Why I Bother Learning Old-Fashioned Skills: Making Stock

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I had never considered making my own stock until this year, when I came across these posts:

http://simplemom.net/how-to-make-homemade-basics/

http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/broth-is-beautiful

http://www.maggiesnest.org/2011/04/14/whats-gaps-and-why-now/

http://www.gaps.me/preview/?page_id=28

At the time, I was in the middle of researching nutrition, specifically to support good gut bacteria and thereby boost the immune system. Making stock from scratch seemed like a fairly straight-forward and easy change that I could make to our family diet, so I experimented, and I was really pleased with the results.

I have found that I get the most use out of chicken stock, rather than vegetable or beef stock. Over the past few months, I have streamlined my method, which is as follows:

How to Create a Low Sugar Childhood

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I am a sugarholic. I am addicted to the taste of sugar, and for quite a few years now, I have been fighting to control my sugar intake in the interests of my health and spiritual well-being. I am very aware of the problems with sugar in my diet; if you would like more information, a good reference is David Gillespie's Sweet Poison.

I can trace this taste for sugar back to my childhood, when I was given sweet desserts nearly every dinner-time, biscuits and treats for my school lunch-box, and pocket money to spend on sweets on the weekend. But even with all this, I still raided the pantry at night in search of sugar. :-(

This is not an issue I wanted my children to have to deal with, so when my first child was starting solids, I was determined that NO SUGAR would be permitted into his diet. My thinking was that if I could shape his tastes to exclude sugar, then he would be much less likely to over-indulge on sweets as an older child and an adult. I think I succeeded; his first taste of cake was on his second birthday, and his first ice-cream was after the age of 3. My other children have enjoyed sweet treats a little earlier than he did, but it is not a regular part of our family diet. Here’s how we did it:

Grocery Shopping with Children

I remember feeling very anxious about going grocery shopping when my first child was a baby. What if he cried? What if we took too long and missed his nap time? How would I manage getting him in and out of the trolley and the car, along with all the bags?

Now, when I look back, those days were laughably simple. Now, I know that I am capable of completing a trip to the grocery store with 3 mobile, talkative, and active children. Here are some tips I’ve learned through the years:

Tired of Cooking?

I don’t know about you, but I regularly get tired, bored, and unmotivated to cook meals. For some reason, I don’t have this issue with housework - perhaps because I have structured it so that I have different chores each day? - but the never-ending duty of putting food on the table can definitely grate on me.

So here are the good, bad and ugly strategies I have tried when I start feeling this way:

What’s in your freezer?

Well, we’ve explored our fridges and our pantries; now it’s time to open your freezer for stock-take in public! :-)

Here’s what I keep in my freezer:

What's in your fridge?

I have 2 fridges - one small, the other smaller :-). So for this exercise, I’m pretending that I have everything inside one large fridge. Also, Tuesday is the day I go grocery shopping, so I’m going to list out what I have in my fridge when it’s full, not when it’s empty (like today). So here’s what I normally have:

What's in your pantry?

Seriously, I'm interested. :-)

My pantry is a collection of 4 upper and 3 lower kitchen cupboards. Small is a word that describes is perfectly. I also have a large pantry unit that I inherited when my parents renovated their kitchen, but unfortunately it does not fit in my kitchen, and so has been demoted to crockery storage.

So what food do I keep in my pantry? Well, my small grocery budget means that I drastically limit the type and quantity of canned and packet foods I store, so that I can use the money for fresh fruit & veg, dairy, and meat. Here is a sample of what I commonly have on hand in the pantry:

Healing Autism with Food?????

I’ve just spent the past week reading up about the GAPS diet, which I first heard about here. The author, Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride, has impressive credentials: she holds a degree in medicine and post-graduate degrees in neurology and human nutrition; she has extensive clinical experience in treating adults and children with learning disorders; and she is also the mother of a son who was diagnosed with autism at 3.

The fundamentals of the diet are fairly straightforward, if a little unusual from the mainstream perspective:

• Animal products including fish, meats and fats, home-made meat stocks, soups and bone broths, eggs, ghee and butter, stews and casseroles
• Pro-biotics
• Vegetable juices, cooked and raw vegetables
• Fermented foods such as yoghurt and kefir, sauerkraut, or other fermented vegetables
• Organic nut butters

The author describes a systematic method to introduce the various foods into the diet (Introduction Diet), along with a longer-term maintenance diet (Full GAPS diet).

The startling thing about the diet is not the food, though. It is the author’s claim that this diet is an effective and appropriate treatment for autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, depression, and schizophrenia.

Why I loved my slow-cooker

My slow-cooker just died yesterday. It developed a fatal electrical fault which tripped out the house power. This is the second slower cooker to die this way in less than 2 years, and I am a little annoyed.

How to stretch your grocery dollar: part 2

As promised, here are some of my tips on how to make a small grocery budget stretch like Elasto-girl in between shopping trips:

1. Have a shopping routine – periodic trips make planning easier and minimises wasted food. Work out whether daily (!), weekly, fortnightly, or monthly shopping (or some combination) suits you best.
2. Have an idea of what will be eaten that week. I don’t use a menu plan, because I like to improvise, but I have a very good idea of how much food we need for each meal and/or week.
3. Use up leftovers. Label and freeze smaller portions for quick lunches later; make double of basics like bolognaise; stretch portions which are not quite big enough with extra veggies or carbs (rice, potatoes, bread on the side). Tinned beans are another great option to stretch meat dishes for a second meal.
4. Plan egg-based or legume-based meals as alternatives to meat
5. Learn how to bake basic sweet treats from scratch – cakes, brownies, scones, muffins, pikelets, pancakes, etc. Keep a good stock of baking supplies on hand and make use of online recipe collections.
6. Investigate keeping chickens, and/or planting a veggie patch.

How do you save on your groceries?

How to stretch your grocery dollar: part 1

One of the bonuses of having a low income is strengthened purchasing skills. Here are some lessons I’ve learned over the past year or so:

1. look for alternatives to the big-name supermarket – markets, greengrocers, butchers, bulk grocery suppliers
2. buy fresh fruit and veggies which are in season, and check whether they are grown locally. Local, in-season produce is usually the cheapest.
3. Prepare a shopping list. Estimate prices on your list before you shop (if possible) so you know whether an item on the shelf is a bargain or not.
4. Look beyond the SALE! sticker. Often, lower shelves will have cheaper brands of the same product which are not on sale.
5. Compare the price per unit – sometimes bigger is cheaper, sometimes not.

Tomorrow, I’ll share some tips on how I stretch our grocery dollar in between shopping trips.  But I’d love to hear how you get more for less at the shops.

What exactly is healthy eating?

Like every other health-conscious mom, I’ve done a bit of research about food. This book is one of many that has influenced my thinking, and moved our family diet away from the mainstream.  

I restrict the amount of sugar we eat, except for special occasions.  The children eat fruit for snacks and drink water, except on special occasions.  I restrict the amount of carbs I eat, except on special occasions. We eat real butter, unsweetened Greek-style yoghurt, and drink full-fat milk. We eat whole grain bread, and I would love us to go gluten-free, but we can’t manage the extra expense. Also due to expense, we buy the cheapest meat available, which is not lean, and we eat only 5-6 meat meals a week. Other meals are based on fish or legumes.

Breakfast is usually wheat (cereal or toast or sometimes pancakes), oats (muesli), or eggs; lunch is salad, sandwiches or leftovers; dinner is something from the slow cooker. 

A third of our grocery budget is spent on fruit and vegetables; another third on dairy and meat; the remainder is spent on staples and non-food items.

I’m sure you have your own opinions about healthy eating, and it would be great to hear them!