Julie Surprise: Out of the Blue Salad

I will be the first to confess that I'm not naturally a very organized person, I'm the one who is usually a bit late, or who will call you last minute for a baby-sitting gig because I totally spaced something I needed a sitter for until the night before or even the morning of. Yes, I know. I am ashamed. I am getting better about it though, through huge effort and help from my list app, reminders and calender on my smart phone, I have improved slightly.

On the other hand, I can do spontaneous, and I can handle random. I will not have a break down if plans fall through or if something changes. I can handle change. In fact, I've discovered I sort of need things to change up a bit everyone once in a while because too much structure makes me crazy (i.e. grumpy, emotional, intense, high strung, etc.) My husband and I are well matched because we both enjoy making random and spontaneous decisions together.

For example, back in July, on one of the rare Sundays in which we did not have a family party or any other after church obligations, we spontaneously decided to drop in at his parents house to borrow their barbecue grill and their pool for a little family summer fun with our kids. His parents were out of town, but even if they hadn't been, they also have no problem with spontaneous drop-ins.

Anyway, once we got there, my hubby started firing up the grill and he asked me to look around the kitchen to figure out what else we could eat, like some kind of salad to have on the side with our grilled chicken.

(I guess I should clarify that this is also totally cool at my in-laws house. They have a standing policy that if the food is there you can have it. [which idea, honestly, was a little hard for me to get used to when I first got married because in my house you always had to ask about anything you wanted to eat in case Mom was saving it for something.] My mother-in-law sort of has this mentality about it; she feels like if she is generous with what she has, that there will always be enough. In fact, I think she sort of has a contract going on with God where if she shares her abundance that He promises her that her cupboards will always be full. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure there was something like that in the story my hubby told me.)

Anyway, there I was, in someone else's kitchen, with the task of figuring out what to eat for our spontaneous Sunday picnic. I looked through the fridge, but as my in-laws were out of town, there wasn't much there in way of produce. So I checked the freezer, "Hmm, frozen fruit." and the pantry, "Nothing." and the storage room, "Hmm, canned pineapple."

What I did find in the fridge was part of what got my wheels turning about the possibilities. My mother-in-law had some good sour cream. The kind that has only two ingredients (cream and enzymes) so I was thinking maybe I could use it to make some sort of fruit salad.
Pineapple is awesome with cottage cheese, so it seemed like I could perhaps make it work with the sour cream so I dumped a can of drained pineapple into a bowl and plopped about a half a cup of sour cream on top. Then I added a bit of sea salt and a packet of Truvia because they don't keep coconut sugar in their house (and I can't eat cane sugar).

Mixed that all up and tasted it. Hmm, not too shabby. At the same time I was doing this, I was making a fruit smoothie for us to drink with some of the frozen fruit in the freezer. I thought about adding a variety of fruit to the salad, but honestly, I was thinking something a little simpler sounded good so I decided to only go with frozen blueberries (about 1/2 cup again). Blueberries and pineapple just sounded delicious.

Once I started stirring those in, the color of the salad turned a lovely bluish-lavender color and I figured I was pretty much done. . .

Except . . . there just didn't seem to be much salad for everyone, and while it was good, it seemed like it needed something. A little more contrast of flavor. so I looked in the fruit bowl and found a couple of ripe bananas. I sliced one up and threw it in.

Tada! Out of the blue, we have a salad!

Needless to say, this salad was not only lovely to look at but it was delicious to eat as well. In fact, I had to go back inside halfway through our picnic and make a second batch so everyone could have as much as they wished. So, that being said, I'm going to double the recipe here at the bottom because for a good sized group you'll probably want it at least doubled.

Julie Surprise: Out of the Blue Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 cans chunk pineapple or tidbits would work well too, drained. (I added the juice to our smoothie)
• 1 cup frozen blueberries, (you could use fresh, but it might not look as blue in the end.)
• 2 large bananas sliced.
• 1 cup clean sour cream.
• 1 packet of truvia, or non-cane sweetener of your choice (honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar)
• A dash or two of fine sea salt.

Mix and enjoy!

I'm so glad that I was given the task to spontaneously whip up a salad with random ingredients.
If I hadn't had that opportunity, I never would have tasted this delicious concoction!
So while I may appear to be a very flawed person, I'm so glad I can handle being creative under pressure. Things can be pretty yummy, out of the blue.


~Julie :}

Edible Decor

Ever since I started buying a Bountiful Basket, drinking Green Smoothies, and just buying more produce in general, one thing that I've enjoyed beyond the obvious benefits of such a life style is the fact that; because my kitchen  theme has always been fruit, with fun, graphic decor in bright colors. This makes is not only logical but very enjoyable and ascetically pleasing to have fresh fruit in the kitchen because I can use it as decor. Plus, having the fruit out in plain site makes it easier to remember to eat it before it goes bad. That is, if you can bring yourself to ruin the lovely display. Lol!
Of course my husband has no problem with the latter issue so it turns out to be a good system for eating our fresh fruit regularly. 

I have a fruit bowl, but often it fills up so quickly that it becomes necessary to use other places for displaying fruit. 

My favorite is the ledge under the window in the kitchen. Here are just a few of the arrangements that have resided there until they were eaten.

Pears . . .

 Golden Delicious Apples

Asian Pears and Apples

Maybe this will inspire some of you to find fun ways to display fruit in your own kitchen, and thereby encourage your family to eat it more often.

What My Diet is Like Right Now

My sister started a FB group recently where like minded Mom's with similar values can share articles and ideas without having to get flamed and bombarded with arguments like they would if they posted the same things on their regular page. It's been a lot of fun to share some of my favorite new ideas and findings with these few women who are all in the same boat, trying to figure out what's best for their families and how to make ends meet without sacrificing their health or values.

Tonight, one of the group members asked about if any of the rest of us feel lost when it comes to grocery shopping; trying to figure out how to afford, good clean healthy fair without it costing an arm an a leg, and even knowing what to make with the food you do get.
I totally understand this feeling!
It's one thing to know what NOT to buy and what NOT to eat. Becoming aware of dangerous additives and ingredients is really eye opening, and it can feel empowering to finally take the plunge and throw out all the junk that's been lurking in the back of your pantry (you know those instant mashed potatoes that have more ingredients than your aunt Edna's secret recipe for frog eye salad?)  Yes, it is a great feeling to say to yourself, "No. I deserve better and my family deserves better and it's not wasteful to throw out garbage."

It's after the cleaning out and rethinking is all done that you might find yourself walking through a grocery store and have no idea what to actually put in your cart. Or, even if you have managed to fill it will all kinds of things you know are great healthy foods, you might find yourself looking at a fridge full of great healthy food but have no idea what to do with it.

I'm sure we've all gone through this, are going through it, or hopefully will go through it because it's all part of the process of the paradigm shift that must occur if we're ever going to leave behind the SAD way that we used to eat.

So, of course, all of the above are the thoughts that went through my mind when I read this question posted to our group's wall. 

So, I started to write a response, and then, as is typical for me, it started to turn into a really long comment and then I had to admit that it was becoming a blog post. So here it is.

I have been figuring things out slowly for the past 2-3 years so I totally know the feeling of getting overwhelmed.
Meat is always tricky too because you want it to be safe but need to be able to afford other food too, and have room for it all. We've been thinking about buying bulk from this site:  http://pinterest.com/pin/15129348718233832/, 
but we'd have to be able to split it with a few families to be able to afford the best deal AND have the room to freeze it. So yeah, still figuring out the meat. 

As of right now Costco has been my link to sanity.
For a while there we just weren't eating very much meat and my hubby was having a hard time with that. So recently I've been buying their organic ground beef ($16.99 for 4 lbs divided into three pieces). I't doesn't say it's grass fed, but it does say hormone free so I figure it's better than some things. Then I also buy a flat of organic black beans and organic tomato paste and use these ingredients to make a big batch of chili which usually lasts us about a week as an easy lunch for my hubby to take to work, or for me to eat. Oh, I often buy their organic chicken stock to add to the chili too. 

Getting veggies from Bountiful Baskets is a great way to get lots of produce in your diet for very little money, plus it gives you a reason to try new things you might not have thought of buying. I think using this resource was a great step in helping me to transition away from the way we used to eat into thinking more about veggies, and actually using them. It was a big learning curve, but so worth it!

Honestly though, we haven't been relying on BB as much because I've been concerned about the dirty dozen and the clean fifteen thing and it seems like most of the produce you get in the BB is on the dirty dozen list. You can get an organic basket for $10 more but I'm not sure it's worth it for how much food you get because the organic basket is always smaller than the conventional one and then it costs that much more, plus, they might include things in the organic basket that are clean enough that buying organic wasn't necessary for that particular item.

Still, if you already aren't eating a lot of produce it's a really great way to get into doing that. And they say eating conventional produce is always better than no produce at all.
Pinterest is a great resource for recipes, as is the Green Smoothie Girl Blog and the Bountiful Basket's Blog.  Actually, there are a TON of great blogs out there for clean eating, most of which I found through Pinterest. You just have to take baby steps and try things to figure out what works best for you and your family.

Right now, I usually buy most of my produce at Costco, like the things on the clean 15 list, such as oranges, grapefruit, Avocado, broccoli, kiwis, asparagus, artichokes. Things with high nutrient content that I can get in bulk and my family will actually eat.
I also will buy organic spinach there for green smoothies and recently I've discovered their organic baby kale which is much easier to eat than the kind we use to get through Bountiful Baskets. It makes a great salad green.
Anyway, whatever I want from the dirty dozen list that isn't available at Costco organically,  I will supplement those veggies and fruits with produce from Whole Foods. I used to use Smith's Marketplace because they do have some organic produce, but often I find that organic apples at Whole Foods are slightly cheaper than at Smiths. As are their grapes, occasionally, and their bananas. It depends though, so watching sales can still be good.

I also have been buying Coconut sugar at Whole Foods to use instead of other sweeteners. Oh, and their nitrate free bacon because my nutritionist told me when I got pregnant that I MUST eat bacon but that it HAD to be nitrate free. I told him I would love that but had no idea where to get nitrate free bacon and he said Whole Foods is where he gets it. His family buys it from behind the meat counter. I've actually just been buying of of the prepackaged  brands because it's cheaper ($3.99 a pack) and with my small family 3-4 packs will last us a least a couple of weeks.  We gave up lunch meat over a year ago and if we have sandwhiches they are now Peanut Butter and honey(Adam's PB has only one ingredient, Peanuts. We get a big jar from Costco), or grilled cheese, or Canned Wild Caught Salmon (our new tuna; we eat it with a mixture of cream cheese based dressing or simply some mashed avocado, depending on what we have, since mayonnaise is full of soy and other things) We also use Dave's killer bread for sandwiches, though someday I dream of sprouting my own grains . . . 

Oh, and we get organic eggs and butter from Costco.  Someday we hope to have a source for local eggs, perhaps from neighbors with chickens or maybe we'll even get chickens ourselves someday. A lot of our friends who live in a house with a yard have done so. One friend even raises rabbits for food.  So, I guess my point is . . . It's a process. I'm sure I will always be wanting to improve this or that aspect of our lives and health, but you just change/try one thing at a time and as it feels right.

Just to be up front and honest, our grocery budget can be anything from $95-$200 a week, depending on the week, and what things we're low on. Oh, and that feeds two adults and two small kids. Cutting back on certain things has certainly helped of course. We don't buy any convenience foods. No cold cereal, not even the healthy kind. My daughter has trouble with milk so we gave that up almost five years ago and haven't missed it. Breakfast consists of either oatmeal (bought in bulk at Costco again) or pancakes made from scratch, compliments of my hubby, half a grapefruit, or bacon and eggs. Things like that.

As for all the meat you bought, if your chicken has bones, I would advise making some Stock from that and freezing it.

In fact, if it's a lot of meat, you could precook the chicken in in crock pot, then shred and freeze extra meat to use for future recipes, like tacos/burritos, soup, etc.
Then of course, as I just said, boil the carcass for your stock.
I've done this before and I got a ton of really yummy stock out of it. In fact, it was surprising because I used a cornish game hen the first time and they are small, but I actually added more water a couple times after the first batch of stock, let it simmer another night and got more out of the bones and veggies. Not as rich and dark the subsequent times of course, but still really good stock. I just figured I'd keep going until I'd gotten as much goodness as I could out of it. You'll want to make sure you have enough freezer containers if you're going to do it that way.
I learned the hard way that glass doesn't freeze well, so if you're using mason jars or anything put those ones in the fridge for use first, or at least don't fill them too full. Anyway, this is a great way to get the most for your money when you buy expensive poultry I think, because it's got to be way cheaper than buying the organic stock at Costco, and you can add whatever awesome veggies you want to it.  In fact, the first night you could just cook all the veggies and meat in the crockpot and you eat that for dinner and then it's just the scraps that are left over that need to be boiled for the stock.

Anyway, this has been a very long post. Hopefully some of the ideas here were helpful and made sense. Feel free to ask any follow up questions!

Julie Surprise: Oven-less Cherry Pie!

Okay, so normally you would want some kind of oven for this recipe. 

 Mine was ovenless out of necessity because our oven has been broken for the past two months or so.

 Luckily for me, the weather has been such that most people wouldn't want to turn on an oven anyway, so I was able to 'bake' my crust on the dashboard of my minivan for a few hours. It might have even taken less time if I had thought of it sooner since it got to be at least 102° fahrenheit that day. As it was, I put the crust on the dashboard and rolled up all the windows at about 5pm at which point the sun was about to go behind some trees near our parking lot and then a cloud cover came over. I pulled it out after 9pm (after I'd put the girls to bed) thinking that it would simply have to wait till another hot day since the next day I'd be gone to Lagoon all day, but to my delight and relief when I pulled it out it was firm and baked through. Yay!
 The recipe I used was extremely simple. I basically used this shortbread recipe that I found on Pinterest except I didn't have any almond flour so I gleaned inspiration from the photo for this crust recipe and used ground almonds instead. It worked great!
So, since I guess I once again, sort of made my own recipe, I'll be kind enough to type it out below for those who want to try the "Julie" method. :}

 As for the cherry filling, well, that was an interesting adventure in and of itself. A tangent which needs it's own post, actually.

Basically it started out as a bowl of fresh cherries marinated with lemon juice and honey because I didn't have any sugar at the time I received the cherries. It sat in my fridge for almost three weeks. Finally, the evening before the fourth of July I decided to try making the pie despite my lack of oven. So I whipped up the crust as stated above. It was only after bringing the crust in from the van that night that I figured I'd better finish making the pie and began to consider how best to deal with the filling.
I'd added some coconut sugar to the cherries earlier that evening while working on the crust, and it was back in my fridge in a glass casserole dish with a lid. It occurred to me as I came in with the crust that while I could use the stove top (which still works) to cook the filling, it seemed a shame to dirty another dish when it was already in a lovely microwavable dish, and I didn't see any reason why the microwave wouldn't work. So that's what I ended up doing. I cooked the cherry filling in the microwave on the fresh veggies setting until it made the kitchen smell wonderful. Then I stirred in a pack and a half of pectin. Then I scooped the cherries into the crust. There was quite a bit of sauce though so I sort of strained the fruit out of the sauce so the pie wouldn't be too runny. The leftover sauce went into a jar in the fridge were it turned into a sort of cherry jelly, not unlike grape jelly actually, though perhaps a tad more tart.
Once that was done I toasted some sliced almonds with a little butter and coconut sugar on the stove top and added those to the pie as a topping.

Tada! Julie Surprise Cherry Pie!


Now, here's the recipe all written out a bit more tidily.

Almond Lemon Crust:

Ingredients: 

• 6 Tablespoons organic butter
• 2 cups freshly ground almonds (Used my little food processor for this)
• 1/3 cup granulated sweetener (I used coconut sugar)
• 1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest (Mine was actually frozen, but it worked fine)

Directions:

• Melt the butter in the microwave in the glass pie dish. Add the almond meal, sweetener, and lemon zest, stirring until fully combined.
• To make a tart or pie crust:
• No need to pre-chill, just press dough into the pie pan. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees (F) for 15 mins until firm and golden brown. Or, as in my case, put on the dashboard of a hot vehicle for 2-5 hours or until firm and cooked through. (I put a sheet of tinfoil underneath it, shiny side up, and another to one side to try and reflect the sun to the top of it. Don't know if it made any difference, but there you have it.)

Cherry Filling:

Ingredients: 

• 4 cups fresh, pitted cherries
• Enough honey to coat cherries well
• Juice from half a lemon
• 1/2 cup granulated sweetener (I used coconut sugar) Optional
  1 to 1 & 1/2 packs of pectin (depending on how runny filling is)

Directions:

• Stir honey and lemon with cherries and if you wish, refrigerate overnight (or up to three weeks!)
  Add extra sweetener (coconut sugar) if needed before cooking.
• Cook in the microwave on the fresh vegetable setting until filling become fragrant and looks done. Then stir in pectin and transfer to crust. Add topping and refrigerate pie overnight or until set.
  If you wish to cook the filling on the stove top add the pectin once it comes to a simmer and stir and cook until sauce begins to thicken.
  Then add to crust as stated above.

Topping:

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup sliced almonds
• 1/2 cup granulated sweetener (I used coconut sugar) Optional
• 1/3 cup organic butter

Directions:

• Add almonds to a small frying pan or skillet and toast on low heat stirring occasionally until fragrant.
  Add sweetener (coconut sugar) and organic butter and stir until sugar melts and coats the almonds evenly.
  Now, you can let the almonds cool and break them up over your pie, or you can do what I did and let them drizzle out of the hot pan over the pie, using a rubber spatula to guide them until the pie is evenly coated. Either way works.

Enjoy!

~Julie :}

Eat Cleaner All Natural Food Wash

Another great find thanks to Daily Grommet!

This is a food wash that can come as a spray, or as wipes.  It is safe, biodegradable, non-toxic etc . . . All you do is spray your produce, let it sit for two minutes and then rinse it off.

The spray will remove all wax and pesticide residue from your food, and because it removes bacteria the shelf life of your produce is increased!
I'm really excited about this!  Apparently they even sell to restaurants, and they offer a poultry and seafood spray as well, that will ensure you don't  have things like salmonella or e-coli in your food.

Check out the Eat Cleaner website for yourself!
Happy eating!

Say Cheese!

Here is a tip I heard, and have used:

Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Julie Notes: Just know that this only works if the cheese is entirely wrapped in foil . . . don't just cap the unwrapped part with foil like I once did. It needs a tight seal to keep air out.

Also, if you're doing this with a big five pound block of cheese, expect to need to replace the foil multiple times before it's used up as the foil get's worn, wrinkled and torn over time. This is probably a more practical method for smaller blocks of cheese. Or, you can cut your large block into smaller blocks first and wrap each individually, to keep from wasting extra foil in the end.