After last night's grocery store frenzy and the amount of money I spent on snacks, I wondered if making our own granola bars would be cost effective and/or tasty. I had bought the ingredients a month or two ago, so I'm going to have to hold off on calculating their cost, but the taste of the homemade bars gets a thumbs up!
I got the recipe from Hannaford's free grocery magazine, either Fresh or Organic & Natural. They have great recipes in them, and great coupons in the Organic one since not a lot of those products have coupons in the Sunday circulars. I made a few changes to the recipe (Get Smart Granola Bars), using dried cranberries in place of blueberries, and baking them on a large cookie sheet instead of in a 9x13 pan. Owen enjoyed measuring and mixing, and overall they were way easy, sweetened with brown sugar and honey and containing oats, wheat germ, flax, rice cereal, and only half a stick of butter.
I finally got around to washing up the veggies from the CSA pick up on Saturday, so we had a bunch of salads tonight for dinner, along with Kira's favorite Black Bean and Corn salad. The lettuce from the farm is so tasty, I can't imagine I ever ate out of those bags before. I also made a kale slaw that has a peanut vinaigrette on it with carrots and peppers.
I boiled up the Choiggia beets--I'm learning to only get enough for myself--and sliced them on top of my green salad sprinkled with blue cheese. They are the prettiest beet to slice. Funny aside: when I was looking up info on these beets, and how to spell them, the Google search page showed the following at the bottom of the page!
First official day of summer! I decided to spend a few hours this morning organizing my notes from the weeklong professional development institute in Georgia. I had so many book recommendations (Made to Stick looks intriguing), web links, ideas for training at my school. I also thought about all the summer projects I want to get to--thinning out the perennial beds, organizing my yarn stash and queued projects on Ravelry, getting to the year's worth of photos to scrapbook.
My friend Mike chatted with me on Facebook while I was in the thick of it (of course, one can't work so hard that Facebook can't be open too!) and sagely remarked that the beginning of summer is when you feel you actually have a chance at getting your projects done!
So that I didn't waste an absolutely gorgeous Vermont June day, we headed out to Lake Paran for the afternoon instead of going grocery shopping. My son has been absolutely unbearable in stores these days. He just won't take no for an answer, and seems to have become a greedy consumer. Grocery shopping feels torturous enough without children, so why bring them if you can help it?
After swimming all afternoon they were starving and salivating in the car on the way home at the thought of english muffins with peanut butter and butter. Sounded like an ideal dinner to me! They each had two! I had leftover pasta salad from Saturday, and let me tell you, it was so delicious after sitting for two days. The pesto was divine.
I headed out the to the grocery stores--two of them, to be exact. I hate to take the time to do both Aldi and Hannaford, but things are so much cheaper at Aldi. I still managed to spend $85!! While I was waiting in the checkout, a family ahead of me had to leave without their groceries since their EBT card was showing a zero balance. They said they were sure there was $53 on there. I felt like a schmuck with my cart full of stuff, that being only my first stop of the night. Sometimes I just don't keep money issues in perspective.
On next to Hannaford. I almost pulled into Price Chopper, which I pass on the way by, but I want to support Hannaford and its commitment to local foods. Plus it's a much more relaxing experience. But I still think it costs more than PC. I made the mistake of shopping without planning a menu. I ended up spending another 195 frickin' dollars!!!
I decided to do a little analysis of the food bills. I didn't add everything, but just some main categories. I am trying to remind myself that I probably haven't shopped for a big full trip in about a month. Here's how it broke down:
Fruit & Veggies....$26.25
Cheeses....$30.10
Breads....$14.60
Fish...$23.46 (a rarity--I splurged for Salmon)
Meats...$12 (boy wanted me to "stock up on hot dogs & I bought beef patties from grass fed, antibiotic free cows)
Can you believe we eat that much cheese? And it's expensive cheese. Kira likes this Dubliner cheese that's $4.50 alone. Since we're home for the next two weeks, I needed more lunch foods and snacks. The thing that gets me is I try to have my kids eat healthier snacks, but it all costs so much more than if I spent a buck or two on a box of sugary snacks. Or got the sugary drinks instead of the 100% juice drinks. Or got cheap milk. I guess I'm going to do what I can while I can until we can't afford it any longer.
Am I a prima donna because I like expensive coffee beans? I seriously can't swallow the cheap grind (boy that sounds dirty.) A few years ago I committed also to buying only fair trade coffee as well, so it's not just about my discerning palate, but am I just being ridiculous? There's a great little book about fair trade coffee by Julia Alvarez that does a nice job using narrative to be informative:A Cafecito Story: El Cuento Del Cafecito.
If you haven't seen Food, Inc., the movie, you really ought to. I keep thinking of the family in the grocery store who are in the produce aisle and the mom has to tell the daughter to put the fruit back because it's just too much per pound. She knows it's crap to eat fast food, but where else can they go and eat from a dollar menu? It's heart wrenching.
I know I can't figure it all out tonight, but I really grapple with this stuff. It's why I started the blog. Here's a photo of the best thing I spent $3.99 on. Some flowers are always worth it to me. And my new favorite coffee, from Maine, both organic and fair trade: Wicked Joe's!
Can't seem to get back in a cooking groove since the Georgia trip and a crazy exam week/close of school. I jumped at the sudden invitation from my brother to come down to the restaurant he manages out of the Crowne Plaza in Pittsfield, MA.
He's been there three years, and it's the first time we were allowed to come dine! He's not in the kitchen any more, but his culinary influence as Executive Chef was very apparent. He's also the banquet manager and whatever else manager! He's got a great chef, Hank, whose food was so good I never touched the salt or pepper. To me, that's the sign of a good chef.
I had planned to photograph the main courses--yes, courses, as he brought out several dishes for us all to try--but we were so excited we dug in to each and every one before I remembered the photo!
First, we had tomato with fresh mozzarella and basil. The kitchen makes their own cheese. (The only thing that would have made it any better was if it was served with the organic tomatoes I got from Mighty Food Farm yesterday!) Then he brought out small tastes of his clam chowder, which had bacon in it, but I knew would be heavenly and actually broke my no food with meat in it rule.
They also brought out other meat laden dishes that looked fantastic for the meat eaters: clams with chorizo and a chicken panzanella salad. The fish dishes were fabulous: a mahi mahi with white beans and then a shellfish dish with handmade tagliatelle infused with chianti!
The kids decided all on their own to get dressed up. They looked absolutely precious.
Kira was beside herself with the fresh mozzarella goodness, which she was able to have on a flatbread pizza. It's nice to see her growing more comfortable with eating out. She's so particular, but if it's a good place, her refined tastes will be met!
Owen got a giant steak with hand cut fries. It was bigger than him. He relishes being the hearty meat eater in the family.
It was great to see Lee in his element. If you're driving through Pittsfield on Rte. 7, stop in at One West at the Crowne Plaza and have whatever's on special!!!
The next day we went to the farm and picked up our Mighty Food Farm share. Heavenly aforementioned tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, kale, eggs, snap peas, parsley, and lots of fresh basil. Kira and I noshed on the flax grain bread we bought there, the greek olives imported by a local family, and aged sharp cheddar from Henry's Market down on East Main St. A local lunch!
Later, we ate dinner out on the deck at mom and dad's, which has undoubtedly one of the top views of the southwestern Vermont valley. I made a pesto with the basil from MFF, and put together a pasta salad with the kalamata olives from the Kontoulis family, feta, sundried tomatoes, and artichokes. I kept needing to add salt and pepper--I'm always surprised how much salt I add to things, but I realize that when it's from scratch, there's no salt at all. It's still probably far less than prepared foods!
The end of the school year is always chaotic, but the past few weeks were even more so since I went out of town for an entire week. When you're a teacher, that means the entire week before is spent doing your regular day plus preparing a week's worth of sub plans for while you are gone. That's the reason for no blog posts for nearly three weeks. Now I'm in the still recovering from being gone mode, AND it's final exams right now. More chaos.
Teachers don't travel much. It's a pretty foreign concept for us to be away for work! After the chaotic week of preparing to leave, it was nice to have some relaxing meals out with colleagues. We were working in a town called Cumming, Georgia, about 50 minutes north of Atlanta. We discovered a chain we really liked, called Ted's Montana Grill. The food was fantastic. They had no problem modifying their chopped salad by leaving off the salami--often places already have the stuff made up and won't accommodate. I had a great veggie burger one night, and crab cakes the next. Delicious roasted asparagus too. My favorite thing was their environmentally aware approach--no plastic straws, recycled menus, biodegradable to go containers.
We also ate at a Mexican place called Cheeky. Their shtick was beer taps right at the tables! This was featured in the bar area and looked pretty cool and fun. The vegetarian food wasn't too great, but we had awesome little ahi tuna tacos with avocado for an appetizer.
The last night we drove down to Decatur and ate at The Brick Store Pub. This place was really lively. I was driving, so it killed me to see all the local craft beer available. But the food was just as good--English pub style. We had chips with malt vinegar and salads featuring local greens and cheeses. Totally creamy delicious goat cheese on one, and blue on the other. Then we even had vegetarian curry of sweet potatoes and chick peas. Really awesome.
What was the most fun about the dining out experience in Georgia was the service. Every waitperson was really nice, and not in a cheesy fake way. They seemed to really want you to have a good, relaxed time. They never complained about my fussy special orders. It was totally different than dining out in the northeast!
Most of the nights we stopped at Barnes & Noble on the way back to the hotel so my colleague could get a decaf coffee. She even bought a book I'm looking forward to borrowing from her!
I've hardly cooked since I've been back, so I'll post more once I can get back into the groove!
How can it be this hot in May? 94 degrees in Vermont. I came home tonight and planned to make up some cold salad kind of meal.
I made a great couscous, spinach, pine nuts & feta salad, not sure where I got the recipe from (Martha Stewart Living or Real Simple?), but it was a side dish to go with a flank steak. I thought it would make a good salad without the steak, and I was right, very tasty. Sliced garlic sauteed with the pine nuts, juice of a lemon, olive oil. Yum.
The second thing I made was a bust. It was a cold sesame noodle salad from This Can't Be Tofu cookbook. I just don't like soft tofu I guess. I also think as much as I want to like Soba noodles, I don't. Will liked it though, so it'll get eaten. It needed soy sauce which I thought we had in the fridge, but we were out. The funny thing is it's closer and quicker to go down to the take out Chinese restaurant downtown than bother with the grocery store, so we ordered Owen his new favorite take out item since our Mother's Day dinner out, Wonton Soup. We got some veggie dumplings, and we grabbed enough soy sauce for the noodles I was making!
The two salads didn't really match, but I wanted to use the spinach, and hoped Kira would like the noodles...ha, I'm funny! She ended up with an english muffin.
Tonight while I was cooking and using the Mighty Food Farm spinach, I couldn't help but think about the documentary we watched in school today. My team-teacher who teaches social studies shows it during the unit on the Industrial Revolution as part of an overall child labor issue. There are plenty of clips of child labor around the world, but he makes a point to show the kids our own country's shame as well.
As I watched this clip of the young people in Texas who were harvesting onions for $2 an hour, I was even more committed to the local food movement. The fact that these children stand in the fields while the planes fly over spraying pesticides brought tears to my eyes.
Will did a great job grilling some tuna steaks tonight. I sliced them up and made a salad that was to die for.
The recipe was from Martha Stewart Living magazine. It called for canned tuna, but there's no way it would have tasted like as incredible. Grilled is the way to go for sure. It had a little more than 1 tblsp of olive oil, and that was it for fats in the dressing--three lemons juiced instead!. The almonds were a great addition, but the capers were what made this for me. I'm so glad I didn't try it last night without the capers!
I also made a blue potato salad based on a recipe from Epicurious.com. I wish these were from the farm (not time for potatoes yet!) because they would have made this great recipe even better! I didn't have all the variety of herbs called for, so I just used tons of dill instead. Never try dried dill when fresh is called for--it's nothing near the same. I also added one hard boiled egg. The rice vinegar was fabulous, and less than half a cup of light mayo for the dressing!
Kira had the tuna plain, Owen had a hot dog, but both kids also had a hard boiled egg too. The eggs were from Mighty Food Farm, so the yolks were super yellow!!
My thinking is that some day Owen will swap out the bad stuff for more of the good. A few years ago I never would have thought Kira would be eating fish like tuna and salmon! They also had fresh snap peas on their plates. Kids like peeling the strings off and popping out the peas, then crunching the pods.
We were wondering about what makes the yolks so yellow. I knew it was pure goodness, but wanted a better answer. Here's what I found from Whistling Train Farm's Egg FAQ page:
Q: What makes egg yolks dark yellow, compared to the pale grocery store egg yolks? Beta carotene, or xanthophyll—both are natural plant pigments. When hens are able to eat green plant material or yellow corn (factory farm hens are sometimes fed yellow dye to color the yolks), the beta carotene concentrates in the yolk making it dark, sometimes even orange. Eating red peppers makes yolks red, and some plants can make the yolks green or even black. Q: Eggs from your farm have darker yolks than I am used to. Does a dark colored yolk mean the egg is rotten? Quite the contrary. Fresh eggs have darker colored yolks and whites than old eggs. The bright color of the egg yolk fades as the egg ages. A pale yellow yolk and watery white mean that the egg has been sitting in storage for several weeks or months.
It's a beautiful day today and I spent most of it doing chores. I shouldn't complain because on rainy weekends we are bummed it's raining. I tried to make the best of it. I brought the stack of recipes I keep and a few cookbooks outside with the legal pad I was going to write my list on, keeping in mind what we picked up from the CSA on Friday.
I sat outside gazing at my horribly overgrown perennial beds (inherited from the house's previous owner) trying to map out what kind of busy week was on the horizon. Where the appointments, meetings, sports, and after school programs fell.
It's a total pain the buttocks, but when the week is busy, it's too easy to fall into bad eating habits and eat bad(tasting) fast food. Last week was pretty much in that category. Plus, when you make a point to get your share of local produce, you don't want it to rot in the fridge. I always hate wasting food, but it's even more criminal when you know the folks and/or see them actually harvesting it!
Here's Lisa from and the Mighty Food Farm Crew transplanting spinach, which we enjoyed with pasta last night!
I decided to go ahead and try a few recipes from the tofu cookbook. The author is a great vegetarian chef with a lot of good books out there.
Hopefully, her recipe for sesame noodles will match those served at Powers Market in North Bennington, which Kira insists are like no other. Then I'm going to try to adapt her recipe for soba noodles with bok choi (which I got a bunch of baby sized from the CSA), since I don't want to make the stock from scratch.
Once I got the list, I headed over to Hannaford, totally feeling sorry for myself (my husband had just come home from a mtn. biking stint). I snapped myself out of it by going the roundabout way, which is more mileage but probably not much more time.
I actually turned off the radio and put the windows down and just tried to take in the day and the surroundings. I get to drive through Old Bennington, past the old First Church where Robert Frost is buried, past the Bennington Battle Monument, and through a covered bridge before coming out at the entrance to Bennington College and driving around the corner to the Hannaford shopping center.
I spent $213.00. Even with the CSA pickup. It is so darn hard to eat well and not spend a fortune.
By the time I finished the trip, unpacked all the bags, cleaned out old food I came across while putting things away, unloaded the dishwasher, washed the #@!!!expletive!!(%* pots from last night and the dishes from breakfast, it was nearly 6:00 already. A whole afternoon, basically.
Then I go to make this meal with fresh tuna and realize I forgot the crucial ingredient--capers. (probably distracted by running into a cute colleague from my school, who was standing in the snack aisle with a can of shaving cream, tasked with the awful job of choosing exactly which bag of chips to buy himself. don't get me wrong, I love my husband and my family, but sometimes I envy these young teachers and their singular living, when the big decision of the day is sour cream & onion or bbq.)
I quickly decided to make a stand by summer salad. Only downside was it tastes great with avocados, and the ones I bought aren't ripe yet.
I knew my daughter would eat some of the bean and corn salad, but Owen would balk if that was all that was on the table. I quickly made some cheese quesadillas and arranged them around the salad, and wouldn't you know it, no complaints!
There are a lot of variations of this salad, and I'm sure if you did a search you'd find some good recipes. I just tend to throw together whatever I've got, but the key is fresh cilantro and fresh squeezed limes. Don't make it if you don't have them.
Tonight's was a large can of black beans, white and yellow frozen baby corn nuked, a bit of jarred taco sauce left over, a bit of salsa, two limes, half a bunch of cilantro chopped, about three scallions chopped, half a yellow pepper, about 10 grape tomatoes quartered. I added sea salt, ground pepper, cumin, chili powder.
I topped mine with jalapenos and black olives, and some extra sharp Cabot cheddar (I realized if it's good sharp cheese, an ounce crumbled suffices and it tastes better than a larger amount of low fat cheese!) I also put crumbled tortilla chips on top after spreading them around the edge of the plate. Be sure to get a good brand of chips, without trans fats, so they taste like corn and not junk. I like this brand quite a bit, and they're a decent price at Hannaford.
Last night I was determined to make a really nice meal in spite of being tired out from a busy morning/afternoon and needing to get out to chaperone the junior prom at 8:00. I really wanted to make something featuring the Mighty Food Farm spinach from this week's CSA, and actually some left from last week too. That's the great thing about fresh farm veggies, the shelf life is incredible.
Kira participated in an incredible event earlier in the day that had us out of the house from early in the morning until about 3:30. It's called Girls on the Run and consists of girls from 3rd to 5th grade participating in a self-esteemed base curriculum centered around training for a 5K. It was so uplifting and positive! I was so proud of her!
We went afterwards to the Brattleboro Food Co-Op, an amazing place I wish we had in our town. I had the most delicious wrap: pesto, swiss, and tofu melted. The tofu was done kind of browned and firm. I'd like to add more of it to my diet and got a great cookbook at the library sale that when things slow down (the end of the school year is always hectic), I'm going to try to make some up for various dishes. We also went to a great thrift store behind it where I got Liz Claiborne cropped khakis for $3.50!
Anyway, by the time we got home, there was no way a trip to the grocery was in order. I looked about and manged to throw together a great meal by asking my dad, our guest for the night, to bring over the feta I knew my mom had in the fridge.
I sauteed garlic in olive oil (a great start to any meal), added some butter, then threw in frozen artichoke quarters, chopped kalamata olives, chopped roasted red pepper (do you know how easy it is to make your own? They're kind of expensive to buy in a jar and don't taste that great. I can't believe I haven't made my own all along!)
I added to small containers of Pacific Organic Vegetable Broth. This stuff is magic. You really should stock it permanently in your house! It's so flavorful and complements the fresh vegetables. It is easy on the sodium, so I usually flavor it with more sea salt and ground black pepper as I cook with it. I use it for all pasta sauces as well as for soup bases.
I put in as much fresh spinach as looked good, and it was done. Of course use Barilla pasta, the best available in the grocery aisle. I usually use the Barilla Plus enriched, but I had a box of regular Barilla linguine on the shelf. The kids had it plain with butter only. Owen will eat that down like no other pasta meal!
The secret to serving this kind of dish is to cook the pasta, toss it with some olive oil so it won't stick, then portion out the pasta to the individual bowls. Then you scoop out all the veggies on top of the pasta equally, then finally pouring the broth/garlic/butter sauce equally between the dishes. Top with reduced fat feta.
Add a salad with fresh farm lettuce and what a nice green meal!
I left Will to clean up, so of course it's the next day at 1:00 in the afternoon and both the salad bowl and the pasta pot are sitting in the sink still. He always leaves something in the sink.
Chaperoning the prom was fun. It was great to see the kids all dressed up and some of them had bigger grins than I've seen on teens in a long time. Just pure happiness. The dresses were so mixed this year, from traditional, to sleek, to short 50s style. I loved the variety, and great color!
The music is another story though. To me, there's no variety there. There wasn't a single song I recognized. They probably played three slow songs and that was it. The funny thing was they all dance in this huge throng, you know, like this pseudo rave pack, but when the slow songs come on, they all spread out and stand much much further apart!
In this town, the prom is a dance only. It goes 8-12, or for the seniors, 9-1. They don't have a dinner/banquet thing. The good thing is it's only $15 a ticket! But I think it was fun having a meal out all together too. And as chaperones, teachers were pouring punch and even taking out the garbage!
Another thing that this town does that we never did growing up in CT, is the post-prom "march"! The parents all come a half an hour before the end and line up outside the building (for the juniors, they traditionally clear out the auto showroom of a local dealership!), and the kids literally line up and march around the outside so the parents can see them all decked out! Isn't that something?
Overall what struck me most though was what pure fun they all had. A few kids arrived in an old antique car (this is the home of Hemmings News after all), but aside from that few get limos or go overboard with materialistic stuff. Most girls do their own hair and make up, a few got their dresses from JC Penney or second hand, and a one girl I know even made her own dress! As a chaperone, it was just watching them have fun and enjoy one another's company. That's what I love about teaching--and living--in Vermont!
By the way, the theme was simply NEON. They gave out glow bracelets. I was remembering the class of 88 at BHS senior prom theme (we were a bunch of kids wishing we had skipped the light fandango 20 years earlier) "A Whiter Shade of Pale."
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The author is a great vegetarian chef with a lot of good books out there. 
This stuff is magic. You really should stock it permanently in your house! It's so flavorful and complements the fresh vegetables. It is easy on the sodium, so I usually flavor it with more sea salt and ground black pepper as I cook with it. I use it for all pasta sauces as well as for soup bases.
