Countdown to Thanksgiving

Once again, we're t-minus less than a week to Thanksgiving, which I only noticed yesterday and then promptly freaked out.  (We're also long overdue for an update around here, but let's just move on... *nervous laugh*)

Thanksgiving around here is less "what do we want to eat" and more "what can we all agree on that won't make any of us violently ill."  The hubby, when he does strap on his big-girl-panties and bravely give it a go, has about a fifty-fifty chance that any poultry he has eaten will leave him moaning and incapacitated in front of and/or on the toilet for several hours.  I have the same reaction to any kind of canned cranberry sauce, though with more of a ninety percent chance that I'll be in there.  And believe me, our bathroom is small.  It's not the sort of place that can handle violent illness x 2.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread-Cake

I thought that everyone grew up knowing about chocolate zucchini bread, but given the number of requests for my recipe I've been getting lately, I'm starting to think it must be a regional thing.  If you haven't heard of or eaten it before, it's good.  So very good.

A few years ago, I received my current incarnation of this wonderful recipe from the director of a local museum, and it's very, very yummy.  The hubby loves it, and he doesn't even like zucchini!

The recipe is titled "Zucchini Fudge Cake," but it's exactly the same thing, only cake-sized, heh.  So, without further adieu, here it is. 

Fish Oil is a Miracle for Us

As I've mentioned before, Sydney has a genetic disorder called 16p11.2 Deletion Syndrome that typically causes developmental delays, autism, epilepsy, and other learning issues.  Back when we were still terrified that Sydney would end up with some degree of intellectual impairment, I began researching ways to encourage brain development, and one of the things that kept popping up over and over was fish oil.

Fish oil- which is exactly what is sounds like- is so incredibly beneficial because it contains high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, something in which most Western diets are lacking.  Ever heard of hydrogenation?  It's the process that gives foods a long shelf life.  It also removes the Omega-3s.  Also, many fresh foods that used to contain high levels of omega-3s no longer do because of things like genetic tampering and feeding farmed fish low-quality food.

Omega-3s have been shown to be beneficial in a stunning number of areas in the body.  They can improve brain function, cardiovascular health, mental health, immune function, and might even lower your risk of getting cancer.

We've seen it work here at our house, too.

When Sydney was eighteen months old, she could only say two words.  She'd actually started with four, but lost two.  The realization that she'd lost words, instead of gaining them, sent me into panic mode, and I began to do some reasearch into brain development.  It was right around this time that we learned of her genetic disorder, and that she had a one in three chance of developing autism over the next year.  After reading enough about fish oil to convince me it was worth a shot and couldn't hurt anything, I went to the grocery store and bought a bottle.  (Hyperventilated a little about the cost, too, to be honest.)

When I started giving her the fish oil, I was hopeful, but if I was being honest with myself, I didn't really expect to see a drastic improvement.  I'd tried various "natural" supplements for myself in the past, and none of them did a darn thing.

Boy was I surprised when Sydney began saying several more words a week after we began the fish oil. 

Within a month, she had thirty more.

Was it the fish oil?  I can't prove it, of course.  She may have learned those new words on her own, without any kind of supplementation.  She may have turned out exactly the same either way.

What I do know is that she has defied all the odds.  She doesn't have autism, and is almost four years old now, so we can safely say we've dodged that bullet.  She doesn't show any signs of epilepsy.  Her gross motor skills have improved dramatically, and her fine motor skills are far ahead of normal.  Her verbal and intellectual skills are not only where they're supposed to be, but she's actually ahead of her peers.  Her academic skills are fantastic.

I think her success so far can be attributed to many factors, but one of them was almost certainly the fish oil.

If you want to try it out, you'll probably want to discuss it with your doctor to find out the appropriate dosage.  We use Barleans Omega Swirl, and Sydney gets a half teaspoon a day, though we'll soon be upping that to a whole teaspoon.

Do your research first.  There's a wealth of information out there on the benefits of fish oil.

The Ultimate Fried Chicken Recipe

I spend a lot of time searching for THE recipes.  Like, THE buttermilk biscuit recipe.  Or THE pork chop recipe.  The absolute best way to make any given kind of food.

This week, I discovered THE fried chicken recipe.

Oh.  My.  Gosh.  Is it good.

The hubby has a sensitive stomach when it comes to poultry.  He can eat some, but if he overdoes it, or eats too much of the fattier bits, he'll end up sick for hours.

The hubby was almost in tears because he couldn't eat more of the skin without ending up sick.  It was that good.

In all fairness, I have to warn you before you continue that this is not one of those healthy, lean chicken recipes.  There are probably enough calories in each bite to keep you going for a week, with a few left over.

That said, here's the link for the recipe.

Crispy Fried Chicken

To summarize with my own notes, for those short on time:

Get yourself a cut up fryer chicken, three or four pounds.  Pour a couple cups of buttermilk into a bowl, and put a couple cups of flour in a freezer bag, along with a tsp each of salt, pepper, and paprika, shaken to mix.  You can probably guess what comes next: Dip each piece of chicken in the buttermilk, then drop it in the bag.  Close, shake, place chicken on baking sheet.  Repeat with all chicken.  When you're done, let the chicken sit there until the coating has turned to a paste.  (According to the recipe, this is very, very important!)

Fill a large skillet about a third full with oil.  (Don't go any more than that, or you're going to end up with oil all over your floor when it overflows.)  Get it really, really hot, not quite smoking.  Plunk the chicken in there and brown both sides really well.  (It's going to bubble and hiss and generally freak out.  Don't be alarmed.)  When your chicken is brown, turn down the heat to medium-low and cover.  Let cook for thirty minutes.  When this is done, get the oil really hot again and cook the chicken until the skin is crispy.  Drain on a plate lined with paper towels.  (Lots and lots and LOTS of paper towel.)

And you're done!  We ate our chicken with a big bowl of sweet corn, and turned some of the leftovers into chicken salad the next day.  Dh brought the rest with him to work and fed a buddy.  This chicken is very, very popular.

How to Make Your Own Sandwich Bread

I used to make my bread by hand.  There's something very soothing about folding and pressing bread dough over and over until it's satiny and elastic.  Not to mention the great workout your arms get during the process.  Then, the small support beams under my table began to crack in the middle, and I realized I'd better find a new way to knead my dough.  My counters are too high to do it effectively, so I decided my best bet was a bread machine.

I love my bread machine.  It was a gift from my daughter's godmother, and it is amazing at kneading bread dough.  It doesn't get tired, it doesn't break my table, and best of all, the bread comes out fluffy and soft and amazing.  I dump all the ingredients in the machine's bucket, let it do the mixing and kneading and first rise, and then I shape the bread and do the second rise and baking as I did before.

My recipe for white sandwich bread is delicious, and very, very easy.  In my machine, you have to dump in the liquids first, then the dry ingredients, so that is how I have them listed here.  You should follow the instructions specific to your own machine.


1 cup warm water
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 cups bread flour
3 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 packet active dry yeast
Melted butter

Place all ingredients in bread machine.  Set to dough setting.  After cycle and first rise are complete, shape bread into tight loaf and place in greased loaf pan.  Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until bread has doubled in size and is starting to rise above the top of the loaf pan.

Preheat oven to 350.  Bake bread for about thirty minutes, or until crust is golden brown and loaf sounds hollow when the bottom is tapped.  Brush crust with melted butter and let cool before slicing.  Store loaf in plastic bag to keep soft.


The best part about this bread is that it's dirt cheap to make.  There are no eggs, no milk, and you can sub in olive oil or butter for the vegetable oil, depending on what you have on hand.  You can also add a tsp of Italian seasoning to the dry ingredients for a loaf of herb bread.

Happy baking!

My Wondrous Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Here it is.  The best chicken noodle soup you will ever eat.

8 cups chicken stock (homemade if you have it)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sliced carrots
1/2 cup diced celery
1/4 tsp pepper
a good handful of egg noodles
2 cups chopped chicken
1 tbsp minced fresh dill
1 tbsp minced fresh parsley
1/2 cup frozen peas (optional)

Bring chicken stock and salt to a boil.  Add carrots, celery, and pepper, and reduce heat to a simmer.  Simmer, uncovered, for about ten minutes, less if you like your vegetables more firm.

If you are using fresh egg noodles, add all remaining ingredients and continue to simmer until noodles are tender.  If you are using dried egg noodles, add noodles and let simmer for about five minutes, then add remaining ingredients and simmer until noodles are tender.  Serve with warm, crusty bread.

If your family is sick and congested, upping the pepper to 1/2 tsp can help clear that right up.  Heh.

The Egg Noodle Experiment

The flu has settled in at our house.

It started yesterday.  The hubby woke up and thought he was dying, then he realized he wasn't going to die and so went to bed and started praying for death to take him.  He had a fever of over 102, headache, chills, aches, and all sorts of other unpleasantness.  Syd hasn't come down with the full flu yet, but she's warm and flushed, and has a bad cough going on.

By some happy coincidence, my plan for yesterday's dinner was chicken noodle soup.  Given that I was chained to the house and my two sickies, I decided it would be the perfect time to try making homemade egg noodles for my soup.

First, I found a simple recipe.  Here's my condensed version:

4 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/8 cup water

Break eggs into mixing bowl and beat with fork.  Add water and salt and beat more.  Add one cup flour and mix in until blended, then mix in remaining cup until dough begins to form a ball.

Work the dough with your hands on a well floured surface, adding flour as needed, until dough is smooth and elastic and no longer sticks to your hands.  Pinch off egg-sized piece, dip in flour, and roll out with well-floured rolling pin until dough is as thin as you can make it.  Lay out rolled out ovals of dough on paper to dry a bit.  Flip after half an hour and allow to continue drying until dough is dry to the touch, but still flexible.

Roll each oval up like a jelly roll and then slice off narrow strips with a sharp serrated knife.  These are your noodles.  When you have sliced all your dough into strips, pile them back up on the paper to continue drying for several hours or overnight.  When they have finished drying, you can either cook them or freeze them and use within a few months.

Sounds pretty simple!  I didn't have too many problems with the execution of the egg noodles.

Sydney was very excited to help me make noodles.  She's usually pretty excited to help me make just about anything, really.

The first few steps were incredibly easy.  Beat eggs, mix in other stuff, dump ball of dough onto table.  Check, check, and check.

Rolling out the dough was pretty easy too, though if I was going to make these again, the only thing I'd do different is to roll the dough out even thinner.  Paper thin.  Also, I think using bread flour may have made the a touch chewier than normal, so I'd be sure to use AP flour.

Syd just had to use the rolling pin for her itty bitty piece of practice dough.

At last, the dough was rolled out and laid out to dry.  The other side of my counter was full of egg noodle dough, too.  When you roll it out this thin, you're going to need a lot of square footage for the drying.

Then it was time to roll them up and slice them into noodles.  This part wasn't too hard, but you do need to make sure that your serrated knife is very, very sharp.

Sydney used her little butter knife to slice her dough into noodles, too.

Aaaaaand.... we have noodles!

And soup.  As you can see, they don't have as neat a look as store-bought noodles, but they're definitely much more filling and healthy.  When you make your chicken noodle soup with homemade chicken stock, organic roasted chicken, and homemade egg noodles, you can be sure you're not going to be hungry again in half an hour.

Have I mentioned that I make the best chicken noodle soup ever?  I'll post the recipe soon, given that it's the season for sickies.  I will say now that the key to good chicken noodle soup is to add a bit of fresh dill. 

Hopefully you won't need to make this for your own family for the same reason I did, but if you do, it's sure a great way to get them healthy again!

Quitting Dairy: Day One

 

Okay, so this might be a gradual tapering off of dairy, as opposed to quitting cold turkey.

I did quite well for most of the day yesterday, not having any milk for breakfast or lunch, where I'd normally have a glass of milk with each.  I didn't have any milk with dinner, but I did have a serving of mashed potatoes, which I make with lots of cream and butter.  Oops.

But I still had much less than normal.  And of course, last night, I ended up with horrible, awful cramps that left me bedridden all evening.  It was probably from the antibiotic I started last night for my sinus infection, but still... sometimes the universe is really freaking mean.

Hopefully today will be better.  I did have a spash of cream in my coffee, but that is non-negotiable.  I must.  Have.  Cream.  In my coffee.  And I must have coffee, or I don't function until three in the afternoon.

Image: Stuart Miles

No More Dairy For Me

I think I'm going to give up dairy.

I've noticed that, lately, every time I drink a glass of milk, I feel somewhat sickish afterward.  I know that intolerance to dairy can cause all sorts of problems as we age, so I am going to try to give up dairy.

Mostly.  I must have half and half in my coffee in the morning.  Period.

But other than that, I will give up dairy and see what happens.  It's going to be hard for me because I got in the habit of drinking a lot of milk for the vitamin D, which helps a lot with my OCD.  So I will definitely need to take my multivitamin every day to make up the loss.  Hopefully though, I'll lose the few pounds I've gained and feel better.

I'll be sure and document how it works as I go.  Losing butter is going to be the hardest, I think.  Goodbye, mashed potatoes.  Goodbye, cheese.  *sigh*  Hopefully though, it'll be worth it.

If anyone has any tricks or replacements for me to try, I'd love to hear about it!

A Healthy, Easy Breakfast

I love breakfast.  I often tell the hubby that I should have married a farmer and had ten children, because nothing would make me happier than getting up before the crack of dawn to cook a tableful of eggs, bacon, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, and whatever else I was in the mood to whip up.  (Needless to say, the hubby is not amused by my hypothetical farm family.  He is, however, amused by the idea of me getting up at four in the morning.)

Because we would be hard-pressed to fit ten children and a herd of cows in our home, I'll just have to settle for making little breakfasts in miniature quantities.  One of the easiest and most filling things to cook is steel cut oats, which is what we ate this morning.

"Already with the camera, mommy?"

We buy bulk organic oats from a local health food store, and our toppings of choice are cream and plenty of raw honey:

Mmmmm.

Cooking steel-cut oats is extremely simple.  Bring three or four cups of water (depending on how long you plan to cook your oats- longer = more water) to a boil, then add one cup of oats and a dash of salt.  Reduce the heat to a simmer, toss a cover halfway over the pot, and cook for twenty or thirty minutes.  The longer you cook them, the less chewy your oats will be.

And that's it.  Give them a stir occasionally to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pot.  Drink your coffee and read the newspaper while they cook.

Oh, and speaking of coffee, you absolutely have to try Peace Coffee.  It's organic, shade-grown coffee that I get from the same place I buy my oats, and it is simply the best coffee I've ever had.

As for toppings for your oatmeal, you can mix in just about anything you can think of.  Honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, bits of fruit, nuts, cream, milk...  Heck, throw in a bit of everything.  This breakfast is almost impossible to screw up.

The best part about St. Patrick's Day...

...is making reubens with the leftover corned beef the day after.

For those not in the know, a reuben is a sandwich made with rye bread, swiss cheese, slices of corned beef, saurkraut, and dipped in thousand island dressing.  And man, are they good.



Dipping sauce of the gods.

I have a confession to make: my daughter loves french fries.  LOVES them.  She would eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I would let her, and she would lick the leftover ketchup from her plate when she was finished.  As someone who always swore up and down that my kids will never eat such trash, this is mildly embarassing.

Because Syd is getting increasingly picky with her eating habits as she makes the long journey to four years old, I've tried to find things that she'll actually, you know, eat.  Without bribery.  And sweet potato fries are a definite hit.  We buy the healthy, natural ones from our local health food store and pop them in the oven when we having something like fried fish or homemade burgers.

What makes them so popular?  This.  Right here.  This dipping sauce is insanely good, and it works with almost anything breaded and crunchy.  Here it is.

1 heaping tbsp mayo
1 level tbsp mustard
1 level tbsp honey

And you mix it all together.  At my house, this makes one serving.  Maybe.

I just can't quit you.

I have been trying to quit stealing the hubby's Pepsi out of the fridge for, oh, probably about three years now, and it's a losing battle.  I've had short victories, but inevitably the siren song of that sweet, fizzy goodness lures me back and I find myself drifting back to the fridge for the occasional can.

However, a few tactics have given me some small measure of success, and I thought I would share them with you, in case any of you are fighting this same (losing) battle.

• Coffee.  Oh, sweet nectar of the gods, how you awaken me so abruptly in the morning.  Obviously, if you're trying to quit caffeine all together, this won't be much help.  But for those of us who need that early-morning jolt to recover our gross motor function, this is a life-saver.
• Perrier with lime.  It's cold, it's fizzy, and it has just a hint of fruit flavor.  It's pricey, but if you desperately need the bubbles, this is a reasonable substitute.  I find it tastes sort of like Sprite.  Sort of.
• Water with lemon.  At first, I bought lemons.  Then I realized the little squeezy plastic lemons at the grocery store also contain lemon juice, are cheaper, and don't require cutting and seed removal, and thus my life was made much, much easier.  No fizz, obviously, but it does have that acidic bite I crave that plain old tap water is lacking.

I know, none of these are the same as drinking soda.  I understand.  Truly, I do.  But they can help take the edge off.  And if you drink diet soda, I can't urge you strongly enough to quit.  Aspartame is horrible for your body.  I used to drink it like air, and didn't understand why I felt like I was on death's doorstep all day long.  Then I quit, and three days of soul-crushing headaches later, I was a new person.

Good luck.