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But first, a quick aside – isn’t this new site so pretty?  B is amazing and worked super hard to get the way I wanted it.  And I’m really picky.  Um, hun, could you just left justify that word but leave the rest centered? Um, could you make that the same color as the rest?  Actually, no, can you change the color?  Um, can you pick another graphic?  No, I don’t like that, go back to the first.  Poor guy.  But he loved every second of it.  He talked to me endlessly about all the different coding and other things I did not even begin to grasp.  I imagine this is what he feels like when I talk about clothes or fabric and stuff.

So, welcome to my new site.  I hope you like it.  I love it!  It’s just so pretty

Ok, back to the drinks.  Since January of 2009 I have only been able to drink beer or other alcoholic beverages with no concern of its effects on my babies for 2 months.  If that.  I weaned Olivia and then got pregnant pretty soon after so it actually may have only been a few weeks.  Now, if you know me, you know I love beer.  Even more than margaritas or mojitos or wine.  So having to go without for so long, I decided to do something about it this summer.  I decided to find non-alcoholic drinks that I liked more than beer that don’t contain high fructose corn syrup.  Thing is these drinks are expensive and hard to find.  So I decided to make my own.  And they are amazingly deee-licious.

Here are the recipes if you want to try them.  Seriously when I’m drinking this stuff I don’t envy Kraft who is downing a Bud Light Lime one little bit.

Basil Lemonade: This is a Giada recipe.  Honestly I don’t have much luck with her recipes.  Every time I cook something of hers, it doesn’t come out well but I had so much basil from our CSA box that I had to find something that used a lot of it fastbefore it turned brown and gross.  I will warn you, though, for sure water this puppy down A LOT.  I only use about half the sugar that the recipe calls for and use about 2-3 cups more of water.  Oh, and if you want to feel fancy, which I usually do if I’m trying to not think of beer, use sparkling water.

Orange Mint Tea: This is from my Mennonite cookbook.  Again, I needed something that used a lot of mint quickly, although it does hold up better than basil.  Obviously, this recipe is not on the web so I’m going to give it to you from the book – Bring 3 cups of water to a boil.  Put in bunch of mint, turn off burner, and cover.  Let steep for 20+ minutes.  Stir in 1/3 cup of sugar.  Add 2 cups of orange juice (no pulp makes it better).  Add 1/2 cup lemon juice (I add more).  Stir, then add water until it’s no longer strong for you.

Knockoff Arizona Green Tea with Honey and Ginseng:  The last drink I found was really more for my dad.  My dad gets swept up in fad diets and fad exercising equipment all the time.  The latest diet he was reading about said that he should drink lots of green tea.  Now my dad does not take to structure at all so he ignored the rest of the diet but decided that he would stick to the green tea thing.  So what has he been guzzling down?  Arizona Green Tea.  Yuck.  Might as well be a Coke.  So I asked him if I could make a tea that tastes better, would he drink that instead of the Arizona stuff?  Sure.  Ok, so I embarked on a quest to find something he liked better.  Apparently a lot of people have set out on this quest.  So it was actually no quest at all, I just googled Arizona green tea with ginseng and there was the recipe.  Although I would suggest using 2-3 tea bags instead of just one.  I like my tea strong.  Oh, and I left out the ginseng.  We just didn’t have it.  Nor do I even  know what it is.

So if you are pregnant, nursing, or don’t have the same affinity for beer that I have, try these recipes out.

 

Image by NatalieMaynor via Flickr

I am totally, completely, absolutely in love with the idea of getting all of our food locally.  From local farms.  Local chickens.  Local pigs.  Local cows. Local McDonalds.  You get it.  It is one of the reasons I love Austin and never want to move away.  We can actually do this.  We gets most of our veggies from our CSA with Johnson’s Backyard Garden (which is freakin’ awesome by the way).  There are tons of farms around that we can get fresh eggs, local meat, fresh milk, shoot, even fish.

Today we went to the Farmer’s Market and I needed to buy food for the camp we are helping with next week (I’ll write more about this another day).  On Friday we will be providing lunch for them and all the food will be organic or locally sourced.  That day we will be teaching them about responsible consumerism when it comes to food.  So I planned out a simple menu and went around getting everything I could from the FM.  We’re making BLTs so I got bacon and  mustard from Dai Due and tomatoes from JBG.  For the vegetarians, I bought Hummus from the Mediterranean Chef (I would have made it myself except I can’t figure out how to make it taste good no matter how many times I make it – which is at least 50 times).  I looked for lettuce but it’s so hot that it’s out of season now.  I’m making mint orange tea so I bought some mint from JBG also.  Later on in the week I’m going to buy blackberries from one of the farm stands and bread from Texas French Bread.  It’s just awesome how I can get almost an entire meal from local, sustainable sources.

I’m also starting to understand the value of making things when they are in season and freezing them for when they are not.

I guess this all just makes me feel like part of the world.  The part of the world that doesn’t live off of quarter pounders and coke.  The part that lives of the bounty of the earth.  I’m not going to say something as cliche as it makes me feel like I’m in a rhythm with the earth but I do.  It also just makes me appreciate the earth and the seasons a lot more.

Man, if you thought I was hippie before coming to Austin, think of where I’m going to be in 10 years.  Probably taking care of my own cows for milk and chickens for eggs.  Hmm, that would be cool.

Anyways, I totally buy into this food revolution thing.  I don’t like Jamie Oliver.  I think he is super aggressive and hostile but I completely agree with his message and am happy he is doing what he is doing even if he’s doing it in a pain in the ass kind of way.  If you could taste some of the delicious food we’ve been eating because of these veggies we are getting, you’d see how easy it would be to be part of a revolution that just tastes so darn good and no bloodshed.  You can’t really beat that.

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I have decided that kale is one of my new favorite veggies and definitely my favorite green.  Kale is hearty and strong.  It stays good for a long time and it doesn’t wilt easily.  I like it, I like it a lot.

Related, I had a ton of random veggies leftover that I didn’t know what to do with until I found this absolutely fool-proof recipe for a Panade.  The steps are easy and it came out perfect and tasty.  Into mine went beet greens, bok choy, kale, dandelion greens, carrots, corn, yellow squash, kohlrabi, sausage, onion, garlic, and parmesan cheese.  We had a ton of old leftover bread.  I didn’t even have to use fancy bakery bread, just a bunch of old regular sliced Mrs. Bairds bread.

Give it a try.  It’s a great way to get rid of leftovers.

Image by sierravalleygirl via Flickr

Some friends of ours have recently started baking bread and have been kind enough to give us their extra loaves when they got ‘em.  This bread is absolutely deeeelicious and inspired me to want to make bread.  I think I would have stayed wanting to do this and not actually doing it if it weren’t for a wonderful couple that Kraft knows that has 5 kids.  One of the kids is having surgery this week (say a little prayer).  The mom told me that the hardest meal that they have to get together is breakfast.  So I am trying my hand at baking bread so maybe it will give them a hand come breakfast time.

This morning I started by making scones since they are pretty easy and require no yeast.  They turned out good.  This upped my confidence for actual yeast bread.  Just 5 minutes ago I pulled my first batch of bread out of the oven.  Two huge and weirdly shaped but pretty nonetheless honey wheat loaves.  It is amazing to see dough rise. 

I’m just really excited.  We just tasted it and it wasn’t knock your socks off bread but it wasn’t bad like I was expecting it to be.  Baking bread is kinda like making tamales, it’s pretty time intensive because of all the steps but it’s not hard and is pretty fun.  I can’t wait to make a couple other kinds of bread tomorrow.

Makes you not ever want grocery store bread again.

Image by La Grande Farmers’ Market via Flickr

It’s been a while since I’ve spotlighted a weird veggie.  We
got one in our CSA box last week and finally cooked it up yesterday. 
It was tasty but I’m still not sure what kohlrabi tastes like since the
flavor got buried in egg and onion and ham (Kohlrabi Ham Bake). 

One thing’s for sure, the recipe said to peel it before dicing
and cooking.  I usually don’t peel my veggies and have found that it
works pretty well for me.  Potatoes have much more nutrient value if
you eat the skins, if beets are small enough they are tender even with
the skins on, I just scrub carrots really well.  It’s easier to wash
them well than to peel a bunch of them. 

That being said, kohlrabi does
not fall into this category.  I half-heartedly peeled it before cutting
it up and throwing it in the saute pan.  Yuck.  There were more than a
few bites that I got peel and it was fibrous and tough.  Kinda like
chewing on burlap.  Kraft said he didn’t get any of that but I suspect
he just didn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Interesting vegetable, though, be sure to peel it.

Image by mhaithaca via Flickr

When we were planning our trip to NY Kraft asked me what I wanted to do in the city.  The only thing I for sure wanted to do was eat pancakes at the Clinton Street Baking Co.  We learned about this restaurant on “Throwdown with Bobby Flay”.

First off, let me say that restaurants in NYC are tiny and crammed with tables.  These places are very efficient with their space.  So we walk into this place that has no more than 12 tables and bump into the owner.  I recognized him from the TV show.  He stopped and looked at Olivia and said, “Ah, well, aren’t you guys brave to be out there with her?”  And smiled and walked out.  Super nice guy.  We got a table immediately.  Kraft ordered the blueberry pancakes (their famous for these) and I ordered their banana and chocolate pancakes.

It was a really hard hike to this place.  It was really snowing a lot.  The ground was slushy.  I was slipping all over the place.  Man, these pancakes better be worth all this trouble.  They totally were.  Oh my goodness, these pancakes were delicious.  Mine had fried bananas on top with a drizzle of chocolate sauce.  They are served with warm maple butter.  That’s right, m-a-p-l-e b-u-t-t-e-r.  I’m so sad that they don’t have this in Austin.  I’ve never eaten such good pancakes.  I don’t know what their recipe is for them but I will definitely be trying Bobby Flay’s recipe and see if they’re anywhere near as good.

If you are in NY, go to this place.  Really, you’ll love it.

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I’m sure I’ll talk about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs a lot so might as well bring it up now

Around October we decided to join a CSA with some friends and split a share.  How this works is you pay up front to a small, locally owned, organic farm and every week you get a box full of veggies of whatever they harvested.  We split a share with some friends because a share can feed a family of four and it halves the price.  We began with Hands of the Earth Farm which has now given their farm to the Urban Roots.  A fantastic non-profit.  Urban Roots is having a CSA but it’s a little more expensive than we can afford right now since part of the money goes to pay for the veggies and another part is a kind-of donation to the program.  Maybe one day we will have enough extra income to join this CSA but for now we had to find a different one.  We ended up going with Johnson’s Backyard Garden.  (Which, by the way, has a fantastic blog if you’re interested in this kind of thing).

Because of this, we have eaten way more veggies than we ever would have otherwise.  Not to mention it has expanded our culinary world to veggies I’m pretty sure I would never have given the time of day.  Consequently, I have really developed a love of cooking.  This is hindered by the Squeaker’s constant need to be in my arms but we do the best we can.

This brings me to my point.  In this week’s box we got a batch of beets.  Before joining the CSA I had only eaten canned beets when my mom was on this weird diet.  They were plain gross.  After getting them several times in our boxes I figured I should give them another try.  I roasted them several times which turned out good.  But tonight I found a recipe that was dee-licious.  Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens.  So if you hate beets, give this one a try.  It’s very refreshing and not overly beety.  I also love that you can use the whole veggie and not just throw out the leafy part.

If it makes it more palatable you can picture Dwight and Mose picking the beets.  Hmm, maybe that’s less palatable.

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Turnips would probably not appear on the all-time favorite veggie list but for some reason I love them.  I’m not sure why I like them.  They’re kinda bitter and aren’t the prettiest girl at the party but I love to use them in anything I can.  I have slipped them into soups, chili, quiche, and casseroles.  I think I like them because they are the underdog of the root family.  Knowing this, I have decided to make sure Olivia likes them, too.  So far the foods that she has eaten have been rice cereal, carrots, and peas.  Today I gave her pureed turnips.  I was super surprised how good turnips taste pureed.  The bitterness is gone and they taste very fresh and light.  The texture is interesting too because it feels like you’re eating pureed pears but there is no sweetness at all.  So, if you’re hesitant to try turnips, perhaps you should start like O and try them first pureed.  I bet if you add a little butter and salt and pepper they are closer to tasting like mashed potatoes than mashed cauliflower which seems to be a popular substitute.  Oh, and by the way, O really liked them.  Thank God because I went a bit overboard and made a ton.