Teddy Bear Pancakes

We're out of bread, and I haven't gotten around to baking in a couple of days, so I've been forced to make the boys pancakes for breakfast two days in a row now.  Poor kids!  They're favorite is chocolate chip pancakes, but I try to keep those just for birthdays and special occasions.  So to make a "plain old boring pancake" a little more inciting (can we say picky kids?!?) the boys get Teddy Bear pancakes!

 I have a terrific whole wheat pancake recipe that gives light and fluffy pancakes that aren't too sweet with just a hint of tang from the yogurt. It takes seconds to whip up, and only a few minutes to cook them. If I'm feeling ambitious I'll triple the recipe and freeze the leftovers. They are great for popping into the toaster oven to reheat for a quick breakfast.


These grains are not soaked. I've been pretty lazy in that department for a little while. However, the recipe uses yogurt or buttermilk, and I've successfully used kefir, so I think it would adapt to soaking very well. Just combine the yogurt and flour the night before, and in the morning add the rest of the ingredients and cook up like normal. And yes, that is a Teflon griddle. I hate it, and the Teflon is starting to flake. It's the only Teflon pan left in my kitchen and I can't wait to get rid of it, but for now it will have to do. I do not have room for a cast iron griddle (and how heavy are those anyway?) and it takes twice as long to cook up the pancakes one at a time on my small cast iron fry pan. If anyone has another solution for me, I'm all ears. Until then, we eat pancakes pretty rarely and I'll just have to deal with it.

Jack-O-Lanterns and Pumpkin Seeds

Yesterday we finally got around to carving our pumpkins. We usually go to Circle S Farm for the hay ride and sunflower maze and to pick our pumpkins out of the field, but this year our plans were foiled by a tummy bug and we never managed to reschedule so we have boring grocery store pumpkins. They did carve up nicely though.
That's face paint on my oldest. He did it himself. The boys picked out their own face designes, but I did most (all) of the work. They did help in scooping out the gunk though.

Once the pumpkins were carved, I tackled the huge bowl of pumpkin guts in attempt to rescue the seeds from clutches of the tentacle like threads of goop. This is a very slow, very slippery, very frustrating project. While at this tedious task, of course the baby wakes up. So as I wash my hands of slime and go to get her out of her crib, I notice some of the water gets into the bowl of cleaned seeds, and guess what, they FLOAT! This new knowledge completely changes my approach to the pumpkin seeds. I filled the bowl with water (after getting the baby and setting her up with a box of toys to dump out), swish around all the pumpkin guts, and miraculously all the seeds float nicely to the top.

It is now an easy task to fish them out and deposit them into the colander. A few more swishes to get the stubborn seeds that were still stuck and I had a colander full of clean seeds.

I soaked them in salt water for the rest of the afternoon, then spread them on a cookie sheet to dry over night in the oven. This morning I roasted up two batches. One sweet with pumpkin pie spices, and one savory with Worcestershire sauce and garlic powder. I read a bunch of recipes on line and in the end made up my own based on several that sounded good.

For the sweet ones I used 2 Tbsp olive oil, about 2 Tbsp succanat, 1/2 tsp sinnamon, 1/4 tsp each cloves and allspice, and a pinch of salt. For the savory ones I used 2 Tbsp olive oil, 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce, and a sprinkle of seasoned salt, garlic powder and onion powder. I really should start measuring stuff, but I rarely do. Each batch got about 1 1/2 Cups of pumpkin seeds. I roasted the seeds at 250* for about an hour and a half, stirring ever 15 minutes and rotating the baking sheets.
We're trick or treating at my grandparents house tonight and I had planned to bring these along to share. It's going to be hard not to eat them all before we leave though!

Homemade Convenience

I am constantly trying to phase packaged convenience foods out of our home. Let me tell you it is HARD to do. The boys need snacks for school. Brad needs lunches for work. Sometimes I need something to munch that doesn't require cooking or creating dishes to wash. Sometimes dinner time sneaks up on me and I haven't given it the slightest bit of thought earlier in the day. Convenience foods are, well, convenient. So as I go about my journey to get the junk out of our diets, I've had some success in finding homemade versions of some of our favorites that have the benefits of not only being free from chemicals, preservatives, and excess packaging, but also much, much cheaper. Today I'm going to share with you 3 of our favorites: Fruit leather, cheese crackers, and mini fritattas.

Fruit Leather:
My boys love the apricot Stretch Island fruit leather. But at $1 a pop, those things are crazy expensive! We would get them occasionally as a treat in the checkout line at Whole Foods for being helpful shoppers. But now that I have an Excalibur Food Dehydrator, making our own is a snap. Since the boys love the apricot flavor, I start with dried apricots. You can use any type of fresh or dried fruit. If starting with fresh, just omit the soaking step.

Cover dried apricots in water, and leave to rehydrate for several hours. Cover the bowl so nasties don't fall in.

Once the apricots are nice and juicy again, pour your apricots and a good bit of soaking water into your blender. I love my Blendtec , it makes short work of just about anything. Use just enough water to get things blending smoothly.

Next, spread apricot goop in a thin even layer on a piece of parchment paper on your dehydrator tray. The Excalibur comes with some teflex sheets, but I prefer the parchment paper because when it's dry I can roll the whole thing up and cut into strips so the boys have fruit roll-ups.

This batch made four trays worth of fruit leather. I put it in the dehydrator at about 145* for around 6 hours. See how easily the fruit leather lifts off the parchment paper? It's done when the thickest spots are dry to the touch.

Cheese Crackers:
These cheese crackers are the closest to Cheez-Its I've found. They are really yummy, and since I do the whole process in my food processor it's super easy and they come together lickety split. I have made the recipe with whole wheat flour before and they turn out ok, but they really just taste better with white. Since these are a once in a while treat, it doesn't bother me too much.

1/2 lb grated extra sharp cheddar
1/4 C butter, softened
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Cream together first 4 ingredients. Slowly add flour to make a stiff dough. It's important to use sharp cheddar in these, even if it's not the kind you like for eating. I like to use extra sharp. Otherwise the crackers don't have a lot of cheese flavor. Also, you can decrease or omit the cayenne pepper if you think your kids won't like it. With the full 1/8 tsp the crackers have a little bit of a kick. My kids don't seem to mind, and I like it that way. 1/16 would probably be fine if you have kids with a picky palette. If you leave it out completely the crackers will be kind of bland, but hey, some kids like it that way.

Divide the dough int 3 portions and roll into logs. Wrap the logs in waxed paper and place in the fridge overnight, or the freezer for 1 hour. I'm always in a hurry so I always use the freezer method and it works great. The idea is just to get the dough chilled enough that you can slice it with out smushing it.

Slice thinly and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. These do not expand very much when baked so you can place them fairly close together, but not touching. Sprinkle lightly with kosher salt.

Bake at 350* for about 12 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack. Once completely cool you can store them in a ziplock baggie or a glass jar. I really have no idea how long these keep, even if I make a double batch they are gone in less than a week.

Mini Fritattas:
Here's my newest toy; a 24 ct mini muffin pan. Oh the possibilities! Today it was fritattas.

Bacon, spinach, cheese into every muffin cup. Then I mixed 6 eggs with 1/2 cup of cream, and topped off the fritattas. This made just enough egg mixture to do all 24, not a drop left over.

After 30 minutes in the oven at 350*, I had cheesey, bacon-y, egg-y goodness.
Yum! I meant to put half into the freezer for later, but for some reason they mysteriously disappeared before I got around to it.

Finding homemade versions of some of your favorite packaged foods is a great first step in the direction of phasing junk out of your diet and home. The kids love these snacks, and I feel good about feeding them something healthier than what comes out of a box. What are some of your favorite homemade convenience recipes?

Kombucha

One of the many things brewing in my living kitchen is kombucha. Kombucha is a fermented tea beverage that has been around for thousands of years. It consists of a mother, or scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast), and green or black tea with sugar. The culture eats the sugar and produces many healing compounds including, amino acids, B vitamins, glucuronic acid, and gluconic acid. Regular consumption boosts the immune system, aids digestion, supports the liver and has been said to help in the healing of numerous afflictions from cancer to arthritis. I grew my own scoby from a bottle of GT Dave's Raw Kombucha, but at the moment there is a nation wide scarcity due to some labeling issues. That makes me even more glad that I have a scoby and brew my own at home. You can't buy it at the store right now. If you have a friend that brews kombucha you can get a scoby from them, as a new scoby is produced with each new brewing cycle. Otherwise there are several places on-line that sell and ship scobys.

Here's my scoby. Your scoby will grow to the size and shape of your container. I use a 1 gallon glass jar. A brand new scoby will be creamy white. This one just finished brewing a batch of kombucha and is colored by the tea it was floating in, so it looks a little darker than a brand new scoby. The scoby you're using to start your brew is affectionately called the 'mother'. The new scoby that forms on top of your brew is the 'baby'. Once you have a baby, you can put it in it's own brew where it is now the mother, and a new baby will form. Or you can give it to a friend who wasn't lucky enough to get in on the GT Dave's before it was pulled from the shelves. Always keep your scoby in some kombucha tea. If you order one it will arrive swimming in some tea. I only put it on the plate for the picture so you could see it clearly.

Here's some tea. I brew a very strong pot, and then add water go get it to a gallon. This is about two quarts of water and 6 tea bags. For 1 gallon of tea I use about 1.5 C of plain white sugar. Do not use honey, as it can kill your scoby. I find I get the best taste with white sugar, but I've made it with Sucanat before and it turned out just fine. It was just a lot stronger tasting. I steep my tea bags for about 1/2 an hour, then add my sugar, stir to dissolve, and cover with a lid to cool to room temperature.

Here's my sweet tea, ready for the culture. It's next to a 1/2 gallon jar of finished kombucha. You can see how much lighter the finished product is. This is because the culture eats the tea as it ferments. In this picture I'm only making 1/2 a gallon of kombucha. I'm using a small scoby and don't want it to have too much tea to convert. For the next batch I'll use this scoby and the new 'baby' scoby together and brew a full gallon.

Once the tea was ready I added about 2 cups of already brewed kombucha. This brings the pH of the tea down to optimal brewing levels and discourages the growth of mold. If you ordered a scoby or got one from a friend it should have come with some kombucha tea. You'll use this as your starter, so put it in with the scoby. Sometimes your scoby will float, sometimes it will sink, and sometimes it will float a little sideways like this one is doing. All of these things are fine and will not affect the outcome. The new baby will always form on the top. Cover your jar with a thin cloth. Cheese cloth is too poreus. I use a flour sack kitchen cloth. You want to keep bugs and dusties out of your kombucha, but it is a living thing and needs to breathe.

We keep our house pretty cool, even in the summer (I'm a weenie when it comes to heat) so I typically brew for about 2 weeks. When it's finihsed you'll have a nice new scoby on top of tea. It will taste tart and a little effervescent. You can slip a straw down the side of the jar into the tea, place a finger over the top of the straw to trap the liquid, and bring it up to taste. If it still tastes very sweet, it's not done culturing so leave it for a few more days and taste again. Once you have a good sweet/tart balance, it's time to bottle it. I strain it into glass canning jars. Be sure to leave a few cups of tea to use as starter for your next batch. I also do a second fermentation in the glass jar with the lid on at room temp for anohter 2-3 days. This helps build more carbonation. Then I pop it into the fridge and enjoy!

Chicken Soup For a Friend

When a mama gets sick, she can't call in to work. A full time mom doesn't have the luxury of going to bed and staying there. And for a lot of full time moms, finances are just tight enough that they wouldn't dream of asking hubby to stay home from work unless they were being admitted to hospital. So when I discovered that a good friend was down with the flu, and looking after two little ones, one of which was also under the weather, I offered the only help I could: Chicken Soup. This friend of mine is dealing with multiple food reactions in her children, so it's not very often that I have things on hand that are safe for her family to eat, but Sunday I just happened to have all of the ingredients for chicken soup on hand, ready to go, and allergen free.

The best chicken soup starts with home made chicken broth. I sauteed up some diced veggies, and I happened to have a whole batch of crock pot chicken in the fridge from the day before. They are gluten free, so I have potatoes in the soup in leu of noodles.



Everything into the pot for a good simmer. Seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little thyme.


Here it is all packaged up and ready for delivery. Sweet heart, I hope you're feeling better soon!