Life Au Natural

I am finding and creating dishes that my family is liking this past week, praise the Lord!  I was beginning to think that my 8 year old son was going to have to get a feeding tube if he didn't start eating soon!  Smoothies saved the day!  His favorite contained everything but the kitchen sink!  It had Kale, wheat germ, flax seed, coconut, blueberries, strawberries, mango, vanilla yogurt, oj aconcentrate, and a breakfast blend all natural juice - oh, and some egg shell water ice.  What is that?  Well, I saw it on this YouTube.  It's good for bone health.  Anyway, he loved the smoothie!

I promised I would tell about my chili!  It was awesome!  I cooked some organic kidney beans in a pressure cooker with some sea salt.  I then put 1 tomato, 1 onion, some basil and oregano, banana pepper, and a hot pepper in the food processor.  I added that to my beans - water and all.  I also browned 1 pound of organic hamburger and added that.  It was still a little on the thin side,so I added a little cornstarch.  I'm going to order some arrowroot, which can be used to thicken and won't contain the carbs.  It was delicious!

I am in the process of reading Trim Healthy Mama at the recommendation of a friend.  It is really eye opening!  I love it!  I will share some of the wisdom as I read on!

I made 4 quarts of homemade vanilla yogurt this morning along with a pint of sour cream.  I haven't tasted the yogurt, but it smells fantastic!  My little girl had a little of the sour cream on a bean burrito we had for lunch.  It wasn't really ready, but there was a little bit of firmness on the top, so she got a little of that.

Oh, and the big news is I got my Wonder Washer yesterday!  We have done about 6 loads in it and it has worked great!  Drying the clothes is a challenge in this rain, so I'm having to use my dryer.  My goal is to try and take us off grid as much as possible. I have a pic of it on my  Facebook page.  Just click the link.  I posted it yesterday, so it should be pretty close to the top of my page.

I am stir frying this evening for supper.  No meat - just veges.  I have some whole grain rice.  According to Trim Healthy Mama, I should have a protein with this, but life goes on!  I just took some granola out of the oven that I made to go over my vanilla yogurt for dessert!  It has nuts in it, so there is a little protein!

Take care and Happy Living!!

Challenges

Ther are some challenges with going chemical/hormone free in your eating - namely cost and taste.  Yes, cost is what keeps a lot of families from going natural.  However, if you overcome cost, you are still left wanting in the area of taste-at least for a newbie.  I have 3 goals for my new c/h free lifestyle.  The first is to eat c/h free on a budget of $60.00 a week for a family of 4.  Secondly, I want to be able to prepare breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts and snacks that my family will love.  Lastly, I want to share it all with my dear readers.  I want to eventually post menus with recipes and costs.  

For now, my success and failures in the past 2 days.  Homemade pineapple ice cream - UCK!  Ok, I followed a recipe for this one.  The recipe called for 2 tablespoons of liquid Stevia.  I thought that was a lot, but, hey, it's a recipe that someone has tried and liked!  I did use coconut milk in the place of evaporated milk, bot the aftertaste of the stevia was terrible!  It was not edible.  That was Monday evening.  This morning, I made an oatmeal casserole for breakfast.  Success!!!!  This was a winner.  Even my picky eater ate it! Here is the recipe:

1 organic apple cored and sliced

1 c. raisins

1/2stick of butter

2 eggs

1/2 c of maple syrup

2 T. wheat germ

2T. Flax seed or flour

3 c. oatmeal

2 t. baking soda

1t. sea salt

1 c. Vanilla Almond Milk

2 t. cinnamon

Grease a shallow casserole dish.  Layer the apples and raisins in the bottom.  Mix the rest of the ingredients together in a mixer.  Pour this mixture over the fruit.  Bake at 350° for 30 minutes. 

The apple, raisins, butter, eggs, wheat germ, oatmeal, and Almond Milk were organic.  Kroger has an organic brand that is relatively inexpensive.  I buy a lot of my groceries from Kroger.  They also have c/h free meat.  

This afternoon, I gave the ice cream another try.  This time I used honey instead of stevia.  I didn't add any fruit. I used vanilla almond milk in place of evaporated milk.  It was a lot beter, but not much taste.  We added some leftover breakfast casserole as a topping and it was really quite tasty.  Next time, I will add a little more honey and another teaspon of vanilla.  

As soon as I perfect the ice cream, I will share the recipe!  Coming tomorrow - Awesome Organic Chili!