The Gang

The Gang
October 2008 Sweet Potatoe Harvest

About Me

I am a busy mommy of 6, seeking to be a loving, godly helpmeet to my husband and a biblical discipler to my children. God has blessed us with a child with Autism. May the lessons that the Lord is teaching me and our family be a blessing to you and yours!

My Favorite Books

  • Bible
  • Created to be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl
  • Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman
  • Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver
  • Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll
  • Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
  • Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp
  • The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace
Friday, March 28, 2008
Sam is reading me the last chapter of his reading book for this week so I'm going to quickly share our dinner menu for tonight and a bonus recipe we made last weekend that was YUMMY!!

It is a tradition that our family have pizza every Friday night. Usually when people think of pizza they think of greesy gooey fat & calories. I'm still working on getting our pizza's fresher and non nitrate loaded (tonight we are still using up some pepperoni I had in the freezer).

Tonights Menu:
Pizza (I'll describe them below)
Fresh Veggies and dip
Organic Kefired Milk, Strawberry, Flax, Virgin Coconut Oil Smoothie.

Our Pizza Recipe: Makes 2 14-15" round pizza crusts
WW Pizza Crust (currently I'm using Organic WW pastry flour but once I run out it will be fresh ground Organic Hard Red Wheat Berry's)
3 1/4 - 5 cups flour
3 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cups Warm Water (I find that the hottest water I can get from my tap works perfect!)
3 Tbsp Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Virgin Coconut Oil or a combination of the two.
Your choice of toppings.

For Crust:
1. Combine 2 cups flour, yeast, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add hot water and oil. Beat with electric mixer on low for 30 seconds, then on high for another 3 minutes (this gets the gluten going). If you have a kitchen aid mixer use the dough hook and you won't have to do any hand kneeding as you ad the rest of the flour cup by cup until you get a nice soft dough ball that leaves the sides of the bowl. Add a tich of flour as needed and "knead" in your mixer for 6 minutes. If you are doing it by hand. Add flour until you get a nice dough ball then move to a floured surface and add the rest as needed while hand kneading for 8 minutes.
2. Divide your dough in half, cover and let it rest for 10 minutes. Then press or roll the dough onto your pans (stoneware is best of course). I like to sprinkle a light layer of organic cornmeal over my stone before rolling out the pizza dough.
3. After topping bake in an oven at 425 degrees F. until cheese is melted and a light golden brown usually about 20-30 minutes. I do rotate my stones so they each have time on the bottom rack so the crust gets nicely browned on the bottom. Note if you use a metal pan you will need to reduce your heat to 375 for about 20-25 minutes.

We make one pizza that has a white sauce because Samuel cannot have tomatoes. The acidic foods really aggravate his psoriasis. My white sauce is a garlic ranch mixture that I make from sour cream (preferably organic), ranch seasonings or ranch dressing, fresh garlic and freshly grated Parmesan (if I have it on hand). We love topping our white sauce pizza with fresh green, red, and or yellow peppers, red onion, fresh spinach, canadian bacon, pepperoni(which I'm not buying any more after we are done with this package), or chicken (which I don't buy any more because I don't have a pastured organic source that I can afford currently.... but when we butcher our own we'll be able to have chicken again!). We then top it off with mozzarella cheese.

The other pizza is the "kid" pizza and usually has the traditional pizza sauce, pepperoni or sausage (from our local farmer) and mozzarella cheese.

Our Friday Night Pizza rule is one piece of pizza until you eat your serving of fresh veggies or salad. Then they can have another. We used to also serve soda until I was convinced that it wasn't only the sugar that was bad but the other chemicals and additives are even more dangerous. So, water and kefir are the beverages served!

Now for the bonus recipe (while Sam is writing his book summary).

This came from one of my favorite blogs http://largefamilylogistics.blogspot.com/. She used to have a lot of great info for large families and still has her old blog which is LOADED with great info on home management and lots of recipes. She has 9 children between the ages of 16 and about 8 months. The baby was a premie so her live has slowed way down to meet his needs these past months. Anyway this weekend we made her homemade tomato soup.... YUMMY!!! I was SHOCKED as to how yummy this soup was. The kids practically licked the pot!!

Easy Homemade Tomato Soup
Chop an onion in the food processor, add celery and a carrot also if you want.
Heat half a stick of butter, or use olive oil, in a Dutch oven or large stock pot; add the chopped veggies and saute.
Mince a garlic clove or 2 into the pot.
Slowly add 1/4 c flour and blend.
Add 1 quart of any tomato product, canned or frozen, juice, whole tomatoes, sauce, fresh tomatoes -if you use puree or paste then use much less or add a lot of water. Diced tomatoes are the prettiest.
1 quart of chicken broth
pinch of baking soda
salt and pepper
1 t basil
Bring to a good rolling boil.
Add 3 c milk or cream and heat to almost boiling-do not boil. May use water instead of milk. We separate it at this point and make a small amount with goat milk for our girls that are allergic to cow milk.
Can make at 11:30 or so and serve or make early in the morning and put in crockpot to keep warm until noon.
Serve with cheese slices.

3 comments:

Karis said...

I'm glad you posted on our blog a couple of weeks ago so I could get your blog site. I am very impressed with your healthy cooking. I feel tired just thinking about it, but I would agree with you that it is time and effort well spent. We also did had pizza tonight, but while ours was delicious and a good price (coupon from Pizza Hut), it wasn't good for our health. I'm processing what you're saying, though, and maybe one day I'll read one of the books your recommended.

Shirley said...

Thanks for posting Karis, I think you will find when you move to the mission field that it will become more common place to eat locally and more fresh. You will probably find at first that you will miss the "convience" foods, however, what you will reap in health and energy will far outweigh the extra time it takes to cook fresh!! The US is one of the WORST nations out there in the health department. We are to be stewards of our bodies which I feel behooves us to start a journey toward good health through good nutrition. That we may not only KNOW Him but Serve Him fully and in the best health we can possibly have. This is a baby step process!! Just as we seek His will in parenting and learn along the way, you will find that learning about true health and nutrition is a very similar process.

ertlnet said...

I made the tomato soup recipe yesterday with some diced tomatoes I had on hand (Fire roasted garlic). It was yummy! -Jenni