Root beer challenge

This summer, one of the fun things Noah wanted to do was figure out which was the best bottled root beer (there may have been adult guidance to narrow the experiment in scope to bottled only). We went to 2 stores and bought one case of each kind of bottled root beer that we could find.  Here's the line-up:

We tried Dang!, Spring Grove, Killebrew, Henry Wienhard's, Stewart's, Virgil's, IBC, and Sprecher.  We opened one bottle of each and poured a taste into little labeled cup (the labels were on the bottom where the consumer couldn't see). It didn't feel like it would be too much to drink in one sitting when we planned this, but by the end we were all feeling a little OD on root beer.

We each had an area where we could line them up as we tasted and we sorted them into best to worst ranking.

Then, we compared our rankings and created the family master list.  I kept the groupings, but not the specific scores since they didn't really matter in the end.

The varieties of locally available bottled root beer that we'll continue to buy occasionally are: Sprecher, Dang!, and Henry Wienhard's. 

The varieties of root beer that we'll choose not to drink, even if we happen to be in a social situation where they are available are: Spring Grove and Virgil's. We had general agreement that they had a medicinal undertone to the taste and we don't care for them.

The other 3 were okay, fine, nothing to splurge on, but not to reject if we happen upon it in a social situation. Generally, I think they had more fizz and foam than the leading names. 

It was an interesting anomaly in that Noah and Brian had identical top 3 lists - which isn't just a case of son wanting to be like father, because they didn't know what was in each cup until we revealed each ranking. What is the probability of that?

Fun at the farm

We had a good time visiting the Green's Sugar bush for the big pancake feed. The number of people there was impressive.
We went on a horse wagon ride and Noah got to ride a pony.

Veg

I've had a few comments about "what do you eat, then?" recently.  This post is as much for my own menu planning help as it is for answering that question.
We've recently reduced the amount of meat we eat, substantially.  We've both read a few things from a variety of sources about diet and health and what the healthiest people eat.  Then I found a couple movies (available on Hulu), you could watch them too.  They are pretty convicting - "Forks over Knives" and "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead".  They are documentaries that fall into the same category as the famous "Super-size Me", but tell a useful story.
Anyhoo...  Brian reports sleeping better since this change and my digestive system seems to appreciate it.  It makes me feel better to think that I'm actively reducing my probability of having a serious medical issue like we've had a few friends deal with recently (at ages younger than us!).  25% of people with "heart disease" only find out they have it when they have a fatal heart attack - scary!
Now here's a list of main meals that we're cooking up:

• Chili - meatless, of course
• Stir-fry (with any variety of vegetables, "fried" in vegetable broth, served over brown rice, covered with our favorite sauce)
• Mexican or Tex-Mex if you prefer
• Tostadas (corn tortilla popped in the oven for 5 minutes) covered with refried beans and topped with lettuce and tomatoes
• Burritos filled with beans, rice, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, etc.
• Sweet and Sour (you could almost put this with Stir-fry, but this time I build the sauce in with the meal and it has pineapple!)
• Stuffed baked potatoes - I'm working on figuring out what to stuff these with in place of butter, cheese, and bacon bits.  I've put on salsa, corn, and roasted red peppers.
• Pasta with marinara, here's where you can put chunks of zucchini in place of the meat
• Veggie soup - I haven't won the boys over yet on any of these recipes, good thing we usually have bread around.

I've found myself having headaches after eating "normal" food recently.  I guess when your body starts being fed "real" food for awhile, it screams out against processed foods.  The other interesting thing I've noticed is how un-appealing certain processed foods can become when you aren't regularly consuming them.  On the other hand, cheese is really, really hard to eliminate - all things Italian beg for it!  I've been putting it on much more sparsely and hope to find an organic source for cheese so I can feel better about it.  I'm not sure I'll be able to reduce Noah's cheese habit, it is a major part of his diet.

If you're interested in reading more, these are the recent books:
Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman
Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn
The China Study by T. Colin Campbell
Forks Over Knives (the companion book to the documentary)

Anyone else out there "rebelling" against the modern culture when it comes to health and diet??  Let's share!

Veggie Crate

 I saw this little crate full of veggies in one of my magazines (either Organic Gardening or Mother Earth News). It was so cute, and I had some lath left over from my Christmas gift making that I thought I should just go build myself one.

This is it.  It kind of needs to sit outside for a few months to get nicely seasoned, but otherwise, it came out great!  It was so quick and easy to throw together.  Now, what can I put in it?  Hmm, need to plant a garden so I can use it the same way I saw it shown...

Little Monkeys

I thought these little monkey faces would be perfect for Noah's birthday. He's pretty much a monkey himself. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. They were pretty tasty too, at least the day of the party, the cookies and cereal got soggy pretty quickly afterward.

This was my fun, creative endeavor for September. What's up next?

Purple Cauliflower

This stir-fry looked so good! We got a purple cauliflower in our veggie box so we chopped it up with the fresh broccoli, summer squash, added a couple of carrots and chicken, and served it over a bed of rice. It was great! So colorful!

Great and Easy Cookies and an invented bread recipe

Since Brian kept going back for more, it seems like these cookies are blog-worthy. I found the recipe online somewhere. It's all over the internet.

1-1-1 Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup peanut butter (I used chunky this time)
1 cup sugar
1 egg

mix together, drop spoonfuls onto baking sheet, bake 375 degrees for 10 minutes.
That's it. EASY!

I had to make cookies because I needed the oven on to create some warmth in the kitchen to help proof my bread from yesterday. I whipped up some bread to go with dinner. I couldn't find a recipe that used wheat germ and didn't use 10 other ingredients that I didn't have on hand, so I invented my own recipe and it turned out great.
Here's what I learned/did: I looked at several bread recipes that I like and found that they all use a flour to water ratio slightly over 2 and one was as high as 3, and slightly less than one teaspoon of yeast per cup of flour. Add to that the following facts:
whole wheat works best with a "tenderizer" ingredient or two
milk and honey are both tenderizers
bread really only needs water, flour, yeast, and salt
most bread also includes a bit of sugar
That's all I needed... Here's my (approximate) mix, I'm not big on measuring. :)

1 1/2 cups warm water
1/4 cup dry milk powder
2 T honey
1/2 T kosher salt
2 cups white flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 T vital wheat gluten
2 t yeast

Mix ingredients. Let rise an hour or so, form into loaves, let rise again for 40-60 minutes, bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. Tastes great, holds up well to spreading butter.

We got our first CSA veggie box last night. I'll be looking for good ways to prepare some lesser known veggies and possibly sharing some of the highlights.