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.

Unprocessed: Setting goals

As I said the other day, to truly go unprocessed, you need to cut out more than we bargained for. Most meats and dairy foods have some sort of stabilizer or preservative or something added. You can't use any sugar (brown or white) in baking. Technically no vital wheat gluten in bread-making. No corn starch to help thicken ice cream or stews. No wines to flavor cooking.

After discussion, hubby and I agreed that this wasn't really what we had in mind when we decided to attempt this challenge. And, even if it was, there is no way I can devote that much time to this project in the middle of the school year. Our primary goals are to reset: to eat more healthfully, be more conscious of what we put in our bodies, read ingredient labels, cut out our demon-foods, fix our snack habits, and try to cut out as many chemicals as possible. Here is the list of goals we came up with, in order of importance:

1. Completely eliminate our demon foods: candy for me, pop and chips for hubby.


2. Cut down or eliminate snacking and desserts (especially the unhealthy ones).


3. Bake all of our bread products (buns, loaves, crackers, pizza crusts, etc.).


4. Switch back to lean meats; attempt to buy some from the farmer's market. (Although, I know we'll probably still use mostly grocery store meats, even with their added ingredients.)


5. Focus more on fruits and veggies; more salads.


6. Make all cookies, crackers, etc, from scratch with real ingredients.


7. Use more whole grains (sub brown rice for white; whole wheat flour for white flour).


8. Grate cheeses ourselves to avoid stablizers added to shredded cheeses.


9. Cut back on eating out (not that we do that much anyway); be more conscious and careful when we eat out.


10. Cut back on our reliance on meat; one vegetarian dinner per week?

Some other thoughts, ideas, and plans:

1. We'd initially talked about doing only two weeks, but after reflecting, we realized that it needs to be longer to actually have a chance of changing our patterns. So we're going to do a month.


2. We wanted to wait until after the Easter candy was out of the house, and I know you're not supposed to start changing things on a Monday, so we agreed to start on April 7.


3. I am willing to cut back, but not totally eliminate sugars.


4. I am going to attempt to make all of our sauces: ketchup, mustard, salad dressings, mayo, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't have time. If we have to purchase, I will read the labels carefully and select the most unprocessed I can find.


5. I will attempt to make all pasta from scratch, but if necessary, will buy the most unprocessed I can.


6. I did not realize the extent of added ingredients to our canned beans and tomatoes; I will try to start using more dried beans and frozen veggies.


7. I would love to go back to making my own yogurt, but I'm not sure I'll have the time. If I don't, my usual plain yogurt already fits the kitchen test.


8. For the most part, our cheeses, butters, milk, cream, peanut butter, maple syrup, and honey already pass the kitchen test.


9. We will continue to use/cook with vital wheat gluten, wine, table salt, olive oil, safflower oil, corn starch, and some seasonings (sriacha, soy sauce, etc.).

So...let's see what happens!

Unprocessed: Rules and reflections

I have been doing a lot of research on the whole unprocessed thing lately, and wow, it is more than I bargained for! The official October Unprocessed website has a ton of great resources, including this official guide, which I downloaded and read cover-to-cover.

What I discovered is that everything is processed. Well, okay, not really...but if you're going whole-hog, so to speak, a lot more things are forbidden than I'd thought about: white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup (okay, I knew all of those), anything with "natural flavors" on the label, or soy lecithin, or carageenan. No corn starch (eek! but my favorite ice cream recipe uses corn starch!). No dutch processed cocoa, no chocolate bars (kinda figured that one). The only "allowed" oils are evoo, unrefined coconut, butter, and peanut. No table salt. You have to check the labels on cheese, butter, yogurt...even milk, because sometimes they add things in. Meat: check the label; most of it has stuff added to it.

One thing I really liked about the guide is that they give really clear reasons and explanations for why things pass or don't pass the "kitchen test" -- they define "unprocessed" as anything a normal person with some cooking skill could make in a home kitchen with whole ingredients.

The other thing I really like is that they make it clear that you need to make the unprocessed goal work for you. So they suggest setting an intention: being clear about what your goals are and striving to meet those, and/or making deliberate exceptions before you even start, so that if you have something that's processed, you're not "cheating" and you don't have to rely on your willpower in a tough moment.

Armed with all of this knowledge, hubby and I had a big discussion about our goals for this challenge. I am so glad he is on board; I do not have faith that I could do this all on my own. More on our specific goals later........ (Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, I've decided to document our work on this challenge here. I have been in a blogging funk lately, and I'm hoping this will not only help us on our unprocessed journey, but also get me back in the habit of daily writing.)

Wordless Wednesday: Road Trip

Road trip = The opposite of unprocessed

Wordless Wednesday: Unprocessed kids

Guess the kids are on board with the whole unprocessed idea. Without any mention of yesterday's discussion, the little guy walked in the door from school, pulled all of the kids' cookbooks off the shelf, and said, "Let's get started finding some good non-store-bought foods to make at home!"