Heinz, Log Cabin, Stay-Puft, Grey Poupon...or my own?

I have come to the conclusion that there was a food conspiracy that took place over the last half century.

Power was taken away from the people of the US and given to the processed food industries. It was a slow process, and it was probably not planned out long term, at least in the beginning. I'm guessing it started with convenience, but the long term event was a considerable loss of our culinary cultural knowledge.

I never questioned most of the things I bought until Isabella and Vincent started having problems after consuming foods with corn syrup in them. That stuff is insidious. The number of foods with corn syrup is insane, and in order to allow them to eat, I had to learn to cook foods that I had never even considered making myself before. Syrup. Graham crackers. Marshmallows. Hamburger buns. Ketchup.

Sure, I could have bought most of these things without the corn syrup in them, but the price on the natural, organic processed verions is wicked high. Sorry, I am not going to pay $5 a box for crackers or $8 for a couple of marshmallows.

So, gentle reader (channeling Bronte from Jane Eyre there), should you have the desire to make your own staple foods, I promise you that they are actually very easy to do. Insanely easy.

Pancake Syrup:
3 c sugar
3 c water
a glug of molasses, vanilla or other flavoring agent

Boil about 15 minutes or so until thickened. Cool and pour into a jar. Keep in the fridge. I'm sure there is a technical temperature to heat to for the proper thickness, but I can never find the candy thermometer, so I just go until it looks good. Yes, once I cooked it too long and it crystalized and a couple of time I didn't cook it quite long enough and it was thin. 95% of the time, though, I get perfect syrup with zero effort and no nasty corn syrup in it.

Marshmallows:
I like this recipe. It is so easy you will fall over yourself for having never made marshmallows before. I mean really, mix water and gelatin in a bowl. Boil some water and sugar on the stove. Dump them all together and let your mixer do its thing for the next 20 minutes. How easy is that? It roasts nicely for a s'more and it makes a good rice krispie bar too.

Graham Crackers:
There a lot of recipes on line. I like this one from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World. You can be eating homemade crackers in less than 30 minutes from the time you start. They are easy to roll out, even if you are like me and don't follow the insructions perfectly. I generall just roll them, square out the edges and cut with my bench knife to the size instead of rolling them out twice for perfectly shaped crackers like the recipe calls for, but I'm lazy that way.

Mustard:
Mustard seeds, check. Water, vinegar, bit of sugar, check. Puree in a food processor and you have mustard. Okay, there is a day or two for soaking the seeds in there, but really, mustard is easy peasy.

Ketchup:
Recipes abound for this one, so have fun finding what fits your preferances. Basic recipe is tomatoes, onion, garlic, little bit of oil, some spices, brown sugar and vinegar. Puree, cook until it as thick as you like.

It is rather funny how easy making your own food is. Mac and cheese, hamburger helper type foods, taco seasoning mix - these are not hard foods to make. Once we start thinking outside of the processed food aisle, it is interesting how perspective changes.

Time + Kids = Creativity

Question #1

What do you get when you mix one pile of scrap wood, one determined kid who is mechanically inclined and lots of free time?

Vincent's fort

This has been his project of the week, built with his own tools. He took out the screws that were already in the wood so that it would be safe for everyone, then reused the screws to hold everything together. He hung the tire on there as a doorknocker, and he put the turtle shell on top for shade. He is trying to figure out what he can use for sides because our scrap wood pile was rather low. I'm sure he will come up with something interesting.

Question #2

What do you get when you mix one toddler who got the morning munchies with one 6 year old boy who often forgets to put away the cereal and milk after he is done with breakfast?
Looks so sweet and innocent doesn't he? Well, the highly classy ricotta cheese container bowl made its appearance in front of him after I discovered what he was doing. Notice the white line on the bottom of the cereal container? Those are not Frosted Flakes, and that is not sugar. Here, take a closer look:
Yes, he put the milk into the cereal container. Good gravy. Let's just say that all of the kids had a quick snack of cereal before it was mush. That was a brand new box of cereal that I had just put into the container the afternoon before too.

Happy days!

Breaking News:

Isabella is reading for pleasure! Daily!

I have actually had to tell her to put the book down in order to do something.

Given her struggles and the fact that she is so into visual images like Luis, I was not sure that this day would ever come. This is so cool.

Drip drop

Each season has its own type of rain.

The rain of summer has fat drops they plop down, cooling as they fall.

The rain of fall slices down from the sky, stripping the trees of their leaves, taking the oranges and crimson away, leaving us with brown and getting us ready for the stark look of winter.

Today we have a spring rain, steadily drenching. Suddenly, everything is brighter than it was a week ago. The soil is blacker. The buds burst into flashes of light green. The brown patches of grass turn emerald. My little onion sets have miniature stalks poking out of the garden beds.

Welcome back, spring.

Food and Safety

So, obviously I am big fan of eating local. No surprise to anyone reading this on a regular basis.

With all of the food safety scares in recent years and months, I suspect that more and more people will be seeing the importance of local food, buying direct.

Those big national food conglomerates buy foodstuffs from hundreds of sources. They mix foods of various origin (including international usually without labeling nation of origin). They process, package and distribute throughout the nation. It is efficient from a cheap oil, processed food standpoint. From a resources standpoint, it is extremely wasteful. The materials used in transportation and packaging represent waste. There is spoilage and a decrease in nutritional value of the foods that have to be picked in California and Texas, processed in Mississippi and delivered to Vermont and Montana. When situations like the salmonella poisonings happen, the amount of waste is beyond comprehension. Millions of pounds of food become suspect and tainted by association. Maybe it was a couple of hundred of pounds of pistachios that actually had salmonella. Because they were mixed and blended without regard, we have no way of knowing how many were tainted and where they may be. As a result, over a million pounds of nuts are being recalled. That is waste on a monumental scale.

If I buy spinach from a local source*, I can be reasonably certain that I know how it was grown and harvested. If I grow it myself, I can guarantee it is free from salmonella.

If I buy foods from a source that sticks with a few sources for food, I can be more confident that my food is secure. From a food safety standpoint, it only makes sense to east local, buy direct.

Our food safety increased for decades, but as food supply chains have spiderwebbed our nation, growing longer and longer, this is no longer the case. Our food safety has not increased in the last three years, and in my opinion, an argument could be made for stating that is decreasing. Without saying so directly, the message from the New York Times article is pretty clear. Eat local. Buy directly as possible.

I'm not a hundred mile locavore. I love me some coffee beans and chocolate, not to mention those avocados I treat myself to sometimes. However, I am aware of the source of my foods. I'm not fooling myself into thinking that the strawberries in the grocery store in December were grown in a greenhouse in Wisconsin or were picked two days ago on a small family farm in South America, package carefully and flown directly to my store for the bargain price of $3 per pound. Awareness and eduction about our basic needs is vital.

Nothing is more basic than food.

Eat local. Buy direct.

*And if you are in the Green County area and have any desire to begin a food based microbusiness of any sort, help a new Community Kitchen/Buy Local Initiative get off the ground. Go to Green County Kitchen and fill out the survey. Spread the word!

Open Letter to my Children

Dear Children of Mine:

Please for the love of everything that is holy, stop fighting, bickering, tattle telling, grumbling and picking on each other. Forever would be nice, but hey, I'd take one day of peace. That is all.

Love,
your Mama, who is on her last nerve

Run along now

I was not thrilled to wake up this morning to another layer of white covering the ground. Most of it has already melted off, but still, the mere fact that it was here means spring is still being held at bay by winter.

I am so ready for little sprouts poking through the earth. I am ready to play in the gardens, plant veggies for the year, harvest some rhubarb. I want asparagus, spinach and spring greens.

Winter, you run along now. We will see you again in six or seven months.

First a howling blizzard woke us,
Then the rain came down to soak us,
And now before the eye can focus -
Crocus.
~Lilja Rogers

It doesn't matter

I read this tonight on Story People, and it touched me.

I had a dream & I heard music & there were children standing around, but no one was dancing. I asked a little girl, why not? & she said they didn't know how, or maybe they used to but they forgot & so I started to hop up & down & the children asked me, Is that dancing? & I laughed & said, no, that's hopping, but at least it's a start & soon everyone was hopping & laughing & it didn't matter any more that no one was dancing.

The end of an era

I am getting ready to put aside something that has been a fixture in our home for the last eleven years. How strange it will feel to fully reclaim this space.

Good bye, diaper pail.

Simon has been using the potty consistently even when wearing clothes. Yes, we are big fans of the "let 'em go bottomless" school of potty training. It works, but then they have to learn to use the potty while wearing clothing too, and Simon is doing great.

I thought that putting aside the diapers forever in our household would be a bittersweet milestone, but I have to say that it is not. Maybe I'll feel a bit verklempt when I get around to packing up the diapers themselves, but for now, I am thrilled. No more diaper changes and diaper bags. Forever.

I wonder what other milestones will feel this way as Simon ages?

Oh the memories

Luis and I took a ballroom dance class back in our college years. It was a lovely experience except for one thing: the instructor insisted that we could not focus on learning how to dance together. She said we must dance with other partners because that is the way life is.

She was wrong. I could count on one hand the number of times I have danced with another man as an adult woman. I'd bet all of those times were with my own father. I am sure she thought college romance wouldn't last, and that she was doing a good thing by teaching us to dance with others, but what she did instead was take some of the joy and beauty out of dance for us.

Over the years, I have occasionally mentioned to Luis that I would like to take another dance class with him. When the local theater guild started a dance class for the bargain price of $10 per person for five classes, he signed us up.

What a joy it has been to relearn to dance with my husband. Sure, he is usually a half beat off and I often mess up on the footing after spins, but when we dance and he looks at me...

I remember why I fell in love.

To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak. ~Hopi Indian Saying

Points to ponder

Think about it:

~ Many other developed countries tax gas at a rate of $2-4 per gallon. We tax it at less than 55 cents per gallon in most states.

~ Levi's says it take 919 gallons of water to create one pair of 501 blue jeans. That is to grow the cotton, create and dye the cloth, and put the finish on. Good news: they are starting to recycle the water more, up to 70-80%. They are also encouraging consumers to wash only when dirty and encouraging line drying. Kudos to them for their changes.

Saturday Randomness

Rambling today:

~ China has better fuel efficiency standards for their cars than we do. They banned plastic bags. Why can't we?

~ Starting broccoli seeds this weekend. Only a week late.

~ I made a fantastic sweet and sour pork this week with pork from my friend Paula at Caulpris Farms. They are local, keep their pigs on dirt, and raise a very tasty animal.

~ I am starting to see the appeal of texting.

~ I am signed up for an event in March that I really do not want to go to. It cost $45 and I do not think I can get a refund.

~ *fingers crossed* That is all I'm going to say about that one. Just cross your for me today too, okay?

~ Has anyone else taken the volunteering challenge for 2009? I am putting in about 12-15 hours a month in volunteer services divided amongst four different organizations, and it is so invigorating.

You know how I was talking about how great things were going with school and the kids?

I realized that the reason school was going so well was because Isabella was cheating on all of her work. This is why she was getting it done so quickly, so perfectly, why she was working so great only when she was in another room "free from distractions."

Damn.

Another quote post

I am feeling very quotey lately...

[Breadbaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread. ~M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating


This is one reason I love to make bread.

Poetry for the day

Come, gentle Spring! Ethereal Mildness! Come.
~ James Thomson

Strange, the way life works

I find life rather full of odd coincidences. Too full.

Yesterday, I was flipping through some photo folders on my computer when I saw the shot of the tomatoes I featured here late late summer. They looked so good. I have not had fresh tomatoes since our wintering supply ran out in mid-December. Fresh tomatoes will not reappear on our plates here until the first harvest sometimes in July, an event I eagerly anticipate every year. I put the tomato photo up on Facebook as my profile picture along with a comment about missing tomatoes and looking forward to winter's end. I know I could just buy some, but they never taste right when from a grocery store, so I have not done that in years. It is so tempting when I am in Brennan's and the little stacks of tomatoes look so appealing, though.

Today, I opened up my new issue of Gourmet. There was a photo of a worker picking tomatoes in the "Politics of the Plate" section. The article was titled "The Price of Tomatoes: if you have eaten a tomato this winter, it might well have been picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery". Shocking statement.

The article details conditions in the United States, not some Latin American or Third World country. It talks about cases in Florida. Florida. Men and women held in appalling conditions of involuntary servitude. People who are in our country illegally, but still people. People who may work all day to pick up to a ton of green, hard tomatoes for about $50, but who are held in slavery and company store conditions of spiraling debt. Over 1,000 people freed by law enforcement officials since 1997; that is only the 1,000 we know about.

To quote the article:
But when asked if it is reasonable to assume that an American who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery story or food service company during the winter has eaten a fruit picked by the hand of a slave, Malloy said, "It is not an assumption. It is a fact."

Suddenly the thought of waiting months to taste a fresh tomato again seems a lot more acceptable.

Recipe-palooza continues

For Darla this time, here is that hot fudge sauce recipe.

Chocolate Sauce

1/2 c butter
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 c sugar
1 c light cream or evaporated milk*
1/2 c light corn syrup **
1 tsp vanilla

Melt butter and chocolate. Add sugar, cream, corn syrup and vanilla. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil 1 1/2 minutes.*** Remove from heat.

Makes about 3.5 cups. Serve warm or cold.

*I always use evaporated milk. And since a can of evaporated milk is about 1 1/2 cups, I usually make 1 1/2 batches of the syrup at a time because otherwise what else am I going to do with 4 ounces of evaporated milk? I could probably come up with something, but it is just easier to make an extra half batch. The kids gobble this down on their pancakes, so that extra bit makes sure I get some for my mochas. And yes, I let the kids put this chocolate syrup on their pancakes.

**Okay, I have never actually used the corn syrup in the recipe. I usually toss in a little extra sugar to compensate for it, but I rarely measure the extra. It is probably about 1/4 c or so.

***The longer you boil, the thicker and fudgier the syrup is. I usually try for a scant 1 1/4 minutes if I want it pourable, 1 1/2 or 2 minutes if I want to be able to just eat it with a spoon.

So that I do not forget

I made a very scrumptious soup last night, and I am putting the recipe here to remind myself of it in the future.

Lentil Soup

2 leeks, sliced
1 small onion, diced
2 carrots, sliced
2 red potatoes, diced small
about 2.5 cups red lentils
8 cups stock (I used beef, but turkey or chicken would be good)
4 slices of bacon
2 smoked Polish sausage

Saute leeks, onions and carrots in a pot in 1-2 T olive oil until they have nice golden color. Be patient; this will take about 15 minutes or so. When you think it is done, give it another 2 minutes. Run two cloves of garlic through the press and add it to the veggie mix when they are starting to just turn golden.

Add just a little stock to cool down the pan a bit and thicken up the nice leek fibers for a minute, then add the remaining stock, lentils and potatoes. Simmer until lentils and potatoes are soft. This will take about 30 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. I threw in about a tsp of salt and four or five cranks on the pepper mill.

While the soup simmers, fry the bacon until crisp. Cool, crumble and add to the soup. Add about 2 spoonfuls of the bacon grease to the soup too. Slice the sausage. Fry it in the remaining bacon grease until hot. Add to the soup a few minutes before serving.

Normally, when making lentil soup, I would puree part of it, but did not do that this time. Just be sure to cook that soup until the lentils are really soft and the potatoes essentially melt away.

For Lisa

Lisa, my dear, ask and you shall receive.

Double Chocolate Scones

2 c flour
1/2 c sugar
1/3 c dutch process cocoa
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 c unsalted butter
1 beaten egg
1/2 c heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 c bitter dark chocolate coarsely chopped
1/2 c chopped pecans, toasted (optional)

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.

In a small bowl, mix egg, whipping cream, and vanilla. Add egg mixture to the flour mixture. Add chocolate and optional pecans. Using a fork, stir just until moistened.

Turn out onto a lightly floured counter. Gently knead by folding and pressing dough 10-12 times or until nearly smooth. Handle dough as little as possible to keep it light. Divide into two pieces. Lightly press or roll each half into a 4 1/2 inch round. Cut each round into 6 wedges. Place wedges onto a parchment lined or ungreased baking sheet. If you like, brush scones with extra whipping cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for 12-14 minutes or until bottoms are lightly browned. Remove from sheet and cool on wire rack for 5 minutes. Serve warm.

312 calories per scone, 15 g fat, 39 g carbs and 5 g protein when made with heavy cream.

I have also made this with soy milk for people with dietary restrictions and unlike a lot of scones, these work well with the substitution.

Conversation

Conversation in the car yesterday:

Isabella: Mama, turn right!
Me: Why? We are taking (babysitter's name) home.
Isabella: Because I'm hungry.
Me: Why would I turn right if you are hungry?
Isabella: Because the sign said "Food, next right." I want some food.

So, her reading ability is really taking off.