A "Whole" new magazine...

I may have a new favorite magazine! Whole Living, a Martha Stewart publication (I have always secretly, or not so secretly, loved Martha...) may be my new mecca!

Apparently Body+Soul magazine changed to Whole Living in June 2010 but the former publication has been in print since 1974. I think I picked up a copy of Body+Soul on a plane trip once or twice but was never convinced that its content was anything more than fluff until I saw its rebirth as Whole Living... and now I have a subscription! I just received September's issue today so I thought I would share a little about the last issue before I dive into a new one...

After perusing the Whole Living website, I found their ten tenets of Whole Living and you can see why I like the magazine's content (at least the content that adheres to these tenets!)

Ten Tenets of Whole Living

1. Happiness is a choice. Make that choice today and every day.
2. Good health isn't a gift; it's a habit you cultivate.
3. A healthy, fit body is not enough--true fitness engages the spirit.
4. Think more about what you should eat than what you shouldn't.
5. Laugh at yourself. You're funny.
6. Nurture your spirit. It's your source of strength.
7. Stay connected to the natural world. It will feed your soul.
8. Believe in yourself. Your intuition is rarely wrong.
9. It's never too late to take the first step toward your aspirations.
10. What you pay attention to will thrive.

Here's a quick rundown of what I loved and disliked from the August 2010 issue of Whole Living:

LOVED: Cute little blurbs on low-VOC paint, gardening, healthy snack foods, etc.; barefoot running; article on cutting out sugar (though, the author eats packets of raw sugar... that's a little more excessive than most); blueberry recipes; summer canning article; healthy sustainable eating tips and recipes (even if some of the tips were a little obvious...)

NOT SO MUCH: Ads (not more than usual in a women's magazine, but still... ads...); first person editorials posing as articles (not terrible, but not amazing...); working out outdoors article (it was just your average Cosmo workout article... we know how to work out triceps on a bench/chair/couch/curb now... thanks... they look awesome...); several articles/blurbs on lack of self-esteem (maybe we could focus on self-actualization instead of hating ourselves? Or skip it all together?); a financial horoscope (Ugh...) and again... ADS! For things that have nothing to do with health or whole living! Annoying...

Overall, 3 stars out of 5 thus far... I will post an update after I read September's issue. Happy Reading!

Slices from Heaven: Sweet Potato Chips

“Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.” -Diane Ackerman

Nathan left for a trip a few weeks ago and for his last meal I wanted him to take some great memories of home with him so I made him two of his favorite foods... a whole roast chicken and sweet potato chips. Both are super tasty and (in the case of the chicken) pretty impressive for being so easy to make! I wanted to share my favorite sweet potato chip recipe with you as we are starting to get into prime season for these tasty tubers and I feel everyone else should benefit from the lessons I've learned about these tasty treats! This recipe is courtesy of our local CSA, Off the Vine Produce, from one of the recipe sheets they included with our box one week last year. Enjoy!

Fried Sweet Potato Chips
Servings: 4

Ingredients:
-Vegetable oil, for frying
-2 large sweet potatoes, washed
-Salt, Pepper and Garlic Powder (Ed note: I skip a step and just use garlic salt... DELISH!)

Directions:
In a large sauce pan, heat oil to 350 degrees F. Thinly slice potatoes into round disks, about 1/4 inch thick. Fry for 1 and 1/2 to 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from oil and drain on a paper towel. Sprinkle with Salt, Pepper and Garlic Powder or sugar, to taste.

Fry, baby, fry...

Making Deli-Style Dill Pickles: Part One

Hunger is the best pickle.

-Benjamin Franklin

The cucumbers from last week's post have finally started the process of becoming deli dill pickles (well, six pounds of them have... the other half are off to become cucumber chips). This is my first foray into pickling anything, though I have canned in the past, so this should be quite the adventure!

You need to prepare the pickles and then let them stand in a cool, dark place for three weeks (skimming scum off the surface daily... hopefully this process isn't too gross!) so below is the preparation before the three week wait.

My recipe for dills comes from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, which has been an invaluable resource for teaching myself how to can and preserve a variety of foods. The first step is choosing the cucumbers which, apparently, was my first mistake! I waited to pick the cucumbers in my garden until they were ripe, and huge and there were some yellow areas (overripe spots) here and there on the skins. Once I started cooking I read that I should have picked the cucumbers when they were still very dark green with large bumps on the outside of the fruit, and zero areas of light green or yellow. Whoops! Apparently my pickle "crispness" will suffer as a result... (See update at the end of this post for Perfect Pickle pics!)

I decided to make the pickles anyway and I gathered my supplies (see spices, sugar and salt above. I also used organic dill from a local grocer) for both the dills and the cucumber chips. For the dills, I used store bought pickling spice (the lime green bottle above) and for the cucumber chips I used the other spices shown to make my own pickling spice. After chopping up the pickles into 4-inch spears, I added half of the pickling spice (a heaping 1/3 cup) and a large bunch of dill to the bottom of an enamel pot and dumped the sliced spears on top. Ensure that the spears have at least 4-inches of clearance from the top rim of the pot. It's important to use only stainless-steel or unchipped enamelware for all pickling tasks because other types of cooking wear (utensils as well) can cause discoloring of the final pickle products that is unappetizing and can be dangerous.

I created a brine by boiling 1.5 cups of pickling salt, 2 cups white vinegar and 16 cups water and then letting it cool to room temperature after stirring to dissolve all of the salt. Once it cooled, I ladled it over the pickles. Once the pot was full (the pickling brine ran out exactly at the top of the pickles... that's why I love these recipes, they always work out perfectly!) I dumped the other bunch of dill and the remainder of the pickling spice on top. Place an inverted plate on top of the pickles (to keep them all submersed in the brine) and used a filled and sealed mason jar of water on top of the plate to weigh it down. Store it in a cool dark place for approximately 3 weeks (to let them ferment) and skim the surface daily for scum.

Now, five days into dill making, the dills are pretty fragrant when I take the plate off for my daily check (in a good way, just a lot of spice and vinegar!) but no scum that I can see has formed yet. I am waiting for the pickles to become "translucent" and ready to can. I am hoping they will be finished by early August!

     I also made cucumber chips through a different method (I only have to wait 24 hours for them to be ready to can instead of three weeks!) to compare the quality of the two products with the amount of labor and time involved in each. Look out for a post in the future with my reviews of both methods!

Update: Here are what the pickles should look like before picking to make "the perfect pickle"... Look for dark, firm skin and obvious bumps on the outside of the fruit. Avoid any fruits with light green or yellow areas of the skin.

Making Deli-Style Dill Pickles: Part Two

Finally, after weeks of fermentation our dill pickles are ready to can! At this point the pickles should be thoroughly flavored with dill and translucent throughout.

When the pickles are ready, strain the contents through a colander, removing the pickles and collecting the brine from the pot in another stainless steel/unchipped enamel pot. All of the spices and dill should be caught by the strainer, leaving you a pile of sorted pickles (if there are any that didn't "make it" pick them out and discard them now) and a pot of brine.

Bring your brine to a rolling boil on the stove and boil for approximately 5 minutes; allow to cool to room temperature before filling jars. Simultaneously, process your jars and lids in near boiling water to prepare them to use for canning.

Fill jars with pickles, ensuring the jars are full but not packing the pickles in too tightly. Fill jars with the cooled brine, leaving a half-inch of head space at the top. Use a tongue depressor (or other skinny flat object) to move pickles around slightly and free any trapped air bubbles in the jar. Place lids on jars, screw down bands to fingertip tight and place jars in water to process for 15 minutes (with the lid on the canning pot).

Remove lid and let cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing jars from water, placing in an out of the way spot on the counter and covering with a towel. Allow jars to sit overnight; check them the morning to ensure all jars are properly sealed (make sure the lid is "sucked down" and doesn't pop or move when you press on the top of it).

Congratulations! You've finished your dill pickles!! Grab a burger (or a pregnant friend!) and enjoy one now!

The Politics of Food: "You Are What You Eat"

I saw this artist's work a few years ago and I was fascinated! Mark Menjivar spent three years traveling the nation exploring "food issues," as his mission statement says, and photographing the inside of people's fridges as is... a perfect snapshot of the food going into their bodies and a byline to show the reader a little background into their lives to ponder about why this person/family eats the way they do. In You Are What You Eat, his photographs explores both life and food as the means to that life, even the reflection of it.  

"These are portraits of the rich and the poor. Vegetarians, Republicans, members of the NRA, those left out, the under appreciated, former soldiers in Hitler’s SS, dreamers, and so much more. We never know the full story of one's life."

Wife Pursuing M.A. in English Literature, job lined up to teach at a college in Colorado following graduation, working to design a class on the politics of food for her future freshman- Gulf Coast, FL - 2 Person Household (plus three dogs) - Mid-Summer - 2010

In the spirit of exploration of ourselves, I present to you... MY FRIDGE! Yes, all of our veggies, our organic dairy products, and oh... a heck of a lot of bottles of wine and beer and some "carmel topping" that his mother bought for sundaes on his last visit... despite my best efforts, I haven't been able to get the entire family on board with our high-fructose-corn-syrup-free lifestyle. Baby steps, baby steps...

Green Groceries on the Cheap?

We were out of town all weekend driving to Virginia and back visiting family, so with so few hours of sleep this week, I am reposting a comment on the Green Baby Guide that has plenty of content for a beginning-of-the-week blog post. Thank you so much to Joy of the Green Baby Guide for giving me the idea for this post! Enjoy!


How to Lower the Grocery Bill while still staying Green?
Good for you all for looking at your spending this closely and knowing where you put your "food dollars!" So many Americans don’t pay attention and we all know where that leads our nation… Anyway, I agree with Joy, that to go organic, a food box through a co-op weekly or bi-weekly (for a two person family, bi-weekly is enough for us) and then planning meals around it is the way to go. We get whole chickens from a local farmer and those have gone up (to nearly $12 a chicken!! Sweet heavens! This economy, I tell you what!) but between that and organic meats from our local grocer (Publix here in Florida) we keep the grocery bill at about $200/mth for two people. Now, that’s not awesome, but I share your problem that I make recipes set to serve four and they serve me… and three servings for my husband!! But here are a few super basic, but easy to overlook tips:


#1. Are you including toiletries or other houshold items in your “grocery” bill? A regular $40 grocery checkout can soar to $140 easily with a month-plus worth of shampoo, toothpaste, dish soap, paper towels, etc. in the checkout aisle. Look at buying these items in bulk through “Subscribe and Save” on Amazon.com (especially if you buy Seventh Generation, Alba or other “green” brands that can be super pricey in the super market!) where not only do you get bulk prices but you receive an additional 15% when you subscribe for a regular shipment (which you can cancel anytime without penalty! Bonus!) Drugstore.com has more items in bulk but no subscription discount that I know of.


#2. ALWAYS make a list, NEVER buy anything not on the list. Ever… ever… seriously, I know we are all grownups and we think we can walk around Target without a case of the “gimme-gimmes” (a great Bernstein Bears book, by the way!) but we can’t. Make a list with literally EVERYTHING you need and buy off the list and not a single item more. Seriously, it works. This is after considering what will be in your CSA box and knowing what is in season, but don't just wander around mindlessly picking up high fructose corn syrup products wrapped in ten layers of plastic packaging. Gross...

 #3. Become a substitutioner… I used to be a Martha Stewart recipe fanatic but dinner parties through her regularly cost $200+ because of her exotic ingredients. Even everyday recipes that call for mushroom soup when I don’t have it necessitate a trip to the store. So I am “The Great Substitioner”… I google first the item I need and substitutions for it (if something useful comes up, I go with that) but generally I just think about the item “Mushroom soup is thick, creamy, and salty” and then add accordingly with what makes sense (milk, cornstarch/cream of tartar to thicken and salt). And voila! A meal! Now, my husband is not at all picky (and he’s never had a bad meal) but in our three years I cook nightly and several times a weekend (we never eat out) and I’ve only made two meals that weren’t edible to me (none that weren’t edible to him!) One was bean soup that I reheated from the freezer and burned (it tasted like cigarettes… BLEH!) and a crockpot recipe that I followed by the book and it had no consistency and smelled like dog food… the dogs wouldn’t eat it, but my husband loved it!


#4. Use up EVERYTHING in your pantry. Challenge yourself for a month to use EVERYTHING in your pantry. It puts your cooking skills to the test and uses the Economics ideal of “sunk cost” at its best. Old canned pumpkin is not only delicious in June, but everyone loves a quick pumpkin pie cobbler because they haven’t had one in ages!


#5. Create your own standby meals and always have the ingredients on hand for them and then add in what you’ve got. Mine are quiche, vegetable soup and crumble. For quiche I either need to make a pie crust (flour, salt, butter) or have one in the freezer; eggs; milk; and whatever is leftover and soon to "go off"… meat, veggies, spinach/greens, bacon, cheese, etc. Quiche takes whatever you’ve got a little of and makes it into a meal for a family. Crumble takes whatever fruit you have that’s about to go off tomorrow, sprinkle it with lemon juice and a 1/2 cup sugar, and then put together equal parts flour and brown sugar with enough butter (a few tablespoons) of cold butter cut in to make a crumbly texture. Put that on top of the fruit and bake at 350F for about 45 minutes or until the inside begins to bubble... VOILA! Instant dessert and no one even requested it! Congratulations, you’ve just won four more wife gold stars!

Hope those help! Here is to Going Green in a bad Economy! Thank you to Green Baby Guide for the idea for this post!

Hump Day Happiness

I found an amazing chocolate bar at Fresh Market last week and may have fallen in love... it is not your "everyday of the week" kind of chocolate, but for a decidedly indulgent afternoon treat (especially in the bathtub with a glass of wine and a stack of magazines) this one is my new favorite...

    I gave a bite to a friend and he said it tasted "like a cup of tea" but I think that was all of the orange flavour and spices that tickle your tongue... Really, it is amazing, it is organic... who could want for anything more? Hehehe...

    And though, I promise to avoid politics as much as possible on this blog, I did want to share this op-ed article with you all because of how much I love the author's conclusion... I don't know if we have to be paranoid about letting our children out to play in the public places of the world but how much better would it be for the entire family if we were out there playing with them?

"Sure, it would be nice to uncage New York's children so they can feel the ecstasy of free play. But it's no less fun if we watch over them. In fact, it might be more fun. Tag, you're it."

Enjoy tingling your tastebuds and engaging your mind... Happy Wednesday!
Photos courtesy of http://www.chocablog.com/