Meatless Monday: Crockpot Tomato Sauce

I had quite the busy last four days, which is why this post is a little late. Lily and I went to the zoo with her Aunt Kim and cousin Rhys on Thursday, caught up on chores and work on Friday, went to NYC with the grandparents on Saturday, then Lily slept over the grandparents’ house Saturday night and got back late Sunday afternoon then went grocery shopping with Mom and Dad. In between, I caught up on chores I normally have trouble doing with Lily around, like giving Ogum a desperately needed trim and FINALLY finishing painting Lily’s room (see pics below). By Sunday night I was spent!

It was Paul's idea to do the split colors like this

Lily loves ducks (and Elmo as you can see by the book she insisted on carrying around with her)

"I'm walking in the spiderwebs..."

"Honk, honk!"

Today’s Meatless Monday recipe is pretty easy, the only really active part being peeling, seeding and chopping up the tomatoes. When I first made this in my Crockpot, it was because I had recently acquired a huge batch of organic, farm-raised and picked tomatoes from Paul’s dad who works on a farm (part of the way he spends his “retirement”). I got bright red, yellow, orange and green tomatoes, more than enough to make the sauce with, the rest went into salads. The yellow and orange were so sweet (“Like candy!” according to Paul’s dad), and the red were perfect for this sauce! I just threw the green ones into the sauce as well because I am not a big fan of them alone (although I know many people enjoy fried green tomatoes). To be honest, I rarely eat fresh tomatoes because the acidity bothers my stomach. I usually will only eat plum or cherry tomatoes very thinly sliced on sandwiches or mixed up in a salad or with fresh mozzarella. But, when it comes to sauces, soups and beans, tomatoes really make them amazing!

Some of the lovely organic tomatoes from the farm

Crockpot Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

1 lb ripe tomatoes, preferably plum

6 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped

1 medium onion, diced

½ cup olive oil

½ cup fresh basil

1 tbsp white sugar

1 tbsp dried oregano

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

First, peel the skin off the tomatoes with a small, sharp knife; then seed the tomatoes and if they’re soft enough mash up into chunks, otherwise dice. Set aside. In a small frying pan, sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil with the salt and pepper for about 3-5 minutes, or until fragrant. Remove from heat then add contents of the pan along with all the other ingredients to your slow cooker. Set to low and cook for up to 12 hours, minimum 6 hours. The longer you cook it the better it will taste, but in my experience, 6 hours of cooking will still taste great if you can’t wait that long!

Taste the sauce once an hour as it cooks and add more seasonings according to taste as you go. If it’s too acidic, add more sugar. Some other seasonings you can add are red pepper flake to spice it up, thyme to soften it, and cinnamon to warm it up and make it a bit less traditional if that’s what you’re into. This recipe is a basic, classic tomato sauce recipe, perfect for anything you need sauce for, but I think it tastes best smothering spaghetti!!!

Lily loves tomato sauce. Most kids do, I think. I actually was not a big fan as a kid, and now I know it’s because of the acidity. My parents just thought I was being picky and made me eat it anyway, or else cave and give me my fuselli with butter and cheese. The picky eater in my house is my husband, but even he can appreciate a homemade, slow-cooked pasta sauce.

For babies 9-12 months, puree ½ cup pasta with a little olive oil and a few spoonfuls of sauce then top with grated Parmesan.

Tomatoes- despite their acidity that my stomach disagrees with –are quite good for you. For one thing, they are loaded with the antioxidant lycopene and vitamins A, C and K with are strongly present in all red or orange-colored produce. They provide cardio-vascular support, strengthen bones and some studies show they are beneficial in protecting against cancer, especially prostate cancer.

So, next time you have time to spend at home and get a hankering for some home-style Italian pasta, give this recipe a try if you have a slow cooker or big pot and bring Italy to the dinner table. (This would be a great recipe to bookmark for a snowy day when you’re stuck inside!)

November Cookies: Dark Chocolate Coconut 'n Flax Cookies

I am POOPED today! I took Lily to a zoo in Brooklyn yesterday and after having to take 3 different trains there and back, not to mention having to be on my feel all day with her, I am still sore. I am almost too tired to even write anything right now…but, bloggers can’t rest now, can they? Not when they’re trying to actually stick to what they set out to do and post at least 3 times a week and have a different cookie recipe every Friday! Not when they’re computer acts up non-stop, narrowly avoiding being punched in the screen several times in less than a day! And definitely not when the internet connection was acting up all morning for no known reason, luckily finally deciding to work again as soon as I was about to reach my wit’s end! (It’s been that kind of day…) No, nothing will stop me from getting healthy cookie recipes to you, my devoted readers (at least I think you’re devoted…), not even a cranky toddler (who I just put down for a nap, yay!).

Note: Lily woke up just minutes after I started writing the paragraph below…what a stinker! She only napped for about 30 minutes!

And for the sake of chocolate and indulging in naughty sweets, this first November Cookie recipe is not the healthiest I have, but certainly one of the yummiest, and I think it deserves to be the first I post, mainly because it has become the new favorite of the house and because I felt like it.

Dark Chocolate Coconut ‘n Flax Cookies

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour, sifted

¼ cup ground flax flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

½ cup white sugar

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup butter or ½ butter ½ cup coconut oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2 cups dark chocolate chips

1 cup shredded coconut

I usually preheat my oven once the dough is ready to be put on the cookie sheets, but if you prefer to preheat your oven once you start making dough, you can go ahead and set it to 375 degrees. Combine flours, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside. In separate bowl, mix sugars, vanilla, and butter and/or oil together until smooth and creamy. Add each egg one at a time until well beaten and combined with mixture. Then slowly add the flour mixture, a little at a time, until well blended together with sugar mixture. An electric beater works best. Lastly, add the chocolate chips and coconut until mixed in evenly with dough.

Drop rounded spoonfuls of cookie dough onto ungreased baking sheets in rows, at least 2 inches apart. Bake for 10-15 minutes in oven on center rack until golden brown. Remove cookies and allow to cool before serving, as they will be HOT! Enjoy with a nice glass of milk (I prefer almond).

Can't you just smell them baking?

Of course, cookies are best when they’re fresh out of the oven, and often I can only wait for about 10 minutes before sinking my teeth into one of these heavenly delights. The coconut and dark chocolate go perfectly together, and the whole wheat and flax flours add the extra benefits of fiber and omega-3s. This recipe also calls for 25% less sugar than the average classic chocolate chip cookie recipes. 

Delicious outcome

I use organic and Fair Trade chocolate chips when I can, like Sunspire, which is available at Whole Foods if you have on near you. You can also find a store online. I have written a post about slaves being used for harvesting cocoa beans where you can read more on the abominable practice of forcing children into unpaid labor under harsh working conditions. It’s very difficult to find chocolate that is truly slave-free, especially when it comes to chocolate chips. If you feel very strongly against using chocolate that may have come from unsavory sources, try just breaking up a slave-free chocolate bar instead! Here’s a site that lists many of the organic, Fair Trade and/or slave-free chocolates available.

I know it’s very difficult to find chocolate that is not only organic and Fair Trade, but also truly slave-free. It’s also hard to find an affordable one! Vitacost.com- one of my favorite websites ever! –has Sunspire baking chips available at very reasonable prices and in a variety of different versions, from grain-sweetened, to vegan, to carob and more! Of course, they don’t offer a “classic” semi-sweet or dark chocolate version on vitacost, but they do have that kind available at Whole Foods.

Of course, I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on anyone; I don’t always use certified chocolates myself since they are not always readily available like I said. I a merely trying to draw attention to the situations surrounding the cocoa bean trade that some sources claim is “getting better”, yet many state otherwise. It’s always good to be informed, and if you are able to make a better buying decision isn’t that always the best way to go? Most of you have children and are horrified that children as young as three (probably younger!) are put into labor camps to harvest cocoa beans, coffee beans, and many other items. Heck, even if you don’t have kids I’m sure you are just as saddened by the situation, so let’s do our best to support those companies that are trying to make a difference!

To end on a lighter note, Lily recently tried chocolate chip cookies for the first time (here’s the photographic proof!) and loved them! This version of chocolate chip cookies would be a great first cookie for a little one in your life due to the added benefits of whole grain flours, coconut and less sugar than most readily-available cookies out there. And of course you want your child’s first cookie to be homemade! They will taste the love you put into making them, I guarantee it!

Dark chocolate has also been proven to be quite healthy itself, especially in comparison to milk chocolate. First of all, it is full of heart-healthy antioxidants and natural mood-boosters which is why many people crave chocolate when they're feeling blue. It also contains many vital minerals such as iron and magnesium. I don't know about you, but I greatly prefer the taste of dark to milk chocolate anyway!

Check back next week for Meatless Monday, the first featured up-and-coming blog post, and another cookie recipe! Have a great weekend!!!

More Halloween Fun!

Here they are- the pics of Lily in costume and our first jack-o-lantern! Enjoy, and feel free to link to your fun Halloween blogs and pics in the comments! (Yes, I know it's 2 days after Halloween!)

Proudly showing off Fairy Princess costume #1 (it was too cold for her to wear this version out), Mommy forgot to turn off the flash

She really likes the wand

Fairy Princess costume #2, tie-dye pixie!

At the yearly parade in our neighborhood where all the kids trick-or-treat at the shops

Throwing her hourly tantrum- how pretty are those wings?!

My first jack-o-lantern! Not bad, eh?

Spooooky

MeOW! Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Green Frittata for Meatless Monday!

So it’s Halloween! Happy Halloween everyone! Whether you celebrate this spooky holiday or not, it’s still always a good excuse to get the creative juices flowing. I read a quote on this from Pete Wentz on twitter yesterday: “If you stopped celebrating Halloween that means you took part of your imagination off of life support and just let it die (sic).” A bit much, yes, but I think you get the point. I find it a little sad when people say they’re too old to dress up. I don’t think you’re ever too old to have fun, and isn’t getting dressed up and indulging in a little fantasy part of having fun? It’s a good way to do so, that’s for sure!

I enjoyed a couple of Halloween parties with my good friend, Josh, this year. I was a Geisha girl and he was a Rockstar.

I will post more Halloween pics either later today or tomorrow so be sure to check back!

Lily is going as a pixie so I will post pics of that later or tomorrow!

I wanted to have a cool Halloween-themed recipe for today, but although this one for a Very Green Frittata may not look ghoulish enough, I thought the greenness of it could represent ectoplasm perhaps, or you could cover it with ketchup or tomato sauce and make it a bit more “gory” for older kids. I was going to (finally) post my crock-pot tomato sauce recipe, but then thought this might be more fun, plus simpler for something last minute if any of you wanted to use this for a Meatless Monday brunch, lunch or dinner today! So, I guess I will post the tomato sauce recipe next week, and on that note, I intend to post cookie recipes once a week for the entire month of November, starting this week!!!! Yay for baked goods! They will all have healthy and traditional versions so you can decide how to make them based on your own standards, and that of whomever you may be baking for this upcoming holiday season…

Very Green Frittata

Ingredients

6 large eggs

1 cup chopped broccoli

½ cup chopped spinach

½ cup chopped kale

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese 
½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

¼ cup milk

¼ cup chopped onion

3 clove garlic, diced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp hot sauce (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat in a medium skillet. Add the onion and garlic and sauté for about 5 minutes, or until slightly browned and fragrant. Add the spinach, kale and broccoli and stir-fry for another 5 minutes then remove from heat. Mix the eggs, milk, salt, pepper, cheese and hot sauce if you’re using it in a large bowl. Pour the green stir-fried vegetable mix into a 9-12” pie pan, then pour the egg mixture on top and stir around a bit so everything evens out. Alternatively, you can just stick the pan in the oven with the egg mixture poured over it if you don’t have an adequate pie dish. Top with the cheddar cheese and bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly browned on top. Serve after it cools a bit. SO GOOD!

I love frittatas! They are simple and yummy and healthy and you can make one with just about anything you have in your fridge. Frittatas are best to make when you have a bunch of left over meats or veggies you want to use up in a simple yet creative way. If you’ve never made a frittata before, some other great add-ins are:

• Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Olives
• Bacon
• Ham
• Feta
• Goat cheese
• Fennel

The possibilities are endless! If you know a great frittata recipe, add it in the comments!

Lily and Paul both love frittatas too! If your child(ren) enjoys eggs normally, give the frittata a try! It’s a way to eat eggs anytime of the day. Many babies are sensitive to eggs before 9 months, so don’t give to baby unless they are of age to try them. Lily was allergic until she was 1; she threw up twice after having a small serving of cooked egg yolk, and it was pretty icky. Eggs are an ideal food for children over 1 year old.

Eggs are a well-known health food. They are loaded with protein and a substantial amount of vitamin B, including the B vitamin choline. Choline helps to boost brain health and function andalso helps reduce inflammation. Proteins found in eggs also help promote heart health by preventing blood clots and lower cholesterol. Eggs are amazing!

And since it’s Meatless Monday, I’d like to promote the purchase of organic free range, antibiotic-free eggs. Chickens are indentured to a terrible life at most mainstream farms and corporations of confinement to a small cage or dark room for their entire life, more often than not suffering from a variety of health conditions including infections, loss of use of their legs due to confinement, and many are subjected to a variety of diseases from living in their own filth all their lives. That’s why most are injected with loads of anti-biotics and have their beaks mutilated in a way that enables them to live in close quarters with hundreds of other hens so they don’t injure each other with pecking. It sounds like a pretty horrible life.

Literally slicing off the hen's beak

Do those look like healthy hens to you?

But, then you have to ask yourself- but which eggs are best? - best for the hens, and best for consumption? Organic free-range is probably the best way to go, if you can find a trust-worthy farm. Any mainstream egg manufacturer is not going to be the most reliable source in terms of producing a truly “happy” hen; usually when they say their chickens leave a cage-free life, it only means they all live in a dark room together to roam about for a few minutes a day when not busy laying eggs. If you happen to live near a family-owned farm that sells eggs, then you probably already know that is your best bet. Although, do keep in mind that just because it’s a smaller farm than Perdue’s, it does not necessarily mean that they maintain an organic and cruelty-free farm. 

Let’s here it for Halloween and healthy hens!!!!

I Received a Blog Award!!

Last week I was surprised and more than humbled and honored to receive a Liebster Blog Award from my friend at Smart Cents Review. Check her out! She has a really wonderful and fun to read blog and posts about lots of fun stuff all the time, like product reviews, DIY projects, money-saving tips and giveaways!

The Liebster Blog Award is given to up and coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. Liebster is a German word meaning dear, sweet, kind, nice, good, beloved, lovely, kindly, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome (wow, that's a lot of nice meanings!).

To keep this award going and pass it along to other new deserving blogs, the recipient must now recognize five other bloggers with less than 200 followers that have really stood out in the crowd.

The rules for the Liebster Award are:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Reveal your top five picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love too!

I would like to pass the Liebster Award on to some of my favorite newbie bloggers who are also some of my biggest blog supporters and favorite to read.  Thank you and congratulations to:

1. Vintage Red Photography (beautiful photography and musings from a true Southern Bell!)
2. Quick and Easy, Cheap and Healthy (great recipes and money-saving tips from a well-written blog!)
3. A Life Well Loved (sweet little blog with a lot of variety, pretty pictures, and I just love the name!)
4. Wee Wonderings (nice blog with nice pics and fun projects and posts!)
5. My Child is Very Advanced (adorable and honest blog with interesting info on breastfeeding, cloth diapering and more, plus a true homebirth story!)
   

Please spread the bloggy love and check out my five picks!

Upon winning this award, I was prompted to pass the award along to other up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers, as you can plainly see! Going through the list of blogs I follow, I was surprised to see that most of them already have over 200 followers! So, some of the blogs above I had to search out over the last few days, but I think I really picked some good ones :) This concept also prompted me to want to encourage the recognition of more blogs that really stand out that you may not know about, so starting next month, I will highlight a different blog that I think deserves some attention. I'm taking submissions, so please recommend me a blog or blogs with less than 200 followers that you think need some extra attention. I will blog about it, talk it up on my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and post links to my favorite posts! You can even recommend your own blog of course! To be considered, just post a link to the blog you recommend in the comments and follow me if you are not doing so already. Simple as that! 


Thanks, bloggy girls, and keep up the good work!

 

Bonus Blog: Kristen Thorne Photography has BRILLIANT photography that you will just love to browse when you get the hankering to look at pretty things :) She's also a close friend who has photographed my family and I a few times. Here are some examples of her handy work below. 

 

When I was preggers with Lily

 

Me with newborn Lily chomping away on her hand, accompanied by my mom and grandmother

Lily's first Christmas :)

Meatless Monday: Tofu Tacos!

We’ve been having various Mexican-inspired dishes in my house lately. Here’s one for all the vegetarians that even meat-eaters will love!

Tofu Tacos

Ingredients:

Filling

1 14oz package of firm or extra firm tofu, drained

½ cup water

½ cup tomato sauce

1 small onion, finely diced

1 tbsp olive or canola oil

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp cayenne

1 tsp cumin

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

Wraps and Toppings Suggestions 

Wholewheat tortilla wraps

Shredded cheese (cheddar, Monterey Jack, pepper jack, queso fresco)

Diced tomato

Diced onion

Shredded lettuce

Baby spinach

Sliced avocado

Corn

Guacamole

Salsa

Sour cream

To drain the tofu, remove from packaging and wrap in two paper towels, then place on shallow plate. Place another plate on top of it and leave it for at least 30 minutes up to an hour. If possible, do it over night for best results. The pressure from the plate will slowly drain the liquid from the tofu without putting too much weight on it. Once drained, unwrap and then cut into cubes, slices, or just crumble it up into small chunks.

Heat the oil in a medium skillet then add the onion and brown. Add the tofu and cook over medium heat until lightly browned on each side; press tofu occasionally to enable any leftover liquid to seep out. Turn after 5-7 minutes to brown on each side; if using crumbled tofu, stir and sauté in the pan frequently so as not to burn it or allow it to get stuck to the pan. Once tofu and onions are good and brown, add the water and tomato sauce and bring to a boil. Lower heat to medium-low, then add all the seasonings. To save time, mix the seasonings in a Ziploc bag or bowl ahead of time then add altogether at once. Here’s another thought: make triple or quadruple the amount of seasoning and store the extra for future use!

Cook it all for about 5-10 minutes, adjusting seasoning as you deem fit. Scoop tofu into wraps and add the toppings of your choice. Serve with beans or a salad. Delish!

This became a family favorite a while ago, and it is the only way Lily will even eat tofu at this time. She really likes spicy food! So, if you have a picky eater who you’d like to get into eating tofu, give this recipe a try and see how it goes. This recipe can also be used for beef, chicken or fish, and probably even pork though I wouldn’t know since I don’t eat pork.

For baby: mash tofu with cheese and/or tomato sauce and optionally add veggies your little one eats at their age, such as corn, avocado or spinach. Ole! If you want to learn more about the safety and health issues involved in eating soy product, please read my previous post Somethin’ Sweet ‘n Spicy. 

I do not recommend the use of non-stick pans that you may think would make frying tofu easier. Most people are familiar with the danger involved in using such cookware, but if you are not, read here to learn more. Carcinogenic toxic fumes that are very cancerous can emit from the pans with non-stick coating as you cook with them. You can inhale these fumes and they will also leak into your food! Pans that get burned cause a higher risk, so if you have any that have been damaged from cooking, throw them out! In fact, get rid of any non-stick cookware you own- it’s not worth the risk. Use glass or stainless steel for safest cooking.

 Enjoy, and have a good week!

Family Favorite Friday

I came up with this concoction the other night when I hadn’t planned dinner and was just using what I had readily available. It was one of those rare occurrences when Lily handed me her empty plate after eating what I served her, and saying, “Moooore” in the drawn-out cute way that she does. I was beaming with pride and happiness. She gobbled up the second helping and Paul took the leftovers to work. Success! I made it with the olive oil the first time then the coconut oil the second time and it came out great each time. Some nice add-ins would be peas and/or potatoes, although I haven’t tried either. This is the perfect dish for picky eaters, especially if the carrots are fresh and sweet.

Chicken, Carrot and Rice Skillet

Serves 4-6

½ lb chicken breasts, tenders or cutlets

1 cup brown basmati rice

2 cups chopped carrot

2 cups chicken or vegetable broth

Juice of half a lemon

1 tbsp coconut or olive oil

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp salt

Lightly season the chicken with the salt, pepper and garlic. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat (I’ve tried it with olive and coconut, both tasted great so whichever you have available/prefer) and brown the chicken on both sides, but do not fully cook. Set aside on a plate covered with a paper towel or other cover. Cook the rice in the broth in the same skillet for 5 minutes, then add the chopped carrot; I simply layered the carrots on top of the rice, as in the picture below.

Cover and cook for another 5 minutes, then add the chicken on top of the carrots; sprinkle the lemon juice and paprika on top of the chicken before covering. Cook for another 5-7 minutes, or until all liquid is absorbed and chicken and carrots are nice and tender. It should all be nice and fragrant from the paprika and lemon when you open the lid! Serve as is, with a light salad if you like.

Babies can have the rice and carrots mashed up with some milk or formula, and younger babies can just have the carrots with milk or formula and cereal. Lily loves carrots!

Carrots are a good thing to love! We are all too familiar with the benefits of carrots in relation to vision; the vitamin A content in them is over 600%! They also have a fair share of vitamins C and K, and are anti-cancerous as well as very cleansing and detoxifying, especially when juiced. If you have a juicer, or even just a blender with a liquefy option, give juicing carrots a try! A glass of pure carrot juice everyday will better your skin, your vision, your immune system, your cardiovascular system, and so much more! Just keep in mind that there is also a very high amount of sugar in carrot juice, so little ones should only drink about 4 ounces a day. That little “rush” you may feel after drinking a glass is normal. In fact, the sugars found in carrots have been found to be beneficial to diabetics due to their carotenoid content, which actually helps to lower blood sugar, although some studies still show risks ifdiabetics drink too much carrot juice due to its high carb rates.

Carrots are also considered safe to eat conventionally as opposed to organically, although I’d recommend always going organic if you can. The conventionally grown ones contain less pesticide residues then some produce since they grow in the ground. The soil they grow in can contain toxins from pesticides however, and if you want non-GMO foods, then going organic is a must. If you want to try and grow your own carrots, it’s pretty simple, here’s a link that explains how.