Energy Efficient Cooking

Cooking and baking are one of my favorite ways to spend a Saturday.  Since having kids though, my time is quite limited as to how much time I can spend in the kitchen.  I have tried Once a Month Cooking, batch cooking & freezing, raw recipes that require little prep and on and on.   I've combined all of these techniques into something that works for our family and minimizes the amount of energy used.  Most recently, with my gluten allergy and intolerance, figuring out "what's for dinner" has become even more important to me so I know that I can share in the family dinner time without having to worry if I can or cannot eat it.  However, when I talk to other friends and co-workers about their kitchen strategy, most do not have a plan or barely know how to articulate how they get it done.  Here is what works at our house and maybe taking pieces of what works for us, will help you have a more effective and efficient cooking and baking experience.

First, I review the latest farm share delivery and center our meals for the week around that.  I also consider what our family/work schedule is for the next two weeks to see if there will be any large gaps of time away from the family, for either my husband or I.  If there are gaps, I plan to make larger batches of what I'm cooking to put 3-4 meals in the freezer that can easily be defrosted.  Then, I find the circular of the grocery store with the most sales and that will compliment my farm share well.  This process takes about 15 minutes, but in the long run of planning, it's the best time spent.  To have a general plan about what is for dinner, takes away the stress on the evenings when an unplanned activity arises.

Once I have all the ingredients I need to make several meals, I start the prep work.  If I need to shred zucchini, beets and onions, I use the food processor near the sink and get to work.  I think about the order of shredding the vegetables, as the onions will leave a taste on the blades and container that I may not want transferred to the zucchini, if it's going into a bread.  After everything is chopped, diced, shredded and sliced, I put together the meals that I've been preparing for.  Then I set everything on the counter and let it set.  It must be an old tradition from my grandmother, but I feel that giving the food the time to absorb the new state it is in, gives it a moment.  Figuring out the spacing in the oven sometimes takes some time.  If I've prepped 6 dishes and only have room for 4, I try to minimize the length of time the oven needs to be on to save energy.  Maximizing how many dishes I cook at a time, reduces the amount of time the oven is on.  I have also found that turning off the oven earlier than a recipe calls for allows for the food to cook internally (of course, this only works if you've already pre-cooked the meat in a lasagna for instance).  Using my slow cooker also reduces the amount of energy and electricity used in our kitchen.  I recently made a gluten free lasagna with zucchini and rice lasagna noodles in the slow cooker.  It was absolutely awesome, cooked while I was at work and there was minimal prep involved as I was already shredding zucchini for a bread and was batch cooking turkey meat to use in multiple dishes.  Although the rice lasagna noodles called for pre-cooking the noodles, I placed zucchini on each layer of noodle so the moisture from the zucchini would soak into the noodle.  The dish was so great, the kids asked for 2nds!

Here's a link to a handy list of energy efficient cooking tips:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030578_cooking_baking.html

Happy Baking!

Reminders

I may have to set myself a reminder to write a posts.  I have so many ideas of posts in my head that I think I write them to myself and never put fingers to keyboard and let the rest of the world share in them.

My oldest has been away the past few weeks at camp in Canada.  He's living with my husband's mom while he attends a day camp, where most of the kids speak French.  The town we live in offers a French Immersion program to incoming 1st graders.  For the next 12 years, these children can be on a French track, where all to most of their classes are taught in French.  The first few years all of the lessons are in French, slowly integrating English for standardized testing purposes.  We want to reinforce what he is learning during the school year in a safe, fun environment for a few weeks during the summer.  Last year, he went for 2 weeks - this year, he requested 7.  We are on week 6 and I cannot wait for him to come home.  Everywhere I look in our house are small reminders that we are temporarily missing one.  There are books that haven't been read in weeks, hockey sticks and goals that have not moved, a bed that has remained in tact.....I cannot imagine the grief parents must feel when losing a child.  The reminders of them must be in every waking corner.

Before having children, I never knew the love a person can have for another.  There is such a deep connection between my children and myself that I can actually feel when one of them is having a tough day.   Later in the day when we connect, I am reminded of the power of love and what it can do for each of us.  It shapes us, creates us, and makes us who we are.  Unconditional love from a partner, child or to a child, must be kept sacred and cared for with the kindest heart.

As you go through your day today, be mindful of the reminders all around you.  Reminisce about the moment you picked your first tomato, your child said I love you, or maybe when your partner said I do.  Find that moment to reflect on a part of you that makes you who you are today.  Relish in that moment, hold onto it, and remind yourself to have more, everyday.

Plantings

June is a fabulous month in New England.  Right before the heat and humidity of summer engulfs the region, a moment of absolute bliss happens.  Being a Jersey girl at heart, June is like an extended Jersey May.  I plant veggies in my garden too early in May and hope that the "global warming" effect doesn't effect them.

This year, I've tried to be make a conscious effort in selecting which veggie plants I put in my Earth Boxes and the garden.  Seeing as though the garden I share is in my neighbors yard, I embraced the plants that my BFFs wanted to plant and over planted what I wanted in my Earth Boxes.  These Boxes are a great way to have a slice of heaven, in your back yard, porch or deck.  I wanted to reach out on my new deck and be able to add greens and edible flowers to my salad quickly.  I planted nasturtiums plants from the local nursery on each end of the box.  Then, I filled the rest of the box with tomato plants.  The Earth Box peeps recommend 8 plants to a box this way and they have their reasons for it.  I over planted my first box and then needed to move a few tomato plants to a new box to accommodate their ever growing size.  In June, my plants look like an August tomato plant from the garden.  No joke.

My little m lady loves her baby tomatoes.  She hasn't noticed these yet, so thankfully they may have a chance.  She eats ground cherries (tomatoes) like they are candy and embraces nature just as I had hoped.

This spring I also had the chance to go to an annual pottery sale, where women were running for ceramic pots like they run for Bridal dresses in Boston.  It was nutty, but I did walk away with several large planters for my new deck.  Next year, I hope to fill them with veggies that are edible but for this year, being pressed for time, I filled them with my favorite summer hanging flower baskets from the local specialty grocery store and cut off the hanger part.  They instantly filled the planter with some color and bees, yay! bring back the bees, and completed my plantings on my deck this year....unless I find some ground cherry plants!

E

Percolator

My week day mornings resemble an organized, chaotic, zoo.  My morning coffee is as fast as a Cheetah trying to catch her morning prey.  I'm pretty sure that if I could have it intravenously as I was waking up, I would take that option.  My Keurig with reusable filter makes me calm during the storm happening all around me.

Weekends in the house are totally the opposite though.  There's no agenda, no commitments and the only thing standing between myself and a great cup of coffee is a 2 year old, wanting to read more books.  I take it down a notch on the weekends and pull out my Grandmother's stove-top Corning-ware percolator.  It brings me right back to her kitchen where she would spend hours preparing the most delicious, wholesome Polish food.  The care she would give each pirogi as she rolled them, resembled that of a sculpture artist from the ancient times, who had no other responsibility but to craft that piece into exactly what it was supposed to be.  

As we prepare for a fun day at the zoo with some work friends, I put on my Percolator and remember the wonderfully slower times when handcrafted, fresh foods were the norm and not something that was sought out.

Farm Fresh

We belong to a very special CSA farm in our town.  Being one of the first towns outside of Boston, I find it comforting that a working farm, with tractors and bee-keeping exists within ear shot.  If I had known of the farm while living in Boston, we would have made weekly treks for our farm share.  Now, we share the share with our neighbors as the abundance of Swiss Chard would put any progressive family over the edge. 

Most Saturday nights are family night in our house.  I make a large dinner and we all join together to share our day and past week and remember how blessed we are to have each other.  While preparing last night's meal, I momentarily struggled with what vegetable to serve with our organic roasted chicken and non-GMO rice.  Then, delighted, I remembered that our spring CSA share had started and quickly found just the yummy veggies for the kids and ourselves to enjoy!  The kids enjoyed shelling their peas from the pods and my husband ate the radishes so fast you would think a rabbit was invited to dinner as well.  My oldest child loves fresh, raw broccolli, which never tastes fresh from the grocery store.  And for the first time, my middle child bit right into that broccolli like it was his favorite cookie!  Just goes to show that if you keep putting the right foods in front of them, at some point they will try and enjoy what is truly a gift from God, wholesome food.

This morning we are going for a bike ride along the ocean and I cannot wait...So as my grandmother's stovetop perculator makes my morning coffee, I sit and dream of all the adventure this day will bring...hopefully, some more love and appreciation of all things that truly matter.

E

Almost....

My journey into gluten-free, simple cooking and understanding homesteading began last summer.  Since July, I've been eating gluten free.  At first it was a sympathetic gesture for my dearest BFF who was diagnosed with celiac disease.  Then, I realized that I naturally liked most gluten-free food....and then I ate gluten and was I sick!  So, I'm a self-diagnosed gluten intolerant/allergic mom who is trying to navigate through these murky waters to find the healthiest, most natural foods for my family.  However, unlike most homesteaders, I work full time, my kids go to montessori and public school and I'm not going to convince my husband in this lifetime that we need a small flock of chickens on our "homestead".

Where does one go from here?  I've always had a love for yoga, home-made jam and hand-me-downs.  But does that make me homesteader?  Almost. I didn't even know there was a term for all the things I love, the way I like to cook, exchange clothes and make new ones from old, and have mini-lessons with my kids in the evening.  Now that I do, I feel like a kid again, obsessively reading all things Laura Ingallas related.  I've taken out every imagineable book about homesteading from the library.  I've looked into signing up for free classes about gardening and bee-keeping (my husband will go for that)

Join me on my journey as I try to nagivate through frugal purchases, energy saving cooking, learning to sew new things, give the kids mini-life lessons in the evening, and sharing this love for being in the moment with my children.  I'm not sure how this journey will turn out, but I will be honest in my findings all the while living a simpler, calmer, more wholesome life.

E