June 2010 | Archives

Healthy Snacks to Go e-book Review and GIVEAWAY

How often do you give your kids a snack that you *know* isn't good for them, simply because you need to feed them/make them happy and don't have time to make anything better?

I already struggle when out with my 2 year old - especially when someone offers him something for free. I know I would feel much better/nicer declining the free sucker if I had something yummy in my purse to give him as a consolation, but I rarely have snacks with me.

This can be especially difficult for those of us trying to avoid processed foods because "real food" doesn't usually come in pre-packaged individual servings, and often needs refrigeration anyway.

I LOVE this new e-book from Katie at Kitchen Stewardship! She is already one of my very favorite bloggers, and this e-book makes me appreciate her even more. It's a wonderfully simple to read and understand guide to making or assembling nutritious snacks for you and your family to take with you on the go. It includes over 30 healthy snack recipes and a ton of tips and extra info.

The first thing I noticed - and the thing I love most - about this e-book is how much thought she put into creating it to be user-friendly. It's designed to be easy to read on your computer or to print and put in a binder. The margins are larger on the side you'd punch holes. She has also kept recipes to one page or a front and back of one if printed double-sided so that they are easy to take out of a binder to keep close at hand while preparing your snack. It's worth printing - that's what I did - to keep in the kitchen, but you should also make sure to read through it on your computer so you don't miss all of the wonderful links she's included. I'm so glad I read this e-book while working on my own because she's given me wonderful ideas for making what I have even better.

Healthy Snacks to Go also has a fantastic key full of symbols to help you understand more about the recipes at a glance. You can tell right away if they are gluten or dairy free, if they are frugal or a little more costly to make, and if they are going to require a little or a lot of effort.

I sampled 4 of the recipes for you (a sacrifice, lemme tell you!) so that I could report back with some authority. Katie's directions are clear and easy to follow, and all 4 recipes I tried came out better than I expected! My family tried the soaked granola (picture from the ebook below), fruit rolls, basic Power Bars, and the wheat thin crackers.

The soaked granola was the most surprising success - it really clumped together well! I think I'll add a little more honey or some dried fruit next time, but I liked it better than any of the granola I make! I think the fruit rolls (we made strawberry) were my favorite, but everything has been good so far. I can't wait to try the rice pudding next time we buy milk!

Over the next few days I'll be sharing two of the recipes from the book that I tried out and posting yummy pictures of the results. Of course, you'll have to buy the book yourself for access to the bulk of them!! You can read the table of contents here to see what you have to look forward to!

Buy it:

Only $6.95 for this 44 page digital book. It's worth every penny! Grab it here.

Win it:

Katie has graciously agreed to give one of my readers a free copy of her book! This contest is open to anyone anywhere! To enter, read about the e-book and leave a comment telling me why you'd like to win it! Simple!

For bonus entries:

*Become a Fan of Kitchen Stewardship on Facebook.

*Follow Katie on Twitter.

*Tweet about this contest (please leave me a url) Here's a sample tweet to copy/paste:

Don't miss the Healthy Snacks to Go e-book giveaway from @kitchenstew and @EatFromPantry! http://bit.ly/arpJK7

*Subscribe to Kitchen Stewardship via RSS or email.

Leave a separate comment for each (five possible) entry!

The contest will be open until 11:59pm CST on Tuesday, July 6th. The winner will be notified by email and posted here on the blog. Good luck!

***Disclaimer: I received a copy of this e-book for free for the purpose of reviewing it for you, my readers. Giving a copy away was optional and I was in no way obligated to write a positive review. All opinions in this review are truly my own. I am also an affiliate of Kitchen Stewardship and will earn a commission for any e-book purchased through the links above.

Make it Yourself Monday: Sauerkraut

Reuben anyone?

I did not grow up eating sauerkraut. I think I had graduated from college by the first time I tried it! Talk about an intimidating endeavor! I almost shirked the challenge, but stayed committed for you, dear readers! I also really needed to use up the leftover cabbage from the yummy egg rolls I made. :)

I must have spent 2 or 3 hours pouring over the how-tos on my favorite blogs. They were all equally scary, so I went with the one that looked the coolest - the "no pound" method over at The Nourishing Gourmet. I also stuck a sliced cucumber in the middle a la

I initially used a large glass vase of water as the weight, but after a few days there still wasn't any water rising above the plate (you should read the directions if this sounds foreign), so I replaced it with the stoneware from my crockpot and another big pot on top of that, both filled to the brim.

After a week of my strange towel-covered tower sitting on my countertop, we had sauerkraut and pickles! Voila!

My husband ran off with my camera, so I can't post any photos for you, but they would really be pretty anyway. My cabbage became a little bit discolored - either because of the few days without enough pressure or because of the pickles. Tastes great though! You really should head to The Nourishing Gourmet if you want to see genuinely pretty kraut. :)

Check out this post for an explanation of the different ways to ferment veggies, and this beautiful e-book for recipes.

What have you been making lately that you could easily buy at a store? Make it Yourself Monday is the place to share! Link up below and read the guidelines for more info and inspiration.

A Grain-Free Day

Our family has been doing what we can to rid ourselves of a serious carb/grain addiction. We aren't strictly no grain by any means, but I'm delighted to realize that we've changed to the point that today is a completely grain free day! Most days we'd have meat at only 1 or 2 meals instead of all three, but we're eating small portions today. Thought I'd share in case you need some inspiration:

Breakfast:

eggs scrambled with avocado and garlic, bacon on the side

Snack:

dried cranberries and coconut muffins

Lunch:

chicken hotdogs and ketchup w/raw energy bars

Second Snack:

yogurt

Dinner:

veal liver, onions, arugula and black olive salad

Dessert (we're bringing this to a party):

Coconut Flour Orange Cake

PS. Don't forget to vote in yesterday's poll for me pretty please!!

Research for my E-book

I have a working title for my e-book now. It's Eat From Your Kitchen. Totally clever, right? ;)

As I mentioned, I'd love to have it released around the end of Summer and it is coming along nicely. I wonder if you would help? I may post more polls in the future, but this one would particularly help me right now. I'd love for you to further explain your answer in the comments section. If you do, and I choose to quote you or find your answer particularly helpful, you might just snag a free copy of the e-book when it comes out!

If you've been cooking at home, or cooking from scratch for a while, please try and remember how you felt when you had just begun embarking on the process of learning to cook or implementing the knowledge you already had. If you are still trying to get motivated to cook at home more seriously, please help me understand your biggest struggles!

What intimidates/ed you most about cooking at home?customer surveys

Be Prepared

I am thankful that in this country (especially the part that I live in) the likelihood of a devastating drought, epidemic, or other natural disaster is minimal. Still, we can't know what tomorrow brings (job loss is certainly a current reality!) and we have two little ones to protect.

While our food storage is nothing compared to many others, we've made a point of investing in goods that can be stored without refrigeration and prepared without electricity. We also have the means to purify water if need be.

I reviewed the Preparedness Pantry site and food storage analyzer a while back and this week snapped a shot of our recent order so that you can see that we do in fact use them. Their customer service is great. The order pictured below was of 3 cans of freeze dried spinach, 1lb of yeast, and a portable washer (for clothes - stinkin' cool!).

I thought I'd take a minute to type up a list of the food we have on hand specifically for an emergency. There are a few other dry goods that have been opened here and there (like 1/2 a box of spaghetti noodles, beef bouillon, various flours), but I'm not counting them.

Grains/Nuts
10lbs whole wheat flour
5lbs rolled oats
5lbs brown rice
5lbs pinto beans
5lbs black beans
3lbs garbanzo beans
5lbs raw almonds

Fruits/Veggies
3 cans freeze-dried spinach
3lbs dried cranberries

Other
54ozs coconut oil
1lb yeast
1lb salt
1 quart honey
1 (40oz) can blueberry granola from Mountain House
22 servings of freeze dried entrees from Mountain House

There are 4 of us in our family, but our littlest will still be exclusively breastfed for a while, so I'd guess these supplies would last us about 3 weeks if we used them moderately, a month if we used them sparingly.

Over the next few months I plan to re-stock our supply of ghee as well as purchase more beans/nuts/seeds. I'm also excited to be learning/teaching myself how to preserve foods through lacto-fermentation and hope to put some fresh produce away.

Do you have food storage? Have you been thinking about stocking up?

The LDS church is a great resource because their leaders encourage them to be self-reliant and prepared for adversity. Here's a list of LDS sites that discuss emergency preparedness.

Here are a few other resources to check out:
Healthy Harvest
All About Food Storage

Are Canned Foods Necessary For Emergencies?

Long Term REAL Food Storage

Make it Yourself Monday: Play Dough

A it of a departure from the norm today, but a fun one!

We've had a LOT of rain lately and we've grown so used to playing the day away outside that I've struggled to find new ways to entertain my toddler. He wasn't old enough last year to enjoy playdough, but this year he's eating it up (not literally thankfully, but it wouldn't hurt him too badly)!

Here's our "recipe" using what we had on hand - the kool-aid is just for coloring so don't sweat if you don't have any! I grabbed some over a year ago for craft projects and almost forgot about it!

1c flour

3/4 c water

1/2c salt

3 Tbs oil

1 pk kool-aid

I used all purpose flour - great way to use up ingredients that you're maybe not so excited about eating anymore. It was really easy to tell when it was ready - just mix it together with your hands until it feels right. We've been storing ours in a cottage cheese container in the fridge for a few weeks now and it's still good.

What have you been making lately that you could easily buy at a store? Make it Yourself Monday is the place to share! Link up below and read the guidelines for more info and inspiration.

Father's Day Feast

What do you have planned? Love these Tie Cakes that I found at Tiepedia.

Not quite that ambitious this year though. :)

Our plans are Coconut Flour Crepes with blueberries and whipped cream for breakfast,
A simplified version of this pilaf for lunch,
And spaghetti for dinner (an easy favorite and we have evening plans) with Chocolate Avocado Banana Pudding for dessert.

Is it bad that I'm most excited about the pudding? ;)

Make it Yourself Monday: Cream Cheese

I showed you how I made my own bagels last week, so what else could I possible follow that up with but CREAM CHEESE! I'm so excited to be trying so many things that previously intimidated me - even moreso b/c they have been turning out fabulously!

You can find directions for cream/yogurt cheese all over the internet - I got help from posts at Heavenly Homemakers, Kitchen Stewardship, Kelly the Kitchen Kop, and Passionate Homemaking. It is super simple - I'll write out briefly the way I did it, but click over to those sites for more!

Homemade Yogurt/Cream Cheese

Start with a batch of homemade or store-bought unsweetened yogurt. Pour it into a strainer covered with cheese cloth or a tea towel, with a bowl underneath to catch the liquid that separates immediately.

Tie the cheesecloth closed with rubber bands to contain the yogurt in a little knap-sack and hang to drain. Place a bowl below to collect the whey - it can be used for all kinds of wonderful things!

Let drain until it stops dripping - the amount of time will depend on how much yogurt you use and how dry you want your cream cheese. I let mine hang over night and then some.

When you open your little knap-sack, guess what you will have??

Cream cheese!!!! Seriously, if it got any easier than this, it'd be cheating!!!

My batch yielded about 15 ozs of cream cheese and two whole pasta jars of whey! The cream cheese was gone in about 72 hours, but it could last you a couple of weeks if you didn't live in my house. :D

Whey will last you up to 6 months in the refrigerator.

What have you been making this week?? Link up below! See the guidelines for instructions and ideas.

Blogger Appreciation Day

Love this idea from 3 Boys and a Dog! The point is to thank the bloggers who sent the most readers your way in the last month - and hopefully send some traffic their way in return. I'm not listing any search engines, facebook, etc. Here are my top referrers for May 2010 (according to Google Analytics):

1. Fun Foods on a Budget- 64 referrals

2. Frugal Hacks - 44 referrals

3. Super Coupon Girl - 19 referrals

4. Kelly the Kitchen Kop - 16 referrals

5. 11th Heaven't Homemaking Heaven - 16 referrals

6. GNOWFGLINS - 13 referrals

6. Money Saving Mom - 12 referrals

7. Back to the Soil - 10 referrals

8. Life and Love in the Country - 9 referrals

9. Secrets of a Southern Kitchen - 9 referrals

10. Balancing Beauty and Bedlam - 7 referrals

Thank you so much for spreading the word about Eat From Your Pantry!

Pretty Pantry Organization

If you knew me in person, you'd know that other than cooking, I am a 'C' student in Homemaking class! I appreciate cleanliness, order, and design, but it mostly eludes me. God has graciously given me a husband who doesn't care (or notice for that matter) if our comforter and pillowcases match, who can't tell when I'm wearing makeup, and who is happy as long as there are eggs and butter in the house. Still, I feel a bit guilty that our home isn't more presentable.

I'm really not being modest when I say that I can't think of a single friend who is a worse housekeeper than I am. Brutal honesty, folks - I've never washed a window in my life and I've only mopped our kitchen floor once this year. Thankfully, my husband still keeps me.

The only thing my husband *does* care about is clutter. And he married a pack rat. *sigh* Alas, God may not have been as gracious to him as to me (kidding of course - we are blessed beyond measure to have every new day). :P When I do something like purge a shelf in a closet or throw out a stack of old magazines, my husband wants to propose all over again. ;)

When my friend Shauna offered these jars and canisters to us (thank you!!) I got all squealy-happy just thinking about them in my pantry. I finally got around to filling them today (weeks later) and look how gorgeous they are!!! My husband was pretty stinkin' impressed too - a happy day for all!

This post is linked to Things I Love Thursday.

No-Bake Chocolate Almond Oatmeal Treats

Need a way to beat the Summer heat but still get your chocolate fix? No-bake cookies are a Summer favorite. Here's my recipe - with a few variations so that you can use what you have on hand!

Ingredients:

1 stick butter (or 1 cup coconut oil)

1/2 cup milk (or cream - so yummy!)

4 Tbsp cocoa powder (or carob powder)

1/2 cup sucanat (or sugar)

1/2 cup almond butter (or any nut butter)

1 tbsp vanilla (optional)

3 1/2 cups oats (try substituting 1/2 cup coconut flakes here!)

1 tsp milled or whole flax seeds (optional)

Directions:

Heat butter, sucanat, cocoa, and milk in a pan on stove or in a bowl in the microwave, stirring until melted and combined. Watch carefully as milk and butter have a low smoke point and burn easily.

Add almond butter, oats, flax, and vanilla & stir until combined.

Spread into a baking pan (8x8 or larger) or drop in balls onto wax/parchment paper/foil.

Refrigerate until cooled (2 hours or so).

Eat and enjoy!

Make it Yourself Monday: Bagels!

Wow! Guys, seriously - this rocked! I had no idea how easy it was to make bagels!! I used the Homemade Soaked Bagels recipe from Passionate Homemaking. They came out great even though I read the directions incorrectly and ended up only soaking half the dough overnight. You can skip soaking altogether, but you should consider the health benefits of the extra step.

I used apple cider vinegar for the acid medium, 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 spelt for the flour, and added some ground flax seed. I also added cinnamon and dried cranberries to half the batch - so yummy!!! Makes 12.

Today I am making cream cheese!!! Come back next week to see how it goes! Link up your own posts below so I can see what you are making yourself! Read guidelines here.

This post is linked to Homemaker Mondays.

Real Food Resources

What do I mean by "real" food? Food that has not been altered much, if at all, from its natural state. Food that hasn't undergone extensive processing. "Traditional" foods from around the world. Basically, not Hambuger Helper from a box, Fruit Loops, or frozen fish sticks.

When the latter is what you've been raised on (the majority of us have!), it's difficult to know where to start when yo want to make a change. I've been moving toward more healthful foods for 6 years and I am still light years behind many others.

These are the things that have helped me. I hope they encourage and educate you as well.

Books and Movies:

Eat From Your Pantry's Amazon Store

e-books*:

Best of Nourished Kitchen

Get Cultured (Free!)

Healthy Homemaking: One Step at a Time

Healthy Snacks to Go - Kitchen Stewardship

Real Food Ingredient Guide

Real Food Nutrition and Health

Real Food on a Real Budget

Blogs: