An Update and a Thanks

I want to thank everyone who commented on my blog yesterday, after I posted about how hard of a time I was having dealing with my family, and all the crazy cravings I was having because of the stress I was feeling.  It was really nice hearing from caring, thoughtful people. 

I sat down with myself this morning and wrote in my journal about my feelings, and I ended up deciding that the reason I got so upset was because it feels like I can't go to my family to talk to them about my feelings or my troubles.  The way it's always been is they come to me with their issues, because I'm the stable one, the one who can see things clearly, the one who listens without judgement.  But I don't want to always be that person for them.  I have my own life and my own issues to work through; I shouldn't have to be dealing with theirs all the time, too. 

I'm proud of myself for not giving into any of my sugar and wheat cravings, although I did eat a lot of other low carb things yesterday that maybe I shouldn't have.  And my mood lifted after Chad came home and he listened to me and held me in his arms.  All I needed was to be listened to and loved.

It's interesting, though, that when my mood went downhill, that's when my cravings got the worst.  I've never really believed those people who say that going low carb/paleo will rid you of all your cravings, because I have a long history of emotional eating and I know that many times people eat for reasons other than hunger.  However, I do know for a fact that I can't eat sugar or wheat the way I used to, even when I'm eating emotionally.  Even a little bit of sugar and wheat can make me feel pretty gross.  I get an almost immediate headache with sugar, and a yucky heavy feeling in my stomach with wheat. 

 I was much better today, by the way.  I woke up feeling refreshed, and I busied myself with a large canning project (three batches of peach jam for my mom and mom-in-law).  I taste tested the jam perhaps a little too frequently, but otherwise I stayed away from sugar and wheat, and actually ate very well today. 

And tomorrow will be another good day, of this I'm sure.

Life Pressures

For anyone looking into my life from the outside, it might seem really nice.  Quiet, simple, cozy, happy.  Yes, it is all of those things, but only because I work so hard to keep everything quiet, simple, cozy, and happy.  I  strive to make my home a sanctuary for me and my husband, a place to keep the crazy world out and where love can grow and dreams can be nurtured.

It's hard to keep it that way, though.  My family seems to always be striving to create stress and drama and drag it into my life.  I have a psychic vampire sister, a drama queen oldest niece, a negative gossip mother, a narcissistic father, and a bad apple younger niece who has lately driven the drama and stress to whole new heights.

Maybe this is why I'm so anti-social.  The people closest to me are torturing me with their stressful lives.  Today, I've been worse than I have been in a while, and I want to swear off people altogether, especially my family, and drive deep into the woods and stay there forever.  Since I can't actually do that, I find myself instead fantasizing about locking myself in my room with a big batch of cookies.

Stressful times are when I find it hardest to resist the urge to eat bad foods.  I need something, anything, to dull the ache in my heart and quiet the noise in my head, and food has always been how I've dealt with it.  I just want it all to go away.

Recipe Makeover: Lasagna

When I was growing up, we'd eat lasagna all the time.  We don't have any Italian in our blood, which is probably why mom's lasagna always featured cottage cheese instead of ricotta, and canned spaghetti sauce instead of homemade tomato sauce.  But it was delicious nonetheless, and I continued to make it often when I moved out on my own.

The thing with lasagna is that it's usually made with lots of pasta.  Lasagna noodles, anyone?  And the way I made it when I was out on my own was always meatless, either just with cheese or with meatless soy crumbles.  Yum.

However, in the peak of summer, I remember my mom always making zucchini lasagna, using sliced zucchini instead of pasta.  It was fantastic, and I knew it would be the best way to convert a high carb meal into something low carb and nutritious.

The best thing about zucchini is that it's so easy to grow.  I've only gotten one out of my garden so far, but we have a local farmer that's grown so much this year that she's been selling it for 3 for a $1!

The one on the right is a Cocozelle zucchini from my garden.

I've found the easiest way to get zucchini noodles is by using a mandolin slicer.  It doesn't even have to be an ultra fancy, super dangerously sharp one, either, because zucchini is so soft.  I got mine at Aldi for $4, and it works like a charm on zucchini. 

If you don't have a mandolin, and don't have the confidence to slice the zucchinis lengthwise, it will taste just the same if you slice them into coins.

My mom always would dip her zucchini in eggs and flour and fry them before using them as noodles, but it saves a lot of time, trouble, and carbs by just using plain raw zucchini.  She would also use fried eggplant once in a while, but I've never been a huge fan of eggplant and can't really justify ruining a whole lasagna by using them.  (And yet I tried to grow eggplants last year; I guess I thought I'd like them more if they came from my garden.  I didn't, by the way.)

And the best thing about zucchini lasagna is that it makes enough to last for several days, and it's a whole meal in one.  Meat, cheese, good fats, vegetables.

Chad would eat two pieces for a meal, whereas one piece was just right for me.  For some of you, a whole piece might be too big, so of course you can cut it into as many pieces as you want.

Zucchini Lasagna

1 pound ground beef
12 oz package pork sausage OR 1 extra pound ground beef or pork (in case you don't do pork/processed meat)
8 oz shredded whole milk mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
15 oz container whole milk ricotta cheese
2 cups marinara sauce, divided
2 eggs
1/8 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon dried parsley OR 3 tablespoons fresh parsley
3 medium zucchinis, sliced about 1/4 inch thick

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

In skillet, brown beef and sausage together. Once completely browned, drain most of the fat and add 1-1/2 cups marinara sauce.  Mix well and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine ricotta, Parmesan, eggs, and seasonings.  Set aside.

Spread 1/2 cup marinara sauce on the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish.  Next, layer on the ingredients in this order:

zucchini noodles
1/3 of the meat sauce
1/2 of the ricotta mix
1/3 of the mozzerella

zucchini noodles
1/3 of the meat sauce
1/2 of the ricotta mix
1/3 of the mozzerella

zucchini noodles
remaining meat sauce
remaining mozzerella

Place into oven uncovered and bake for 30 minutes.  Check to make sure cheese isn't burning.  If it looks like it's starting to brown at this point, add a piece of greased foil to the top.  Bake for 30 more minutes, or until quite bubbly and cheese is nicely browned.  Remove the cover if you added one.

This next step is important: let sit for 20 minutes.  You can eat it immediately, however it's going to be soup if you try it.  Letting it rest gives it time to get rid of most of the moisture from the zucchini, and plus it's extremely hot straight out of the oven!

The first piece is always messy, no matter what you do.

If you're more of a cheese fan, go ahead and top the lasagna with another 4 oz (1 cup shredded) mozzarella.  I thought it was delicious with just 8 oz total though.


Nutrition facts:

For 1/8 piece:
Calories: 541
Fat: 40
Protein: 36
Carbs: 9
Fiber: 1

For 1/10 piece:
Calories: 433
Fat:32
Protein:29
Carbs: 7
Fiber: < 1

Keeping the Faith

Would you believe, at 28, I'm going to be a great-aunt soon?  Yeah, me either.  It came about through no fault of my own.  I didn't mean to be an aunt, let alone a great-aunt.  I didn't think I'd be a great anything for several years.  But here I am, about to be the third oldest generation in my family.

My niece is 19.  She was born when I was the sweet and innocent age of 9, so of course I immediately hated her for stealing my place in the family as the baby.  When she turned 10 or so, she and I actually started to get along.  Pretty soon, I actually enjoyed her company and brought out in her the nice, sweet side that no one else got to see.

When she got pregnant last winter, I was very disappointed.  She's not married to the father, and I'm not sure if she has any plans to be.  I guess I always thought she had so much potential, and knew that if she applied herself, she could do great things with her life.  But to see her go down the same path that her mom went down, that my mom went down, that all the other women in her life went down (except me), it saddens me.  Strapped with a baby, poor, in a bad relationship, with no ambition.

I guess that's why she and I haven't talked at all since I found out she was having a baby.  Actually, there's another secret reason I haven't talked to her, and this really makes me feel ashamed.  I'm really mad at her for getting pregnant before me.  Here I am trying everything I can to have a baby, and she has one without even trying. 

I'm trying really hard to let these feelings of disappointment go.  I'm not a strongly religious person, but I am very spiritual, and I believe that God brings us to certain hard situations in life to teach us to be better people, and I'm certain this is one of those times.  So to kind of break the ice, I decided to make my niece and her baby some things, including a receiving blanket and this cute little bear.

When I showed it to Chad, he asked, "Making it for Baby D?" which is what we've been calling our future baby.  I said, "No, but I wish I was."  And that got me to thinking...  It's been really hard to keep my faith that we'll get pregnant as the months go by.  For the last 5 months or so, I've even been thinking in my head that it's just never going to happen.  I want to stay positive, but it feels so forced when I do and it ends up making me feel even sadder when I don't get pregnant that month.

But I wonder if making things for Baby D is a gentler way for me to keep my faith.  I love to craft, after all, and crafting things for our baby might instill a seed of belief in my heart that we will have a baby someday.  I guess I'll try it and see how it goes.

The Changeover

I love to cook.  I always have, to be honest.  When I was a teenager, I started cooking for my mom because she worked long hours.  I wasn't exactly a great cook back then, but I was learning.  When I moved in with Chad, I continued cooking, and as I got better, I started to develop my own recipes.  It was very exciting!

Now that I'm low carb, I've pretty much given up hope for my old recipes.  Which is a shame, because I have a whole book full of them.  But a couple of weeks ago, I decided I'd buy myself a pretty new recipe holder and start the long (but fun) process of converting my old carby recipes into delicious new low-carb recipes.

In with the new, out with the old.

I'm going to make it a point to try to convert one recipe a week, at least.  So hopefully soon, you'll see some new recipes from me!

Farm to Table II

Yesterday I wrote a post about getting our quarter cow, and said that the farmer we bought it from offered to have us on a pasture walk they had planned.  I jumped at the opportunity, because not only would I love to see how their cows lived, but I figured I'd learn a lot about farming that I can use down the road when Chad and I have our own farm.

The farm we bought the cow from is called Green Heron Growers, and they have a nice little farm here in Western New York close to where Chad and I live.  It was a pretty drive out to their farm.  It was kind of overcast that day, and it was sprinkling off and on, but we brought umbrellas so we wouldn't be too uncomfortable.

There were several people there already when we pulled up.  It was kind of funny, actually.  We were the only people there who didn't have their own farm, but everyone seemed so.... normal.  Not farmerish at all.  The folks that owned Green Heron Growers themselves looked like they used to be hippies, to be honest! 

Their farm is based very strongly on Joel Salatin's farm Polyface Farms, which is an intensive grazing system that promotes healthy animals, healthy land, and healthy people.  Instead of destroying the land, it improves it by adding topsoil and nutrients.  The animals eat the foods that they naturally eat in nature (GRASS!).  And because the animals are eating naturally and are happy, the meat they produce is healthier for people, too.

The farmers first showed us their baby broiler chicks that were soon to go out to the pasture.

 

Then we headed out to their pastures, and talked about what they're doing to improve the land.  

Even the dog likes eating the grass.

I was amazed when they told us that they actively seeded their fields with lots of legumes (clovers in this case) and lots of different kinds of grasses to provide the perfect balance for the cows to eat.  Not too much protein, not too much carbohydrate, and not grasses that were too tough to eat. 

If you looks close, there really are all kinds of different grasses and clovers in this field.  I'll never look at grass the same way again.

They took us to their chicken tractors next, but along the way, I got this shot.  The farm across the way is an organic Amish dairy farm.

The chicken tractors were really cool.  What these are are outdoor pens for their broiler chickens.  They move them twice a day, so the chickens get a fresh crop of grass and bugs, and so the field gets fresh chicken poop fertilizer all over.  The tractors also help protect the chickens from natural predators, like raccoons, skunks, and coyotes.

 While we were there, he moved it for us so we could see how excited the chickens got when they got a fresh supply of grass and bugs.

After that, we walked on down to where the cows were that day.  Along the way, I caught a couple of pictures of some Amish buggies driving by.  This isn't unique for us to see in our area.  I see Amish people all the time because there's such a large group of them around here.  But I thought it was a pretty picture.

And then, cows!

They have a herd of 37 cows, mostly mixed, but all have Red Devon in them somehow.  He said this was very important to him, because the Red Devon is an extremely docile cow, and he believes that the temperament of the cow in life has a lot to do with how it tastes later on. 

Every day, they move their herd to a new paddock, or small sectioned off pasture.  That way, the land has a chance to recover, and the cows get fresh new grass every day.  This ensures that the cows are eating the very best food every single day, just like they would do if they were in the wild.  

There was a cute little baby cow that had gotten loose from the rest of the herd, and he just kept mooing at us.  When the farmer tried to catch him, he ran around like a little kid!  It was pretty cute.

The farmers actually name each cow born on their farm, that's how much they care about them.  The little calf that got loose was Midnight. 

Then they invited us into the new paddock they were moving the cows to, so we could watch them enjoying the new grass. 

Oh my, they were so loud!  They chomped like mad!  They started out on the other side of the paddock to us, but they just kept getting close and closer and closer.

This one was just a few feet away before she realized she had to turn and go the other way!

The red devon is so docile that he managed to get quite friendly with some of the calves born on his farm.

I accidentally captured his Amish neighbor, so I put a yellow dot there to hide his face; they prefer not to be photographed.

It was a long tour.  We were out in the fields nearly 3 hours, but I learned a lot and it rekindled my passion about farming someday.  I don't think we'll have cows right away, or possibly ever, but we'll definitely be caring for some kind of animals.  Chickens at least, and possibly sheep or goats.  

On the way back to our car, I saw some free range laying chickens in their back yard.

It was really cool visiting the farm we bought our meat from.  It made me really appreciate our purchase, and cemented the idea of buying from them again.  

By the way, did you know hows have whiskers?

 

Farm to Table

Do you remember back in May when Chad and I bought a freezer and ordered a quarter cow on a whim?  Fun times!  Well, it's July now, and we finally got a call from the butcher last week about what kind of cuts we wanted from our cow. 

The conversation went very quickly!  I hardly knew what to say, and the lady I was talking to sounded like she was in a hurry.  All I really was able to manage to get through was that we wanted as much of it as possible to not be ground beef, that yes I wanted the tongue but no I didn't want the heart, and oh yes, could I have the suet? 

On Wednesday of last week, the farmer sent an email to the handful of people they sold some cows to, to let them know the beef was all butchered and frozen and ready to be picked up.  They also said that they were having a pasture walk on Saturday and we were all welcome to come.  That sounded so awesome!  I wanted to go and check out their farm before, but wasn't sure if I could actually face the cow that we'd soon be eating.  But since the cow was already butchered, I'd only really be facing our cow's friends and family. 

So Thursday, Chad went out to the butcher's on his lunch break and brought home this.

Totally 70s kitchen flooring. 

When he handed me the first box, the first thing I said was, "Holy cow!", which made me laugh and almost drop the box.  All together, we got 91 pounds of beef, so each box was about 40-50 pounds!

Now I'm a nerd, deep down.  I needed to know how much meat we got, what kind of cuts we got, how much we paid per pound, and if we actually saved any money going this route.  So before I carted the meat downstairs into our new freezer, I weighed and wrote down how much of each kind of meat we got.

If you're as much of a nerd as I am, you can check out my figures here.  If you're not that interested in numbers and figures, I'll just tell you here the basics. 

We paid the farmer $4.50 a pound for hanging weight of our 1/4 cow, and that included the butcher fee.  Since our quarter came out to be 135 pounds, that's $607.50.  After processing, we got about 91 pounds.  That means we paid $6.67 for the parts of the cow we actually brought home. 

Now, if I went to our local Wegmans and bought the same cuts of organic grass fed beef (although Wegmans doesn't carry organic in all the cuts we got), we would have spent $7.96 per pound.  So it actually was a good deal. We ended up filling our freezer quite well.

It wasn't just about how good of a deal we could get on meat, though.  It's about quality.  It's about knowing that the cows are very well taken care of, that they eat good natural foods, and that they're happy.  I don't know if you can actually taste a difference (some people say you can), but I liked just knowing that we got to make at least one cow happy. 

And he was pretty delicious, too.

 

Paired with my own homegrown veggies as a side, this was the perfect meal!

Tomorrow I'll show some awesome pictures we took on the farm that our cow came from!