On Monday, January 31, 2011, the feds made these recommendations PDF (per New York Times which paraphrases as follows): As the nation’s obesity crisis continues unabated, federal regulators on Monday issued their bluntest nutrition advice to date: drink water instead of sugary drinks like soda, fill your plate with fruits and vegetables and cut down...

I think mother nature has decided that a new ice age is a good idea and that its all gonna start this last January. we have a good 3 to 3.5 feet of snow on the ground here. Today we have yet another storm that will yield 2 more feet of snow. Then this Saturday...

I am part Irish so I have always felt an affinity to St Patricks day. I like it as a mom because its a holiday in early cold spring when you really need it BUT its not all about candy!! I adapted a traditional recipe from this European Cuisines site, it is quite delicious. This...

In an effort to increase the usage of less traditional ingredients in our house, to broaden the kid’s palates, I have been experimenting with buckwheat. Common buckwheat, Fagopyrum esculentum, isnt actually a wheat, its a pseudocereal and is a non-grass broadleaf plant. Other pseudocereals that you may know are amaranth and quinoa. Buckwheat originated in...

I put together this recipe on a lark (a term you might use to describe most of my experimentation in the kitchen, light hearted with a chance of failure always but that being ok). I call it Three Secrets Chicken because there are three ingredients in it that I think most people do not usually...

I recently got a starter batch of kefir grains from Wardeh at Gnowfglins. She too has her own herd of dairy goats and also works hard to give her loved ones whole and wholesome foods. Her kefir grains have been amazing, quite vigorous, and the kefir delicious! What is kefir? Kefir grains are a combination...

A fact of life with kids and school these days – Snack Must Be Provided For Snack Time. Week after week I have to find a snack that the kids will eat but which is not nasty like cheezits or chips or other sorts of candy. Sometimes they go in with cheese, other times homemade...

We have been enjoying christmas here, lots of baking. My mother gave me a Kitchenaid stand mixer and we have been using it for a few initial recipes. One of them is a cheesecake we have baking in the oven as I type. Another is a recipe I whipped together on the fly for a...

In a fit of poorly guided frugality, I bought some ground turkey recently. I have to mention that turkey is not my favorite food for one serious reason – if I eat roasted turkey two days in a row I become violently ill, an eruptive experience that is accompanied by unforgiving and deeply disturbing hallucinations....

Some foods, like homemade bread, are more than just “cooking” and can be more like therapy. Pasta is like this. I was raised in a family where pasta was considered junk food, needless carbohydrates (obviously, we are not Italian or Asian!). In Colombia, the starch of choice is rice and various tropical starch crops like...