Tomatoes

I was lamenting the fact that my tomatoes are taking their own sweet time ripening.  My garden has TONS of tomatoes, but they are in varying stages of ripeness, and the ripe ones start to get overripe before I have enough to can.  Anyway, I dried some a little while ago (in slices), but yesterday I decided to do a little bit of experimenting.  First, I sliced the tomatoes thinly and dehydrated them at 135 degrees until they were crispy (it took about 15 hours for most of them).  Next I stuck them in my vitamix on low speed until they were all chopped up.  Since I use my crockpot so often, my plan is to just throw them in with a little extra water in place of diced tomatoes.  The little tiny jar on the left was quite a few tomatoes...I'm guessing about 10 big dehydrator trays full!  I love that it takes up so little space in my already crowded pantry.  The jar on the right is actually tomato sauce that I made "tomato leather" out of, dried it until it was crispy, and chopped it in the vitamix.  It started out as about 2 cups of sauce, and is now probably only 1/2 cup or so!

Tomatoes!

So, even though I've been complaining about the lack of tomatoes to can, I'm actually not sure that I'll be canning them anyway!  I may have found my new tomato preservation method.  MUCH easier than canning, less time consuming (well, as far as active time), and less storage space.  What's not to love?! 

Raw Sprouted Hummus

We eat a TON of lentils around here.  They are so yummy, good for you...and you can't beat the price.  (I love WinCo bulk food section!)  I started sprouting a bunch of lentils earlier this week (we're having some for dinner tonight) but I sprouted more than we need for just one meal.  We usually just eat them plain, on salads, sandwiches, etc., but this afternoon I made a yummy hummus out of them!  I'm sure this would work just as well with any other sprouted legume, but since I have a gigantic colander of lentil sprouts sitting on my counter, obviously that's what I used. 

3 c. sprouted lentils
2 cloves garlic
1/4 large onion (or so...I just had part of an onion sitting in the fridge and used it...I think more onion would be better but was too lazy to cut up another one!)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lemon, juiced
Fresh parsley (just threw this in because I have an abundance of parsley, I'm not sure it really added anything to it)
1-1.5 tsp cumin
salt & pepper to taste...I think I probably used about 1/4 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp pepper.
olive oil for blending

Toss everything but olive oil in blender (vita-mix!).  Turn it on low speed and add olive oil until it blends freely.  I HATE using the plunger on the vita-mix so I always do everything possible to avoid it.  You could definitely cut down on the olive oil and use a plunger though. 

Yum! 

I have been really focusing on eating more raw foods lately, but I get kind of sick of the standard green smoothie & salad rut that I seem to fall into.  I have also been experimenting with raw (blended) soups, but I don't think the weather is nice enough yet for me to truly enjoy a soup that isn't hot!

DIY Cheez-It's!

The boys are driving me just a little bit crazy today (it's been a long week), so I decided to attempt something that has been on my to-do list for far too long: cheese crackers!

At the grocery store the other day, John tried to toss a box of Cheez-It's in the cart. Um, no thanks. Processed cheese product? Blech. (In all fairness to Cheez-It's, I don't even really know what's in them because we don't buy them...) I told John that I had found a recipe a while ago for goldfish crackers, and I would attempt to make Cheez-It's from it. And WHY NOT attempt it on a day when I was already close to pulling my hair out?

TADA!

And guess what? They were easy. I wish I had doubled the batch as the boys declared that they "wanted cheese crackers every day." They taste very close to Cheez-It's (or what I remember of Cheez-It's...it's been a few years), but I think they are a little salty. Also, next time I think I will attempt to roll them out even thinner because the thinner ones were nice and crispy! Yum.

Okay, want to try? HERE is the recipe! I mixed it all up in my Vita-Mix and stuck it in the fridge for about 20 minutes (but next time I will chill it for longer because it was still a little sticky). Then, I rolled the dough out on wax paper (I didn't have parchment), cut it into squares with a pizza cutter and plunked the whole thing on a cookie sheet. Worked perfectly.

Possibly Preston and Bryton are currently cleaning their playroom with the anticipation of more cheese crackers. (Hey, it's not bribery...it's positive reinforcement!)

Granola Bars

excuse the poor quality phone picture - I'm lazy...

I'm taking a break from my kitchen decluttering today to catch up on other (slightly more enjoyable) things. Like making granola bars! I used this recipe but modified it to make it slightly more healthy. Here's what I did:

1 c. steel cut oats

1 c. rolled oats

1 c. whole wheat flour

1/2 c white chocolate chips (I had some leftover from holiday baking)

1/2 c. craisins

1/2 c. wheat germ

1/2 c. ground up walnuts (I don't really like walnuts, but I figured if they were ground up enough I wouldn't notice them...thank you Vita-Mix!)

1 tsp. cinnamon (actually used a little more than that)

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/2 c. honey

1/2 c. rice bran oil

2 tsp vanilla

Press into 9x13 pan, bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Mine were brown around the edges at about 18 minutes so I took them out. Cut with pizza cutter after a minute or 2...then let sit in the pan until cool.

They are plenty sweet even though I completely left out the brown sugar. Next time I might try eliminating the egg and using flax seed mixed with water instead. Or, I might try an even healthier (no bake!) recipe that looks pretty interesting that I found here. My dad happened to leave us with an abundance of chia seeds! :)

Finally

Okay, it's OCTOBER and we're still (finally) getting tomatoes.

Yesterday I finished picking the tomatoes and decided that I probably had enough to do either tomato sauce or diced tomatoes (I canned a few jars of tomato soup a couple of weeks ago). I opted for the tomato sauce since we use it more, but in hindsight, I probably should have done the diced tomatoes since it's easier to find tomato sauce to buy in glass jars. Oh well, the tomato sauce was MUCH quicker to do, and since I started this while John was still at work, I kinda needed something low-maintenance thanks to 3 little boys and 1 destructive dog. I washed the tomatoes, cut the bigger ones in half, and tossed them in the vita-mix. I seriously love that thing. It makes my life just a little bit easier.

Anyway, out of that gigantic pot of sauce, I ended up getting 11 pints. My pantry is filling up quickly! I'm hoping for another week or 2 of warm (by warm, I mean above freezing) weather to possibly get enough tomatoes for some salsa...yum!

VitaMix L-O-V-E

I think my Vitamix is the only kitchen gadget that I use every single day. Literally. Sometimes I use it 2 or 3 times a day. I *LOVE* it.

Yesterday I used it to make a huge amount of applesauce. My parents brought a ton of apples when they came to visit, and they were sitting out in the garage. I used about 1/3 of them to make applesauce yesterday and then canned it (and I have plans to make the rest into applesauce as well, but I can only get so much done while taking care of 3 little boys). It's SO much easier in the Vitamix because you don't have to peel the apples! I just used an apple slicer, sliced/cored the apples, cooked them, tossed them in the Vitamix, and BAM...APPLESAUCE! Yum. Then I poured it right into the canning jars straight from the Vitamix!

John (the official breakfast-maker) uses it to mix up pancakes (or waffles) and scrambled eggs. Today I used it to make tomato soup from fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes. The boys (and John) LOVE tomato soup, but the kind that they love unfortunately has high-fructose corn syrup in it (not to mention the BPA in the cans). We've found an organic variety that they like okay, but it's just not the same. So today I tossed a bunch of tomatoes in, a quarter of an onion, some spices (salt, pepper, basil, oregano), and a little milk...and 4-5 minutes later, out came steaming hot tomato soup (or "tomato smoothie" as it was dubbed by the boys).

When I finally get enough tomatoes from the garden (soon...hopefully soon!) I plan to make tomato sauce and maybe tomato soup to can - I am sure it will be a piece of cake since I won't have to peel the tomatoes, either. We'll see how many tomatoes my little garden produces though. And let's hope they ripen up before the first frost!