A Gift of Cookies

I got a message from a friend. She sent me a package and wanted to make sure it had arrived. I hadn’t, so the anticipation began. She had sent me a necklace as a surprise this summer. What could it be?

It came next morning. It arrived early without announcement. My husband saw it as he was pulling out of the garage. I needed to go to work so I ran it in put it on the table and left. It was addressed to the whole family. I got the feeling that she made us something. I couldn’t guess what. The box was bigger than I expected. A plain brown box with some dents from it’s journey. At work as I packed other boxes full of gifts for others it was all I could think of. What could it contain?

Eight hours later I am at home with the family gathered around the box. We get the scissors and with some difficulty we manage to cut the tape from around the top flaps of the box and open them. First brown paper then finally a tin decorated with squiggly Christmas trees and stuck on top a red paper with a handmade calligraphy label. “Cookies Handmade by Sherri and Christie”

It is the first time I have gotten cookies in the mail since I was a girl. I cannot wait even with knowing dinner is waiting I pull the top of the tins and rustling through the tissue paper I pull out a green sesame cookie and a ginger snap. They are better than expected. My first taste of vegan cookies.

The above is a piece I wrote for the writing group I am involved in. Until this week I had not gotten homemade cookies in the mail for many years. It moved me so much that. I felt I should post it here. Many thanks to Sherri and Christie who both write for Vegan Cooking Club. Sherri Let me know that many of the cookies come from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I look forward to reading that Cookbook. The above Picture was taken after some have been eaten. Getting cookies at Christmas time was something I looked forward to as a child.

Many years We got a big box of cookies from my grandmother and I remember the wonderful Santa sugar cookies thick with icing detailing his outfit right down to his black boots. She was an artist. Living half way across the country from her I never got to see her make them. I can’t remember when she last sent some.

Meatless Shepherd's Pie

A few weeks back my Friend Sherri posted a vegan Shepherd's Pie over on Vegan Cooking Club. This got me thinking. I am a great lover of shepherd’s pie and cottage pie. I did some growing up in the UK and it is standard fare there--great pub food. In my quest for Meatless Monday recipes I decided that I would take a stab at making a vegetarian version.

From what I understand and have been brought up to think, shepherd’s pie and cottage pie were inexpensive ways to stretch out meat in herding communities by adding a bunch of other things and topping with potatoes. Shepherd’s pie usually made with ground lamb and a gravy sauce. Cottage is made with beef and a tomato sauce base.

I made shepherd’s pie in cooking class as a 12-year-old in my 1st year of my English school. I remember making it, but for some reason that recipe is not in my lesson book from then. I always look there and then make it up but since I was planning on converting it to meatless, I decided I needed to start with a solid recipe.

I looked through all my cook books. I finally found a recipe for cottage pie that looked good and easy to convert in Graham Kerr's Smart Cooking. (For background Graham Kerr was once the Galloping Gourmet, he started to cook low fat and then minmax.  This is a cookbook from that era and so I felt that the little meat in it could be easily substituted.) So I set out to make it.

I started with the basic recipe that Mr. Kerr wrote, substituting the meat and the bulgur with texturized soy protein (TSP). I measured and stirred and tasted. With the tasting I came up ...”Hmm needs something”. I opened my freezer and found both white puree and green puree from The Sneaky Chef. I added some of both. It needed more veggies and I added peas. This was a good improvement but it still needed something. I began to think that I shouldn’t have skipped the bulgur and next time I won’t. I looked in my spice cabinet and added garlic salt and basil (I wanted sage but could not find it). I saw sesame seeds and added about a tablespoon of those. This made a big difference. One more thing I may add in the future is mushrooms.

So here is what I made:

Vicki’s Veggie Shepherds Pie--Round 1.

2 cups TSP/TVP
Fresh parsley
Fresh thyme
2 Carrots
1 onion
1 garlic clove
Garlic salt
Marjoram
Olive oil
Vegetable bullion and 1 7/8 cup water to rehydrate TVP
1/4 cup white
1/2 cup green
Can tomato paste
1 cup veg stock
Soy sauce
Frozen peas
Lots of mashed potatoes made with buttermilk
Cheese
Basil
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

Rehydrate TSP with veggie stock and water. Meanwhile brown onions and garlic in olive oil. Stir in half tomato paste and TSP. Add seasonings and sesame seeds. Combine Green and White with remaining tomato paste and add to mixture. Bring to a bubble. Add frozen peas.

Put into oven-safe casserole top with mashed potatoes. Top potatoes with cheese. Put in oven until hot and bubbling


Everyone liked it but we agreed it needed something more. We are thinking mushrooms.

Beanie Weenies

During Holiday time when there are parties and food constantly involved in celebrations it is also good to eat simply.

I don’t know when or where I started making this meal. I think it may be a hold over from  beans on toast that I like to eat in the UK with a sausage (or banger) on the side.

For those who aren’t in the know bangers are not American sausages in the Midwest they are more like Brats, but very different in flavor.

My kids like to make or help make this meal.  It is very simple and cheap.
1 large can of baked beans (I buy vegetarian beans to cut back the fat and not mix too much meat.)
1 package of hot dogs (some times we use a whole package some time we use half depends on the day. We use either turkey or all beef hot dogs.)
1-2 packages crescent rolls.
Salad.

1. Cut hot dog and put in sauce pan with baked beans. Here is Griffin cutting the hot dogs.

He is using a “lettuce” knife. I bought it for him at the grocery store for a couple of Bucks Holly had a pink one I got through Pampered Chef. They don’t cut little fingers but have plenty of cutting power for fruit and veggies (not carrots) as well as other soft food like hot dogs.






Prepare the rolls. Holly’s favorite job here.

Cook it all. Stirring the beans and dogs. Beans and hot dogs are done when the cut ends are no longer flat and dome out a bit.


Simple easy and a quick lunch or a light dinner and it is always

Thanksgiving Day.....A week late(r)

An American eating blog with out an entry about all that was eaten for Thanksgiving. What was I thinking. Well I was eating.

We cooked and cleaned and ate. Poor Holly and her newly metal filled mouth (she got braces the day before) only ate olives, nuts and bolts (Kix, Cheerios, mini pretzels, and Goldfish crackers), mash potatoes and chocolate ice cream.everything else she tried just hurt too much.

There were few leftovers after Thanksgiving. Always a good thing.
Here is a quick round up in photos (not the best pictures but they will need to suffice):

Holly and Griffin ate snacks before dinner.









You can see the nuts and bolt on Holly's lap and corn chips, cookies, and baby carrots on Griffin's. I am proud to say he mostly ate the carrots.

PIES!

Bill's Blueberry pie and two stages of his Chocolate Ribbon pie before and after the top layer of Cool whip.

And then my cranberry mold next to Holly's olives.

 No pictures were taken of the rest of the food. I wish I had but all I wanted to do was eat.

We left for home sated. The kids slept and Bill and I chatted about how in comparison there is a lack of pies at his families events compared to my family (last year there was 11 pies and 13 people counting the 4 month old. The report from this year there was 7 pies and 9 people!

Thanksgiving Countdown

As I write this The gathering at the Elder Dunn's homestead with the Williams clan is about 13 hours away (12 from when I posted)

Our contributions are 3 pies, a plate (or two) of cookies and a cranberry mold.

Bill has made (and I may get him to write about it later) a blueberry pie and is getting ready to finish making his favorite Chocolate Ribbon Pie.

I made a pumpkin pie. I have been experimenting with recipes for a few years now. The most disastrous one was the year I used the recipe from my mother-in-laws Joy of Cooking. It never set up. I followed the directions, I cooked an extra 30 minutes when it wasn’t set when the described time came ans went. It was still pumpkin soup. I even tried to bake it longer once we got there. It was still pumpkin soup .

This year we have a Bittman (How to Cook Everything By Mark Bittman). I had good success with a quiche of his so I tried his this year. He has a good trick of cooking the filling while you pre-bake the crust to give it a bit of a kick start.  As usual I had some left over filling after filling the crust. So I fill little ramekins with it. I have now eaten one of the Ramekins. It set up well. It was tasty but a bit on the under seasoned side. The texture is good not too smooth but not grainy. Holly helped make it. She won’t eat it unless I can convince her that it will won’t hurt her newly braces filled mouth and she is hungry enough.

The cranberry mold came because I was sad to discover that my guilty pleasure of the nice jellied cranberry sauce (you know the one that comes out in the shape of the can) is full of high fructose corn-syrup. As I am trying to avoid that I thought I would make some sort of cranberry mold. I found a recipe at Williams-Sonoma. I enjoyed making it. It talks about cooking the mixture until the sauce thicken and the cranberries burst. Well they pop and can do so loudly. I didn’t follow the directions as well as I should and to try ad make up for my mistakes I added a second packet of Knox Gelatin. I hope it turns out well. I used my Tupperware jello mold as I don’t use it that often.


Now for the cookies. Griffin has been asking me to make “people” cookies with him for several weeks. After much discussion we determined that he meant gingerbread cookies. He decided that he wanted to bring them for Thanksgiving so I threw in the idea to make turkey shaped ones.
Now I looked at all the recipes that I have and got the general ingredients. I have used many times a recipe I tore out of a magazine many years ago. It was sitting on the table as I was getting ready to make the cookies and I grabbed it only to see one of our children’s cookbooks with a picture of a gingerbread man poking out of a stack of paper. I have used ‘The Children’s Step-By-Step Cook Book’ by Angela Wilkes cooking with kids many times. No only my own kids. Kids like the pictures to follow as well as the really nice photos of the ingredients at the start of every recipe. Knowing that Griffin would be “helping” I opted to use this version although I substituted molasses for the honey or golden syrup it called for as I didn’t have either in the house. After sending Bill out twice once for more cookie sheets and another time for currents. We got the cookies  made.

We even made one armless and one with a light saber.  We tried them and they taste really good!


Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Meatless Mondays And the Wild and Wooly Dunns.

As I have said before we as a family are trying to eat healthier. Our busy lives don’t always make it easy and I look for things with a way to build a tradition or a good habit or something along those lines. So I found a campaign about eating Meatless on Mondays. There is more to the whole movement than just eating vegetarian for one day a week.

Meatless Mondays has many a websites and an articles on the subject and I will post soon a list on links to things I have read or want to read on the subject. We are doing it and here comes the predicament.

We have some standbys that are meatless and I find that we are eating them a lot! Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad meals but I get sick of repetition and I think the kids do too. I like it when Holly is really exited to eat something because it has been awhile since we have had it. I think the kids would not care if we ate the same thing every week. But I like to vary it up for better nutrition and variety.

Our stand-bys include spaghetti just a jar sauce or this sauce paired with garlic bread (usually store bought). A version of my mom’s lasagna the recipe is will come soon or penne rigate casserole from the Family Nutrition book by William and Martha Sears. They are all pasta. We used to eat a lot of pilaf--almost a red beans and rice dish--that we adapted from Amy Dacyczyn and her Tightwad Gazette recipe. But we had a flying bean problem for a while which had us stop making it.

Back to the predicament. Not too long ago I was drawing a blank and needed some help fast I was planning the weekly menu and couldn’t think of anything to make for Meatless Monday. So I did what any mom home alone with her computer would do these days. I posted to facebook and Twitter the following:
“I really need some non-pasta, kid-friendly, vegetarian recipes or ideas.....grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup is passe too. HELP!”

I started to get responses right away I want to thank Mark, Nancy, Kate, Sherri, Stephen, Lynn, Viveka, Kristin, Heather, Karen, Jacqui, Renee, Mary, and Maggie for all the suggestions. Well maybe not the lima loaf.

I got many suggestions for dishes here is an edited list:
Quinoa
Pilaf
Fried rice
Soups and Stews without meat
Fake chicken nuggets
Tacos / burritos with out meat
Pizzas
Veggie Chili
Omelets (and other egg dishes)
Potato pancakes
Turnip Au Gratin
Quiches
Broccoli Cheese Casserole



And a few for cook books:
The Imus Ranch cooking for Kids and Cowboys
any cookbook by Jeanne Lemlin

And a few for Websites:
Vegetarian Times 
http://pdxvegancookingclub.blogspot.com/
http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/
http://www.fatfreevegan.com

So the first thing I did was MornignStar Farms Chick'n Strips and Buffalo Wings with Green beans and French Fries. Griffin Said they were the best Chicken Nuggets I had made. And he knew they were fake. I call that a win.

I also went to the library and Checked out The Imus Ranch cooking for Kids and Cowboys. We tried the Cowboy Sloppy Joes. We all liked them. Holly was so pleased with it that when she was unpacking groceries and saw TVP she was really exited.

Menu Planning

It’s Tuesday and as is the case of many Tuesdays I have the day off work. Among the many things I need or want to get done is planning a weekly menu, and doing the grocery shopping. I find this usually daunting. There are so many things to consider from time to meatless monday to what we still have on hand from last week and what we may be getting from our CSA on Thursday. And of course my picky kids. In fairness I know much more picky kids but one is under weight and we need to keep him eating and the other is a hollow athlete 11-year-old who gets stomach aches that sideline her and make her crabby if she doesn't eat enough.

I have many sources for ideas. Rachel ray publishes a weekly menu on her website as well as in her magazine. Women’s day publishes a Monthly Menu. and of course my large cook book collection and the food blogs I follow.
The good news is that this week I have no evenings to work. And the only thing we are getting from our CSA this month is fruit so I don’t have to consider that. But that 11-year-old is still swimming almost every night.

So here I sit with only the following:
Tonight will be a recipe from Rachel ray: “Chorizo Hash and Eggs” as published in her December/January 2010 magazine (Although to please the kids we are substituting bacon for chorizo)
From the November Woman’s Day November 2009 I am using the Friday 11/6 suggestion of Soup and ham and Cheese Quesadillas, for Wednesday
Thursday I will make meat loaf as the kids have been asking for it for a while. Probably from the Sneaky chef I am considering lentil bolognese from Meatless Monday for Monday but I am concerned that the timing might be off to get everyone fed on time. I wonder if it will work in a crock pot.

But I have been sitting her for almost 2 hours and I haven’t even considered Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I also want to make some cookies this week. I picked up an copy of Martha Stewart's Holiday Cookies from 2006 at work when a coworker was getting rid of it. (Did you think I would go 2 blogs with out mentioning cookies?)

I think I will make some tea and clean up a bit an come back to the menu planning.

Sorry for the lack of food blogging I am hoping that I can get one or 2 out in the next month but I will be writing more fiction.

Illness stuck the house last night only Holly and I were not here. Griffin work up with a violent stomach bug. Poor boy and poor dad.

Well when this happen we again turn to Dr. Sears. He, although probably not the originator, taught us about the BRAT diet. Banana Rice Apple sauce and Toast.  Griffin easily goes for the first three. I add, from years of childhood experience, 7Up to drink and for protein chicken.
Well Once I got Home and Holly was redirected. Griffin and I watched some TV. Like all of us he settled in to watch some cooking shows on the PBS create network. He was taken by Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. They were doing a bunch of things with chicken. 
The boiled up a whole chicken with Vegetables and some herbs to start with. The first thing they did was to serve the chicken up on a bed of white rice with the vegetables. Griffin was very taken with that idea and requested that for dinner. He was also very taken with the idea of a chicken pot pie which they also made.He wants that for Thanksgiving.
Since Griffin was sick and last time he was he lost weight quickly because he didn’t want to eat more than usual. I felt obligated to make this happen. So I took a couple of Chicken Breasts we had in the freezer and put that in a pot of water with three large carrots, 3 cloves of garlic, a few wedges of celeriac and our old stnad by a Knorr vegetable bullion cube. I let this simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour. I had set the timer for 45 minutes once I got a rolling boil and then with 15 minutes remaining I started the rice cooker.
Well Griffin got rice sliced up carrot and chicken for Dinner and Bill and I spiced ours up with a little soy sauce. It worked out pretty well. The chicken was a bit dry probably from a little long cooking a being cooked straight from frozen and being boneless.

If you are curious the episode of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home was #118 “Comfort Food: Poached Chicken, Chicken Pot Pie and Apple Tart Dessert”

I'll have to see if we can hold off on the pot pie until after Thanksgiving.

Vegan Low Fat Ginger Cookies

As I have said before I like making cookies and one of the times I do this is when I feel I need to help people, and I don’t know what to do or can’t help in some way.

This prompted me to have to find some vegan ginger cookies. I searched the intenet and found several recipes. Yesterday I madethis recipe.

When I was picking recipes for a friend she was facing chemo and with that the possibility of nausea. She also loves ginger. So seeing a recipe that called for 5 tablespoons of fresh grated ginger it sounded perfect. Now I have to confess that the thought of getting the ginger grated I was a bit daunted. I made he some others for her and that is a different blog.

Now another friend is struggling with some trouble with digesting fats. It is completely unknown right now. But she too is a ginger fan and it finally sunk in that this is a almost fat free recipe. 0.3g of fat per cookie. Probably could make it fat free by using white flour instead of whole wheat.

Today was the day to try.

The things I learned were:
Alarge ginger root is about 5 tablespoons of grated ginger.
They taste best a little underdone.
I was reminded of how fibrous ginger is.
Using a good scoop to put the cookies on the pan is very important.
And if you don’t like ginger these cookies are not for you. They are very gingery. I really like them.
Those who tasted them tonight liked them. We did not inhale them but the recipe was taken home.

I will be trying this in the non low fat way and I will be experimenting with using powdered ginger because grating ginger in my food processor sucks. So I hope to have updates on these cookies in the future. Especially since I have promised them to some friends.

Cooking for Varying Diets...

My wife and I are gamers and host a weekly game with friends who bring their kids. We adults take it in turns to do the food prep for the week, and therein begins the trouble.

Normally, picking foods for fussy kids ranging in ages from 5 to 11 would be bad enough. Little gremlins simply don't know enough about the good foods in life. Maybe it's because they still have most of their taste buds and all the "acquired" tastes of adulthood have more to do with us not being quite so sensitive. I don't know. But picking foods gets really tough when having to work around serious diet restrictions.

First off, one of the gamers is allergic to dairy. She still eats some amount of dairy and the allergy isn't horribly severe, but enough dairy and she'll pay for it. Now add her pork allergy. And now her symptoms that are stunningly like those for gallstones (get too much fat and be really sick) but which aren't supported by diagnostic ultrasound nor lab tests.

Then there's her husband. Large and heavy-set guy and, quite naturally, having trouble keeping his blood sugar levels in control. A very common issue in America today (and soon the rest of the industrialized world).

Player #3 has also had trouble with his blood sugars.

And then there's my wife who definitely had a brush with gallstones severe enough to drive her into a diet so low in fat that the pounds melted off her fast (screw Atkins, super low fat WORKS).

Now, try to pick a meal that won't set off anybody's ailments. It ain't easy. I predict lots of chicken will be on order for the weekly game. No one's allergic. It's relatively low in fat and it's easy to flavor. Sometimes we also turn to multiple dishes for different groups of eaters.

And that's what we had this week. It was our turn so we started working through recipes to find the right one to trot out. It being our weekly D&D game, we don't like to spend too much time during the game to do food prep. It's kind of a drag to pull away from the table and the action to cook all the time. So we were thinking CROCK POT.

We have this crock pot cook book by Dawn Hall called Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook. The recipes are very simple without many ingredients or preparation steps. They're also, unfortunately, fairly bland for the most part, but they're definitely a good starting place. They're also generally oriented to reduce the amount of fat per serving. Tons of recipes have under 4g of fat. For a dinner, that's not doing badly at all.

Tonight we picked a Chicken Chili recipe and doubled it so we'd have enough. It was made up of chicken and was based around a lot of Great Northern beans - I added some red beans for more contrast as well. And it turned out pretty tasty and filling. All of the adults (and 1 child) were satisfied with how it turned out (although a couple of us did think it stood well with a little punching up from some Tabasco sauce too).

For the kids, we made homemade mac and cheese, a tried and true recipe from a Campbell Soup cookbook. The kids ate well, the adults ate well. And it all worked out in the end. But it sure was a challenge to get there.

Oat, Fruit and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oh my here is my second post and as promised it is a cookie post So what has happened to all the healthy food. Well I think I will have one tomorrow. It will be interesting. Monday I will talk about we Wooly Dunn and Meatless Monday. thoes who know me know some of my struggles already.

A little back ground on these cookies. On Thursday I was in the shower getting ready to go to my last massage appointment with my massage therapist. She is moving on to other things. I felt that I needed to take her a little thank you. As I have said before I like to make cookies. It was 11:00 and my appointment was at 12:30 a 15 minute drive away. I was pretty sure that I could make some sort of cookie. So I pulled out my BHG New Cook Book. 2005 version with the Breast cancer Pink cover and flipped to the back. It has this pink section called "Eating for Life" They are recipes that are supposed to be better for you.

Now there is one cookies recipe in the section. "Oat Fruit and Nut Cookies" They sounded pretty good only I had no nuts in the house and I am always reluctant to take nuts to people to many allergies and dislikes. Now I know she loves Chocolate. I had chocolate chips. So I thought I would substitute that instead of the nuts. For Fruit I had both regular and golden raisins on hand. I got them made and packaged up and I was only 3 minutes late to my appointment and that was traffic anyway! she liked them and so do I.

Needless the cookies I didn't take didn't make it through Friday so Griffin and I made some more tonight with Crasins (dried cranberries). Again very yummy.

Oat, Fruit and Chocolate Chip Cookies

(adapted from Better Homes and Garden New Cook Book 12th edition, 2005 Oat, Fruit, and Nut cookies page A-65)

Preheat Oven to 350F

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup packed Brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup dried fruit pieces (raisins craisins cherries chopped apricots etc.)
3/4 cup chocolate chips.

In large mixing bowl beat butter with an electric mixer until soft and fluffly about 30 seconds.
Add brown sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda beat on medium until combined. scraping the sides as needed.
Add eggs and Vanilla until well combined scrapping the sides until well combined.
Add flour and beat on low
Stir in oatmeal fruit and chocolate chips.
Drop on cookie sheet in a size that makes you happy.
Bake for 10-14 minutes until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.

Vicki's Tips:
I use my Kitchen Aid stan mixer and I combine steps 2 and 3.
I try and always use parchment paper under my cookies. My sister uses silicon baking mats. The cookies don’t stick and you can literally slide them on the the cooling rack.
I don’t measure the fruit and chocolate exactly. I put them in with the mixer running until it looks right.

Griffin’s Thoughts:
Thumbs up from Griffin, he says “I like it. It made me feel good to help make them.”

I love to make cookies and I can usually get people to eat them. Not always my family but people like cookies.

In order to make more healthy cookies I have been looking for low fat whole grain and lower in refined sugar cookies.

This is not always easy. My first big success was some granola cookies that I made for some friend who were having a house warming and soup party a while back.  I was watching a young woman for the weekend whom as part of her disability it helped to keep here eating as little refined sugar as possible.  Bill like them but neither Holly or Griffin would touch them. The young woman loved them and they didn't make it through the party. Here is the recipe. I made recipe card so everyone could have them and I gave them all out.

Granola Cookies
From: The Family Nutrition Book
William and Martha Sears

1 egg beaten
1/3 cup softened butter or peanut oil
1/3 honey or barley malt
1/2tsp. vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 granola

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Mix the egg, butter , honey, and vanilla. In another bowl mix the salt baking soda and flour. Combine wet and dry mixtures. Mix in Granola until completely combined. Drop on cookie sheet by spoonfuls 1-2 inches apart. Bake in oven for 10-12 minutes until edges are light brown.

Note: These will be different every time you make them depending on the the flavor and style of Granola you use. I used Cinnamon Apple Granola made by Nature’s Bakery Cooperative the first time I made these. They are very similar to oatmeal cookies.

-Vicki

(If you like cookies I have 3 or 4 more cookie posts planned)

Hello and Welcome to our Blog.

We the Wild and Wooly Dunns (Me (Vicki), Bill , Holly, and Griffin) really want to eat better and healthier. We all have different ideas on this. and I will give everyone that is writing here their chance to write about it. Griffin is writing yet but probably will start in the not to distant future. But as a new kindergartner he is not a writer yet.

So you will see recipes here as well as menus and critiques of food.

I hope that it is as educational for you as it is for us.

Feel free to give us some ideas for meals and such.

Again Welcome.