Make it Yourself Monday: Bread Crumbs

As promised, today is the first day of a new meme, Make it Yourself Mondays! I've got some great ideas for the upcoming weeks and I'd love for you to join me by linking your recent posts that feature things you have made yourself instead of buying pre-made. Starting with something simple today: Breadcrumbs!

Making Breadcrumbs

Step 1: Set out leftover bread extras (ends of loaves, pieces not eaten with dinner, etc.) over night. We were given a sub sandwich this day and little guy ate all of the meat and cheese out of it. :)

Step 2: Zip dried pieces up in a bag and get ready for the fun part!

Step 3: Pound away! I like getting my 2 year old involved in this part - you could even let little ones try stepping on the pieces to crunch them.

Step 4: Store breadcrumbs until ready to use. I just stick the bag in the freezer and add to it as we can.

Step 5: Season as desired and use to make yummy things like lamb meatballs or top sides like this twice-baked butternut squash!

There are obivously a million variations on these instructions, but I wanted to make sure you got a taste for how simple it really can be. If you are pressed for time you can try toasting your bread or baking it at a low temp until it has dried. Keeping your supply up will ensure that you never have to run out to buy pre-made crumbs and also let you have control over the ingredients your family consumes!

What have you made recently? This is not strictly limited to food, but try to keep it focused on things that people regularly buy pre-made. Can't wait to learn from all of you! Use the form below to add your site - be sure to name it something that will give us an idea of what your post is about. For instance, I'd label mine Anjanette @ Eat From Your Pantry: Breadcrumbs!

Also feel free to grab the graphic for your post, and link back to this page so others can enjoy!

Linky:

Chicken & Lentil Loaf

Another experiment with leftovers... and it turned out just fine! Adding it to my list of things to make with the whole chickens I cook. Served it with a side of asparagus and cashew gravy (gravy was AWESOME - I did substitute arrowroot for corn starch). My only complaint is that it was a little dry. I think I will try it without any tomato anything next time and instead use milk like the recipe for this Dutch Chicken Loaf calls for. Then maybe I'd put the cashew gravy on the loaf itself!

Chicken and Lentil Loaf

Ingredients:

2 cups lentils - cooked

2 cups cooked chicken - diced

1 cup breadcrumbs

1 large onion - diced and sauteed

7 oz. tomato paste

2 tbsp. water

4 eggs

seasonings of your choice

(I diced my chicken pretty finely)

Directions:

Prepare lentils, chicken, and onions if you do not have them leftover from other meals. Mix dry ingredients together in large bowl. In separate bowl, mix tomato paste with water to thin out and then add eggs and whisk thoroughly (I just used a fork). Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and work with a spoon or your hands until evenly combined.

Shape loaf in a greased bread pan and bake at 375 for 30-45 minutes or until set.

I originally intended to make 2 small loaves (to freeze one) but in the end went with 1 larger loaf. Still, I used whole numbers so this would be super easy to halve if you didn't have enough on hand or weren't sure your family would go for it!

Guest Post - How I Changed My Thinking by Grating Cheese

A better title for today might be "Stolen Post: How My Friend April Has a Way With Words." :) I *did* ask permission to copy her post here though, so it's not technically stealing!

I am gearing up for the posts I promised to share on getting started with cooking from scratch, and April wrote the perfect introduction! I am blessed to know April in real life and delighted to share her wisdom with you. Please visit the original post at her blog and tell her if you love it as much as I do!

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It's easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to cooking. With all the cookbooks, blogs, and cooking shows out there, we are just bombarded with information, and it can be really confusing to know where to start. And that's not even taking nutrition into account--how can I be worrying about lacto-fermentation when I don't even know how to chop an onion? I certainly didn't learn all those things overnight. I had to start somewhere small. I started by grating my own cheese.

Grating your own cheese may not seem like culinary mastery, but I realized just the other day what a huge difference it made in my thinking and the way I buy and cook my food. And for me, at that time, it was a big change. I grew up in a family that bought the giant bags of shredded cheese at the warehouse store. It was easy to just grab a handful and throw it into whatever. But as I started learning more about grocery prices, I found that I could often get a brick of cheese for cheaper than its shredded counterpart, especially when the bricks went on sale. So I bought myself a $5 box grater, and I got to shredding some cheese. What I expected was for it to be a bit of a pain--and it was, at first. I had to wash that thing constantly (which may say that we eat too much cheese around here), and it did take quite a bit longer to shred my own cheese than to grab a handful out of a bag. But what I didn't expect was how much better it would taste. It tasted fresher. It had a better texture and melted better because it wasn't coated in cornstarch to keep it from sticking. And, as I mentioned, it was often cheaper.

As I got out that box grater the other day to shred some cheese, it hit me, how normal grating my own cheese had become. I no longer consider it a pain, because I have forgotten the alternative. For me, this is just what you do if you want shredded cheese. I don't even look at the sale prices on the pre-shredded stuff, because that's just not what we do. And in that moment, I realized how many other things, that I used to consider terribly time and labor-intensive, have become completely normal for us. As silly as it may sound, shredding my own cheese opened up the door for me to make all kinds of things on my own. Once I got used to cheese-shredding, making my own pasta sauce didn't seem so intimidating. One thing led to another, and before you know it, my thinking changed so that now, there's hardly anything I could buy in the store that I don't think I could make at home.

So my challenge for you today, dear readers, is twofold: First, I want you to pick one thing in your kitchen to do on your own that you're not already doing. For some of you, it might be making mashed potatoes from scratch instead of a box. For others, it might mean rendering your own animal fat--something that's not even on my radar right now. We're all at different stages, and that's okay. The second part of the challenge is to stick with it! When I first started shredding my own cheese, it was seriously a pain in the neck. But if you stick with it, over time, your thinking will change, and I can almost guarantee you'll be better for it.

What one thing do you plan to change?

Wrapping up the Real Food Challenge

This week Jenny from Nourished Kitchen shared her knowledge of the importance of incorporating meat into our diets, and what to look for to make sure the meat we eat is nutrient dense and safe.

Meat is a tough one for us (and I imagine most other city-dwellers). $6.00/lb for good beef, lamb, or bison uses up my food budget a lot faster than my frugal mind can handle sometimes. Knowing how dangerous the hormones and antibiotics we consume second-hand from conventional meats are has encouraged our family to eat less meat - we eat vegetarian dinners about a 1/3 of the time and incorporate meat into a dish rather than serving it as the main course on the other nights.

Downside: I've struggled with anemia both of my pregnancies so far. I had to have a blood transfusion after my last, and have been keeping track of and trying to improve my iron levels this time with hopes for a different outcome. I have never dealt with obvious signs of anemia outside of pregnancy, and this could just be what my body does when I'm pregnant, but I would wager that all but eliminating red meats from our diet hasn't helped.

Purchased some yummy meats this week and made lamb meatballs and bison chili! Both super-delicious!

Read my post on Thinking Outside the Grocer if you are struggling to find a source for quality meats.

The other topics this week were all great as well. If you missed them, check out the archives.

To wrap this challenge up, I'm going to list the changes we've made as a direct result of the knowledge and/or encouragement Jenny has shared. Thanks so much for helping us take steps to better nourish ourselves and families this month!

We have...

Started soaking our flour, rice and other grains, and beans before cooking them.

Purchased coconut oil and ghee in bulk.

Made (and LOVED) milk kefir for the first time.

Made bone-broth half a dozen times and used it in even more ways!

Stopped eating dried pasta (for the most part - and this is a HUGE sacrifice for us!).

Tried new-to-us foods like arrowroot and sucanat.

Learned a TON that we haven't had a chance to implement.

Had our thoughts on food challenged in too many ways to count.

Found about a hundred topics to research further (never ends, does it?). :)

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Love the great summary Jenny shared on the final day of the challenge:

Stay Natural & Unrefined. Eat only natural, whole foods in their unrefined state.

Avoid Modern, Processed Foods. Avoid processed, packaged, refined foods even those sold as "natural" foods. If you're great-great-great-great-great grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it.

Sour, sprout or soak. If you eat grain, beans, legumes, nuts or seeds, make sure that you properly prepare them to maximize your body's ability to assimilate their nutrients.

Love healthy fats. Enjoy wholesome, healthy, unrefined natural fats liberally - and especially on your vegetables.

Brew mineral-rich stock. Make homemade, mineral-rich broth and stock weekly, and consume it daily.

Eat grass-fed, pasture-raised and wild-caught.Eat meat, including offal, and make sure it's from a trusted source that relies on traditional methods of raising their animals: on fresh pasture.

Keep dairy raw and fresh. If you eat dairy, keep it raw or, at the very least, make sure it comes from grass-fed animals and is not subject to ultra-high-temperature pasteurization.

Get Your Good Bacteria. Consume naturally fermented, probiotic foods and beverages daily.

Get involved. Grow your foodshed and give back to the community. Fight for farmers and consumers rights and against the industrialization of our food supply.

Maximize nutrient density of your foods by preparing and consuming them with time-honored tradition.

I hope those of you who have participated in this challenge, or followed along in any way, are interested in learning more! I'll be posting on some real-food topics in the near future and Nourished Kitchen is going to be posting video tutorials this month!!!

Also, you should check out the Recipe Cards that Nourished Kitchen puts out by mail each month. I received a month's worth and they are GORGEOUS and wonderful! Jenny is offering a discount of $28 on a year's subscription if you order using the code 28DAYS through March 28th.

List post is linked to Nourished Kitchen. You should stop by to read the week 4 reports of other bloggers!