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.