Foodie Friday

Food is always a priority around here. I will happily surrender whatever "wiggle room" there may be in our budget for groceries - I can happily go weeks at a time without purchasing anything else. I read recently that it costs an average of $191 a week to feed a family of four real, unprocessed, whole foods. We may not spend that much each week, but when push comes to shove, I'd rather buy a few extra organic food items than a new shirt. It's just worth it to me. Here's a look at what happened in our kitchen this week, not an all-inclusive menu - just a few highlights:

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

• I already shared this recipe, but wanted to put it back out here because it is so easy and makes such a good loaf of bread. I made this for John and the girls to enjoy for tuna sandwiches the night that I taught Baby Sing and Sign this week and we've been enjoying it toasted in the mornings with a shmear of coconut oil.

Lemon Chicken and Orzo Soup - Using egg yolks in soup may seem odd - it did to me at first. But I've made this soup several times and the egg yolks give it such a great creaminess and, combined with the lemon, a wonderful flavor. I don't add any extra salt or other seasonings - just the veggies, chicken, broth, egg yolks, and lemon.

adapted from Good Life eats

• 1 large organic chicken breast
• 1/2 organic onion
• 2 organic carrots
• 1 large organic garlic clove; pressed
• 2 backyard egg yolks
• 1/2 organic lemon; juiced
• 1 32-ounce box organic, low-sodium chicken broth
• 1/2 C whole wheat orzo
• 2 C organic kale; chopped
• Saute the chicken breasts until cooked through; shred and set aside
• Saute the onion and carrots for 5-10 minutes in olive oil; add garlic and saute 2-3 minutes more
• In a separate bowl, whisk egg yolks and lemon juice
• After veggies are softened and fragrant, pour in chicken broth; bring to a boil
• Temper egg yolks slowly with 1 C hot broth; add all back into pot
• Keep heat at or below medium - do not boil again
• Add shredded chicken and orzo; simmer until orzo is cooked
• Add kale and simmer until kale is wilted

Simple Whole Wheat Muffins
adapted from Pastry Affair

• 3 T organic, unsalted butter; melted
• 2 T organic coconut oil; melted
• 1/2 C organic coconut sugar
• 1 backyard egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 C organic whole wheat flour
• 3/4 C organic whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt (I've started using pink Himalayan salt for all my baking)
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 - 3/4 C whole milk (add milk last as the quantity depends on your flours - whole wheat varieties need more liquid)
• Bake at 350 degrees in a greased muffin tin
• I made mini-muffins and I think they baked for 10 minutes, or so (but keep an eye if you make these as I'm not positive); made 24 mini muffins

Whole Wheat Brownies
adapted from Brown Eyed Baker

• 1 stick organic, unsalted butter; melted
• 1 C organic coconut sugar
• 1 1/8 oz organic, unsweetened cocoa powder (I weighed this on our kitchen scale because I was dividing a recipe in half)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 2 large, backyard eggs
• 3/4 C organic, whole wheat pastry flour
• 3/4 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 C homemade toffee chips (this is the result of the over-cooked batch of Christmas caramels that we're putting to good use!)
• Preheat oven to 325 degrees
• Combine melted butter and sugar in a heat-proof bowl; place bowl over a pot of simmering water and heat until fully combined
• Remove from heat and add cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, espresso powder, and vanilla
• Stir in eggs one at a time
• Add flour
• Mix in chocolate chips and toffee (or any other additions)
• Butter an 8x8 glass pan
• Bake for approximately 25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean
• This batter was thick... but the brownies are soft and delish! As you can see, the 8x8 pan produces thick brownies - I might try the same recipe next time but a slightly larger dish with a decreased baking time, just to make some flatter treats. Not that we're complaining... these will be served up at our weekly group dinner tonight with Talenti vanilla bean gelato and Valentine's sprinkles, per the request of my lovely sous chefs. :)

Sweet Potato, Swiss Chard, and Sorghum

A home-cooked meal, from start to finish, it such a wonderful thing. For those who enjoy these meals on a daily basis, it's easy to take them for granted. And that's part of what I love about blogging like this - after baking or cooking, I get to stop and look at what we've made, take pictures of it, and then relish in the beauty and taste. 

Last week, we had one of "those" dinners, the kind of dinner that I stopped to admire because of the health factor, the homemade factor, and the yum-o factor: Chicken, Black Bean, and Sweet Potato soup with Swiss Chard and fresh Whole Wheat Bread. Now it's time to share!

Whole Wheat Bread
adapted from Zesty Cook Easy Whole Wheat Bread

• 2 tsp local honey
• 2 2/3 C warm water
• 4 tsp active dry yeast
• 3 T organic sorghum
• 5 C organic whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 C wheat germ
• 1 T oats
• Stir honey into 2/3 C warm water
• Sprinkle yeast over mixture and let rest for 10 minutes
• Combine sorghum with 2/3 C warm water; combine with yeast mixture
• Stir into flour; add salt, wheat germ, and 1 1/3 C warm water
• This is a very sticky, gooey dough
• Pour into non-stick pan, smooth top with wet fingers or spatula, and sprinkle with oats
• Cover with towel and let sit until rises to top of pan (less than 1 hour)
• Bake at 400° for 30-40 minutes

Chicken, Black Bean, and Sweet Potato Soup

adapted from our very own Gran's recipe box

• 2 local organic chicken breasts
• 1 box organic low sodium chicken broth (with extra water, if needed)
• 2 small-medium organic sweet potatoes
• 1 small organic onion
• 1/2 organic pepper (red or green)
• 1 can green chilies (I had whole chilies and chopped them myself)
• 1 can organic black beans, rinsed
• Mild salsa
• Organic sour cream and fresh cilantro for garnish
• Saute onion, pepper in organic olive oil
• Add chicken breasts and chicken broth; simmer until chicken is done
• Remove chicken and shred or chop; return to pot
• Add diced sweet potatoes; simmer until cooked
• Add green chilies, salsa, black beans - extra salsa, salt, and pepper are good flavor boosters
• Serve with a dollop of sour cream and cilantro

Swiss Chard

• 1 big bunch organic swiss chard (ours was homegrown from Gran and Grandpa's garden!)
• Olive oil
• Crushed red pepper flakes
• Kosher salt
• Organic lemon
• Heat approx 2 T olive oil over medium
• Add red pepper flakes (more or less depending on desired spice-quotient)
• Add roughly chopped swiss chard and cover
• Cook until swiss chard is wilted and tender
• Squeeze lemon over before serving

I loved everything about this meal. I've made the soup many times and the girls eat every drop. This was my second attempt with the bread recipe - I used sorghum this time (the original recipe calls for molasses) and I increased the salt. We thought it was much tastier and, as far as a no-knead whole wheat bread goes, it's great. And the swiss chard? Loved it. Thank you for enjoying this little walk down meal-memory lane with me - I'm so thankful for this kind of dinner. 

Kale - from smoothie to soup

The kale-a-thon continues! As you may have seen, it reigned supreme in smoothies, and last week the mighty, mighty kale came through in soup! I've often heard the word "rustic" used in reference to various foods and I think that word would be appropriate for the kale and potato soup I made - it was basic, it was simple, and it was really tasty!

Kale, potato, and carrot soup

• 1/2 organic onion, diced
• 3-4 organic carrots, chopped
• 4 cloves organic garlic, pressed
• 3-4 organic potatoes
• 2-3 C. organic kale, chopped
• 4 C. homemade turkey stock 
• kosher salt, pepper, dried thyme and basil
• handful organic barley (uncooked)
• Saute onion and carrots in olive oil, seasoned with thyme and basil, until onions become transparent
• Add potatoes and saute for a few minutes
• Add garlic and cook until fragrant
• Pour in stock (I had it warming on the stove so it would keep the temp up)
• Add kale and cover for a few minutes, just until kale starts wilting
• Stir in kale and add barley
• Simmer all together until barley is done, about 35-40 minutes
• Season with salt and pepper, serve with a dollop of plain organic Greek yogurt

Potato chips

Hello! Let me tell you - a hobbyist like myself just doesn't have enough hours in the day! I haven't blogged in a week, but I have made another hat, an awesome wreath (pics to come), and fed the fam some new and some old recipes. But, as I've said before, when blogging is another hobby, it sometimes has to take the back seat..

Potato chips. I am obsessed with homemade baked potato chips. They are so easy, so tasty, and are a perfect accompaniment to soup, which the weather has turned and soup season is upon us. Get slicing and baking:

Sweet Potato Chips

• 1 large organic sweet potato
• olive oil
• kosher salt
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Peel sweet potato and thinly slice (maybe 1/4th - 1/8th of an inch)
• Coat with approx. 1 T olive oil
• Sprinkle with kosher salt
• Spread in single layer on cookie sheet
• Bake for 15 minutes; flip chips over; increase oven temp to 400 degrees and bake for another 10 minutes, or so
• Baking time varies - approx 25 minutes total, but depends on oven and thickness of chips

Served with an organic kiwi and a gouda and apple grilled sandwich! 

We made these again last night with a little chicken and rice soup. The girls caught a little cold and I needed something hearty and full of goodness in their bellies last night. I don't have pics of the soup, but here's the simplicity of it:

Chicken and Rice soup

• Cook brown rice separately 
• Saute onions, carrots, celery in olive oil
• Push veggies to side of pot and make room to melt some butter
• Add 1-2 T. flour, whisk until thickens
• Pour in chicken broth (I used 2 C. homemade broth and 1 C. water)
• Add shredded, cooked chicken 
• Salt/Pepper
• Stir in cooked rice 

Gran saved the day yesterday - she had fresh homemade chicken broth as well as the meat off of the whole chicken she had cooked while making the broth. John and I both commented at dinner what a difference homemade broth makes. I think it will be on my list for the weekend, so I'll get the camera ready!

Hopefully another good night's sleep and leftover soup for dinner, and we'll have these faces back in no time:

Riding hand-me-down horses from the neighbor named
"Dapple-gray" and "Moo-choo" wearing "helmeys"

Team Lawrence does dinner!

There is a children's book called I Went Walking.  This afternoon, we lived our very own real life version of this book. And in the words of the girls, here is what we saw:

• "pink pig. no real. pretend."
• "black cat. no, gray. no, white cat."
• "three cats."
• "anderson, momma, baby."
• "man. fix door. tool. driver." 
• "truck. dirty. rust."

We saw a pretend pink pig.  We saw three cats; the friendliest of the bunch was white. We ran into our friend Anderson, his momma, and his baby brother. We saw a man fixing his garage door... with a tool... a screwdriver. We saw an old rusty truck.

As you can see, it's hat-making season in our house.
Lucky for me, I have hat-loving ladies.

After our long and very interesting stroll, we came home to feast upon a pot of potato soup made by our very own Chef Daddy! Soup season is upon us - if you've got a pot, some of this, some of that, a little broth... voila! Soup was the probably the number one vehicle for veggies for the girls last fall/winter. They acquired tastes for broccoli, peas, spinach, corn, cauliflower, green beans, onions, peppers... you name it, their little bodies ingested it with a soup spoon. Here's a quick run-down of ingredients:

• 
  About 8 potatoes - yukon golds, medium size
• 4 pieces of bacon
• 2 leeks of average size
• 2 celery stalks
• 2 carrots
• 1 quart chicken broth (homemade chicken stock is the ultimate)
  • + 4 or 5 additional cups of water
• 
  5 pieces of roasted garlic
• 2 Bay leaves
• Fresh oregano
• Fresh rosemary
• Salt & pepper to taste

Tools of the trade:

• Large soup pot - Le Creuset is the champion soup-maker!
• 
  Stick blender (or regular blender)

And here are some snippets of info from John's soup-savvy mind:

"Before we start, you could easily “healthy” this recipe up by simply omitting bacon and using extra-virgin olive oil instead. However, this is not the particular route I chose for this particular soup. In my humble opinion, few things go together so well in life as bac’n ‘n’ taters...

As far as soups go, it does not get much easier than potato. Plus it is healthy, inexpensive, and like most soups, gets even tastier after a day or two in the fridge."


-John "Daddy-doo" Lawrence

We love John for a lot of reasons.  But, his overall love of being in the kitchen is definitely at the top of the list! Time after time, I've said to John "Dear, do you get tired of doing dishes every night?", and his consistent response is "Not if it means that I've had a good home-cooked meal". Thanks, dear, for dirtying dishes in order to replenish us from our walk-about with this hearty soup and then doing dishes so that I can sleep peacefully knowing that the kitchen is clean. 

A slice of warm cornbread and fresh dark chocolate and cherry whole wheat cookies for dessert (recipes for both to come) perfectly accompanied our potato-bacon goodness.