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Harvesting In Full Swing

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For years, roasted veggies has been a favorite fall and winter food for us.  But we’ve never had the experience of roasting vegetables we grew ourselves, until now.  I found this recipe for a great roasted veggie marinade and wanted to try it with the day’s harvest.  Our son helped me in the garden, and we ended up with a huge bowl full of veggies:  potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, and red and green peppers.  In addition, I had a couple portabello mushrooms in the fridge, and I always have a big stash of garlic in the cupboard (we didn’t grow our own garlic this year, but it’s on the list for next year’s garden).

I washed and chopped everything, and then whipped up Gena’s marinade, using garlic instead of shallots (what I had on hand), and raspberry balsamic vinegar (again, what I had on hand).  The whole house smelled wonderful while they were roasting!  Since I had root veggies in the mix, I cooked them for about 50 minutes, but if you’re using mostly softer veggies it will cook faster.

The rest of our lunch consisted of a rice and lentil mixture that I like to serve when the main dish is veggies.  Since veggies and rice alone don’t have a whole lot of protein, I often add lentils to my rice when I’m cooking it.  I always use brown rice, which takes roughly 50 minutes to cook.  I start with rice and water (two cups of water for each cup of rice), add a bit of salt and coconut oil, and bring it to a boil.  Then reduce the heat to low and put a lid on the pot.  After it’s been cooking for about 20 minutes, I add washed lentils and some extra water (roughly 1.5 cups of water for each cup of lentils I add), and turn the heat back on high for a couple minutes to get everything boiling again.  Then I set the heat back to low and let it finish cooking until the rice and lentils are done.  Lentils only take about half an hour, which is why I add them part way through the cooking process, although I’m sure it would be fine to just dump everything in at the beginning and let it all cook together.  After they’re cooked, I add whatever seasonings we’re in the mood for.

Organic lentils and brown rice are both things that I buy in bulk from our food co-op.  If you have any space at all to store food, these are good things to buy in bulk – they’re less expensive that way, and I always know that I have plenty on hand.

The roasted veggies were amazing.  Knowing that they were growing in our garden this morning and on our plates at lunchtime was pretty sweet.  Obviously they aren’t free – there’s a lot of work (and water!) that goes into gardening.  But for us, it’s a labor of love, and we enjoy every minute that we spend out in the garden.  Lately at least half of our meals are coming from our garden, and it’s making all the effort we went through to move here feel very worthwhile.  I can’t even imagine how great it will be when our fruit trees get a little bigger and we’re able to harvest our own fruit too.

Next year I want to plant more varieties of squash (we just did zucchini this year, and had a few too many of them!), garlic, and additional herbs (rosemary, dill).  We’ve started tearing out plants from some of our beds that are finished for the year, and planting red clover as a green manure crop in those beds.  Pretty soon it will be time to put the cold frames over a few beds where we’ll be able to keep growing greens long after it frosts, and the rest of the garden will go to sleep for the winter.  We’ll be harvesting root vegetables soon, and storing them in our basement.  I like the simple storage ideas described here for root veggies.

So far, I’ve canned 24 quarts of tomato sauce and seven quarts of diced/crushed tomatoes, and there are still a lot of tomatoes that haven’t ripened yet – I think we’ll be set for tomato products for the winter!

All in all, I have to say that our first year of serious gardening has been even more successful that we had expected.  Not everything has worked perfectly, and we had a few crops that didn’t do much or went to seed much too soon.  We’ve had epic battles with aphids (best thing I’ve found to defeat them is a jet stream from the hose, which washes them off the leaves.  They really like to hide under the leaves of curly kale).  But overall, we’ve harvested huge amounts of food, and still have lots more to harvest in the next few weeks.  And we’ve learned a lot and had a blast in the process.

Kitchen Projects

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Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Between garden harvesting/preserving and all the outdoor projects we’re trying to finish before the weather gets cold, we’ve been pretty busy.  I have 19 quarts of tomato sauce canned now, and no longer have to hover over the directions to make sure I’m not making any mistakes.  We still have a lot more tomatoes to harvest, but the process of canning tomato sauce is no longer daunting to me.

Each time I’ve canned, I’ve saved a bit of the sauce to put in the fridge and use right away.  I made this pizza sauce, which was honestly better than any sauce I’ve ever bought.  I love to make my own pizza, but I’ve always purchased those (expensive!) little jars of pizza sauce, and I can’t believe how easy it was to make my own.  I used pureed tomato sauce since that’s what I had on hand.  Starting with some of my tomato sauce, it took about ten minutes to make the pizza sauce, and cost almost nothing.  Much better all around than the store-bought variety.

I’ve also made spaghetti sauce, which turned out great and only took a few minutes.  No recipe – I just used peppers, basil and onions from our garden, plus garlic, mushrooms and some dried Italian herbs.  It turned out great, and like the pizza sauce, only took about ten minutes starting with my basic tomato sauce.  So I think we should be pretty well set for tomato-sauce based dishes this winter.

I also baked bread last week, which was another great success.  I used this recipe, but (you know me!) I tweaked it a bit,  Instead of five cups of white flour, I used three and then added two cups of whole wheat flour.  Later on, when the recipe calls for adding whole wheat flour, I subbed half a cup of oats and used whole wheat flour for the rest.  I also cut down the honey in each step to about 1/4 cup.  The recipe makes three loaves of bread, but I only own one bread pan, so I made one loaf and divided the rest into 24 bread rolls (after the initial rise/punch down of the dough).  They’re in the freezer now, and all I have to do when we want bread rolls is let them thaw/rise on a baking pan for a couple hours and then bake them for 15 minutes.  Simple, and much less expensive than buying organic whole wheat bread and rolls at the store.

One more kitchen experiment that turned out really well recently was this raw cinnamon raisin bread.  I followed the recipe just as it was written, except I used honey instead of agave (there has been some controversy about agave lately, and I’m just more comfortable with local honey right now).  Anyway, this recipe is definitely a winner.  Both my husband and son came back for thirds, and it’s a great way to get lots of really nutritious foods like seeds, nuts, veggies, and fruit.  The zucchini and carrots came from our garden – we have plenty of each, so I like recipes that help me use them up.  I know that a lot of my readers probably don’t have a dehydrator, but you could always spread the dough in a pan and bake it in the oven for a while.  Definitely a toddler-approved recipe, so I wanted to share.

We’re also working on putting up a fence around our utility area in the back yard.  That’s where we have our compost bins, our cold frames during the summer, our scrap wood/metal, and stuff like shovels and rakes.  It’s all stuff that we need in order to have our mini-farm, but it’s not the prettiest area, and not particularly safe for our son.  We’re hoping to have that finished within the next week or so.

Other than supplies for the fence, we haven’t been spending much money at all lately.  Far too busy!  My thrift store habit is completely gone – I don’t even think about shopping these days.  I’m still getting rid of clutter, although at a much slower pace these days, because there just isn’t as much stuff in our house anymore.  It feels good.  The time I used to spend browsing around in thrift stores is now devoted to hanging out with my husband and son, or tinkering around in the kitchen.  Much better.

So that’s what we’ve been up to.  I hope you’re all having a good September so far!

Category: family, food  9 Comments

A Picture From Our Back Patio

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For months now, readers have been asking for a picture of our garden.  Sorry it has taken me so long, but better late than never.  Across the front, the beds are filled with greens, beets, beans, peas, peppers, watermelons (we ate the first one yesterday – it was awesome!), and herbs.  The back row of framed beds has greens, onions, carrots and more greens.  You can see the patch of corn at the back left, and the beds with tomatoes are on the far left and the back middle, with wire fencing in them to support the vines.  Our potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts are on the far right towards the back (behind the scarecrow).  There is a giant volunteer sunflower in the middle bed in the front row.  It didn’t start to get huge until the beans were mostly gone, and it’s pretty, so we let it stay.  In all, there are 27 veggie beds, all dug by hand to a depth of about 18 – 24 inches and augmented with lots of compost.  The orchard is off to the left and the berry patch is off to the right.  You can see a bit of the orchard in the picture, but not the berry patch.  In the bottom right corner is a blueberry bush, planted in a giant planter that we sunk into the ground.  Blueberries need very acidic soil, and our soil is alkaline.  So we filled the planter with peat moss and compost and buried it, to give the blueberry bush it’s own little acidic oasis.

When we moved in, the backyard was nothing but weeds.  My husband planted the grass from seed, and has tended to it ever since (no chemicals – everything in our yard is organic).  With the lawn in the foreground of the picture, it looks much bigger than it is.  In reality, we have a relatively small patch of grass and the majority of the yard is devoted to the orchard, berry patch, and veggie beds.  But when I tried to get closer to the garden with the camera, I couldn’t fit the whole thing in the picture.

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Category: food, garden  12 Comments

Canning Tomatoes

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Last weekend, my husband picked enough corn from our garden to fill our wheelbarrow.  He and our son sat on the back porch husking the ears while I blanched the cobs and then froze the kernels on trays.  We now have about 20 quarts of corn in our freezer.

That part was easy.  I wasn’t nervous about freezing corn.  But I was nervous about canning. 

I knew that we were going to have to can tomatoes.  We have 60 tomato plants, and there’s no way I was going to be able to fit all that sauce in the freezer.  Canning made sense, but I had an irrational fear of it.  What if I screwed it up?  What if I poisoned my family?  What if something exploded in the kitchen while I was toiling away?

Turns out, it was a pretty easy process once I got started.  Getting started is usually the hardest part of any new adventure, and this was no exception.

We ended up getting a pressure canner last weekend, because it gives me more options than a water bath canner would (and I can use it as a water bath if I ever choose to).  We had a whole bunch of jars that my mother in law gave us last month, and they all have rings so the only other thing I had to buy was some new lids (actually, a lot of the jars she gave me had never been used, and still had their lids with them.  But the lids were 30+ years old, and I wasn’t sure if the rubber seals would still be good) and a little set of canning gadgets (funnel, jar lifter, and a little gizmo for picking up the lids out of the hot water that they sit in before they go on the jars).

First, we harvested tomatoes.  We filled two huge saucepans, although you can’t even tell that we took anything, as the tomato plants are still a sea of tomatoes.  I washed them and dumped them straight into my VitaMix (love that thing), skins, seeds, and all.  The VitaMix liquefies everything I put in it, and made quick work of the tomatoes.  I ended up with about two gallons of fresh pink sauce.  I simmered the sauce down for a few hours until it had reduced to about a gallon, gotten nice and thick, and turned a beautiful bright red color.

Then it was time to can.  I had read the instructions that came with our canner about 700 times.  I also had a book I was referencing and a web browser with an embarrassing number of canning tabs open.  I double and triple checked everything.  And then I got started.  And it was one of the easiest things I’ve done in a long time.  I ended up with four quarts of organic tomato sauce that all sealed perfectly and are ready for the pantry. 

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Now that I did it once, I am excited to get the rest of the tomatoes harvested and canned.  I’m planning to make most of them into sauce as it takes up less room that way, and we go through a lot of tomato sauce around here.  I’m not adding anything extra to the sauce right now, but it will be easy to add whatever seasonings and veggies we want throughout the winter as we use each jar.

I have no idea how many jars of sauce we’ll end up with, but I imagine that we will not need to buy spaghetti sauce anytime soon.  And I am thrilled that I got past my fear of canning and learned something new. 

Category: food, garden  24 Comments

More Ways To Use Zucchini

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We have a lot of zucchini right now.  I think that’s the case for most people who grow it, and like most, I’m always looking for ways to use it in interesting and tasty recipes.  I’ve made several dozen zucchini muffins over the last week or so, and frozen them.  This is the recipe I used, although I altered it a bit.  I cut the sugar in half (and they are officially approved by my two-year-old) and used ground flax seed instead of the Ener-G egg replacer (don’t know what that is, and I typically use ground flax + water in baking recipes that call for an egg).  I also used maple syrup instead of agave nectar, and skipped the crumb topping.  I’ve made them with pecans and walnuts, and both are fantastic.  I love the fact that I have about 50 whole wheat, zucchini-filled muffins in the freezer right now.

Today, I decided to see what I could do with this recipe for zucchini cakes.  I know, a Paula Deen recipe seems like the last thing on Earth that I’d cook, but this worked amazingly well with the adaptations I made, and it used up a ton of zucchini.  My guys both loved it, so I thought I’d share.  I only had one yellow squash on hand, so I used that and five zucchini.  I used a mixture of dry oats and bread crumbs instead of just bread crumbs.  I also used Daiya vegan cheese (mozzarella – I buy it in bulk at the food co-op) instead of the Parmesan cheese.  And instead of an egg, I used a tablespoon of ground flax seed (I didn’t add any extra water at this step, because the zucchini was still pretty moist even after I pressed most of the liquid out of it).  I was out of Italian seasoning, so I used Old Bay instead.  And I added half of a bell pepper to the food processor when I was chopping the onion, simply because it was taking up space in the fridge.  If you eat eggs and dairy, by all means use the ingredients called for in the recipe.  But this recipe worked great with the substitutions I made, so it’s pretty flexible, and can easily be adapted for people who are sensitive to those ingredients or choose to not eat them.

There was no way that I was going to fry anything in half a cup of butter, so I decided to bake my creation instead.  Instead of making cakes, I turned it into a casserole and just baked it for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees.   We devoured two thirds of it at lunch today, along with some fresh ears of corn from our backyard.

Right now, I’m loving recipes that use up lots of zucchini.  And a recipe that has zucchini as it’s primary ingredient is likely to be pretty inexpensive at this time of year… if you aren’t growing your own, chances are someone you know is, and will be more than happy to share!

Category: food, garden  14 Comments

Saturday’s Harvest

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Everyday lately we’ve been harvesting a good chunk of our food from our backyard.  I’ve noticed that our grocery bill is less than half of our usual total, and the cart looks pretty empty when we get to the checkout stand. 

Here are a couple of pictures that show most of what we harvested yesterday:

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We got our first peppers yesterday, and our first broccoli.  We also found a few zucchinis that had been hiding… oops!  They are huge!  The pile of green beans in the top photo came from one plant, and we have about 50 plants out there, so we’ve been eating lots of beans lately. 

Nearly all of that food was gone by the end of the day – everything except the tomatoes and the four biggest zucchini.  We have the tomatoes in a bowl on the counter for snacking, and there are still a few left.  The big zucchini are all shredded and in the freezer – our first preserving of the summer! 

Now that we’re getting so much food from our garden, all the work that we put in early in the spring to dig beds, add compost, and tend to our little seedlings seems very much worth it. 

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!

Shredded Zucchini Salad

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Did I mention we have nine zucchini plants?  And that they are all thriving?   We’re trying to stay on top of them and pick them when they’re small, but every once in a while we miss one and find it when it’s the size of a small dog (I think they go from small to small dog in about two days).

We usually add one to a green smoothie each day, and we’ve been adding them to salads and stir fries and soups.  Zucchini can be used for all sorts of dishes, and it adds a great moist texture.  It can even be made into “noodles” and used like pasta with whatever sauce you like.  There are fancy gadgets designed just for the purpose of making noodles from zucchini.  They’re called spiralizers, and they do make a neat looking plate of zucchini pasta.  But they are pretty much uni-purpose implements, and I try to avoid products like that in my kitchen.  I only have so much space, and I want it to be taken up with appliances and tools that I use everyday, for multiple things.

I had been using a knife to cut thin strips of zucchini, but last week I thought about using my food processor.  I use my food processor several times a week, for lots of different tasks.  It definitely deserves its spot in the kitchen.  And it has a shredder blade that works amazingly well at making short noodles out of a zucchini.

So for the last few days, our lunch has been a huge salad made on a base of shredded zucchini.  Looks a little odd if you haven’t tried it, but it makes an awesome salad.  Just shred a zucchini or two, and then top with whatever you like on salads.  We’ve been harvesting cherry tomatoes every day, so those get added, plus some olives, hemp-esan, fresh green beans and sugar snap peas (both from our garden).  Add some seeds and whatever homemade dressing you like, and you end up with a great lunch that only takes a few minutes to put together.

Zucchini has a reputation for being quite prolific, and for ending up on neighbors’ doorsteps because gardeners just can’t use as much of it as they grow.  So if you’ve got zucchini coming out your ears, hopefully my shredded zucchini salad idea will help you use up today’s harvest.

Eating from our garden has made a huge dent in our grocery bill.  Last week I bought only fruit at the grocery store, and not a single veggie (we have fruit trees, but it will be next year at the earliest before they produce anything).  My shopping cart used to be half filled with fruit and half with veggies, but these days I go out in the backyard a couple times a day with a huge bowl and fill it with greens, beets, carrots, peas, beans, onions, basil, tomatoes… definitely worth all the hours we spent digging garden beds in the spring!

Category: food, garden  18 Comments

The Luxury Of Frugal Thinking

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I don’t know the exact demographics of our town, but it’s definitely a lower-income area than the city where we used to live.  There is only one grocery store in town, and it’s not stocked with organic produce and ten dollar jars of coconut butter.  Houses here are lot less expensive than they were in the city (which is the reason we were able to afford our 3/4 acre lot here, and for that we’re grateful).  We love the down-to-earth nature of the town, but we’re also aware that there are probably quite a few people here who are struggling financially.

We’ve moved beyond the days when frugality was absolutely necessary because of our low income.  But we continue to keep our expenses at pretty much the same level they were at when we were poor, because that allows us to move as quickly as possible towards our goals.  We want to add a window in our dining room, and even though I suppose we could technically afford to just have a window company put in a new one for us, we’re going to head over to the Habitat for Humanity thrift store and poke around in their enormous used window stash and see what we can find.  Frugality is so ingrained in us that we just prefer it that way.

But I wonder if it’s a luxury to be able to make decision like that?  Well, I know it’s a luxury to be able to ponder how to go about adding a window to a room… what I mean is whether it’s a luxury to be able to think in terms of buying things used, minimizing our ecological footprint, growing our own food, etc.?  The things we do are things that people a few generations ago did without even thinking about it.  But these days, it seems that people who are talking about things like environmental preservation, reusable shopping bags, thrift stores, and organic gardens are all relatively well educated and well off.

50 years ago, having a backyard garden was commonplace.  Now, it’s not as common, and I notice when I walk through town that the poorer neighborhoods don’t seem to have gardens at all.  A garden is a very frugal way to provide food for a family, but it does require a time investment, and people who are working two and three jobs probably don’t have the time.

It seems completely counter-intuitive, but I feel like frugality is more popular among people who don’t have to be frugal, but rather choose to be frugal.

Why is this?  Is it because middle class people have more time to ponder their choices?  Is it because we’re exposed to more choices in the first place?  I know that not having a TV is a very good influence on my family in terms of avoiding commercialism and advertising.  And I know other families have made the same choice.  But I wonder what the average income and education level is for TV-free households?

There are definitely people who are living below the poverty line and absolutely thinking outside the box in order to make ends meet without going into debt.  But I feel like many of us (at least those of us who are blogging about it) are living frugal lives in order to be able to save money for retirement, our children’s education, and various other goals, rather than to stretch a small paycheck to cover the bare necessities.

This has been bouncing around in my head for a few days now, and I’m still not sure if I’m doing a good job of explaining my thoughts.  Basically, I feel like more needs to be done to help people who could truly benefit the most from frugality gain a good understanding of the options that are available.  What do you think?  How can we make high quality organic food available to people who aren’t making a ton of money?  How can we encourage the dual benefits of avoiding consumerism and protecting the planet, when people are struggling just to make ends meet?

Avoiding Nestle Without Even Trying

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I was aware from a very young age that my parents didn’t buy any Nestle products.  They explained the reasons for the boycott, and it made perfect sense to me.  After spending two years in Africa with the Peace Corps, those reasons made even more sense.  I don’t knowingly buy Nestle products, but the boycott is rarely something I think about.  It’s sort of like brushing my teeth – just something I do.

Recently there has been quite a bit of chatter in the blog world about the fact that BlogHer 10 is being sponsored in part by a couple of Nestle subsidiaries.  Several bloggers have decided to opt out of the conference, and others have been quite torn by the decision.  Attending conferences isn’t very high on my list of things I like to do, so this isn’t an issue for me.  But I know that it’s been painful for several bloggers who are actively involved in promoting breastfeeding.  (I’ve had BlogHer ads running on my site for a few years now, although I’ve manually opted out of having any ads for baby formula/bottles/nipples, etc.)

Boycotting Nestle takes more than just avoiding candybars and cocoa with their logo on it.  They own a tremendous number of other companies, and produce everything from bottled water and pet food to Lean Cuisine and Hot Pockets.  Actively boycotting them might require taking a list of the brands with you to the grocery store.

Unless you’re into frugal homemade food, and simple, whole, organic foods.

I will admit that even though I never knowingly purchase Nestle products, I hadn’t seen an updated list of their companies in years.  When I sat down to write this post, I checked out the list that I linked to above, and was happy to see that I’ve been avoiding Nestle without even trying.

I do my grocery shopping at the local co-op and at a small, regional chain health food store.  95% of what I buy is organic.  I do not buy prepared meals or processed food, which eliminates most of the companies owned by Nestle (and helps to keep my grocery bill down).  I make our own desserts, often inspired by something from Kristen’s Raw (I tend to make things that aren’t particularly fancy and take very little time to prepare).  We drink mostly water, but we don’t buy bottled water.  I don’t wear make-up, and we don’t buy candy or ice cream.  When I grocery shop, the cart is filled mostly with produce (not as much anymore since our garden is producing more – yay!) and stuff from the bulk bins like nuts, seeds, flour, coconut, etc.

Shopping at farmer’s markets, co-ops, and small health food stores has a lot of hidden benefits.  If I have to spend money on food, I like knowing that I’m supporting small local businesses as well as farms and companies that have similar values to my own.  Nestle is pretty bad, but let’s face it, so are a lot of other big corporations.  Buying food from small local companies makes it easier to have at least a bit of an idea where your money is going.

Going to thrift stores for non-food items is another great way to direct our dollars somewhere besides the pockets of big companies.  The thrift stores where I shop are non-profits devoted to helping the needy, the homeless, people with epilepsy, and people with developmental disabilities.  I know that there are some for-profit thrift stores out there, but most of the others are set up to raise money for various charitable causes, which is one more reason to shop there.

Shopping the way we do, for both food and everything else, makes our money go further and keeps us healthy and happy.  It works for us, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  And it has the added benefit of not contributing profits to companies that I find reprehensible.

Sharing Some Great Recipes

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Thanks for all the great feedback about creating a life that needs no escape.  Just to clarify, that post was in no way meant to be anti-travel.  I love to travel, and spent my 20s doing quite a bit of it.  Since our son was born, we’ve significantly curtailed our traveling.  We have no desire to travel without him, and he’s just as happy in his own sandbox, or at the park behind our house as he would be at a park a thousand miles away.  And getting to the one behind our house is a lot less stressful!  There’s nothing about traveling to far-away places that would impress our two-year-old, but once he’s older, we’ll definitely want to show him the world.

Rather than being anti-travel, that post was meant to instill a desire to make every day awesome, rather than living for the weekend or for vacation.  If traveling is what makes you happy, then it should definitely be a part of your awesome life plan.  But if it adds stress to your life (as it would for us if we tried it with a two-year-old), there may be better ways to spend time closer to home.

Today I want to share a couple of great recipes I’ve been loving lately.  A few weeks ago, I came across this awesome recipe for three minute cookies.  I used agave nectar instead of maple syrup, stevia instead of the sucanat, and chopped almonds instead of rice cereal (just because that’s what I had on hand).  My guys loved them, and they’re so easy to make.  It takes me about five minutes instead of three, but I’m not complaining!

My favorite part about the cookie recipe was the flax/chia/water substitute for an egg.  I stopped buying eggs a year or so ago, and I’m thrilled to have found something that works just as well to hold things together (and flax and chia are always in my freezer. I buy them in bulk and we eat them everyday already).  Over the weekend, I also decided to make spicy black bean burgers.  We love them, but buying the frozen variety gets pretty expensive.  I made a huge batch of black beans in the crock pot, and used this recipe to make burgers.  Instead of the egg, I used a little water, a spoonful of ground flax seed, and a spoonful of chia seeds.  The burgers turned out great, and cost very little to make (cooking your own dried beans is a great way to go, especially if you make a bunch of them in the crock pot and then store them in the fridge for the week, or the freezer if you’ll take a while to use them up).  Both of my guys give two thumbs up to the cookies and the burgers, so give them a try!

Have a great Monday, and welcome Get Rich Slowly readers!

Category: food  15 Comments