Cheating

…on eating healthily, with a scrumptious apple oven pancake:

…on Sunday School attendance, to let over-tired Mackenzie get a good nap, and catch up with family on the phone:

…on “milk-only” for six months, by introducing yams a couple weeks early:

Rest assured, we know cheating is wrong and we feel terrible. Well, at least poor Mackenzie does.

Let’s play a game *UPDATED*

The name of the game is:

Guess That Kitchen Disaster

Here’s how to play:

1. Look at the photo below.
2. Go ahead and laugh… “it” was a pretty dumb thing to do.
3. Leave a comment, letting me know what exactly you think “it” was.
4. Go on your merry way, content in the knowledge that you didn’t have as much KitchenFail as Anne did in the month of May. Check back in a few days for The Answer.

Hint: “It” happened as a direct result of my absent-mindedness and general state of distraction as I prepared food for my niece’s first birthday party. My mom swooped in during my time of crisis and was cool-headed enough to avert further disaster. She was also cool-headed enough to take photos for posterity.

Reassurance: No, I didn’t serve that at the party (Hi, Mark).

Empty Threat: If you happened to have heard the story, please don’t give it away in the comments. Or else.

UPDATED TO ADD:

Whole wheat pita dough, in a tupperware, heated to 500 degrees. It was in the second oven, rising, when we decided we’d better fire both ovens up to get more pita baked in time for the birthday party.

I noticed smoke pouring out of the oven, threw open the oven door, and it took me a full minute to realize what I was gawking at. It looked like a plastic volcano, erupting all over the place.

My mom had the presence of mind to clear a path to the back door, grab the rack with oven mitts and hustle the whole mess onto the patio to cool off.

My favorite part? My brother’s offhand remark when he noticed it sitting out there a few hours later: “We’re not eating whatever that is, are we? Because there are flies on it.”

No, Mark. We’re not going to eat it.

Incidentally, the whole wheat pita was delicious. I used this recipe, except I used all whole wheat flour, and I added about 2 tablespoons of wheat gluten. I made 6 times the recipe (in three separate batches). One batch got melted into the Ooze of Doom, and the other two batches were more than enough for the party.

Recap - Dinner Prep

So there is this Healthy Minds and Bodies Group that I attend… participate in… ok ok, I created it and I do most of the talking… but other people come so it is fun anyway

We met recently… last month… the month before last and I’m only now getting around to recapping it.

The original intent was to do some cooking demos. Fast things like chopping onions, cooking whole wheat couscous, cooking lentils, etc. However, instead it turned into a lively discussion about how to get dinner on the table and what gadgets we use to do it.

Get Dinner Done

The biggest tips here revolve around planning in advance. Your dinner prep will go much more smoothly if you know what you’re making ahead of time.

Grocery shop with specific meals in mind, and start thinking at least the night before the meal about how you’re going to get it on the table. This is so important with healthy cooking because you may need to start some beans soaking, cook the brown rice ahead of time, or get some veggies chopped.

I hate running to the grocery store for just a few items, so I tend to shop twice a month at costco, and then 3 times a month at a regular grocery store for fresh stuff. I keep plenty of dried/food storage type stuff on hand, so ideally I never have to worry about those. I plan meals like salads for the few days immediately after a grocery store run, then dishes that use onions, potatoes, canned tomatoes, frozen veggies, etc. for later in the week when the fresh stuff is used up. The same goes for fresh fruit. I make a conscious effort to eat the time-sensitive stuff first (berries, pineapple, melon) and save things that keep better to tide me over until the next trip (oranges, grapefruit, apples, green bananas, red pears) .

Frugal(?) Cooking

I haven’t ever participated in a blogging carnival before, but this one over at Owlhaven caught my interest.

I consider myself frugal with regard to cooking, in that I tend to cook from scratch and comparison shop. However, our philosophies about food here in Beanland are a bit different than the norm, so I was very curious to see how our diet stood up to the frugal challenge.

First, a bit about our food philosophy:

- We believe that good, healthy food is an investment in our health and our future. So we are willing to pay more money when necessary to eat well. I shop around to find the best deal on what we eat. Not to eat the best deals I find. (I hope that makes sense.)

- We enjoy cooking, but convenience is also a factor because we are both very busy. Scott is in medical school and I am a work-at-home mom. I tend to cook three dinners a week and we eat leftovers the other nights and all lunches. I usually make breakfast (a smoothie or one of the recipes in this post) and we graze on fruits and veggies the rest of the day.

- We don’t eat meat. We rarely eat dairy (cheese, milk, eggs). We rarely eat anything processed (white flour, added sugar, etc.). Our goal, in a nutshell, is to eat “whole plant foods” as much as possible because we believe that they are healthiest. That means we cook with a lot of spices, rather than cream, butter, cheese, sausage, etc.

- We store oodles of food in our basement (grains, dried beans, canned tomatoes, etc.) , so our weekly or every-other-weekly shopping trips are mainly to pick up fresh stuff.

Without further ado….

The goal of the carnival was to shop for three days’ worth of food and post pictures, recipes and cost per person per meal. I cheated because we constantly “shop” out of our basement and because I wanted to participate without actually doing all the dirty work (sorry!). So I chose some recipes to share, priced them out, and took photos of the food we had on hand to make the recipes. This is a hypothetical 3 day plan. I chose recipes that I thought were among the less expensive of what we regularly eat. I know we could eat less expensively, but it was very helpful for me to price out our regular meals. Hopefully it helps someone else as well!

In case you are intimidated by trying to cook a meal with “complete protein” without meat or dairy… ask yourself how many people you know (in this country) who are suffering from protein deficiency. It’s just unheard of. Far and away, more people are suffering from obesity and not eating foods that nourish their bodies and fight disease. So shoot for simple, whole plants (don’t peel and fry your potatoes or peel and sugar your apples) and eat a variety and you’ll do just fine! It’s easier and yummier than you might think.

The Menu

Day 1
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples, raisins, cinnamon, and pecans
Lunch: Black Bean Soup with blue corn tortilla chips
Dinner: Red Lentil Curry with brown rice
Snacks: Oranges, apples, sweet potato, raw carrots.

Day 2
Breakfast: Whole grain pancakes with homemade strawberry syrup
Lunch: Red Lentil Curry with brown rice (leftover)
Dinner: Split Pea Soup with homemade whole wheat bread
Snacks: Hot air popped popcorn, celery, pancakes w/syrup

Day 3
Breakfast: Oatmeal with three berries and flax
Lunch: Split Pea Soup with homemade whole wheat bread
Dinner: Red Lentil Curry with brown rice
Snacks: Sweet Potato, oranges, bread with applesauce

The Photos