Monthly Archives: January 2012

New Year, New You: January Re-cap

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Happy last day of January!  Since it’s the end of the month I thought I would just share with you my changes for the month.  Some changes have been easy, some have been harder.  It actually only took a few hours to clean out the pantry, although the emotional trauma is still with me.  🙂  So, drumroll please:  in the healthy eating category I got rid of the bad oils, high fructose corn syrup, white refined sugar (see what I did with that here), and I’m working in kicking my Dr. Pepper habit.  I have begun soaking my oatmeal and I installed a faucet mount water filter for drinking and cooking.

In other areas, I have begun recycling (I know, right?) and I am doing a ton of research on whole foods, traditional ways of food preparation, and healthier alternatives to household products.  And I’ve been more consistent with my blogging! 🙂  My pantry purge also triggered a purging spree throughout my entire house.  If I don’t love it and/or use it, it’s outa here.  It’s been incredibly freeing to de-clutter.  And I love having less to dust.

So there you have it.  Some baby steps towards a better year and a better, healthier life.  Over this next month I hope to find healthier versions of some of our favorite foods, especially some of those packaged mixes the I like.  Switching to whole foods is a process and there’s grace for the journey.

Have you made some changes this month?  What has been the most challenging for you?

New Year, New You #3

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I know you have all been impatiently waiting to read the continuing adventures of Pantry Girl, Food Avenger.  If you want to find out what happened before, you can read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

We now re-join our heroine sobbing in the middle of the kitchen floor surrounded by mountains of canned goods and boxes of “stuff” thinly disguised as food.  Battles can be emotional, and having just ninja chopped HFCS to near extinction, and Chuck Norris kicking MSG and artificial sweeteners to the curb, our pantry purging protagonist is portraying her passionate protest at the plight of our national provender.  Holy hyperbole, Batman!  Seriously, I could be a one woman reality show!  Ok, enough with the drama.  I really didn’t break down and cry, but it did kinda make me mad when I began to realize all the junk that is in so much of the foods that we eat.

To continue, the next things that got the boot where my half can of Crisco and my jug of canola oil.  (Repeat after me:  hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oil are not my friends!)  I have been using other oils for a while, so it was definitely past time to toss those!  I use butter or olive oil in most of my recipes and I just recently been introduced to organic coconut oil.  It is naturally solid at room temp and makes a great alternative to unnatural shortenings.  It comes in two ways: expeller pressed which has a neutral taste and no smell, and extra virgin which tastes and smells coconutty.  Yes that is too a word.  It’s good for pie crusts and frying things and that makes me happy cause I loves me some homemade french fries!  As an aside, don’t EVER try to fry homemade french fries in olive oil.  It will fill your house with smoke.  Really stinky, thick, black smoke.  And then your smoke detectors will go off because the detect the really stinky, thick, black smoke.  All of them.  Loudly.  At the same time.  And then you’ll need rescue dogs with earplugs to find your children.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.  Because I would never be silly enough to use a low smoke point oil to fry french fries in.  I’m so glad we’ve gotten that out of the way.  🙂

Another change that’s in process is replacing refined, white sugar with raw organic honey and organic dehydrated sugar cane juice.  While I know that is not the least refined kind of sugar,  as I said before it’s a process.  I have quite a bit of white refined sugar in my pantry left over from some very good intentions I had about making goodie baskets for all those near and dear to me for Christmas gifts.  Unfortunately the goodie fairy never showed and now I’m stuck with lots of refined sugar that I don’t want to eat and I feel that it wouldn’t be good stewardship to toss all of it out.  (Now that I know how to make sugar body scrub it won’t go to waste!)  I am also continuing my search for healthier alternatives to some things I use frequently, like the onion soup mix, Italian salad dressing mix, and the ubiquitous cream of something soups.  There are several recipes online and I will keep trying them until I find one I like.

What pantry items have you deep-sixed for homemade, healthier alternatives?  Please share, it may be something someone else is looking for.  🙂

I linked this at Fight Back Friday.

Chicken and Broccoli in Wine Sauce

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Last week a friend and I went to dinner at an Italian place.  My friend ordered a dish in a wine sauce and she let me have a taste.  I decided right then that I needed to come up with a recipe that had a wine sauce.  This is what I came up with using ingredients that I already had at home.

Chicken and Broccoli in Wine Sauce

Here’s what I used:

3 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces (preferably organic, free range)
2 bunches of broccoli, cut into bite sized pieces
1 medium onion, thickly sliced and the slices cut in half
4 oz button mushrooms, thinly sliced
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
2 c homemade chicken stock
1 c white wine (I only had a white zinfandel, so that’s what I used)
1 tsp fresh minced garlic
pinch of sea salt
ground pepper
thyme
toasted sesame seeds
Put the chicken stock, wine, minced garlic, and 1 1/2 tsp sea salt in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil.  Continue boiling, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is reduced by about half.
While the sauce is reducing, heat the olive oil in a large skillet.  Add onions and saute until they are translucent.  Add the mushrooms and chicken.  Cook, stirring, until the chicken is no longer pink.  Put the broccoli in the skillet.  It will steam beautifully just sitting on top of everything else.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Check sauce and adjust seasonings if necessary.  Pour the sauce over the mixture in the skillet.  Sprinkle with fresh thyme and toasted sesame seeds.  Stir to distribute sauce and seasonings.  Serve with a green salad and garlic toast.
This was a really quick and easy meal and it made the house smell really good.  The kids liked it so much that they ate it all and didn’t leave me any leftovers for today! 🙁  You could serve it over pasta or rice for a more filling meal, or if you want to stretch it.  This will easily served four adults, or in my case, 1 adult and two teenagers.  I just love it when an experiment works out!
Do you experiment in the kitchen?  What has been your favorite experiment so far?
I shared this post at Simple Lives Thursday, Real Food 101, Pennywise Platter Thursday, and