Real Foods Challenge -- The Home Stretch!

When last I posted, I had suffered through the disappointment of mediocre pizza and ice cream.  The ice cream never got any better (in fact, the texture is so unappetizing that it's still sitting in the freezer).  The pizza, however, benefitted greatly from a stint in the freezer!  The recipe makes 2 pizza doughs, and I just bagged up and froze the extra one.  Shanti topped it and baked it a few days later, and the crispiness factor had gone way up.  So, we'll be making that again.

Day 9 was all about Shanti.  His favorite dish is a heaping Caesar salad.  It's the only salad he'll order, and if a restaurant doesn't carry Caesar, he'll ask for a Caesar-like dressing instead.  Last year, I made him a Caesar from scratch, and he was thrilled.  This time I made a special loaf of Dutch oven bread for the croutons, and I got to work mincing anchovies and squeezing lemons...

And this salad could have been a whole lot better!  The recipe came from Cooks, and here's how I would amend it:

1. The recipe calls for whole anchovies, not paste, because the paste is fishy.  Don't even try to make a paste using a fork, though.  Throw it all in the food processor.

2.  Same with making the emulsion.  Use a food processor, because beating by hand SUCKS!

3.  Make the croutons in the oven, not stove top.  My croutons never got crispy, and I cooked them 3 times as long as called for.  Just cut the bread, toss in oil and bake them.

BUT, Shanti loved it, ate 3 servings and smiled a lot.


The next day went a bit better.  Actually a lot better.  I made banana-persimmon muffins using this recipe (I subbed half the banana for persimmon).  These were the perfect breakfast muffins!

For dinner that night, we totally indulged with Broccoli Cheese Soup.

This also was a Cooks recipe, and it is sooooooo good.  Thick, rich, no making a roux, much less cheese than other recipes, and look at how green it is!  Spinach is the key to that bright green color.

So, now we're done with the Challenge, and I think we're both going to implement some of the changes.  I'd like to commit to the 100-day Challenge (but I had to indulge in chocolate, real pizza and a yummy breakfast at Breadboard), but in the meantime, I'll be making all of our everyday baked goods with whole grains.  Shanti is giving up sodas at work, so long as I get him a bottle of juice.

I'm really glad we did this.  It wasn't a huge change from our diets, but it did show me how easy it had become for us to rely on white flour and sugar.  Now, because we have a whole grain bread available nearly all the time, which is rich in protein (and therefore filling) we don't feel the need to snack so much.  And with muffins in the house (so long as I make them), that becomes a quick pick-me-up in that awful between-lunch-and-dinner time period.

I'll be leaving off food for a while.  I have myriad crochet projects to share with you, and we got a new foster dog, and I'm way overdue on putting together my gardening map.

In the meantime, what's cooking in your kitchen?