UNprocessed Recipe - Green Bean Casserole

I've had some bees in my bonnet recently to work on creating recipes that can either stand up to or one up their traditional but overly processed counterparts. This one is one of my favorite holiday meal sides, that creamy green bean casserole with the crunchy onions on top. Yum! The Hero absolutely loves this casserole, and he was my inspiration to start with this one in the unprocessing process. It turned out fantastic, even better than the original, we thought. Here's how I did it:  

Green Bean Casserole

• 1.5 lb. fresh green beans, cut in 2 in. lengths

Mushroom Soup

• 2 cups diced or chopped fresh mushrooms (crimini, shitake, or portobello)
• 1 pint whole milk or coconut milk + 1/2 cup reserved
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. thyme
• 1/2 tsp. rubbed sage
• 3 T. Butter or butter substitute
• 1 rounded T. flour

Crispy Shallots

• 2 or 3 medium-large shallots, sliced thin and separated
• 3 T. flour
• 2 tsp. house seasoning blend, or salt and pepper
• 3 T. water

Steam green beans to desired tenderness, pour in 8x8 square glass baking dish. Simmer chopped mushrooms in the milk or coconut milk with salt, pepper, thyme, and sage until mushrooms are well done. While mushrooms are simmering, prepare crispy shallots by tossing thinly sliced and separated shallots in seasoned flour. I use a tupperware with a lid to shake them. I used Old Bay to season mine, but any seasoning blend or simple salt and pepper will do. Pre-heat oven to 375 F.

Once the shallots are well coated in the dry flour, sprinkle in the  water to make a batter, toss again and let sit while your oil heats. In a small cast-iron skillet over medium heat, heat some oil and test a piece of shallot in the oil to see if it's hot enough. fry up the shallots leaving enough room in between that they don't become one whole fritter! It took me 4 or 5 batches in my small skillet. Turn them over once in the middle of the fry so both sides cook evenly. Remove to a paper towel or newsprint covered rack while you finish the soup. In a larger skillet or pot, create a roux with the butter or butter substitute and enough flour that you have a peanut-butter consistency roux. Stir with a spatula to keep it all moving, once it is a light tan color, slowly add in the simmered mushroom and milk or coconut milk mixture, stirring vigorously to smooth. Add extra milk to reach an easily pourable cream soup consistency. Pour the soup evenly over the green beans in the pan and top with fried shallots. Bake for 15 minutes or until hot, preferably bubbly. Let cool for just a few minutes before serving!

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We had this with a whole chicken in the crock pot. It was a tasty combo! I can't wait to dig into the leftovers for lunch this week sometime. I'm excited to get into some other traditionally processed recipes and bring them back to real food roots! If you have a dish you love that's usually heavy in the processed foods and you'd like to see my take on it, drop me a line!

God I hope they get it...

Ok, so it's a cheesy reference. Musicals run through my head 23 hours of the day. :) This is not a recommendation, but it is a share! There's a new company launching this month, and I'm really excited about what their goal is. They aim to be a buying club, much like Sam's or Costco, but for natural and organic foods. They will be a delivery service and intend to source produce local to your region. This is good for people like me, who would like good deals, but this is fantastic for people who live in organic food "deserts" where there are little or no options for buying these types of products. They are currently offering free memberships (usually $25 a year for the lowest tier of membership). I got one, and thought I might share the opportunity with you. They have a non-GMO promise, which I love, and their prices that they have up right now are very good. I've spoken with their customer service department on several occasions and I can tell you that they are really attentive and personable when dealing with customer relations, so I hope that translates well when they start real orders. I thought long and hard about whether to share or not, because I didn't want to recommend something I hadn't tried out yet, but I figured that by the time I had tried it, the memberships would all be paid only, so I'm just putting this out there for you to consider! I'll definitely update you on their performance once I've started ordering, but if you'd like to check them out before then and take advantage owaf the free memberships, you can visit them by clicking on the banner here. (You may have to watch *or leave running while you do something important...* a video about founding partner membership, or investing in their company before the free membership option will pop up, FYI!)

**EDIT: I forgot to mention that they have an exciting shopping option where you can sort products according to dietary needs, for example, you can see all their dairy-free options with one click. Same with gluten, etc. How exciting is that!?!**

Sausage and Cabbage remixed!

When I was a kid my mom would make sausage and cabbage in a steamer with some lemon pepper and smoked sausage, it was so tasty, so simple, and a taste that makes me think of fall. A comfort food for me, almost. I made the original a few weeks ago, but this week at the market I was inspired to do a different twist on the dish, by the star of my tweaked version:  Applegate Organic Chicken Apple Sausage

The meal is chicken apple sausage with carrot quinoa on a bed of wilted cabbage with chunky apple ginger sauce. I served some steamed cauliflower on the side. It turned out very tasty! I'll detail the meal here, if you try it, please share your feedback! This meal contains dairy in that I used butter, to make it dairy free, use a dairy free margarine or coconut oil in it's place. If you want to use a meat substitute to make it a vegetarian meal, I think that would be tasty too.

Apple Sausage with Chunky Applesauce, Quinoa, and Cabbage

• 1 C. Quinoa (rinse well in cold water in a sieve or cheesecloth)
• 1 Medium carrot, finely grated
• 1 T. Butter (or oil of your choice)

After you've rinsed your quinoa (rinsing helps eliminate that bitter taste it can take and brings out it's richer flavor), add it to a generous 2 cups of water and a dash of salt in a saucepan, bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer, cover and simmer until the water is gone. Add the butter and grated carrot once the quinoa has had plenty of time to rest and absorb the water. As you fluff with a fork, integrate the carrot and butter. Cover and let rest while you work on the apples and sausage.

• 1 package organic Applegate Chicken and Apple Sausage
• 4 small apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks (you can use sweeter apples or tart apples, but be sure they're fresh and firm to hold up to the heat and still have texture)
• 2 T. butter (or oil of your choice)
• 1/4 C. un-filtered 100% apple juice (or another liquid, just don't use sweetened, filtered juice! It'll turn out far too sweet or caramelize too soon)
• 1 T. grated ginger
• 1 t. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 salt
• a bit of fresh ground black pepper

In a large skillet with a lid, melt your butter or oil over medium-high head and add the cubed apple pieces. toss to coat evenly and brown a bit on each side. Add sausage, cover, and lower heat to medium. Turn sausage every minute or so, once the sausage is browning visibly on all sides, add the juice and spices, stir to coat the apples and sausage evenly with the spices. Return to simmer the fluid out, covered, while you get the cabbage ready. When the liquid is gone, turn the heat off and let rest.

• small head of cabbage, quartered, cored, and sliced. ( I used purple for the color and flavor, but you could do any cabbage)
• 1 T. butter or oil
• 1/3 cup liquid, broth or water
• pinch of salt and pepper

Melt the butter into a large skillet or wok with a lid. Toss cabbage in hot butter, add liquid and put the lid on to steam and wilt. When the cabbage is finished, plate in this order: bed of cabbage, top with a scoop of quinoa, sausage either in links or cut to diagonal medallions, and finish with the chunky applesauce. You could have fun with the sides and beverage choices. I'd love an oktoberfest beer or a hard cider, I'm thinking next time I cook this some warm homemade sourdough might compliment it. :) I hope you enjoy our new twist on cabbage and sausage!

ABX and BF - Day 30!

We did it! Completely done! Yesterday afternoon, I got to nurse without thinking of when we couldn't nurse again. All night we slept with no screaming, no sippies of water. It was glorious! I haven't had any symptoms in a little over 3 weeks. I'll have a blood test in 30 more days to make sure there isn't any sign of an active Lyme infection. I appreciate all the support during our crazy month. It wasn't easy, and it never got easier, but it was manageable, one day at a time, we managed. Today has been a marathon nursing day, I had somewhat anticipated that. We'll see if he slows down a bit in the coming weeks. I'm incredibly happy to have stuck to my plan. I can't imagine having lost my breastfeeding relationship over this. I was so scared when I was faced with this decision, and I don't regret the choice I made, on the contrary, I feel relieved that I chose what I did. I'm happy that we can continue to nurse until DB feels like it is time to stop. I hope that by sharing my story, perhaps another family facing the scary medical advice to "just wean" will look at their other options. There are always options.

ABX and BF - Day 15

Halfway through! If you haven't been following, you can catch up to speed on our Lyme, Doxy, and Breastfeeding story HERE: Acute Lyme, Treatment, and Breastfeeding  and HERE: ABX and BF Day 1 .

So things are going somewhat better now. DB managed to get a horrible cold this week, which added some complications to the mix A) sick babies really benefit from being able to nurse often, like more often than usual, which was already often, so the "no nursing" windows were very hard, and B) the nursing windows were hard because his nose was so stuffy he couldn't really get a good suction/compression cycle going. A sip or two, then snot, choke, cry, nose wipe, flail about, get latched again, repeat. A couple nights he couldn't really sleep because of congestion, but those nights excluded, sleep has gotten much better than the first couple nights of our new schedule. We've been skipping him going into his little side bed and he's just been in our bed from the beginning, it helps him sleep through that first waking, or just fidgeting a little, snuggling up differently, and falling asleep without crying to nurse, or even rooting, really. Now he tends to wake at 6 AM to nurse and fall back asleep again until he wakes up, usually with The Hero.

   Daytime went OK, the teething DB's been doing was the only real problem there, he's just super fussy. The cold plus teething made for sad and clingy baby. Lots of snuggles, plenty of naps, and we're making it just fine. It's been good for us to both learn soothing methods other than nursing, but I really can't wait for the next 15 days to pass and be able to nurse any old time I please! I've taken to pumping when I remember, in the middle of the non-nursing window, and dumping it out, because it isn't safe to drink, but the emptying of the breasts will help me keep my supply up. We can do this, we're over the hill!

Food Standards - All in your perception

  Ok, so when I started this blog, I didn't really intend for it to focus so much on breastfeeding, and I certainly didn't intend to get political, (and promise to try and avoid it, still) but this blog IS about parenting, and raising a family, and there's something both food (yes, grown up food!) and politics related to talk about here, so this post is born.

  Part of what the breastfeeding community, activists, supporters and families alike, are seeking, is the "re-normalizaion" of breastfeeding. Part of that is to stop this whole talk of "breast is best", putting the boobies on a pedestal, like a high and lofty goal. Breast is normal. Normal. The boob juice is nature's intended food for babies. Breastfeeding doesn't give a higher IQ, or help to avoid health problems, or help stave off food allergies later in life. Yes, folks, it's true. Breastmilk does not contain magic. The key here is changing public perception. Formula is sub-par, it has been linked to health problems. These are the facts. Now I fully believe there are instances were formula is a good thing, and I won't get into my personal feelings on how formula needs should be handled here, but let me say I am not attacking formula! It has valid uses. I am, personally, attacking the unethical companies behind formula, but not in this post. This post has a different purpose. So to sum up this paragraph, Let's stop thinking "Breast is best, but formula is widely used and OK too..." and start thinking "Breast is normal, and formula is sub-par and risky..." Same thoughts, different perspectives.

   Now, I promised to chat about grown up food, so here's where I tie this whole thing together. Let's just mad-lib that statement up a bit. At tonight's performance, the role of breastmilk will be played by organic, local, natural food, and the role of formula will be played by standard, hormone and chemical laden processed and fresh food. Ready? Ok. Let's stop thinking "organic, local, natural food is best, but standard, hormone and chemical laden processed and fresh food is widely used and OK too..." and start thinking "organic, local, natural food is normal, and standard, hormone and chemical laden processed and fresh food is sub-par and risky..." Same thoughts, different perspectives.

Whoa! Mind = blown. This is exactly the thought I had while in the shower, shampooing my hair last week. I've been debating even sharing this thought, it's risky, tying the two things together like this, but in reality, they're the same thing: food companies, twisting around consumer perceptions through very careful, possibly probably unethical marketing. This week a few things happened that made me decide to share these thoughts and what this family is doing about it. One: I drastically changed my shopping method. Two: I woke up and seriously questioned government regulation of food safety.

Ok, let's tackle the first one. For a while now, I've divided up my gweekly grocery budget between two stores, a local organic market, and my neighborhood supermarket. I'd usually buy organic foods first, and commercially standard fare second. This week was the first of many many to come, where I spent my whole budget at the organic market and not at the supermarket. It was super scary, for me and my wallet (especially my mental wallet), but I survived! And my meals this week have tasted so good! I don't have all the kinks worked out yet, but I'll share the journey with you!

Ok, once I realized that I needed to treat the food for The Hero and I the same as I treat food for DB, I knew I had to make this change. As the main shopper and cook in the family, I was the one who had to make the plunge. I explained my thoughts to The Hero, who completely agreed with me (yay!), and we made a plan. I set out in all my hippie-dippy glory the next day, to buy our week's supplies at the organic market, with the goal to buy local when possible. Let me add here that the market I use is NOT Whole Foods. While just walking into that pretty store is like food porn, I'm not totally sold on some of their decisions on a moral level, and they charge insane prices. Ok, enough digression. Back to the plan.

  So I figured step one would just be to head to the market and buy what I needed. Usually, I'd check the supermarket circular and make my choices for the week based around sales, building a menu and a list from there. Not having that this week, I just built a rough menu in my head, planning to get inspiration from the ingredients I found and editing as I went. I had to buy some things that are a bit expensive (Cardamom, bulk oil) that would have driven up my typical bill a bit, and some things I'd never purchased before (baby food items), that were a new expense. I'm guessing at the super market I would have spent about $20 more than usual to get these things. Once I left the market with my week's supply of groceries, I had spent about 18% more than my "typical" bill. This included some really awesome stuff, fair trade plantains, heirloom eggplant, organic grape jam, a dozen local free-range eggs, grass-fed sour cream, organic strawberries and blueberries (The Hero eats some every morning), and much more. What this did not include, the fly in the ointment, per say, is meat.

  Not that the market doesn't carry meat, it does. It has a small meat department with bison, beef, chicken, all  local, natural, and somewhat expensive. Rightfully so, it costs to raise natural meat (chicken breasts at their natural size, which you may not even be familiar with anymore!), so it costs to buy it. My choice this week was to forgo buying meat, and go off of our frozen stash. (I won't be wasting the old food we have, I just won't be re-stocking!) In the future, I'm thinking of having a separate meat budget and buying meats once a month, portioning it out to three or four omnivorous meals a week, three or four vegetarian meals a week.

How to make this work without breaking the bank: the Pyre family will be adjusting portion sizes to the recommended sizes of meat in proportion to veg, fruit, and starch/grain. Perhaps this method will allow us to have responsibly raised meat in our diet still, while being kind to our budget, not to mention, super kind to our health!We will make small sacrifices to come up with that extra 18%, I'd rather have the healthy foods than new shoes. (There, honey, see? It's in writing! There are witnesses!) We're still a single income family, with one of us returning to school this semester, and in need of a few things around the house. We'll just have to see if it works.

It's good that the paragraph about my money ties into the post about big money. So why aren't we all eating the healthy stuff? What about all those tests and rules that are supposed to keep us safe when we're eating? Yeah, well, those rules are made by the people who own the companies. You know, since they don't really know you, they make the rules to protect their money, not you. And it's only getting worse. Wouldn't you like to know if one of the top guns at one of the most corrupt agricultural biotechnology firms, a man who previously tried to keep milk from being labeled with or without rBGH, was appointed to the position of "Food Safety Czar"? Well, this happened! Two. Years. Ago. I found out about it today. And I do far more research into food safety than the average American. Food that's supposed to be safe isn't safe, and it takes an impossible amount of diligence on the part of the consumer to sort out what is and isn't.

  We've been working our way off of the worse foods for a while, the fast food circuit, the over-processed foods. This is pretty much like when I quit smoking. I quit one cigarette at a time, until I was smoking just a couple each week. Those were the very very hardest to get rid of. I'm not really surprised at the "withdrawal" type feelings coming from each of our healthier steps. If the food is laden with chemicals, of course we're going to miss and crave like crazy each time we get rid of something, but, just like the cigarettes, over time, I won't miss them. Over time, they may even start to disgust me (the cigarettes certainly do). Ditching the supermarket is me quitting my last cigarettes. It was the hardest step. This should get easier over time, and I'll make it work. I'm excited! I feel a little scared, but liberated. This certainly isn't over. If too many people do what we're doing, someone's going to loose all their money, and they won't go down without a fight.

I know not everyone has the right opportunities to do this exact thing. This is what will work for our family. There are alternatives! If all you do is start reading labels and choosing hormone free, or buying some produce at a farm stand or farmers' market, or planting a single tomato plant in a pot on your porch, there are small steps you can take. You can eat like your body was made to. It's not easy, but one step at a time, it gets easier.

ABX and BF - Day 1

Well, we got off to a rockier start than anticipated, but it all worked out on the first dose. I had planned on taking the pill at DB's bedtime, and his goodnight nursing would mark the last for the 6 hour window. I then learned that I had to wait a couple hours after a meal to take the meds and we had just eaten a late dinner right before DB went to sleep. I shifted the plan to taking the pill at my bedtime, around midnight. So at midnight, I popped the pill, and managed a decent dream nursing out of my sweet boy. He decided he was done in about 10 minutes, and we all went upstairs to tumble into bed. We slept comfortably until his first (and only) waking in the night, at 3:15 AM. He was rather confused and put out that A. his boobs weren't accessible (I put on a complicated bra and tight tee shirt to prevent sleep nursings, which both of us are accustomed to and I didn't want to accidentally nurse him in the "bad" window") and B. Mommy wasn't doing anything to make them more accessible. We cuddled, but that wasn't cutting it, we rocked and bounced. He stopped crying, he stopped whimpering, but he was clearly waiting for the part of the show where the boobies would appear and we would all get back to sleep. Through my whole song and rocking number he would stare at me with wide eyes, root for a second, and then stare again, interspersed with threats of tears, where I'd just try to calm him vocally and change his position. Eventually, around 4 AM he fell asleep for good, and even rewarded me for my early-morning mommy strength with a sleep smile and giggle. Yay! I needed it, because it was very hard to withhold his nursing from him.

Back to bed we all go, and he snuggles up next to me just fine, though he's a little restless once we lay down, he eventually quiets and we return to dream land. He woke again around 7 to enjoy his first nursing since bedtime and enjoy he did. When he sat up and started playing with my nose, I asked him "do you want leles?" and signed "milk" to him, the excitement was unmistakable and he got right down to business with some hard kicks to my hip bone and some rather adorable little piggy "yummy" sounds. As I type right now, we have an hour and a half left to nurse before dose 2, and we're taking advantage of it. I feel like daytime will be easier, I can distract and entertain him, as well as offer snacks and drinks that I couldn't in the night. We'll see!!

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  Dose two: took it at 11:30 AM, trying to move the time up to make up for our late start last night. DB was in the middle of a long nap when that time rolled around, so the last time he nursed was around 10:45 AM. When he woke up, he climbed up into my lap and laid his head on my chest, but didn't ask and I didn't offer, as I usually would. We hung out around the house until my fussy could take no more of this new and different leles free world he woke up to. We went out and ran errands, got our geocache for the day, dropped off dry cleaning, went shopping for some summer-weight long sleeve shirts since I'm about to be more sensitive to sun exposure. The errand running (and baby wearing, the two are always hand in hand...) certainly helped to distract the little guy, and some diluted juice to keep the thirsties at bay while keeping some calcium going in. We got home around 4:30 and I offered a snack of steamed sweet potatoes. While it was entertaining, not much got down. Some snuggles, more juice, and playtime were enough to hold him off to his 5:30 milk break! Another happy baby smile! I love it. I also love the much more comfortable feeling I've got going on. He chowed down and was "all done" but I'm thinking he'll be a frequent at Mom's Breastaurant until bedtime. All in all, the first two doses weren't too bad. 1 day down, 29 to go!