Can we make? Yes we can! Almond Butter

We thought about starting a theme of posts called “Can we make it? Yes we can!” We’ll see how often we actually do this. But for starters, here’s Almond Butter!

Do you know how easy it is to make almond butter (and peanut butter, etc.)? Easy! You just grind the heck out of some almonds.

Do you know how time consuming it is? Very. We do not have a food processor so we used our immersion blender attachment. The thing is - that thing can get over heated, so we had to take frequent breaks. What should have taken about 30 minutes took us two hours. Oh well, we were happy about our creation:

(we only used a few of the almonds)

 And here is a picture of some of our homemade almond butter on our homemade bread:

Testing it out:

  

Will we do this again?  I would love to... once we get a better grinder contraption :)

For the time being, I’ll let someone else do the grinding and I'll buy it packaged, or I’ll go to Fresh Market and grind peanuts or almonds there.

Granola Gone Wrong

After watching King Corn, I want to try to cut down on our corn intake – especially high fructose corn syrup.* But, in protest to how much corn we mass-produce, I want to at least be aware of what corn is in, and possibly choose something corn-free to eat if possible. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think corn is evil. But, in our efforts to be able to mass-produce it, we have stripped the soil of nutrients, reduced the corn variety we use, and use massive amounts of land- which could be used to grow thousand of other yummy foods- for only one food type. Also, a lot of this corn goes in to the animals we eat, which is not that healthy for them and enables “cow factories” and such. Just watch the documentary...

Taking inventory of our kitchen I realized I eat corn in almost every cereal I eat for breakfast! While also taking inventory I noticed that we had ingredients on hand to make granola. So I looked up a few recipes and went to work on creating a new breakfast for us to eat in the morning.

Mistake 1: using steel cut oats instead of rolled oats (it’s what we had)

In my defense I did google and read about using steel cut oats instead of rolled oats for granola. I read that I was to expect the granola to be more like brittle that would take some breaking apart.

Mistake 2: leaving it in the oven too long.

I kept expecting the mixture to get hard – like brittle, but it stayed liquidy no matter how long I left it in the oven. Finally, when it starting smelling like it was getting too done (a.k.a. burnt), I took it out. That’s when it turned in to brittle and it took Jamie and two spatulas to get it out of the pan.

Mistake 3: too much brown sugar and honey.

I followed a recipe, but either the writer of the recipe I followed had a serious sweet tooth or the steel oats had something to do with it. We tried it in milk but it made the milk so sweet that I could not drink it– and that’s saying something because I love milk.

So what did we do? Jamie added the left over rice krispies we had and I went to the store and got some organic yogurt and cranberries. After that, it was edible, though Jamie always opted for something else for breakfast and I ate the granola over yogurt with cranberries myself :)

Here’s a picture of my salvaged breakfast:

The granola contains honey, brown sugar, and almonds.

Though this attempt did not turn out to well, I’m determined not to give up. We will not be having granola for breakfast any time soon because 1. I’m not sure Jamie is ready for that again, and 2. We bought tons of muffin mixes last week because Lowes Foods had them on sale :)

*here is a clip of how to make high fructose corn syrup –makes you think twice about the stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jisBG3egS8o

Eggcellent

So, Jamie has done it again - no surprise really. He made a fabulous meal, which we love so much we've had it twice in the past few days.

Vegetable scrambled eggs:

This is a picture of the first time we it - don't you love how he added the strawberry for decoration :)

 The next time I wanted to take more pictures of the different stages - those veggies look so good!

 Adding the eggs:

 Finished and ready to eat!

I did help this time – I made the salad :)

So, we have to send a thank you to Lowes Foods for overstocking on Free Range, No Hormones Added Eggs for Easter. Good eggs for half the price! All of our veggies for this meal are from the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market.

That’s all for this post – another successful attempt at eating good food!

Beef, it's what's for dinner

Jamie made some awesome hamburgers yesterday!

A few weeks ago we visited a biker church as part of our Food Faith and Spirituality class. This church is doing a lot with food to help their community - from having their own community garden, to helping teach others about gardening, to selling local grass-fed beef and using part of the proceeds to donate this good beef to local food pantries. Here is a website about their beef ministry. You can read a little about the benefits of "happy cows" as opposed factory cows in our last blog about milk.

We are trying to be more conscience about our meat consumption not only for our own health but because we do not believe that cow, chickens, etc. were created to be treated rottenly just because of our society's demand for more cheap meat. I have always had a hard time eating meat if I have to think about the fact that it came from an animal. But, knowing that the meat I eat has come from an animal that was treated well and given a good life, and, as I appreciate its sacrifice in order to give me food, I am truly thankful instead of being grossed out. (Thinking about sacrifice goes for plants as well, they too must die in order for us to eat.)

Anyway, below are pictures of this week's local and healthy meal. The burgers are made from the grass-fed beef we got from The Giving Table and the veggies we put on them are from the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market. SO YUMMY! Be jealous.