Italian for a day

Red sauce, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato gravy... there are plenty of names for the pasta topping of choice for many. At home we having a few other names for it depending on who is eating it or how it's being eaten... dunking sauce, pizza sauce, and most recently "Pregnant Mama's Yum Sauce". For the sake of keeping thing consistent, I'll call in tomato sauce.

Unfortunately, the Topsy Turvy tomato planters we used this year were sucky-sucky, and I didn't produce the crop I was hoping to. Still determined to make sauce for the winter, I was given a large box of Amish country tomatoes from my in laws this past weekend.



On Monday afternoon I started my half a day long project of sauce making. There are many methods to making a delicious sauce, but regardless of how you create it there are a few important rules to live by when creating your masterpiece:

1. Be mindful of your ingredients. Will you use fresh tomatoes or canned? Garlic cloves or powder? Every item you add to your sauce will impact your result. For the record, I like to only use fresh ingredients when they are available, however I have used cans of San Marzano tomatoes and the sauce was still quite good. Different, but good.

2. Cooking time is important to the flavor of your sauce. How long will you cook your sauce? Certainly a "quick" sauce can be made, but many believe the sauce should romantically bubble away for hours for the flavors to meld together and intensify.

3. Proper storage is key to preservation and flavor. Will you can or freeze your sauce? I like to can mine to save space in the freezer, and also so I can give the jars as gifts. It's much more beautiful to give a mason jar with a ribbon and handwritten tag around the mouth than a slimy frozen plastic container, in my opinion.

To start my sauce I first removed the skins and seeds from my tomatoes, which was probably the longest and most hands on part of making my tomato sauce. When doing that, I roasted a couple of heads of garlic in the oven. To do this, cut each of the heads in half so the cloves are all in halves. Place the heads in a sheet of aluminum foil, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, and the wrap the heads up nice and tight. Place your garlic in an oven preheated to 350 degrees, and in 30 minutes remove the softest and most delicious smelling garlic you've even seen.

After the tomatoes are prepped and the garlic is roasted, I threw both ingredients along with sauteed white onions into a large stock pot. On medium heat, I let the ingredients come to a boil to let the juices evaporate and thicken up a bit.



After the sauce thickens, I turned the heat to low and added kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, white sugar, and fresh herbs. The sauce was then left untouched for hours to allow the flavors to cook together. After a few hours I took out my trusty immersion blender and gave the sauce a good blend (normally I wouldn't mind a few chunks, but in hopes that the kids will be eating my sauce I had to make it as smooth as possible).

Later, I transferred my sauce into warm sanitized mason jars. The jars were then put into a water bath to lock in the seal and preserve the sauce.



After the jars were processed I transferred them to a clean towel, where they rested untouched overnight.



I checked on the jars yesterday morning and luckily all of the seals took! I kept a small container of leftover sauce in the fridge, and tossed it with some farfalle and parmesan last night for dinner.... mmmmm! The canned sauce has a shelf life of one year, although I'm not sure it will last that long in our house. Perhaps I should at least stash away a jar or two for after the baby is born so I can at least enjoy my sauce with a deep glass of red wine, but for now a crusty piece of bread dipped in the sauce is quite enough to make me content.

Half a dozen...

Is how many there will be in the McKinley family in January!



I'll admit, this blog has been on summer hiatus. Unfortunately, it seems that the term "morning sickness" is all relative (more like 24/7 sickness!), and that I must be one of the freaky pregnant women whose palate is completely turned upside down. It's difficult to zealously discuss food when for the past few months it's been a challenge to even open the fridge without gagging. Thankfully, some of the sickness is starting to subside. That being said, don't expect to see any rubs for steaks or vegetable heavy ideas for the next few month, then again that's not really what this blog is about!

What you can expect to see over the next few months are lots of after school snack and holiday themed posts. Starting in January I'm sure there will be a post (or twenty) on homemade baby food, and fun ideas and traditions for bringing a new baby into a growing family.

Now it's time to play catch up... please prepare for more than a few posts that have been waiting to be written :)

Earth Day: Baby Steps

"Going green"... what a broad concept. To some it means trading in motorized vehicles for bicycles, or installing solar panels in their homes. To others it means cutting back on unnecessary consumption... I remember a former employer claiming they were "going green" by replacing their bottled water with filtered water machines and styrofoam cups -- good idea, wrong follow through.

I've always been the girl carrying around a reusable canvas bag in my purse to avoid the pileup of plastic bags under my kitchen sink. Thankfully many of the major grocery stores are starting to catch on, offering a cash back incentive to using reusable bags. It feels great for finally being rewarded for something I've always tried to do!

At home we really try to do our part in the little ways that we can... paper plates are only used when absolutely necessary, we limit our time in the car and group errands together, we're teaching the kids to turn off lights and water when not in use ... baby steps!

All of the recent recession talk has really got me thinking that maybe the victory gardeners of the older generations were on to something.

If fruit and vegetables grown at home taste better and cost less money than produce bought at the grocery store, why not try to grow my own victory garden?

We live in Central Jersey, where gardens and farmers markets are prevelant. The previous owners of our house had already started with a small garden, a strawberry patch, and grapevines. A great start, but we have more in mind! We're starting our vegetable garden this weekend, planting a few more berry bushes, and have plans for a pumpkin patch and an apple tree trellis.

To kickstart our plans, the kids and I took a trip yesterday to Lowes to pick up a few plants for outside, take a look:


Connor decided to help me move my herbs from the AeroGarden to outdoor pots


"Brittany, let me pose... it's very important that I have a picture on Earth Day!"


One of the flower baskets on our front porch


One of the window baskets that the kids filled -- they even picked the flowers


My herb garden on the back porch


The kids, proud of their work


Look... they're even getting along... maybe I can convince them that Earth Day happens more than once a year

Minnesota Nice - Being Polite Has it's Benefits

Minnesota nice, according to Annette Atkins:

...The cultural characteristics of Minnesota nice include a polite friendliness, an aversion to confrontation, a tendency toward understatement, a disinclination to make a fuss or stand out, emotional restraint, and self-deprecation...

I've often been accused of being too "Minnesotan", in reference to this standard. I'm often the last to make a fuss about something (once, actually eating fettucini that smelled like wet dog for the sake of not adding fuel to a frustrating situation in a restaurant), and I believe there's something to be said for general politeness.

I joke with the kids often about karma when trying to teach them to be nice to others. "You'll be surprised at how nice others will be if you simply smile and ask how their day is...", I say. Once, Ryan fell off our kitchen stool after teasing Connor, to which Connor yelled, "HA! Karma got you, Ryan!" I'm not quite sure they understand the concept yet...

Anyway, a neighbor down the street just dropped off a box of treasures on my doorstep:




It turns out that a produce truck broke down in our town, and our neighbor who owns an autobody shop was given a large gift of vegetables and fruit as a thank you for service. They knew that I like to cook and bake and decided to share their gift me. I can't wait to use everything! I'm making homemade GF tortillas tonight, and the peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes will make a great addition to dinner!

If any other trucks accidentally break down in Marlboro, like maybe one filled with pastries, please stop by!

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

I really want to post about my jam making experience.

Hmmm... not sure if I should post about that... it's probably not that interesting...

Maybe someone wants to know about how to make jam, or at least will be entertained by my clutzy adventures in the kitchen.

Nope... too boring... I'm too tired... I should really just think of something better to write about...


Three days later:

DARN IT!!! So-and-so just wrote about making jam and now everyone is excited about making it! I should have gone with my gut...

Then again, who really wants to read about my jam anyway? I'm not a real cook or baker, and ugh... I'm a stepmom... does that diminish my credibility when it comes to "family fun"?



Ohhhh, self-doubt, you plague me. I've had hundreds of these battles with myself over the past few months, which explains why my new posts have been absent. Change "jam" to any other recipe or idea that I've had, and change "so-and-so" to any chef, blogger, or friend, and there is my constant issue. Combine that with months of too much stress, not enough down time, and a lot of "it's ok that you spilt your coffee on my face... here let me help you order another", and you've got one stressed out woman.

My dear husband and I had a chance to slip away to the Caribbean for a week, just returning this past Saturday, for what I like to call our "second honeymoon". It was a life refresher, and a great reminder that no matter how full we choose to make our lives we must always take time for ourselves together and individually.

Upon returning home I realized, among other things, how much I've been missing being creative in the kitchen AND sharing my adventures with others. The weeks leading up to our vacation were filled with mediocre dinners and tired deserts, and I've been craving to dive back in a la Julia. In the past few days I've experimented making pesto courtesy of the overgrown basil in my Aerogarden, a dutch oven chicken (the most moist chicken you'll ever eat -- recipe soon!), and yes, jam.

It feels good to be back in the kitchen... I've missed it.

Thank you, dear husband, for encouraging me to always do what I love... even if you and I are the only ones who take pleasure in my cooking and in this silly little blog :)

I Carry Your Heart... Cookies

I Carry Your Heart - E.E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


It has long been a tradition in my family to make two-toned Valentine's Day cookies. For this project, my mother used to prep our rolled sugar cookie dough by first mixing the ingredients in her KitchenAid, and then dividing the dough into two separate balls -- one to be dyed red, and one to be dyed pink. After being dyed the dough would then be chilled in the refrigerator for hours until it was ready to be worked with. We would cover our entire countertop with waxed paper and flour (although, when working with children and rolled cookie dough I really like to use a clean vinyl tablecloth over the dining room table to maintain a bit of personal space) and then my mother would roll out portions of the dough for each of us. With two heart shaped cookie cutters, one about twice the size of the other, she would cut first a large heart out of the red dough and then a smaller heart to be removed out of the center of the dough she had just cut. She then had one of us do the same with the pink dough. She then carefully placed the pink smaller heart inside of the large red heart, and did the same with the other. Our "hearts" held each others'.

Yesterday I decided to pass along this tradition to my stepchildren. They were home from school for the first of two snow days (I feel another project coming along today), and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to share with them something that I loved as a child. We spent hours mixing, chilling, and cutting our dough with great success and minimal bickering :) After all of the cookies had cooled Caitlyn and I bundled up and trudged through the one and a half feet of snow and delivered our heart cookies to the neighbors. You can imagine their surprise to see the two of us running through the streets on one of the most miserable days of the year to deliver our Valentines!

The children may not realize it now, but in deciding to share their "hearts" with our neighbors I can slowly see them becoming the type of people who will share their hearts all year round. That's my hope, at least.

PB and G's - PB and J gets a GF makeover

We've all heard of PB and J's, but, "What is a PB and G?" you might ask. Take a look at the new snack idea my stepson Connor and I came up with when looking for an alternative to super sugary jelly and glutenous bread...



What you need:

PB and G Snack
1 lightly salted rice cake
2 tbsp natural creamy peanut butter
1/2 c fresh red or green table grapes

Cal: 225
Total fat: 16g (3g saturated)
Sodium: 25mg
Total Carbs: 28g
Protein: 10g

VS.

PB and Jelly Sandwich
2 slices Wonder Bread Classic White Bread
2 tbsp Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter
2 tbsp Welch's Concord Grape Jelly

Cal: 430
Total fat: 18g
Sodium: 480mg
Total Carbs: 61g
Protein: 11g

NOTE: I am NOT a nutritionist, I'm just a parent who reads labels. I happen to know that oil and sugar should only be used in moderation, and things like nutrient-rich fresh whole fruit and whole grains are important in diets. I do not claim to have all the answers or to do things perfectly... at the end of the day I know what works for my family, but more on that later!

Most importantly, we had a lot more FUN making the PB and G!



Caitlyn, my step daughter, and I were inspired to make our own fun creations. Check out Caitlyn's pretzel and grape "light post":



I made "antennas" in response to being called the "alien stepmom":



Simple swaps can be more nutritious AND fun for you family! The best part is that these snack ideas can easily be made gluten-free... and lets be honest, what GF child is going to turn down food that they can play with for lunch?