Home made tomato sauce with spaghetti squash

Growing up in an Italian family makes spaghetti with meat sauce seem like a requirement for a fulfilling life. But, it has increasingly come to my attention that maybe eating a giant bowl of starch covered in meat is not exactly the healthiest of things to do regularly. So, I switched to whole wheat noodles a long time ago, and now noodles made with white flour taste super decadent. But after my squash extravaganza earlier in the blog, I became really intrigued by the prospect of subbing spaghetti squash for noodles. Here are the methods and results.

I cooked the squash much in the same way that I did it for "attack of the gourds". A couple of butternut squashes, an acorn squash, and a red kuri squash came along for the ride that were used for soup and squash bread later.

I made the sauce in a fairly typical way for me, derived from how my mom/grandma make tomato sauce.

Materials:
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- as many garlic cloves as you can handle, chopped
- 2 tbs olive oil (i don't measure, i pour, so this is likely less than i use
- 2-3 sweet peppers (usually bell peppers) chopped
- 1 lb ground lamb from the Magle family farm (beef, ground turkey, veal also work, and with heartier noodles, i usually use 0.5 lb for this amount of sauce)
- 1 32 oz can crushed or diced tomatoes, depending on how chunky you want it.
- 1 4 oz can tomato paste
- 4 oz water
- salt and oregano to taste

Sautee chopped veggies until they start to get soft. Throw in the meat and brown it. I usually forget to thaw ahead of time, so I put it in frozen and scrape off parts from the meat block as they cook. After the meat is browned, add the tomatoes and the water, bring to a boil and let simmer over low heat for at least half an hour. The longer the better. Really low heat for hours makes it taste awesome :) BUT WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT?! Season with salt and oregano to taste.

Abobe is the sauce. You can probably also tell that I harvested the squash seeds and roasted them from the background. Scrape out squash guts after they are cool enough to touch, cover in sauce and cheese and enjoy.

The texture is very much like eating spaghetti noodles. I found it very satisfying. Major drawbacks: it takes a really long time to make the squash compared to boiling noodles and you don't get much out of one spaghetti squash. But after we ran out of squash, I ate it on top of some italian bread that i managed to find at the store that was unprocessed. WOOO!!! Side note: I agree with Sarah about enriched flour in breads. Extra vitamins are important, and enriched flour is the only way some people get enough folic acid and the like. I do however draw the line at HFCS.

NaBloPoMoNoProFoNo #5: Lunches for the lazy. #RECIPE - Confetti rice salad

In an ideal world, I take a little time on the weekend to prepare a lunch food for the week ahead.  I don't actually always get to do this, but when I do it makes the week run about 300% smoother....in part because my husband commutes and has to be at his vanpool site by 6:00 am (!!!).  I mean, there's a time to be whimsical and creative in the kitchen, but 5:30 am ain't it. 

We get tired of sandwiches pretty fast (like, one sandwich later), and I often fall back on a big pasta salad-type recipe.  The "scoop something premade from a large bowl into a smaller bowl and maybe wash an apple or something" method of packing lunches cannot be beat!  I particularly like this rice-based salad because

(a) it's a change of pace from pasta salad and

(b) it stays good longer than pasta salad

Score!

Confetti rice salad

Only very lightly adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe - Mel on Facebook

Salad ingredients:
3 cups cooked rice (I used leftovers from Alton's Brown Rice recipe)
1 can beans, drained (I used black here.  Or whatever's in your cupboard)

1 can corn, drained (or frozen or fresh, if you prefer)

1 bunch green onions, sliced

1 red pepper, diced
About a half bunch of cilantro, chopped

Dressing:
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
fresh ground black pepper, as much as you want

1.  Combine salad ingredients in a large bowl.

2.  Whisk together dressing ingredients in a smaller bowl, then combine with the salad ingredients.

3.  Chill overnight or for as long as you feel like. Eat. Seriously, this recipe could not be easier.

 

I think it would also make a good potluck recipe because it's different and kind of pretty:

but I always just make it for myself, bwahahahahaha....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FYI I'm always on the lookout for a good make-ahead lunch recipe that stays good at least a couple days, so if you find one send it my way!

NaBloPoMoNoProFoNo #4: Musings on flour and sugar

Some thoughts on flour and sugar, prompted by yesterday's simplecarbfilled bread recipe...

The official stance of October Unprocessed is that flour is OK (including white flour).  The logic is that you could mill flour in your own kitchen if you really wanted to (although it's very unlikely that you do).  However, to count as unprocessed, flour can't be bleached or enriched. The bleaching process is really just a label-reading thing: I have never had an issue finding unbleached flour. The enriched thing ... I have no problem with extra vitamins being added to my flour, but you can decide for yourself. 

 

Whole-wheat flour is always better from a nutritional standpoint, and I do use that when it's possible.  But you can't use whole-wheat flour for everything -- for example, I'm planning to post my homemade angel food cake recipe later in the month and there's no way to make that with whole wheat. The blog 100 Days of Real Food has a nice post about the nutrients you lose in white vs. wheat, if anyone is interested.

Anyways, long story short: flour - always avoid bleached, use whole-grain flours where possible, I will not be avoiding enrichment. 

So what about sugar?  Well, there's no way to make regular table sugar in your own kitchen, so it fails The Kitchen Test.  Along the lines of seeing this challenge as a lifestyle change and not a gimmick, I will admit I have no intention of cutting processed sugar out of my kitchen entirely. So, I didn't stop eating it during October Unprocessed and also won't stop eating it during NoProNo.  SORRY, PURISTS! It is sort of my one big Fail.

However: I do sometimes substitute with honey (which is legitimately non-processed). I occasionally buy and use 'raw' sugar when it strikes my fancy, which isn't very often. More important than raw vs. processed (since, in my opinion, at the end of the day sugar is sugar and it's not that great for you), I try to limit my sugar intake to foods that are 'worth it', like homemade baked goods, as opposed to things like sweetened drinks which contain a ton of sugar but don't make me drool in anticipation. 

Long story short - using processed sugar is legitimately a cheat. Although I am semi-unapologetically not giving it up, I am at least trying to use it mindfully.

I do know a handful of people who have felt way better health-wise after cutting out sugar, which is intriguing to me. But since I like to bake, giving up sugar would  feel sort of like giving up a hobby.  Maybe I'll try it out next year for NoProFoNo, just for the additional challenge.

November unprocessed?

I've come to the conclusion that 100% unprocessed eating is not something that is in the cards for me, not even for one month. It is something that I will continue to strive toward, but I'm just not there yet. Here are some reasons/excuses:

1. My job is stressful, and I don't always feel like cooking when I get home. Eating food prepared by other people makes me intensely happy some times. I really like cooking, but some days I do not have the wherewithal/ingredients to make something satisfying.

2. #1 is primarily due to the fact that my body has little to no ability to buffer my blood sugar levels and I can go from completely fine to stark-raving-mad-starving in a matter of seconds. This is not conducive to microwaving leftovers much less making a healthy meal.

3. Going away for the weekend (when I do a lot of cooking that gets me through the week), sends me on a horrible tailspin of doom that results in me eating greasy Thai food and crackers all week.

4. Having a (my?) social life in Chicago is not super conducive to eating only unprocessed foods. I am the only on around me trying to do this in earnest and I am easily swayed by peer pressure. I do not like being "that guy" that makes special requests and given #2, my ability to just abstain in certain situation is not always doable. Seth doesn't mind the unprocessed eating, but is not really on board with 100% conversion to unprocessed-ness (mostly because of #5 I think). And while I am getting better at picking out healthier options on menus, sometimes a salad with grilled chicken breast cannot compete with nachos, especially when beer is involved.

5. There are some loopholes in the system that make me lose faith in it. Take the example in #4: it is entirely possible to make a giant cheese stuffed plate of nachos unprocessed (all the other ingredients can be bought/made without preservatives), and have a grilled chicken breast salad be processed (salad dressing, processed meat, etc) depending on where you go. Another great example is that according to the strictest set of rules by the guy who started October Unprocessed, you can have Fritos (corn, oil, salt) and not milk (because he has an unspecified issue with homogenization.) I guess what I am getting at is that I'm not sure that being unprocessed is the ultimate mark of a healthy food.

So despite all the excuses, I will still try. During the two weeks or so that I did eat almost entirely unprocessed, my stomach felt a lot better. But that could also be due to the fact that my stomach issues may be stress related, and that I had time to do things I enjoy doing (cooking and blogging) so I wasn't stressed. Anyway, here are some of the ways I can deal with the above mentioned excuses:

1. Even if I don't have time to cook or pre-prep dinners for the hard nights, I can keep things in the fridge or freezer (fruits, veggies, store bought unprocessed foods) to eat. I think I need a better grocery shopping plan.

2. I guess the solution to this one is encompassed in #1, but keeping things at work to get me home without dying. Individual packs of lightly salted nuts seems to be the solution here, because I also have a problem with stress snacking :)

3. I need to plan ahead. Bottom line. But not get pissed and quit if I fail.

4. If I know I'm going somewhere that not likely to have unprocessed things on the menu, I can try to eat ahead. Also, I can try to get better at picking salad over nachos. Maybe I'll hate it, but I can honestly say I have no picked salad over nachos frequently enough to say whether or not it's satisfying.

5. Decide what I think is reasonable and stick to it. The primary motivation for this is to be healthy and to hopefully figure out what sends my stomach into a rage, so eliminating milk because it's homogenized even though it doesn't bother my stomach and is fine in moderation is not something I'm going to do. I will also strive to minimize and not eliminate the unprocessed food, because sometimes the joy of occasionally indulging is too enticing.

So, in summary, I still like cooking, and I think label reading is an important exercise in awareness, so I'll keep posting recipes and thoughts on what I think is reasonable when I have time. I would welcome additional suggestions to any of the issues I have posed above. And during my lack of posting, I have been cooking unprocessed, I just haven't been sharing the results. I"ll try to catch up on that soon.

NaBloPoMoNoProFoNo #3: On foods that taste like childhood. #RECIPE - Tsoureki

Everyone has at least one food that reminds them of their childhood. 

Personally, when I want to be transmogrified back to my youth, I make Tater Tot Casserole.  Converting that recipe (which includes multiple cans of Campbell's condensed soup, natch) into something legitimately nonprocessed will hopefully be an amusing challenge for me later in the month. 

But for now, we'll start with one of my husband's favorite childhood foods, Tsoureki (greek easter bread). Since he commutes to work pretty early, I sometimes make up a loaf on Sunday and then pack slices for breakfast during the week. This recipe technically contains processed sugar, but you can sub raw sugar if you like...more on that tomorrow.

Recipe for Tsoureki

Ingredients

3/4 c milk, slightly warm (I microwave it)

2.5 t yeast (one packet)

4 c all-purpose flour

2/3 sugar

1 t salt

1/2 t cinnamon

2 T butter, melted

2 T olive oil

2 T honey

2 eggs

zest from 1 orange

1 T milk

1 egg yolk

Instructions:

Combine 3/4 c warmed milk with yeast, set aside.

Combine flour, sugar, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl, set aside.

Add the melted butter, olive oil, honey, eggs, and orange zest to the milk/yeast mixture and mix.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mix with a spoon until combined.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead by hand for 10 minutes.

Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, divided dough into three portions.  Roll out each portion to about 16ish inches long (I've never measured.  I roll to about the length of my pan). 
Braid into a loaf and set on a baking pan (I use parchment paper, oil the pan if you don't).

Cover loaf with oiled plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, preheat oven to 350F. 
Beat together 1 T milk and egg yolk, and brush onto the loaf. The more egg wash you use, the darker the loaf will be, if you have an aesthetic preference.

Bake for 30 minutes.

BAM, DONE!  This stays good covered at room temp for at least 4-ish days, I don't think we've ever had it around longer than that. In fact I didn't even get a chance to take a picture before the front piece had been torn off and eaten:

I sometimes make whole wheat blueberry muffins for a packable breakfast, and I suspect those have more redeeming nutritional value than this, but there's a lot to be said for starting out your day with a food that puts you in a good mood.

NaBloPoMoNoProFoNo #2: Because Applebee's is THE WORST, that's why.

One of the topics that came up quickly after I first started talking about October Unprocessed on Facebook was how restaurants fit into it.

I go out to eat about twice a week (ish) and I see those as rule-free meals. I don't think too hard about processed vs. unprocessed if someone else is doing the cooking, since it's largely out of my control at that point.

However, I figure that my money is best-spent at restaurants that don't use a lot of processed ingredients anyways (coughAPPLEBEEScough).  (....Did I just make the NoProFoNo restaurant rule "anything but Applebees?" ...Heh).

So, I WILL be looking for restaurants that seem to serve Actual Real Food, but I WON'T be That Guy demanding to know if the nori in my sushi is locally sourced and whether the tuna lived a happy life.

Hey, speaking of sushi, look what I ate (at a restaurant) tonight!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We do homemade sushi every once and a while, too, so I should make that happen sometime during November so I can blog about it.  (And take a picture of it, since I think we are actually better at plating than Local Sushi Restaurant, which apparently really believes in giving sushi room to breathe). It doesn't take FOREVER to make but it's definitely not a weeknight meal, either.  

 

Anyways, tomorrow I'm making up breakfast for the week so I will post an actual recipe, hooray!

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?