I discovered this Cranberry Apple Zinger tea back in the winter in a fruit tea sampler.  I loved this particular tea, but had a really hard time finding a box of just this kind.  Eventually I did, but had to buy it in bulk, so now I can share the fun with you guys!

Although I loved this tea in the winter, I’m really enjoying it this summer.  I make it into a cold sweet tea, which is a flavorful beverage–with zero calories!  It’s super easy to make:

I use my 10-cup coffee maker for this.  In the filter basket I put 3 tea bags.  Then fill the water reservoir all the way full, and brew.  After it’s done, let it cool.  (Make it at night and let it cool overnight)

In a 2 quart pitcher I put about 4 droppers full of regular Sweet Leaf Stevia, and all the tea from the coffee maker carafe.  Voila!  Sweet Cranberry Apple Zinger!

This is what is in my crock pot right now.  Super easy, not expensive, and for my anti-tomato children, this is a chili they actually enjoy. 

Soak one pound of dry white beans overnight in the crock pot (without the heat on).  I used navy beans, but Great Northerns work well too.

In the morning drain off the water, and add in six cups of chicken broth.  The best choice I know of right now, for avoiding glutamates, is the Imagine Brand Organic Free Range Chicken Broth.  It comes in cartons (like rice milk).

Also add in 2 teaspoons of minced garlic, and a chopped up small onion.

Cook on high for a couple of hours until beans are soft.

After that, sautee

3 Tablespoons of olive oil

3 teaspoons of minced garlic

another chopped onion

Once those are lightly cooked, throw in a pound of ground turkey, beef, or venison and cook it up, breaking the meat into small pieces with your spatula.

Add in 7 teaspoons of the homemade taco seasoning mix that I told you about two days ago.  (or one packet of chili seasoning)

Once the meat is cooked, add it to the beans in the crock pot.  Also add in about two cups of frozen corn.

Cook on low until it’s time to eat!  (when it’s getting to within a half hour of dinner time, add one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar)

If you are not going to be home for doing those steps in the middle of the day, I see no reason why you couldn’t just throw the cooked meat and everything else into the crock pot first thing in the morning and cook on low.  **The one exception to this would be the seasonings.  If you add salt to beans before they are cooked, they prevent the beans from getting soft.  Not good!  So, if you want to leave this chili to cook on low for the day, hold back the spices and just add them as soon as you are able to before eating, but after the beans are soft.

I used to keep a lot of leftovers on hand, but lately I am just freezing the leftovers into containers that are good sizes for my husband to take to work for a meal, or for us to have for dinner another night.  This recipe makes a lot, so we will almost definitely end up with enough for two dinners for us.  Especially if I serve some homemade bread or salad with it. 

For today’s lunch I threw together this veggie taco meal and my husband and kids loved it.  So, of course, I have to share it with all of you. 

Start with melting about 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet.  (You could use olive oil instead)

I added about a teaspoon of garlic and one small diced onion.  (whizzed it up in the food processor)

after sauteeing that for a few minutes I added in four carrots and one zucchini, both of which I had whizzed up into small pieces using my food processor.

Also added three cans of beans:  1 kidney, 1 black bean, 1 pinto.

Plus 7 teaspoons of my homemade taco seasoning mix.  (basically equals on taco seasoning packet from the store–will share the recipe at the end)

I stirred this up while heating, making sure it didn’t scorch on the bottom.  Brought it to a boil, then covered and simmered for about 10 minutes or so to get the carrots cooked.  Then uncovered and continued to cook and stir at medium temp. for about 20 more minutes.  Basically, once the carrots aren’t too hard, you can be done.  (I liked leaving them just a little crunchy for texture)

We had hard taco shells and soft tortillas.  You can probably find whole wheat tortillas at your grocery store.  I also had

organic lettuce

guacamole

sour cream

colby jack cheese

and taco sauce to put on these.

My kids do not like tomatoes, so this recipe really made them happy.  Of course, you could add some diced tomatoes while cooking, or just have them to add afterwards for those that enjoy them.

It was definitely a messy meal, but everybody ate happily and there were no complaints.  A golden recipe for my arsenal! 

I am sure you could use more or less veggies, different beans, etc.  This is a great “cooking from the hip” recipe because it’s hard to mess up.  As long as it’s hearty, and not too liquidy, you are good to go.  This recipe did seem a little runny in the skillet, but once it started to cool off it turned into a perfect consistency for tacos.

If you plan ahead you could soak and cook the beans ahead of time.

Zucchini is so great for adding into recipes like this.  When we get excess zukes in the summer time I just whiz them up in the food processor and freeze ‘em in ziploc bags.  They don’t have a strong taste, so they are easy to throw into soups, stews, casseroles, and other stuff to add nutrition and heartiness without setting off anybody’s “veggie alarm.”

To make your own homemade taco seasoning just mix up:

6 teaspoons chili powder
5 teaspoons paprika
4 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
3 teaspoons onion powder
2 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

I just stick it all into a Tupperware spice container and have it on hand for times when I need taco mix.  It saves money and helps avoid the unhealthy fillers that are in so many pre-packed mixes.

My 15 year old son needed to bring a Mexican food to a Cinco de Mayo celebration (which is today, Dos de Mayo, but hey….whatever!) and so we made this super easy and delicious soup.  I am HAPPY to say that it is healthy, inexpensive, quick, and MSG-free!  Woot!

In a crock pot, combine:

two 15-ounce cans black beans

two 14.5-ounce cans of diced or stewed tomatoes (read those labels–I found stewed tomatoes with high fructose corn syrup in it!  ugh)

28 ounces of vegetable broth

15 ounce can of corn, or the equivalent of frozen corn

15 ounce can garbanzo beans (aka chick peas)

2 cups of diced potatoes

2 cups frozen green beans

1 cup salsa

Cook on low for 9-11 hours, or on high for 4.5-5.5 hours.  You can serve it with a dollop of sour cream if you want to. 

If you want to be even thriftier, you can always use dry beans and just soak them overnight.  Drain off the water in the morning, and throw those soaked beans into the crock pot to cook along with everything else.  I would say that you would probably only need about a cup-and-a-half of the black beans, and about 3/4 of a cup of the garbanzo.

I’ve noticed that a lot of crock pot recipes require you to do a whole lot of advance cooking before putting the stuff into the pot.  I like ones where you just throw the stuff in and come back later to a meal. 

We’ll be having this soup tomorrow night along with a loaf of fresh honey whole wheat bread.  Yum!

I finally had time to bake bread properly on Saturday morning, and I thought I would share my recipe with you. (Plus, if I go a long, long time before making bread again sometime in the future, it would be handy to have the recipe here to refer to. )

Supermom’s Family-Favorite Honey Whole Wheat Bread

In Bosch mixer combine:

6 cups warm milk (not too hot! You don’t want to kill the yeast) (also, if you’re low in milk, you can use part milk and part water)

6 Tablespoons baking yeast

3 Tablespoons lecithin

1-and-a-half sticks of butter, sliced

1 cup of honey

1.5 Tablespoons sea salt

Plus freshly ground whole wheat flour. (I use a Whisper Mill) Basically, I grind 8 cups of wheat into flour and pour all of that into the Bosch. Then I grind 8 more cups of wheat, but just add it roughly by the cupful as the mixer goes round and round. You only want to add enough flour to get to the point where the dough comes away from the sides of the mixer bowl cleanly.  (the extra flour is used making pancake mix)

Leave the cover on and let the mixer do it’s thing for 10 minutes. (electronic kneading!!)

Though this recipe was originally given to me for 6 loaves, I find that it works better for us to make it into 5.  So, just grab blobs of dough and try to distribute it evenly between 5 loaf pans that have been sprayed with no-stick spray.  Lovingly pat the dough into shape, and then cover all of it with a tea towel and leave it alone to rise for a half hour.

I leave the loaves on the stove top for the rising, because about 15 minutes into the rise time I start pre-heating the oven.  I think that the heat that radiates up to the stove top helps it rise better.

Preheat the oven to 325 or so.  (350 is too much, but if you have a fancy-shmancy oven that allows you to be even more precise than 25-degree increments, I would not be surprised if you find that 330 or 340 degrees works even better).

After the half hour of rising you just need to uncover your bread and pop it into your oven.  Bake for 22 minutes.  (Seriously.  Not 20.  Not 25.  22.  Or at least, that’s what brings about bread perfection in MY oven.  Yours may be different.)

My family loves this bread so much that I try to plan for it to come out of the oven about 15 minutes or so before lunch time.  They will gladly eat some fresh bread with butter, honey, jam, or peanut butter for lunch. 

Learning about all of the covert ways that MSG and it’s baddy cat cousin Glutamate make it’s way into our food has sure been a bummer. One of the biggest disappointments was my discovery that my feel-good “No MSG added” chicken broth powder still had the junk in it. Rats! What’s a girl to do??

I can be somewhat challenging to find a chicken broth substitute that doesn’t have MSG or glutamates in it. At Walmart all I found had problem ingredients in it. But at Kroger I hit the jackpot with Imagine brand Organic Free Range Chicken Broth. I bought the low sodium version (which still has a lot, but it’s better than the regular). You’ll have to check the ingredients at your own store, because a lot of products are manufactured at more than one place, so they might not be 100% the same everywhere. (Feel free to leave a comment and let us know)

I wanted to make my healthier version of The Pioneer Woman’s Chicken Spaghetti Casserole, but to do that I would have to make my healthy version of canned cream soups. So….I had to get creative.

The recipe I used to use features the “no msg added” chicken broth powder. I wanted to experiment with the organic broth instead. So…here’s what I came up with:

Melt one and a half sticks of real butter on medium-low heat.

Once melted, add 3/4 cup whole wheat flour. Stir with whisk until well blended, and let it cook a bit until it gets bubbly.

Then I added two cups of the organic chicken broth, plus four cups of Horizons whole milk that had been pre-heated.

After that I just stirred with the whisk for about 20 minutes while reading a magazine and chatting with my daughter.

It came out great!

From there I made my version of the casserole. Here’s what I did:

Supermom’s Healthier Chicken Spaghetti

3 cups cooked chicken–cubed or shredded (I always cook my chicken ahead of time in the crock pot. Just buy a big bunch of chicken breasts on sale and throw ‘em all in the crock on low in the morning, all done by evening. Refrigerate or freeze.)

2 cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese (I learned that there are glutamates in the pre-shredded cheese, so once I use up the supply I have on hand, I am either going to start buying bricks of cheese and shredding them with my food processor, or learning to make my own. Haven’t crossed that bridge yet.)

half a sweet onion–chopped (throw it in the food processor with the chicken. Easy!)

about a pound of whole wheat spaghetti–cooked (break it up into smallish pieces to make stirring and serving a little easier) (even if you normally hate whole wheat pasta, try it! you won’t even notice the taste in this casserole)

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
Salt & Pepper to taste

Some more cheese to sprinkle on the top (if you like cheese overkill)

And maybe 2 cups of the canned cream soup alternative.

Optional: Feel like a better mom by adding in some frozen corn and/or peas and/or broccoli.

Directions:

This is super easy. Just mix up everything except for the cheese that goes on top. Start with all of the dry ingredients, then add the cream soup stuff and stir it all together (I use a really big bowl so that I can stir with wild, reckless abandon) until it seems like you’ve got enough to make a nice, creamy casserole.

Stick it all in a no-stick sprayed 9 x 13 pan. Sprinkle that extra cheese on top. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. Or, if you just made all of the ingredients and they are already hot, it only takes about 20 minutes to heat it through. Then it’s time to eat. Yum!

I often make extra spaghetti during some other meal and then use the leftovers to make this casserole.

Now I have one and a half quart jars of the cream soup alternative in the fridge, so that will make other meals very easy for the next week or two.

Enjoy! (I’m going to eat now….)

So today my daughter asked me to bake bread.  I baked my own whole wheat bread for years, then when Life Happened I switched to whatever was healthiest at my grocery store (Baker’s Inn).  Then I started making the effort to drive 45+ minutes to Great Harvest bread where I can get honey whole wheat that is freshly baked every day.  I would get about a month’s worth of bread at a time, and stick it in the freezer.

Well, we’re down to the end of our supply, so my daughter suggested I bake.  I’m still trying to use up some bargain organic milk that I picked up last week at Kroger (I got a whole gallon of Horizons organic whole milk for about $2.69.  Then I watered it down about 50% to get an even bigger bargain.  Though we don’t often use milk, I decided to take advantage of that deal, and I’ve been looking for ways to use milk ever since.  (nobody here drinks milk, so it all goes into recipes)

It has been so long since I baked my own bread that I had a hard time remembering the recipe.  Finally, I got it all done, baked, and when pulling it out of the oven I realized that I FORGOT THE HONEY!  Wah!

Yeah, 100% whole wheat is better for you.  But I was really looking forward to that honey whole wheat…..

I had to leave the house right after taking the break out of the oven, and while driving I realized that even if nobody liked the 100% whole wheat bread, that I could save the day by turning the bread into healthy bread crumbs (just whiz it all up and stick it in a ziploc bag in the freezer) , or homemade croutons or stuffing mix.  I’m going to search for some recipes for those since I’ve never done either one.  I’m sure it can’t be too hard, though.  Right?

The single most popular recipe I share with other moms is the one for my Healthy Lemonade.  It’s super easy, and so good!  There’s nothing to it:

Take two lemons and squeeze the juice out of them.  (I just use a hand juicer that cost about $2 at the grocery store.)

Put the juice into a two quart pitcher, and then fill it the rest of the way with pure water.

Add 2-4 droppers full of Sweet Leaf Stevia.  You can use the Lemon Drop flavor, which is very popular, the plain (which is great because it’s so versatile), or a fun flavor like Grape, Valencia Orange, or Apricot Nectar.

Stir and enjoy!

Stevia is an herbal sweetener that is much sweeter than sugar, but has zero calories, zero carbs, and a zero glycemic index!  The calories from the lemon juice is approximately 25 calories for the entire pitcher of lemonade.   The lemon water is great for cleaning your liver and gallbladder, for keeping your pH level healthy, and for fighting off kidney and gall stones. My whole family loves this lemonade, including the kids.  We have been able to reduce our juice purchase by 50-75% thanks to drinking this sweet, tasty, and HEALTHY lemonade all the time.  Try it–you’ll love it. 

Early in December I went with the members of my book group to The Greentree Tea Room in Lexington, KY.  One of the delicious items on the menu that day was Tomato Bisque Soup.  The only tomato soup I had ever had was from a can, so this was a real experience.  :)  The soup was positively dreamy!  We asked if it was possible to get the recipe, and were told that they did not give out their recipes.  Wah!  Once I got home I started searching the internet for a soup recipe that seemed like it might be similar.  I found some that seemed like they might work, and have been experimenting with my own changes until I have a recipe that is just about as wonderful as the tea room was serving.  This is easy to make, although it takes a little time, and it is very good even reheated.  I’ve been making this big batch of the soup and then enjoying it for every lunch for a week or so.

Ingredients:

1 stalk of celery

6 ounces of diced carrots–basically one big carrot, or about a cup or so of matchstick carrots.  Adding a little extra won’t hurt a thing, so go ahead and be generous. 

half a sweet onion

one parsnip

2 teaspoons minced garlic

a teaspoon black pepper

1 tablespoon parsley-fresh or dried

1 bay leaf

half cup whole wheat flour

6 tablespoons butter

1 quart chicken broth (use a kind without MSG)

24 ounces diced tomatoes (leave the liquid in)

8 ounces tomato paste (I just use one of those little cans.  it’s not an exact measurement but it works fine)

2 cups whipping cream

Using your food processor, chop the carrots, celery, parsnip, and onion until finely diced.  The smaller the better.  Then combine those vegetables with the garlic, black pepper, parsley, bay leaf, chicken broth, diced tomatoes, and tomato paste in a large soup pot. Cover and bring to a boil.  Let boil approximately 10 minutes, then turn temperature down to a simmer.  Let simmer for 50 minutes.

At this point you need to have a colander inside of a large bowl.  Pour the soup into the colander so that the liquid drains into the bowl.  Pour the non-liquid items into your food processor.  (try to find and remove the bay leaf first)  Pour the liquid back into the soup pot.  Add the butter and half cup of flour.  On medium-high heat, use a whisk to stir the liquid, butter, and flour until it thickens.  (it doesn’t take long)  In the meantime, whiz up the rest of the soup stuff in the food processor until it is very finely minced.  Once the liquid-flour-butter is thickened, add the stuff from the food processor back into the soup pot.  Use whisk to mix it all up.  Turn off the heat.  Add the two cups of whipping cream and whisk into the soup.  Enjoy!

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!