More Water, Please!

The USDA Food and Nutrition Service recommends that adults drink between 8 and 12 8 oz. servings of water daily for optimum health. I think that's a great suggestion, but let's be honest here - who wants to drink 12 glasses of plain water a day? Water is boring! If you're anything like me, you need to find ways to jazz up your water in order to reach your H20 intake goals. There are so many easy ways to naturally flavor your water without using artificial ingredients or sweeteners. I'd like to share some of my favorites with you...

#1 - Citrus water! Just slice up some of your favorite citrus fruits and put them in the bottom of your water pitcher. Let it sit there for a few hours in the fridge - the longer you let it sit the more citrus flavor you'll get in your water. Personally, I like to cut up 1 small lime, about 3/4 of a small lemon and 1/2 an orange.

Here are the fruits before the water (in an awesome old glass milk jug I found at a barn sale):

And after the water:


#2 - Cucumber water! I learned this one at a small coffee shop in Illinois. You can do the exact same thing that you did with the citrus water, only slice up about 1/2 of a medium sized cucumber instead of citrus fruits. This water has a much more subtle flavor, but its very clean and refreshing.

#3 - Lemon and mint water. This is a refreshing variation on the citrus water that's especially good on hot summer days. Slice up 1 lemon and throw in about 8 fresh mint leaves. Let it sit over night and in the morning enjoy a cool, delicious, calorie free drink!

#4 - Decaffeinated clear tea. This is my favorite water to drink in the winter. If its decaffeinated and clear (so don't add any milk or cream) then it counts as a water serving. I use this all the time on cold winter nights to keep myself from snacking. For added health bonus try decaf green tea, which is loaded with antioxidants - cancer fighting agents. Celestial Seasonings and Bigelow teas have lots of flavored decaf green teas for you to try.

So jazz up your water and start drinking! And don't just stick to my suggestions, try infusing your water with all kinds of different natural ingredients - citrus, cucumber, mint, fresh ginger - go crazy! Let me know what combinations you like best. So raise your glass and give a toast to good hydration. Cheers!

My little helper...

My little apprentice:


Gotta love my kitchen "help." :-)

Gardening

Just wanted to do a quick little post and give a shout-out to my garden. Let me be perfectly clear about my garden, here: I have a toddler... a boy toddler, who requires about 95% of my energy. SO needless to say, my garden is not weeded, the plants are quite overgrown and running into each other, and its not the kind of garden you would see posted in "Better Homes and Gardens." BUT it does give us fresh produce that is virtually free and organic. Here is what we are feasting on this week:


And if you really want to enjoy your garden all year, you may can tomato sauce, pickles, jams and jellies, or so many other things. Canning, btw, is not as hard and complicated as you think. I'll have to post about canning some time soon. Here are some of the things I have canned this summer:


So the next time you think you can't garden, ask yourself this - can I dig up a small portion of my yard? Can I stick a couple plants in a couple of holes in that ground? Can I sit back and watch it grow for the summer? If you answered YES to at least 2 out of 3 questions, chances are you can garden. :-) Remember your garden does NOT have to be picture-perfect to produce healthy, fresh food for your family. So get out there and start planting!

Pie Crust

Most people I know give me major praise for making my own pie crust, but I am here to tell you that really, its very easy! Anyone can do it. To prove it, I will take you step by step through my crust-making journey.

First, mix 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 tbsp. sugar and 1 tsp. salt together in a bowl. Next you need to cut in one cup of some sort of shortening. Personally I think 1/2 cup shortening and 1/2 cup REAL butter works the best. However, 1 cup of pure shortening works too, or 1 cup of real butter, OR you can throw some margarine in the mix, too.


Whatever you use, cut it in until you get pea sized crumbs. If you don't have a handy-dandy pastry blender, you can use a fork or a couple of knives.


Next, add 1/3 cup of ICE water. Here is a little trick I've discovered - the colder the water, the better - this helps the dough stay stiff and easy to work with. Mix this together with a spoon of some type (or your hands, which is what I usually do) until the dough sticks together to form one large ball. You may want to add up to a tbsp more water if the dough is too crumbly.

Cut your ball of dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Let the dough rest in the fridge for at least a half hour. I think a lot of people skip this step, which makes the dough soft and hard to work with - hence the myth that making your own crust is hard.


Now, on to making the pie! In my experience, 2 main tricks really make the rolling process easier: using chilled dough, and using enough flour on the rolling surface. Flour your surface AND rolling pin, and roll your first ball out. When you have rolled the dough out thin and you are ready to transfer it, fold it into a triangle - this will help you transfer the dough without ripping it. Unfold it, cut off all but about an inch of overhang, and fill that baby with some fruit!


Follow the same steps for the top crust. Roll the edges of the dough under and together, then crimp the edges by pinching the dough between your fingers. Make sure to finish it off by cutting a vent hole in the top crust to allow some steam to escape.


THERE YOU HAVE IT - a pie crust. I hope you can see how truly uncomplicated it is. Try it out and let me know how it goes OR share your own pie crust experiences and tricks. For truly, there are as many pie crust recipes and methods as there are stars in the sky. :-)

First Entry: Home made pasta

Like so many stay-at-home moms, I need to be very thrifty in order to keep our family afloat. We don't buy a lot of extras, and as much as I would love to cruise the grocery store and purchase the most exotic cheeses and hams and fresh fish, I just can't. In addition, I can't afford to buy expensive kitchen gadgets like the ones Martha Stewart uses... instead, I garage sale hop!

My most recent acquisition: an electric pasta maker! This was such an exciting find because I have always wanted to make home made, dried pasta as Christmas gifts. (I saw Martha Stewart do this a few years ago on TV, and I thought it was the coolest idea.) The pasta maker is a "Pasta Perfetto 900," probably manufactured in the 90's. Took it home, washed it thoroughly, and plugged it in. With a little rigging of the lid mechanism, my husband got it to work perfectly.

There is really nothing to making home made pasta, especially if you can get your hands on an electric pasta machine. Basically, all I had to do was mix flour, eggs, water, salt and olive oil in the machine, let the pasta extrude, cut it off at the desired length, then dry it completely on the counter for a couple of days. Here are some pictures of the maker in action:


So far I have made elbow macaroni, spinach rigatoni, and tomato rigatoni. The plain egg noodle recipe was very easy to master. I only needed to adjust the dough a couple of times to get it right. The spinach pasta was a little more challenging. Here is something I discovered: If the pasta dough is too wet, it will extrude very slowly or even clog the machine. If the dough is too dry, the pasta will split as it comes out of the holes. It was hard to get the "wetness" correct on the spinach pasta. However, I did get it eventually:


We cooked a sample of the spinach and egg noodles tonight for dinner. They cooked perfectly, much to my surprise and relief. They seemed to soak up a lot more water than store-bought pasta, however. To serve, we sauteed garlic in olive oil, tossed in some fresh chopped basil, salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese. It was delightful.

So YAY for my lawn sale pasta maker! In case you are reading, Martha, you can be thrifty and still make home made dried pasta! ;-)