Rae: June Read

Your June assignment is fiction. Read any young adult or juvenile book of your choice...something you could read aloud to kidlets. Report back. We will be in Japan until the first week of July. I will post your next assignment at that time.

Happy reading!

Lulu: Beans, magical indeed

I made a really easy dinner tonight using beans, and I did them in the crock-pot. It wasn't fancy at all, but definitely hearty, yummy, and easy. (Usually my three prerequisites.) I put pinto beans in the crock-pot, not pre-soaked or anything--just out of the bag--in the crock-pot with some beef broth that had whole stewed tomatoes and Mexican spices in it (the broth was pre-frozen, courtesy of Phill's mom--all I had to do was thaw it in hot water). I turned the crock-pot to High and let it cook for 5 or 6 hours, and they were perfect! I made some boil-in-a-bag rice (this stuff is so good to me and takes 10 minutes to cook, costs $1.12 a box with four bags in each box), put the beans over the rice and then piled cheese on top. It was really delicious and easy! Oh, and so CHEAP! I guess cheese isn't that cheap, but beans sure are, and rice is. And broth is easy to make.

Anyway, that's all. Just a really easy, yummy dinner using beans.

Lulu: Food and Einstein

Crock-pot Rigatoni

Makes 10 servings

28-oz. jar spaghetti sauce

12-oz. rigatoni, cooked

1-1 ½ lbs. ground beef, browned

3 C shredded mozzarella cheese

½ lb. pepperoni slices

sliced mushrooms, optional

sliced onions, optional

1. In 4-quart slow cooker, layer half of each ingredient in order listed. Repeat.
2. Cover. Cook on Low 4 to 5 hours.

Variation: Use 1-lb. ground beef and 1-lb. sausage.

Beans & Rice

Makes 8-10 servings

1-lb. pkg. dried red beans

water

salt pork, ham hocks, or sausage, cut into small chunks

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

3-4 C water

6-oz. can tomato paste

8-oz. can tomato sauce

4 garlic cloves, minced

1. Soak beans for 8 hours. Drain. Discard soaking water.
2. Mix together all ingredients in slow cooker.
3. Cover. Cook on Low 10-12 hours, or until beans are soft. Serve over rice.

Variation: Use canned red kidney beans. Cook 1 hour on High, then 3 hours on Low.

Note: These beans freeze well.

Dorothea’s Slow-Cooker Chili

Serves 6-8

1-lb. ground beef

1-lb. bulk pork sausage

1 large onion, chopped

1 large green pepper, chopped

2-3 ribs celery, chopped

2 15 ½-oz. cans kidney beans

29-oz. can tomato puree

6-oz. can tomato paste

2 Tbsp. chili powder

2 tsp. salt

1. Brown ground beef and sausage in skillet. Drain.
2. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker.
3. Cover. Cook on Low 8-10 hours.

Variations: For extra flavor, add 1 tsp. cayenne pepper.

For more zest, use mild or hot Italian sausage instead of regular pork sausage. Top individual servings with shredded sharp cheddar cheese.

These are the recipes I was going to try from the crock-pot cookbook. I think the Dorothea one is hilariously named. I only wanted to try it because of the name and its few ingredients. I only tried the Rigatoni (which was REALLY good!!) , because Phill's mom came to visit (from England, no less) and made meals every day! In fact, we had so much left over each time that we were able to freeze NINE meals for this week. Absolutely perfect for our moving week.

On another non-food-related (however, book-related) note, I'm reading a book I picked up in the book section at Wal-Mart. I just thought it looked really big and great, but I read the first few sentences and then decided I definitely wanted to read it. It's called Einstein: His Life and Universe (by Walter Isaacson). Hasn't someone mentioned this author? Or this book, even? Anyway, I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading it kind of slowly, but the writing is beautiful and I'm pretty intrigued by Einstein. There are a few things from it that I had to share, because they were just so beautifully worded, not to mention that the ideas expressed are beautiful, too.

"His success came from questioning conventional wisdom, challenging authority, and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. Tyranny repulsed him, and he saw tolerance not simply as a sweet virtue but as a necessary condition for a creative society. 'It is important to foster individuality,' he said, 'for only the individual can produce the new ideas.' This outlook made Einstein a rebel with a reverence for the harmony of nature, one who had just the right blend of imagination and wisdom to transform our understanding of the universe. These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the twentieth century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age."

And I found this particularly adorable and interesting. He had a hard time with early language development, and the author says "Whenever had had something to say, he would try it out on himself, whispering it softly until it sounded good enough to pronounce aloud." I find that so interesting because it kind of is a pre-cursor to how he later came up with his theories. He used "thought experiments", which essentially means he thought things out, as opposed to real experiments. But he learned through this method. He learned using his imagination. He thought things out until they were right in his head, and then he verbalized. In the beginning, different characters are described, different characters in his life, and it becomes evident that many of these colleagues could have also come up with the theory of relativity that was so defining to Einstein's life. But the more I read about what kind of person he was, the more I'm convinced that he was meant to be the one who brought about that theory (and other earth-shaking ones). In fact, this sums it up really well:

" 'When I ask myself how it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstances,' Einstein once explained. 'The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time. These are things he has thought of as a child. But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up. Consequently, I probed more deeply into the problem than an ordinary child would have.' " I just don't think that was happenstance, coincidence, luck...it's very much on purpose, this life, these people who shape our history and cause us to think in ways we aren't accustomed to.

Lynness: Song of the South

We were talking at the dinner table and somehow we got on the subject of
"Brer Rabbit and de Tar Baby" and I told Isaiah the story (with voices
as per my Disney record and storybook collection, which Isaiah now has-
and listens to on the same old Fisher Price record player I used, but I
digress...). Nathan mentioned that there were more stories about Brer
Rabbit in a book at Grandma and Grandpa's house (Jon and Janis') and I
remembered someone on this blog wanting to know where it went- I think
it's in Lakewood!

Beccy: New Stephanie Meyer Book FYI

For those of you who are Twilight Fans (Abby!) I am attaching the link for this Daily Herald article from this morning's paper.
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/265974/136/

Lynness Re: Beans, Beans the magical fruit

I, too, have been working on integrating beans into our diet, and have
enjoyed some success. The biggest problem I have encountered is the
TIME factor needed for dried beans- you usually can't wait until 5pm to
decide what's for dinner at 6 (like I do) unless they're canned beans.
So, after suggestions from my ward food storage gurus, I decided to
precook and freeze portions of beans. This sounded like a great idea to
me, but I just hadn't gotten around to it. I decided to go for it after
reading Rae's post and opened a mylar pouch of black beans from my food
storage. And then I put the WHOLE thing in to soak. This morning I
realized just how many beans I had to cook. I had 5 POTS worth- 2 of
them being large, oblong crock-pot types!!!! I am putting them in
quart-sized freezer bags to be thawed when needed. I think it will
really work well- though next time I probably won't do 5+ pounds for
dried beans at a time!!

I've never really been too fond of the idea of spending a whole day
making meals to freeze and take out- I don't want to take a whole day to
cook, and I don't care for many of the meals that freeze well. BUT
(since I'm a 30 minute or less dinner prep kind of person who make
scratch meals almost every day) I do buy bulk ground beef and cook it up
and freeze it in 1lb portions. If we want super nachos, or chili, or
tacos all I have to do is pull out a pack of ground beef and warm it up
while I chop produce or open cans and dinner is ready in about 5 minutes!

Rae: Beans, Beans the magical fruit

I have made it a personal goal to learn how to cook with dry beans, lentils, and peas. I purchased two really cheap extension cookbooks online that are very basic. And I have two wonderful new cookbooks to explore:

The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World

Like Beccy, we are trying to make better eating choices at our house. Since our move to Payson, Ivan has not been working full-time and so he hasn't been eating out for lunch or drinking sodas. He doesn't miss it at all. I have been at home and have been able to enjoy grocery shopping and cooking more. And I DO enjoy both. We have both lost weight and we feel so much more healthy. And Bill hasn't complained. Yet.

I recently went to the Drypac cannery in Spanish Fork and purchased a lot of #10 cans of food. We gave the bulk of our really old food storage to the single woman who purchased our home in Lancaster. She had nothing in the way of storage and we didn't really have room to bring it all with us. So, in many ways, we are starting over. It's interesting to live in an LDS community and see the panic that many members exhibit because they have not been following the counsel of the prophets. As your auntie and sister and friend, I can bear witness that we are SO blessed (spiritually and physically and materially) when we try our best to follow those leaders. Consistently, with small (or even tiny) but solid steps. Not in panic mode trying to take imprudent giant steps.

Back to the beans. I failed my first attempt at cooking with beans. It's kind of tricky to figure out exactly how much soaking and cooking they need. And DON'T use a slow cooker. It's just not the best method. At least for dry beans. Ivan asked me if I felt bad about the beans I had wasted. I said that if I had felt that bad, he would have known because I would have been in tears! As it was, I just got more information and tried again. I successfully made a delicious batch of Boston baked beans! I am soaking black beans this morning for an end of the week batch of Cuban beans. So good!

I am reminded of a time when Gma spent the entire day trying to make homemade tomato soup. And I do mean the whole day. It didn't smell very good to Beccy and I and we kept making snide comments about having to eat it. At least I did. We were not little children but Gma MADE us sit down at the table and we were supposed to eat her creation. Darned if I was going to! It made her really mad until she herself sat down to eat...took a couple of spoonfuls and realized how nasty the soup was. Then she cried a bit and then laughed a lot and the soup went down the disposal...or something like that. The moral of that story for me as a mother is that I never forced the kids to eat anything BUT they had to at least try it first. Many times they have tried new foods only to discover that they like the end product!

Enjoy your cooking, eating, and reading!

Beccy: April & May reads

Hey girls!
It's as much fun reading your posts as it is to read the book of the month. I wish we had a week together on a deserted island to read books and gab. (I typed desserted island first, and decided that might be a good idea, too.)

Speaking of desserts, I would like to read 50 Ways to Take the Junk out of Food. You mommys might like Sugar-Free Toddlers. I am trying to teach my family (me included) to eat less refined sugar, among other yucky stuff. Troy's family history of diabetes is first and foremost in my mind, but in general, I'm just getting really sick of junky, sugary foods. Maybe that comes from having a long period of life when I ate them freely. Us moms have to teach our kids to do better than we did (well, at least better than I did ...) When you really start to look, it's scary how much our culture feeds sugar to kids. I have a friend whose daughter eats fruit snacks and drinks Kool-Aid all day long, and then she wonders why she can't get her to eat a normal meal. Empty calories and making our country sick and obese. But I won't get on a soapbox here . . .

I have the Fix It and Forget It cookbooks (Costco) and we have some family favorites from them (Hamburger Sausage Soup, only we leave out the hamburger, for one). I've never been so ambitious as to spend all day cooking/bagging up a weeks' worth of meals, but I do love to use a crock pot. I actually have two. One of them actually burns things because it cooks too fast. We call it the microwave crock pot. Kind of defeats the purpose. When Troy was little, his mom said he called it a "crotch pot." :) Eeeeeww!

I'm a bit late, but my April read was Peak by Roland Smith. It's about a 14-year-old New Yorker with famous mountaineer parents whose name is Peak ("It could have been worse," he says, My parents could have named me Glacier, or Abyss, or Crampon.") Stuck in the city, he gets in trouble for scaling buildings in the city like Spider Man. A judge orders him to leave the country (an attempt to prevent copy-cat climbers) and he ends up in Tibet with his father, about to become the youngest person to climb Everest. He goes to his father's Sherpa for training with a Nepalese boy and faces dangers and decisions that mature him. This book is great fun with loads of boy-appeal. It effectively immerses you in the "culture" of mountain climbing. I think the best things it has going for it are the original and unpredictable plot and the author's narrative voice--Peak is convincingly "teen" and sometimes very funny. Curt loved it and we're actively seeking out other books by this author (Curt's reading Elephant Run).

Abby: Slow Cooker, Hungry Planet, Maya, Jessica Seinfeld, Reading

Rae/Lulu, I will be most interested to hear how that turns out! I'm going to go look that book up at our library. When Heidi was born I had three dinners I had made in advance that helped out. With Esther I just didn't even bother. But I'm intrigued by this idea. Similar, but different. And although I'm not expecting like your friend Camille, I think it'd be helpful on those busy days - like you said. :)

Lynness, I'm curious about the Maya Angelou book now! I think I'll go look it up. My pick for the month is a book I checked out a couple of months ago. The recipe is also one we used at that time but I've been craving it ever since. When Eric's laptop died we lost the recipe so I thought I could sort of cheat and count the book since I checked it out again and have been skimming through it. It's called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. The main purpose of the book is to look at several countries in depth to see how they eat from week to week and compare the amount of money they spend on food. But there are a lot recipes as well. We have always loved Eric's mom's recipe for German Rouladen and found a new recipe in this book. I'll post the recipe soon.

And oh - Deceptively Delicious? I've tried several of the recipes (a few months ago) and think it's a really fun idea! Eric did say that he would prefer that we just do one or two a week instead of the crazy amount I was trying. :) Although you can't really taste the additions, they do change the texture and as adults -- we know something's different. The girls didn't seem to mind at all! My favorites and the ones that I think are the most successful at disguising it were the breakfast recipes, bread recipes, and desserts. I especially remember a lemon cupcake with raspberry filling that I made. It had cauliflower added to the cupcake and beets to the raspberry filling. We couldn't taste it at all.

And oh, my April read - The Wheel on the School - is still sitting on my shelf. I've read the first chapter. I'll finish and get back to everyone on that. This past month I read A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan and Opera: What's All the Screaming About? by Roger Englander. Now I am reading The Joy of Music by Leonard Bernstein and Piano Lessons by Noah Adams. I thoroughly enjoyed my books last month and am already enjoying this months books. :) Oh, how I love to read.

On a side note, I am so engrossed in the story of The Wheel of Time - the series I am currently reading by Robert Jordan. It is so amazing to me how authors create worlds and wonderful characters with such depth! Because I've been so into these lately, my spring cleaning hasn't been moving along as quickly as I'd like. So I made myself a promise last Sunday that I wouldn't read the next book in the series until I had done my spring cleaning (decluttering, reorganizing). I even told Eric so that I wouldn't be tempted to renig. BUT...all week I've been reading two other books, both non-fiction. And both books I wasn't exactly sure I'd enjoy. And I've been reading JUST as much as I was before. Apparently, it's not the story alone -- it seems to also be the reading time that I need. Soooo....I picked up the next book in the series at the library today and will just be working extra hard to budget my time a little better understanding that reading is my hobby and that I need reading time as well as cleaning time (and playing with girls time, and cooking time, and hubby time, and reading to girls time).

Love you all!
Abby

Lulu: I've changed my mind.

While the Deceptively Delicious cookbook is intriguing and full of nutritious recipes, I lost my enthusiasm to do a recipe from it when I realized that I didn't want to buy a million vegetables and fruits and spend one night puree-ing them, and I don't really feel like trying any of the recipes with canned pureed vegetables instead. (Something about the phrase "canned pureed vegetables" makes me feel a little queasy.) Another time. I decided on a different course, one that will still take a little bit of preparation, but ultimately, one that will save me some time in the evenings.

I have an awesome cookbook called Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with your Slow Cooker. (Dawn J. Ranck, Phyllis Pellman Good) I have a friend who is pregnant with her third and engaged to a man who already has a child. So she will very soon be a very busy mom of four. We got together and I helped her make a menu from several of the recipes in this cookbook--I think about twelve. Then I went with her to the store and did the running-around to get the ingredients while she pushed the cart (full of her two kids) and maneuvered her delightfully large 9-months-pregnant belly. We brought the food back, and I had to go home, but she prepared all the ingredients of the recipes and froze each meal in its own Ziploc bag, complete with a label describing its contents and how to cook it in the crock-pot. While the preparation was quite a bit of time (because we did twelve meals at once), it will make the first few postpartum weeks so much easier for her.

Although I'm not going to make myself twelve frozen crock-pot meals, I am going to prepare four to be used during the next two weeks, just to use on days when we have less time or will be out of the house until dinnertime. Phill's mom is coming to visit from England (YAY!!), and I've planned for most of the meals to be pretty low-maintenance so that we can relax together. The meals I will be trying in the crock-pot are: Rigatoni (I had no idea this could be made in a crock-pot, but there's even recipes for bread in this cookbook), Gravy roast with vegetables (a classic, but I've never made it in the crock-pot with gravy, just broth, and I think it will be better this way), Beans & Rice, and Chili.

I'll post again about how it goes, how everything tastes! Sorry, Lynness, that I won't be trying anything from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook (yet). I know you were interested to see how it would turn out!