Unprocessed parenting

This has been a challenging winter for us...multiple illnesses, a broken kneecap, eye surgery, and a winter that won't end (Hello, spring? Where are you?!). While I still spend a lot of time in the kitchen, make most of our dinners, and continue to make our breads and treats, we've also been cheating more: going out to eat, ordering in pizza, scrounging (crackers & cheese, frozen pizza, oatmeal), and (I'm embarrassed to admit) that blue box of wrongly-colored mac-n-cheese actually graced our table for the first time ever. Okay, that last one wasn't actually a cheat; hubby was just desperately craving the blue box and frozen chicken nuggets.

It's time to refocus. I've always been interested in the Unprocessed October idea...but October is always a crazy month for us so I've never tried it. I brought up the idea to my hubby, knowing that it would be hard to do it without him being on board. Luckily he, too, feels the need to refocus our eating and exercise habits. We decided to start with a two week unprocessed trial once spring arrives. (I'll be honest, I'm too bummed by this never-ending winter to start now...the weather just makes me want to cuddle up with comfort food and cookies. Plus this gives me time to do some research and planning.)

Tonight as we sat down to dinner, hubby and I started talking about what we'd be able to eat from our dinner if we were doing the unprocessed thing. Our ever-curious kids asked what we were talking about.

I started with the idea that companies take whole foods and add stuff to them (chemicals and things) to make them taste better or to make them last longer. And the more things they put in and the farther the food gets from its original state, the less healthy it is for our bodies. I explained that Mommy and Daddy were planning to try eating unprocessed foods for a while, avoiding foods with all the added stuff. We looked at our table: could we still eat the ciabatta? Yes, Mommy made it. The little guy asked about the flour I used; "but you bought that at the store." That's true; so I took out the bag and we looked at the ingredient list: just wheat. So although we buy it at the store, the wheat isn't really processed, just ground. How about the chicken soup? Could we still eat that? Yep, Mommy made that, too. The fruit? Yep, it's a whole food. The kids asked, "How about our yogurts?" I explained that no, their yogurts weren't unprocessed, but we also weren't going to make them eat unprocessed with us, unless they wanted to. The little guy (he's 6 now) asked why their yogurt wasn't okay. I asked him to read me the list of ingredients: he started with milk, sugar, vanilla...sounds okay so far. Then he got to a bunch of strange, unpronounceable words; yes, those are the ones to be wary of.

We are not planning to force the kids to give up their yogurt or cereal during our unprocessed trial, but I'm glad to start these conversations with them and help them start to think about the foods they put into their bodies.

I'm curious and hopeful about trying the unprocessed thing. I'll keep you updated!

Fudge success!

One of our most-anticipated treats at Christmas time is my mother-in-law's creamy and delicious chocolate fudge.

While I experiment in the kitchen all of the time, fudge is not something I've ever tried. Paging through their new Star Wars cookbook (yes, they have two Star Wars cookbooks), the kiddos found a recipe for May the Fudge Be With You, and insisted we try it. In the recipe, it talks about stirring the fudge until it goes from glossy to dull, but I had no idea what that meant or how long it would take. I stirred it for a minute or two, and then poured it into the pan.

Now that I know better, it is not a surprise that the fudge never set, and while tasty, it had a grainy texture.

A short time later, Joanna mentioned Celia's tutorial on fudge, and I decided to try it. Celia actually has two tutorials; I studied them both, but tried the chocolate recipe.

With Celia's detailed, helpful instructions and pictures, it became very clear why my first attempt didn't turn out, and I finally realized what it means for fudge to "snap" and turn from glossy to dull. Clearly I didn't mix for nearly long enough. And clearly I was not patient enough.

Happily, it worked! Thanks, Celia. :) I can now make a delicious and creamy fudge, and I can't wait to try other flavors.

Pizza rolls

I've talked before about hubby's love of frozen processed foods. One of his favorite things to do is to walk through the frozen food aisle in the grocery store and drool over the frozen foods...in the hopes that I'll say, "Oh, I can make those!" It worked for taquitos. :)

On Super Bowl Sunday, hubby really wanted pizza rolls, so I decided to try them.
There weren't as many recipes as I thought there'd be, and most of them just used regular pizza dough and seemed like mini calzones, or used wonton wrappers which didn't seem like the right consistency. But then I found this article, which described the process of perfecting the pizza roll.

I made the dough as described, using my pasta roller to get the dough nice and thin. For the filling, I used our normal homemade pizza sauce, mixed with pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. I plopped a bit of filling every couple inches on the pieces of dough, used a pizza cutter to separate them, and then pinched them together.

We tried them both ways, fried in oil and baked in the oven. Do I even need to say which tasted better?

I'm not a big fan of fried foods, but even I couldn't stop eating these. These took forever and were kind of a pain to make, especially for how few the recipe made. But they were delicious, and I know hubby would be thrilled if I ever made them again!

Lego cake & a mother's love

I'm not sure how, but somehow, my little guy is turning six. When I asked him several weeks ago what kind of cake he wanted for his (first ever!) friend birthday party, he responded with, "A weapon's case with weapons on it like a sword and shield and ax." ??! No idea where this stuff comes from. When I explained that that probably wasn't likely, he decided, "How about a blue six-studded Lego block?" Hm...well, that I could probably do.

I did some research, but couldn't find much, until I stumbled on this article from the Kitchn: How to make an anatomically correct Lego cake. I was really impressed with the math and research that went into it...but I wasn't that concerned with the precise measurements of my cake. The one piece of advice I did take was the idea of using mini-muffins for the studs of the Legos.

Following my friend Di's lead, instead of making a sheet cake and trying to slice it in half horizontally, I decided to bake the cake in two jelly roll pans. I was nervous that a 9x13 wouldn't be big enough (we were expecting up to 20 people, depending on how many parents stayed at the party), and then I found two 15.5"x10.5" pans. Perfect!

I settled on Dorie's devil's food cake (you can find the recipe here), remembering that it was sturdy, moist, and yummy the last time I made it. I made a full recipe, divided into the two jelly roll pans, plus 18 mini muffins.

I asked the little guy what kind of frosting he wanted in between the layers, and he decided on chocolate. Knowing how rich the cake was, I wanted a light chocolate frosting and found this recipe, which was just the thing. Unfortunately, I only had one stick of butter at room temperature, so I made a half recipe; I wish I would've had a bit more, but it was enough to make a thin layer in between the cake layers.

Looking for a stable, easy-to-color frosting, with a light taste and texture that wouldn't compete with the chocolates, I decided to try seven-minute frosting. I used ATK's recipe, adding blue food coloring with the vanilla at the end. I was impressed with how easy the frosting was to make, and as promised, it tasted very marshmallowy, and was a huge hit. As I tried to frost each individual stud without getting too many crumbs in the frosting, I said to my little guy, "This is proof of a mother's love." :)

The cake was a huge hit; even I couldn't think of any "it's good but"s. My mom, brother, and sister couldn't stop raving, and the little guy begged and begged for a second piece (I didn't cave). When I asked the birthday boy if the cake lived up to his expectations, he said, "It was perfectly excellent."

Dorie's black and white chocolate birthday cake

It was recently my 37th birthday! I think I've posted before about the fact that, being the cake baker in the family, I frequently passed my birthday without birthday cake. A few years ago, I finally complained to my hubby, and he started buying me an ice cream cake, one of my favorite treats.
Last year, I decided I wanted to make my own birthday treat, and I made cupcakes with my girl. This year, I decided I wanted to make myself a fancy cake. I paged through my cookbooks, finally settling on Dorie's black and white chocolate cake, a yellow buttermilk cake filled with dark chocolate cream and frosted with white chocolate whipped cream.

I made a half recipe, using my two 6" round pans. After reading some commentary about the recipe, I decided to make 3/4 of the whipped cream recipe to be sure I'd have enough to frost the entire cake. The cake was a bit of a process, but I baked the cake and made the chocolate cream a day early, so it wasn't too overwhelming. I was also careful to take advantage of our deep freeze, freezing the cake layers before frosting and freezing it after the crumb coat. It worked beautifully, and was a delicious and fancy way to celebrate my birthday with my favorite people. :)

What I've been up to: a mishmash

Oh, my, has it really been that long?! One post in October, zero in November, a few in December, and one in the first six weeks of the new year.

The funny reason that I've been so absent (besides the normal full-time-working-mother with a partner with a broken kneecap complaints of being busy) is actually technology. My work computer (my only computer) was ancient in technological terms: seven years old, too old to run our grading program, too old to accept any updates, too old to find the internet. I stopped bringing it home, instead relying on my iPad and iPhone, both of which I love and am addicted to, but neither of which is great for typing. And thus, no blogging.

Happily, when our building tech committee reviewed the applications for new computers, they chose me! And last Friday, my new computer was delivered. It is amazing: it not only finds the internet, but even jumps from site to site in seconds. Beautiful. So I'm hoping to get back into the swing of blogging...while it sometimes feels like a chore, I've missed writing about cooking and recording my baking adventures...and mostly, talking to like-minded food bloggers about food. :)

A couple of weekends ago, I tried these cinnamon roll muffins from Tracey's site. I liked the idea of cinnamon rolls that could be made on a moment's notice, as they are frequently requested here, and the kids are not always happy to hear that cinnamon roll dough takes a while. These muffins were incredibly quick. The kiddos weren't sure about them at first, but the dozen disappeared in a weekend, so I guess they were a hit. Even knowing ahead of time that they would be biscuit-like, I still missed the cinnamon roll texture, so I'll probably stick to the real thing in the future.



Although I haven't been blogging, I've still been talking to my Twitter pals, and I jumped on board when several people were baking these Asiago bagels from KAF a few weeks ago. I made them for bookclub, and they were a hit, although (no big surprise) the kiddos didn't like them. I am not a big cheesy bread person, so they weren't my favorite either, but it's always fun to try a new bagel recipe.









My friend Rebecca tweeted about these pretzel rolls a while ago; they are a favorite at her house. She talked about how easy they were to make, and how delicious they were. I asked for the recipe, but it took forever for me to try them. This Monday, the kiddos and I had the day off from school. We had some big plans, but ended up spending the entire day playing in our pjs, and I finally had a chance to try the pretzel rolls. As promised, they were easy, and had a delightful pretzely flavor and light, fluffy texture. Hubby and I loved them. We weren't able to finish them, so he brought them to school this morning, and I heard they were an absolute hit with his first block students.






I also made these scones for breakfast, subbing in strawberries for the raspberries, and adding a handful of white chocolate chips. I really think these are the best scones I've ever had, so incredibly moist. I baked one tray the first morning and froze the rest. They have provided us with a delightful breakfast treat on two other mornings, and I already have plans to bake another batch.







Finally, we've been reading a lot of Harry Potter around here, and after reading about the delicious butterbeer, I decided we had to try it. I found a bunch of recipes online, but eventually settled on this one, which is apparently served at Disney, and which (apparently) JK Rowling says tastes the way she imagines butterbeer tastes. I used the not-so-simple recipe at the bottom of the article, subbing in vanilla extract for the rum extract. Fun to make and fun to sip, but holy moly was it ever sweet! No one could have more than a sip or two at a time.

And that's the start of what I've been up to! I'm hoping to get up some other posts over the next few days...and hoping that will get me back into the swing of things. We shall see!

At long last: the perfect fried rice and steamed dumplings

My hubby and I have been making fried rice ever since we first moved in together almost ten years ago. We both love going out for Chinese food, and, even before I learned to cook, we loved the team work of chopping millions of veggies and rapidly throwing them into a hot wok.

We've tried countless recipes over the years, but could never capture that elusive Chinese restaurant flavor. No matter what we did, the dish was always lacking something. I followed recipes from Cooking Light and Cook's Illustrated, random Chinese cookbooks that my mom has had forever, experimenting with adding more soy sauce, trying oyster sauce, fish sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, hoisin, in different combinations and different amounts. It was never right.

Tonight, I did it. And it is so simple. After browsing a bunch of recipes online, I was struck by how simple most of them were; nothing more complex than soy sauce, ginger, garlic, salt, and white pepper. I have only recently heard of white pepper, and had spontaneously picked some up when I was at Penzey's recently. Magic. That's what we've been missing.

I made the rice with the steamed dumplings that KAF posted on the blog this morning. Steamed dumplings are another family favorite. These were easy and yummy: the outside was perfect, much better than the wonton-wrapper-covered ones I've tried before. The filling was okay, if a little bland; I'd like to doctor it a bit, maybe with some soy sauce. They were good with a dipping sauce, though (soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic). The kids loved them; in fact, I think at final count, the little girl ate a dozen on her own.

Most fried rice recipes I've found rely on simplicity, but we love it loaded with meat and veggies. Amounts here are approximate; I never measure too carefully when making fried rice; that's part of the fun, right?

Fried rice
Makes about 8 dinner-sized servings

4 Tbsp peanut oil, divided
3/4 pound chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
10 uncooked shrimp, cut into thirds
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp minced ginger
2 carrots, chopped
3/4 cup broccoli florets, cut small
4 or 5 mushrooms, sliced
1 c frozen veggies (peas and corn)
3 eggs, broken up gently
4-5 c day-old cold rice
2 T soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper

Have all ingredients prepped and ready beforehand. Cooking goes fast and you are constantly stirring.

1. Heat a wok over high heat until water sizzles and evaporates in a second or two.
2. Add 1 T peanut oil and swirl to coat.
3. Add chicken and cook until partly done. Add shrimp pieces and continue cooking, about 3 minutes, until both chicken and shrimp are cooked through. Remove to a large bowl.
4. Add 1 T oil to pan and swirl to coat. Add ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant, about 10 seconds. Add carrots and broccoli and cook for 1 or 2 minutes. Add mushrooms and cook for 1 minute. Add peas and corn and cook for 1 minute. Remove veggies into bowl with chicken and shrimp.
5. Add 1 T oil to pan and swirl. Add eggs and cook until just barely set, 1or 2 minutes. Remove to bowl.
6. Add 1 T oil to pan and swirl to coat. Add rice and stir. Add soy sauce, salt, and pepper and cook until rice seems warmed, 2 or 3 minutes. Add everything back in and give it a final stir.