NaBloPoMoNoProFoNo #1: an intro post by Sarah

It's NaBloPoMo, huzzah!  For the unaware, NaBloPoMo is a challenge to blog every day in the month of November. 

Since my favorite topic is FOOD, Crystal is kindly letting me hijack her blog to talk about my OTHER challenge for November, which is to not eat any processed food.  In the spirit of giving monthly challenges alliterative and ridiculous acronyms, I'm calling it NoProFoNo, for No Processed Food November (although I enjoy that it could also stand for ...No Processed Food?  NO!). 

Not eating processed food in November was inspired by October Unprocessed, which is pretty much the exact same challenge, but in October (and sadly lacking in any alliteration).  I did the October Unprocessed challenge (mostly...there might have been a little cheating that I will discuss later), but with a focus on making it an actual real lifestyle change...which is why I'm extending it into November.  But this time, with blogging!

I found that people tend to react to the idea of giving up processed food for a month in one of two ways.

(1) They think it sounds really easy.  This is generally because they think I mean I'm giving up things like pizza rolls and frozen pot pies.  And although those things ARE processed, what's really surprising is the number of foods that shouldn't be processed, but are (spoiler alert: there is corn syrup in ALL THE THINGS).

(2) They think it sounds really hard.  Which it isn't: the key (I've learned) is just mindful grocery shopping.  And I live in the middle of nowhere, so if I can easily grocery shop for an unprocessed diet, so can anyone.  I'm not doing anything super-fancy (ie this is not a raw food diet, which would be unprocessed under the very strictest definition), I just want the food I eat to be ...actual food.

What IS the definition of unprocessed for NoProFoNo?  Conveniently, the creators of October Unprocessed wrote up a definition of unprocessed food that I really love.  It is:

"Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with whole-food ingredients. ...It doesn’t mean you actually have to make it yourself, it just means that for it to be considered “unprocessed” that you could, in theory, do so." 

They call their definition The Kitchen Test (read a label, ask if you could make it in your own kitchen) and it really simplifies grocery shopping.

And since every blog post needs a picture, here is an ingredient from my kitchen that I chucked in October because it totally didn't pass The Kitchen Test:

HORK! NOT FOOD!

Is anyone else up for NoProFoNo?  Or NaBloPoMo?  Or anything else awesome and zany during the month of November?

Guest post update: Canadian Thanksgiving!

I'd like to super apologize for posting this to late. At least it's well before American Thanksgiving so you can all bug Anna for recipes. Personally, I would like to see the recipes for the rolls and the boozy cranberries especially.

I fell off the wagon hard for October unprocessed for a variety of reasons (being out of town, stomach bug, having meetings/social engagements every evening last week), but I'm getting back on track. I'll post for myself soon. Anyway, here's another lovely guest post from Anna:

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I’d like to apologize for this blog post being so late! We moved and didn’t have our internet set up. Overall the local thanksgiving was a hit! I’ll go through some highs and lows.

Our highs included; the turkey! The Mennonite farmer my friend referred me to came through with about a 22 lb turkey that *just* fit in a borrowed roasting pan. I was worried it would be tough being free range, but it was tender and delicious and we have lots of leftovers. Added bonus – the turkey was raised less than 5 miles from my new house. We used my Mom’s tried and true method for tender turkey – cook it with the lid on. No brining, no butter baths, no other fancy-ness – just cook with the lid of the roasting pan on.

Another major hit came from this blog! After my previous post about sugar, a friend suggested using granulated maple sugar (produced locally!) and it made the BEST apple pie I’ve ever had in my life. We topped it with maple sugar whipped cream and it was amazingly delicious. If you can get your hands on some maple sugar, I would strongly recommend you try it in an apple pie.

The biggest low was probably the wild yeast crab apple cider. It was fun to make back in July and allow to ferment and carbonate on its own, but it was so tart it was basically undrinkable. If we make it again we will have to mix the crab apple juice with something sweeter. Another minor failure was that with moving I was unable to find the time to bake bread ahead of time for the stuffing – so while we did have fresh baked wild yeast sourdough rolls with dinner (yum!), we had to buy some bread at the farmers market for the stuffing.

I was unable to find local flour, but used red fife – a Canadian grown flour, for the rolls and pie crust. Almost all the ingredients for our meal were produced locally and everything was homemade. I’m happy to post recipes if anyone is interested!

Menu follows:

Turkey – all local

Stuffing – all local – purchased bread at farmers market

Gravy – Homemade, local

Mashed potatoes – From my garden

Rolls – Home baked, wild yeast, sourdough red fife

Green beans – From my garden

“Boozy” cranberries – Cranberries locally foraged, made with maple sugar and US orange juice
(and a splash of Gran Marnier!)

Butter – homemade from Ontario cream

Cheese – Homemade from Ontario milk

Cider – Wild yeast crab apple cider

Apple and pumpkin pie – Local apples/pumpkin, red fife flour, and granulated maple sugar

Whipped cream – Local cream, fresh whipped with maple sugar

Hope everyone had a great Canadian thanksgiving – any Americans want to try to do a local Thanksgiving when your turn comes?

Days 12 and 13: I tried valiantly to finished off leftovers and gave into my need for gluten.

Day 12 was Saturday, and I think I may have had too much fun on Day 11, or ate too many french fries, so my stomach hurt and I was feeling unmotivated. Luckily, I still had leftover soup and chicken crock pot stuff so I didn't starve.

Then, all my pent up cooking urges EXPLODED on day 13 and I made 3 different things throughout the course of the day:

Scalloped Turnips and bell peppers: Slathering veggies in cheese sauce is one of my standard moves for things that I get in my CSA. This week, I had some turnips and bell peppers that seemed up for the job. I base all my au gratin attempts on this recipe. but I vary the veggies based on what I have on hand. My most common variations are doing cauliflower instead of potato, and wedging swiss chard between the potato layers, which is delicious. Here's what it looked like:

Delicious right? uh.... sort of. As I was cutting the turnips, I noticed that the large one that I used for the bottom layer smelled really horseradish-y. Guess what that turns into when you cook it: INCREDIBLY BITTER TURNIP. So, this was an incredibly uneven dish. Some bites were delightful, others I had to spit out. So after eating about half of it, we decided to pitch it. Any advice on picking out good turnips?

Later in the day, I got a vicious craving for pizza. And because Naked Pizza is mysteriously temporarily closed, I decided to make my own. I used the basics of Bobby Flay's pizza crust recipe. (Wait, isn't he the grilling guy? Whatever, it worked.) The only sub that I made was that I used half whole wheat flour, and the dough ended up rising and resting for longer because I was doing other things.

I also made the sauce by sautéing about 6 garlic cloves in 2 tbs of olive oil. Then I added a 4 oz can of organic tomato paste, 4 oz water, and a splash of port wine, making a denser variant on the port wine marinara sauce from previous in this blog.

I however DID NOT make my own cheese, despite the fact that I have a mozzarella kit waiting on my counter. SHAME ON ME! I have other plans for that though. Muahahahhahahaaa!

Also I topped it with grape tomatoes and broccoli.

That is the pre-baking picture. It was so delicious that I forgot to take a post baking picture, but it looked pretty much the same, only with melty cheese and browner crust. Oh yeah, I baked it at 375 for 20 minutes. 

You may have noticed that the dough recipe makes TWO pizzas and I only had ONE pizza. Well, that is because I got crazy and used the other half to make fatayer , i.e., delicious spinach pies. The only major difference in the dough recipes is that there was less oil. Also I used frozen spinach instead of fresh, which was a mistake because it took way longer to than than it would have to wilt. Oh yeah, and I didn't have lemon. I think they would have benefited from the lemon. Also i overstuffed them because i forgot to half the filling recipe. OOPS.

These are AMAZING!! I have eaten them for all meals of the day. Not all in one day though, that could be considered excessive. I plan on making a whole batch (which would make about 2 dozen) and freezing some, because they are as I mentioned earlier: AMAZING!!

Suck It, Red Lobster. Suck It With Whatever Part Lobsters Traditionally Use To Suck Things

So, I have not been doing this unprocessed month thing, because everything I eat is processed.  My tears are made of Blue #7 and I can hear Doritos grinding together in my joints when I jog.

So it should be no surprise that I love things that are baked and filled with cheese.  I particularly always had a soft spot for those little cheese biscuits you get at Red Lobster (I force Crystal to take me to Red Lobster, because apparently I am a bad husband and/or seven years old).  So when we were paging through cookbooks looking for all natural things to make, I scoffed a bit when we encountered a cheese biscuit recipe.  It can't possibly be as good as the ones the pimply sixteen year olds make at Red Lobster, I scoffed, what with their MSG firehoses and access to low-grade cocaine.

But somehow I was wrong, they totally are.

It's a pretty simple recipe, it goes like this. 

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (kind of a weird amount) of flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup milk
3/4 teaspoon dried dill (we used wet, and also a lot more than that, and it was fine)
1 cup shredded extra-sharp Cheddar (we used non-sharp but it would have been better if we had sharpened it I think)
 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 grind (?) of pepper

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper in the dry bowl.  Mix egg, olive oil, milk, dill, and cheese in the wet bowl.  Then let their powers combine.  Mix, fill some muffin tins, bake for 10 minutes or so at 450.

They are good.  Here's a picture.

Oh man, I'm going to have to jog so many Pringles out of my knees for this. 

Day 10: Attempted bar food and Also I took Day 11 off.

Thursdays are a rough day to go unprocessed because that is the day we choose to do happy hour at our local bar. Luckily, our local bar has a nice menu.

It seemed like the burgers and sandwiches were off the table, because their breads and delicious pretzel buns were unlikely to be made in house. So I went with the chicken picata salad. 

I got dressing on the side, and even asked the waitress about the chicken and she assured me that it was made in house and not a chunk of frozen processed chicken. I think I did ok for bar food. So not by best day, but salads are better than boneless chicken wings. 

Also we had friends in town on Day 11, so i gave up my crusade for a while. Who can resist Hot Doug's?

Day 9: Pumpkin pie!

This is why we can't have nice blogs: I got busy for a while, got behind on the blogosphere and then got overwhelmed by the amount of blogging I didn't do. Here's a flurry of catch up posts:

The leftovers from both the chicken crock pot meal and the carrot dill soup got better with age, so many meals were had by just eating leftovers of those things. In the mean time, I decided to make a pumpkin pie. This process was spread out over the course of days 6 though 9 of this month, but I'll put it all here:

Day 6: Roasted the pumpkin at 400'C until it got all soft along with the squash. I then scooped out the meat and put it in a bowl.

Day 7: Mulled whether to make said pumpkin goo into a pie, cookies or bread. Researched pie crust

Day 8: Decided to pull the trigger on making a pie. Started the dough for the crust. Typically, I use a food processor to make pie crusts, but they never really live up to my dreams of buttery flaky crust. Evidently, that's because I let the food processor mash the frozen butter into dust and flaky pie crust requires PEA SIZED CHUNKS. And pea sized chunks require a pastry blender. Imagine that a whisk and a potato masher had a baby, and you have yourself a pastry blender. I used the crust recipe linked under pea sized chunks but halved as I only wanted a bottom crust. I left the dough ball in the fridge overnight.

Day 9: I made the filling as a bastardization of several recipes. Here's my best recollection:

3/4 cup agave syrup, for low glycemic action1 tsp cinnamon1/2 tsp salt1/2 tsp ground ginger1/4 tsp ground cloves2 eggs, beaten1 15 oz can of pure pumpkin1 cup 1% milk (because evaporated milk seems totally counter to this exercise. but apparently the guy who wrote the rules thinks milk might not qualify. I have to disagree, perhaps out of desperation)I mixed all of the things together in my kitchenade mixer and then proceeded to make the crust. 

I also rolled out the crust, with my trusty marble rolling pin i had stuck in the freezer to chill. Finer points:
- keep everything really well floured and cold. butter melting into the flour before it hits the oven is death.
- to keep thinks round, rotate the crust a quarter turn between rolling. trust me it works.
- the crust recipe said to cut it into a 12 inch circle, but that was a little shallow for my pie plate.

I linked the pie plate with the crust and filled it with the filling and baked it at 425 for 20 minutes and then 350 for another hour or so, until it set. I also used the remainder of the crust to make adorable ghost cutouts for the top (I put them on about 20 min till the end of cook time)

The pie was really good, a lot more spicy than sweet. But it went bad really quickly. I guess there is a big downside to no preservatives :) 

Day 8: Taco Chicken Bowls

Today's (or yesterday's I suppose) unprocessed recipe is brought to you by budget bytes, as suggested by my pal Kathy. She makes this for her kids and they really love it.

http://www.budgetbytes.com/2011/07/taco-chicken-bowls/

Because this is presented as a cost saving recipe on the web site, I thought I'd do a quick price comparison when doing this naturally.

Major differences:
- I paid $5.79 for 1 lb of chicken, because it was not on sale. (They paid $2.90 for 1.5 lb)
- The cheapest unprocessed cheddar I could find was extra sharp white cheddar for $6.99, as opposed to the $2.49 for whatever cheese they used. Quite the difference.
- Paid $1.79 for [flavorless] 1 lb frozen corn, as opposed to their $0.57 for 0.5 lb, and I used it all because I only had 1 lb chicken instead of 1.5. 
- You might be able to find unprocessed salsa in a grocery store, but I could not. Even the ones that claimed to be unprocessed had cane sugar in them, which seemed to be against the spirit of October Unprocessed. So I improvised by replacing it with sweet peppers, jalapenos, and tomato paste I had on hand and added water.

So, basically, I paid more then their whole recipe for the 2 most expensive items, and my recipe included a third less meat. Moral of the story: BUY CHICKEN ON SALE!!

I followed the recipe pretty much as stated in the link above, and I set up my crock pot on a Christmas light timer to cook for 8 hours while I was at work.

I have to say this stuff was pretty good, but I would imagine that it would be WAY tastier with actual salsa. Any suggestions for things to jazz it up in the absence of salsa?

On deck: pumpkin pie, and a discussion about peer pressure to eat processed and not particularly delicious cake in social settings.