Organizing my home

In 2012, I am embarking on a big project that has, or at least had, a little too do with cooking. It's called the 52-Week Home Organization Challenge. Each Monday, I have received a prompt for organzing some part of the house. The first four weeks dealt with the kitchen - counters, cupboards, the pantry and the refrigerator. I actually had to deal with reorganizing my pantry in Week 1 in order to get a ton of food off the counter, but Week 3 led to some interesting discoveries about how old my spices were, and a reorganization of what I didn't throw out from my spice rack.

Weeks 1 and 2 both resulted in some cute new accessories for me. They are the storage container box and the canisters pictured above. Of course, I had to be cheap in these endeavours, just as I am with food. The canisters are from Goodwill. And the storage box is the very box 2/3 of my excessive collection of storage containers came in. It had been just sitting there on the counter looking ugly for a long time. Meanwhile, I've had a collection of pattern paper in several different colors sitting in my stash since 2005, and it didn't seem like the yellow ones would be used on a layout anytime soon. So, they're now covering my box!

I believe the 52-Week Organization Challenge moves on to a different part of the house next week. I hope I accomplish as much with the future challenges as I did with the first four. (Although I was actually pleasantly surprised about how little food had to go when I cleaned out the fridge!) I am not sure how the rest will go, because I live with a packrat, and I am a bit of one too. If it had been up to me, we'd only have as many storage containers as actually fit in that box. I also would have gotten rid of some of the coffee cups and other items cluttering up two shelves in my dining room, and a collection of magnets cluttering up the front of my refrigerator. But Don wants to keep all of these things, so we still have them. Hopefully, his collections won't stop me from improving the rest of the house.

I know one room that can be improved without his blessing is my scrapbook room. As it doubles as the home office and his clothes closet, he would love to see some improvement there. He also would love to see it well enough organized that I don't keep hauling stuff into other rooms so I can work with it more easily. My hope is that the challenges for that area are broken into small enough pieces that I can do each in a week. Also, I think that's going to require an investment in a little more expensive storage than ceramic canisters, so I hope the funds will allow.

Healthy Lemon Bars

High fiber, no refined sugar or flour, and low cholesterol used to be key elements of a healthy diet. I still believe that to be the case, so that's why I like a recipe for Lemon Bars I adapted from one of my late 20th century health-conscious cookbooks. I made them and shared them with the Sandals' Women's Bible Study, and they were loved!

LEMON BARS

Crust:

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup margarine or butter

1 egg

1/4 cup crushed Wheaties

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

Mix together these ingredients and press into greased 8x8 pan.

Topping:

3 eggs

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

1/ cup margarine or butter

1 teaspoon lemon peel

I actually had to use both margarine and butter in mine, because of a shortage of ingredients on hand. Next time, I will probably just use margarine as the original recipe called for. Another change to consider, for the sake of lower cholesterol, is to substitute two egg whites in the crust and four egg whites in the topping.

I love how the topping tasted with brown sugar, but because of it, these lemon bars don't have the intense yellow color you normally would associate with them. If you really want the yellow color, it can be had by substituting white sugar in the topping. There's no good reason I can think of to do this with the crust.

Another reason I'll keep eating whole wheat

Squidoo.com's whole wheat pie crust

What would the world be like without pie? Certainly pie is good for desert, but as far as I am concerned, there are some kinds of pies that are good for you! Especially if you make a whole wheat pie crust. I really like this linked crust published by squidoo.com. It also uses butter, which makes it roll out more easily than one with shortening.

Squidoo.com recommends it for quiches, but I've done one better. I make my own recipe called "Greens Pie" with this crust. I have made it twice. The first time, Don had just had outpatient surgery, and his doctor was recommending he lay off meat for a week but highly increase his fiber intake. (Well, she was actually recommending vegan for a week, as would have his niece, but this pie violates that on several fronts.) Both whole wheat and dark greens are good sources of fiber, and this pie makes a hearty meal.

To make my Greens Pie, follow squidoo.com's recipe for the pie crust, even putting the mustard in at the bottom. If you are going to make a 9" pie, you may wish to double the recipe, because having tried it both ways, we find Greens Pie is better with two crusts. However, my pie tins at this time are a whole bunch from Marie Callender's and a local establishment called Polly's Pies (in Norco). These are 8" pies, and the squidoo.com recipe will make enough crust for top and bottom.

For the filling, you have many choices. As long as they are green, leafy vegetables that hold up cooking for an hour, and as long as you chop them into very small pieces. My latest version used collard greens, my earlier version used a more mixed variety. Other good choices are Swiss chard, spinach, endive and parsley. Whatever you have, chop it up and throw it in! Green onions, cinnamon, mint and dry parsley (or fresh if you didn't just throw your entire supply into the mix) are good seasonings.

Add to this about 1/2 cup of cheese. Feta is recommended in a recipe I have adapted this from, but other choices it recommends are both Swiss and Romano. I made my more recent one with Parmesan, the earlier one with Swiss.

Coat all of this mixture with oil generously and pile into your pie crust. Bake pie in a 400 degree oven for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes.

I love this with a whole wheat pie crust, but this is adapted from an old Sunset magazine recipe that calls for fila dough. If you'd like to try the pie that way, Sunset recommends four sheets on the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan, each brushed with oil. Add the filling, fold the edges of the fila dough up, and put four more layers (each brushed with oil) to the top. Bake the same.

Why I won't be going paleo

I've heard a lot about the paleo diet. Then, I saw on Facebook (thanks Kellie Rykbos) that there was such a thing as paleo brownies. She was having them with meatloaf, and I too was planning to make meatloaf that night. Now here it is Sunday morning, the meatloaf is two-thirds gone, and I finally have made some time to Google paleo brownies and see what the fuss is all about.

I have learned that paleo diet enthusiasts aren't eating anything that wasn't available to our Paleolithic ancestors. That means no sugar, no flour, no (regular) butter and no processed foods. Sounds great, but...

To make brownies you pretty much have to have flour and butter or at least oil. So while what we normally think of as flour, including the whole wheat variety, is off limits, almond flour is not. Nor is coconut flour. While regular salad oil and any kind of olive oil are off limits, coconut oil is not. Butter and margarine are apparently both off limits. Not sure if peanut butter also is, but almond butter is not.

Well, I'm not going to run out and buy any of those fancy products just to make brownies! So I Googled healthy brownies. I found a plethora of recipes that call for nothing more exotic than egg whites. And I like this one. It calls for whole wheat flour (I do prefer using this when possible because of the texture and because of Don's need for a high fiber diet). And it calls for one EGG. I have every thing this recipe calls for, right here.

Healthy Brownies with whole wheat flour

One of the other recipes I found uses just Brownie mix, black beans and water. I've never though of putting black beans in brownies, but I think fruit, vegetables and legumes of all kinds are good substitutes for eggs and oil, which I think this recipe omits from the standard Brownie mix recipe. So it's probably good too, only I don't have black beans or Brownie mix, and I do think from scratch is usually better.

But here it is, with a photo.

Black Bean Brownies

More thoughts on soup

Here's another good article about soup, this one from 12 Tomatoes. Verifies my conclusion a few weeks ago that anything vegetable-wise, goes into turkey soup. Or ham soup. Or vegetarian soup. Or even beef soup.

http://12tomatoes.com/2012/01/winter-vegetable-soup-simple-delicious-a-few-tips-for-choosing-vegetables.html

Got too much ham? Make soup!

This is one of those that I wasn't sure I would blog about. As I blogged about in the past, I had leftover ham from my Dec. 23 "Pre-Christmas Dinner." And I was really having a hard time figuring out what to do with the rest. Which meant that in the second week of January, I still had ham. And unlike the Christmas turkey that I had to throw out a few days after New Years, it still was good.

Don was concerned about how long the ham had been in the refrigerator. So much so, he insisted I put ham in his the night I made quesadillas. Um, OK, I remember a year where there was so much turkey after one of the holidays I made turkey quesadillas ad infinitum. But I really wanted my quesadilla to be vegetarian. So, we only used up a little more ham that night.

The next night, I had planned another very simple vegetarian meal. Cream of corn soup. Now, I could do two vegetarian meals in a row and be happy. But there was the issue of the ham. And I decided that diced ham would be really, really good in cream of corn soup.

I used a recipe from a very old cookbook. I am writing at Starbucks today, and will be going from memory, but this - minus the ham - is pretty close to the recipe.

Cream of Corn Soup with Diced Ham

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp flour

1 quart of milk (4 cups)

1 15 oz. can of corn (not creamed)

Approx 1 cup diced ham

Seasonings to taste

Melt butter in saucepan, and mix in flour. This makes a roux, which is what's great for thickening soups and sauces. Add milk, corn ham and seasonsings, and heat until roux is dissolved into the milk, the mixture is thick and has a sheen to it. Serve in bowls, add more seasonings or garnishes as desired.

The reason I wished to share this recipe with you is that if you like ham, Fresh & Easy has it on sale now, and on its blog it is sharing other soup recipes with ham. I am sorry to report that I have also recently learned Fresh & Easy is closing its stores in Ontario and Hemet. I don't think anyone I know shopped either of those Fresh & Easy stores regularly. The ones closer to me are doing well. My favorite is the one by the Jurupa Spectrum Theater (still open, no longer Edwards). I am aware of two in Riverside - one somewhere on Trautwein, the other at Madison and Arlington. I think there may be one more in a location I can't remember. Here is a link to Fresh & Easy's soup recipes.

http://blog.freshandeasy.com/2012/01/soup-recipe-round-up-january-is-soup.html

Hunt’s® Lemon-Tomato Chicken Pasta

Hunt’s® Lemon-Tomato Chicken Pasta

I am going to try this recipe soon. I am letting everyone know now because of a coupon promotion that is going on at Hunts.com. Print this or one of six other recipes, get one coupon for canned tomatoes. Share it on a social media website, get another. I got it for sharing it on Facebook, but since I don't think very many of you are Facebook followers of mine, I wanted to share it with you as well.

For me, this will be a way to use up the last of the Angel Tree/Treasure Box pasta that was for awhile taking over my pantry, as well as some lemons my mother gave me on Jan. 1. I think it will be a great way to do so, but you get one more coupon for writing a recipe review on their site. Since I also see this site as a place to share that sort of thing, stay tuned.

But I don't like.....

Today's lunch: Avocados, cottage cheese, tangerines, grits and tomatoes. If you know me at all, you would be surprised I ate any of this. Growing up, I hated all of these except grits. Since no one else in my family much cared for grits, I was never exposed to them until I married my current husband, and he usually only eats them in the occasional restaurant we visit that has them on the menu. Probably my avowed hatred of Cream of Wheat had something to do with the lack of earlier exposure, as the texture is similar. Once I saw grits for the first time, the resemblance to Cream of Wheat made me not a fan.

I overcame my hatred of oranges as a young adult. I did not overcome my hatred for tomatoes until my late 30s. (I turn 50 later this year.) I still will not claim to like avocados or cottage cheese. Yet, both of them, combined in a "salad" with slices of tangerines (or maybe oranges)are delicious. Here's how to make this simple dish.

AVOCADO SALAD

1. Cut the avocados in half and remove the pit. (I'll admit, my "half" was only about one-third of the avocado. Since Don likes them, and LOVES cottage cheese, he received the more generous half.)

2. Salt the avocados.

3. Spoon cottage cheese into the depression where the pit was.

4. Top the cottage cheese with tangerine slices.

This is so good, I will be saving it on a list of favorite recipes. Yes, that means I'll be eating a mix of avocados, cottage cheese and tangerines again sometime soon.

I am still on the fence about grits. My grits are not the traditional kind. For one thing, most grits recipes call for "grits," a cornmealish substance that I'm not even sure you can buy in a typical California supermarket.

But I am going to share with you another food blog I discovered recently. Rook No. 17. This blog has lots of good things, but I'm linking you to a recipe for Southwest Black-Eyed Peas and Chili-Cheese Grits. Although I only learned of this at the end of 2010, it is apparently a tradition in the southeast to eat black-eyed peas on Jan. 1. With us spending New Year's at the coast, that wasn't going to happen, but I decided they would be the best choice for the first meal I cooked once we got back last night. I had to take out most of these ingredients, one because I didn't want to go on a grocery store run until today, and two, because with Don still having traces of indigestion that made him, my dad and my brother ill while we were on vacation, he wasn't feeling up to spicy food. So, my black-eyed peas were simply the small amount of peas I had in the cupboard, with a little bit of salt, pepper and leftover chopped ham, boiled for about one hour. I followed the grits recipe more closely, but omitted the chilis.

I also changed this to yellow cornmeal. This may be very good with white, but if there is white anywhere near here, it wasn't in my house. There is (still) a lot of yellow cornmeal here though. And while this recipe has given me second thoughts about grits, I needed to improvise on the cooking techniques to make it satisfactory to all.

For one thing, using exactly the amounts called for in this recipe, and cooking the grits for the prescribed amount of time left me with grits the consistency of the dreaded Cream of Wheat. Although that is exactly how we ate them last night, in bowls with the black-eyed peas on top, even my grits-and-milk loving husband said these grits were too thin.

Secondly, since I only used a small amount of black-eyed peas, and fed the peas and grits to just the two of us, I had lots of leftover grits. I wasn't sure how I'd use those, but I had noticed the yellow cornmeal/cheese mixture made something similar to polenta. When I came across a recipe for polenta wedges topped with tomatoes, I decided we would have either that or grits topped with tomatoes, depending on how thick my reheated grits would end up.

I added more cornmeal. Maybe a cup more. My finished product today ended up looking more like a yellow version of the grits Rook No. 17 has pictured on her website. It is very good topped with tomatoes, but I think next time I will make polenta instead of grits. Just a little more my style. And you can buy ready-made polenta in local grocery stores.