Taking advantage of the day

Our weather was surprisingly nice today. And because of my husband's irregular work schedule, he sleeps during the daytime. It always helps to get out of the house when both the kids are home so he can get a chance to sleep in a quiet house. So.... We packed a picnic lunch and headed to the only decent park I know of here!

I wanted to get just one decent picture of the two boys together today, but.... it didn't go so well. We'll have to try again another day.

Granola bars are on the agenda for tomorrow! For now, I'm off to bed!

What got me motivated

Salad dressing.

Seriously. Salad dressing. A month or two ago, I made some buffalo wings. But we didn't have ranch dressing. Whoops. So I decided to do a quick google on my phone and see if I could come up with something close enough. And lo and behold, there were quite a few recipes out there. I ended up taking a little from one and a little from another and coming up with something that works for us. I just whipped up my fourth batch a couple of days ago to go with, you guessed it, buffalo wings. And the remainder will be snack dip for the boys.

For some reason, this just sort of blew my mind. Certainly I knew that just about anything could be made at home. Heck, if a friend could teach me to make sushi(thanks, Shannon!) anything is possible. But ranch dressing isn't made.... it's bought. Right? Wrong!

Nicole's Ranch Dressing Recipe

•1 1/2 Tbsp. dried parsley
•1/2 Tbsp. dried chives
•1/4 Tbsp. dried tarragon
•1/2 Tbsp. lemon pepper
•1 Tbsp. salt
•1/4 Tbsp. oregano
•1/2 Tbsp. garlic powder

Combine all dry ingredients in an airtight container.

To make actual dressing, combine 1/2 cup yogurt, 1/2 cup sour cream, and 1 tablespoon dry seasoning mix.

This was a snack for the boys on the day I made the cookies and protein bars. Ansel's plate is on the left, Kadin's is on the right. Both finished all their vegetables! I'm also proud to report that they'll eat vegetables without dip, but I do like to offer them some fat in what they eat so that they feel satiated and aren't just snacking without end(although they do snack a lot anyway).

Tea cookies and muscle fuel

I'm getting back on the baking bandwagon. I didn't get anything done while I wasn't feeling well, so it was a good thing we had enough on hand to get through without taking too desperate of measures.

This week I wanted to make a non-chocolate cookie as I have it in my plans to make peanut butter and chocolate granola bars(probably tomorrow). So I did some internet browsing and came up with a recipe for Swedish Butter Cookies from Taste of Home. Now, I have no idea if there is anything remotely Swedish about these, but that's what they call it.

The nice thing about this recipe is it calls for only very basic ingredients that you're likely to have on hand all the time.

Swedish Butter Cookies Recipe

I started with the ingredients. As I said, very basic. Do notice that I'm still using white sugar and regular white flour. I'm working on using up my more 'conventional' ingredients. I don't want to just throw things out, but I won't be rebuying things like this if I can help it.

He loves to mix. I would almost say that Ansel lives to mix! We did eventually have a melt down when the dough got to the point that he couldn't mix it.

The dough. It was sort of dry, but I packed it down and it got sticky enough.

Dough rolled out. It was sort of like rolling playdough, but not as forgiving. This would be fun for an older child(Kadin would have been ok with, but no way Ansel could have gotten it to stick together).

The cookies baked, cooling, and sugared. I would have taken a picture when it came out of the oven, but one of the tips I read said to cut the cookies immediately, so I made sure to do that.

They're basically crispy, buttery sugar cookies. I think they're good, but I don't know that I'd remake them. Not when there's so many other cookie options. I like that they're small, so I don't feel bad letting Ansel eat one or two here or there.

My husband has a thing for protein bars. His favorite has actually been more of a nutrition bar, namely the Zone Perfect Strawberry Yogurt Bar. I'm now left to wonder.... has he read the ingredients on that? There's actually a couple of things in there that are rather alarming. So, of course, I wanted to make this myself. I think the idea originally occured when I was watching Alton Brown. So, of course, I tried his recipe first.

Alton Brown's Protein Bar Recipe

This is a lot of stuff. I had to go out of my way to buy a couple of things to make this, like oat bran(which I never would have thought to buy) and soy protein powder. And yes, that IS plain old Skippy peanut butter. As I mentioned up above in reference to the cookies... I'm using up some things I have already. I got a heck of a deal on Skippy peanut butter a while back and stocked up. I used the end of this jar making the protein bars, and then I have one more jar. After that, I'll be buying fresh peanut butter from the store I buy most of our food from.

The other interesting thing that happened is that we discovered Ansel likes to eat plain, cold tofu. Who knew?

There was a lot of mixing. Ansel got to help a lot. And I could have taken pictures, but.... the majority of time, it all looked like vomit. And... it was terribly unappetizing. You never would want to try any of this. I even thought about giving up at some point. So here's the dough right before I spread it in the pan. Oh! And here's a picture of the unfiltered apple juice I used. I forgot it in the ingredient shot.

These looked pretty good coming out. That's all fruit, not chocolate, by the way.

And cut and wrapped up. I actually cut it into sixteen servings. I froze some of them since there's no way my husband will eat sixteen in a week. And I'd really rather my kids not get too used to meal replacement items. They have the time to eat "real" food, and I'm the one who has to prepare it for them anyway. So why the heck not?

And that's it for that! I did actually manage to also make dinner on this day. We had steak, baked potatoes, and salad. Very imaginative, don't you think?

The weekly haul

So I know I've been slacking. But, I was sick, so I think I'm excused.

Being sick threw things off again, so I didn't go shopping on Monday, my usual day. I went on Tuesday.


First order of business was to make the list(and drink coffee). Sometimes the list is easy to make because I keep a whiteboard on the fridge to write down things we need as they come up. Then I just rewrite my list so it makes sense for going through the store.

Ansel was.... excited? About.... shopping? I'm not sure. But I do know he has egg on his face.

In a perfect situation, I would go shopping first thing in the morning and be back for lunch. But this week I didn't leave until the afternoon, so I wanted to put dinner in the slow cooker. Chili won, because it was a lousy rainy, cold day.

This does use a lot of canned items, but eh. Someday I'll get past that, but for now, I'm ok with it.
Nicole's Chili Recipe:

1lb ground beef
2 15oz. cans diced tomatoes
2 15oz. cans tomato sauce
15oz. can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
15oz. can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 large chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper(I use more, but we like things spicy)
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1/4 chili powder(I make my own)

Brown the ground beef. Combine everything else in slow cooker. Cook on low 8 hours.

Everything in. This smells soooo good as it's cooking.
And.... then we went to the store. On a nicer day, when I get started sooner, I'll take some pictures of the shopping excursion, too. But for now, pictures of the haul will have to do.

This is a pretty normal shopping trip for us. I didn't buy any meat because we had a lot in the freezer already. I didn't do as much cooking when I was sick as I normally would have, so there was enough that I skipped it for this week.

This cost $99. Everything is organic or at least pesticide/hormone/HFCS free.
The dairy. Two gallons of local, non-homogenized milk. It comes from here. I got to meet the man who owns the farm once at our local store. He had just started selling his products there and he was very nice and let Ansel have a LOT of samples. That won me over. The price for organic, non-local milk is the same as this milk. It's not the "organic" status that pulls me in so much as the idea of a more conscious product, so knowing the background of this product and the way it's produced is plenty for me.

The produce. Pretty normal for a week. We'll eat all of this, except maybe a couple of potatoes, by the time I go to the store again next week. We'll also use more apples, but we still had a bag and a half. Everything is either organic or local/pesticide free.

The other grocery items. I think everything is organic except the mayonnaise and the curry sauce. I replaced all the canned items I had used to make the chili earlier. I like to keep things like that stocked so I can use them as needed. The boys also begged for this cereal, and there was a coupon and a sale, so... I said ok.

The laundry stuff. I just started using this detergent, and will post about that soon in more depth. I also use Bac-Out for washing diapers, and will post about that at some point I am sure. Both of these items had coupons, so I wanted to take advantage of that even though I didn't need more right now.

When we got home, dinner was done! My husband was already eating as he had to get off to work. The boys ate as soon as it had cooled down enough. It was really good(always is). I think I might start aiming to have a slow cooker meal on all my shopping days just to make life easier.

Now it's really late, but I wanted to get this up tonight before it goes too many days in blog silence.

Getting started with snacks

Ordinarily Monday is my grocery shopping day. But this past Monday was a very rainy day, and there wasn't anything I was in dire need of, so, I decided to bake instead. First items.... granola bars and cookies.

Ansel has a real 'thing' for granola bars. He requests "bars" with a strong Jersey-like accent which is tremendously endearing and makes it very hard to say no. If you DO say no, his new go-to line is, "But I'm SO hungry," and shoots you this sad, puppy dog look and you just can't say no. So the least I could do was make a healthy, affordable bar option for him. And heck, for the rest of us! I saw Alton Brown make granola bars on his show once, and ever since then I've had it in the back of my head to try his recipe. So that's what I did.

Alton Brown's Granola Bar Recipe


Now, one must always(in my opinion) start with a tidy kitchen. My smallest helper was happy to pitch in.

All of the dry ingredients have to be toasted. This was great because Ansel was able to help with all of it, and he had a blast spreading it on the cookie sheet. This is oats, raw sunflower seeds, wheat germ, and almonds. The recipe called for sliced, but we had slivered. Close enough!
I should have taken a picture of this sooner, but you mix the sugars and wet ingredients and combine on the stove. It only took a minute or two and smelled really good! I used a berry mix for fruit. I think it would be easy to sub in chocolate chips, but things might get a little gooey.

Everything gets spread into a pan(recipe called for 9x9 but I had 8x8) and baked.

And while things bake, you start to clean up!

Finished product! Basically, you let the granola cool after you pull it out of the oven. It took several hours to no longer be warm. Then cut into bars. This made a dozen generous sized bars for us.

I was still feeling like baking, and since the kitchen was already a bit messy, we decided to launch straight into cookies. Oatmeal chocolate chip was our first undertaking. I have a fair bit of cookie making experience. Oatmeal has always been a favorite, and I try to justify that it's almost, sort of, a little bit like eating oatmal. Somewhere deep down, right? But we also have a lot of oats we've had a while that I want to use so I don't have to worry about them going bad. I followed the basic Quaker oatmeal recipe.

Quaker Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Mmmm.... butter! I love butter, and I am not afraid of it. I don't go out of my way to consume it in huge quantities, but I don't avoid it. I never use margarine. And I almost always use salted butter, unless a recipe specifically calls for unsalted butter.

Cookie dough well on its way. I used a full cup of milk chocolate chips. Note: I use Hershey's chocolate chips, not Nestle. I do not use any Nestle products of any kind(unless I slip up and don't realize that a product is owned by Nestle. I'll get into that eventually.).

I have a thing for parchment paper. It's not 'green' and I know that. But.... it makes everything come out better. And sometimes it saves my food from being burned or sticking, so it reduces food waste? Maybe? But you'll notice lots of parchment paper. (Also see granola cooling to the right).

Cookies in the oven. I don't know if baking on two tiers like this is exactly correct, but I do it because I'm impatient.

My dogs were not happy that they were being terribly neglected while I baked and baked and baked. Their crates are in the area that should be a breakfast room, except it's much too small to be a breakfast room, and putting a table in the place it should go(under the light) would obstruct traffic from getting out the back door or into the master bedroom. Can you say poor planning?
This is Ellie, our husky mix, shooting me pathetic looks.

And Teddy, our mastiff/St. Bernard mix puppy was so perturbed he couldn't even bother himself to move when I got down in his face with the camera.

He is ever so excited about the finished product. I mean, seriously, he is THRILLED!

And this is how much one batch is. I would, generally, give each kid two cookies at a time for a snack or dessert. And this would last us a week. Except, I ended up sending some with the husband to work for something they were doing there, so I may be making cookies again over the weekend. Only time will tell!

I store cookies in a glass cookie jar on the counter, back out of easy reach of small hands. If I bake up a batch and it's just a ridiculous amount, I freeze some in freezer Ziploc bags. Most cookies freeze and thaw very well.

Stocking up

Back in the day, I was a coupon queen. I had a mega-sized binder filled with organized coupons for every product imaginable. I combined coupons and sales and stocked up on huge quantities of products for very low cost, and in some cases for free! I had toiletries, canned foods, frozen items, paper products, all sorts of things. And I had so many of them that I had to get creative about storing them. We stored breakfast cereal in the top shelf of the closet in the master bedroom(I think at our peak we had about 60 boxes!). We had a large linen closet entirely dedicated to bathroom items. I also stored lots of canned goods in the unfinished basement of our house. We never ran out of anything. And our grocery bills were much lower than the national average, despite living in a very expensive area of the country.

But..... We compromised some healthful choices in order to do this. I did make an effort to not go crazy with a lot of truly "junk" foods. But we were absolutely eating a lot of processed foods. And we were eating a lot of meat(my husband's number one vice!). I do think we ate better than most, but I certainly wasn't losing any weight. And I found that my kids just wanted to push more and more towards the junk and the sweet stuff. Something needed to change.

So when we moved to Georgia, I stopped using coupons. And I found our natural foods store, and started doing the bulk of our shopping there. For the first time, we could afford to buy organic produce, and some other organic items. I would love to get to the point that we could buy all hormone free, organic, natural, etc. but we're just not quite to that point yet. We're gradually making our way!

In preparation to make these changes, I started pricing and purchasing the basic goods I'd need for baking and cooking. One of the first things I decided to tackle was snack foods and desserts. We don't eat dessert often, but I do like to have some dessert options on hand for when we decide to treat ourselves. We have two growing boys(Kadin is 8 and Ansel is 3), so snacks are a must! The boys are already really good about snacking on fruit(we go through about 15 pounds of apples a WEEK!), but also enjoy cookies and crackers and things along those lines. I decided we would make all of these from scratch at home.



Dry goods were relatively easy to acquire. Our natural foods store sells bulk loose goods in self-serve containers. I was able to nab some awesome(to me!) deals, like organic cane sugar for 89 cents a pound! Where I could justify the added price, I bought organic. Where it was a signficant price difference, I went with natural items, but not organic. Some day we'll get there! I'm setting up a cabinet of dry baking goods so everything is easily accessible. Convenience will be a big part of making the whole foods lifestyle work for me.



I think nuts and other baking 'extras' will be a bit slower to build up. They're pricey, and buying lots at one time would send our grocery costs through the roof. So each week, I'm trying to add a few more here and there. I store nuts in the freezer in labeled bags.

These pictures were taken on Monday, and I actually ended up buying significantly more yesterday, so those pictures will be coming soon. I typically go grocery shopping on Mondays, and aim to only go once a week. There is some fluctuation to this, but I hope to streamline as soon as possible, while not being too rigid. Our grocery shopping this week was bumped to Tuesday because of bad weather on Monday. This is probably the story of my life..... Regimented without rigidity. Maybe that will be my new tagline!

Who we are and what we're doing

I'm Nicole, and I'm kick-starting my family's move towards completely whole foods, and mostly whole living. We've been trying to be mostly healthy for years now, but our commitment has waned at times. My husband and I each have our 'junk' vices, which are not the same, so it means we have double the amount of junk floating around! And when life got busy, we'd end up eating out or making crappy, easy to fix foods. Our older son also saw enough commercial tv to know that there's an endless wealth of kid foods with cartoon characters on the packages and fun commercials that exist to entice little ones. So I caved into that more often than I should have.

(Our family at a wedding the weekend after my husband started chemotherapy.)

And then, in the midst of an already difficult time, we got the devastating news that my husband(at only 42 years old) had cancer. This led to us moving from our home in Virginia to Georgia for employment and insurance reasons, and going into survival mode. We did our best to get through it all in one piece, and made some concessions along the way. We all got a loss less active, and we gave in to a lot of convenience items.

(My husband and kids mid-way through the chemotherapy process.)

And now we're on the other side! In the first week of December 2009 my husband was declared to be cancer free! There's still going to be a lot of monitoring, and I think we'll always be a little bit wary that something could be there, but now is the time for us to make strides to be a healthier family. I want more for us, especially for our children.

My husband has a leg up on me, as he's always been a physically active person. His weight often fluctuates, but he has an easy time of losing pounds once he puts his mind to do it. I, on the other hand, have struggled with my weight since I was a teenager. Having children has exacerbated the problem, and I find it embarrassing to even acknowledge the significance of the issue. But I'm hoping that this outlet will help me to feel better about accepting it. I have no reason to be embarrassed so long as I am actively working to resolve it.

I expect a bumpy journey. We all have our vices. But we're taking charge of it, starting..... well, starting this past Monday! (post of that to follow as soon as I can manage it!)