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Crockpot Orange Chicken - Modified

Categories: Cooking | February 8th, 2010 | by happilybarefoot | no comments

I am going to be taking some of our families favorite recipes and modifying them to be in line with the real food challenge and our new way of eating.

Today I am going to be making Crockpot Orange Chicken

1 1/2 pounds boneless chicken, cut in 2-inch chunks
1/2 cup sprouted flour
Olive oil, enough to brown the chicken
Sea salt, to taste
6 ounces (1/2 can) frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed*
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons homemade ketchup

Brown rice for serving over, soaked overnight and cooked in bone broth if you have it.

Dredge the chicken pieces with the flour, and shake off the excess. Dispose of the extra flour. If you are like me and grinding your own sprouted flour with a coffee grinder, you may want to use a few tablespoons at a time to waste as little as possible. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over mediumish heat, and brown the chicken on all sides - it does not need to be fully cooked, we’ll do that in the slow cooker. Transfer the chicken to the crockpot.

Mix together the orange juice, honey, vinegar & homemade ketchup - taste it then adjust and salt to your liking. Pour the mixture over the chicken and toss gently to coat the chicken on all sides.

Cook on low for 6 hours or on high for 3 or 4. High for 4 hours was ALMOST overdone… I would say 3 hours MAX Serve over your soaked brown rice.

*I had this in the freezer to use up. Next time I plan on reducing fresh squeezed orange juice on the stove, I’ll update the recipe when I try it.

28 Day Real Food Challenge - Week 1 Recap

Categories: Cooking | February 7th, 2010 | by happilybarefoot | 4 comments

Thanks to the 28 day real food challenge over at Nourished Kitchen, it has been one week since I had sugar, soda or coffee. One week without using processed foods in my home, one week making everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING from scratch.

This week we purged our pantry*, filled it back up, learned about the proper way to prepare all grains (soaking, souring or sprouting) for maximum digestibility and nutritional benefit. I sprouted wheat, dehydrated it and ground it into flour. I prepared a sourdough starter and made pancakes with it - and next week will be making my first loaf of sourdough bread. I prepared steel cut oats, numerous loaves of bread and noodles all from scratch with the proper soaking methods. I fed my family real, wholesome, delicious food and didn’t hear one complaint.

It was a great week in our home. In the next week my hopes are to stay on track! I have a kombucha starter & water kefir grains along with two kits for making fermented vegetables (pickles here we come!) all on the way.

I am feeling really good about these changes - changes I have been trying to make for a long time and I am SO grateful to Jenny of Nourished Kitchen for putting this whole thing on - I’m sure it is a TON of work, she should be so proud of herself for giving lots of families like mine the kick in the pants they needed to get started eating real food!

*I will admit to there being a pile of butterscotch candy in the cabinet… I however, have not touched it. I kept it on hand in case a sugar withdrawl hit and I was about to take it out on the kids. Thankfully that has not been the case at all, and I’m sure it will land in the trash, as I don’t even have a desire to consume it.

28 Day Real Food Challenge - Day 3

Categories: Cooking | February 3rd, 2010 | by happilybarefoot | no comments

Yesterday’s progress was good I drove out to Whole Foods to see what I could pick up for dinner for a reasonable price. I ended up coming out with 1.5lbs of grassfed ground beef and a huge package of baby lettuce and brought it home to make meatloaf and what was quite possibly the best salad I have ever had in my life. The kids not only ate everything without complaint - they asked for SECONDS. I’m amazed. Not once in two days have I heard “this is yucky, mama!” So on day two - this challenge is officially worth the effort LOL

So today is all about the grains! Click here to read the full challenge!

My plans are to make Spelt and Rosemary Crackers. I also want to try bread - but one thing at a time.

I also found this recipe for cocoa macaroons while reading the spelt crackers one…. yeeeeah… I’ll be trying those!

28 Day Real Food Challenge - Day 2

Categories: Cooking | February 2nd, 2010 | by happilybarefoot | no comments

Still at it! Day 2 of the real food challenge! After purging my pantry yesterday (and passing it all on to my not whole foods mom ) I am pretty impressed with what I still have!

For day 2 we were told to do a little shopping and start rebuilding our pantries. I did go shopping, but just for dinner ingredients, as I was pretty well stocked otherwise.

Extra credit for today was to seek out a source of raw milk - which I have done. Found a pretty good price too

28 Day Real Food Challenge - Day 1

Categories: Cooking | February 1st, 2010 | by happilybarefoot | one comments

I’m doing the 28 day real food challenge on Nourished Kitchen.

In the words of my son “Bye, yucky food! You aren’t good for my body!”

I’ve been lying to myself. “We don’t eat processed food.” Really? That sure looks like a lot of processed food to me… (And a lot of that justified by that “organic” label… I’m totally disappointed in myself. Organic suckers are no better than nonorganic ones…)

Admittedly I haven’t hit the fridge yet… but only because the boxes of food I drug out of the pantry was blocking the way to the fridge. I don’t think there is much bad stuff in there, though.

What an eye opener. Thank goodness my husband is on board.

Day #1 Check List:

For today’s assignment make sure to clear your cupboards of the following processed foods as well as anything containing these ingredients:

Vegetable Oils: Soybean, Cottonseed, Canola, Corn
Sugar: White Sugar, Brown Sugar, Turbinado, Agave Nectar (including “raw”), Sugar in the raw
Stevia: white stevia powder, stevia liquid
Margarine
Shortening (excluding palm shortening)
White flour: all-purpose flour, unbleached all-purpose flour, white rice flour,
Cornstarch
Soy foods: soy sauce, soy flour, soy milk, soy lecithin, isoflavone-enriched foods and supplements
Dried Pastas and Noodles
Iodized Salt
Refined Sea Salt
Meat & Dairy Replacements: TVP, veggie burgers, vegan cheeses, sour creams, rice and nut milks, vegan sausages
Processed cheeses
Skim and Low-fat Dairy: cheese, milk, yogurts etc.
Boxed cereals, crackers and cookies

Without the internet…

Categories: Other Stuff | January 31st, 2010 | by happilybarefoot | no comments

Every once in awhile I sit here and thing of all the things I could manage to get done in a day if I wasn’t checking my email, obsessing about facebook or chatting with the ladies at my favorite message board. Sometimes I see posts from other bloggers (you know, ones that update their blogs more than once a year…) and see the cool projects they manage to get done in a day’s time. The awesome things they accomplish with their children. The cool crafts and sewing projects… you know, LIVING life, not just typing about it…

I think of all the time I spend parked in front of this machine… and think of what I’ve missed out on. I know I’ve missed my kiddos playing quietly together. That would at the end of the day be much more rewarding to watch than 3 youtube videos and much more entertaining than a stupid facebook quiz.

Then I think of all the things I have learned from this chair… I never would have had a homebirth or used cloth diapers. Never would have learned to cook real, healthy, from scratch food. Never would have had such an awesome supportive group of women rally around me when times were tough….

Some days, I just want to rip this thing out of the wall and never look back. Others I have to fight with myself just to get up and make breakfast rather than read one more thing.

I need to think on this more - but I need to figure out how to get the internet to become more of a resource and less of a time suck.

The Home Waterbirth of Pezzie!

Categories: Other Stuff | November 13th, 2009 | by happilybarefoot | 5 comments

I was pretty certain that this baby was going to come on Grandma’s birthday, so when I started feeling strange around midnight on November 11th, I wasn’t surprised. I also wasn’t surprised when I woke up at 2am, 4am, or 5am. By 6am I decided it was the day and woke up my husband - who replied to my “I need you to get up now.” With a glance at the clock and a “Why?”

My husband started setting up the birth tub while I called the midwife and started making preparations. The hose to fill the birth tub was leaky so we ended up running it from the basement utility sink rather than the bathroom sink.

With the tub well on it’s way, I wandered around the house, trying not to get too excited. I think I listened to a hypnobabies CD at some point and threw some breakfast burritos in the toaster oven. Around 7am my cable clicked off (probably should have paid that bill on time… ) and I lost all contact with the outside world LOL (and the kids lost our most reliable form of entertainment that would distract them).

My mom arrived and braided my hair for me, and the midwife arrived soon after. The kids spent the majority of the morning bouncing off the walls, eating junk and doing whatever we could do to keep them occupied. My labor was totally manageable at that point, and I was starting to feel guilty for calling the midwife and my mom so early - but true to form, had I waited until “they” say to call, nobody would have made it in time.

My husband and I went for several short walks during the morning, and eventually I locked myself away in the bedroom with my hypnobabies CDs and tuned out the chaos in the living room. The midwife came in a few times to listen to the baby, and I think I was in and out of sleep for a good portion of my labor.

Eventually things changed and I decided that I needed to get into the birthing tub for some relief. Unfortunately, we had filled the tub so early that I found it to be too cold. I returned to the bed and listened to my CDs some more to help me relax while I was waiting for the tub to be warmed.

Awhile later my midwife let me know that the tub was ready when I wanted it, and I headed in. I got comfortable, put my CDs on again and started mentally preparing for the pushing phase - something that I cannot stand.

My mom was taking photographs the whole day, and attending to the kids, as was my husband. At some point I started to feel a bit pushy and complained that my water was in the way, and was quite relieved when it broke. The pushing feelings were getting more and more intense and I was trying to keep myself calm and not panic.

At some point I started pushing, which was just as I remember it being from my previous births - not pleasant. First on my hands and knees and then after reaching down and feeling that the head was mostly out, I moved to more of a kneeling position. Baby wasn’t coming out and I was getting impatient. Finally another good push got the baby moving and I felt her slide under my hands. My midwife helped me move the baby out of the water and on to my chest, and I immediately looked over and called for my husband and the kids to come over to the tub. I looked between the baby’s legs and called out that she was a girl - nobody looked surprised, and truthfully I wasn’t either! The kids were so excited! She was born at 3:12pm.

I tend to be a bleeder, so we had some issue getting that under control, but my midwife is skilled and I wasn’t concerned - I moved out of the tub to deliver the placenta which was a little difficult since like Nova this baby had a short cord too.

I made it to the bed, nursed the baby, got the placenta delivered and after awhile got control of the bleeding. The kids came in for a little bit to see the baby, but I needed to rest so I sent them back out after a few minutes. The midwife weighed and measured the baby while I had some stew - 8lbs 5oz 19.5″ long - my heaviest and shortest baby! We passed the baby off to my mom to get her dressed while I stepped into the shower.

Pretty soon everyone cleared out and it was just our little family. It was a great birth - but I do remember asking “Why do I keep doing this?” LOL (Well, I know why, but it sure doesn’t feel good at the time!)