Pomegranate Pancakes and Apple Cider Syrup

I had this awesome idea to do green and red pancakes for Christmas morning. Because really, how cool would that be? The other day we added spinach to our normal blender pancake recipe and it was, while not awesome (because hello, spinach) it was edible (thank you, syrup). The kids thought green pancakes were fun.

Tonight I tried to make red pancakes but here's the deal, I used pomegranates. At first I only added 1/2 the pomegranate seeds and the batter ended up gray. Gray is not really an appetizing food color. In fact, I won't eat Mexican gray squash simply because of the name. So I added the other half of the seeds and ended up with purple batter, which makes sense, since pomegranate juice is purple. Clearly, this was a well thought out experiment. The pancakes tasted fine and cooked up pancake colored, but what really made the meal awesome was this syrup from One Perfect Bite. YUM.
I think maybe beet juice would make red, or at the least pink, pancakes. I'll give it a try and report back.



Here are the recipes:

Whole Wheat Blender Pancakes From Make a Treat With Wheat ( I think. The recipe is copied from my mom's house and I'm pretty sure it was in that cook book, which is now out of print.)

1 cup wheat berries
1 cup milk
blend on high for 2 minutes in a regular blender or 30 seconds in a commercial grade blender.
Add
1/2 cup additional milk blend additional 2 minutes or 30 seconds, depending on blender
1 egg
1/2 cup oil or applesauce
2 T sugar (optional)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Blend until combined

VARIATIONS
Green Pancakes
Add a handful of spinach to the wheat and milk blending, reduce 1/2 cup milk to 1/4 cup or 1/3 cup depending on the spinach amount ( you want the batter to poor but not to be watery)

Pomegranate Pancakes
Add seeds from one pomegranate to
1 1/3 cup wheat berries
reduce total milk volume to 1 cup
may omit sugar, depending on sweetness of seeds

Apple Cider Syrup from One Perfect Bite
One Perfect Bite Syrup
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup apple cider
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons butter, cubed
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Whisk together dry ingredients, add wet stuff and bring to a boil. Stir while it's boiling until thickened and bubbly, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to low and stir for an additional 2 minutes. 

Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal

I've invented something.

I don't think it will come as any great shock that this something contains food. After all, I'm assuming you read the title of the post.

This morning my son was trying to talk me into "Whole Cream of Wheat" yet again. I have a rule: Cream of Wheat is OK every other day, not every day. On non-cream of wheat days, breakfast is a battle.

I offered eggs. I offered smoothies. I offered cold cereal, oatmeal, even apple PIE oatmeal. All I got was a lot of pouting until I figured that if I could make apple pie oatmeal, I could probably also figure out pumpkin pie oatmeal.

He said yes. Thank the heavens.

Granted, this recipe makes enough food to feed my family for two mornings. I consider that an added bonus. Now I don't have to come up with a breakfast he won't sneer at the day-after-tomorrow. Score. 

5 cups water
1 cup whole milk
sprinkle of salt (maybe 1/2 tsp for this amount of oats?)
2 1/2 cups oats (I like old fashioned but mostly have quick right now)
3/4 to 1 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)
1/3-1/2 cup brown sugar (SOME members of my family don't know that breakfast doesn't have to result in a sugar coma...those people added yet more sugar to their bowls. Cretins. Or maybe I should call them pre-diabetics?)
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cloves

Mix it all up and cook at boil on the stove for 2ish minutes. Take off the heat, throw the lid on for another few minutes to let the oats finish softening. Enjoy.

Clearly, this would be better with whipped cream on top, but then, what isn't?

Pre School, Gearing Up

Tomorrow is the first day of our schooled at home preschool.
Our letter is going to be 'A'. (It seemed appropriate.)

So at 7am today the children and I made "acorns" to take for dessert to family dinner.
Because we live in Arizona, my kids had no idea what an acorn was, which kinda proves the point that you're always learning. It wasn't even a school day and we got to have a conversation on where acorns come from and what their purpose is. Fun times!

The original instructions call for doughnut holes, but Fry's didn't have any so I got cream puffs instead. I know, giant improvement!
Anyway, you dip the end of the cream puff in nutella and then in chocolate sprinkles. The stem is 1/2 a pretzel stick. You could cut your sticks in thirds but I'm really lazy so I just shoved the 1/2 stick in further.

Because I'm so awesome, I also made waffles for breakfast and let the kids eat them with nutella on top. They were having a hard time not licking the acorns. Maybe we should have made breakfast first?

Best Snack EVER

Holy Pizza Sauce, IB Nation.
My sister has discovered the secret to snacking.

It's salty, fast and HEALTHY.
I KNOW!!!!!! I'm excited, too!

Ready? OK.

Get a small zucchini. Slice it in thin strips or thin rounds. Zap in microwave for 30 seconds. Now get out your Costco container of shredded Parmesan. Oh, I know you have one! Hurry now.
Sprinkle the cheese over the zukes and zap for another 30ish seconds.
Devour.
Repeat.
I'd have taken a picture but every time we make it, there's no time before it's gone again. We kinda ran out of zucchinis. Seriously. Without putting them in unlocked cars.

Pudding Pops

We are doing a Two Week Easter Countdown with the children. Each day there is a planned devotional and an activity that teaches the lesson.  Easter is my favorite holiday, and now I can share the deeper meanings with my little lovelies. :D Today The Boy asked me what the Easter Bunny was, so maybe I'm not doing too bad a job at teaching Easter on my own, huh?

One of the activities focused on miracles. The theme for the day was rainbows, so of COURSE we had to make rainbow pudding pops. Also of course, I had no pre-packaged pudding in the house. I also didn't have corn starch. Who doesn't keep corn starch on hand? Ferills.

Luckily, I wasn't out of money for the month, so we were able to get our supples and the next day we made pudding and then these super cute rainbow pudding pops.

Step One: Make pudding
Step Two: Divide pudding

Step Three: Dye pudding
Step Four: carefully spoon into paper or plastic cups
Step Five: Stick a fork in it (that's what I had, feel free to get sticks)
Step Six: Freeze
Step Seven: Set the cup in some warm water to loosen the pop
Step Eight: Eat your protein on a stick (because momma's on a low carb diet, we made sugar free pudding)

I do have one little tip for this activity: If you don't want lumpy pudding, it's best not to turn over the whisking to your four-year-old. In this case, I felt the lumpy pudding was a reasonable cost for quality Boy time. :D

Lemon Berry Cupcakes

A super yummy treat I invented out of necessity. (It's what I had on hand and could do in the time I had to bake.)

Sorry I don't have a picture of the middle. 

I was busy holding a newborn and The Hubs was standing in as cellphone camera operator. 

One box strawberry cake, prepared as per box instructions Stay with me. Y'all know I do not ever start a recipe with boxed anything, much less keep boxed cake mix on hand, but I had this left over from another project and was in a time crunch. These turned out so delicious I had to share!

Add the zest from one lemon

Small dollop of heavy cream or larger dollop of whipped cream

1-2 Tsp fresh lemon juice (judge it based on how thin your batter is getting)

Bake in lined muffin tins as instructed.

Frosting

1 stick butter

1 stick margarine (again, not a normal ingredient for me, but I'm broke this week!)

beat the living tar out of the butter/marg. until it's nice and fluffy the add:

3 1/2 cups non-sifted (or 4 cups sifted) powdered sugar (it's a pound of powdered sugar)

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp lemon juice

zest from one lemon, finely grated

dollop of cream to smooth it out a bit if it's a tad grainy

Then fold in 1/4 cup blueberry puree. 

I did not know this, but blueberries totally gel. 

Frost cakes and top with a blackberry. 

When I made these, I added the blueberry before I knew the frosting was grainy, so the blueberries were more incorporated than I would have wished due to the extra mixing. 

I hope your family likes them as much as mine did. 

You Make It! :Baby Wipes

My friend, Whitney, is super awesome. She totally gets my organic-ness and raw-ness. In fact, she's introduced me to being aware of chemicals in the products we use and so I'm now even more neurotic than I used to be. So neurotic, in fact, that I just made my own baby wipes. Ferills.
It turns out the baby wipes you buy in the store contain things like formaldehyde, chlorine, dioxins and alcohol. Super. Making your own is not as easy as the washing detergent we made last week, but it's close! Or maybe I was just more tired tonight.

LIST OF INGREDIENTS
1 roll of quality paper towels (I used Bounty because that's what I had)
1 cup boiling water
1 heaping Tablespoon of coconut oil or other carrier oil
1/2 cup witch hazel
a few drops of Tea Tree Oil or Lavender oil
A couple light squirts of a chemical-free or chemical-light baby soap
Air-tight container for holding wipes

The point of the witch hazel is to soothe and the tea tree oil is an antimicrobial and thus natural preservative. The soap is obviously the part that cleans. Duh.

Cut the roll of paper towels in half. Or get your husband to do it, because honestly, it's a bit tedious.

Dissolve the oil in boiling water and remove from heat. Dump in the witch hazel, soap and essential oils.
Put towels in container. (FOOTNOTE: Apparently you're only supposed to do one of the cut rolls at a time. I didn't know this, and did both halves of the roll of paper towels. It still worked out, but apparently I won't use them fast enough. Oops.)
 Poor the mixture around the base and slap the lid on for 5-10 minutes. After that time, the cardboard center comes out of the rolls. Let sit overnight to fully absorb.

My favorite part of making these, other than knowing my baby's bottom will be chemical free from now on, was smelling the coconut oil. YUM! It doesn't hurt that I just saved a bajillion dollars, either.

Baby wipes are big business. In 2000 the industry made $263.9 million. (http://www.enotes.com/how-products-encyclopedia/baby-wipes) I'm all about capitalism, so go team for that entrepreneurial spirit. Boo for making something we use on our BABIES, toxic. That's totally a Fail, Huggies. In case you were wondering.

Next week on You Make It!: Toothpaste. Yup. I'm totally serious.
Thanks to Whitney for the recipe and letting me re-blog her blog.

You Make It! :Laundry Detergent

I've had this recipe for a YEAR, courtesy of my friend, Steph, and I'm kicking myself for not trying it earlier because it seriously took 8 minutes of active time to create five GALLONS of concentrated laundry detergent.

Here's the cost breakdown:

$1.49 Fels-Naptha Soap (does one batch)
$3.49 Arm and Hammer Washing Soda (does many batches)
$3.74 20 Mule Team Borax (does many batches)
$2.44 5 gallon bucket
$0.97 bucket lid

Total cost to get started : $12.13. The only thing you'll need to re-buy is the bar of soap. Doesn't it make you a LITTLE steamed to know Tide charges about that for ONE gallon of soap? Yeah, me too.

1 Bar Fels-Naptha soap (or Sunshine, Ivory, Zote, Kirk's Hardwater Castle)
1/2 cup Borax
1 cup Washing Soda

The hardest part was finding washing soda, but I called around and found a Basha's that carries it.

Grate the bar of soap and add to four cups hot tap water you already put in a pan on the stove, because you were smart and knew I was going to have you use 4 cups hot water.

Melt the soap. My recipe says to stir constantly, but I didn't and it appears fine. However, if you love to stir stuff, go for it.

Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full with hot tap water. Add the powders and stir while your soap is melting on the stove. Add melted soap/water mixture to the powder/water mixture in the bucket and stir. Then fill the bucket up the rest of the way with hot water and stir again. If you want, you can add 10-15 drops of essential oil. Let it set overnight to gel up and give it a shake before you use it.

I was totally planning on adding citrus oil and maybe anise, but I can't find my essential oils since we moved back into our house. Sigh. I also can't find a can opener, but that's another story.

Back to the soap. Oh wait, we're totally done. That's it! For a top-load machine, use 1/3 cup to 5/8 cup per load and 1/4 cup for front loaders. I'm guessing all HE machines use the 1/4 cup measure.
I bet this 5 gallons of soap lasts me until July, at least. I'll keep you posted.

PS This soap doesn't sud much. That's a GOOD thing, since it doesn't contain sodium laurel sulfate, an added chemical in most liquid soaps whose purpose is to foam, but actually does stuff like kill babies and small animals. Or something.

Next week we're going to make our own baby wipes! YAY!