Time for Chai

My current favorite recipe for chai:

1. A good mug, having a smallish surface area so the drink doesn’t cool off too fast.
2. Celestial Seasonings India Spice Chai, 1 bag.
3. boiling water
4. powdered milk, 4 heaping teaspoons (Fat free, yet creamy! Woot!)
5. granulated sugar, 2 heaping teaspoons (Dude, if it’s not sweet, it’s not chai)
6. a timer set for 4 minutes

Steep the tea for 4 minutes or a few seconds longer.  DO NOT SQUEEZE THE BAG.  Remove the bag.  Add milk and sugar, stirring.  Drink and relax.  If you’re really fortunate, you will enjoy the entire cup before it cools.  If your kids interrupt you with things like, “Gannon rode my bike and the chain came off,” or “Will you please call the national guard now,” do not despair.  This is yummy iced as well.

By the way, those are examples of two actual interruptions I have had during this very cup of chai, which I am now sipping.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

These things are so good.  I can’t even say.  Words fail.  The recipe comes from a book that I think you should get.  It’s called One Bite Won’t Kill You and it’s by Ann Hodgman.  It’s hysterical, and practical too.  But this isn’t supposed to be a book review, so I’ll be quiet now.

2 cups creamy peanut butter

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons baking soda

a pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease two cookie sheets or cover them with parchment paper.

Beat the peanut butter and sugar in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and then the baking soda, salt, and vanilla.

Roll the dough into 1-inch balls and place them 2 inches apart on the cookie sheets. With the tines of a fork, press crosshatches into the balls to flatten them.

Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, in the middle of the oven, for 10 minutes, or until they’re puffy and golden brown. Let them sit on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes; then transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

Makes 3 to 4 dozen cookies.

I Don’t Make These Things Up.

We ate strawberries and whipped cream last night after Gannon’s ball game.  As we sat in the living room savoring the yummy-ness, I wondered aloud, “What did our pioneer ancestors ever do without carrageenan?”

Gannon asked, “Was she the inventor of whipped cream?”

Ms. Geenan, I salute you.

My New Favorite Salad

Okay, this is so yummy. I like salads, as a general rule, but lately I have been uninspired. This might have to do with my attempt to eat those salads-in-a-bag that the local grocery chain sells. They always taste yucky to me. I hate it when the greens get slimy. Plus, you really have to eat the whole thing as soon as you open it, because they don’t keep well at all afterward. But I digress.

The salad I’ve enjoyed for lunch for the past two days goes like this: Baby spinach, topped with diced apple, feta cheese, homemade granola, and a few craisins. Splash it all with Newman’s Own Lighten Up Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette. I have to restrain myself from licking the bowl. But maybe that is too much information.

The photo makes it look like it’s mainly toppings with about 4 little leaves of spinach. Be not deceived; there’s half a bag of the iron-laden stuff in there. I like spinach.

Nutritional Comparison: Marshmallow Fluff vs. Grape Jelly

Fluff/Jelly

Serving Size: 18g/20g

Calories: 60/50

Fat: 0g/0g

Sugars: 9g/10g

Protein: 0g/0g

Anything else good? no/no

Bring on the fluffernutters!! Actually, even as I type this, I am eating a sandwich consisting of multi-grain bread, organic peanut butter, and Fluff. And the kids are eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. And we won’t even discuss the nutritional implications of that.

Pineapple Salsa Recipe

This recipe comes from a book called Healing Foods by Miriam Polunin, published by DK in 1999. I utterly love this salsa. So does Brian (“It’s The Bomb”). The kids…well, too many textures in there for them. They prefer their food to be uncomplex and fairly bland. This is not. Plus, this has little flecks of actual green stuff, which always turns them off immediately. If I had a good photo of it, I would post it here because this salsa is beautifully colorful.

Pineapple Salsa

• 1/4 lb fresh pineapple, finely diced
• 2 tbsp finely chopped red pepper
• 1 tsp finely chopped green chili pepper (I use the canned kind.)
• 3 tsp chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tsp chopped fresh mint (Gannon takes care of the mint in a pot on the windowsill.)
• 1 tbsp lime or lemon juice

In a serving bowl, combine all the ingredients. Allow the flavors to blend for at least 10 minutes before serving. Chill,covered, until ready to serve and eat within 2 days. Serve at room temperature.

Easter Lesson

Here’s an idea for presenting the resurrection story to your children in a different way.

Resurrection Cookies is a recipe that incorporates biblical instruction and hands-on learning. This household may give it a try, after the antibiotics kick in.

Honey Banana Oat Muffins

Here’s my newest creation. I’m attempting to retool some of my favorite recipes to make them healthier. For the basis of these muffins, I used my favorite banana bread recipe from one of those community cookbooks places use for fundraising (this one was from the Somerset Manor, a nursing home in Bingham, Maine). I tweaked it significantly, and it tastes pretty much nothing like the original. Still yummy though. Even Brian likes them. Acadia ate 4 in a row. Gannon despises them. I’ll eat his.

	Honey Banana Oat Muffins
Ingredients 1/3 cup applesauce 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup honey 2 large eggs, beaten 3 ripe bananas, mashed well 1/2 cup white flour 1 cup whole wheat flour 1/4 cup old fashioned oats 1/4 cup steel cut oats 1 tsp baking soda pinch of salt
	Fat: 0.7g Carbohydrates: 16.1g Calories:73.8 Protein: 1.8g

Cream applesauce and sugar. Add honey, eggs, and bananas. In another mixing bowl, combine flours, oats, baking soda, and salt. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, mixing till moistened. Spoon into mini muffin pans and bake 17-20 minutes at 350.

Number of Servings: 30 mini muffins

Recipe calculation thanks to SparkRecipes.

The Mom Book

I love magazines.

I hate magazines.

What a pain to have years’ worth of Family Fun, Parenting, Child, Cottage Living, and the like in boxes, piles, or on shelves. Who has room for that kind of thing? And how can you find anything in there anyway? “Hmm…didn’t I see a great idea for my boy’s bedroom curtains…somewhere…sometime….?” But those monthly periodicals often contain great ideas within their pages. So what to do?

Rip ‘em out.

I have a binder (another binder idea) that I have dubbed The Mom Book. In it I save and organize all the articles, columns, and even ads that inspire me. Mostly they have to do with the kids or the house, which is why I called it The Mom Book. When I find a neat color scheme, I stick it in there (I use those slide-in page holders). If I see a great toy ad, it goes in there too. Recipes go in a different binder, unless it’s more of a nutritional essay. I have an article about raising an introverted child, one on convenient exercises for mothers, and one on postpartum depression. Craft and holiday ideas go in there too.

When I’ve pillaged everything I like from the magazine, I toss it in the trash recycle it get it out of my house. This was a big step for me, since I am a packratesque teacher who sees a future use for everything (I save those plastic containers mushrooms come in). But the clutter finally got to me! So there you have it.

This post inspired by Rocks In My Dryer’s Works For Me Wednesday posts.

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Kitchen

One of my favorite blogs (“Rocks In My Dryer” is the title…I was hooked immediately) hosts a weekly blog carnival of sorts. This week’s topic is the Kitchen. Here’s my tip:

I’ve gone through my cookbooks and photocopied my often-used recipes and organized them in a binder. I use the slide-in plastic pages to keep them from getting goopy from food and so that I don’t have to deal with punching hold in the papers. The result is that I don’t have to flip through pages and pages of recipes I never use just to find one I need to pork chops, or whatever. It’s nice to have them all in one place. When I want to try something new, my books are still available.

Maybe this isn’t such a novel idea, but it’s a great tool for me. I once started doing this by hand onto those little index cards, but whoa, was that tedious. The copier is great. I suppose if you had to drag your library to Kinko’s or something it might be a pain, but we’ve got one here in the house, and I take full advantage of it!