Nuances of Natural
Okay, you already know that fast food isn’t really good for you. And if you know that and you still choose to eat it once in a while, I see no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is food companies trying to make you think you’re making a “healthier” choice when in fact you are not.
Take, for example, the new “natural” cut fries from Wendy’s. Apparently “natural” means they leave the skin on – I’m not sure what else about cutting a potato qualifies as natural. And they’re using sea salt (although any kind of salt would fit the “natural” bill). When it comes right down to it, any sort of french fry is technically natural. I mean, it’s nothing more than a fried potato, and you couldn’t get much more natural than that unless you ate the thing raw.
Unfortunately, there’s no regulation around the use of the term “natural” – no certification necessary to start marketing your products with this term. If Wendy’s were to start using all organically grown potatoes for their fries, that would actually be something to talk about. Natural is not.
AND, here’s the kicker on these bad boys: they actually have MORE sodium and calories than the previous version of their fries.I haven’t tried them yet, and maybe they really are extra delicious, but I suspect it’s really just a big marketing gimmick.
And that, my friend, is just not natural.
Cheese Find!
I was super excited to find this grass-fed, pasture-certified cheese at my local grocery store this week for $4.49. It’s also local – from Wisconsin! It’s a very mild cheddar (and I’ll admit, not as good as the aged cheddar I am able to get from the local farmer’s market), but it’s so great to see big stores choose smaller, more humane suppliers and giving me more choices when I can’t get to the farmers’ market.
No White on my Rice
Following up on my post about lentils, I realized that brown rice is another amazing kitchen staple that is good for you and costs pennies per meal. The downside? Brown rice takes 50 minutes to cook. If I’m going to whip up a quick stir fry for dinner, I usually end up making white rice because it’s done in 15 minutes, when the other food is done.
So, how do you make the switch to quick and easy white rice to good-for-you brown rice? If you know me, you’ve already guessed the answer: the freezer. I noticed at Whole Food that they sell frozen brown rice that you heat up in the microwave. After buying it a few times (it was so easy and tasted great) I realized that this was something I could easily do myself. Just make a big batch of brown rice when you’ve got time to wait 50 minutes for it to cook. Cool the rice and divide it into smaller portions (2-3 servings for us) in individual containers and freeze. When you’re ready to eat it, pull out the counter, put the frozen rice in a microwave-safe dish with a cover and cook for 3-5 minutes, until hot, stirring occasionally.
This makes it super easy to whip up a stir fry, fried rice, or anything else when you’re short on time.
Loving Lentils
You probably know this, but lentils are amazing. They are super good for you and crazy inexpensive. My problem is that I don’t always know what to do with them. Last night for dinner I made a very easy brown rice and lentil casserole that was suprisingly good for how few ingredients and how little work went into it. Not to mention that it ended up costing pennies per serving to make. I think next time it would be great to add some veggies to, like zucchini or red pepper. I served it with a fresh green salad, and it was perfect.
So, if you haven’t already, think about working lentils into your kitchen. Also, if you have any amazing lentil recipes that you like to make, please share them!
Using up Leftovers
One of the great things about thanksgiving is all of the tasty leftovers! But if you’re like me, in a regular week, I sometimes have a hard time using up all the food that I buy. As I’ve mentioned, I often freeze what I can, but there are also a couple of great meals you can make that not only taste delicious, they’re totally flexible and can be easily customized to the ingredients that you have on hand. One of my favorites is strata. This is generally a breakfast dish, but depending on what you add to it, it can easily moonlight as a dinner meal. Not to mention that it reheats easily as leftovers.
It’s simple. You take leftover bread like dinner rolls, burger buns, baguette – basically anything that’s lying around. Tear or cut it into small pieces to fully cover the bottom of an 8 x 8 baking dish (or double this recipe and make it in a 9 x 13). In a bowl, mix 5 eggs, 1 1/2 c milk, 1 teaspoon of salt and 2 tablespoons melted butter. I also add 1/2 t of dry mustard, but if you don’t have it, don’t worry about it.
Then, here’s where things get interesting. Add 4-8 oz. shredded cheese – seriously, any kind of cheese – to the egg mixture. Then toss in some meat if you want (cooked), like bacon, ham or sausage. Add some cooked veggies, whatever you’ve got, like broccoli, mushrooms, artichokes, tomatoes, onions, or even potatoes! Pour the egg mixture over the bread and mix together. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or at least 4 hours). When you’re ready, preheat the oven to 350 and bake for 45 – 60 minutes.
For the strata in the picture, I used rosemary focaccia, diced ham (that was hanging out in my freezer) and cheddar cheese. Other recent creations include artichoke with roasted red pepper and parmesan and mushroom and sausage with mozzarella. This is such an easy thing to make, and great way to use up extra little bits of food that would otherwise go uneaten. Enjoy!
Do we need an Oat Revolution?
I ran across a relatively new product in the grocery store recently – a breakfast cereal called “Oat Revolution.” Really? Did oatmeal really need to be revolutionized?
This is just another great example of the marketing machine that is processed food. Why do they claim these oats are “better”? Because they’ve added flax seed. And that’s pretty much it.
This box contains 5 packets, and retails for around $3.50 (that’s nearly 70 cents a serving!). For the same price, or even less, you could buy a big 42 oz canister of regular instant oats. You’ll get 35-40 servings out of that big can, bringing your cost per serving under 10 cents. And if you opt for the flavored versions, you’re getting a bunch of added sugars and ingredients. I know I’ve talked about oatmeal before and why it’s such a great option for breakfast, and I still believe that.
What I don’t believe, however, is that these oats are worth my money
Time vs. Money: Salad Dressing
Walking down the salad dressing aisle in the grocery store always reminds me that pretty much everything in the store is something that people used to make themselves. I mean, aside from the basic staples, everything used to be homemade.
But anyway. The point is actually that I’ve stopped buying bottled salad dressing and now I make it myself with oil and vinegar. It saves money, tastes better, and has way fewer chemicals, preservatives, and other synthetic nonsense. For a basic balsamic vinaigrette, it’s roughly something like this (although I don’t actually measure, I just eyeball it):
2T olive oil
1T balsamic vinegar
1/4 t dijon mustard (okay, this one you have buy. I don’t make it myself)
If you have it, maybe 1/2 t of chopped garlic or chopped shallot.
And that’s it. Sometimes I mix it with or fork, or whip it together in my mini food processor (this does a better job mixing everything together). That’s my standard, but you can also swap out the vinegar (red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, you get the idea) to change up the flavor. Oh, and once you get the hang of it, try this great recipe for Easy Herb Vinaigrette with canola oil and fresh herbs. It’s amazing when herbs are abundant in the summer.
I also noticed something interesting when I started eating salads with homemade dressing – I didn’t get as hungry after I ate. Usually if I brought a salad for lunch, I was starving 2 hours later, but the homemade dressing with quality oil is so much more satisfying. Try it!
Alright, I guess technically this could be a time vs. money post, since you can definitely make your own peanut butter (I know my sister does it and it’s easy. She even adds brown sugar or honey sometimes to make it extra tasty). Since I don’t actually do it myself, I’m just going to talk about what you can buy on the supermarket shelves. And if you want to get all crazy with your food processor and whip up a batch, well, I’ll leave that up to you.
I buy Smuckers All Natural Peanut Butter pretty exclusively. Why? Because all that’s in it is salt and peanuts. Jif (and most other peanut butters) contain lots of creepy extra stuff, including sugar, hydrogenated oils, and a chemical or two that I can hardly pronounce. I know natural peanut butter has that funky oil on top that you have to stir in, and even then the stuff on the bottom still ends up kinda dried out and not so creamy. But I read a tip a while back that has changed my peanut butter experience forever – store the jar upside down in your fridge. You’ll never have to stir again.
I know that Whole Foods sells an all-natural peanut butter that you don’t have to stir, but I don’t have a jar of that here to check the label and see if there’s extra additives that keep the oil from separating. I do know that Skippy and Jif both have “natural” line products, but they’ve still got added sugar, plus palm oil (aka saturated fat) to make it smooth throughout.
I’m choosy, I’m not a mom, and I choose a truly all-natural peanut butter.
Time vs. Money: Popcorn!
What did we ever do before the microwave? I use mine nearly every day. And for most people, it’s pretty much the only way they ever make popcorn. Do you remember a world before microwave popcorn? It’s vague in my mind, but it’s there. I think if you told kids today that you can make popcorn in a pan, on the stove, they would be utterly amazed. But like so many of the things I’ve posted about, it’s really, really easy to do. So, perhaps this post is incorrectly titled as time vs. money – maybe effort vs. money would be more accurate, because we’re really only talking about a difference of a few minutes.
All it takes is a little bit of oil, drop in some unpopped kerns, and heat it up. Oh, and don’t forget to cover it so it doesn’t shoot all over the place when it starts popping. Shake it around a bit. Keep shaking it around a bit. When it slows to about 3 seconds between pops, it’s done. The only potential downfall for this method is that you can actually burn it if you don’t take it out of the pan as soon as the popping slows down.
The markup on microwave popcorn is huge. I did a quick search on Peapod, and it shows that it costs about $1 per bag for microwave popcorn (which is about 1 big bowl of popped popcorn). Compare that to just buying a bag of popcorn kernels, at only $2.29 (on Peapod, again). You can get 10-11 big bowls of popcorn out of that single bag of kernels. Even counting the vegetable oil you’ll use, the cost is about $0.25 a batch. Yep, a quarter.
Plus, you get to avoid the creepy, toxic fumes that come out of that easy-to-use microwave bag, as well as some less-than-savory ingredients like partially hydrogenated soybean oil (uh, trans fat anyone?), artificial flavors, and the mysterious propyl gallate. It’s amazing, really, how in this search for “convenience” we’ve really just added synthetic ingredients and fancy packaging to a bunch of things that everyone used to make themselves anyway.
The Milk Dilemma
Am I the only person who spends 5 minutes staring at the milk selection at the grocery, trying to decide what to buy? Perhaps. But the reason I’m standing there for so long is because of the ongoing battle inside my head: ethics vs. money.
I am thinking of this today because of the big court ruling in Ohio recently that finally allowed them to label their milk as hormone-free. It’s a big deal because not only are consumers getting honest information about the products they’re about to ingest, they’ve also admitted that hormone-free milk has a different composition than milk from cows that have been treated with hormones. From a shopper perspective, buying hormone-free milk does make a difference.
But that’s where my dilemma starts to creep in. Here in Illinois, pretty much all the milk in the grocery store is labeled as hormone-free. And it’s half the price of organic milk. So I stand there and stare. I mean, if I’m going to sit here and talk about why it’s important to buy certified human eggs, shouldn’t the milk be a no brainer? What’s the advantage to organic milk? Unfortunately, like many things related to organic certification, things are a little murky. Here are the must-haves for milk to be certified organic:
- No use of synthetic hormones
- No use of antiobiotics
- Cows eat organic feed, grown without pesticides
- Cows must have access to pasture
It’s that last one that’s really fuzzy. There are no specifications for how much pasture time the cows have, or if they even go out to pasture – they simply have to have access. I wish I could count on the organic certification to tell me whether the cows have been treated humanely or not. I guess the only way that I can really be certain of that is to buy my milk from the local farmer’s market, where I can meet the farmer and talk about these issues. Here again, the cost goes up.
I don’t really have an answer on this one. Hormone-free is a must for me. Organic, well, depends on who wins the battle that day, ethics or wallet. Plus, organic milk is much harder to find at a standard grocery store, and I’ve only seen it sold in half gallons. Not even the Oberweis milk, in the fancy glass bottles, is organic. I guess it’s just a good example of how “trained” we’ve become as a society to expect cheap food, at any cost.
But, I’m working on it.
