Steak - it's what's for dinner

We are fortunate enough to have a farm with cows, which means we don't have to buy red meat. But, that doesn't always translate to happy faces at the dinner table.

Oldest son: What's for dinner, Mom?
Me: Steak.
Son: What? Again? I'm so TIRED of steak!

I know, I know - my children are so mistreated.

Of course, when I found a recipe for "restaurant style steaks," I pinned it and decided to look it up the next time I planned steaks.

Here is the original link. It calls for fillet Minot, which I love, but when I have a calf processed I typically don't get that particular cut. But I've tried this recipe with both porterhouse steaks and T-Bone steaks and it seemed  to work out fine.

But, whatever kind of steak you use, here is what I did:

Soften up a 1/2 stick of unsalted butter just a bit. Mix in a scoop of Simple Salsa (a wonderful seasoning mix I was introduced to by a dear friend and have started putting it in EVERYTHING). Then, put this mixture in the refrigerator.

Heat 1/2 stick unsalted butter and 1 tablespoon in pan until it is super hot. While it's heating up, pre heat the stove to 400 degrees. Mix about a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of pepper together. Rub the steaks down with the salt and pepper.

Place steaks in pan for about 3 minutes on each side, and continuously scoop the melted butter and oil over the steaks.

Then transfer steaks to oven. I place mine as close to the top heating element as I can. I leave them in about 7-10 minutes because my kids won't eat the steak if it's still red.

It should look like this when it's done!

And, yes, red wine goes well with these steaks. :-)

These steaks were a huge hit both times. It even had my oldest son asking for SECONDS!!

I will say, the second time I made this I used sea salt and doubled the amount of salt and pepper I combined. And it was very salty - a bit too salty for our taste, but everyone still asked for seconds and NO ONE asked for BBQ!

No-bake Granola Bars

My kids (and husband) LOVE granola bars. Not the nice crunchy kind, but the ooey-gooey sugar-loaded kind. So when I found this no-bake granola bar recipe, I was excited. It really is super easy.

As always, click here to find the original link.

But, here's how I did it:

1/4 c. unsalted butter
1/4 c. local honey
1/3 c. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 c. quick oats
1 c. puffed brown rice cereal
toppings of choice

In a bowl, mix the oats and rice; set aside.

In a small sauce pan, melt butter, honey and brown sugar until it starts to bubble. Then reduce to low heat and cook for about 2 minutes. I stirred frequently, but I don't think the original recipe says to - up to you. Then, mix in the vanilla. The mixture will foam up, that's normal.

Quickly pour hot sugar mixutre over oats and stir to coat as evenlly as possible. Then press mixture firmly into a jelly role pan. I used my stoneware pan and it worked just fine. But, I would recommend using a spatula to firmly press the mixture into the sides and bottom of the pan. Otherwise, it will stick to your hands. It is important to get it pressed in firmly so that your bars don't fall apart when you cut them.

Here's what mine looked like:

Then, press in the topping of your choice. You can tell I used chocolate chips. But I'm already planning a batch with raisins and sunflower seeds. In my picture, I had make two batches since I pack 4 lunches a day plus whatever snacks my husbands wants during the day. :-)

Now, you'll need to let them sit for a couple hours before you cut them apart. Because I made this on a hot afternoon, I let them sit overnight.

With a sharp knife, cut the bars to the size you'd like. I lined a plastic container with wax paper and placed the cut pieces inside, with more wax paper between layers.

Then, I kept them stored in the fridge. I'm not sure you have to do that, but since my kitchen tends to get hot I didn't know if they'd re-melt or not, soo...

My husband was the first one to try them and he ate about 4 right out of the box!

So, these were  a big hit!

Pizza Pockets for school lunch

I had a request for this one. As I've said before, figuring out school lunches is always tricky. I love this one because the kids love pizza, but everyone loves different stuff on theirs. Plus, this way, I know what's going in their food.

I got the original idea from Pinterest (of course). This site has several other cute ideas that I haven't tried yet. Be sure to check it out here:

Ok, here's what I did. I buy the refridgerated Pillsbury artisian wheat pizza crust. Roll it out and cut it into several small pieces. I usually get about 15 squars out of it and that seems to be the perfect size for my muffin tin.

Then, using a silicone muffin tin so I don't have to use cooking spray, I put one piece of the dough in the bottom of each muffin cup. Obviously, you're putting a square peg in a round hole - but that's ok, you want the sides to stick up just a bit. Make sure you get all the air bubbles out form under the dough. With 15, there's obviously going to be a few oddballs, but that's ok. You can line as many of the muffin cups as you want/need. Keep the extra dough pieces to the side for now.

Then, put a spoonful of  sauce in each cup. You can use whatever kind you'd like. My secrect: I buy chunky vegetable marinara sauce, run it through the blender to smooth it out. Great way to sneak in a few extra veggies. Then top with a bit of cheese. Now, you've got individual pizzas. Some of my kids like chicken, some like olives, some like pepperoni or ham, so instead of fighting over what toppings we're doing, each child can have his/her own. (I also like to get the kids involved with this one. It's a super easy recipe and they can do their own toppings.)

Now, take an extra piece of dough and cover a muffin cup with it. Then pinch the edges of the top piece and the bottom piece together to kind of seal. Bake at 400 degrees for about 10-15 minutes. Final results look a bit like this:

Notice I only have about 3 pizza pockets, the rest are little pizzas. Not all of mine like the extra bread.

Someone has also asked how I keep them warm in the kids' lunchboxes. I don't have a great answer for that one. I do warm them up in the mornings before I pack them, but with one child not having lunch until nearly 1pm, it's hard to keep it really warm that long. Fortunately, my kiddos don't seem to mind too much.

In other blogs, I've seen posts by people that had trouble with the middle being doughy. I've never had that problem, but perhaps it's because I roll the dough out a bit before I cut it up. BUT- if you do have a problem, one suggestion was cooking just the dough in the muffin cups for a bit before adding the sauce and toppings.

Nutella cookie-type-things

One of my children is particularly small for his age. Although he is not the youngest of my bunch (let's call him Spidey - one of his favorite characters), people often think he is because the youngest (who is about a year and a half younger) not only out-weighs him, but towers over him by a good 3 inches.

Being smaller has a lot to do with genetics, but he also struggles to eat as much food as the other 3. Combine that with the time constraints of a school lunch - not to mention all the distractions - and I figure I'm lucky he eats anything at all during school.

So, my Spidey Challenge is to create a school lunchbox menu that requires very little chewing (so no chewy fruit roll ups), no assembly (like homemade lunchables), but is also something he'll eat. I've learned to stay away from all sandwiches besides peanut butter and jelly, because he just picks them apart. But, as much as I like a good PB&J, I think even I would get sick of them after a while.

I came across a recipe for "healthy breakfast bars" that promised to be packed with protein. The original link is here: http://watching-what-i-eat.blogspot.com/2012/06/peanut-butter-banana-oat-breakfast.html

It looked decent: peanut butter, bananas, applesauce, and even added a scoop of protein powder. AND you could add carob for chocolate chips! Score!

But mine didn't quite turn out. Although I enjoyed them, the kids fussed about the chocolate chips. Which COULD BE because, unable to find carob at my local grocery store (not a complete surprise) I opted for the 100% cacao instead - hey - it's supposed to be full of antioxidents and it's still chocolate, right? Well, as far as my 4 were concerned, I couldn't have been more wrong.

So, for my next attempt I made a few changes and here is the final result (notice the pink silicone baking mat):

Here's what I did:
1 ripe and mashed banana
1/3 cup Nutella
2/3 cup plain/unsweetened applesauce
1 scoop vanilla protein (I use ProFlex from Melaleuca)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup quick oats

Mix indredients in the order listed. Let it rest about 10 minutes. Put your handy-dandy baking mat on top of the cookie sheet and place spoonfulls of the mix on the mat. I usually end up with about 18 cookies by the time I'm done, but you could obviously make more or less depending on the size of your cookie-scoops. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. When done, let them cool off before storing them in an air-tight container.

I keep these in the refridgerator, but I don't think you really HAVE to. Mine just like the cookies cold. They are a little soft, so keeping them in the refridgerator helps keep them in cookie form. :-)

Although I haven't packed these in a lunchbox yet, the kids did try out an earlier batch and they were big hits. And it's great as a mom to say, "Why, yes, I can pack a cookie in your lunchbox today," and NOT feel the urge to send an "I'm sorry" note to the after-lunch teachers for all the sugar pulsing through my children's veins.

I've thought about bumping up the protein a bit by adding a second scoop of vanilla protein mix. Protein is especially important for Spidey since he eats so very little and so very slowly. As I've gotten more comfortable cooking with milled flax seed, I have also toyed with the idea of adding in a scoop of that. Milled flax seed is a great way to work in extra fiber, a bit of protein AND reduce the amount of extra fats (like oils) you have to add into recipes.

See, our trick with Spidey is - get the extra protein in to maintain his weight, BUT due to some other issues he's got, he also could use extra fiber (or, um, help getting things to move along). So it's always a very delicate balance of getting the extra protein without clogging him up but not too much extra fiber that he just flushes everything through his body.

If I have further success (or not-so-successful) renditions of this basic recipe, I'll give an update. :-)

Fruit Roll-ups Experiement

With the start of school fast approaching, I've been working on finding ideas for the kids' lunches. Packing four lunches each morning can turn into a game of Pong really quick.

You know that game, right? The old Atari game that you played with the little knobby game controller (that you actually had to plug into the console). The ball bounced around from your paddle to colored bricks and you had to clear all the bricks. As you go through the game, each level gets more bricks and even adds a few bricks that you never clear out. Anway, by the time you get to the upper levels, the ball is bouncing around so maddly that it's hard to follow on the screen.

Trying to remember who really likes to eat raisins and who would rather chew their toenails off instead of even looking at a raisin can be a bit tricky at 6 am. So, last year, I got into the really bad habit of buying pre-packaged food for their lunches. Because, for some reason, my kids think that if you have food that comes in a store bought package it automatically tastes WAY better than anything in a Ziploc bag. Go figure.

But, this year I am determined to pack real food, better food and more whole foods in their lunches. For my oldest, this is going to be a little tough because he really doesn't like whole apples - unless you give him something to scoop with it. He also doesn't like raisins, grapes, oranges, or bananas packed in his lunch.Hmmm...

My mother had found a link on Pinterest for homemade fruit roll-ups. I thought it might be a possibility, because who doesn't like fruit roll-ups? The directions SEEMED simple, but sometimes, those are the projects that get me in trouble.

One day, a friend from church handed me a plastic bag of figs from her tree and I decided to give the fruit roll-ups a try.

You can find the original link here: http://www.loveumadly.com/2012/04/100-pure-love-for-100-real-fruit-snacks/

But here is what I did this time around: Using my handy-dandy food processer, I dropped in the figs, cleaned and de-stemmed. I also found a stray strawberry-applesauce cup that I decided to throw in as well. Hit puree.

Once it was a nice smooth consistency, I spread it out on my silicon baking mat & cookie sheet. If you don't have a baking mat, I would HIGHLY recommend investing in one. I use mine all the time. It helps eliminate the need for a cooking spray.

I didn't measure how much fruit puree I ended up with. The original link called for 1.5 cups, I really think I might have had about 2 cups. Once I spread the mix out in a thin layer,  a good bit of my mat was covered.

Then I put the mat & cookie sheet in the oven at 170 degrees farenheit. The original link above calls for 150, but mine only went down to 170. Then I set my oven timer to turn off after 8 hours. Again, I strayed from the original link a bit here. She suggests leaving the oven door open a bit to let moisture out. I couldn't gt mine to stay open unless I opened it up about 3 inches. I was afraid it would let too much air out so I kept it closed, but that didn't seem to effect my end result - which was:

After the 8 hours and a little cooling time, I took the cookie sheet out of the oven. I flipped the sheet upside down and on top of my silicone mat then flipped the whole thing back upside down (think about when you put a plate over your freshly baked cake then flip it over to get it out).

I used a pizza cutter to cut the dried fruit into 6 strips. I then cut wax paper into 6 strips and rolled the fruit up. I couldn't get my rolls to look as pretty as the original link and had to use just a bit of tape to keep it from coming un-rolled.

You might notice in the pic that there are only 5 rolls. That's because my husband was a bit skeptical about the outcome so we split one. And it was quite tasty! A bit of cross between a fig newton and a fruit roll up, which I think all four of the kids will love! Success!!

One other note, after going through the process, it seems to me like setting the oven at such a low temp for such a long time ends up being a food dehydrator. I don't have one so I couldn't try it that way, but it might just work if you do happen to have one.

The original link has suggested fruit combinations. I've only tried the one I listed above. But, it seems to me like it'd be pretty hard to go very wrong. I've been thinking about trying a veggie roll-up, too. But I'll let you know if I do. :-)

In the beginning

Welcome to my new blog!

With this blog, I hope to chronicle my adventures, successes, and failures as your fairly average mom, wife, daughter, mother, sister, and human being. If you're looking for a "professional" site, you might be disappointed. As the mother of 4 very active children, as well as a full-time director for a local non-profit, and the wife of a man who believes in volunteerism, my life is full of little details, reminders, and schedules. When you think of this site, think "streaming consciousness."

My everyday life is filled with pretty boring stuff, like what to pack in the kids' lunch? I want it to be reasonably healthy, but I also want them to actually eat what I pack instead of tossing it. And, what to make for dinner? Again, I'd like to eat without gaining weight, but the kids' (and the husband) have bigger appetites. And unless it comes out of a box, I have a hard time convincing my children that it IS real food. How do I fit my own workout routine in between this son's scout activities and that daughter's tumbling practice and before my husband's meeting? And even bigger questions like how do I pass my faith on to my children? Am I setting the best example of how a Christian woman lives?

I hope you find something to enjoy and pass along. Any projects or recipes I find and use from other sites I will do my best to make sure proper credit is given. If you happen to find something out of place, please let me know. After all - as your average human being, I'm bound to miss something from time to time. :-)

Here's to Dyngus Day!