Chicken Tamale Casserole

Our family LOVES mexican-style food. Well, everyone except the oldest rugrat, but she eats it. It is impossible to duplicate authentic mexican food using the products that are on store shelves and the products on store shelves are often filled with preservatives, coloring and are loaded with GMO products. So, I have been making mexican food from scratch for many years. Enchiladas are a favorite of mine but I have yet to make them the right way, using corn husks and boiling them individually for my family. This recipe uses all those flavors and still comes out pretty good. Its quicker to make than individual enchiladas and a favorite at our house. I usually make the sauce early in the day and throw the casserole together in the evening. You can use any meat you want. If you have leftover pork, it makes a great enchilada. Just shred the meat, add the seasonings and use as a filling. I like to use chicken and find that ground beef is equally as delicious. You can also make this with just cheese. Use about 2 cups of cheese and a can of chopped green chilies and add the sauce below.


First you have to make the 
Enchilada Sauce
12 red Chili pods

2 cups boiling water

1 quart chicken stock

1 T cumin
2 tsp garlic powder
2 T flour
1 tsp sea salt

Place chili pods in a large bowl. Pour boiling water over them and allow them to soak for at least one hour. Mash them in the bowl. Pour the liquid through a strainer into a pot and discard the chili pods. Add all the remaining ingredients except the salt. Cook for 2 hours on low, allowing sauce to reduce to about 2-3 cups. Add the salt and use in the recipe below.

Filling
1 pound of chicken (or ground beef or cooked pork)

1 cup chopped onion

1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
2 cups of above Enchilada sauce
1-2 cups of grated cheese(reserve for topping)

Place the meat in a large skillet and brown over medium heat. When cooked, drain the fat and add the onion, cooking till the onion is slightly translucent. Add the seasonings and sauce and mix well. Heat through, bringing to a simmer. Cover and allow to cook on low for about 10 minutes while you prepare the crust.

Dough
3 cups masa harina
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp sea salt
2 cups water
2 tsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine all the ingredients for the dough in a large bowl and mix well. Lightly grease a 13 x 9 baking dish. Place the dough, which will be soft and slightly sticky in the baking dish. Press down lightly with your fingers, spreading the dough out evenly over the entire dish, and up the sides about an inch. Pour the filling onto the crust. Top with grated cheese.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until crust is lightly brown and cooked through.

Garden Abundance-Rhubarb

With spring comes rhubarb. A plant that many find no use for. To me its a nice departure from the norm and its tangy flavor and crunch makes many different dishes that much better. When most people think of rhubarb, they think strawberry rhubarb pie. Its a good thought, and a good pie, but one can only make so many in a season and then you have to move on. Strawberry rhubarb jam is another favorite but I find that the strawberries run out far more quickly than the rhubarb and so I have an abundance. In the garden, abundance breeds innovation and so we have Rhubarbecue Sauce. That's right, barbecue sauce made from rhubarb, and its GOOD!

The recipe is not difficult. A little prep work and measuring upfront and you leave it to cook. In the end you have a sauce you can use immediately or you can can it. One recipe will produce 4 pints of a delicious, thick sweet and tangy sauce that is really good on grilled chicken, pork and even poured over a pot of mini sausages. Here's the recipe:

chopping all the veggies is the most
time consuming job of this recipe.

Rhubarbecue Sauce
8 cups of chopped rhubarb
3 1/2 cups light packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups chopped raisins
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp sea salt

Wash the rhubarb and chop off the ends. Cut into 1 inch pieces. Put the rhubarb, sugar, raisins, onion and vinegar in your crock pot. You do not need to add water as the rhubarb will start to let off water as it cooks. Cover tightly. Cook on high until everything is soft. Use an immersion blender to smooth out the sauce. Add your seasonings. As the sauce begins to thicken, turn to low. Stir often to prevent burning around the edges. Vent the lid to allow moisture to escape and speed up the thickening process. Depending on the water content of the rhubarb, the entire process can take anywhere from a few hours to a full day. The sauce will be thick when finished and a deep brownish red. The thicker the better, but it should be at least as thick as a store-bought sauce before you use it. You can process it if you wish or refrigerate for up to two weeks. To process, use a hot water bath for 20 minutes. 

The finished sauce is very thick and has a sweet/tangy flavor.

How to make Bagels

the finished product!

Bagels are fun to make. My kids really love them for breakfast and they are a break from the normal slice of toast. They are a little more labor intensive, so I usually double my recipe and then freeze them in gallon bags. That way we can use them when we feel like it and I don't have to worry about any going to waste. Bagels are ridiculously expensive in the store, especially the ones that are good for you, so this is another way to stretch your grocery dollar.

2 cups warm water
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup molassas
1 T yeast
2  tsp sea salt
6 cups hard white wheat, freshly ground
corn meal in a shallow dish(optional)

Combine water, honey. molassas, oil, salt, yeast and a cup of the flour. Mix will and allow to sit till mixture starts to bubble. Add half the remaining flour and mix well. Add the remaining flour a little at a time, mixing until you have a smooth, relatively dry, non-sticky doughball. Knead for 6-10 more minutes to develop the gluten completely. This is key to your perfect chewy on the outside, tender on the inside bagels. Cover and allow the dough to rise until double.

Set up for boiling before you begin. The bowl I mixed my
dough in is on the left with a cookie rack on top for draining
the wet bagels. On the right is my kettle for boiling
the bagels and a slotted spoon for removing them.

dough is shaped and ready to boil

Grease 2 large cookie sheets and set aside.

In a large pot combine one gallon of water a 1/3 cup honey and one tablespoon of baking soda and bring to a boil if you are making your bagels now.(see photos)

each little dough ball makes a 3-4" bagel

make the hole nice and big. It will
close up during the boiling process.

push your thumbs right through
the center of the dough ball.

Divide the risen dough into 8 equal portions. Form each dough portion into a ball and the turn the edges of the ball inward while punching a hole through the center with your thumb. Continue to roll this dough through and gradually stretch it out to a 2-3" hole. Each portion should look like a large doughnut. The holes will close during the boiling/baking process. Place these circles on a greased baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap, allowing to rest about 10 minutes to “proof” the dough. At this point you can cover them all well with saran wrap and place in the refrigerator for a day. This will allow the yeast to do its magical work on the dough and will give you a much better flavor. However, its not necessary if you want your bagel now. Since your water bath should be starting to boil at this point you can preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Don't put too many bagels in at once or you will
lose your rolling boil. This is important so the
bagel doesn't get soggy. 

Place one or two bagels in the boiling honey water and cover the pot. Boil for about 30 seconds, uncover, flip the bagel over with a slotted spoon and cover again. The bagels usually sink, then rise in a few seconds. If they don’t, they rested too long, but are still fine. Just turn them over so that both sides get wet. After 1 minutes in the water, remove with a slotted spoon and place on a rack to drain. As you prepare to pull more out of the water, move each of the drained bagels to a small shallow dish of cornmeal, dusting the bottoms to give them a nice crunch, and help prevent sticking then transfer to the prepared baking sheet. 

the dough is now boiled, drained
and ready to bake

Once they have all taken a dunk in the water and have drained, bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 20-30 minutes(depending on the size you chose). You can turn the over halfway through cooking if they are not browning on both sides.
Optional: You can brush them with a mixture of 1 beaten egg and 2 T water then sprinkle with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, etc.  after they have their water bath and are dried off. The egg wash makes an ungarnished bagel look shiny as well, but is not necessary.

Rainy Days

In the spring, I am usually VERY busy planting and tending to the garden in addition to wrapping up our school year and preparing for canning season. On the days when it is raining, I usually bake quite a bit so that I can "get ahead" for the days when I am outside in the garden all day. The last rainy day we had I decided it was time to use up the shredded zucchini I had in my deep freeze. When I run out of ambition to use the abundant green squash, I pull out my trusty food processor and shred it. I bag 2 cup portions in the economical freezer bags, squeeze out the air, tie them off and then fill the pricier gallon ziplocs with up to 8 of these ready-made zucchini balls.  The two cup portions are perfect for quite a few recipes that I have in my file folder. I made two loaves of chocolate zucchini bread and two loaves of pineapple zucchini bread on Tuesday and I wanted to share that recipe since its such a yummy one.

Pineapple Zucchini Bread
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup honey
2 tsp vanilla

1 cup melted coconut oil

3 1/2 cups freshly ground wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup raisins
1 cup crushed pineapple, drained

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease two 8x4" loaf pans. Set aside.
Combine eggs, honey, vanilla, coconut oil in a large bowl and mix well. Pour in flour, salt and baking soda and powder and mix well. Do not over mix though. Once you have a smooth batter, incorporate zucchini, pineapple and raisins, distributing everything well, but again, not over mixing. Pour into prepared loaf pans and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour.

Taking survey's for cash

Most companies want to know what you like and dislike about just about anything. They will pay good money to find this information out. That's where marketing companies come in. They ask questions, correlate data and give the corporations answers that help them make better products. Its a great process. Getting paid to give your opinion is a wonderful part of that process. In today's world most people don't feel they have time to stop and answer 25 minutes worth of questions. Marketing companies now offer incentives to get the information they need. Some ways include gifts, points for gifts and sometimes cash. Not all companies pay cash reliably. This company, Super Savvy does. You get emails throughout the week that offer you money for asking questions. If you respond you may qualify and get paid, if you don't,  its no harm done. This is something that is great for a stay at home mom. You can do the surveys while your baby naps, when your kids are playing in their rooms or at night after they go to bed. Surveys pay anywhere from $2 to $20 and more. Its fast, easy and if you are comfortable clicking on dots and reading and answering questions, stress free.

Usually there are several questions to see if you qualify to participate. If you don't, you may use 2-5 minutes of your time and get entered in a weekly sweepstakes for cash. If you do qualify, you get paid. Money is usually paid about 6 weeks after you answer the questions.

If you are interested in joining, click here to find out more

Do Something!

Wednesday night, after a very long day, I sat down with my true love to watch Food Inc.  I have skimmed the book and knew the jist of the film, but I really wanted to see the entire thing, so I sat still for the two hours it took to watch the documentary. I have to say, I was shocked. The very fact that our food system is still so out of whack despite the efforts of people to show the public what our food supply has become is amazing to me. Its really very scary. This has been going on for years and yet it still going on. When I find myself talking with someone about the quality of today’s food, I usually get blank stares. I guess as they look at me, they are thinking I am already a wack-o anyway. I homeschool, I garden, I can foods, I try to live as green as possible, I love Jesus…you know; I’m an extremist :P But I digress…my point is that food is very important to me. Its required for life and if we are filling our bodies with trash, one would assume(or at least I do) that our quality of life will deteriorate. 

The prevalence of cancer is on the rise...the body is reacting at a cellular level to all the toxic foods that enter it. Our bodies can only beat off so many bad things and then it becomes exhausted. If we don’t get back to basics and feed our families unprocessed, well-balanced foods most of the time, I am willing to guess that cancer will become a 1 in 3 person occurrence in the next 20 years.

This ain't your mama's junk food

When I was a kid, we ate junk, but our "junk" and today's "junk" are two different things. Having my one soda a day(my mother was liberal, wasn't she?) was a soda made with real sugar. Not corn syrup, not high fructose corn syrup, not aspertame or GMO beet sugar. It was plain sugar; something my body recognized and could deal with. Bread's while starting to become the pasty white that they are today, still had some wheat in them. Vegetables were fresh and they were not genetically altered. TV Dinners, while new to the scene, were not a daily affair. My mom stayed home and cooked dinner. Now, from birth, kids are exposed to chemicals. From formula, to fast food, to gummy bears and sugar-laden cereals. All of it is processed and 90% has GMO products in it. Our detoxification systems are in high gear from the get-go.

What's wrong with this picture?

As I watched the movie, my insides were screaming. Why is it that people don’t find these things out for themselves? Why isn’t this being aired on ABC or NBC? Is it too inconvenient to avoid the easy processed meal? Why do people continue to buy foods like this? I realize our government is not helping by subsidizing the very thing that is in all of those processed foods; corn. If the powers that be were to subsidize potatoes and cabbage and broccoli and carrots. If they were to assist the farmer in growing things that are good eaten raw and whole and not turned into other powders and syrups and byproducts, people could afford it and would eat it. As it stands now, a head of broccoli and a bag of potatoes, costs more than 4 value burgers at a drive thru.

I have discovered that as we changed the way we ate to a more wholesome, less processed lifestyle, when we did eat out, we would get sick. It’s a sad state of affairs because I do love pizza and Chinese food and burgers just like the next guy. We have learned in all of this that there are places you can eat and things you can choose that are better than others. There are stores you can walk into that won’t require you to read labels and as you make changes; like getting all your produce organic or only purchasing meat from the local beef farm, it becomes a new “normal.”  You have to plan your meals, often relying on evenings for planning the following nights dinner, but it can be done, even when you work.

As I watched the film and saw the families trying to figure out what they could get that was healthy, I was saddened. If a person does want to make an effort, it is NOT easy. ABut diabetes, and cancer and the myriad of health problems that come with eating poorly is not easy either. There are so many people that either don't know, don't care or feel helpless, drowning in a system that doesn't promote health and well-being. I was recently told of a woman that walked into the gas station convenience store to get some candy for her kid for school. Apparently she needed enough for all the classmates. She wanted packages but the convenience store didn’t have them. They only had single bars. The attendant told her that Food Lion(a local grocery store), which was right down the road, had them and they were cheaper, the lady said she didn’t have time and purchased single candy bars with her WIC card to the tune of $58. How is it that food stamps can buy candy now? Is that what social services had in mind when they gave her a stipend to feed her family healthy? I doubt it, and yet that purchase was accepted by the card.

As I watched the cattle, knee deep in feces, gorging on corn(which raises the risk of e-coli in their gut), I was nauseated. Images of forklifts forcing a deathly ill cow to her feet so they can say she was standing when they slaughtered her. That very meat is then stamped by the FDA and ground up and fed to us. I watched the story of a mom, who lost her 4 year old son to e-coli. The meat had been discovered to be contaminated with e-coli, but was not recalled for another 16 days. During that period, the child died.

After the film, I looked at my husband and we were both speechless. The few companies that own our food sources have taken a simple product called corn, genetically modified it to make it herbicide-resistant and then processed it into so many products that it makes one’s head spin. I was raised in Illinois. I watched the fields of corn rise up from the earth each summer. What once gave me a warm fuzzy feeling as it grew knee-high by the fourth of July, now causes me to feel a deep sadness. We have taken something and altered it to such a state that it causes illness and death to life as we know it.

Do Something.

We can make changes in our food supply. Our dollars speak loudly to these companies. Our voice needs to be heard at the federal level. If you want to save the few small farms left so that you can buy local foods, you need to fight for them, partner with them, help them by purchasing their products. If you don’t like that HFCS is in your kids cereals, don’t buy it. Boycotting products speaks volumes. HFCS is become much less popular because people stopped and said “NO.” Make a difference at home. Grow a garden, teach your child how to plant seeds. If you have too much, share with a neighbor. Shop at the farmers market, from LOCAL GROWERS. Join a CSA. If none of this looks like familiar to you, read. Learn about the issues. Make a difference!

Here are some books that I highly recommend:

The Omnivores Dilemma

Food, Inc

Seeds of Deception

Animal Vegetable Miracle

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it

What will you do?

Coupon Adventures: Printables

Banquet meals rarely have a coupon and the meals are very inexpensive. Much to my surprise, today I got a link to a coupon for them. Its for $1 off any Banquet Family meal.
Click here for coupon

Also, Marie Collanders has a new asian line. The coupon is for $1 off any one Marie Callender's Asian Recipe or Pasta Al Dente.  Here's a coupon for that as well: Click here for coupon