Last Days of Summer... Tomato Basil Salad

Today I woke up missing my grandmother and the feeling of her - her presence - has been with me all day. Dropping off the kids. Going to the farmer's market for fresh veggies.

The market is right next to where she used to live and we'd go there often together. So it was no surprise that the tomatoes were not only on special, but good and plump and calling my name. As were the Italian peppers that will be making their appearance tonight in one of her most famous dishes.

However, I don't want to wait until tonight to make something that reminds me of my Nonna. Smells like her. Tastes like her cooking. Well, almost. No matter how many times I make her food, it never comes out quite right. Not like grandma used to make.

And her food was famously good...and good for you.

Well, as I type this, I have her Insalata Pomodoro - Tomato Salad - marinating on the kitchen counter top and making my mouth salivate.  THIS is the secret to great tomato basil salad: letting it sit, the flavors marry.

From the peck of tomatoes I got from the farmers market, along with a bunch of basil and 1/4th of a gigantic locally farm raised red onion, I made a lunch worthy of my grandmother's presence. I just wish she were here to enjoy it with me.

Tomato Basil Salad - Insalata Pomodoro

* 3 cups free cut ripe tomatoes (see below for free cut)
* 1/4 cup sliced red onion
* a bunch of basil, riped
* 1 1/2 cup olive oil
* salt to taste (I use a lot of salt, you do what you want)

1. Wash the tomatoes and, over the salad bowl free cut the tomatoes into bite sized pieces. THIS is the other secret to perfect tomato salad. Never use a cutting board, as all the juice from the tomatoes will just sit there on the board when you want the juice in the salad. That's the best part - sopping up the left over juice with a good piece of bread :)
2. Next, slice the onions and add to the bowl. I like mine in long, skinny slices. "Cut them how you like," is what my grandmother would say.
3. Tear the basil up into bits and pieces over the bowl. Let the aroma carry you away and don't bother with the cutting board. Cutting basil bruises it and it just doesn't taste the same as when you rip it up with your fingers.
4. Lastly, drizzle all your warm, lucisous olive oil over the salad and add salt. Like I said, I use a lot of salt, probably about 2 teaspoons or so. Why? It neutralizes the acidity of the tomatoes and THAT is what makes this salad so scrumptious - the smooth bite and flavors.
5. If you're in a hurry, go, eat. But if you have time, stir all the ingredients together and let them sit in the bowl for a few minutes to meld together. The longer, the better. This salad is best served at room temp.

And that's it!

One final summer dish during these last days of summer...

Enjoy!

:)

Pumpkin Muffins...Yummy and Gluten Free :)

At the suggestion of my best cooking buddy Amanda Green at A Whole Lot Of Crock, I made pumpkin muffins this morning...yummy gluten free pumpkin muffins :)

Now, I used to whine and complain when I first had to go gluten free. But now that it's been, what, 2 years? I've found there are so many "alternatives" out there that I really don't miss out. And I say "alternatives" in quotes because let's face it: if we ate a variety of grains - aka, not wheat all the time - do you think we all would be having such a problem with wheat? Like I always say, eat the rainbow everyday...aka, eat a variety of everything, everyday :)

Anyway, back to the muffins...

To make the muffins yummy, EASY, and gluten free, I use Bob's Red Mill GF all-purpose baking flour.  I've been using Bob's Red Mill gluten free flours for years and everything I make, from banana nut bread to, well, bread, turns out great. It's quick, easy, and I use this gluten free flour in place of the wheat flour any recipe asks for. Just like that. Yep, being gluten free is that easy.

I added a sprinkle of sugar crystals on top of the
muffins before I popped them into the oven.

This recipe asked for King Arthur's GF flour, but I've used it before and I wasn't all that impressed. What I baked felt gritty when we ate it, like there was too much corn meal or something. That, and it wasn't exactly gluten free since I didn't feel all that well after eating what I made... Hence, I use Bob's Red Mill GF flour instead and everything I make with it comes out perfect.

That is, if I follow the recipe...

But I followed the recipe this time, much to my surprise (and I'm sure also to my cooking buddy's surprise when I tell her ;)

Warm out of the oven, they turned out great. Can't wait to surprise the kids with them after school...and my hubby too. The kids can have gluten, but thanks to both their parents having Celiacs, well, they eat gluten free about 80% of the time. That's why I'm glad I've found substitutes for wheat flour that don't short change taste, flavor and that all important YUM factor.

Here's the recipe I followed. I'm only going to post BB original recipes here for my B&B, so, when I am brave enough with baking (and following directions) I'll post my own creative baking recipes!

;)

Food Snobbery on a Budget... How to Buy and Eat GOOD Food on a Budget

this post also appeared on the "The Green Mamas" blog

Hi, my name is Lia Jean Green bean-eating-machine Mack, and I'm a food snob.

I blame my parents for having us live in Italy for three years while I was growing up. Every Friday morning, the town we lived in held an open air market - mercato - where you could purchase anything and everything fresh.

Fresh fish from the sea, fresh artichokes picked that morning, homemade pastas that took two seconds to cook...and eat ;) Oh, and let's not forget the cheese wagon. Every Wednesday at the same exact time, a man pulling a cart of cheese wheeled down our street would sing, "formaggio... mozzarelli... provelone..."Now that's a real cheese wagon :)

So I got used to eating whole fresh foods...and fell in LOVE! There is no beating the taste of a ripe red tomato mixed with fresh basil, straight from the garden. I think that's why everything tastes so much better in Italy. Everything is fresh and local. So what if I couldn't drink the water or that the heat and electricity went off daily at 3pm because someone had to go home for a nap. Italia... I was in food heaven!!!

And then we moved back to the States - God love America - where there is a grocery store open daily on almost every corner. Only thing, most of the food available here comes in a box. Or a plastic bag. Or worse! It's not fresh... tt's not even local!

Oh, the horror!!!

Well, fast forward to 2010 (when I originally wrote this post). I'm married to super conservation man and together we are raising two amazing little greenies. I've been a stay at home mom for six years and have not one thing in my life to complain about. Nothing, that is, except my food budget. It's tight. Living on one income in a very expensive part of the country and being able to buy good whole food that is fresh, organic, and local is difficult to say the least. But it's doable. And for a while there I was doing pretty good.

For the last two years, however, I've been feeling the pinch. Food prices continue to rise, utilities are still going up, and summer is coming, which can only mean one more thing will be getting more expensive. Gas. Just in time for everyone to get out and have fun after being frozen all winter long. So nice of them...

Yet, I still want to be able to feed my family well, but wanting to buy and eat only organic, local, fresh foods can be quite costly. I know of one local mom who spent over 17K last year in food alone because they ONLY eats local, organic, fresh meats, cheeses, fruit, vegs, ect.... That's a lot of money.

Of course I could easily manage to buy all sorts of shit food (pardon my language) within my food budget. I could feed my family from the box and dollar menu and have money left over! But I'm a food snob, remember? I cannot eat that stuff. Ingredients I can't pronounce? Food that doesn't even look or taste anything like food? Packaged, frozen, processed, freeze dried disgustingness???

Oh no. Not me, baby. Not after eating REAL food. It's just not possible.

Plus, I don't want my kids eating shit - crap - either. We are what we eat. When we eat crap, we feel like crap and therefore act like crap. And I'm not interested in taking care of kids who act up all the time and get sick all the time because they are being fed crappy food.


So, having very little wiggle room in the budget, but wanting only the best (what mom doesn't?), I've learned how to get most everything we need (aka: I want) on the budget we have. It's fun being a food snob. You just have to find a way to do it when you don't have endless amounts of the green stuff lying around. Below are some of the things I do to get what I want, thus enabling me to eat really yummy good for me food all the time

I don't do all my shopping in one place.

Some things at my main grocery store are too expensive, yet elsewhere they aren't. Took me a while to scout out all the good deals, but now I know that by going to three separate stores on a rotation, I can come home with a lot more of what I want for less $.

I garden.

I grow tomatoes and herbs and carrots and potatoes and all sorts of yumminess :) By doing so, I control what goes in and on my food. The kids have their own garden plots too, and we spend a good deal of time with our beloved Mother Earth to keep it going. After the cost of seeds, what we reap is free. FREE! Best price ever :)

I go to Farmer's Markets.

And stock up. What I find for good deals, I buy bunches of and freeze what we're not eating that week. Frozen blueberries, frozen green beans, frozen anything. Tastes great when picked and stored at peek season. Nothing better than pulling out veggies in the dead of winter that you bought fresh and know where they came from. Tastes great.

I buy in bulk.

When I can, I save up and buy staples in bulk. Flour, sugar, pasta, rice... This year I'm buying 1/4th of a bison and a neighbor of ours who likes to hunt is getting us a deer. Who knows how long this supply of meat will last, especially since we only eat meat two to three times a week. (Meat is pricey) This, of course, will happen after I find an inexpensive deep freezer on Craigslist (anyone have one they don't want?)

I do without.

Yes, you heard it. We don't buy pop (soda). The kids drink juice once a day (if that) and that's it. Instead we drink water, H2O, aqua fresca...you get the picture. Same thing with junk food. Since we don't eat it, we don't buy it, thus we save big bucks. And if it's not on sale and it's not in the budget, oh well. Better luck next time, right?

I make it stretch.

I can make five meals out of one chicken. And that doesn't include the amount of chicken stock I make and use from the bones. So I might spend a little more buying an organic chicken - or A LOT more buying an organic local chicken - but I'll make that dollar stretch as much as possible. With a little ingenuity, you can think of ways to make anything stretch more than one meal.

Of course, all of this takes time, energy, and knowledge, something that most of us are hard pressed to find. But it CAN be done if you put in the work. The biggest benefit from all of this? You won't have to compromise. I don't. Just know that there will be times when you can't get the big ticket items, but that's fine. You don't have to have exactly what you want ALL the time, do you? My goal is to have good for us food only, and don't concern myself with specifics.

Everyone can be a food snob on a budget. All you have to do is learn to go with the flow, enjoy what's in season, and make the most of what you've got.

:)

The Nook, The Book, & The Hook

My husband and I just celebrated our anniversary. 11 years of blissful love...

Before the big day, my husband said I was going to like the gift he got for me. Many questions later, all I got out of him was that I had 14 days to decide if I liked it or not... and it's electronic...

When I opened my gift a few days later, after mentioning in passing conversation that I never wanted one of those reader thingies, that I love the feel of a real book in hand, I opened my gift - a Nook.

In all sincerity, I tried to act surprised, happy, and interested. He reminded me I had 14 days and if I didn't like it, we could return it. No hurt feelings. He's a guy. Enough said.

I went through the tutorial, almost, but I lost interest. He loves electronics and went about setting it up for me. And I did try to borrow some of his exuberance, yet walking around the house afterwards, seeing all my books strewn about on table tops, night stands, coffee tables, steps, in bathrooms, next to the pool, on the banister, I couldn't help but know in my heart of hearts that I was never going to fall in love with the Nook. It just didn't feel real.

My books, even the wide assortment I borrow from the library and have to give back after I've fallen in love with them, are like friends to me. I enjoy seeing books all around me, piled up, laying about.

And when I see any given one of them - like Real Cajun sitting on the table next to my laptop right now - I am instantly brought back into the past conversations we've had. And with each book, each friend, I have different conversations going on...

Real Cajun by Donald Link
Secrets to Happiness by Sarah Dunn
Effective Writing by Bruce Ross-Larson
Deeper by Megan Heart

These are the titles of my most current friends, and if you look into any of these books, you can see just how varied our conversations are! ;)

Point being, I love a real book. Love to lay them out, pile them high, anywhere along my path, so that in passing I'll see them again, maybe pick one up for a quick moment alone, maybe just daydream a bit about the story inside.

With the Nook, I just couldn't see myself able to do any of that. I'm a visual person. I need to have my books around me, in view. Or I feel I might loose out on that ongoing conversation, forget to pick up a good old friend that I haven't seen in a while because it's conveniently tucked away in some well organized list that I have to go find after turningg something on, recharging something.

It's just not real for me.

And that's what I said to the guy behind the counter when we went to return the Nook a few days later. Bored with it, I hadn't even registered it yet.

"But how do you know you're not going to like it if you don't even try?"

How do you explain to someone that I had already done so, in my head. I'm a writer. I can come up pretty quick whether or not a story line is going to work out. For me, I knew this one wouldn't.

"Most people who said they wouldn't like a reader LOVED it once they actually downloaded some books."

How do you explain to a sales person that you love FREE books from the library.

"But there are millions of free books that you can download into your NOOK!" This was said in a very my gosh, woman, aren't you stupid tone.

How do you explain that you don't CARE about those free books because you just want to happen upon a book at the library, book store, friends house, that looks good.

This was the hook that had caught my darling husband. He thought, frugal mama that I am, would love free books. And I do. I just don't want to have to do so on an electronic device that I have to charge, turn on, find my list, be bombarded with a list of a million books that I can read knowing full well I don't have enough time in my life to do so.

I just like what I like. I like real books.

"Wow. That's a shame." This, said not only by the Nook sales man behind the counter, but also three other Barnes & Nobles workers nearby, listening in on our conversation.

Steadfast in my opinion - I'm in my thirties, I've brought two children into this world sans medical intervention, I've been married for 11 years, I've seen the worst and best life can hand you, and I'm still ticking - I'm allowed to have one. No matter that it doesn't help add to your sales commission or that I'm the only person on earth who thinks this way. I don't doubt myself. I like real books!

And, I've studied advertising psychology. I'm impervious to sales hooks.

So I returned the Nook, purchased a real book, and went home happy. I know plenty of people that are in love with their reader, and I'm happy for them. Everyone deserves to be happy.

How about you?

Do you love the book? The Nook? Both? Or are you still on the fence?

What hooks you?

Maybe sometime in the future I'll try the Nook again, see if it's really the best thing going.
But for now, I see one of my books out of the corner of my eye - one of my friends - calling to me, its book cover my favorite shade of turquoise blue... And maybe after that, I'll look for a good Cajun recipe for dinner tonight inside one of my new friends.

:)

Food Snobbery on a Budget...

Hi, my name is Lia Mack, and I'm a food snob.

I blame my parents for having us live in Italy for three years while I was growing up. Every Friday morning, the town we lived in held an open air market - mercato - where you could purchase anything and everything fresh.

Fresh fish from the sea, fresh artichokes picked that morning, homemade pastas that took two seconds to cook...and eat ;) Oh, and let's not forget the cheese wagon. Every Wednesday at the same exact time, a man pulling a cart of cheese wheeled down our street singing, "formaggio... mozzarelli... provelone..."Now that's a real cheese wagon :)

So I got mega used to eating whole fresh foods...and fell in LOVE! There is no beating the taste of a ripe red tomato mixed with fresh basil, straight from the garden. I think that's why everything tastes so much better in Italy. Everything is fresh and local. So what if I couldn't drink the water or that the heat and electricity went off daily at 3pm because someone had to go home for siesta. I was in food heaven!!!

And then we moved back to the States - God love America - where there is a grocery store open daily on almost every corner. Only thing, most of the food available here comes in a box. Or a plastic bag. Or worse! And it's not fresh. It's not even local!

Oh, the horror!!!

Well, fast forward to today. I'm married to super conservation man and together we are raising two amazing little greenies. I've been a stay at home mom for six years and have not one thing in my life to complain about. Nothing, that is, except my food budget. It's tight. Living on one income in a very expensive part of the country and being able to buy good whole food that is fresh, organic, and local is difficult to say the least. But it's doable. And for a while there I was doing pretty good.

For the last two years, however, I've been feeling the pinch. Food prices continue to rise, utilities are still going up, and gas is expensive.

Yet, I still want to be able to feed my family well, but wanting to buy and eat only organic, local, fresh foods can be quite costly. I know of one local mom who spent over 17K last year in food alone because they ONLY eat local, organic, fresh meats, cheeses, fruit, vegs, ect.... That's a lot of money.

Of course I could easily manage to buy all sorts of shit food (pardon my language) with my food budget. I could feed my family from the box and dollar menu and have money left over! But I'm a food snob, remember? I cannot eat that stuff. Ingredients I can't pronounce? Food that doesn't even look or taste anything like food? Packaged, frozen, processed, freeze dried disgustingness???

Oh no. Not me, baby. Not after eating REAL food. It's just not possible.

Plus, I don't want my kids eating shit - crap - either. We are what we eat. When we eat crap, we feel like crap and therefore act like crap. And I'm not interested in taking care of kids who act up all the time and get sick all the time because they are being fed crappy food.

So, having very little wiggle room in the budget, but wanting only the best (what mom doesn't?), I've learned how to get most everything we need (aka: I want) on the budget we have. It's fun being a food snob. You just have to find a way to do it when you don't have endless amounts of the green stuff lying around. Below are some of the things I do to get what I want, thus enabling me to eat really yummy good for me food all the time

I don't do all my shopping in one place.
Some things at my main grocery store are too expensive, yet elsewhere they aren't. Took me a while to scout out all the good deals, but now I know that by going to three separate stores on a rotation, I can come home with a lot more of what I want for less $.

I garden.
I grow tomatoes and herbs and carrots and potatoes and all sorts of yumminess :) By doing so, I control what goes in and on my food. The kids have their own garden plots too, and we spend a good deal of time with our beloved Mother Earth to keep it going. After the cost of seeds, what we reap is free. FREE! Best price ever :)

I go to Farmer's Markets.
And stock up. What I find for good deals, I buy bunches of and freeze what we're not eating that week. Frozen blueberries, frozen green beans, frozen anything. Tastes great when picked and stored at peek season. Nothing better than pulling out veggies in the dead of winter that you bought fresh and know where they came from. Tastes great.

I buy in bulk.
When I can, I save up and buy staples in bulk. Flour, sugar, pasta, rice... This year I'm buying 1/4th of a bison and a neighbor of ours who likes to hunt is getting us a deer. Who knows how long this supply of meat will last, especially since we only eat meat two to three times a week. (Meat is pricey) This, of course, will happen after I find an inexpensive deep freezer on Craigslist (anyone have one they don't want?)

I do without.
Yes, you heard it. We don't buy pop (soda). The kids drink juice once a day and that's it, if that. Instead we drink water, H2O, aqua fresca...you get the picture. Same thing with junk food. Since we don't eat it, we don't buy it, thus we save big bucks. And if it's not on sale and it's not in the budget, oh well. Better luck next time, right?

I stretch it.
I can make five meals out of one chicken. And that doesn't include the amount of chicken stock I make and use from the bones. So I might spend a little more buying an organic chicken - or A LOT more buying an organic local chicken - but I'll make that dollar stretch as much as possible. With a little ingenuity, you can think of ways to make anything stretch more than one meal.

Of course, all of this takes time, energy, and knowledge, something that most of us are hard pressed to find. But it CAN be done if you put in the work. The biggest benefit from all of this? You won't have to compromise. I don't. Just know that there will be times when you can't get the big ticket items, but that's fine. You don't have to have exactly what you want ALL the time, do you? My goal is to have good for us food only, and don't concern myself with specifics.

Everyone can be a food snob on a budget. All you have to do is learn to go with the flow, enjoy what's in season, and make the most of what you've got.

:)

Body After Baby...A Week in Chocolate...

Yep, that's what it was... a week in chocolate...

And fast food, Chinese take out, left over chips, chips and more chips, a dip in the hidden Halloween candy dish, midnight runs to the kitchen for more junk...Yep...I think that just about says it all...

Fatigue is a b*tch, ya'know? I just didn't have it in me to even cook for a few days running. It was all I could do to just keep up with the kids, the house, and do a bit of laundry. You know you're not doing well when laundry, where your sitting most of the time, kicks your ass. But then I started to feel better (that's the day I started eating chocolate....) and then I was able to find energy again.

However, where I faltered (and, oh, did I falter) I picked up elsewhere big time. I took daily walks, shoveled snow and went sledding, danced with my little girl, and overall had a very active week! And even though the fatigue hit me two days this week where I could barely do anything, I felt great and more energetic during a week that is usually a NO fun, ZERO energy week for me.

Maybe there's something here...maybe it was the chocolate...

Hmmm....something to consider for the future...

;)