

It's amazing: in the morning, before we rush out of the house for work and school, I chop an onion coarsely and put it in the bottom of my crockpot. I throw in an organic, free range chicken, sprinkle it with pure salt, freshly ground pepper, and a little paprika. Put the lid on, set it on low for 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 hours (depending on the size of the chicken and when I expect to get home).

When we get home, the house smells amazing. I pull out the chicken and strip off the meat: 4 or 6 cups of gorgeous meat for soups or pasta or.....

I throw the scraps back in the crock, add in a carrot or two, a celery stalk, an onion, a couple of bay leaves, a bit of thyme (1/2 tsp maybe?), about a teaspoon of salt, some freshly ground pepper, and 8-12 cups of water. Set the crock back on low for 12 - 24 hours.

The next day, I strain the whole thing and have 12 or more cups if amazing chicken stock.

All this beautiful, healthy food for maybe 30 minutes of work spread out over two days. Magic.

Unprocessed pizza

One of the keys to our unprocessed success this month has been planning ahead ~ knowing what's for dinner ahead of time, having all of the ingredients ready in the house, avoiding last minute scrounging. However, tonight, I had nothing on the menu and our fridge is looking pretty bare.

Suddenly I thought about one of our go-to dinners: pizza! I had a couple of crusts in the freezer, but they were from a couple of months ago and were made with half white flour. I decided to give the KAF whole wheat pizza crust another try, since it had made such delicious calzones and crackers. I had some homemade pizza sauce in the deep freeze, and some fresh mozzarella left over from our calzones. We used black olives, mushrooms, pineapple, and red onion for our toppings; the only one of our usual toppings we couldn't use was pepperoni.

The pizza was delicious, even better than our other go-to recipes. And completely unprocessed!

A journey to whole wheat

When I first started baking, I followed every recipe exactly...most breads and all cookies/muffins/etc relying exclusively on unbleached all-purpose flour. Some of my bread recipes during my various challenges called for other types: whole wheat, rye, pumpernickel, corn. My cabinets filled with different types of flour, but it was still the all-purpose that we purchased in twenty pound sacks and cycled through at unbelievable speed.

Eventually I heard enough/read enough to realize the benefits of whole grain and, following many recommendations, I started subbing in whole wheat - and then white whole wheat - for a quarter of my all-purpose flour. Gradually I started adding more and more, until finally, with this unprocessed challenge, I wondered, "What would happen if I used all white whole wheat...would anyone even notice?" The simple answer is: No.



Burger buns: I used KAF's best beautiful buns, but subbed in 400 g white whole wheat and 20 g vital wheat gluten. Made twice - gorgeous, fluffy, buttery buns both times.



Crackers: I used this buttermilk whole grain cracker recipe, subbing in a combination of white whole wheat and ground flax seeds. Yum!



Muffins: I've been subbing in increasing amounts of white whole wheat flour for the all-purpose in our muffins: garden harvest, banana chocolate chip. Scones, too, starting with Smitten Kitchen whole wheat berry scones. Sometimes I put in a scoopful of all-purpose, but the majority is always white whole wheat. Everyone gobbles them up just as quickly as before.



Pizza crust: I tried my first 100% whole wheat pizza crust this past week, and it was amazingly delicious. I used this recipe from KAF, omitting the sunflower seeds.



Spaghetti noodles: I've already written about these; we love them!



Tortillas: My biggest unprocessed/whole wheat success story may be these tortillas. We've had them with fajitas three times in the past two weeks, and they are so good. The kids aren't big fans, but they've tried them every time, in the hopes that eventually the taste will become more acceptable. Hubby and I love them, though, and I am getting so much better at making them. Last time, it took me only 20 minutes to roll and cook the whole batch!



Cookies: While this unprocessed challenge has helped us cut down on sweets a lot, every once in a while you need a little something, and I was intrigued by these 100% whole wheat chocolate chip cookies from KAF. It's true that they have a fair amount of processed sugars, but we tried them anyway. The little girl and I had fun baking them together this afternoon. We made tiny teaspoon-sized cookies, which baked perfectly in eight minutes, and hit the spot as a little after-dinner treat!

Totally unprocessed dinner: Donna Hay's cannelloni

Every Wednesday, I am struck by how delicious my friends Kayte and Margaret's Donna Hay meals look. Every Wednesday, I think, "I really need to try that." But I never have. Until two weeks ago, when they posted these cannelloni and I knew that I really had to try these.




Being in the middle of our unprocessed month, I decided to see if I could make the whole thing from scratch, using all whole and unprocessed ingredients.




I think I did pretty well. I used: whole milk, lemons, vinegar, salt, pepper, spinach, whole wheat flour, eggs, tomatoes, onion, garlic, fresh basil, parsley, oats (ground into oat flour to replace the bread crumbs), Parmesan, olive oil...oh, and I guess I did use a pinch of white sugar.




I used my new DIY cookbook from ATK to make my first ever ricotta. It was amazing. And not very hard or even very time consuming. I can see why people say they'll never go back to store-bought again.




Then I used Donna Hay's recipe for tomato sauce.




I made my usual whole wheat egg pasta, rolling it out into long sheets for my lasagna noodles.




And then I assembled and baked it. It was amazing: the ricotta was lemony and bright, the basil and spinach were so fresh, the noodles were flavorful and perfectly textured...it was one of the best meals I've ever had, and one of the first times I can remember where I could taste each individual ingredient. And, in addition to the whole family gobbling it up (once the kiddos had scraped out some of the ricotta), I was so proud of myself for the meal I created. :-)

Chicken stock & chicken noodle soup

We used to have a favorite chicken noodle soup (a recipe from Cooking Light that used canned chicken broth, boneless chicken thighs, and dumplings instead of noodles), until the day I happened upon Deb's recipe for homemade chicken soup...and then we had a new favorite. I posted the recipe I used here.

I make this soup at least once per week, no longer following a recipe, varying the amounts depending on whether or not I want ingredients to freeze or if I have another recipe during the week ahead that needs broth or chicken. And now that we've gone unprocessed, I've incorporated homemade whole wheat noodles, too.

Chicken stock
2 T oil (safflower or olive)
6 pounds chicken pieces (3 breasts, 3 leg pieces)
1 onion, cut into four or six large pieces
1 carrot, cut into three or four chunks
1 celery stalk, cut into three or four chunks
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
a few turns of freshly ground pepper
12 cups water

1. Heat the oil in a large stock pot over medium-high heat. Add half of the chicken and cook for a few minutes until browned; then flip. Remove to a plate. Repeat with remaining oil and chicken.
2. Lower the heat to medium-low and add the veggies. Cook for a few minutes until browned.
3. Add chicken back into the pot.
4. Add spices and water, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, partially cover the pot, and simmer the stock, for 60 - 90 minutes, skimming off the yucky stuff that appears on the surface.
5. Remove the chicken. Let it cool, and then pull the meat off the bones.
6. Strain the stock over a large glass measuring cup or a pitcher. Press on the vegetables to get out all of the flavor.

Egg pasta
4 eggs
3 c flour (2 c white whole wheat, 1 c all-purpose) ~ 14 ounces

1. Combine eggs and flour in a food processor until they form a ball.
2. Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and let rest for at least 30 minutes.
3. Roll the pasta thinly, dust with flour, roll up, and use a pizza cutter to slice into 1/4 inch strips.

Chicken noodle soup
2 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 - 4 carrots, chopped
3 - 4 stalks of celery, chopped
1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp salt
a few turns of freshly ground pepper
8 c homemade chicken stock
2 - 3 c cooked chicken
5 - 6 ounces fresh pasta
1 cup frozen vegetables (1/2 c corn, 1/2 c peas)

1. Heat the oil in a large stock pot over medium heat. Sauté the veggies until softened, five minutes or so.
2. Add the broth, thyme, and salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 or 15 minutes.
3. About four minutes before you want to eat, add the chicken and pasta; two minutes later, add the frozen veggies.

Day one and plans for the week

Phew, day one of going unprocessed draws to a close.

This morning, as I contemplated getting out of bed, I thought about the meals we had planned for the day when suddenly I realized that our normal Sunday morning breakfast contained one of those secret processed foods! Eeek! We usually have steel cut oatmeal on the weekends, made with milk and water, combined with raisins and apples cooked with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter. Milk...seemingly innocuous, is (when you think about it) actually quite processed between it's raw stage and what we buy at the grocery store. I came downstairs and told my hubby what I'd realized. He looked at me with one eyebrow arched and said, "Abby, that is not why we're doing this. Maybe we should say 'minimally processed.' We are not eliminating milk from our oatmeal; we're eliminating chemicals and other bad stuff from our lives." Oh, yeah, that's right.

So for breakfast, we had our normal steel cut oatmeal. I even left the brown sugar coated apples (at hubby's request), although I will continue to use maple syrup when I'm just making oatmeal for me.

For lunch, I had leftovers from last night's tater tot hot dish - the unprocessed part, covered with mashed potatoes instead of tater tots. It was delicious.

Then I got busy in the kitchen. This unprocessed thing takes a lot of planning and a lot of time. :) I started by making these wheat thins from KAF, as written up on Smitten Kitchen. Hubby and I are both concerned about having some unprocessed snacks in the house, so that we don't cave in to a craving in a weak moment. They were relatively easy to throw together, using my food processor to mix everything together and my pasta roller to roll out the dough. As Deb suggested, I made a double batch. And they were...okay. I'm hoping that they're better tomorrow, and I'm positive that they'd be better with cheese than just plain. I bookmarked this list from the Kitchn of other homemade crackers to try.

For snacks, I had part of a banana and some almonds. Hubby had leftover garlic bread with eggs.

For dinner, we had chicken noodle soup with fresh pasta, with grilled cheese sandwiches. This is where the mega-planning comes in.

I made this oatmeal wheat bread from KAF, subbing in white whole wheat flour for most of the all-purpose, and multiplying all of the ingredients by 150% to fit in my large pullman pan. This bread is mostly whole grain (oats and whole wheat flour) and uses honey instead of sugar, and it was completely delicious. We used a little less than half of the loaf for our grilled cheese sandwiches tonight. I'll use some for the little guy's lunches this week. The rest of the loaf will be used for eggs-in-a-nest on Thursday for hubby and the kids when I'm at parent-teacher conferences.

I made a large batch of chicken stock (recipe tomorrow), with three pounds of chicken. I used 8 cups of the stock for tonight's soup, and froze the other 5 cups. I used half of the chicken for tonight's soup, and saved the other half ~ part for tomorrow night's fried rice, and part for Wednesday night's chef salad.

I made 4 eggs worth of fresh pasta, subbing in white whole wheat flour for most of the all-purpose. I used 6 ounces in tonight's soup, and froze two other batches of 6 ounces for future batches of soup.

It was a busy day, but makes me feel better about the week ahead. It also makes me feel like I can make it through this month, as long as I have a full day in the kitchen each weekend. :)

Bridging the gap: Homemade tater tot hot dish

Apparently (according to my mom's recipe book) one of my most-requested meals when I was a child was my mom's tater tot hot dish. My hubby had never had the experience, and when I finally made it for him four or five years ago, he was furious (not really): How could I have kept such goodness from him?!? Needless to say, it became a household favorite. But with the ingredient list: fatty ground beef, three cans of condensed soup, and something called "browning and seasoning sauce," I would only make it once or twice a year.

One night a few months ago, I was thinking that tater tot hot dish sounded good, but we didn't have any of the ingredients (except tater tots). I wondered...could I make it from scratch, without all of the soups? I looked on line, and was surprised that I couldn't really find any recipe that didn't contain the condensed soups or some other processed ingredient.

Hm...what if I started with a homemade cream of mushroom soup? What if I used fresh veggies in addition to frozen? What if...the what ifs multiplied, and I made a small pan, warning my family that it might be totally yucky. Guess what? It wasn't! It was way too soupy and a little bland, but I kept working on the recipe. And then, two weeks ago, tater tot hotdish was on the menu again...and I couldn't find the recipe anywhere. I looked everywhere. Finally, when we were down to the wire, I said, "Well, let me try writing it down from memory..." and it was the best it's ever been. It is so much more flavorful than the original (sorry, Mom!) :), with bright flavor from the fresh veggies, and a richness from the mushroom soup. It does have a lot of butter and a bit of cream, and I could probably try reducing them some, but it is just. so. good.

Homemade tater tot hot dish
by Abby :)

for the mushroom soup:
3 tbsp butter
1/2 onion, minced
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 8-ounce package mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/4 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 1/2 c chicken stock
1/2 c cream

for hot dish
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 16 or 20 oz package ground turkey
1 c frozen vegetables (I use peas and corn)
1 2-lb package tater tots (I don't use the whole package)

1. Preheat oven to 350º.
2. Melt the butter over medium heat in a saucepan. Add onion, carrot, celery, and mushrooms and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
3. Add flour, salt, and pepper, and stir for 1 minute.
4. Whisk in chicken stock and cream and bring to a boil. Turn off heat and set aside.
5. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Cook the onion, carrot, and celery for 2 minutes. Add the turkey, salt, and pepper, and cook until turkey is brown.
6. Pour the meat mixture into the bottom of a 9x13 glass baking dish. Sprinkle the frozen veggies over the meat. Pour the soup over the meat and veggies. Place the tater tots on top.
7. Bake for 60 minutes at 350º.

In light of the fact that we're starting our unprocessed journey tomorrow, I have been thinking about how to make this favorite dish unprocessed. The only ingredient that doesn't fit the kitchen test is the tater tots. So tonight, I decided to cover a corner of the hot dish with some leftover mashed potatoes to see if it would be a workable substitution for the next month. Kind of a cross between tater tot hot dish and shepherd's pie.

Practicing unprocessed

Even though our official start date isn't until this weekend, I have started making a few changes in the past week or so. Separate from our other motivations, I have felt pretty crappy lately, and I know that one of the main things to blame is my eating habits. Way too much candy, too much snacking, too many "Oh, what the heck; what's one more?"s.

To be truly unprocessed, you need to eliminate sugars, both white and brown. I looooooove sugar. My favorite breakfast is oatmeal ~ either with white sugar, banana, almonds, and plain yogurt, or with brown sugar, apples, raisins, and milk. I was nervous about losing my sugar, but a few days ago, I took a deep breath and tried maple syrup, one of the unprocessed sugars (pure maple syrup, of course). And guess what? I loved it!

I've also been checking our dinners each night, to see how they'd do against unprocessed expectations. (In part just to reassure myself that this is possible and won't be that challenging.)


Here, we have this slow cooker honey chicken via Tracey's site (processed ingredients: sriracha, corn starch, canned tomato paste) over brown rice, roasted asparagus with this recipe from Cooking Light, and grapes. I remember trying brown rice some time years ago, and we thought it was really gross, so I was nervous about trying it again. But I know how much healthier it is and that we need to give up white rice, so I tried it in this recipe where I knew it would be buried under flavorful chicken. And it was delicious! I'm not sure what I did wrong last time, but no one could tell the difference; the little girl who loves white rice more than just about anything gobbled up her plateful just as quickly as usual. What a relief!


Last night, we had homemade chicken noodle soup (ingredients: safflower oil, chicken breasts and thighs, onions, celery, carrots, peas, corn, thyme, salt, and pepper; processed ingredient: egg noodles), homemade breadsticks (an ATK roll recipe with white whole wheat flour), grapes, pear, homemade applesauce (ingredients: apples, water, cinnamon; processed ingredient: sprinkling of white sugar), and cheddar cheese.

All of the processed ingredients from these meals are things we probably won't be giving up anyway, although I'll probably try to make my own noodles and I may try subbing in honey for the sugar in the applesauce. I've got a notebook with a lot of notes, and I've started recording meal and snack ideas. Both of these dinners will go on the list.

The gift of years

When I started this blog a little over three years ago, I was an enthusiastic baker (and cook), but not a very experienced one. I wanted to broaden my horizons, but was nervous to try new recipes, reluctant to stray from recipes as written, and quick to panic when anything didn't go as planned. I eagerly joined challenges (the BBA followed by the Modern Bakers and the Mellow Bakers), hoping to learn more.



This Christmas, I really felt the difference the past few years have made. For one thing, I made everything - Christmas Eve dinner (chicken wild rice soup in bread bowls, salad with poppyseed dressing, doughnuts), Christmas morning breakfast (BBA cinnamon rolls), and Christmas dinner (glazed ham, mashed potatoes, rolls, green bean casserole, sugared cranberries, rustic apple pie, and vanilla bean ice cream) completely from scratch, and without asking our guests to bring anything.



Recipes that just a couple of years ago gave me fits - Maida's big apple pie, which I swore I would never make again - came together without a hitch.

Mishaps were easily dealt with: when the roll dough I was working with (a new recipe that I'd altered slightly - still not sure what went wrong) just would not behave normally, even after an hour of doctoring/waiting, I tossed it and was still able to have fresh rolls on the table at 6:00.



I was able to add two new recipes: these sugared cranberries which looked beautiful and were a good way to use up part of a leftover bag of berries, and this from-scratch green bean casserole which I absolutely loved (but I'm glad I didn't try it for Thanksgiving because I don't think it would've gone over well with the traditionalists).

When I realized in the midst of getting ready to put the ham in the oven that I'd forgotten to buy apple cider, I confidently subbed in chicken broth, and wasn't upset when it meant that the final product wasn't quite as good as last year's.

I'm so happy that even though everything in my kitchen doesn't turn out perfectly every time, I now have the experience and confidence not to panic, or get frustrated and give up, or even worse, let it ruin the celebration. Because a happy, healthy family, gathered together around the table, laughing and eating, is of course what the holidays are really about.

I love this kind of Sunday

Hubby spent the day reading The Fellowship of the Ringto the kids and then watching football while the kids were upstairs building giant forts out of every pillow and blanket in the house.

I spent the day in the kitchen. Hadn't planned on it, but things kept coming up, and at the end of the day, I was looking at this counter full of food. I love it.



Today's breakfast treat was pumpkin doughnut muffins, recommended by Di. I made a half recipe, which made eight muffins. I baked them for 26 minutes; we loved the flavor but they were a tad dry...I'll take them out earlier next time.

Rebecca tweeted about Sara's baked applesauce yesterday, conveniently a day we spent at the orchard. I made 5 pounds of apples with a sprinkling of sugar, cinnamon, and fresh nutmeg, and they baked for about 55 minutes. It made a much smaller yield than I'm accustomed to, but this is easily the best applesauce I've ever tasted in my life (and that's with forgetting to add the pats of butter!).

My little girl has a cold and was sneezy and drippy all morning; I said, "What about chicken noodle soup for dinner tonight?" "YES! [it's a favorite] With flour bread!" That's what the kiddos call ciabatta, because of the dusting of flour. I got right to work, using the recipe from ABED, and letting five hours in the middle of the day sub for the overnight rest it's supposed to get.

And then I remembered reading Deb's post for chicken noodle soup the other day, and decided to give it a try. I always make turkey stock for gravy, but believe it or not, I've never made my own chicken stock for soup. I ended up using a combination of Deb's recipe and the recipe from ATK's family cookbook. Knowing that I wanted broth for tonight's soup, as well as tomorrow's dinner, I upped the recipe by about half. The soup was so good, with a light and clear broth. I'm not sure it will fit into our schedules to make it this way all the time (we eat chicken noodle soup a lot), but if I have a Sunday at home, I can certainly see stocking up (hehe) again.

Finally, I picked up a bag of Meyer lemons at the grocery store today and it's been ages since we've had homemade ice cream, so I whipped up a batch of Meyer lemon curd frozen yogurt.

It was a good day.

Homemade chicken stock
makes 13 cups broth, 6 cups cubed chicken
5 pounds chicken pieces (I used 4 leg quarters and 2 bone-in breasts)
1 1/2 onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 T salt
freshly ground pepper
12 c water
1 T safflower oil
1. In large stock pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened and beginning to brown, about 4 minutes.
2. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and add half to the pan, making sure the skin is touching the bottom of the pan. Cook 10 minutes, until chicken is nicely browned. Remove first batch of chicken and repeat with second batch.
3. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Simmer with the lid mostly on until chicken is done (took about 45 minutes for me; some of my chicken pieces were very large). (Skim off scum as necessary.)
4. Remove chicken. Let cool, remove skin and bones, and chop.
5. Strain stock into a large measuring cup.

Chicken noodle soup
makes 7 servings
2 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 parsnips, chopped
1 small potato, chopped
1 tsp dried thyme
8 c broth
6 oz egg noodles
3 c cubed chicken
1. Heat oil in large stock pot (I used the same one I'd cooked the stock in) over medium heat. Add veggies and cook for 4 minutes.
2. Add broth, bring to a boil, and simmer 15 minutes.
3. Add noodles and cook for time on package, adding the chicken for the last 2 minutes of cooking time.
4. Serve with flour bread and fresh baked applesauce. :-)


A simple meal, but it makes me happy to know that I know the ingredients of everything I put on the table because it was all made right here.