A greener kind of birthday

A few months back, I’d talked with a friend about the idea of doing a recycled baby shower. Instead of buying the mom-to-be a bunch of new stuff – why not shower her (assuming she was a second-hand lover like us) with high-quality second-hand stuff out of the attics and closets of her mom friends. We’d both already had our second babies and, in my case at least, there are no more on the horizon, so I decided to apply the theme to Owen’s first birthday instead, figuring it may be the last birthday when I can get away with such a concept.

So I sent out e-mail invitations to just a few friends (we'd decided to keep things very low-key for birthday #1) for a green-themed birthday. They starred Owen looking like so….

and at the risk of departing from good old fashioned birthday etiquette we requested either no gifts at all or something recycled – a book, article of clothing, or toy – stowed away in the guests' attic because their own children had either outgrown or grown weary of the thing.

Will and Owen and I wore various shades of green, we tried to compile semi-earth-friendly party favor bags (housed in lunch-sacks that Will decorated with tree and frog stamps and markers) and I made a few homemade pizzas using a recipe out of Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Vegetable Miracle.” And the few older kids in attendance also played a quick game of pin the can/bottle/newspaper on the recycling truck.

We also wound up with some fabulous second-hand gifts, including one set of old-fashioned building blocks in one of those pull-toy wooden wagons. As my friend who’d brought that treasure watched Owen and Will open the gift, a little light bulb went off in her head and she realized they had been her grandmother’s at one point. So Owen will enjoy playing with that family heirloom for a while, but eventually we’ll be returning them to the proper descendents. Which suits me all the more – nothing like returning recycled gifts to keep the clutter down.

Will was eager to help Owen out with candle blowing on both Owen’s zucchini cupcake and this gorgeous (and delicious) vegan chocolate cake, which our friend Carey made for the party -- and which we lighted just for show.

Our party favor bags included some zucchini chocolate chip cookies, also a recipe courtesy of “Animal, Vegetable Miracle.” In case you’ve got zucchini overflow in your own garden or refrigerator, here’s the recipe:

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 egg, beaten
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
Combine in large bowl
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
Mix in a separate smaller bowl, then
blend into liquid mixture
1 cup finely shredded zucchini
12 oz. chocolate chips
Mix these into other ingredients. Drop by spoonful onto greased baking sheet and flatten with back of spoon. Bake 350, 10 to 15 minutes.
*From Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”

Just call me granola head

I had a request yesterday for my granola recipe, which is another relic from my mother. She made the stuff throughout my childhood and still eats it today. Back in the fall when I did an interview with Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, she suggested that oatmeal (particularly if it's made with oats that have been soaked overnight, which I have yet to bother to do) as a gentler breakfast option for the digestive system. But I’m kind of a granola addict, so I just cut back to every other day and join Will for oatmeal on the off days. (Will, by the way, is addicted to oatmeal – a relic of the long-ago era when he was afraid to poop and I was trying to make sure he had enough fiber in him that he wouldn’t get himself constipated. Now he insists on oatmeal every day).

So now that I’ve whetted your appetite with tales of Will’s potty training, here’s the recipe. It’s perfect for me: not too sweet, but if you’re used to the store-bought stuff you might want more honey.

Mom's granola

8 cups whole oats
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup sesame seeds
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
*1 cup roasted, ground soy beans (roast on cookie sheets in oven; grind in blender)
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup honey
*3/4 cup canola oil
1 cup raisins

*(I omit the soy beans now, partly out of laziness, partly because I'm not sure I want to be eating too much soy. And when I heard Canola oil actually wasn't so good for you, I switched to just a half cup of olive oil. I like it fine but there is the faintest hint of olive oil in it -- so vegetable/canola oil's probably a better bet for flavor.)

Mix all dry ingredients (except raisins) in a 13x9 pan. Mix honey and oil in a small bowl then stir it in with the dry ingredients. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes (rough estimate), checking and stirring every 10 to 15 minutes. After it cools, add the raisins (or any other dried fruit you like).

Will likes to get a spoonful or two thrown in with his oatmeal or Cheerios now and then – but mostly this is a breakfast for mom in our family. (Rob likes it fine for a leisurely morning but most days he thinks it takes too long to chew the stuff down.)

Dinner planning on the Scramble

For a couple weeks now I’ve been trying out dinner planning, Six O’Clock Scramble style (the healthy, family-friendly dinner planning service and cookbook I first mentioned on January 7). First I tried out a week’s worth of menus from the online service for free. And once I realized how much I was enjoying this new approach for simple but healthy cooking, organized grocery shopping and the opportunity to let my family’s tired taste buds try out a new meal every single night, I decided to do a story for the Ledger-Enquirer’s Taste section, which you can read here. It includes an interview with Scramble mastermind Aviva Goldfarb, who’s made it her mission in life to discover recipes that are healthy, kid-palatable and relatively simple to execute.

I’m no artist in the kitchen, and since I rely on recipes anyway, the Scramble has been a nice way to mix things up and try out a lot of new meals without worrying that Will might snub the stuff. So far, we’ve all eaten hearty portions of every Scramble meal I’ve made. (I’ll admit here that Will is probably a less finicky eater than your average toddler.) Rob says he might not want to have the New Year’s Gumbo again but it was fine once. And I’ll admit that I didn’t like Chips Ole’ quite as much as Will (he was THRILLED to get to dip blue corn tortilla chips into meat sauce – we used ground turkey -- and call it dinner). But for the most part, everything’s getting rave reviews. Many of the recipes do rely on canned beans or canned tomatoes to keep things manageable in terms of time and cost, but there’s also a lot of fresh produce and whole grains in the mix. Most of the time, I made the suggested sides too (or my own variation on them), and we wound up eating a wider variety of vegetables for that reason. Here’s some of the Scramble menus (minus all the side dishes) that we’ve eaten over the past couple weeks:

From the sample online newsletter (you can view these five recipes here):

Goddess Chicken with Artichokes
Ginger Shrimp (Chicken or Tofu) and Broccoli Stir-fry (We chose tofu, even though we try not to eat very much of it these days),
Tortellini Soup with Spinach and Tomatoes
Chips Ole
New Years Good Luck Gumbo

From the winter section of the cookbook:
Chicken Diablo
Flounder with Lemony Bread Crumb Topping
Quesadillas with spinach and onions
Split Pea Soup with a Touch of Curry
Lentil and Cheese Casserole (Vegetarian meatloaf)
Pumpkin black bean soup

Tonight we’ll be trying a honey-baked salmon (stolen from the summer section of the cookbook, when I realized I’d forgotten to get lime for the “Wild Salmon or Arctic Char with Chili-Lime Spice Rub” in the winter section).

You can view a couple of Aviva’s favorite Scramble recipes at the end of the online story. And she gave me permission to share a couple of my favorites so far from the cookbook. I’m not going to include recipes for the suggested side dishes, but they are in the cookbook.

Chicken Diablo (Prep 15 minutes; Cook 50 minutes)

4 Tablespoons butter
¼ cup Dijon mustard
½ cup honey
1 tsp curry powder
1 whole chicken, cut up (or 8-12 chicken pieces of your choice) (I cut up a whole chicken and made chicken stock with the left-over carcass and wings to use in later meals. Obviously this turns it into less of a quick scramble recipe, but the payoff of a batch of homemade chicken stock was worth it for me.)

Preheat the oven to 350. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the mustard, honey, and curry powder and continue cooking and stirring until the sauce is well mixed, about 2 minutes.

Arrange the chicken pieces in a large baking pan. Pour the sauce over the chicken. (At this point you can refrigerate the chicken and sauce for up to 24 hours or bake it right away.)

Bake the chicken for 50 minutes. Halfway through, turn the chicken over and baste it with the sauce. For browner tops, put the chicken under the boriler for the final 5 minutes of cooking.

Recommended side dish: Lemon-pepper asparagus


Flounder with Lemony Bread Crumb Topping (Even Rob, who just doesn’t like fish much, admitted he enjoyed this meal. The fresh lemon and fresh parsley are a must, I think.)
2 flounder fillets (about 1 to 1½ pounds total)
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 Tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup chopped fresh parsely
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about ½ lemon), plus additional for serving
½ teaspoon minced garlic (about 1 clove)
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Coat a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray the top of the foil with nonstick cooking spray. Lay the fish fillets on the baking sheet. In a medium bowl, combine the bread crumbs, oil, parsley, lemon juice, garlic, salt and mustard and mix them together well with a fork. Press an equal amount of the bread crumb mixture onto the top of each fillet.
Bake the fish until it is white and flakes easily in the center, about 10 minutes. For a browner topping, broil it for the final 2 minutes of cooking. Sprinkle the fish with additional lemon juice before serving if desired.

Recommended side dish: Asian Rice Pilaf

I haven’t been a Scramble purist quite. When one week’s menu called for a Greek penne pasta with kalamata olives, for example, (one of the few things Rob just plain refuses to eat is olives) I substituted with a chickpea pasta recipe that my friend Ginny recently shared with me. It was easy and delicious, so I’ll share it soon when it won’t get confused with the Scramble fare.

Adventures in meal-planning

I’ve discovered in the couple months since I resolved to revolutionize dinnertime, which had grown bland, stale and predictable, in our house, that the most difficult thing about cooking is trying to decide what to make – enough ahead of time that I can get the necessary ingredients at the store. Often, I’d wind up in the store without a plan for the week, buying the same old staples for the same old meals whose ingredients I’d memorized because I’d made them too many times.

So I started finding recipes in cookbooks and in my recipe files and worked on a dinner rotation that now stretches almost 50 meals long. I re-insert quick dinners some of the time and make many of the meals stretch out over a couple nights (we never throw away left-overs in our house), so I just recently got through one “rotation.” And now, just as I was preparing to start over on meal one, I learned from my cousin and his wife in Colorado about “The Six O’Clock Scramble,” a meal-planning Internet service that’s healthy, fast, family-friendly and somewhat in tune with the season – so that’s tempting me to add more meals to the rotation or disembark from my list altogether. I’m sampling a week’s worth of menus this week for free – and I may at least buy the cookbook by week’s end if we like the meals as much as we enjoyed last night’s easy and yummy Goddess chicken with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes (see the recipe here). I’d like to add more simplicity to my cooking regimen.

But it won’t be as simple as following one person’s meal planning lock-step. There’s too many good, healthy cooks out there that I’d like to be learning from. I discovered as I was catching up on my cousin April’s blog this weekend that she too was experimenting with meal planning in Seattle. Her meals are filled with more farm-fresh vegetables and generally healthy sounding stuff than just about anything on my list and I got to thinking that I might buy this cookbook, which she swears by, in part to see if I too can convince my family to eat such things as kale and cauliflower (so far not much luck in those departments) if I come armed with the right recipes.

So my dinner rotation may grow 80 meals long – or it may get filled in with more seasonally appropriate, interesting, healthy or just plain yummier dishes along the way. Whatever happens, I’m just glad I’m no longer making the same old lasagna every other week.

Here’s our dinner rotation (minus the side dishes) so far, with things newly switched around to try to keep the chicken, fish, turkey and vegetable-based dishes coming at fairly well-spaced intervals (Rob has a red-meat allergy that keeps all things beef and pork-based off-limits). I’m forcing some still untested fish recipes into the equation because we don’t eat enough fish, plus a couple other recent recipe discoveries -- but most of the meals are Will-tested and approved. My next step is to type in all the non-staple ingredients out to the side so I've got a one-stop resource for grocery-list making.

If you’d like a recipe, just ask, and I’ll leave it in the comments on this post.

First the sources:

RB = My recipe box (largely comprised of old favorites from my mom's meal repertoire)
VP = Vegetarian Planet
FG = Fields of Greens
EBF = My old edition of the Enchanted Broccoli Forest
HC= The Healthy Cook
C = My recipe files on computer
VE = Vegetarian Express Lane

Then the meals:
Spinach fettucine with sun-dried tomatoes (FG p. 136)
Grace's meat pastry (with ground turkey, onions, carrots) (C)
Cheese Souffle (RB)
Curried Chicken (C)
Lentil and Pasta Soup (HC p. 124)
Baked salmon (RB)
Penne with Red Pepper Sauce and Broccoli (VP – p.251)
Meatloaf (with ground turkey) (RB)
Spinach Calzone (RB)
Chicken in tomato and basil sauce (RB)
Corn chowder (HC) (with potato, zucchini, corn)
Fried Tilapia and crispy rosemary potatoes (C and VP)
Eggplant Parmesan (RB)
Sloppy Joes (HC)
Mac and Cheese (RB)
Chicken Paprikash with Broccoli (HC p. 213)
Black Bean Chili (RB)
Jenn’s La Barbouille (C)
Tuna casserole (C)
Spinach Ricotta Dumplings in tomato sauce (VP p. 312)
Quiche with broccoli (EBF)
Homemade Chicken and noodles (RB)
Chickpea burgers (C)
Hamburger Stroganoff (RB)
Homemade Pizza (RB) with spinach, fresh tomatoes, mushrooms
Chicken Enchilada casserole with tomato soup (RB)
Salmon loaf (Rob hates it but Will likes it and that’s what really counts) (C)
Spinach manicotti (RB)
Crockpot barley with ground turkey soup (RB)
Fritata
Pad Thai (p. 277 VP)
North African Veggie Stew (FG p. 192)
Ground turkey lasagna with spinach (RB)
Curried brown rice with mushrooms and peas and chicken drumsticks (HC and RB)
Broccoli Soup (VE) and grilled cheese sandwiches
Fillets Neapolitan (C)
Spanokopeta (RB)
Homemade spaghetti and meatballs (RB)
Tortellini tomato spinach soup (C)
Baked Chicken nuggets (C)
Roasted Winter Vegetables with cheesy polenta
Baked rigatoni with broccoli (VP. 293)
Maple glazed salmon (C)
Winter Veggie Curry or Spring Veggie Curry – (FG p. 186 or p. 190)
Rosemary Crockpot Chicken (C)
Stir fry with tofu and vegetables (HC p. 297)
Chicken and spinach pasta bake (RB)
Black bean burritos w/ corn, tomatoes, zucchini

What cookbooks, recipes, Web sites or basic strategies have become essential tools for your meal-planning?

Cookie workshop

This week Will and I wrapped up a four-session cookie bake-off that we carried out over the course of two weeks. One of my fondest childhood memories of the holiday season is the platter of Christmas cookies we sampled each night. My mom typically made at least six varieties. This year I used her recipes for sugar cookies, magic cookie bars and fudge. And I found this classic gingerbread recipe online.

We had fun with each variation of cookie making (Will helped with all but the fudge). But as much as Will enjoyed the rolling pin and cookie cutters, I think I’ll be abstaining from all baking that requires cookie cutters until at least Valentine’s Day. These cookie projects turn into two-hour marathons and I’m exhausted at the end.

At the end of a gingerbread man cut-out session, I let Will invent his own recipe with a remaining scrap of dough. He chose to add water and flour to it, roll it out and then beat it on the cutting board like so.

Of our four cookie varieties this year, my personal favorites are probably the magic cookie bars (really more appropriate for adults because they are evil, sticky-gooey goodness) – in part because they required no rolling and cutting. In making the graham cracker crust for them, Will discovered the joy of smashing graham crackers to smithereens with a rolling pin.

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re looking to gain a few pounds:

Magic Cookie Bars
1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs mixed with ½ cup melted butter
1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup coconut
1 can Eagle brand milk

Pat graham cracker crumb-butter mixture into a greased 13x9 pan with a fork, then with fingers. Then sprinkle the walnuts, then the chocolate chips, then the coconut over all. Pour the can of Eagle brand milk over all. Bake at 350 until brown around the edges – about 30 minutes. Cut into squares right away, but don’t take them out until they’ve cooled.

Any favorite Christmas cookie recipes to share?

Healthy fats?

My column in today’s Ledger-Enquirer features an interview with Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of "Nourushing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats." I tracked her down after reading several articles on the Weston Web site (which advocates consuming “nutrient-dense whole foods and the vital fat-soluble activators found exclusively in animal fats”) that left me wondering whether I was making bad choices with my skim milk/lowfat yogurt/margarine consumption -- which I inflict upon the entire family. The Weston A. Price Foundation (a D.C.-based nonprofit organization named for a Cleveland dentist who in the 1930s studied the traditional diets of native groups from various corners of the globe) advocates drinking raw milk and eating lots of butter, eggs, animal fat and other “good” saturated fats like coconut oil.

It’s advice that runs counter to the low-fat mantras of most nutrition experts but as I read the science and the ideas behind it, much of it seemed to make sense. Some of it even seemed to apply to me. I was a vegetarian for a few years a while back and I still go somewhat light on meat and eggs and margarines. And I’m often a little light-headed and have to eat throughout the day. So I wondered if this criticism on the Weston Web site of one of the many pieces of advice that comes from mainstream nutritionists (Fallon calls it “politically correct nutrition”) was describing me: "Limit fat consumption to 30 percent of calories." Thirty percent calories as fat is too low for most people, leading to low blood sugar and fatigue. Traditional diets contained 30 percent to 80 percent of calories as healthy fats, mostly of animal origin.” Of course I don’t count calories and have no clue what percentage of my calorie consumption is fat – but I imagine it’s way too low.

As I read the Weston explanations of how our bodies process various kinds of fats, how things like pasteurization and hydrogenation alter fats and why saturated fat is actually quite beneficial, I was further intrigued.

I’m a chronic skeptic, though, and I’m still sorting out what to believe. I ran the Q&A with Sally Fallon by my pediatrician via e-mail and, although I caught him on a busy day, he was able to tell me: “Briefly I don’t see anything bad that is recommended. Most of us can take in about anything in moderation.” Carolyn Bentley, a dietitian and lactation consultant who used to lead a nursing mother’s group I frequented with Will, weighed in too (her comments didn't make the online edition of the story so I'll post them below, along with information about the seminar she's giving this weekend in Auburn).

As for what I'll be doing when it comes to consuming fats in our house, for now, I’m going to hedge things a bit and ride the fence. I’ll make some changes that make sense to me without flinging myself full force into a purist Weston A. Price-style diet (largely because I’m too lazy and to do it right but also because part of me is still playing the skeptic -- and I just can’t imagine consuming 32 ounces of milk and two eggs every day).

Here’s what I will do differently for now:

*Switch from Country Crock to real butter
*Switch from skim milk (we often wound up with the ultra-pasteurized Horizon variety) to just plain pasteurized organic whole milk (I’ve noticed the Publix brand is not ultra-pasteurized)
*Become a better label reader and try to limit our consumption of processed foods and products with partially hydrogenated oils more than I have been in the past. And try to cut the trans fats out entirely.
*Cook with whole chickens more often. And save the stock and actually use it. Plan a couple or three nights’ worth of dinners around one chicken.
*Stop buying the lean ground turkey, which Rob hates anyway, and get the cheaper fattier stuff (I do this half the time as it is, but now I’ll do it guilt-free)
*Switch to organic whole milk yogurt (Will is a yogurt fiend) and maybe try to start using the yogurt maker my mother gave me again
*Return to making my own salad dressings and cookies from scratch (I did this pretty consistently before Will’s birth but once I had kids I got lazy-busy). Now that Will loves to bake alongside me, being too busy is no longer an excuse. I also just noticed that the first two ingredients in our Ken's Steakhouse "Red Wine Vinegar & Olive Oil" salad dressing (a recent buy-one-get-one-free impulse purchase) are water and soybean oil. They must have known that "Watered Down Soybean Oil" salad dressing just doesn't sound quite as enticing.
*Throw some more meat-containing meals into the dinner rotation (I’m still loving my new vegetarian cookbooks and planning to use them plenty too)
*Keep thinking and reading without obsessing… Who knows, maybe by next month I’ll be moving on to raw milk or switching back to skim. I need more convincing either way. Please leave a comment if you’ve got anything persuasive – or otherwise – to say.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s the Weston A. Price Foundatoin dietary guidelines for nursing mothers (with parenthetical notes about how I violate almost all of them on a daily basis – poor Owen...). For those of you non-pregger/non-nursers out there, I’ll throw in their guidelines for the general population as well. After all, even those of us who are nursing have to feed the rest of our families too.

Diet for Pregnant and Nursing Mothers

Cod Liver Oil to supply 20,000 IU vitamin A and 2000 IU vitamin D per day (NEVER HAD IT)
1 quart (or 32 ounces) whole milk daily, preferably raw and from pasture-fed cows (learn more about raw milk on our website, A Campaign for Real Milk, www.realmilk.com) (I’M PROBABLY DOING ABOUT 12 OUNCES OF WHOLE PASTEURIZED MILK NOW – ALTHOUGH I’M NOT A MEASURER AND I’M NOT CONSISTENT)
4 tablespoons butter daily, preferably from pasture-fed cows (HMMM. MAYBE 2 TABLESPOONS MAX, BUT THE BUTTER THING JUST STARTED THIS WEEK)
2 or more eggs daily, preferably from pastured chickens (SOMETIMES 1 EGG. SOMETIMES 2. SOMETIMES NONE.)
Additional egg yolks daily, added to smoothies, salad dressings, scrambled eggs, etc. (NOPE. I’M STILL SCARED OF RAW EGGS.)
3-4 ounces fresh liver, once or twice per week (If you have been told to avoid liver for fear of getting "too much Vitamin A," be sure to read Vitamin A Saga) (I’VE NEVER TRIED LIVER, BUT I’M THINKING I WILL JUST TO SEE…)
Fresh seafood, 2-4 times per week, particularly wild salmon, shellfish and fish eggs (NOPE. WILL AND ROB DON’T LIKE IT SO WE DO FISH WAY TOO RARELY. I NEED TO FORCE IT ON THEM MORE OFTEN)
Fresh beef or lamb daily, always consumed with the fat (NOPE. ROB HAS A BIZARRE RED MEAT ALLERGY SO WE KEEP OFF THE STUFF. I’M NOT SURE I’VE EVER HAD LAMB.)
Oily fish or lard daily, for vitamin D (DON’T DO IT. I DO TAKE DHA CAPSULES, ON THE ADVICE OF MY MIDWIFE.)
2 tablespoons coconut oil daily, used in cooking or smoothies, etc. (NOPE, BUT I MAY START USING IT MORE)
Lacto-fermented condiments and beverages (NOPE. MAYBE I’LL GET SOME SAUERKRAUT.) Bone broths used in soups, stews and sauces (NOPE, BUT I MAY TRY THIS MORE)
Soaked whole grains (I USE WHOLE GRAINS BUT I DON’T SOAK THEM)
Fresh vegetables and fruits (FINALLY! I PASS THIS ONE)
AVOID:
Trans fatty acids (e.g., hydrogenated oils)
Junk foods
Commercial fried foods
Sugar
White flour
Soft drinks
Caffeine
Alcohol
Cigarettes
Drugs (even prescription drugs)

Here’s the promised general guidelines, with no interference from me:

Dietary Guidelines

Eat whole, natural foods.
Eat only foods that will spoil, but eat them before they do.
Eat naturally raised meat including fish, seafood, poultry, beef, lamb, game, organ meats and eggs.
Eat whole, naturally produced milk products from pasture-fed cows, preferably raw and/or fermented, such as whole yogurt, cultured butter, whole cheeses and fresh and sour cream.
Use only traditional fats and oils including butter and other animal fats, extra virgin olive oil, expeller expressed sesame and flax oil and the tropical oils—coconut and palm.
Eat fresh fruits and vegetables, preferably organic, in salads and soups, or lightly steamed.
Use whole grains and nuts that have been prepared by soaking, sprouting or sour leavening to neutralize phytic acid and other anti-nutrients.
Include enzyme-enhanced lacto-fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages and condiments in your diet on a regular basis.
Prepare homemade meat stocks from the bones of chicken, beef, lamb or fish and use liberally in soups and sauces.
Use herb teas and coffee substitutes in moderation.
Use filtered water for cooking and drinking.
Use unrefined Celtic seasalt and a variety of herbs and spices for food interest and appetite stimulation.
Make your own salad dressing using raw vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and expeller expressed flax oil.
Use natural sweeteners in moderation, such as raw honey, maple syrup, dehydrated cane sugar juice and stevia powder.
Use only unpasteurized wine or beer in strict moderation with meals.
Cook only in stainless steel, cast iron, glass or good quality enamel.
Use only natural supplements.
Get plenty of sleep, exercise and natural light.
Think positive thoughts and minimize stress.
Practice forgiveness.

Here's what Carolyn Bentley, a licensed dietitian and international board certified lactation consultant, had to say about Fallon’s recommendations:

“We know that a whole egg is a complete protein; it’s the best protein out there. And I do think that there’s good research toward the use of butter in moderation, and we do know that fats are essential in a healthy diet but anything in extreme is potentially hazardous. There are concerns with the use of unpasteurized milk especially since most of our dairies are not small family-run dairies. A milk that’s collected from a cow in the backyard where you control the pasture, you control the sanitation would be different. But without those controls I think it’s dangerous. Anyone who is looking to make these types of changes should consult with a registered or licensed dietitian so that healthy adjustments can be made. Overall I think some of the thoughts are really good, but you have to take into account that we’re living in the 21st century and I think it could be dangerous unless you invest in some type of co-op or family farm that’s using organic means of farming and pasture renewal.”

If you go
What: Seminar on Healthy Diets with Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions and president of The Weston A. Price Foundation
When: Friday evening, 6-10 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Where: Auburn Church of Christ, 712 South College Street, Auburn, Ala.
Cost: Friday evening: $10; Saturday seminar, including lunch: $45. Friday and Saturday: $50.
Details: Talks include “The Oiling of America,” “The Basics of Healthy Diets,” “All About Fats and Oils,” “How to Change your Diet for the Better.”
More information: Call 334-821-8063
Learn more about the Weston A. Price Foundation at www.westonaprice.org

There are loads of articles on nutrition and so-called “nutrition myths,” as well as some recipes, at the Weston web site: www.westonaprice.org. Take a look (and let me know what you think).

Potatoes, butter knives and all the simple things

I spent today alone with the boys (no preschool, no playdates, no errands, no scheduled anything) and we were all so happy. It’s a reminder to me of why I keep Will at home at least a couple days a week so he has plenty of time to discover his own fun (camping in sheet-tents in our bedroom, reading books to himself in his bedroom, sorting playing cards in the living room, “ice-skating,” running and purposefully falling throughout the house, and of course inventing stories with Ally and Puff as central characters).

On our daily walk with the gargantuan double stroller Will and I talked all the way to the park --- about the birds, cats, construction site, and mail man we passed, about life, about Fresh Burger. And for the first time, Owen stayed awake for the whole 20-minute journey, which until now has always lulled him to sleep at some point. He was enjoying our first semi-cool morning outdoors so much that he also stayed happily awake while Will ran around at the playground.

Back at home Will and I cooked up a barley/kale/carrot/potato/kidney bean stew for dinner (which Will would later devour, once we extracted the kale from his serving) and Will discovered that he loves cutting potato wedges with a kid-sized butter knife. We decided we were putting on a cooking show for Owen – and we were careful to try to elicit coos and smiles, which are more exuberant and expressive than ever, from him as we worked. (I’m pretty certain that there’s something biologically rigged about those baby “social smiles” that forces us as parents to engage with our little helpless infants as much as possible. Owen’s smiles are so intoxicatingly full of happiness that you can’t help but do silly songs and dances and speeches to illicit more of them. And so sweet baby Owen, who might otherwise get ignored for little lapses of time, keeps learning from us.)

Owen was also thoughtful enough to go to sleep in time for Will and I to enjoy lunch and naptime reading, just the two of us. And then miracle of miracles, both boys napped in unison for an hour and a half.

Who could ask for more?

For the thrifty shopper in you: I also found a book at the Just 4 Kidz Consignments sale that made Will laugh and laugh. If you're a Columbus area-mom you might want to check out their Saturday sale for lots of half-price bargains.

Revolution in the kitchen?

About a week ago, Rob tells me out of the blue he’s thinking about reclaiming our once-upon-a-time vegetarianism. Or at least cutting most of the meat out of his diet. I’d already been feeling a bit short on inspiration in the kitchen as Will has grown a bit more finicky with age (although he’ll still devour twice the amount and variety of food as your average toddler). Now here comes Rob – who’s never really been a big fan of bean-based meals or fish of any sort and who has a bizarre red meat allergy – telling me go ahead and make your chicken casseroles, I’ll just pick out the meat. Nothing like preparing a meal so that not only your toddler, but also your husband, can pick out half of the ingredients in distaste.

So tonight I told Rob we needed to sit down and come up with a whole new repertoire of meals. There’s going to be a revolution in the Addington kitchen. I armed myself with two great vegetarian cookbooks borrowed from a friend (somehow the meals in my own cookbooks were seeming either tired or overly complicated). And Rob and I paged through them writing down recipes we want to try. I leafed through my recipe box and wrote down some old tried and true favorites we’ll stick with and I looked through a couple of my own cookbooks as well.

Now I have about 30 recipes that I’m going to write down in a rotation that looks reasonable. The inspired cooks among you will probably say: “What a dull way to cook.” And I agree that the most inspired cooking probably happens when you get in-season produce at a market or from a natural food co-op and then invent recipes based on the ingredients that nature and your own whimsical shopping have set before you. But I haven’t yet managed to make that work. And as my mom has been trying to tell me since I first started cooking for myself, half the stress in trying to prepare meals is simply deciding what to make. She writes out a dinner menu for a month and then knows she’s getting variety in her diet and is prepared to grocery shop for exactly what she needs. I won’t necessarily do a dinner a day (part of my domestic survival strategy since I started cooking for myself has involved eating on a casserole for a couple days). But I’ll have a list to guide me when it’s time to cook – and to push me beyond all the old, tattered recipes that I’ve grown weary of after so much preparing and eating. And yes, there will be meat in some of them for Rob to either pick out or eat as he chooses.

I’ll let you know how it goes. (The cookbooks I borrowed and will soon be buying my own copies of are “Vegetarian Planet: 350 Big-Flavor Recipes for Out-of-This-World Food Every Day” and “Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes from the Celebrated Greens Restaurant”) If you have any cookbooks or specific recipes to nominate for my little dinner revolution please post.

The icing on the cake

I may be a mom but I’m no Martha Stewart. I can prepare a passable meal some of the time, but take me to a potluck and I’ll probably rank every other dish ahead of my own offering. And I’m not sure I’ve ever baked a cake from scratch – lots of frit pies and cookies in the years before kids but poor Rob’s birthday cakes have tended to be of the box mix variety with the container of ready-to-spread frosting to match.

So when I woke up this morning with cake baking and decorating on the agenda, there was a little trickle of dread in my throat. And it was the decorating that scared me most. I’d borrowed a little cake decorating kit (which contained far more tips than I knew what to do with) and a book from a friend. Didn’t consult the book until I was mid-project this morning but it saved me from adding way too much color, and from generally screwing up icing dispenser assembly. Tricky thing was I had an icing recipe that gave no specific amount for the main ingredient, powdered sugar. I’d been told it worked best if this icing was pretty thick, but soon I was wondering how you define “pretty thick” when it comes to homemade icing. My first attempt with the brown looked like it was melting away (turned out it hardened right up just fine) so by the time I got to mixing up the yellow I made it rock hard – so rock hard in fact that as I was squeezing the bag the icing started bursting out the seams instead of through the mini-star tip I’d put on it. Soon I found myself impatiently sculpting the yellow on with my hands and deciding well this might be a fun excuse to make a very three-dimensional solid looking beak.

It was a long little art-and-cooking project that turned out pretty mediocre but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Owen was a patient assistant, cooing up at me from his bouncy seat when he wasn’t napping. And I got to thinking that sometime a few years in the future, when Will and later Owen have a few more fine motor skills and less determination to NOT follow instructions, it might be fun to make a ritual of letting one brother decorate the other’s birthday cake with me each year. It might look even messier than my messy owl, but what fun to create a sweet edible surprise for your birthday brother.

Still it was just time-consuming and messy enough (picture powdered sugar and icing residue over every counter of the kitchen) that when Rob’s October birthday comes around he’ll probably be facing another Betty Crocker cake, with mono-color store-bought icing spread over it in 20 seconds flat.

One of Will’s good friends has a severe milk allergy, so I made a dairy free cake using her mother’s recipe. Here it is, in case you’re ever hosting someone with food allergies. I know it tastes good when other moms make it. We’ll see if I managed to do any major goof-ups when we actually try the thing at tomorrow's little party.

Yellow Cake (with dairy-free modifications)

1 cup shortening (Use Smart Balance - it has to be the kind that comes with two 8 oz tubs together and says Smart Balance Regular now with flax. On the front of the carton it has a small "U" with the word Parve on it.)

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

3 cups flour

2.5 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup milk (use rice milk)

2 tsp vanilla extract

Grease (with Smart Balance) and wax paper line cake pans. Cream Smart Balance and sugar, beat well. Add eggs one at a time. Add flour, baking powder and salt and rice milk. Add vanilla. Mix well. Pour into cake pans. Bake 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then move to wire racks.

Icing

1 cup Smart Balance

Confectioners sugar (I used more than 4 cups of it)

1 tsp vanilla extract

add cocoa powder for chocolate

Eat your vegetables, kid

Here’s a link to my column in today’s Ledger-Enquirer about luring kids to eat their vegetables. Below are some recipes mentioned in the column. Happy healthy eating!

Sunshine soup (my cousin April’s recipe with lots of flexibility, no precise measurements and just a pinch of magic)

April says: ‘Sunshine soup could be any kind of stuff with lots of carrots added in to make it yellowish orange - and nothing added that would turn the orange brown - like greens. I just cook onions in a generous amount of oil or butter (I usually use coconut oil) and then add a whole head of cauliflower cut up small and several cups (maybe three or four?) of sliced carrots, and Herbamare (a salty seasoning), and cover the veggies up with water - you could use broth instead. I put the lid on the pot and cook until everything is soft enough to blend. Then blend the heck out of it. You could even add some grain to make it creamier and thicker and more filling - quinoa or rice or millet would be good - I suppose millet would be the sunniest. I frequently blend any soups that we make because Jasper tends to eat more if it is blended. And then I can also add a bit of raw or lightly cooked greens - kale, romaine or whatever.”

Zucchini brownies: (This was also posted on July 27 and includes notations by my friend Grace about how she altered the recipe – but in case you missed it…)

3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 cup butter or margarine
softened 1 3/4 cup sugar (I used less - about 1 1/4 cup)
1 cup vegetable oil (I used less - about 3/4 cup)
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla (I used more - about 1 1/2 tsp)
12 oz chocolate chips (I used less - just enough to cover top)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I omit since we don't use nuts in our house)

Combine first 4 ingredients in bowl, stir well. Combine zucchini and butter; add to flour mixture. Stir well. Combine sugar, oil, eggs, vanilla; add to mixture. Stir 2 minutes. Pour into greased 15 x 10 inch pan; top with chocolate chips (and nuts if you are using). Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes (I found it took longer to cook). Test center to see if "cake" like. Yield: 32 brownies.

You’ll find more kid-friendly vegetable recipes at this site and at "the veggietable.com."

If you have a vegetable recipe (or any recipe for that matter) that your kids gobble down without complaint, please share. Any favorite kid cookbooks or cooking-with-kids Web sites to recommend?

Zucchini brownies

Nothing like a good meal prepared by a friend who’s a far superior cook when you’re adjusting to life with two kids. Our friend Grace brought us a tasty chicken, broccoli and pasta dish seasoned with fresh rosemary from her garden and a salad with mixed greens, dried cranberries, tomatoes and carrots. And to top it all off there was an unexpected dessert: zucchini brownies. Wow, were they good.
Will, who declines zucchinis when they come sautéed, boiled, steamed or camouflaged in casseroles, dug right into these chocolate-chip-covered delights. The truth is, though, that while there may be a couple cups of shredded zucchini to help you see this as a healthy dessert, you really just need to try this recipe because it’s so much tastier than plain old chocolate brownies. Grace’s four-year-old daughter, Ella, may have added her own special touch to the desserts as she helped her mom measure and stir the ingredients.
Here’s the recipe with Grace’s notes about how she altered it along the way. Happy baking:

Zucchini brownies
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups grated zucchini (I bet you could use squash and maybe carrots)
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 3/4 cup sugar (I used less - about 1 1/4 cup)
1 cup vegetable oil (I used less - about 3/4 cup)
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla (I used more - about 1 1/2 tsp)
12 oz chocolate chips (I used less - just enough to cover top)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I omit since we don't use nuts in our house)

Combine first 4 ingredients in bowl, stir well. Combine zucchini and butter; add to flour mixture. Stir well. Combine sugar, oil, eggs, vanilla; add to mixture. Stir 2 minutes. Pour into greased 15 x 10 inch pan; top with chocolate chips (and nuts if you are using). Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes (I found it took longer to cook). Test center to see if "cake" like. Yield: 32 brownies.

Do you have a yummy, kid-friendly recipe to share? Please post.