Sometimes for Shabbat in the winter I'll make two big pots of this chicken soup, maybe a dessert, and maybe a salmon salad that doesn't have to be made before Shabbat (no cooking required). Any time any of us is sick is also an excuse to make it on a weekday. Ok, no more preamble; let's get to the good stuff! :)
Ingredients
1 whole chicken (a package of, say, chicken thighs would also work, but boneless skinless probably would not come out right)
salt and pepper to taste
garlic powder to taste (optional)
4-5 or more carrots, sliced
4-5 or more celery stalks, sliced
1 onion, whole (I've used yellow and red; both make the soup taste good but they're different)
1 leek, sliced (that's how we like it best but you can also use more or less half a bunch of parsley, chopped, instead)
matzah balls (optional; I actually haven't been making them lately because I found organic, whole wheat matzah meal at my Whole Foods around Passover time but that's it)
Put chicken in your biggest available pot, fill pot with water (you can estimate but if you want a measurement it's 2 and 1/2 quarts or 10 cups), add seasonings, and bring to a boil. Once it's boiling, you can turn down the heat to a simmer if it boils over. Now add veggies and cook for 1 and 1/2 hours. If you forgot the seasonings before or decide you want more, go ahead and add them at any time (but I think the soup comes out best when they're added immediately). If you're including matzah balls, follow your recipe's instructions. (I don't currently have a good one to recommend but I do suggest using whole wheat if possible.)
So what do you think? Ashkenazi or not?
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Food and Mood
Cross posted in The Daily Yay!
I've known for awhile that I'm lactose intolerant but continued to eat dairy anyway. A few days ago I finally decided to forbid myself completely from eating dairy because I knew it was wreaking havoc with my digestive system.
An added benefit of going dairy-free is that, after just a few days, I noticed that I was in a better mood today than I have been lately. I'd originally attributed my feeling down to things like the shortening days and rainy weather, but the improvement in my mood was unmistakable. Just to be sure, I googled "dairy mood" and found this article from About.com.
I've known for awhile that I'm lactose intolerant but continued to eat dairy anyway. A few days ago I finally decided to forbid myself completely from eating dairy because I knew it was wreaking havoc with my digestive system.
An added benefit of going dairy-free is that, after just a few days, I noticed that I was in a better mood today than I have been lately. I'd originally attributed my feeling down to things like the shortening days and rainy weather, but the improvement in my mood was unmistakable. Just to be sure, I googled "dairy mood" and found this article from About.com.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Hubby asked for fourths of tonight's easy, delicious salad with just five ingredients...
...Though he's a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. He'd asked for salad because he said he needed raw greens! I'd already made him an omelette containing chard for breakfast but I guess my unofficial health coaching is working! :)
Here's the salad that I threw together in a large mixing bowl:
All ingredients were organic. (See this post and the one it links to for why organic is better.)
Four slices Ezekiel cinnamon-raisin bread (you could probably use any other cinnamon-raisin bread, or even plain bread plus raisins, but Ezekiel bread is a complete protein)
Walnuts (maybe about a cupful or more)
One bunch lettuce (not a head of iceberg; I think it was green leaf)
A few small carrots
A little bit of cilantro (you could probably leave that out if you don't have it)
I just broke up the bread into small pieces, tossed in pieces of walnuts, tore up the lettuce into small pieces, attempted to Julienne the carrots, and tore up the cilantro.
What are your favorite random (or not-so-random) salad ingredients?
Here's the salad that I threw together in a large mixing bowl:
All ingredients were organic. (See this post and the one it links to for why organic is better.)
Four slices Ezekiel cinnamon-raisin bread (you could probably use any other cinnamon-raisin bread, or even plain bread plus raisins, but Ezekiel bread is a complete protein)
Walnuts (maybe about a cupful or more)
One bunch lettuce (not a head of iceberg; I think it was green leaf)
A few small carrots
A little bit of cilantro (you could probably leave that out if you don't have it)
I just broke up the bread into small pieces, tossed in pieces of walnuts, tore up the lettuce into small pieces, attempted to Julienne the carrots, and tore up the cilantro.
What are your favorite random (or not-so-random) salad ingredients?
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Heathy food=lots of energy! :)
Cross posted in The Daily Yay!
Rena not only perked up (she had napped in her stroller on the way there from the playground) but walked herself almost the entire way home without even being very worn out by the end.
Cute compliment from hubby! :)
Cross posted in The Daily Yay!
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Post-Party Excursion
Cross posted in The Daily Yay!
I headed for a bench outside the store, purchases in hand. After enjoying my chocolate bar, I finished my blog post about the night before. Then I relaxed on Facebook and listened to someone singing and playing ukelele in the background. Ukelele seems to be a popular instrument around here.
When I started to get chilly and the hour was getting late, I headed home to hang out with hubby and give him his promised root beer. :)
"Slumber Party" with Hubby! :)
Cross posted in The Daily Yay!
To celebrate my new job, hubby and I decided to have a special chicken dinner. I gave Rena an early, simple dinner of crepes (I make them with coconut oil instead of butter or margarine to cut down on my dairy intake, as I might be slightly lactose intolerant, and to avoid using a product with soy) with some raw tomato and some raw avocado on the the side (she loves them; I don't always have to cook side dishes for her) and then put her to bed. I headed to QFC at the University Village Shopping Center to get kosher chicken, as Whole Foods around here doesn't carry it.
I decided to call my parents on the way. They're three hours earlier, as they live in Cincinnati, but it's ok for me to call them late. They had actually just walked in the door: They'd been out late at the wedding of a local Chabad rabbi's daughter. They reported that there must have been 600 people there and that a bunch of them asked about me. It made me happy to know that so many people in my hometown still think and care about me. Even someone who wasn't at the wedding asked my mom about me recently when she ran into her at a grocery store.
At QFC, I headed to the kosher poultry section. I hadn't seen Empire Organic chicken in ages, but lo and behold, it was there last night! I bought all the drumsticks and left the whole chickens and boneless skinless breasts for others.
Back at home, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees and made a one-dish dinner out of a dozen drumsticks, a couple big bagsful of cremini mushrooms, and a pile of raw cashews; seasoned with salt, red pepper flakes, and a little turmeric; with coconut oil mixed in. Forty minutes later.... Yum! :) Hubby and I ate up all the drumsticks -- we each ate half a dozen and saved some of the other stuff for today.
Then we had fun singing, dancing, joking, and playing around. We do that part of a slumber party most nights, really, but this was special because we were celebrating my new job! :)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Foodiscovery Restart
I'm going to restart this blog not with berry picking but something else because we might be going berry picking again on Monday.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
notice
This and all my blogs are suspended until further notice (hopefully not forever) due to a number of things going on in my life currently. (Update 08/30/11: I have restarted one of my blogs and will be restarting this one soon, too, with a post about berry picking.)
Monday, June 6, 2011
My ever-increasing dietary restrictions. Or, why is it so hard to find kosher organic food?
Cross posted in Kosher Cuisine
Finally, after almost two months, here's the promised story of my transition to buying organic. I have this post that I saw posted on this Facebook Page to thank for motivating me to finally write this. It's going to be long so I'm going to divide it into sections. Here goes:
My first shopping trip upon going organic
I was already going to Whole Foods for most of my grocery shopping, so I continued there. I thankfully live within walking distance of the Whole Foods at Roosevelt Square. The only difference was I had to look for that "USDA Organic" symbol, besides looking for a kosher symbol. Basically, I'd apparently made my food life twice as complicated....Or so I thought. See, several items I'd been getting for their other health benefits, such as Rena's juice-sweetened puffs, my favorite vegetable broth, and these yummy tortilla chips were already organic. Other items, such as milk, eggs, and salsa, were easily found in organic versions.
Crackers
My main struggle that trip was finding crackers that would be acceptable to my husband but also healthy and organic. He had been used to eating a specific variety of Triscuits but unfortunately they are not organic. To complicate matters, there were for some reason two sections with crackers, which I didn't know at first. In the first, small section I found exactly one brand that was kosher and organic....but otherwise not up to my dietary standards. I thought, these can't possibly be the only crackers in the store! I asked an employee where I could find crackers, and she directed me to another aisle. Phew! Here I had some trouble as well. I found so many organic crackers but they weren't kosher. Finally I found one called Mary's Gone Crackers that was labeled both organic and kosher. Fun name, but were they healthy? Yes, whole grains and no sugar. I brought them home to hubby....Yum! :)
P.S. The next day I found other crackers called Two Moms in the Raw that Rena and I liked better.
Produce
Organic versions of my usual fruits and vegetables are readily available at Whole Foods. However, I decided to join an organic CSA that would deliver to my door, just for convenience. Full Circle Farm packs up a box for us every week with organic produce from their own farm and partner farms and delivers it to our apartment at some point on Thursday nights or early Friday morning. I love it because I don't have to think about my weekly fruits and vegetables if I don't want to, but if I want to change anything there's a window of opportunity. I could also tell them never to give me something if I don't want it. Customer service is great, always responding to your questions and comments. They'll even give you a credit if you're not completely satisfied with all your received produce, if you ask. They even called a couple weeks to make sure I got my box, since the deliverymen couldn't be buzzed in. All this for $46 a week, for a family order. I always end up buying other fruit because hubby and Rena eat TONS of fruit (and I barely get any!). Also there are a lot of greens, which sometimes spoil before I get to use them all. This is good, though, because I'm encouraged to get used to using more greens.
Also I love that it comes so close to Shabbat so I get fresh produce for Shabbat! :)
Meat
I wanted to make a meat dish for Friday night Shabbat dinner right after my organic transition, but I couldn't find any locally. Help! I resorted to making a vegetarian meatloaf in the hopes that hubby wouldn't even realize it was fake. Funny thing was, I realized as I went to serve it that it happened to be April Fool's Day, so even if he figured it out, it would just be an April Fool! Well, he didn't, and not only that but it came out awesome and he said it was deli-quality meatloaf! :) Unfortunately when I made it next time it didn't come out so good -- I think I just got lucky the first time because tofu isn't usually the best thing in the world -- so after that I just got regular kosher ground meat. As for chicken, for the following Shabbat I went online to search for kosher organic meat, as QFC only rarely has Empire Organic chicken. I tried ordering but they wouldn't even process my order for a single chicken because shipping costs would have been exorbitant! I'd promised hubby chicken for Shabbat so I had to run to QFC and get a regular kosher chicken. Hubby also likes when I get the precooked kosher chickens but unfortunately those aren't organic either. I once tried making General Tzo's Tofu in the hopes that hubby wouldn't realize it was tofu not chicken, but he could totally tell the difference because it didn't come out good. My only hope of avoiding non-organic meat of any kind is to make it to QFC right when they've just gotten a shipment of Empire organic chicken. They get so little so rarely that it's snapped up immediately. They supposedly get it every two weeks on Mondays, but last time I was told it was coming on Tuesday and then it was late. I've basically given up on that. In short, I'm resigned to eating non-organic meat, at least while living here in Seattle. If it were just me I might go vegetarian, but I can't do that with my hubby who goes nuts after just a few days without meat.
Fish
According to my Internet research, wild-caught is really the best way to go, even better than organic fish. So I called Whole Foods again to find out what wild-caught fish they had and found a recipe accordingly. I've also gotten wild-caught canned tuna and salmon.
Cheese
I had a big problem with cheese, as there didn't seem to be any available locally that was both kosher and organic. Initially I tried making my own but I could only make a soft cheese which is simple and doesn't need rennet, a thermometer, etc. I made Paneer cheese. Hubby and I liked it for a bit but then he got tired of it. I spent more long hours on the internet, and it turned out that a couple brands, including Tillamook Cheddar that's found at Whole Foods, were actually organic and kosher thought they didn't advertise that on their packaging or website. Though it's a bit annoying that I can only get cheddar but no mozzarella, parmesan, or others, I can't complain too much because I do get to have cheese. There's also kosher organic cream cheese, cottage cheese, etc. I love the brand Nancy's because it tastes good and it's cultured. Also Nancy's sells giant containers of yogurt which is wonderful because my husband is currently on a fruit-and-yogurt kick. (Please note, not all Nancy's products are organic so you have to make sure the package says organic when you buy.)
Sweeteners
I had been using Truvia, but it's not organic. Also I'd heard that it can actually make you gain weight because your body is tricked into producing unneeded insulin which is stored as fat. So I experimented with various sweeteners. I'll go into more detail in a separate post, but for now suffice it to say that there's no lack of natural sweeteners, such as honey and maple syrup, in organic versions.
Passover
I bought kosher organic grape juice that I'd finally found at Whole Foods awhile before that. However, my husband requested wine. I could not find a wine that was both kosher and organic so I resigned myself to getting Israeli wine. If it wasn't organic, at least I could support Israel with my wine purchase instead of Kedem.
Whole Foods actually had kosher organic matzah and matzah meal that were also whole wheat, amazingly enough, so that was that.
Hubby requested a couple of things -- horseradish and marshmallows -- that simply did not exist in kosher and organic versions. I complied like a good wife.
Other food wasn't a problem; I just had to make sure everything was up to the strict standards for Passover, i.e. nothing with leavened bread.
Gotta draw the line somewhere
At this point, I still accept food that someone gives me, is provided free at an event, etc. even if it's not organic. I'll eat Noah's Bagels still, for example, if someone else pays. I admit that free food is a weakness of mine, but it's also important to me to not look a gift horse in the mouth. As it is, my husband has local relatives who don't keep kosher, and it's hard enough for them to give us food that's ok, without making them also give us only organic food. I'll also use up non-organic food I had from before my transition, and I'll also use something non-organic that I bought accidentally. It's still food, an it's important to me not to waste.
Conclusion
While organic food has become important to me, and indeed most of the food I eat nowadays is organic, sometimes something else that's important to me trumps my desire to eat organic. I don't want to beat myself up over not eating 100% organic. As much as I can do is good. I don't have to throw in the towel when I encounter a snag.
Finally, after almost two months, here's the promised story of my transition to buying organic. I have this post that I saw posted on this Facebook Page to thank for motivating me to finally write this. It's going to be long so I'm going to divide it into sections. Here goes:
My first shopping trip upon going organic
I was already going to Whole Foods for most of my grocery shopping, so I continued there. I thankfully live within walking distance of the Whole Foods at Roosevelt Square. The only difference was I had to look for that "USDA Organic" symbol, besides looking for a kosher symbol. Basically, I'd apparently made my food life twice as complicated....Or so I thought. See, several items I'd been getting for their other health benefits, such as Rena's juice-sweetened puffs, my favorite vegetable broth, and these yummy tortilla chips were already organic. Other items, such as milk, eggs, and salsa, were easily found in organic versions.
Crackers
My main struggle that trip was finding crackers that would be acceptable to my husband but also healthy and organic. He had been used to eating a specific variety of Triscuits but unfortunately they are not organic. To complicate matters, there were for some reason two sections with crackers, which I didn't know at first. In the first, small section I found exactly one brand that was kosher and organic....but otherwise not up to my dietary standards. I thought, these can't possibly be the only crackers in the store! I asked an employee where I could find crackers, and she directed me to another aisle. Phew! Here I had some trouble as well. I found so many organic crackers but they weren't kosher. Finally I found one called Mary's Gone Crackers that was labeled both organic and kosher. Fun name, but were they healthy? Yes, whole grains and no sugar. I brought them home to hubby....Yum! :)
P.S. The next day I found other crackers called Two Moms in the Raw that Rena and I liked better.
Produce
Organic versions of my usual fruits and vegetables are readily available at Whole Foods. However, I decided to join an organic CSA that would deliver to my door, just for convenience. Full Circle Farm packs up a box for us every week with organic produce from their own farm and partner farms and delivers it to our apartment at some point on Thursday nights or early Friday morning. I love it because I don't have to think about my weekly fruits and vegetables if I don't want to, but if I want to change anything there's a window of opportunity. I could also tell them never to give me something if I don't want it. Customer service is great, always responding to your questions and comments. They'll even give you a credit if you're not completely satisfied with all your received produce, if you ask. They even called a couple weeks to make sure I got my box, since the deliverymen couldn't be buzzed in. All this for $46 a week, for a family order. I always end up buying other fruit because hubby and Rena eat TONS of fruit (and I barely get any!). Also there are a lot of greens, which sometimes spoil before I get to use them all. This is good, though, because I'm encouraged to get used to using more greens.
Also I love that it comes so close to Shabbat so I get fresh produce for Shabbat! :)
Meat
I wanted to make a meat dish for Friday night Shabbat dinner right after my organic transition, but I couldn't find any locally. Help! I resorted to making a vegetarian meatloaf in the hopes that hubby wouldn't even realize it was fake. Funny thing was, I realized as I went to serve it that it happened to be April Fool's Day, so even if he figured it out, it would just be an April Fool! Well, he didn't, and not only that but it came out awesome and he said it was deli-quality meatloaf! :) Unfortunately when I made it next time it didn't come out so good -- I think I just got lucky the first time because tofu isn't usually the best thing in the world -- so after that I just got regular kosher ground meat. As for chicken, for the following Shabbat I went online to search for kosher organic meat, as QFC only rarely has Empire Organic chicken. I tried ordering but they wouldn't even process my order for a single chicken because shipping costs would have been exorbitant! I'd promised hubby chicken for Shabbat so I had to run to QFC and get a regular kosher chicken. Hubby also likes when I get the precooked kosher chickens but unfortunately those aren't organic either. I once tried making General Tzo's Tofu in the hopes that hubby wouldn't realize it was tofu not chicken, but he could totally tell the difference because it didn't come out good. My only hope of avoiding non-organic meat of any kind is to make it to QFC right when they've just gotten a shipment of Empire organic chicken. They get so little so rarely that it's snapped up immediately. They supposedly get it every two weeks on Mondays, but last time I was told it was coming on Tuesday and then it was late. I've basically given up on that. In short, I'm resigned to eating non-organic meat, at least while living here in Seattle. If it were just me I might go vegetarian, but I can't do that with my hubby who goes nuts after just a few days without meat.
Fish
According to my Internet research, wild-caught is really the best way to go, even better than organic fish. So I called Whole Foods again to find out what wild-caught fish they had and found a recipe accordingly. I've also gotten wild-caught canned tuna and salmon.
Cheese
I had a big problem with cheese, as there didn't seem to be any available locally that was both kosher and organic. Initially I tried making my own but I could only make a soft cheese which is simple and doesn't need rennet, a thermometer, etc. I made Paneer cheese. Hubby and I liked it for a bit but then he got tired of it. I spent more long hours on the internet, and it turned out that a couple brands, including Tillamook Cheddar that's found at Whole Foods, were actually organic and kosher thought they didn't advertise that on their packaging or website. Though it's a bit annoying that I can only get cheddar but no mozzarella, parmesan, or others, I can't complain too much because I do get to have cheese. There's also kosher organic cream cheese, cottage cheese, etc. I love the brand Nancy's because it tastes good and it's cultured. Also Nancy's sells giant containers of yogurt which is wonderful because my husband is currently on a fruit-and-yogurt kick. (Please note, not all Nancy's products are organic so you have to make sure the package says organic when you buy.)
Sweeteners
I had been using Truvia, but it's not organic. Also I'd heard that it can actually make you gain weight because your body is tricked into producing unneeded insulin which is stored as fat. So I experimented with various sweeteners. I'll go into more detail in a separate post, but for now suffice it to say that there's no lack of natural sweeteners, such as honey and maple syrup, in organic versions.
Passover
I bought kosher organic grape juice that I'd finally found at Whole Foods awhile before that. However, my husband requested wine. I could not find a wine that was both kosher and organic so I resigned myself to getting Israeli wine. If it wasn't organic, at least I could support Israel with my wine purchase instead of Kedem.
Whole Foods actually had kosher organic matzah and matzah meal that were also whole wheat, amazingly enough, so that was that.
Hubby requested a couple of things -- horseradish and marshmallows -- that simply did not exist in kosher and organic versions. I complied like a good wife.
Other food wasn't a problem; I just had to make sure everything was up to the strict standards for Passover, i.e. nothing with leavened bread.
Gotta draw the line somewhere
At this point, I still accept food that someone gives me, is provided free at an event, etc. even if it's not organic. I'll eat Noah's Bagels still, for example, if someone else pays. I admit that free food is a weakness of mine, but it's also important to me to not look a gift horse in the mouth. As it is, my husband has local relatives who don't keep kosher, and it's hard enough for them to give us food that's ok, without making them also give us only organic food. I'll also use up non-organic food I had from before my transition, and I'll also use something non-organic that I bought accidentally. It's still food, an it's important to me not to waste.
Conclusion
While organic food has become important to me, and indeed most of the food I eat nowadays is organic, sometimes something else that's important to me trumps my desire to eat organic. I don't want to beat myself up over not eating 100% organic. As much as I can do is good. I don't have to throw in the towel when I encounter a snag.
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