Lunch Box Chronicles: Day One-Hundred Seventy-Eight (Forks Over Knives Gone Awry)

So, I came home zonked.  Really pooped.  Tired.  And, I still had emails to write.  The sales calls promoting my fantastic Spelt Right products were more exhausting than hauling 250 pounds of flour and lifting 500 pounds of dough.  Now it is my fingers and psyche getting the work out rather than my back and biceps.

With every call and email, I put on my armor and a smiley voice.  The method is working.  We are sending out samples and getting meetings.  Just got to keep up the energy.  So got to keep in the protein.  And, how am I to do this on our new found diet - plant based diet?

Enter the 15 year old.  "Spencer, can you figure out what to make for dinner without meat please?" Answer, "Umm, not really."  Shoot, I thought his intellect would have pulled me through on this one.  Thank goodness his cooperative nature is still intact so he agreed to help.  He just needed some direction.

I could pull it off without the meat.  But eliminating the egg, dairy and cheese was out of the question tonight.  Solution: potato, spinach, egg and cheese layered casserole.  Again, I had a "culinary vision".  This could work.  It would fill us up, and could be done in less than an hour.

I directed the kid with the basics.  He pulled off the rest on his own.  The dinner was stellar, but failed the "Forks Over Knives" test.  It did, however, pass "The Mom Is Really Exhausted and Thankful" test.

Ingredients:

• 4-5 medium sized potatoes, sliced 1/8 inch thin, cut with the precision of a mathematician. 
• a bunch of fresh spinach, rinsed, spun, and de-stemmed
• 3-4 eggs
• some milk (let's guess at 1 cup)
• 1and 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
• salt, pepper and garlic to taste
• extra virgin olive oil for frying the potatoes

Directions:

• Put 1/8 cup of EVOO in frying pan.  Pan fry the potatoes until soft on the inside and a little crispy on the out (we did this in two pans to get the process moving)
• Place layer of potatoes on 9-12 inch baking dish.  Layer with spinach.  Layer with potatoes.  Layer with spinach.  
• Blend eggs, milk, 1 cup of grated cheese, salt, pepper, (and chopped garlic if desired)
• Pour over layered potatoes and spinach.
• Top with remaining 1/2 cup of grated cheese.
• Bake at 400F for about 20 minutes or until tooth pick inserted in comes out dry and cheese is all bubbly and tempting on the top.

Enjoy, sit back, relax, and think not of anything but of eating good things.

Lunch Box Chronicle Day One Hundred Sixty-Eight (In the Shadow of the Storm, Make, Bake, Eat Cookies)

This day is beyond surreal.  One of the largest natural disasters is about to hit NYC, and I'm waiting impatiently in my apartment for all hell to break loose.  All public transportation is closed - no subways, no buses, no rail service.  All flights are cancelled.  The threatened eleven foot water surges have caused the closure of the tunnels.  More than a quarter of a million people have been ordered to evacuate from their NYC homes.  

The talking heads on the t.v. are murmuring non-stop, holding on to swaying trees, sopping themselves, repeating to us again and again The Obvious.  This storm is going to be Big.  Bigger than Big.  How-to-survive messages from friends and family who are out-of-state and out-of-country are appearing on my Facebook, in my email, and through texts.  

All kids are home from school - indefinitely.  The apartment building has become a refuge for all the children, huddled together, roaming the halls and apartments as if the world belongs to them; playing make believe, and showing the adults that a hurricane is nothing but a chance for all kids to just be kids.

Somehow, this close living, the quick stop with neighbors to share goodies, the endless play of the kids in the building, the Super making storm preparations, all make this impending event seem less lonely, more communal, and perhaps safer.   But, what do I know?  It is only the shadow of the storm that has reached us thus far.

So, I retreat to doing what I do best in these situations - cooking, baking, and writing.   Here is a recipe to offer a little bit of calm before the storm.   

Whole Grain Spelt Chocolate Chip Cookies.

1 cup (2 sticks) of butter - REAL BUTTER softened

1 and 1/2 cups organic cane sugar (this stuff has sooo much flavor)

2 TBL pure molasses

1/2 teaspoon baking SODA

2 eggs

1 teaspoon REAL VANILLA 

1 1/2 cups organic whole spelt flour

1 cup organic white (sifted) spelt flour

12 ounces mini semi sweet Ghiradelli Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, beat butter until smooth.  Add sugar and  molasses.  Keep beating until smooth, add in eggs and vanilla.  Keep mixing.  In separate smaller bowl, mix together spelt flours and baking soda.    Beat flour mixture into butter mixture, slowly adding in the flour.  Stir in chocolate pieces.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoons about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake in 375 oven for about 10 minutes.  Because these are spelt, they tend to flatten out.  Done when edges are slightly brown.  Transfer to a wire rack for cooling.  

Lunch Box Chronicles: Day Eleven (Spelt Right Monkey Bread)

Here's a great recipe for a treat or to impress your friends, family, and neighbors at brunch.

News Flash!! We have provided you a step by step one minute slide show on how to make these.

Ingredients: 2 Spelt Right Pizza Dough Balls, fully thawed to double their frozen size
1/2 cup organic cane sugar (I never using bleached white sugar)
1 tablespoon cinnamon (I use organic)
6 tablespoons real butter, melted (and purified if you would like). Purified means skimming off the impurities from the top of the melting butter and pouring off and using the clear butter, leaving the sediment on the bottom. Throw away the sediment. Also, known as ghee.

And, you will need a bundt pan or other pan with removable sides.

Preheat oven to 400 F

Lightly butter a bundt pan. Be sure to put a cookie sheet or other pan on the shelf beneath where you place the bundt pan because it will drip. Place melted butter in small bowl. Mix together cinnamon and sugar in a separate bowl. Gently pull apart the thawed dough and make 1/2 inch 1 inch dough balls. Then take the dough balls and dip in butter. See picture. Take the dipped dough balls and roll in cinnamon/sugar. Place the coated dough balls in bundt pan. Repeat steps until you are finished with the dough balls.

Bake at 400 oven. Remember to place a pan on a rack under the bundt pan because it will drip and make a mess.

Bake for about 30-45 minutes. Done when balls are not gooey in center. WaaLaa! The perfect treat for a gaggle of 7 year old girls visiting, or for a troop of teenagers over to watch a basketball game. Not a bad surprise for a brunch either.



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Lunch Box Chronicles: Day Six (Ghiradelli Chocolate Baked in Spelt Right Dough)

Here's a short and easy recipe. One package of Spelt Right dough and Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate chips. As always, let the dough rise to double its size. Make 10-12 small rounds, flatten to about a 1/4 inch thick. Place 8-12 Ghiradelli chocolate chips in the center. Make a triangle. Bake at 450 for 8-12 minutes. Yumm. Definitely not for lunch, but perfect for dessert.

This is a quick recipe, because tonight was movie and story telling night, with little time to be food creative (though I did make some homemade caramel). The movie was a fantasy involving a legendary character Barron Von Munchausen and his encounters with a sultan. The movie triggered a memory of a story that had been told to me by my father (who would be 89 if he were still alive). My kids were mesmerized. This family story is about my father's grandfather or great grandfather (my kids' great great or great great great grandfather) who was enslaved by a Sultan in either Syria or Lebanon. His destiny was grim, BUT, he managed to win his freedom by convincing the Sultan that he could fight a bear with his hands and survive. Being victorious over the bear, my great great won his freedom, which (as I told my kids), eventually led to the birth of my great grandfather, grandfather, father, me, and the kids! We thank the bear for the sacrifice!

In honor of the bear, my great great grandfather, and generational story telling, we pass on recipes from our family to yours.

Be your child's detective - the clues may be on your dinner plate

Be your children’s detective. They can’t do it on their own and they need your help.

I often get stuck in the trap when my kids are misbehaving or acting out in some way of thinking that they are just trying to torture me. It will get me all riled. Often, this leads to just exacerbating an already stressful situation. BUT, I have come to realize over the years that when one of them starts getting out of sorts in a seemingly irrational way, there is often rationality behind it. And it often starts with what they have or have not eaten.

It is here where my detective skills come in handy.

I start searching for clues.

For my son, clues include red hot ears, irritability over seemingly small things, irrationality, dark circles under his eyes, and moaning.

What I have learned is he really isn't trying to torture me, but instead he is actually having a physical reaction to something.

For my son, that something is often some artificial additive in food that sends him into a tail spin. We like to pretend that he will grow out of such sensitivities, but as time goes on, we have come to realize that he has a “smart body” that simply rejects these chemical additives that pose as foods. We test our theory every so often relaxing the rules of what he can eat. And, each test often lands on its face, with a miserable child and frustrated parents.

For example, we decided to get some ice cream the other day. No big deal, right? Wrong! I was in a hurry and did not go to Maple’s the organic ice cream shop in Portland. Instead, we went to a well known shop, but one that uses artificial additives in its ingredient list. He enjoyed the ice cream thoroughly, but what followed was not so enjoyable. He was trying to do a simple homework assignment and his brain literally locked up. This “A” student couldn’t draft a simple sentence and then he became increasingly frustrated, being brought to tears. Panic starting setting in. It actually became scary.

Having been through this before, I knew what was happening and I knew he needed my patience. I was reassuring him that he was having a reaction to something he ate and to cooperate with me as we tried to work through it. I gave him water and some digestive enzymes, and then I started loading him with a real meal: homemade chicken on the grill, salad, and rice. He started to calm. His look of relief was apparent. His eyes brightened. He said, “thank you, Mom, you know what I mean; thank you in many ways.” He got on with his homework, finished it with ease, and we both said, “this is it, no more experiments.” Only real food for him.

We had a similar reaction just a few weeks earlier, but that time, it was because of a protein low. Again, my son became increasingly irrational over what seemed to be a very small issue. We were driving out of state so I could not bring him home. I stopped the car and called my husband in somewhat of a panic. He reminded me that our son had been going non stop with summer vacation trips and visitors at home and that we had not monitored his diet. Sure enough, he concluded that our son had not had sufficient protein in his diet for several days. We stopped in a real restaurant (no fast food for this family), got him a burger with a salad, and as he was eating, the panic started to fade. His body was no longer deprived. He looked at me and said “Mom, can we just forget this happened.”

For the rest of the trip, he was well fed and a charm.

It is easy in this world of fast food and boxed meals to forgot that our kids need real nourishment, not just convenience. Next time your kid acts up, do a little detective work, you just might find the answer on your dinner plate.

For a good source on the connection between diet and behavior, check out the Feingold Association website www.feingold.org

What Your Kids Eat Does Make A Difference

You would think that I know this by now...that what you feed your kids can have a huge impact on their mental and behavioral health (as well as yours). I spent years studying this; we experienced this in our own home; we fought schools over this; I even changed my career path from being a lawyer to an entrepreneur making wholesome all natural spelt (ancient grain) breads, bagels, and pizza dough as a result of this. See www.speltrightbaking.com detailing our story. Yet, something about certain holidays -Christmas, Halloween, Easter - I get lulled into a stupor thinking that perhaps "just a little bit" of the commercial crap (artificially flavored, colored, and preserved candies) won't make an impact. But, inevitably they do. And, the crash is hard. For more information on how additives can impact you and your kids, see www.feingold.org

Our entire family's life changed when we finally realized that our young son's diet was directly impacting his health and behavior. We have told our story many times, but are telling it again because we believe that this is such a huge issue for families.

From 2-8, our son had many health (many digestive issues) and behavioral problems, and received numerous provisional diagnoses. I was very skeptical of the diagnoses, because he did not fit the diagnostic criteria all of the time. Sometimes, he was fine; others not - either distant, miserable, off-the-wall, hyper, upset. I wanted to know what was triggering him. It all seems to obvious to me now, but it wasn't at the time.

He is very sensitive to one food in particular (common wheat - but not all gluten based products), and definitely cannot tolerate certain additives in foods: the preservatives: BHT, BHA, and sodium benzoate; artificial reds and yellows; high fructose corn syrup. Our response was to remove wheat (and substitute with spelt) and remove ALL artificial food additives. There are just too many artificial additives out there, so to be safe, we removed them all.

The results have been profound. Our son no longer experiences the health and behavioral problems he did as a younger child and he is not on any medications.

There are plenty of studies out there demonstrating the connection between diet and behavior and I will post them as I find them. One such study was published in the Lancet (the British equivalent of the American Medical Association journal) in September 2007. Here is a link. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607613063/abstract

Please check out our website for more details on our story. www.speltrightbaking.com