Homemade Ginger Tea

Most of my friends know I have a love affair with Yogi Ginger Tea. 

I love ginger in general: gingerbread, chewy ginger cookies, Thai ginger beef, Gingered Butternut Squash & Apple Soup, Ginger Chicken on a Stick, Watermelon Soup with ginger and mango … I could go on and on.

So when Tonia posted a recipe for homemade ginger tea, I was enthralled.  If only I had had the recipe two weeks ago when I was terribly sick with the sinus crud (and packing and moving at the same time)! 

I’m adding gingerroot to the shopping list right now.

Here’s the recipe Tonia shared:

ginger is great for colds and for upset stomachs.  this tea is strong, but it really relieves cold symptoms.

2-inches fresh gingerroot

2 cups water

freshly squeezed lemon juice

honey or maple syrup to taste

Peel and slice 1″ of ginger thinly.  Place in pan with two cups of water and simmer about 15 minutes.  Peel the other bit of ginger, grate it, and squeeze the pieces over a bowl to collect the juice.  Set aside.  Strain and pour simmered liquid into cup.  Add a squeeze of fresh lemon and a few drops of ginger juice.  Sweeten to taste.

2 cups. 

from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair  

Sweet Potato, Squash, & Apple Soup

I’ve been enjoying new recipes and raw food inspiration from Happy Foody!  (Thanks to Tonia for sending me her way.)

We are currently living with my inlaws while we wait for our new-to-us (18-year-old) house on 17 acres right across the road to become available.  Hopefully, it’ll be only another couple of weeks.  In the meantime, I tried out this recipe on my inlaws. 

They loved it … and I loved it!  Definitely a soup I’ll add to our list of “regulars.”  I’ll double it next time so we have leftovers for a few days.

Sweet Potato, Squash, & Apple Soup
1 medium onion
1 T olive oil
2 cups veggie stock*
2 cups butternut squash, peeled and diced
2 cups sweet potatoes or yams, peeled and diced*
2-3 medium apples, cored and diced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional - it was spicy w/o it, so add it slowly)

*I added an extra cup of these ingredients to stretch the soup since there were six of us eating it as a main dish.  It was just right for six with not a lick left over.

In a large soup pot, saute the onions in oil on medium high heat until translucent. Add the stock, squash, potatoes, apples, and salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne and bring it to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes (or longer). Take 2 ladles’ worth of veggies and 1 ladle of stock and blend in the blender or food processor until smooth. Return to soup pot and stir together before serving. Makes 4-6 servings.

Italian Dressing Mix

I had lunch with a friend yesterday.  Mary whipped up a salad of baby greens, avocadoes, tomatoes, and sliced red onions.  Her homemade Italian dressing and a couple of slices of bakery bread with a little dab of organic butter made for a heavenly meal. 

The homemade Italian dressing was simply delish.  Mary says she keeps a large batch of the spices mixed in a jar then makes up enough dressing for a week at a time. 

Italian dressing mix can be used in so many ways — for a meat marinade, to sprinkle on your popcorn, or mixed with olive oil as a seasoning on Roasted New Potatoes.  The mix would make a nice hospitality thank you or housewarming gift, too.  We’re all looking for ways to eat well! 

Here’s the dressing recipe (based on an AllRecipes.com recipe):

• 1 tablespoon garlic salt
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 tablespoon dried parsley
• 1/4 teaspoon celery salt
• 1 tablespoons salt

In a small bowl, mix together the garlic salt, onion powder, sugar, oregano, pepper, thyme, basil, parsley, celery salt and regular salt. Store in a tightly sealed container.

To prepare dressing, whisk together 1/4 cup white vinegar, 2/3 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons water and 2 tablespoons of the dry mix.

Roasted New Potatoes

adapted from AllRecipes.com 

1 1/2 pounds new potatoes, quartered

2 tablespoons olive oil (cold-pressed, extra virgin)

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary (crush it in your hand before adding to release its flavor) 

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper  

Combine all ingredients in a 9″x13″ glass baking dish; toss to coat. Bake, uncovered, at 450 degrees F for 35 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Toss every 10 minutes or so to ensure the potatoes don’t stick or burn.

How do you cook healthy without spending a lot?

That’s Meredith’s question.  Okay, I’ll bite.  But reluctantly.  Because I am not claiming to be frugal when it comes to our family’s food.  Am I frugal elsewhere in our budget to allow for a larger food budget?  Yes. But I do spend more on food that is healthy, and for us that often means organic.

Back to Meredith’s question:  How do you cook healthy without spending a lot?  (Which, by the way, doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how.  She does a great job of it already.  I’m just sharing my tips here.) 

I have one HUGE answer for this that I have not implemented yet but plan to start this year:

Grow your own food.  A vegetable garden, herbs, fruit trees and bushes, a cow, chickens, whatever you can squeeze into the green space you have.  It’s a different kind of investment:  Time.  Space.  Hard work.  Inconvenience.  Patience.  Diligence.  And I’m not sure I’m up to the task, but that’s the only real answer I’ve found. 

When I talk to people who have grown their own food, they tell me I’ll love it.  And by golly, I’m just going to do it whether I want to or not.  Healthy, organic food for my family is that important to me at this point. 

Plus, it’s good for the environment (less packaging that ends up in landfills, fewer emissions from transporting the food thousands of miles) not to mention that the nutritional value is much higher than foods grown and picked before they’re ripe and/or loaded with pesticides and other junk.

As for cooking healthy NOW and working that into our budget, I have implemented some steps that have reduced our overall grocery bill so I can spend more on healthier foods.  Most of these tips have also happily saved me time in the kitchen and inches on the waistline and bum:

• Keep it simple.  A meal of grilled chicken, steamed broccoli, and fresh carrots is much healthier, cheaper, and less time-consuming than Creamy Chicken and Broccoli Casserole, prepared or homemade rolls, and orange jello.
• Menu plan!  Oh yes, that’s an important one.  If you feel your spending is out of control or you have nothing to eat for dinner but all kinds of food in the pantry, discipline yourself to menu plan.  
• Make it from scratch.  It’s usually healthier and cheaper.
• Rarely fix dessert.  We typically have ice cream, which I stock up on when it goes on sale, for the hubby’s bedtime snack.  Other than that, desserts happen on special occasions (and at Grandma’s house!).  That’s one less category of items on the menu plan and grocery shopping list and several fewer inches on my bum.
• Cut out bread (rolls) with every meal.  I rarely buy prepared rolls anymore.  Once I learn to make whole-grain bread, I’ll probably start serving bread occasionally since it makes my hubby happy.
• Eat less meat. Gradually increase the vegetable portions on each plate and decrease the meat portions to stretch one meal of meat to last for two meals.
• Eat breakfast for supper.  It’s a nice change to have scrambled eggs & sprouted grain toast, omelets (using leftovers), or whole grain pancakes for supper every now and then.
• Make soup (using leftovers) more often.
• Buy whole chickens.  They are cheaper by the lb and you can get several meals out of them plus homemade chicken broth for soup.
• Shop the “manager specials.”  These are the sales that are even cheaper than the sale price. I like to shop at Publix for their Greenwise, all-natural meats and stock up the freezer with manager specials.  Just be sure to cook them right away or freeze them safely.
• Don’t buy food just because it’s on sale.  On the other hand from shopping the manager’s specials, don’t buy food you don’t typically eat just because it’s on sale.  Sometimes I find myself wanting to buy unhealthy snack foods just because they’re on sale.  Stick to your guns and walk away!  It’s not a good deal if it adds an item to your grocery receipt that wouldn’t have been there had it not been on sale.
• Get it directly from the source.  Many of our local organic farmers sell their produce and meats to local health food markets where you can buy those items for a premium price.  But they also sell their goods at farmers’ markets or through CSAs (community supported agriculture) for much, much cheaper.  Frequest farmers’ markets and roadside stands or join a CSA.
• Limit or cut out entirely processed boxed foods and snacks.  We’ve reduced snack foods to apples, bananas, whole-grain crackers, raisins, carrots, celery, pineapple, and other fruits (when they’re on sale). Fewer processed, boxed, snack foods means fewer grocery dollars and better health.
• Move any boxed foods to glass storage containers.  Hang with me on this one.  I’ve started moving our foods that are boxed (the whole-grain crackers, raisins, etc.) to glass jars instead of leaving them in the boxes they were packaged in.  I did it for my own organizational purposes, but I realized later that my kids started choosing snacks differently.  They quit asking for the boxed foods (that were now in glass jars) and started asking for fresh fruits and vegetables.  It dawned on me that half of the issue with eating junk foods is that we respond to the bright colors and images and words on the packaging.  Now, my kids are gravitating more toward the bright colors of the natural fruits and veggies.  Fascinating!  So, once again, fewer processed, boxed snack foods means fewer grocery dollars.
• Enforce a “no eating unless you’re in the kitchen” rule.  Whole apples are the only exception.  Originally this was enforced because we had the house on the market, and I admit it was tough to change the rule.  I felt like a mean mommy.  But once the kids got used to it, I noticed they weren’t as motivated to eat just because they had the munchies (especially while watching a movie or TV) if they had to drag themselves away from their activities to eat in the kitchen.  Now they eat only when they are actually hungry.  And since they’re eating in the kitchen anyway, a squishy banana or a juicy peach is a fine option since they have a napkin and plate handy.  Before, they used to choose less-messy but more expensive snacks like boxed crackers that they could carry to another room with them.  Again, this one equals more healthy choices and fewer grocery dollars on boxed foods.

Enjoy!

Cooking with Lentils

I’ve been experimenting with cooking with lentils.  These little legumes promote excellent health on a tight budget. 

This recipe for Curried Lentil & Pumpkin Soup was a big hit in our family.  I will warn you that it took some coaxing to get my kids to take a bite.  It’s not pretty.  But after that first bite, they polished it off and we ate it for lunch for a couple of days.

Robyn gives instructions for cooking lentils and rice and provides great meal ideas here and here for using the leftovers to stretch your grocery dollars.  (HT: Meredith)

And here’s a recipe for Lentil and Sausage Soup from What’s Cookin’?

Do you have a favorite recipe that uses lentils?

Big Lots sale on organic vegetable broth

Spotted a great deal at the Big Lots in Franklin: 

$1 for 32 oz. box of Swanson Vegetable Broth
(Certified Organic & Vegetarian)

The expiration date is April 2008, so you’ll want to use it soon or freeze it.  There were about 15 boxes left after I hoarded 10 in my basket.  We’ve been making lots of soup this winter (homemade chicken soup is wonderful when you have the sniffles). 

I’ll often substitute vegetable broth for chicken broth in recipes, especially when I find a sale like this.

Homemade Raw Ketchup & BBQ Sauce

Many of the condiments at the grocery store contain high fructose corn syrup (bad!) and MSG (bad!) and loads of sweeteners.  So I’ve decided to make my own.  I’ll try these recipes to start and tweak them to our taste.  I can also choose fresh, organic ingredients to make them healthiest.

recipes from Sweet Savvy: 

Catsup 

I was actually surprised how much I like this! It has a nice, fresh taste and contains all the goodness of raw tomatoes, raw garlic and raw honey. Will keep up to two weeks in the refrigerator. Each tablespoon contains less than 1/4 teaspoon honey.

Makes about 2 cups.

1 cup fresh ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 8-ounce jar sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil
1 small clove garlic, grated on a microplane grater or very finely minced
1/4 cup raw honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1. Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor, including all the oil in the jar of sundried tomatoes.
2. Blend until very smooth.

BBQ Sauce 

This is a fine accompaniment to any grilled food in the summertime.   You can also add any ingredients traditionally used in cooked BBQ sauce to this raw base.

Makes about 2 cups.

1 recipe Catsup (Raw)
chili powder and cayenne pepper, or any combination of chilis and/or chili sauce and chili powder you like.

1. Make the catsup according to the recipe.
2. Add the chili powder to taste.
3. Blend until very smooth.

Ginger Chicken on a Stick

2 Tbsp oil
2 Tbsp ginger root, grated
1 tsp garlic, minced
2 chicken breasts, skin and bone removed.  Cut into strips.
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp honey
sesame seeds

Heat skillet, add oil, ginger, garlic, and chicken.  When chicken is almost done, add soy sauce and honey. Finish cooking chicken.  Put on sticks and roll in sesame seeds.

Curried Lentil and Pumpkin Soup

After disassembling our Autumn centerpiece in the kitchen this week, we had two perfectly good butternut squashes and a pumpkin left over.  My ears perked up when I heard a mom at the neighborhood playground telling a friend about a pumpkin soup with curry and lentils.  I’m pretty sure this is the recipe she was talking about.  I can’t wait to try it.

from RecipeZaar.com

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tsp curry powder
1-1/2 cups red lentils, rinsed and pick over
1-3/4 kg pumpkin or butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, chopped
8 cups vegetable stock
yoghurt or sour cream, to serve

1. Heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add the onion and garlic, and cook until the onion is softened, about 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the curry powder and cook, stirring for a further 30 seconds.
4. Add the remain ingredients, except the yogurt or sour cream.
5. Stir until well combined then bring to the boil.
6. Reduce the heat and cook, partially covered for about 30 minutes sirring occasionally until the pumpkin is tender.
7. Serve in bowls with a dollop of yoghurt or sour cream.