Laurin and Kelly Talk

The Best Laid Plans

Originally posted at Aiming Low on July 21, 2009.

I’m an anti-soda mom with about a 12% failure rate, more or less. I also subject my kids to all manner of food indignities like cardboard pop tarts, cereal not endorsed by colorful characters, and organic juice boxes. My daughter asked to change schools last year, so severe was the shame she experienced from not carrying full-throttle Capri Sun in her lunchbox.

I feed my kids very healthy food most days, but I am not above bribing them with sugar if necessary. Sugar is delicious. Sugar motivates. Today I needed to bribe. We went to the playground with some friends and their kids and, despite having one tired little guy on my hands who hadn’t slept well for the last couple of nights, planned to go to lunch afterward. My son wanted to go home, but dammit, I wanted to go to lunch. Clearly, concessions had to be made.

The kids know they can’t order soda at restaurants, unless it is a special occasion. I am fairly hardcore about this since they like restaurants and will readily accept, If you want to go out to eat, no soda. With zero leverage today I agreed that Yes, you can have Sprite. What’s a little sugar and abandoned family values when mama gets to talk to adults about bloggy things?

The restaurant we chose has the most dreaded of all kid drinks, duhn, duhn, duhnnnn – red fountain Hi-C fruit punch. I learned the hard way what stuff with red dye can do to my kids, and they know they aren’t allowed to have it, special occasion or not, no matter what, and they accept it. They respect me, you know.

It enrages me that, like high fructose corn syrup, red dye is in everything, even in foods that aren’t red. Foods that don’t need to be red, like yogurt. Adorably packaged, heavily marketed during SpongeBob stuff, that promises utter delight. I am ever vigilant. My son is particularly sensitive to red foods and he knows the deal. No red dye, ever! He will tell strangers he’s not allowed to have red dye. He reminds his father.

The soda fountain punch is the worst of the worst. It is humiliation hooch which causes otherwise moderately well-mannered children to flip out to the point of flinging food and chasing their tails until you double the tip and slink out dragging your jittering kids. I’ve heard.

So that is why, when I sent my son to the counter today to get his Sprite refilled so I could chat some more and he came back with a full cup of the shiny red liquid and a cheesy grin, I never saw it coming.

Photo Credit: Funkyah

A Few Cool Things

I saw this cooler shopping bag on Fresh Finds, thanks to Brownie Points, and I'm ordering one immediately. Don't laugh, but this is going to improve my productivity immediately! It's a twenty minute drive each way to my kids' school, and sometimes I'm just not up to taking them in the grocery store with me after school.

Shopping on the way to school means I'm limited to buying things that aren't cold or frozen, otherwise they would be ruined by the time we got home. I know this could be avoided with better planning, but that's just not me and I'm perpetually out of half and half.

Sometimes I put a cooler in the back of the car, but it takes up a lot of room and doesn't fold flat like this does. Also, the nearest Whole Foods is 30 minutes from me. So there's that. A green reason to buy this. I am so green.

I found a few other cool things on the site as well, like this take-a-dip container which is perfect to send to school with the kids.

I also like this salad container with a built in cool pack and dressing dispenser.

 

And for serving salad this summer, what could be cooler than salad on ice? I think this is brilliant!

 

Eat Me Crunchy

 

I found this via Curiobot today and it's simply ingenius. Finally, a way to have crunchy cereal the whole way through the bowl, even if you have to pause to share a brilliant thought with Twitter, and then don't make it back for a while.

"A removable shelf covers 70% of the bowl's base, holding the cereal
above the milk. All you have to do is eat your cereal from the shelf-less
section of the bowl where the cereal and milk meet, pushing the cereal
in as required. Brilliant!"

It's currently sold out at Firebox. OF COURSE IT IS. Looks like you can order it from EatMeCrunchy.com, the UK site.

Not Flipping Out - French Fry/Frozen Food Pan

There's a pretty long list of things I would rather not do, and flipping individual pieces of frozen food halfway through cooking is one of them. You have to do it or you get that soggy, raw-tasting, not quite cooked situation going on. That's not good eats. (Hope that's not trademarked - Alton, call me!)

I discovered the french fry pan a few months ago and it has made cooking much more enjoyable for me. I just had a highly nutritious lunch of french fries -I do what I want when I want - and thought I would share my favorite french fry brand and this must-have kitchen tool for lazy brilliant home cooks.

I couldn't find a picture of my pan, but the Analon pan below is even better than mine because it has that open side for sliding the fries onto the plate. If you have a round pan with holes designed for cooking pizza, that also works perfectly for frozen food.

Personally, I think this pan is overkill. I mean, if you don't need to flip, don't flip, eh?

 

Love This! - Tea Technology

Kelly, I love, love, love this Tigo filter cup for tea. I thought of you right away since you are such a tea-ie. Is that a word, tea-ie?

It is available at One Foodie Goodie, a one cool product a day website, through the weekend for only $9.50. According to the Goodie folks, it was featured in the November issue of InStyle magazine and has been sold out ever since. You can also get an insulated sleeve for your BPA-free cup and portable green tea disks from the Tigo site.

How cool would it be to able to see your monkey-picked oolong tea leaves swirling around while you drink? When you're finished with your tea, the clear cup would also making reading your tea leaves easier too!

Related Posts: Am I the Only One Who Doesn't Drink Coffee?

New Year, Old Tradition - Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas

Happy New Year, Kelly! I'll bet you know what I'm doing today. I've got collard greens and black-eyed peas simmering on the stove, and I'm about to make some cornbread. I could no more skip making this traditional Southern New Year's Day prosperity meal than I could eat a piece of pie without saving the pointy tip for the last bite and a wish, thanks to my elementary best friend who passed on that bit of lore from her grandmother.

My need to follow food traditions has always been so strong. I even remember insisting one New Year's Day long ago that a boyfriend take me to a chain cafeteria, probably Morrison's, so I could get greens and black-eyed peas. We were traveling and I wasn't able to make them myself. This was not his idea of a fun New Year's activity with a hangover, and he soon became an ex-boyfriend. Hey, you gotta weed out the ones who don't share your interests somehow, right?

I find traditions surrounding food comforting, and this particular one is firmly entrenched in my psyche. I loved getting a big ladle of black-eyed peas from my father on New Year's Day as a kid, and digging around until I found my silver dollar piece. It was always there, just like my mom and dad.

I suppose there is a part of me that secretly believes that I'll have an unlucky year if I don't make these dishes, but it's not about believing in luck as much as believing in myself. Making my collards and black-eyed peas is my affirmation, my putting it out there to the universe, that this will be my year.

Al's Legendary Collards

Adapted from an article in the St. Petersburg Times from years ago.

2 1/2 pounds fresh collard greens, about 6 cups chopped
1 smoked ham hock, or a few drops of Liquid Smoke if you are vegetarian
1/3 cup chopped onion
2 1/2 tablespoons corn syrup
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
2/3 cup white vinegar
1 3/4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2/3 teaspoon hot sauce
1/3 teaspoon garlic powder
1/3 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Buy the pre-washed and pre-cut collard greens or, if you're a purist, fill your sink with water, thoroughly wash a big bunch of collards, cut the hardest part of the stems off, and coarsely chop. Puree 1 1/2 cup of the greens with 1/2 cup of water and add to a large stockpot about half full of water. Add everything else except the chopped greens and bring to a boil. Add the greens in batches, letting them cook down until they are all in the pot. Simmer for about 3 hours, or until you like them.

What about you guys? What food traditions are important to you?

Juicy!

Kelly, a very nice man sent me a cooler box full of Sunkist Naturals a while back. And, sir? I'm sorry it took me so long to write this, but maybe you'll forgive me because I really loved these juice smoothies and have some nice things to say.

Remember my 2-week sick fest? I blogged about chugging down some Green Monster juice in an attempt to get rid of what was ailing me.

Anyway, the point of this is that I think the nice man found our blog because of that post and thought I would like the Sunkist smoothies. I did, and the kids definitely did! Our favorites were the Glorious Greens, Strawberry Dream, and the Sunshine Carrot. Each bottle contains 2 servings which translates into about 70 calories per serving at the most. Some flavors have even less.

Here are the essential stats on the juice. It is all-natural, no sugar added, and comes in eight tasty flavors. In their words:

Our Sunkist Naturals® line is quite possibly the closest thing to making fresh smoothies and juices in your own kitchen, only without having to dust off the blender. We begin with the best produce and end up with the best beverages, and in between we take every necessary step to achieve supreme freshness and nutrition.

We blend our whole fruit together first, then gently flash pasteurize to ensure safety. Finally, our beverages are cold filled in sterile bottles to lock in every precious layer of delicious flavor.

We have fine-tuned our process so that we minimize the loss of vitamins, minerals and nutrients. Furthermore, we do not add any unnatural additives to preserve or stabilize our beverages, so you can trust that you're only getting what nature intended.

How To Dry Brine a Turkey - My Experience

This is the post I put up after Thanksgiving after my first dry brining experience with my turkey. Judging by the sheer number of people who arrived here after googling some variation of dry brining a turkey, the method is sweeping the world!

Other than brining, the key to it all is the method of roasting the turkey. Please read my post on the super "fancy" rotation method. This simple trick has consistently produced rave-worthy turkeys for me, year after year. May your turkey be moist and delicious and your holidays delightful!

If you are interested in how to dry brine a turkey, please read my pre-Thanksgiving post on what the experts say to do. The following is an account of how it all turned out for me.

Kelly, the dry turkey brine experiment this year was a total success, and I will be repeating it at Christmas. Every Thanksgiving I wet-brine (some say this is redundant) my turkey, and it has always turned out very moist and flavorful.

Prior to Thanksgiving this year, I kept reading about the much easier dry-brine method and decided I just had to try it. This is a symptom of my basic personality which is "If something is working for me, do it differently to make things hard on myself."

Even though some of the dry-brine experts recommend 4 days with the salt on the bird, I started my 14-pound turkey at 10:00 pm on Tuesday night. All I did was place the clean bird breast side down in a Ziploc Large Big Bag, sprinkled 3 tablespoons of kosher salt all over the cleaned and dried turkey, squeezed out the air, and sealed the bag. That's it. I did not rub the salt into the bird at any point in the process. Slacker alert!

At noon on Wednesday, I flipped the bird breast side up - didn't even open the bag, just smushed it around. Fun! Then, at 7:00 on Thanksgiving morning I removed the turkey from the bag, rinsed it, placed it in a pan, and patted it dry with paper towels. My turkey went back in the fridge on a pan uncovered to dry out until 1:30 PM, when I removed it to rest on the counter.  Note: change up these times to allow 6 - 8 hours of drying-out time in the fridge if you eat earlier in the day.

By 2:30 pm, the turkey was trussed, rubbed with canola oil, and on the v-rack in the roasting pan. In the picture above, you'll notice I start the turkey breast side down. See my previous post for what I put in and on the turkey.

Also, I realize my trussing technique might be for the birds, but here's how to really truss a turkey properly if you are a purist. Two hours and twenty minutes later, when the digital thermometer registered 165 degrees in the breast, the turkey was done.

Our turkey this year was the best, ever. The skin was perfectly browned and crisp and the meat was moist and flavored perfectly throughout. I can't recommend this dry-brining technique highly enough, and I may not wet-brine again. Alton, please forgive me!

Related Posts: How to Dry-Brine a Turkey - From the Experts, Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey in Less Time

How To Lose 5 lbs.

 

Laurin - Happy Thanksgiving!  I already feel stuffed just thinking of today's menu.  Remember when we were talking about losing a few pounds when we feel the need?  I'm feeling the need.   I've been so busy with work and life that I haven't thought much about what I'm eating and forget about exercising.  I know you feel my pain.  I've taken some of your advice and I have a few tricks of my own.  I thought we should share them with our friends, especially after days like today!

1.  Eliminate soda (we both agree this may be #1).  Especially since we love us some Coke!

2.  Eat more salad and veggies and make meat a small portion.

3.  Cut out white foods, i.e. potatoes, white rice, white bread and white pasta.  (Potatoes are the hardest, because they equal french fries-cut those out for sure!)

4.  Skip that dessert, especially after dinner.  If you can't, just have a bite or two.

5.  My favorite snack is yogurt and almonds.  It immediately staves off the hunger and holds me over. 

6.  When Dr. Oz was on Oprah on Tuesday, he reminded us that the Japanese finish eating when they're 80% full.  I've tried this in the past and it really works...I just keep forgetting!

7.  Walk as much as you can.  Just take the dog out or park the car far away at the grocery store.  Use any excuse to walk when you have the option.

8.  I can never completely eliminate carbs, so I eat them in moderation.  I have to have them with every meal or I'm never satisfied. 

9.  This is a great salad dressing:  olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper.

10.  Always eat breakfast!  

I know I won't be doing any of this until tomorrow.  Hopefully, we'll be able to fit into those holiday party outfits.  Enjoy your day!

Great Potato Side Dish

Laurin - I've been making this great recipe that I got out of Domino magazine's October issue.  It's been quite a hit!  It's a modified version of Nathan Turner's Potato-Leek Mini Gratins.  Each time I want to make it, I don't have leeks, so I replaced them with red onion.  This goes great with steak or chicken and maybe for a holiday side dish.

This is MY version of Nathan's recipe, try them both to see which one you like the best.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

6 - 8 small Yukon Gold potatoes

1 large red onion

1/4 lb of Gruyere cheese

1/2 cup of milk

Use a traditional baking dish or a muffin pan.  Drizzle olive oil on the bottom of dish or a small amount in each cup and sprinkle some shredded Gruyere.  Add a layer of thinly sliced potatoes and a layer of thinly sliced red onion.  Repeat until the pan or cups is full.  Top with salt and pepper, then add 2 to 3 tablespoons of milk to each cup or 1/2 cup of milk to the baking dish. 

I've also made this dish without the milk and it still came out great in case you want to eliminate the extra fat.  Nathan says to cover with foil and put in the oven for 45 minutes, then remove it and put back in the oven for the cheese to get brown and bubbly.   I've made it without the foil and it comes out great just the same.

We'll have to post about our conversation yesterday about cutting out certain foods including potatoes to lose 5 pounds.  In the meantime, forget about those 5 pounds and try this just once...you'll love it!

Finally, we are participating in Blessed With Grace's Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays.  Check out her blog for some yummy  cranberry salad and other great recipes.