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!"

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."