I made this quick and easy item for my lunch today and they were very yummy!

2 cups bread crumbs or stuffing mix  (I always save the ends and crumbs from the whole grain bread we get.  You can chop up bits of bread in the food processor to make your own healthy bread crumbs.)

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (did you know that there is fat-free cheese available?  I just learned that.  It’s pretty good, too!)

1/4 cup chopped green onions and tops

2 cloves minced garlic

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1 package (10 ounces) frozen spinach, thawed and drained

1/4 cup vegetable stock

2 tablespoons melted butter

salt and pepper

2 egg whites, beaten

Mix it all up and form into balls.  Place on greased cookie sheet or pan.  Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until browned.  Yumm!

He’s a pretty normal kid, too, so I think there’s a good chance you and yours will also enjoy this easy and fairly healthy snack.

Fruit Nuggets

2 cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs

half cup finely group ginger snaps OR graham cracker crumbs

half teaspoon cinnamon

half teaspoon nutmeg

half teaspoon ginger

2 cups assorted dried fruit (apples, raisins, dates, apricots, whatever you have)

half cup orange juice

2-3 Tablespoons honey

Combine graham cracker and ginger snap crumbs in spices in med bowl.  Finely chop fruit in food processor or by hand. (I used my food processor to turn the crackers and cookies into crumbs as well)  Add crumbs to the fruit in the food processor, if it’s big enough.  If not, combine in a large bowl.

Add orange juice and honey, stir or mix until it all holds together. Roll into one inch balls.  Store in an air tight container at room temp or in the fridge.

My son loved these so much that he took them to share with his friends, who also thought they were very good.  Now I have to make more. 

Have any of you ever tried making your own cheese?

I’m just loving reading Barbara Kingsolver’s new book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle these days.  She’s inspiring me about so many things!

When I was a young mother of only 1-3 children (back in my 20s) I did a lot of gardening, canning, and so forth.  As we added more children to our family, and things got more intense, most of those extras  were abandoned in favor of survival.  :)  Now that my “baby” is four, there may be room for me to get “back to the earth” a little more every here and there.

Today’s reading of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle reminded me of homemade cheese.  You can get all the books and supplies from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.

Although I regularly struggle with whether or not I think cheese is healthy in general, I’m pretty sure that homemade cheese is healthier than store-bought.  :)  I’m thinking that my little homeschool students and I might enjoy some good edible science experiments…..in the form of Ricotta, mozarella, and so forth.

Have you ever tried making homemade cheese?  How did it go?

Thanks to reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I was reminded of the Seed Savers Exchange. You can get heirloom seeds of a huge variety of amazing veggies, herbs, and flowers. These are seeds you can grow in your garden and then keep the seeds from your harvest to plant the next year. (and share with your friends!) You just can’t find wonderful items like purple tomatoes or multi-colored swiss chard in most grocery stores.

If nobody’s willing to eat it, it won’t help anybody be healthy.

I’ve been reminded of this by my children (and myself, once or twice) while we’ve been trying out some new recipes.  Needless to say, the reject recipes won’t be making their way to this blog.

You can read another good review of Supermom’s No-Lice Hair and Body Spray here.

My oldest child is 15.  He brings his friends over to our house a lot.  These boys, mostly brought up on McDonald’s, Mountain Dew, and school cafeteria lunches, are my very favorite taste testers.  My theory is that if they will eat something healthy and like it, I’ve got a winner recipe on my hands.

So far, my son’s friends have tried, and liked, all of the following:

Teeccino

Yerba mate teas

water flavored with grape stevia (and other flavors)

and their greatest rave review is for…

HEALTHY ICE CREAM!

They ALL love it, and always want more.  So, this isn’t just for the hard core health nuts.  This is Good Stuff!

Most importantly you need a good food processor or Vita Mix.  You could try this in a blender, but you need to make it in much smaller batches.

Secondly, you need bananas.  Any time you see bananas that are speckled with brown and marked down to 15-25 cents per pound, buy them!  I bring them home, peel them, lay them down side by side in a larger rectangular Tupperware container, and then use an ordinary dinner knife to cut through the bananas (about a half inch thick, but it really doesn’t matter).  Put the seal on the container and stick it in the freezer.  (These are not only wonderful for healthy ice cream, but I also use them in smoothies, banana bread, and more)

Once you’ve got frozen bananas, you’re ready to make ice cream.

I normally use about one banana per person that will be eating the ice cream.  Put the bananas into the food processor.  If possible, add 4 or 5 frozen unsweetened strawberries. (the strawberries help the ice cream hold it’s ice cream consistency longer) Chop it all up very well in the food processor.

Then add a little bit of milk, rice milk, coconut milk, or any other milk-like liquid while the food processor is going round and round.  Once the consistency resembles soft serve ice cream, stop adding the milk.

Now, if you want strawberry ice cream, just add some more strawberries and a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract, whiz it up some more, and eat!

If you want chocolate ice cream, you should add cocoa or carob powder by the Tablespoonfuls until the ice cream looks chocolatey. (keep the food processor going and give it time to mix up before you add another spoonful of powder)  Then add honey by the Tablespoonful until the ice cream is sweetened enough.  Start with 2 Tablespoons and take a taste.

As you can see, this is a very “cooking from the hip” kind of recipe.  Basically, you just add the elements until they do what they’re supposed to do.  You can continue to tweak it until you’ve got it just right.

My whole family loves to have healthy ice cream for a treat, and sometimes we even have it for breakfast.  I have added chopped up figs to the chocolate ice cream.  You can also add healthy peanut butter if you like a Charlie Brown kind of ice cream.

You could also substitute other fruits for the strawberries.  For instance, now is a good time to make peach ice cream.  Use your imagination.  It’s really good!

As far as freezing it, this recipe is best when made fresh, but you can freeze it with decent success.  I have best results when using shallow, small, rectangular containers to freeze the ice cream in.  You need to pull it out of the freezer awhile before you want to eat it, to give it time to thaw a bit.  Not as perfect as when it’s fresh, but it makes a good, quick, healthy snack.

Another use for leftover healthy ice cream is to dehydrate it.  I have poured leftover healthy ice cream onto teflex sheets and dehydrated it at a low temperature.  It turned out like fruit roll ups, except chocolatey, which was awesome.  Chocolate chewey yumminess without sugar!

This was my first attempt at making calzones. I think they turned out pretty good.  The children enjoyed them, and I ended up with enough to have leftovers in the freezer for dinner some other time!

First, for the dough, I combined:

2 cups hot water

2 Tablespoons of yeast

whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons sugar (later I realized I should have used honey)

For the amount of flour, you just add flour while the kneading bar goes round and round.  You keep adding flour until the sides of the bowl are clean when the dough spins around.  You want to get just enough flour to get to the point where the sides and bottom of the bowl are clean, but no more than that.

For the filling combine in a skillet:

1 cup shredded zucchini

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1/2 cup chopped onions

1/4 cup bell peppers

1 can (14 ounces) diced tomatoes with garlic, undrained or the real tomato equivalent

2 teaspoons Italian seasoning

Cook over med high heat, stirring, until the liquid from the tomatoes is gone.  (about 10 min)

Cool slightly, then add:

1 cup fat free ricotta cheese

2 cups shredded reduced-fat mozzarella cheese

To assemble the calzones, you need to roll out the dough.  You can roll it in circles, or rectangles of any size.  For some of ours I used my Pampered Chef Cut-n-Seal which made cute little circles that the kids were very excited about.  For others I made long rectangles of rolled out dough, added the filling down the middle, and then wrapped up with sides.
Once you have all your dough and filling used up, bake at 350 for about 15 minutes.  We enjoyed serving it with warmed spaghetti saucefor dipping.

If I had it to do over again, I would add some garlic to the dough, and probably add soem garlic butter or garlic salt to the outside of the calzones before baking.  It would add fat, but it would have been more flavorful.

With the filling, you can add or delete any of the ingredients you like.  I made a few calzones with spaghetti sauce and pepperoni for two of my children (yes, pepperoni is meat…it was left over from our last shopping trip.  :)  ).  I think more zucchini would have been nice in this recipe, and this is the time of year for it.  Shredded carrots would have been good, too.  You could even add cooked beans in this.  Oh!  And spinach would work well also.

A very versatile recipe, and one you can certainly make with all whole foods without sacrificing anything!  I love that.  Don’t you?

The other day I made this for lunch.  I think it’s great, but the rest of the family didn’t.  So, more for me!  I’ve been eating it for leftovers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ever since!  This is very easy to make and is definitely appropriate for any meal of the day, snacks, or even hors d’oevres.

Spray a 9×13 pan with no-stick spray.  (Olive oil is a good one and can be found in most stores)

Sprinkle 1-2 Tablespoons of dry bread crumbs on the bottom of the pan.  (If you can use whole wheat bread crumbs that would be ideal.  I save our scraps of bread and make my own bread crumbs in the food processor and store it in the freezer)

In a bowl, combine

2 cups fat-free cottage cheese

1.5 cups shredded fat-free Cheddar cheese

2 eggs

6 Tablespoons whole wheat flour

1 package (10 ounces) of frozen, chopped spinach that is thawed and drained (I put my frozen block of spinach in a colander in the sink several hours before I want to use it, so that it’s ready to go when I am)

1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions and tops

1/4 cup chopped bell peppers or pimiento

1/4 cup chopped parsley

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Stir all those ingredients together and then spread on top of the bread crumbs.

Bake at 350 until set and lightly brown, approx 35-40 minutes.  Let sit to cool for 10 minutes before cutting into squares.

Enjoy!

As participants in my upcoming healthy eating class will learn, although I know a lot about the “shoulds” of healthy eating, I do not always find it doable.  Yes, I can do it….but only if I let everything else in my life fall by the wayside.

Changing how we eat is hard.  Harder than you’d expect.  Habits are what come easy, and healthy habits are a bonus.  I try to find healthy things that I can make into habits.

Every now and then I get inspired to try to eat healthier than we have been.  Sometimes I become aware (or reminded of) some aspect of healthier eating that I’ve wanted to try, or meant to get back to.  I run with my enthusiasm, even though I know there is a good chance that I won’t be able to maintain a completely strict way of eating for very long.  I figure even if it’s only for a couple of weeks or months, it’s worth doing if it’s good for me.  Right?

So right now we’re trying to shave meat out of our diet.  Once upon a time we actually did a whole foods, proper food combining, mostly organic, vegan diet!  Yeah baby, it was wild!  We went cold turkey with it, and for the most part it went very well.  (My oldest child, now 15,still talks about our first meal on The Diet.  It was whole wheat bread with homemade hummus and broccoli sprouts.  I can still remember his little face–just 6 years old–looking at his lunch, and then asking me, “What is this?”  After I told him it was hummus, he replied, “Mucous?!”  It’s still a good family joke.  And honestly, it was a pretty good lunch that I wouldn’t mind having again.)

But, eventually life got in the way (in the form of a complicated pregnancy, bed rest, moving to a new house, and a premature baby!) and our perfect diet went bye bye. Since then I’ve had my ups and downs with eating healthy.  For now, the reason we’re trying to shave meat out of our diets is mainly because of the many hormones, steroids, and junk that goes into most commonly available meat, fish, and poultry in our stores.  Secondly, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of eating animals in general.  Commercially raised animals are not treated in a proper way while they live, and are not slaughtered humanely either.  I don’t think I’ll ever be a hard-core vegetarian, but I do like the idea of not killing living creatures for my food, if possible.

So, anyhow, in the next few days I’ll be sharing some of what is working and not working for us.  Also…recipes!  Only the ones we actually liked.  :)  (So, tonite’s “Black Bean Pancakes” will NOT be recommended….anyone have ideas about how to make 2-3 dozen unlovable pancakes go bye-bye??)