Pumpkin Pie or Pumpkin Latte Smoothie

This recipe makes an amazingly smooth pumpkin smoothie. You have your choice of pumpkin pie (leave out the coffee) or pumpkin latte (with the coffee).

It's wonderfully smooth without needing a sugar-y banana. Make it with any milk, preferably unsweetened. If has enough protein to make a full meal even with low-proteins milks like almond.

Both recipes use a special smoothie base called Vanilla Life Shake. Order it here.

Let me know how you like this recipe.

And let me know about your favorite smoothie recipes, whether on your blog or left here.

Mug Muffins! Fast, filling, low-glycemic, GF, and a whole healthy meal!

Muffins don't have a great reputation among those who would be healthy. They're usually full of both fat and sugar. They surely don't make a real meal.

This recipe provides all the nutrition of a meal. The main ingredient Shaklee Life Energizing Shake, makes it a complete meal. Here we use milk and/or egg, and fruit - just like a smoothie.

Here's Mug Muffin recipe! It's high in protein, low in sugar (none added), filling, fast, and delicious. And flexible when it comes to ingredients. It's a satisfying meal ready in less than 10 minutes.

I've included the basic Fruity Mug Muffin, and the Cocoa or Cocoa-PB Mug Muffin variation.

Fruity Mug Muffin

You'll need:
a small banana, or half a large one, speckled if possible
an egg
a few tablespoons of unsweetened applesauce, or milk or cream
2 scoops Shaklee Life Energizing Shake, vanilla (or strawberry might work)
a handful of frozen or fresh blueberries, or other berries (optional)

In a large mug, smoosh the banana until it's mostly smooth, beat in the egg, and stir in the applesauce (about 2 T - you want a damp mix, not soupy but not stiff).

Gently stir in the scoops of Energizing Shake one at a time, until it's smooth.

Add a handful of frozen or fresh berries and stir in lightly.

Put the mug in the microwave. In mine it takes 4-5 minutes to cook when I'm using frozen berries, 3-4 minutes otherwise. It may rise over the top of the mug but that's ok. It's done when the top loses its shine and looks cooked.

Take it out, let it cool a few moments or until it's room temperature, and eat it. You can dump it out, but I eat it out of the mug with a fork (so I don't compress it by digging at it with a spoon).

Variation: Cocoa (PB) Mug Muffin

You'll need
a small banana, as above
an egg
1 T smooth or chunky PB, optional
a few tablespoons of milk (or cream)
2 scoops Shaklee Life Energizing Shake, chocolate or Cafe Latte
1 T plain unsweetened cocoa (not chocolate drink mix)

Use the same method, stirring in the peanut butter before adding the egg. Then add the milk and follow the rest of the directions. Omit the berries. You could add some chocolate chips at the end for a triple-chocolate treat.

Put the mug in the microwave as before, but check after 3 minutes to see if the top looks cooked. Let it cool....

The cocoa makes this recipe almost brownie-like.

Today I made my lunch mug muffin with ripe raspberries in place of the applesauce. We have a lot in the garden just now. It's not quite as sweet as when I use applesauce, but it was full of flavor. Notice the pink color in the mug!

Broccoli-Mushroom Custard GF

This versatile one-dish meal is delicious, also easy to make ahead, or in quantity for planned-overs. I made the broccoli-mushroom version for supper for our 51st wedding anniversary: we wanted to spend time on a nice long walk, not sitting in a restaurant.

This recipe features a custard that surrounds both veggies and rice. The cheese adds richness, and if you choose the feta-cheese option, it also provides the salt.

Here's the recipe. It's helpful if you have some leftover cooked rice. I always make extra rice, 6 cups at a time in my rice cooker. The cooked rice keeps for several days in the fridge, or forever in the freezer. If you don't have leftover rice, cook some up right away!

This recipe makes about 6 servings.

Ingredients. All measures are approximate. This is a very flexible recipe! (see below for variations)

1 1/2 pounds broccoli
1 pound brown mushrooms
1 T butter
3 cups cooked rice. I think white is nicer in this recipe. I use short-grain.
1 cup feta cheese crumbles
3 extra large eggs or equivalent
1 cup whipping cream
2 1/2 cups whole milk
Whole nutmeg (optional)

1. Pre-cook the broccoli by steaming it briefly in the microwave. Chop into bite-size pieces.
2. Coarsely chop the mushrooms, then saute in the butter until beginning to brown all over.
3. Heat the rice until soft in a 9x13 glass baking dish in the microwave, about 2 minutes.
4. Toss the broccoli, mushrooms, and rice together in the baking dish.
5. Sprinkle the feta cheese over the mixture. Use more if you'd like.
6. Beat the eggs well, then add the cream and milk and beat again. Pour over the contents of the baking dish.
7. Grate nutmeg over the top (optional)

Bake at 350 for nearly an hour. Check after 50 minutes to see if it's cooked to the center.

Variations:

• Use other vegetables. Sauteed greens, strips of pre-steamed carrots, sauteed onion, whole cloves of garlic, strips of sauteed pepper (red bell would be particularly nice, or if you want some zip, sauteed chilis).
• Use parmesan instead of feta. You'll probably want to sprinkle salt on the rice while warming it unless you use feta.
• Add meat, such as roasted chicken or pork; or add canned salmon. Increase the milk by 1/2 cup.
• Sprinkle the top with crumbs (no longer GF) or ground pecans or ground hazelnuts.
• Add 1/2 cup pumpkin or winter squash, cooked and pureed, to the custard before pouring it over the rice and vegetables. 
• For added piquancy, use sour cream instead of whipping cream. 
• Make in individual casseroles, adjusting cooking time. 
• Serve on a bed of sauteed greens. Or serve with a green salad, or fruit salad. 

Growing Onions: Preparation and planting

Onions grow well here in Anacortes WA, which enjoys cool but not cold winters. We almost never get below 20F and that means we can plant onions now, in early December.

We like raised beds. Then the soil is what we make of it. Our beds are about five years old and are replenished and amended each year. Here are some tips if you're just beginning:

Location: If you are in Zone 5 as we are, you want sun. Make sure you have the most sun your yard will allow. A southwest facing slope is ideal, and good drainage helps most crops. (I am using the Sunset zones, not the USDA ones, which take only low temperatures into account.)

Size: You can make a bed as small as 2'x2'. Or make long boxes to fit your terrain. Stick with 4' foot widths so you don't have to step on the soil inside the box to plant or weed or harvest. Or start with containers, but in the winter they will freeze sooner and all year around they dry out fast.

Making boxes: All you need for a 2'x2' is a single 8' board. We like the sturdiness of 2" stock. Make 3 cuts, one every 2 feet, then build a square. We use corner braces to secure the pieces. Our boxes are 12" high, but you can get away with less. The higher you make them, the deeper the soil you can accommodate. We finish the boxes with white barn paint (because it contains no toxins) to help keep them from rotting. You could use cedar or treated lumber but then it's more expensive and we don't know what is going to seep into the soil.

Soil: The basis of our boxes is top soil we purchased. We had a truckload brought in, back when we didn't have anything planted and the delivery wouldn't destroy anything. It was very sandy, really a disappointment. We have amended it in several ways.

Our favorite 'outside' amendment is coir, which is made of ground-up coconut shells. It holds an amazing amount of water and doesn't break down readily. So garden boxes we established four years ago with a portion of coir are still our best producers. Back then we could find only small bricks of coir and thought of it as an extravagance. Now I have been able to find larger bricks online at a fraction the cost. Coir holds an amazing amount of water and so will help keep crops happy during our summer dry spells. To use it, soak a brick, then use it when filling a box. We soak ours in a kiddy pool: one brick when wet fills the pool, and makes a good amount for a 12'x4' garden box.

We also use our own compost. We put all our table scraps in a back corner of the back yard. More on compost in a later post. Every lawn mowing contributes to the pile, along with every veggie scrap. Whatever we have is divided into our garden boxes. There's no such thing as too much compost and we have neighbors who happily contribute their (untreated) grass clippings to the pile.

We don't use peat moss, which is not a renewable resource. We also don't use vermiculite, which is expensive and blows around and gets wasted. We do bring in rotting horse manure from a friend's paddock and have at times gotten straw from a neighbor. Straw can be treacherous though if it is fact hay and still has hay seeds in it. They will turn your garden into an intractable lawn.

Planting. Start small. Read about Square Foot Gardening, in which each plant is treated as an individual. You don't need massive amounts of food because in SFG you don't have a lot of waste.

Advice: Just begin. Then grow it from there. More to come....

Onions are great fun to grow and store well in the winter. You can eat the greens along the way and never have to run out. They are just one of the crops you can start right in the garden in December in Zone 5. What varieties will you try this year?

Perfect Popcorn

This popcorn is perfect because as soon as it comes out of the pot, it is buttered, salted and flavored. It takes only one pan to pop it in, and one bowl to pour it into. The rest is up to the guests.

In our house we always choose peppery popcorn but this recipe should work for just about any flavor.

The relative ease of popping corn in coconut oil has transformed and simplified the already fairly easy process. Here is step by step what I've adapted from traditional procedures, and the reasons for each step.

1. Choose a good-sized pot with good heat-retaining properties. Mine are stainless over a conducting core. You want the heat to be distributed over the whole bottom of the pot. You'll need a lid, of course.

2. Pour about 1/4 cup melted coconut oil into the pan, or scoop some out of the container it's stored in. (When I purchase coconut oil, which I do in gallon tubs, I melt it and pour it into pint canning jars for ease of use. Then when I want it liquified I place the jar on a saucer and put the whole thing in the microwave for a minute or a bit longer. Or I can scoop out the solids from the wide-mouthed jar.)

3. Turn on the heat fairly high to start heating pan and oil. Add 5 kernels of popcorn to the pan and sprinkle 1/2-3/4 teaspoon salt into the pan.

4. Have ready 1/2 cup popcorn and 2 tablespoons of butter, room-temperature if possible. Fridge-temp will do. Also have a sprinkling of cayenne ready, or about 1/2 teaspoon.

5. When 3 or 4 of the 5 kernels in the pot have popped, act fast. Add the butter, then pour in the popcorn, sprinkle on the cayenne, and close the lid fast. Then turn down the heat to medium.

6. Start shaking right away. You don't want any piece of popcorn in contact with the bottom too long. The popping should begin quickly.

7. Continue shaking back and forth, and let the top vent to get some of the steam out. (The steam is made when the water inside each kernel of popcorn super-heats, then is released when the kernel pops.)

8. When the popping has stopped for several seconds, take off the lid and pour the popped corn into the waiting bowl.

9. Eat! It will be buttered, salted, and flavored. If you want to use onion salt or other flavored salts, reduce the added salt or omit it. If you would like to have a caramel-flavored popcorn, add 1/2-1 tsp sugar in place of the cayenne. Be careful! Caramel is hot and sticky!

This recipe makes a very large batch for 2 people, and will disappear quickly with 4.

By heating the heat-tolerant coconut oil first, then adding butter and popcorn, the corn doesn't have a chance to burn before the whole potful is popped (with possibly the exception of a few kernels).

Questions? I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions! This recipe is of course naturally gluten-free.

Hummus - Basic recipe

I haven't made hummus for a while. I like to have some sort of beans soaking and noticed the bag of garbanzos someone gave me. So I put them in water a couple of days ago, and by yesterday they needed rinsing and cooking. I turned off the heat last night when I went to bed and just hoped they were done.

This morning I tested them and they were cooked enough, maybe not quite all the way to very soft but good enough for hummus.

I have a new food processor that would surely smooth them into a pleasant paste.

The food processor had a residue of green powder in it. This was left over from drying greens from the garden and pulverizing them for use in the winter. One pound of greens - enough to fill my picking basket - dried down enough to make less than a half-cup of powder. So what was sticking to the food-processor bowl was a significant amount, something I didn't want to waste. Green powder would make a perfect amendment to hummus, so after I got out all I could, I just whirred the cooked beans in the same bowl. (My food processor has 3 nesting bowls.)

Here's the recipe I use. If you like to measure precisely, this is probably not the recipe for you!

Basic Hummus

1. Soak a 1 pound bag of garbanzos for a day or 2, rinse thoroughly.
2. Put in a pot with a lid, cover with an inch or more of water, and cook until tender.
3. Scoop half the beans into a food processor (or less if yours handles only small batches), using a slotted spoon.
4. Let the processor work until the beans are mostly smooth, adding cooking liquid to get to the consistency you like.
5. While the processor is working, add several tablespoons of sesame tahini (made from raw sesame seeds). I prefer a hummus that tastes strongly of sesame. You may want to use less.
6. Toss several garlic cloves into the processor chute while the processor continues to work.
7. Add salt to taste, 1 tsp or more.
8. While the processor is still working, squeeze a lemon over a strainer and into the processor chute.
9. When everything looks homogeneous, stop the processor and taste. Adjust as needed.
10. When you are satisfied, scoop the contents out into a container with a lid, pour several tablespoons of tasty olive oil over the top, and refrigerate. Serve on salad or with raw or cooked veggies.
11. Refrigerate the cooked garbanzos and their liquid for another batch of hummus or to make another garbanzo-bean recipe.

This is a gluten-free recipe made only with real foods.

First potatoes of the season!

Today John harvested the first 3 potatoes of the season, reds from last year.

We must have missed harvesting one. And from that one we have these three and lots more: The plant is in bloom, so it's still producing, growing the baby spuds still. 

I love gardens! Magical things happen there. You put this bit of DNA in the ground in the form of a seed or a piece of potato, and you end up with something that knows how to organize sunlight, water, stuff from the soil, and maybe things we can't see, into food we can eat. Tiny seed, lots of food. 

I never get tired of marveling over it. 

Anyway, we'll have perfect fresh potatoes as part of our supper for the first time tonight.

We were behind putting things in because we were away. This potato overwintered so it had a head-start on the others. Maybe next year we'll just leave a few dozen in the ground on purpose and save a lot of work!

Spring treat - frizzled garden greens

We planted a fair number of quick-growing greens when we got back from New Zealand in April. We were eager to get something out of the garden, and some greens take only 30 or so days.

And then the 30 days went by (rather quickly) and now we have lots of greens, some of them bolting already despite our very cool June. They include several kinds of mustard, turnip greens, radish greens, kale (old and new), chard (old, just starting to go into its second-year biennial seed-producing phase) - a total of 8 kinds.

If I'd left them in the garden, they would have become tough and bitter. I have other options: leave them in the fridge till I need them (but there are more every day); sauté them and pack for the freezer against a day next winter when they'll be great in a soup; or….

Frizzle them!

I have done this before with kale but not as a regular habit and not with other varieties of greens. Here's what I'm doing now:

I'm looking over the greens when I first gather them from the garden. I don't want to wash them if I don't have to. Mostly they are fine, since I have harvested them by cutting them off several inches above ground level with scissors.

Then I'm laying them out on foil on a cookie sheet. The foil has been used several times, and already has a thin coating of olive oil, which adds a perfect flavor for greens. Once there, I wipe them around a pit in the oil, and if they seem dry, I'm adding a few more sprinkles of olive oil.

Then into the oven they go. The oven has been preheated to 400 degrees. Or else it is hot from baking something else, and that's the temperature I use. They go on the bottom rack.

Then I do my best to keep an eye on them. I don't want them getting black. They could use moving around at about the 3 minute mark. In 5 minutes, they are ready to take out, usually.

Once they're out, I let them cool off. Or I sprinkle them with parmesan. Or I sprinkle them with salt.

I serve them with supper. They're great on soup, or just to eat by hand with almost anything. (So far, with everything.) They're reminiscent of nori.

I'm thinking of crumbling them into leftover rice tonight, after it's reheated. Though they really are best when they are crisp, and it takes almost no moisture to soften them up and the rice may wreck them.

Last night supper got delayed by Father's Day calls from the kids, so I didn't go out harvesting. Instead I just grabbed a handful of mixed greens from the produce-keeper bag in the fridge to frizzle. So if you don't have a garden but want to have these very tasty (irresistible) healthy crisps around, you can certainly use greens from the farmers' market or store.

Let me know how you're using them.

Making chocolate

When I first saw this recipe, I had to scratch my head. What did they mean by making chocolate. It turns out it is all about converting cocoa into something more like a Hershey's Bar. Sort of.

I shared my home-made chocolate tonight with a wide range of tasters, from a 7 year old boy to several seniors. 

Twice the taster said it was like fudge. It's sort of like fudge, I agree, but it's made entirely differently. All the tasters liked it. Many came back for more, including the 7 year old and several adults.

So you decide how like a chocolate bar it is, or how fudge-like. If it's convincing fudge for you, you won't have to go through all it takes to make real fudge.

Before I give you the recipe I used, I want to warn you about a big challenge these ingredients create for each other. You may find that you end up with a mass of brown sweet stuff that won't blend with the oil. I will let you know as we go along what I did about that. Because I did find a way, but it wasn't the food processor that finally got them to blend.

Is this recipe worth it? You decide. It yields a healthy, tasty confection that is very chocolate-y and makes you want more. Or at least made me want more, and my husband, and all those kids who tested it for me.

The recipe: Homemade Chocolate (makes a lot!)

Mix together 1 cup cocoa powder, 1 cup coconut oil, and 1/2 cup raw honey. That's it. 

Literally that's all you need to do. HOWEVER, when I mixed them in my food processor, I ended up with happily married honey and cocoa powder, and a nearly entirely independent layer of oil. 

In my kitchen, which runs less than 70 degrees most of the time (we keep the house at 65 but when the oven's on I know it's warmer), the coconut oil I buy is solid. When I made this recipe, I liquified it by placing the jar in a bowl of warm water. When it wouldn't blend that way, I cooled the whole mixture. Nothing worked.

So I started stirring. I stirred and stirred, and suddenly it all congealed and became one mass of yummy flavors. 

At this point I spooned several puddles of it onto a parchment paper on a cookie sheet and placed it in the freezer to cool quickly. It was firm right away - maybe 10 minutes later. Then I cut it with a hefty knife into bite-sized chunks. It was great!

Why did it suddenly congeal? I think it has to do with the fats in the cocoa. The coconut oil has no affinity for anything water-based, such as honey, but it would naturally be attracted to other fats. In cocoa the fats are bound up in a substance that is high in fiber and also contains other complex carbs and proteins. It could easily take several minutes for the oil in the powder and the coconut oil to combine.

In between, while I was still not successful with getting the ingredients to blend, I tried the blade in my little food processor. Even with the chilled mixture the oil separated more than it had been before I processed it.

I have plenty of chocolate left from this first experiment, but there will be a next time, and then I'll try chilling both the honey and the oil first. 

There's no cooking in this recipe. That means the raw honey stays raw, and same for the coconut oil. Since I buy the least processed products that I can get, it's a real plus to make a confection without cooking. 

If you make this recipe, please post your experience. It's worth making, but we're not yet sure the best way. 

Quick cocoa cookies or portable breakfast food (GF)

(Warning: These cookies are gluten-free only if your oats are gluten-free. Oats don't have gluten but the places where they are processed might be used too for processing wheat and then your oats could have gluten. I am highly wheat-sensitive (and maybe gluten-sensitive) but I can eat all the oats I've tried, as long as it's in moderation. Oats themselves are known to be inflammatory, so they can cause problems  in some individuals regardless of their contamination level.)

Recipe.

This recipe has no added sugar, just what's naturally in the unsweetened applesauce and banana. It doesn't need more. The fat comes from the cocoa and nut butter. The protein comes from the oats and nut butter. Minerals come from good salt. Every ingredient adds something healthy. You could have these for breakfast with a hot beverage and consider it a good meal.

Vigorously mix together the following:

3 ripe bananas, smooshed with a fork
2 cups regular (non-instant, non-quick) rolled oat
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup nut butter (almond, peanut butter, any nut butter)
pinch of good salt (coarse salt is fun - it doesn't all blend in, so you might get some in any given bite)

You can do the mixing in a mixer or food processor. Hand-mixing also works.

Let the mixture sit for 20-30 minutes before baking.

Drop by tablespoonfuls on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Space closely: they don't spread. Flatten them a little for faster cooking and check after 10 minutes.

Bake at 350 degrees in a preheated oven for about 15 minutes. You want them cooked through but not dried out.

Let them cool. Can refrigerate or freeze.

Additions: Chocolate chips, nuts, bits of fruit.

In the news: We (Europeans) are all one family

DNA research is so interesting! Here's an article that ties us together much more recently than we'd guess - than I guessed.

First, here's an excerpt from the article:

The researchers found that the extent to which two people are related tends to be smaller the farther apart they live, as one might expect. However, even two individuals as far apart as the UK and Turkey are still likely to share all of each other's ancestors from only a thousand years ago.

"What's remarkable about this is how closely everyone is related to each other," said Graham Coop, Professor of Evolution and Ecology at UC Davis. "On a genealogical level, everyone in Europe traces back to nearly the same set of ancestors within a thousand years. This was predicted by theory over a decade ago, and we now have concrete evidence from DNA data." Although the data was from Europeans, the same pattern is likely to apply to the rest of the world as well, he added.

Citation: Ralph P, Coop G (2013) The Geography of Recent Genetic Ancestry across Europe. PLoS Biol 11(5): e1001555. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555

So it says that even an individual in England and another in Turkey "share all each other's ancestors" if we go back 1000 years.

Now here's why I find this so remarkable personally. I have worked really hard to find my ancestors. I have found lines in England that go back to the mid 1500s. I also know about ancestors who came to Massachusetts Bay Colony soon after the first pilgrims in 1620, and these folks were adults when they came. In other words they were born in the late 1500s. 

And that means these ancestors whose names I know and who are connected systematically down to my parents, me, and my kids, were born as much as 600 years ago. And all of them were born in England. 

So that leaves 400 years back to our common ancestor, yours and mine (if you're 100% European). 

Four hundred years is about 12 generations, maybe 16. 

Going back 1000 years, we all have 2 to the 30the power ancestors. Or more likely the 40th power. That's about 1000000000000 ancestors. But in reality there were only about 30 million Europeans, so clearly we were descended from the same couples over and over again - or at least from the same individuals.

There's no way we are going to know for our own family lines how many duplicates there were. Of the 3 or 4 couples I know about from about 1600, I have about 66000 ancestors in 1000AD - but many of those are going to be duplicates.

Somewhere back there our attempt to know all our ancestors loses all meaning! In 1000AD, there were 30 million Europeans. Even though any family could have known the names of some of their lines, the task even over a few hundred years becomes impossible to track. Here is the number of ancestors that you have back just till the American Revolution, a mere 240 years ago, assuming 4 generations per hundred years. (With reproductive age beginning at 16, it could easily have been more generations per hundred years.)

1 - 2   (meaning, 1 generation ago you had 2 ancestors, namely your parents)

2 - 4

3 - 8

4 - 16  (this is how many you had about 100 years ago, or in about 1900. Do you know their names?)

5 - 32

6 - 64

7 - 128

8 - 256 (this is how many ancestors you had about 200 years ago, or in about 1800)

9 - 512 (this is how many ancestors you had who were alive at the time of the American Revolution)

Of course it depends on when you were born and the details of what age they were when they had kids and so on.

But of those 512 ancestors, how many are there whose names you know? How many duplicates were there? Most of us don't know these things going back just 200 years, maybe not even in 100 years.

Now take it back to 1700. That's 2^12 ancestors, or about 4100 ancestors - 3500 more than a century later!

And of these certainly some were duplicates. 

How far did your ancestors travel to find mates? How often did they marry cousins? 

Actually we have some clues about these things. People - unless they were male Vikings - didn't travel far. And they married cousins a lot, most of the time without knowing it.

For our families, though, it's impossible to know these things from the historical record, from any existing written record.

And that's where the DNA record comes in. According to the article mentioned earlier, the same long unvarying strands of DNA - which implies close relationship - occurred in every European (2000 in all) whose DNA was tested!

Bottom line, from the UK to Turkey, we all drew from the same pool of ancestors in 1000AD. The DNA says so.

We're not going to know their names. They're cousins, of that we are now certain. Or I should say we're cousins. WE are. 

(I'm really sorry we can't know the details, I have to say. I really would like to know where I've been all these generations!)

Whole-chicken and garden soup

We've eaten this soup all winter. This is a small variation on Creamy Chicken Soup because when I got home with the cream I found it spoiled. Improvise! (I am not going to make an 8-mile 40-minute round trip for cream.) This soup takes days but very little labor.

Put the whole chicken into the crockpot, cover (or almost cover) with water, set the pot on low, cover with the lid, and plan something else for dinner for the next few days.

When the chicken is thoroughly cooked, after 24-30 hours more or less, lift out pieces of meat for immediate use or freeze them. Discard the skin. Leave the bones and more of the meat in the pot for this recipe. Cook them for one more day.

On the third day, discard the bones and skin. Return any meat to the pot. Add veggies, such as:

• leftover baked squash
• dried summer squash pieces
• dried mushrooms, or fresh
• leftover mashed potatoes
• roasted veggies (potatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, etc) - or they can be raw
• chopped celery, or freeze-dried celery
• fresh chopped onion
• good salt to taste

Add water to the rim and return the lid to the crockpot. Let everything cook on high until heated, or on low overnight if the veggies are fresh and need more cooking. 

Using a Vita-Mix, food processor, or wand, homogenize everything that's in the pot.

Serve steaming hot. Add cream (half cup?) just before serving, or at the table.

Serving idea: Heat up some red pepper flakes in a little dish of olive oil in the microwave for 2-3 minutes. Using a teaspoon, drizzle this mixture over the soup in pleasing patterns. Don't mix it in - the variations in taste of hot soup, cold cream, and spicy oil make a nice little culinary adventure.  Serves about 8.

This soup can be the basis of many meals in the days to come, or can be frozen for eating at home or on the road.

No-fry refried beans

This week's Anasazi beans had a wonderful flavor that got better every day. I thought I'd make something similar to be the basis of several meals this week.

I'm out of Anasazi beans but I have plenty of pintos.

Since we're traveling soon, I want to freeze a couple of servings to heat up along the way. A quart of the Southwest Baked Beans are already frozen for the road.

Homemade refries next week means starting the beans now. We won't be able to eat them till at least Day 4. Here's how I make refries that are smooth, creamy, and full of flavor without frying even once!

Day 1 (today, 3 pm) - Measure out the beans (3 cups), rinse them, pick out the broken ones, then cover them with cold water in a big bowl. They're going to grow so they need space.

Day 2 (tomorrow afternoon sometime) - Pour off this water, add fresh, and make sure the beans are covered.

Day 3 (Monday afternoon sometime) - Check the beans to make sure they're beginning to ferment (little bubbles are forming). If not, let them go a while longer. Or if you want, let them go till the next day after rinsing them and making sure they're covered.

Let's say I'll find them fermenting on Monday afternoon and I have time for the next step. Then I'll go ahead and....

Cook them. Pour off the water, put them into a pot, cover them barely with fresh water and cook on low. Don't set the lid down on the pot, but you can tilt it to help keep the heat in.

OR

Cook them in a crock pot the same way, except that you will want to cover them completely.

Cook for about an hour. Check for softness. How quickly they cook will depend on how old the beans are, among other things. You want the cooked beans be creamy. (Some beans never soften that much, but pinto beans as well as others do.)

My old beans cooked for over 4 hours before they looked like good candidates for creamy refries.

Those are the basics. But what I'm going to do is add the same veggies I did with my wonderful Southwestern Baked Bean concoction. These included an onion, several cloves of garlic, and chopped chili peppers. This time I'm using ones I roasted earlier today. You can also add finely chopped carrot - but don't add celery: then you would have savory refried beans, which haven't been invented yet. The veggies should all be added when you begin cooking the beans.

Once the beans (and veggies) are soft and creamy, take the pot off the heat and let the mixture cool a little. Then mash it all up or run it through a food processor or use a wand mixer to homogenize the mixture. Then salt to taste w/ good salt. I used a wand mixer and in about 5 mess-free minutes I had delightfully creamy 'refried' pintos.

Variation: add side pork to the pot of beans when it starts to cook. The amount is up to you, maybe 1/4-1/2 cup, chopped. Or maybe more.

Serve these refries alone, or with cheese, on tacos or burritos or in a bowl with a spoon. 3 cups dry beans makes a lot of refries! You can cut the recipe in half but these are easy to freeze, so why not make enough for planned-overs?

PS - The fresh chilies I bought for this recipe were wimps. I could have used 5 or 6 instead of the two that should have given the beans a decided zest.

Southwest Baked Beans

I wanted to do something with my aging Anasazi beans. They're so beautiful, and have looked great in a special jar I display them in, but they needed to be used before they wouldn't cook up tender anymore.

So I looked up recipes online, and kept running into baked beans. I love baked beans!

But these are Anasazi beans and deserve a Southwestern presentation. So last night I adapted a baked bean recipe to Anasazis. The result is something that is clearly a cousin to Boston Baked Beans, but is also distinctively Southwestern.

Southwestern Baked Beans

2 cups beans - I used Anasazi, but other beans that stay firm would do. Rinse then cover the beans in water. Soak for 24-48 hours, then cook on low in a crockpot for another half-day or day or so. I used the same water so I wouldn't lose nutrients.

3-4 strips good quality thick bacon or side pork.

Line the bottom of a large glass brownie pan (9x13 works) with the bacon, then pour the beans, including liquid, over it.

1 large onion, 5 cloves garlic, 1/2-1 cup medium-heat chilies (roasted or canned or freeze-dried), carrots (optional)

Chop a large onion into dime-sized pieces, dice the garlic fine or smash, chop the chilies fine, grate the carrots if you want to use them.

Add all these veggies to the top of the baking dish. Don't stir yet.

1 - 1 1/2 cups tomatoes: Use canned crushed, diced fresh, or sauce. Pour the tomatoes over everything else.

Salt is optional. I use a good quality salt called Real Salt. Sprinkle on whatever your taste suggests.

Now stir. Be careful not to disturb the bacon. You want the veggies underwater (or under tomato sauce). You don't need to make it uniform - a light top-stirring will do.

Put in a 275 degree oven - no need to preheat. Check it after 2-3 hours, and if the top is drying out, top-stir to moisten everything. If the liquid is thick at this point, add water.

Continue cooking until a deep and pleasant aroma escapes the oven next time you look. You want the onions to be cooked well and the sauce to be somewhat thick. (It won't thicken all the way till it cools off.) Remove it from the oven. Total cooking time is perhaps 4 hours. Resist eating until mealtime despite the amazing vapors. Or go ahead and try some. Hmmm!

When you serve it, stir in the bacon, breaking up the pieces as needed. If you love bacon, you can also top the whole panful after adding the tomatoes and let it cook right on top. This first time I used side pork, which was rather chunky, so it's blended throughout the beans now.

I'm packaging half of it for the freezer. Serves about 4-6, and makes a meal if you've added the carrots.

Super soup, real creamy cream of chicken

This recipe is from +Jenny McGruther, modified a bit. Here's my version (but check hers out).

1. Buy a plump chicken, the best quality you can afford.
2. Place the chicken in a large crockpot, cover it completely with cold water, and turn the pot on low.
3. Lay various veggies on top: carrots including tops, whole stalks of celery including leaves (but cut in half if they won't fit), onions, leeks, kale or chard stems, or whatever is available. Don't chop them or mix them in.
4. Cover the pot and ignore it for 24 or more hours.
5. Remove the veggies and discard the inedible parts.
6. Remove the chicken and debone, carefully retaining as much of the broth as possible.
7. Turn the broth, still in the crockpot, on high.
8. Saving half the chicken for another recipe, place the boned chicken and salvaged cooked veggies into a food processor and whirr till it is almost smooth. (I had to do this in batches).
9. Add the resulting paste to the broth and stir it in thoroughly.
10. Heat till steamy.
11. Stir in a cup of heavy cream. I preheated the cream in the microwave because my crockpot is slow to heat up.
12. Mix 3-4 egg yolks (depending on size - I used duck eggs, and with their large yolks I found I needed only 2 yolks). Use a wire whisk. Add some of the hot stock mixture to temper the yolks, then stir them into the soup.
13. Heat the soup to close to a full boil.
14. Serve. I added an extra tablespoon of cream in a swirl. We ate the soup with roasted veggies (potatoes, rutabagas, and parsnips sprinkled with olive oil and good salt and cooked and browned in a 400 degree oven).

This is a smooth, rich, satisfying soup full of flavor and real food. The two of us will get two meals each out of it. The flavor is so full that more cream or even water could be added to stretch it. Thanks, Jenny!

Wheat isn't what it used to be, and that means trouble

Every time a food we had a symbiotic relationship with over the millennia begins to cause problems, we find that someone has messed with it.

Wheat is a cornerstone of our civilization, but the wheat we eat today has had some serious chemistry done to it so it is better suited to mass production, harvesting etc. So says the following article.

The article then goes on to describe the savagery done by wheat and its breakdown compounds in our guts. This is an article every bread lover should read before taking another bite.

Because it's not just what is happening in the gut. Wheat has on of the highest glycemic index values of any of the foods we eat, right up there with candy. And that means it contributes to big bellies and the packing of fat into visceral cavities.

Here's the link to the article: You Should Probably Stop Eating Wheat.


Back in 2006 I had to stop eating wheat. It was hard but not as hard as enduring the pain and intestinal distress, even bleeding, I experienced every time I ate it. I have not had wheat (except by accident) since. I don't miss it. It is not tempting. I am over it.

So I found this article fascinating because now I realize I might have avoided all sorts of other ills, too, including diabetes.

Well, just read the article. And then leave a comment here or share this post with your friends. Peg

How I lost 24 pounds (along the way)

"Before" and "during" photos coming soon!

Weight loss has always been hard for me.

I'd get woozy in the head, and seriously hungry, and I'd have cravings that would drive me to distraction.

I tried various kinds of programs. I discovered along the way that I really didn't digest raw veggies well, so that eliminated some programs. Others, such as ones that emphasized a heavy consumption of meat, were obviously not a way I could eat for very long, so what would happen when I stopped?

What happened when I stopped these programs was more weight gain, the yoyo dieting effect everyone talks about.

Then I heard a lecture about the cause of yoyo dieting, which is thought to be the loss of lean muscle mass.

Without lean muscle, the metabolism goes down, and sitting becomes the preferred occupation. That information jibed with what I had found that to be true.

By now, with more years under my belt, I also had added more pounds under my belt.

Then I ended up doing a sedentary 18-month service project and the weight accumulated. By the end of it I was 35 pounds heavier than my traditional overweight weight I had lived with during my 40s and 50s.

And by the time I had gained all that new weight, I was eager only to sit and at best work from my comfy chair.

I had heard about this program that I'm doing now. It's called Cinch Inch-Loss program*, and claims suggest that people on that program will not lose any lean muscle mass. (The program literature cites research that shows that just about every type of diet causes the loss of 60% fat and the rest - a full 40% - of lean muscle. But it also shows that participants in the Cinch program actually gain lean muscle.)

Nonetheless, based on my earlier dieting experience I knew it wouldn't work for me.

Then in August I attended an event that featured a dozen or so successful dieters who had used this program. They had lost as much as 200 pounds! They each had a story that began with hopelessness. That sounded like me.

By the time I had heard all twelve stories, I began to entertain hope that this program might work for me.

So I committed to it.

I began in late August when I got the products in the mail. I liked it right away. I liked that it made breakfast and lunch easy. And that it meant that I could make supper for John and we'd be eating the same things.

I did need help measuring calories of our favorite dinners. Sometimes I was too high, sometimes I was too low. With a little effort and paying attention, I got the evening meals right in the proper lane for modest weight loss.

That's what I opted for, reasonable weight loss, maybe 1-2 pounds per week. It didn't really sound like much, but I also figured that if in a year I lost 50 pounds, I would certainly look and feel better.

The pounds began to come off. The first ten pounds were fairly quick, and then they slowed to a steady rate, until I reached 18 pounds off. At that point I plateaued in terms of weight loss, but during that time I was losing inches, especially around my waist, which by now has gone down 5 inches. FIVE INCHES! They said 'inch-loss' and that's what was happening.

(The idea was this: because we are losing fat but also building lean muscle, there are times when the inches go down when the weight doesn't.)

I also undertook walking every day. This was not new for me, and I was frustrated that at first I could walk only about a mile or a bit more. So I got a referral for a physical therapist to help build my endurance. From then on I did one or both every day 6 days a week and my stamina increased.

I never ran into a problem eating the foods recommended. I never had cravings, which I still consider a miracle. When we were traveling, I still used the recommended food-products. When we spent a week at a resort south of Cancun, I didn't have full access to the food-products and I sorely missed them. That was the first and only time I have experienced cravings in these 3 1/2 months, cravings for the products, not for the sweets the resort offered us.

Now I can walk 3 miles up and down hills and am comfortable walking an hour or more. (I'm striving for more every day.) I have reached new levels of stamina in my PT sessions. And I have lost 24 pounds.

That's about a third of what I want to lose. At the current rate I should lose the next 48 or 50 pounds in another year or so. I have no idea how far or fast I may be able to walk or do other exercise by then. What I do know is that I'm looking forward to it. I love the daily routine, the foods on the program. The thought of keeping on going is delightful.

I've lost one pants size, and people are starting to notice, but best of all, I'm proud of myself and I feel excellent! And there's more good stuff to come.

*The program changes its name to Shaklee 180 on Jan 1 2013. Meanwhile go to http://at-the-well.myshaklee.com and click on Cinch.

Recipe: Savory creamed kale

This recipe is super-simple, though it does take about 20 minutes to cook if you use curly kale. I really don't understand the incredibly intense and deliciously satisfying taste of this recipe. It's nearly addictive, and it's not just because of the cream:

You will need:

1 cup homemade veggie broth
2 large heads kale
1 T good butter
3/4 cup whipping cream
salt

What you do:

Trim the kale, chopping the stems into tiny pieces and shredding the largest pieces of leaf
Heat the broth and add the kale, including stems. Cover for 5 minutes or until the kale is beginning to wilt, then leave the cover off the pot and cook on medium until most of the liquid is absorbed. Add the butter, stir, and continue cooking until the liquid is gone.
Lower the heat, add the cream, and heat through, just until the cream is about to simmer. Salt to taste.
Serve in bowls.

Recipe: Rhubarb chutney

I wanted something I could do with rhubarb that didn't have bucketloads of sugar, and that didn't end up being a dessert. The resulting experiment gave us something we call chutney. Whatever the proper name, it goes well on goat cheese and crackers, any other cheese (we've tried many) and crackers, with pork, with lamb, and with Indian dishes. (I served it with something I made that was similar to lamb saag.)

You will need:

6 cups of coarsely chopped cleaned trimmed rhubarb
2 onions chopped into about 1/3-inch dice
1/2 cup golden raisins
1-3 cloves finely chopped garlic, depending on how well you like garlic
2 T finely grated ginger
1/3 cup water
2 T sugar, more or less
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T tamari soy sauce
2 T mirin
2 T good butter
1-2 carrots (depending on size) chopped in 1/4-inch dice - optional

What you do:

Saute the onion in the butter until the onion is beginning to become translucent. Add the rhubarb, ginger and garlic and optional carrots and saute for about 2 minutes. Don't let the garlic brown. Add the water, raisins and sugar. Let simmer until the rhubarb softens (but stop before it turns to stringy mush). Let this mixture sit until it is no longer very hot. Taste for sweetness and stir in more sugar if you need it. Stir in the vinegar, tamari, and mirin. Taste and adjust seasoning by adding more sugar, vinegar, or tamari. Eat warm or cold; pack leftovers into jars and keep in the fridge. Use lavishly with almost anything savory.

Recipe: Rhubarb cream surprise

Last night, an hour or so after dinner, I wanted a bite of something special. The old gray cells started reviewing what we had in the house. This yummy concoction appeared a few minutes later, and it satisfied every tastebud.

Rhubarb, cooked in enough water to cover it about halfway in a pot (not aluminum!). I added about 2 T sugar at the end of the cooking to about 3 1/2 cups of rhubarb and stirred it in. Stir as little as possible to keep the rhubarb chunky.

10 frozen peach slices. We freeze bucketloads of ripe peaches in season by cutting them in about 12ths and laying them on cook sheets, then freezing them till they're hard and packaging them in Ziplocs.

30 frozen blueberries. We freeze bucketloads of blueberries, too, straight from the box, on a cookie sheet. We also package these in Ziplocs.

Half-and-half cream. We use good jersey cream from Bellingham.

Assembly:

In a small attractive dessert dish (we use our Chinese miso bowls), pour in about 1/3 cup of cream. Then lay 5 peach slices in a layer partly submerged in the cream. Sprinkle the blueberries on top of the peaches. Spoon the hot cooked rhubarb on top of the fruit. Use as much as you'd like and include some 'juice'.

So you have a cold layer and a hot layer. The cream wells up around the rhubarb. Eat by digging straight down through the layers. It should be delightfully hot and cold. By the last spoonful the flavors will have blended delightfully.

You can have seconds if you want - it's that good, and that healthy. Nothing bad in it!

Let me know if you try it. We enjoyed this over the Mariners game - it almost compensated for the loss.