Coming up...

Here are some things that are coming up in the next couple of weeks.

Real Food and Religion Series:
This week we start a series called Real Food and Religion. Many bloggers are helping out and have written great posts I'm excited for you to read. They will talk about how their religions influence their food choices.

I wanted to do this series because our religious beliefs are a driving force for many of us. I wanted to know why people do what they do and eat what they eat. I got back some very thought-provoking answers, and I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I have.

What we believe about where we come from and where we are going influences what we do in between. As a Latter-day Saint (Mormon), we have general health guidelines, but many of the specifics are left up to us. As I have pondered the specifics, I have been led to study our religious guidelines in more depth. A lot of the bloggers whose posts you will read in the next few weeks have done the same thing and learned some really interesting things in the process.


Answering your questions:
In between the Real food and religion series, I will be answering your questions. You had some great things to cover! I will be posting about snacks, desserts, the FDA, and saturated fat. If you have a question, but haven't posted it, just let me know.
Edited to add: I'll also be posting about baby food and some new recipes!

On TV:

Tomorrow night on PBS, Food, Inc. is showing at 9pm. If you haven't seen it, I recommend you watch it. This is a really informative show about what is happening with our food. My husband and I watched it together. Up until that point, he had kind of gone along with all the changes we had made to our eating habits. After that, he said, "Wow, how can we avoid eating like that?" I was happy to tell him, "We already are."

Canning Chicken Broth

In my post yesterday I explained how I make homemade chicken broth. I divide my chicken broth into 3 unequal parts: some to freeze, some to refrigerate, and some to can.

Freezing
Freezing is a great option because it keeps the nutrients intact and preserves for a long period of time. For me though, it definitely has some down sides: it takes up freezer space (which can be at a premium if the freezer is well stocked) and you have to thaw it. I don't like to use my microwave because when you do, you lose nutrients. So that means freezer food is not convenience food for me. I have to plan to get it out of my freezer about a day in advance to let it thaw in the fridge. And sometimes that works great. But other times I may not have realized I need it and I forget to thaw it... that's when I'm glad not all of my chicken broth is in my freezer.

Refrigerating
Refrigerated chicken broth lasts for 3 to 5 days if you leave the fat on top. After that, you could remove the fat, boil and put it back in the fridge for another 3 to 5 days... but that sounds like a lot of work to me when you could just use it at that point.

Canning
Canning does destroy some nutrients, but from what I can find the jury's out on how much is really lost. (I found different sources saying anywhere from 10-90% of some vitamins are lost!) That is the downside. The things I love about canning are:
Work one day, have food for many days.
Shelf storage: even if the power goes out or there is an emergency, you can use your canned food.
It doesn't take up freezer space.
It lasts a long time.
Cans of food on the pantry shelf gives me a sense of accomplishment and security. Really. I can go in my pantry and think two  things, "Wow, I provided this food for my family." and, "No matter what else may go wrong, at least we have food."

How to Pressure Can Chicken Broth:

Remove the fat from your chilled broth.
Heat lids and rings over low heat. Simmer.
Wipe lids and rims of your jars. Top with hot lids and rims.
In a separate pot, boil 3 quarts of water.
Pour boiling water into pressure canner. Add jars.
Close pressure canner and turn heat on high. Let steam flow for 10 minutes.
Add pressure regulator.
Process at 11 pounds pressure. 20 minutes for pints, 25 for quarts.

Chicken Broth

Chicken Broth is loaded with nutrition. My favorite part is that it's made from leftovers, so it's practically free. Homemade broth tastes so much better than anything you can buy in the store. It makes your gravies and soups taste great. There is a lot of room for variations on the recipe below. You can add salt (I leave it out and add it when I'm using it in recipes), reduce or increase any of the vegetables.

And don't feel like you don't have time to make this if you aren't going to be home all day. It can simmer without you there watching it as long as the heat is low enough.

I buy whole chickens and save all the bones in plastic baggies in the fridge. I separate the chicken into two baggies, cooked bones and raw bones. I also have a baggie for vegetables in the freezer. When I have a baggie or two filled up, it's time to make some broth. Cooking the bones and vegetables intensifies the flavor of the broth.

Ingredients:

Chicken Bones

Onions

Carrots

Celery

Parsley

Garlic

Preheat oven to 450. Roast raw chicken and vegetables for about a half hour. Place all ingredients in a stockpot or other large pot. Cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Skim off any impurities that rise to the top. Let it simmer all day or overnight. Just make sure it has a lot of water in there and is at a low temperature to keep too much water from evaporating.

Strain out the solids. Cool. Divide into containers. (I use mason jars.) Chill in the refrigerator.  A layer of fat will form on top. You can use it as cooking fat.

Store in the freezer for longer term storage. I can some of the jars with a pressure canner. You lose some nutrients that way, but you have the convenience of being able to pop open a can and it's still much healthier than what you can find in the store.

Any questions??

My sister suggested that I open up the blog for questions.

Use this comment section to let me know what you would like to see in future posts. Request specific recipes, more information on diet and health, or whatever questions you have. I'm happy to research it if I don't know the answer!

Anytime you want more information on a specific post, please ask in the comment question. I read and respond to all comments!

Soaked Granola

Since posting my granola recipe, I have adapted it to make a soaked version. Soaking oats reduces phytic acid, which was my original reason for doing it, but it also changes the texture into yummy little clumps of granola.

I don't have a food dehydrator, so I use my oven turned down as low as it can go, which is 170. (Of course, if you're lucky enough to have one, use it!) It cooks for about 12 hours at 170. You need to be around to stir and break it up every so often. Below are a few different variations, depending on how healthy you want to make it.  I double the recipe when I make it, since I want to fill up my oven if I'm going to have it on that long!

Basic Soaked Granola Recipe

This makes a crunchy, sweet, clumpy granola.

The night before, measure out:

6 cups oats
6 cups water
3/4 cup whey

In a separate bowl, mix:

1-2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Enough water to cover

In the morning, drain the oats and nuts.

Meanwhile, melt in a small saucepan:

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. sea salt

Mix the coconut oil mixture and nuts with the oats.

Add:

1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

Spread out on a baking sheet. It will not look anything like granola at this point- don't worry! It's supposed to look like someone dumped a bowl of oatmeal on your baking sheet. It will look like that for a while. It starts looking a little more granola-y about halfway through.

Bake at 170. Check about every 1-2 hours (you have some wiggle room here), stirring and breaking into clumps. It is done when you can break apart a cluster and it's not wet in the middle, anywhere from 8-12 hours.

Variations:

Cut the sweeteners in half, 1/4 cup of each.

Omit the brown sugar.

Substitute honey for the brown sugar.

Omit the coconut.

Substitute up to half of the coconut oil with butter.  (This substitution is purely for cost. I like to leave at least half coconut oil because it's sweet and because it's not something we tend to get a lot of in our diet.)

White, Brown, and Raw Sugar

So, you know sugar is not good for you. You want to get it out of your diet, but you still want something sweet. What's a girl with a sugar craving to do? Here is a list of 3 common sugars, how they are made, and what the difference is.

Raw Sugar: Raw sugar is made by pressing the juice out of the sugar cane, mixing it with lime, evaporating the liquid, and spinning in a centrifuge. Umm, what happened to the raw part? When you talk about raw milk or raw honey, that means nothing was done to process them. Raw sugar, on the other hand, is actually processed! In one statistic I read, it is only 5% less processed than white sugar.

White sugar: White sugar is made basically the same way, but they add chemicals to take the color out. They can do this before or after crushing the sugar cane, but the end result is the same: they bleach out the color and filter out the vitamins and minerals found in whole sugar cane.

Brown Sugar: To make brown sugar, first they make white sugar, then they add in some of the molasses. That's where it gets its darker color. It has a very small amount of minerals from the molasses, but brown sugar is only about 5% molasses, so most of what you are getting is empty white sugar calories.

I used to buy Organic Evaporated Cane Juice from Trader Joe's. Sounds good, right? Well, from all I've read on sugar, there is really very little difference between the "raw" and the "white."

I try to reduce my sugar consumption and use honey or maple syrup as an alternative. For those few things I still make with sugar... I use regular old white or brown sugar, just because it costs less. I like to use my shopping dollars where they really count, and it doesn't make sense to me to spend more than twice as much on the "raw" sugar, for only a 5% variation in the final product.

More reading on sugar:
"Get the refined sugar out."
"Will the real raw sugar please stand up?"

Water, water everywhere

Do you know the saying, Water Water Everywhere, but not a drop to drink? That’s how I feel lately. 

Well, not about water so much, we have plenty to drink. It’s about milk. I live in a tract home in a fairly rural area.  If I drive 5 minutes in almost any direction from my house, I will see cows grazing, horses running, and goats chasing each other trying to escape their fences. But somehow, I can’t seem to find any local raw milk! Right now, I drive a half hour to pay an arm and a leg for raw milk that comes from several hours away. Unfortunately, my raw milk source raised their prices, so I have been trying even harder to find a local source of milk.

I ask people who live in the country or on farms. Most don’t know anyone, but I have had a couple leads for raw goats milk. I’ve never drunk goats’ milk before, but if it’s raw and less than $8.88 for a half gallon, I’ll take it!

The trouble is, no one will sell it!

They are afraid I will one day get sick and sue, or that some one will come find they are selling milk and come after them. I don’t want to cause any trouble; I just want some milk!

The last woman I talked to said that she drinks it, but her mom tells her not to sell it to anyone else. "If the goat was sick or something, you could get sick," she said. “But you would know, right?” I asked. “Well, yeah,” she said, “but I still don’t think I should sell it.”

So, here I am, living by all these cows and goats, but  I can’t get any milk. If only we could fit a cow in our backyard…