Eggplant Schmegplant

I have a problem: when I go to Sprout's I get over zealous and idealistic.

Exhibit A September 6, 2011: Cantaloupe, 3 for $1.00. I hate cantaloupe, but you sure bet I brought three of them home that day. Some weird part of my mind got so excited about the sale that I convinced myself that my tastes would change and I'd be eating cantaloupe after dinner for dessert. Please don't ask me how many of the three cantaloupes had to be thrown away.

Exhibit B September 12, 2011: Eggplant, some seemingly great price for some forgetable amount of eggplant. I hate eggplant. It's spongy and smells. But the deep purple and delightful sale lured me in and I bought one anyway, with no real plan of how to eat it.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011. I planned to cook my loverly husband a delicious Garlic Roast Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon from Rachael Ray's Classic 30-Minute Meals cookbook. He complained recently about how I have become inattentive to the chicken preparation since going vegetarian, and so I really wanted to put some effort into this meal. I hadn't thought much about what I'd fix myself and figured I could just throw some tofu in the pan along with the chicken, when I remembered the eggplant.

Often I find I am disappointed with the tofu I fix when I am making chicken for my husband. It's just not an acceptable main dish substitute if all we are having is chicken and a side. I wasn't sure how eggplant would hold up as a main dish, but I was aware that it is often served in place of chicken in Italian dishes so I figured it couldn't be a terrible substitute here. I sliced it lengthwise and prepared it exactly as I prepared the chicken (see recipe below) and OH. MY. STARS. It was deliciously satisfying. I was sad I had only cooked one slice because this dinner definitely left me craving more. In fact, every time I have sat down to eat since then, I've wished I was eating that eggplant instead of whatever was before me. No lie.

The texture was a bit slimy so I might cook it either on a lower temperature next time or take it out a bit earlier. I have to admit though, I kind of liked the slime. This is certainly worth playing with a bit.

The unfortunate part of this whole thing is that I only reinforced my delusional, sale-obsession. This is, however, a step of progress on the path to granola, for it doesn't get much crunchier than buying in-season (if sale means in-season), not making waste and trying new things. Speaking of, please go try this recipe. It goes great with a glass of white wine, which you will just happen to have on hand if you make this!

Garlic Roast Eggplant with Rosemary and Lemon (adapted from Rachael Ray's recipe)

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant, sliced lengthwise in 1/4-1/2" pieces

4 cloves garlic, crushed

4 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves stripped and chopped (I used dried rosemary)

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

The grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning or salt and pepper

1/2 cup dry white wine or vegetable broth

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Arrange eggplant in a baking dish. Add garlic, rosemary, olive oil, lemon zest and italian seasoning (I also drizzled a tiny bit of red wine vinegar over it, because eggplant tends to really soak up juices). Toss eggplant to coat, then place in the oven. Roast 20 minutes (probably more like 10). Add wine and lemon juice to the dish and combine with pan juices, then spoon over eggplant. Return to oven and turn oven off. Let stand 5 minutes longer, then remove from oven. Serve with pan juices.

Enjoy!

Never Going Back

Have you ever tried to clean your tub using baking soda and vinegar? If you haven't, I suggest you stop what you are doing right now and go try. Seriously. The results are jaw-dropping.

My quest to granola-living has me swapping my toxic, chemically-laden household cleaners for all-natural, feel-good, make-it-yourself versions. I am doing this slowly, replacing each cleaner as I run out and I am proud to say I took the last plunge today. This last one was a bit scary for me. How the heck was I going to clean the dirtiest area of our house to my standards without the scum-fighting, bacteria-killing power of Scrubbing Bubbles?

Four words people: vinegar and baking soda.

Seriously. Every single item in your house can be cleaned with varying amounts of either or both of these two household items. And the bathroom is no exception. I first replaced my window cleaner with 1 liter warm water and 2 tablespoons vinegar. It worked like a charm. I then replaced my toilet bowl cleaner with 1/4 cup baking soda and 2 cups vinegar. Magic. Mopping? Just use 1 gallon warm water and 1 cup apple cider vinegar (with a drop or two of baby oil if you want).

Today I conquered the shower. Previously I had been cleaning my shower while showering. Great time saving tip but geez, I almost hacked up a lung every time I sprayed down the shower. The humidity in the shower plus the action-packed Scrubbing Bubbles were a potent combination and made me painfully aware of how chock-full-o-chemicals that stuff really is. Then today happened. I was out of my go-to cleaner and ready for the natural option. For the basin of the tub I closed the drain and poured in the vinegar, just enough to thoroughly wipe it down. I then sprinkled baking soda all over the basin and got to scrubbing with my sponge. I am not kidding you when I say that soap scum I didn't even know was there began to come off. It took a little bit of elbow grease but before long my tub looked, well, cleaner than ever before! I rinsed it off with warm clean water and voila! I still can't believe how well it worked. For the tile area I just rubbed in baking soda with warm water, as vinegar can eat away at the grout if overused.

For me, this whole "all-natural" lifestyle is not just about getting rid of "toxins" and "waste"and all that jazz, but also about saving money. However, I am not here to tell you that cleaning with vinegar and baking soda is more cost-effective. Heck, I am terrible at math and too lazy to really figure it out. I will tell you that I go through the biggest jug of vinegar I have ever seen and an equally big box of baking soda about every 3-4 weeks. I know that's faster than I was replacing cleaning products. But honestly folks, I don't care. After the magic I saw it work on my tub today I don't give a flying flip. You can't put a price on soap scum removal people. Write that down.

No pictures for you folks. I am embarrassed of how bad our tub had gotten. Instead I challenge you to take your elbow grease, vinegar and baking soda and go try it out yourself. Seriously. Go.

These Ain't Ya Momma's Cloth Diapers

Would you believe me if I told you I haven't been updating my blog because every time I get on the computer I lose hours reading about/looking at/entering giveaways for cloth diapers?You should because I have become majorly obsessed. But fear not, I am finally making time to sit down and fill you in. I want to spread the love (the good, the bad, the ugly love) and share my new milestone on the path to granola.

Back when I was pregs my friend Erin asked me if I was planning to do cloth diapers, because she knew a lot of her friends back in California were starting to do that. "Uhhhh no," I replied, with a bit of judgement in my voice I'm sure. Cloth diapers were for CRAZY people on the west coast and there was just no way I was going to do that. Fast forward several months and enter my friend Christina, pregnant with triplets and planning to do cloth. I admit, I told people she was doing it and I told people she was a bit nuts. Through facebook, however, she shared a link for a group called the DFW Cloth Diaper group and introduced me to some girls who were doing it. I started reading blogs, websites, reviews, facebook discussions and that was the beginning of my very slippery slope into cloth diaper fanaticism. Seriously folks, I stayed up at night thinking about cloth diapers. And that's when I knew I had to try them out.

Stop reading for a moment and go google "clothdiapers." The insanity is unreal. First, you almost need a dictionary to even understand what most of these people are even talking about, not to mention some kind of decoder ring to crack the acronyms they use- AIO, AI2, PUL, H&L, LO, DH, etc. I was thoroughly confused and decided I needed some real life, hands on instruction to see if this would be worth my while. I went to Babies, Bottoms & More in Farmer's Branch to see if anyone could explain to me what the heck all this stuff was. The owner runs this business out of her garage basically, but she was very helpful and patient with me as I played 20 questions. Finally, feeling like I had a grasp on this whole thing, I decided to take the plunge into diapering.

Unsure of how this experiment would turn out, I decided to turn to Craigslist for my first purchase. That's right folks, I bought USED cloth diapers. The fact that I was buying used grossed me out to no end, but I didn't think it would be wise to blow money on brand new diapers when I wasn't sure if I would stick with it, so I bought some previously pooped on cloth. I found a great deal and purchased 6 BumGenius 3.0 pocket-style diapers. Much to my delight, the diapers reeked of bleach and were snowy white! It wasn't long before I was hooked and searching day and night to find great deals on more diapers. I have purchased many more since those original six, but they continue to be my favorite by far.

There is, however, quite a learning curve with using cloth. It has taken several weeks of figuring out how to get it on just right to prevent leaks and figuring out what to do with the poop. Most instructions I find online say to "shake the poop off into the toilet" and then throw it into the laundry. Well, pardon the TMI, but Will's poop isn't shakable at this point. You can purchase diaper sprayers that hook onto your toilet to assist in this matter but I went and just bought a detachable shower head to use, since my toilet is right next to my bath tub. This seemed, to me, an ingenious idea and I couldn't wait for Will to poop so I could try it out. My excitement soon turned to frustration as the shower head ended up spraying poop anywhere BUT the toilet and I ended up soaking wet! I now use a tiny squirt bottle and just hold the diaper over the toilet and spray and refill and spray and refill until all the mess is gone. It takes quite a bit longer but it works just fine and leaves me and my bathroom relatively clean. After the poop is gone I spray the diaper with Baby OxyClean and throw it in a bag designed to hold wet diapers until I can get it in the wash.

The laundry hasn't been nearly as bad as I imagined it to be either. Now that I have enough diapers to make it almost 2 full days, I only do laundry every other day. In some weird way that I can't explain, it's actually very relaxing. I daresay I look forward to dong my diaper laundry every other night. It goes like this: I put all the diapers in the washer and run a cold prewash followed by a hot wash with a tiny bit of Tide Original powder and follow that cycle with an additional cold rinse. Then I take all of the diapers and hang up the covers and throw the inserts into the dryer on low. The next day I put all the inserts into the covers and I am ready to go. It's quite easy and I haven't had very many staining issues and no stink issues at all!

I am proud to say that Will is now fully cloth diapered, even when staying with a sitter or grandparents or out and about! It took a while and I eased into it but what once seemed crazy and overwhelming is now just a part of life. I really don't think I could go back (although I actually am going to go back to disposables for our Disney World trip next week because the thought of carrying around dirty diapers in the heat at an amusement park all day makes me want to hurl). If anyone reading this is interested in more information about cloth diapering, let me know because it's my new favorite thing to talk about.

Super Mom?

I realize that for people to stay interested in this blog, I should probably write more often. Shame on me. I am not a super blogger (not exactly sure what I am "super" at right now, but it's not blogging), but I am trying and that's really all I can give you people, so I hope you are satisfied.

As far as adventures in being granola go, I am pleased to report that I have been pretty successful in my latest endeavor: homemade baby food. It's laughable really, that I call this a success, because ITS NOT THAT HARD. In fact, it's so easy that it makes me wonder why Gerber even makes any money at all. Actually, I know exactly why they make money: convenience and fear. Making baby food seems to be something only "super moms" can handle, and I am basing this claim solely on the responses I get when I tell people, "I'm making my own baby food." The most common reply is, "That's great but I would NEVER have the time for something like that." Everyone else kind of gives me a sideways stare, as if am some loony rocket scientist. I actually don't even like saying that I am doing it anymore because it's a little embarrassing and peoples' reactions make me feel weird. The thing is, folks, I am hardly what anyone could classify as a "super mom" and I certainly aint no rocket scientist. I tend to be the most over-scheduled, mess of a person there is (trying to get better at this), so if I can do it, you can do it.

Admittedly, I had the same reservations about this whole thing as many others do. About 5 years ago I visited a friend in Seattle who had a young baby and she was sitting at her kitchen table making sweet potatoes for her little one. I was in complete awe. The thought of actually making food for a baby had never entered my mind and I thought this woman was SUPER cool for what she was doing. It was never something I could do though. But something came over me when I got pregnant and committed to this whole "granola" living thing. With fear and trepidation I registered for some containers for homemade baby food and here I am today. I got a recipe book too, but that's odd to me since every recipe is essentially the same: cook and mash. Not too difficult.

I had a monster cooking session a week ago and prepared a few weeks worth of food. I spent maybe an hour in the kitchen. Seriously. Two pears, three sweet potatoes, two zucchini and two apples later, I had enough food in my freezer for many many meals and some left over for me to chow down on. I boiled everything in just a bit of water, except for the sweet potatoes which required quite a lot of water, and sent each through the food processor. In addition to these "cooked" foods I feed him raw avocados and bananas mashed up on the fly. So, so, so easy folks, not to mention quite yummy! You should have seen me licking the bowl after I made the pears! Delish!

And there we have it. This is the easiest, most disaster-free granola move I have made yet, and I challenge you to do it as well (if you have really young or really aged mouths to feed that is). I think the biggest thing that I learned through this process is that most of these "granola" steps seem so huge to me at the time, yet end up being so simple once I really get the hang of it.

That leads me to cloth diapers, naturally. I mean, what goes in MUST come out right? Cloth diapers seems an impossible task to me right now, but I am very seriously contemplating the switch. If you haven't seen a cloth diaper in a while people, GO GOOGLE them! You won't believe your eyes! Cloth diapers have come a long way and many brands are super cute. But, that's another post for another time. Stay tuned…..

Two Important Lessons

The past few weeks have been bombs for me in the kitchen and in the house, and while that should give plenty of fuel for blogging (considering the point of this blog is to share my mishaps in granola living), it's left me discouraged and unmotivated to share. I did, however, learn some valuable lessons that I need to share, now that I have finally found the time to step out of the kitchen and to plop myself down in front of a computer.

1. DO NOT under any circumstances add salt to already salted peanuts.

A couple of weeks ago I stood in front of my food processor with my notepad and pen, ready to perfect my homemade peanut butter. In went one cup of salted, roasted peanuts, one teaspoon of salt, and a tablespoon of oil. My plan was to gradually add more of each element until I got the perfect blend, take note of what I had added and share it with all of you lovely readers. After one whirl of the motor I took a taste and was almost knocked off my feet. The saltiness was overwhelming, to say the least. I tried adding more peanuts, more oil, honey, maple syrup, more oil, more peanuts, more honey, sugar, ANYTHING to lessen the salt flavor. Nothing worked. I couldn't throw it out because I felt bad about how may ingredients I had put into this project and furthermore, I didn't have anymore peanuts left, so I knew if I wanted peanut butter then I would have to suck it up and eat what I had made. And I did. Every last bite. Boy was I glad when it was all gone. Lesson learned.

2. Let the volcano happen IN the toilet not ON the counter.

As a wanna-be granola mother I am on a quest to remove as many chemical "toxins" from my house as possible. I am not quite sure what that even means, but I think it means I have to make some of my own cleaning products. Since I don't want to throw money down the drain I have decided to continue to use the products I already own and replace them when they run out with homemade concoctions. The first to go was toilet bowl cleaner. A quick google search brought up a ton of recipes, all centering around two main ingredients: baking soda and vinegar. Perfect! I happened to have those two in my kitchen. So, last Friday I went into my kitchen and got a measuring cup, filled it with the appropriate amount of baking soda and added the appropriate amount of vinegar. I figured I could mix it first and then put it into a spray bottle. Apparently I didn't pay much attention in elementary science because I had a volcanic explosion on my counter top. The "lava" spilled all over the counter and down onto the floor. Needless to say, I had sparkling counter tops and only half-way decent looking toilet bowls. Next time I will mix it in the toilet. Also (and this one is for free), do yourself a favor and DON'T use apple cider vinegar. It's amber color, when sitting in your toilet, looks like someone forgot to flush. It's definitely no the clean blue color I am used to, but alas, I press on.

Buffalos and Tacos

Taco night. I hate taco night. It's too easy and therefore makes me feel like I'm not living up to my domestic goddess aspirations. Daniel, however, loves taco night, and why not? It's always successful, as opposed to my usual mealtime experiments, which never fail to be overly complicated but almost always fail to be tasty. Last night on the way home from work Daniel picked up the necessary supplies- tortillas, ground turkey, chips, avocados and taco seasoning. I already had some tomatoes, an onion, and a black bean dip that I made earlier in the week. What followed was dinner delight.

The Meat

I prefer not to buy ground turkey if I can help it. After reading Eating Animals I decided turkey is a no-go, but how do you do tacos for a meat lover without taco meat? He only eats meat, cheese, and sour cream anyhow so it's not like I can just have him sub-in veggies. Sprouts was running a special on ground bison so I went to the brand's website and checked it out. Their bison basically run free on 10,000 acres of land (how's that for free range?), eat pesticide-free grass (and whatever else bison eat), and aren't given any hormones, steroids or antibiotics. It doesn't get much more "granola" than that! Sign me up! I went to sprouts to acquire said bison meat and found they were totally out of fresh and only had frozen left. Bummer, but not a deterrent. At the freezer I found the last package of bison meat and my jaw dropped. Blood-central. The frozen meat was encased in a solid block of bloody ice. Yuck. Free-range ideals went out the window, I could just call Daniel and have him pick up some Jennie-O turkey on the way home. And that was the end of that.

The Veggies

Typically I just eat sliced bell peppers, spinach, tomato and avocado in a tortilla, but I used the last of my bell peppers in my black bean "hummus" and I wanted to save my spinach for a pesto in case snowmageddon continued to lock us in the apartment, so I had to get creative. In my crisper I had a zucchini and a yellow squash, so I decided to toss them with olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic and some Nature's Seasoning and roast them. In the meantime I started to make some pico de gallo. I diced my onion and tomato and tossed them together with parsley, as I didn't have any cilantro, and some garlic. When the zucchini and squash finished roasting I took them out of the oven and last minute decided to throw them into the pico. It ended up being quite tasty, though my onion-to-every-other-vegetable ratio was way off. Still, the pico made a great taco filling and a surprisingly great pairing with some pasta and cheese the next day (snowmageddon decidedly made me more creative in my eating habits).

"Refried" Black Bean "Hummus"

The secret to this next dish is that it is neither "refried" nor "hummus." On Monday I decided I would try my hand at making a black bean hummus. I took Giada's White Bean and Roasted Eggplant recipe and basically substituted every ingredient with other ingredients. Eggplant became bell peppers. White beans became black beans. Lemon juice became lime juice. I tossed in some cayenne pepper and onion powder as well. It didn't taste much like a hummus at all, and though Daniel actually liked it, to my total amazement, we both thought it lacked something (if you play with this recipe and figure out how to make it better, let me know). Enter taco night. In scanning my fridge for veggies I saw the concoction and decided to heat it up to use in a bean burrito or two. What a success! It's very "granola" to see something you made earlier in the week for one recipe and use it in another. Mark that.

Dinner was delicious and satisfying and took less than 30 minutes to make. Really, what more can you ask for? That should be good enough, but it's not. You see, typically we buy our tortillas at the store and although they are handmade at Kroger and have a very short shelf life (having a short shelf life is also very "granola") they still have a ton of ingredients in them that I cannot pronounce. This I cannot abide. "Maybe next taco night I will make my own tortillas," I say to Daniel. His response? "So you mean next week?"

Taco night is here to stay and though it's not the domestic goddess meal of choice, it's something I can feel good about.

"Vegan" Blueberry Muffins

Ideally I'd like to be a vegan. I am, however, married to a meat-and-potatoes man, so veganism doesn't really work very well in our house. I strike a vegetarian-ish compromise for myself, while trying to get him accustomed to a more varied palate. He also really LOVES all things that come out of a box, can, or package. I am desperately trying to lessen my use of all things packaged, while still preparing his favorite fare.

This brings us to blueberry muffins. Try making vegan blueberry muffins that taste just like Duncan Hines. Go ahead, try. Real blueberries just don't come close to the taste of his beloved canned DH blueberries. I am determined, however, to try to make something he'll love to eat that I feel good about him eating. Last week I made a vegetarian version of some blueberry muffins I found on a great vegan blog. She called for soy yogurt but I used greek vanilla flavored and used a real egg instead of the egg-replacer that she used. I have a thing against egg-replacer, though I am not sure why. It just seems to defeat the whole "real-food" concept. (I don't want to use eggs, but until I find a suitable replacement, I will just continue. More on that to come.) Anyhow, the muffins were SUPER tasty! Daniel liked them pretty well and I felt semi-proud of them.

But that wasn't enough. That wasn't "vegan" enough for me. I couldn't just stop at a good recipe. I had to take it a step further. Enter silken tofu. Now, I had seen my dad make a yogurt like substance out of silken tofu so I figured it couldn't be that hard to replace

the vanilla yogurt in the recipe with the silken tofu. Just throw it in the food processor with some vanilla extract and bam! Right? Wrong. First of all, I couldn't get my massive bottle of vanilla extract open. I suppose some of the vanilla had crusted at the top and sealed it shut. I gave up and went to the cupboard to see what else I could use. Why not almond extract and some maple syrup? Well, it probably wouldn't have been bad, except that I lost control of the almond extract and poured WAY too much into the tofu. It smelled awful and tasted even worse.

Most people would stop here. Most people would reevaluate and think of another solution. Not me. Nope, I just cringed and essentially closed my eyes as I poured the silken tofu disaster into the batter. As they were cooking all I could smell was the almond extract. They were pretty much dripping with it. They looked quite beautiful though. I held my breathe as I took a bite. Not bad. Now for the real challenge: the Hubster. Will it pass the Daniel test?

After dinner, he sat down with two blueberry muffins and a diet Dr. Pepper. I waited patiently for the verdict. "Well, they taste different." That's all he said. I pressed him on it and the conclusion was, "I mean, they aren't as good as what you made last time, but I will eat them."

And the search continues......