It's been too Long...

Wow! I've really neglected my readers lately....if I even have any anymore. :/ I apologize - life has been crazy for me the last few weeks. I was on vacation and then my grandma died a few days ago -for more info about that see my other blog. We had her funeral yesterday and I'm still trying to play catch-up on laundry and housework and everything else. At times like these, healthy eating kind of slips off the page and I need to get it back. During times like these, I'm really grateful for fast and easy healthy meals that I don't have to think twice about making. I'm also grateful for store-ready food that is healthy that I can just buy.

I hope you are all doing well and I'll try to write again as soon as I can recapture some sanity.

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Learning, Learning, Learning...

We had a brunch party last week and I made whole-grain waffles. A friend brought their belgium flip waffle maker and WOW! I realized that I had no clue what a good waffle was before. Those were absolutely amazing! They were so light and fluffy - about twice the fluffiness of my waffle maker. The difference between my cheap waffle maker and the flip one were like night and day. So I guess you know what I want for Mother's Day! (j/k)


The other thing I've learned this last week is that I'm happy that I have the compact bosch mixer. I tried to use the large bosch mixer at my parents house to make this recipe and it just didn't work. It's just too small of a recipe - the dough just kind of stuck in the middle and didn't get mixed. So, for a small family the compact bosch is just perfect!

The nice thing about cooking is that you just keep on learning more things every time you try something new! Have a great day!

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Canning Dry Beans - Pinto, Kidney, etc.

Last week was a busy week, but I decided to add to my busyness by canning a batch of pinto beans. :) I ran out of canned beans and I love having them on hand. I've posted about pressure cookers - I cook a lot of beans in my pressure cooker and it is really nice to be able to cook them from start to finish in about an hour for most beans (including soaking). Some days, however, the pressure cooker is still not fast enough for me. I love having some jars of canned beans on hand that I can just open and pop in a recipe. I could buy the canned beans, but I've decided to can my own, mainly for the experience but also because I store dry beans that I like to rotate.

Ask your local extension service how to can dry beans for your altitude. I pre-soak them for 12-18 hours and then cook them for 30 min. I then hot-pack them into hot quart jars leaving 1 inch headspace and pressure can them for 1 hour 30 min at 15 lbs. pressure. They turn out wonderful - very tender. Remember to make sure you follow canning recipes that are tested for your altitude exactly. To ensure safety, only use recipes that are verified by your state extension service.

Just FYI, two #10 cans of pinto beans (about 10 lbs.) made 19 qts. of canned beans. It took me the good part of a day, so plan on doing it when you have a lot of time! Here's some pictures:

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Whole-Wheat Navajo Tacos

I love navajo tacos. This recipe is great, but not super healthy. I modified it a little to make it whole-grain and I liked it even better! Enjoy!

NAVAJO TACOS
Makes 6 tacos.

1 c. warm water
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. nonfat dry milk
3 Tbsp. Gluten flour
1-1/4+ C. white-wheat flour
1 Tbsp. active dry yeast
6 c. beef or vegetarian chili*
3 c. shredded lettuce
1 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1 c. sour cream (or ranch dressing)
3 tomatoes, diced
salsa

1. Prepare the fry bread: In a bosch mixer combine first six ingredients in order with yeast on top of flour. Mix and add more whole-wheat flour until dough pulls away from sides of bowl. Mix for 6 minutes. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface; punch it down and let it relax about five minutes. Roll the dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch and cut it into six circles with a diameter of six inches each. Allow circles to rise another 15 to 20 minutes. Fry dough circles in hot oil until golden brown.

2. Serve fry bread warm, topped with generous amounts of chili, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, and salsa.

*I made a quick chili with 1 can of Regular Nalley Chili, 1 C. pinto beans 1 C. crushed tomatoes and taco seasoning to taste. It was delicious!

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Seedling Update

Here's our seedlings that we planted a while ago. They are doing very well in our south-facing bay window! I'll probably start putting them outdoors for a few hours in a couple of weeks. It's still a little cold.

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