It’s near January. And I’m expecting my third son any day now. Nursing and postpartum recovery await me, so this New Year is not about getting my best body nor any sort of diet. Let’s be honest. We’ve all been there, done that, and it’s a bit uninspiring. But what I am interested in is how food can bring relief to my tired, postpartum body while nourishing my new child and the rest of my family. There are foods that heal, and we needn’t be intimidated by lack of money, time, or ability. And whether you’re expecting a baby soon or just curious how food can help balance hormones and elevate your mood after the sugar-infused season we just celebrated, Eugene’s newest specialty grocery store is here to help! Be sure to enter the $50 Whole Foods gift card giveaway too! Their produce department often offers $5 off coupons...and, well, it’s just so pretty. Look for their private Whole Foods or 365 label on all sorts of products – Whole Foods has these high quality products manufactured by reputable companies so they can offer them at a lower price. And the Eugene store is designed in a way where it’s also just a fun place to hang out when downtown – think family date with slices of wood-burned oven pizza in their eating area, happy hour at their bar offering local brews, or trying out one of the local businesses housed within Whole Foods: Ellenos Real Greek Yogurt offering fresh yogurt and smoothies (it’s ridiculously good), or a cup of Wandering Goat coffee. When you visit, you’ll also find that there are very well educated team members available to answer your questions and make recommendations based on your interests or needs. ![]() Currently, Heng Ou’s book, The Essential Art of Nourishing the New Mother motivates me. Ou highlights some of those “trendy” foods we’ve been hearing about, such as bone broth and turmeric, that have been nourishing people for centuries but are currently new again to us westerners. Listed below are a few of Ou’s favorite pantry items, all of which can be affordably found at Whole Foods. Click on links for detailed recipes, inspired by Ou.
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And…Whole Foods Eugene is giving away a $50 gift card to a GoMomGo Reader! So awesome! To enter: Comment on this post with what you love about Whole Foods (if you've been there) or what interests you in Whole Foods if you haven't been yet. You can also enter on our Facebook page & share for more entries. Giveaway winner will be announced on Sunday, January 1, 2017 at noon. Happy New Year, right? Hooray!
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News flash: It's September! I feel like this grants me full license to turn my oven back on after giving it a nice long summer vacation. I miss baking during the hot months and am super excited to get back into the swing of things like muffins, cookies, and other things I find on Pinterest and then attempt and ruin. However, today is NOT about the various recipes I have uncovered from the depths of the interwebs that have turned out to be less than spectacular. Today is about one of my family's all time favorite breakfast treats. It's a meal that involves cinnamon, jam, and turning on the oven. It calls for steel cut oats (They're easy to find! Don't be afraid!) And best of all, it can be prepped at night, baked the next morning, and one 9 x13 dish serves my family of four for at least two breakfasts. So...hooray for not having to use your brain in the morning. Here we go! Baked Oatmeal Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. You're going to need two bowls - one big and one medium. Let's start with the big bowl. This is going to be all dry ingredients, and it doesn't matter what order you add them. Just throw them in. - 2 1/2 cups regular rolled (old fashioned) oats * I used quick cooking oats once because that's all I had, and it really didn't turn out as nicely. The consistency was rather soupy and my four year old was not a fan. So sub at your own risk! - 1/2 cup steel cut oats (you can find these in the bulk section at Winco)- 2 tsp baking powder- 1/2 tsp salt- 1/2 tsp cinnamon Stir that up. Here we go for the medium bowl. Again, order doesn't matter. - 2 cups milk- 1 beaten egg- 1/3 cup applesauce- 1/4 cup brown sugar- 1/4 cup honey- 1/2 cup oil (I like to use coconut oil) * A note on the coconut oil - it doesn't matter if your oil is solid. It will melt in the oven. It will make the mixture look really weird and gloppy right now, but it will be okay. Trust me. Now take the bowl of wet ingredients and add it to the bowl of dry ingredients. Stir it up. It will look really wet and unappetizing. You'll think you've done something wrong. Don't panic! The oats will soak up all that liquid. And if your oil is solid, it will melt. Grease a 9 x 13 pan. Pour in the glop! Bake it for 20 minutes. Pull it out and add in: - 2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries * If you're using frozen berries, there's no need to defrost them or anything. Stick it back in the oven and bake it for another 20 minutes. By the end, it should look pretty set as well as nice and brown. When it's done, pull it out and let it sit for a few minutes so it can make your whole house smell delicious. Now comes an important detail: when it's time to eat, you MUST put the following two additions on the top of your oatmeal: - strawberry jam- plain yogurt (I think Greek is best) The jam and the yogurt make it unbelievably sweet and creamy and just plain fantastic. Not everyone thinks so (like my big kid) so just dish everyone up a bowl and then put the yogurt and jam out on the table so that each person can help themselves. Store leftovers in the fridge. They heat up really nicely in the microwave the next day. Or after bedtime as a treat. I won't tell. I realize that the way I type recipes isn't super cook friendly. I ramble waaaay too much. So here is a picture of the actual recipe, in a 100% guaranteed easy to read fashion: Nice, right? Super professional and classy. Three more thoughts:
One last thing!
Here are two articles that I have found to be extremely helpful in thinking through what I want our family mealtime to look like. For a while there when my son was about three, mealtimes were the most stressful time of the day. It was a battle every. single. time. And it sometimes still is! But these two articles (plus lots of great advice from more experienced parents) really helped me be intentional about nailing down what works for our family. Will these articles be applicable to every family? No way. But you might find them interesting. This one is on kids serving themselves - so instead of me putting oatmeal in a bowl and then topping it with jam and yogurt, and then giving it to my kiddo, I put all three things on the table and let him put his own food in his bowl. We've been letting my four year old serve himself since he was about two, and I think it really is awesome. Is your kid as resistant to trying new foods as mine is? I hope not. It is a FIGHT. And it's so weird - he would try ANYTHING that we put in front of him, and usually enjoy it and eat more - until he turned about 3.5. Then it was abruptly all over. Now he takes one look at something new and flat out refuses to taste it, often throwing in an insulting jab at how gross it looks. It is beyond frustrating. So then we tried doing a "Sam I am" bite (from Dr Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham) - he had to take one bite of everything new and then if he didn't like it he didn't have to eat it. But soon even that became a struggle. Arguing over one simple bite (which never resulted in him enjoying the food and requesting more) became the focus of our meals. But this article advocates a "you don't have to eat it" approach. We've been doing this for about six months now, and I'm not kidding - it is awesome. This article is totally worth the read. Please please pretty please let me know if you try this oatmeal! I promise you will get rave reviews from your people about how fabulously tasty it is. Hooray! Happy (Kitchen) Adventuring! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Megan Defferding is the mom to two super fun boys who love to find great stuff to do all around Lane County! Check out her blog series, Happy Adventuring, weekly on GoMomGo. Well, true to form, the Oregon weather has proved to be a fickle friend once again. This week is forecasted to be rainy all the way through, so we better put away our swim suits and sunscreen and start pondering how many games of UNO we can play before our eyeballs fall out of our heads in boredom. So besides UNO, what does one do with small children when you are home and not wanting to spend a ton of money? I mean, we love open gyms and such as much as the next family, but contrary to my preschooler's belief, we can't just go to the bank and get "tons and tons of monies for free." Well, one of our go-to activities is baking. Now, I realize that baking isn't exactly free, nor is it entirely wise for the waistline. However. I have strong arguments in favor of you making these cookies pronto. 1. They will make your house smell so good. Like a factory with little elven cookie makers bustling around. 2. You can use up those brown bananas that are sitting on your counter (don't deny it). 3. Baking is great language, math, and fine motor practice for your little helpers. 4. This recipe makes a TON of cookies - I get 56 - so they're fun to share. Like Pete the Cat says, "sharing is cool." 4. Because you get to eat them at the end. End of story. Banana Bread Cookies (Don't like banana bread? I promise you'll like these cookies anyway.) In a large bowl, cream together: 1 cup butter, softened (that's two sticks) 1 cup packed brown sugar When that's mixed together, go ahead and add: 1 cup mashed ripe banana (about 2 bananas - please don't measure this. Just mash them up.) 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Okay so that gross looking stuff in the tupperware? That's what bananas look like after they've been in the fridge or freezer. If they're in your fruit basket and are looking pretty sorry, either peel them and put them in the fridge for a day or so, or else peel them, chop them into bite size pieces, and throw them into the freezer. Once they're frozen they're easy to pull out to bake with, and also great for smoothies! Also, I used to make these with all white flour. Now I do half white and half whole wheat. I 100% promise you can't tell the whole wheat is in there. Plus you can eat way more cookies because they're super healthy now. Right? Hooray! Mix again. Then add: 2 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt Yes. Keep mixing. Now, some people are fancy and mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl before adding them to the wet stuff. That's great, if you like to wash lots of dishes. Me? I'm lazy, and just add the dry stuff right in. No problemo. Last but not least! Throw in: 1 cup chopped walnuts 2 cups oatmeal (I prefer quick) 2 cups chocolate chips Mix those puppies right up. Its taken you like 10 minutes so far, amiright? So worth it. And if you're tricky you have only dirtied a few things, so you win the smart cook award. Okay, time to bake. If you have some, use parchment paper on your cookie sheets. This stuff is miraculous because you don't have to grease the cookie sheet, the cookies will slide right off, and then you get to throw away the paper when you're done. (Also, it leaves your cookie sheets so clean that you don't have to wash them afterwards. I won't tell.) Oh, and you can reuse that parchment paper - this is good because it's sort of expensive. Plop the dough down in about tablespoon-ful size lumps. Using a scoop is so handy for this. Go ahead and put the cookies pretty close together on the sheet. They won't rise or spread much. Bake at 375 for 9 or 10 minutes. If you like your baked goods on the well done end of things, go ahead and leave em in for a few minutes longer. Be sure to eat them warm, because oh my word. You'll be glad you did. Also, if you want to be crazy, you can freeze some cookies and then have an easy snack to pull out and make happy tummies. You can freeze the cookies after you bake them, which is easy. Just put them in a ziplock bag and toss em in. Or, you can put the cookie sheet in the freezer before you bake it, but after you've plopped the dough down. Freeze them like this for a few hours, and then you'll have little raw cookies. Take them off the sheet and throw them in a ziplock bag. Don't forget to write the baking directions on the bag. Then one day you'll be wishing for a treat because your littles are behaving like wild things, and you'll remember that you can have fresh cookies in just a few minutes, thanks to your excellent planning skills. Please don't feel the need to share the cookies with your wild things. Give them carrot sticks or something. Happy Adventuring! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Megan Defferding is the mom to two super fun boys who love to find great stuff to do all around Lane County! Check out her blog series, Happy Adventuring, weekly on GoMomGo. Is it just me, or is feeding your family just SO MUCH WORK? Every morning, they wake up, and they want to eat. So I make food, and then I clean it up. Then we repeat the drill every two hours or so. Then, finally, at the end of the day, right around 5 pm, when I feel like I am going to melt into a puddle of desperate exhaustion - they have the audacity to demand yet more food. And every night, I'm like, are you even kidding me right now?!? So clearly, I have zero suggestions for supper solutions. Look elsewhere for your meal time magic. However. Snacks? I've got a snack that makes at least the eating times between the actual meals an absolute breeze. Are you ready for this? ![]() The Best Granola Bars Of All Time - Chewy, No-Bake Goodness These handy little guys are so great to have around for quick and easy grab on the go snacks. They freeze really well, so I always make a double batch. That way I can have one to chop up, put in baggies, and throw straight in the freezer. Pull them out and in a few minutes they will thaw and be ready to go. The recipe below is for one batch, which makes 16 bars in a 9 by 13 pan. All that being said, I wouldn't exactly call these a health food. They're similar to the Quaker Oats Chewy Granola Bars. Maybe not super low calorie or whatever, but really, really tasty. Here's what you're going to need: 2 1/2 cups Rice Krispies 1 1/4 cups oatmeal (I like quick best) 1/4 cup ground flax seed OR wheat bran OR additional oats 1/2 cup honey 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup peanut butter (if you avoid nuts, Sunbutter works fine here) 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 cup chocolate chips Directions: First. This recipe only takes about 15 minutes to throw together, which is awesome. However, it's not a great one to do with littles. Most of it is done on the stovetop, and you need to work sort of quickly at the end. So, there ya go. 1. Dump the first 3 ingredients into a big bowl. That last one? Flax seed OR wheat bran OR additional oats? Doesn't matter what you choose. You're the boss. I just use whatever I've got - usually flax. If you happen to have wheat germ, or oat bran - any of these will work. Probably nutritional yeast too? Whatever. Stir em up. 2. In a small pot on the stove, mix the next 3 ingredients. Let them melt together over medium heat. It will take some time - keep a close eye on it and stir it pretty often. 3. Once it starts to boil, set the timer for 2 minutes. Stir and boil until the timer beeps. Don't cut corners here. There's something about the boiling that helps the bars stick together. 4. After the required 2 minutes, take the pot off the heat and stir in the peanut butter and the vanilla. Now here's the deal with the peanut butter. Measuring it is sort of a pain. So I...don't. I seriously hold up the measuring cup and eyeball it. Trust me, it will be fine. 5. Dump the honey mixture in the bowl with the dry ingredients and stir it all up. Keep stirring until everything is evenly coated. 6. Wait about 3 or 4 minutes to let the mixture cool, and then mix in the chocolate chips. Don't wait too long, or it will cool too much and it will all have a hard time sticking together. 7. Pour the mixture into a greased 9 by 13 pan. Want to use cooking spray? Go for it. Want to put your hand in a baggie and dip it into butter and smear it around in the pan? That works too. It's also more fun. ALSO! If you want to, you could use muffin tins, mini muffin tins, or even a melon baller/cookie dough scoop to make these into whatever shape your heart desires. Again, you're the boss 8. Use your hand (the baggie! Use the baggie!) to press the mixture firmly and evenly into the pan. Really press it. The goal is to get it all to stick together so that the granola bars don't fall apart. 9. After about an hour, you can cut and eat them. So tasty. Kids love them. Adults love them. You are now a snack time winner. Okay one last thought - this recipe is based on one I got from a little website you may have heard of called Pinterest (aka How to Spend an Hour of Your Precious Time Feeling Like a Failure) (kidding - sort of). Here are my two big tips for using recipes from blogs:
1. Read the recipe ALL THE WAY THROUGH. I can't tell you how many times I've started a recipe and then realized that it has to be refrigerated for 3 hours before serving, or that the beans need to be soaked overnight, or something else random that means I can't serve it when I thought I was going to. 2. Read ALL of the comments. Even if there are a hundred or more. Wasting time or ingredients is so very frustrating, and sometimes there are super helpful comments that can save you that trouble. Okay, please let me know if you try these! I bet you will love them! Happy Adventuring! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Megan Defferding is the mom to two super fun boys who love to find great stuff to do all around Lane County! Check out her blog series, Happy Adventuring, weekly on GoMomGo. So Christmas is in one week. ONE WEEK. Did that just blow your mind, or am I the only one? I really feel like it's like, September. What on earth? Anyway. Let's pretend that you are in need of a last minute gift. Which I'm sure you're not, because you're way more prepared than I am. Or let's pretend that you need an activity to do with your kiddos because it's freezing outside and if you have to answer one more question about elves or reindeer or what a virgin has to do with Jesus your head will explode into a million tiny pieces. Ahem. I have a solution that will solve both these scenarios. Two birds with one stone and such. You make granola. You make granola, and everyone is occupied for at least 30 minutes, and your house smells lovely, and you're rewarded with a yummy snack that you may or may not eat by yourself in your closet while your kids watch Caillou's Christmas. Here's how it's going to go down: Recipe adapted from Cookiesandcups.com *1/2 cup butter (one stick) melted *1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp brown sugar (weird, I know, but follow directions!) *1/2 cup honey *4 cups corn flakes, crushed (also weird. Go with it.) *5 cups old fashioned oats *1 cup raisins *2 cups sweetened flaked coconut *1 cup nuts (I like almonds) *1 tsp salt (don't be stingy here. Salt = taste bud happiness) *1 beaten egg white 1. Preheat your oven to 300. Melt the butter in the microwave in a small bowl and then add the brown sugar and honey. It will look a little funny, like it's not all mixed. But that's okay. Hint: spray your honey measuring cup with non-stick spray before you measure, and all the honey will come out easily. Another hint: this local honey is THE BEST HONEY IN ALL OF THE LAND AMEN. You can get it at Hentze Farm out in Junction City. But Hentze closes on Christmas Eve, and doesn't reopen until June 1. So hurry! Get thee to Hentze! Important: don't throw away the butter wrapper. Trust me on this. Also: Don't put that bowl in the dirty pile - you can reuse it to beat the egg white. 2. Fill a big Ziploc baggie not quite half full with corn flakes. That usually equals out to be four cups-ish when they're all crunched up. Squish as much air out of the bag as you can, and enlist your children to beat the tar out of the bag in order to crush the flakes. End goal should look like this: 3. In your biggest bowl, dump the corn flakes, oats, raisins, coconut, nuts, and salt. Stir it up 4. Pour the butter mixture into the bowl and stir and stir and stir. It will look like nothing's happening, and you will ask yourself if there is possibly enough liquid to cover all the dry stuff. Don't ask these questions. Just keep stirring. It won't look very different. See? 6. Line a 15x11 baking sheet with parchment paper or tin foil, and then dump the contents of the bowl onto the baking sheet. 7. Here comes that butter wrapper! Use it to press the mixture down evenly into the baking sheet. No dirty hands! Gold star for you! Now you can throw it away. 8. Bake for 20-25 minutes and do not, under any circumstances, stir it. When it's done, pull it out of the oven and let it sit for at least 6 hours. This helps it to get crunchy and irresistible. Cover it with a towel or something so that you don't have to stare at it's golden goodness all day. 9. Eat it. It will keep in a container for two weeks, no problem. But good luck getting it to last that long. At our house, we eat it with milk (like a bowl of cereal), or dry by the handful, or over yogurt. It also works as a yummy streusel topping for muffins or banana bread or whatever. The end. You're welcome for the super high quality cell phone pictures. This is really a great recipe to make with littles. There are lots of chances to measure and dump and stir, which is so fun. Also, baking with littles is a wonderful time to discuss math concepts such as more, less, and equal. Dumping ingredients into the bowl offers great counting practice, and kitchen time is always helpful for new vocabulary words. I like to go over the recipe one last time before we put it in the oven and ask my little if we added everything - "Did we put in the oats? The salt? The honey? The elephant?" He thinks it's hilarious every time, and I'm reassured that my preschooler still thinks I'm funny. Whew. Now if you want to (reluctantly) give some granola away as a gift, here's a pretty way to do it: Go to St. Vincent de Paul and buy a mason jar. They're 49 cents. Once I was at the Seneca location and the guy tried to charge me 99 cents. That did not go over well. Bonus points if you find a wide mouth jar. You'll have to buy new bands and lids, which you can get at Bi-Mart or Freddy's or pretty much anywhere. Put the granola inside the jar (after you wash it for pity's sake, ewww) and if you're fancy, put a bow on it. Voila! A gift that anyone with a mouth will be thankful for. Please let me know if you try this! The Essentials Time Frame: hands on work time - 30 minutes-ish. Bake time - 20-25 minutes. Rest time - 6 hours. Where: your kitchen! But you should probably buy the ingredients at the store. Public service announcement: all the dry stuff is cheapest in the bulk section of Winco! Mess Factor: the stirring can get a little out of control, so help your littles to stir slowly. Also, eating it is super messy, so I suggest sending your little outside when it's time to eat, unless you want your floor to look like this: Oh gosh, it's so cold, I'm kidding about sending them outside. Sort of.
Happy Adventuring! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Megan Defferding is the mom to two super fun boys who love to find great stuff to do all around Lane County! Check out her blog series, Happy Adventuring, every Wednesday on GoMomGo. |
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