Laepple Organic Farm

On Thursday, we took a drive and picked a whole order of beef- close to 700lbs! We split it with my inlaws and Perry's brothers family. Organic grass fed beef is quite a reasonable price when you buy it in larger quantities. We also got some wheat berries and spelt/rye berries. Here are some pictures.

cooking spray

Did you know that there is isobutane and propane in cooking spray???? I just found this out recently. I won't be using cooking spray anymore...
Alternatives:
-oil/butter and a napkin
-a manual oil sprayer that you can put your own oil in
Both of these would be much cheaper and healthier!

vita-mix

I love, love, love my Vita-Mix. We bought ours at Cost-co about 2 1/2 years ago. Perry wanted to stop at the demo to try the samples, and we watched the whole thing and then kept talking to the demonstrators afterwards. I was very reluctant, Perry really wanted it. I finally was sold by the fact that it cleans itself (it really does!) So we took home our new $400 appliance- can't you buy a fridge for less?
We didn't use it for anything other than fruit smoothies for a while. Then we stopped using it, then we'd use it for a while and stop again. Sometime last year, we started using it very regularly. We now use it for:
-smoothies (fruit and green smoothies)
-soup
-grinding flax seed
-mashing strawberries for jam
-fruit syrups
-raw truffles
-salad dressings
-chopping vegetables
-pancake batter
-cheese sauce (mixing and cooking)
-ice cream
-rice milk
-almond milk
-grinding rice flour
-peanut and almond butter
-spaghetti sauce
-and probably more that I can't think of right now!

In the future, I plan to use it for grinding wheat berries (when we buy a dry container) and making baby food. There are so many possibilities! Check out theVita-Mix site for info and awesome videos.

pudding

Here's a fun snack that takes no time at all and will help you get some fruit in. No need for a Vita-mix, any blender should work for this one.

Raw 'Pudding'

2-3 bananas
1/2-1 cup frozen blueberries
1 tbsp raw honey

Put in blender and process until smooth. If you add some ground flax, it will gel up a bit after about 10 minutes. I did this and preferred it without, but it might seem more of a pudding consistency with the flax.

Enjoy!

oatmeal

To cut down on the amount of breakfast cereal that we have been eating, I have been making oatmeal a few days a week. This also helps to cut out some dairy as well because we don't need milk for our cereal. Here are two of the recipes that I've made.
Apple Cinnamon Overnight Oatmeal
Baked Oatmeal
These recipes make a completely different kind of oatmeal. The second one is more like an oatmeal quick bread, while the first one is more like traditional oatmeal.
Substitutions that I made:
Overnight Oatmeal- I used 3 apples instead of 2
Baked Oatmeal- I used slightly less sugar, subbed plain or vanilla yogurt for half of the milk, added cinnamon and blueberries. You could also do an egg sub with 1 tbsp ground flax and 3 tbsp water.
I bought some steel cut oats this weekend, so now I just need some good recipes for those!

dairy

Here are some links about dairy:
Sustainable Table- talks about the history of dairy in North America
Milk Sucks-PETA- put very plainly, but may be more info than you'd like to know (although if we're eating/drinking it, we should know what IT is!)
International Dairy Federation-health reasons why you should drink milk
There are pretty good arguments on both sides. Even if dairy is healthy for us though, I'm not really sure I like the idea of animals that are treated so poorly just so I can eat/drink dairy products. For now, we'll continue to cut down on dairy and see where it takes us...

salad

My main goal for January is to drink a minimum of 6 cups of water a day. My secondary goal is to eat at least 5 salads a week, with homemade dressing.
Here's what I've made so far:

Fruit and Lettuce Salad with Orange Yogurt Dressing- this was sooo good! I used organic vanilla yogurt, sunflower seeds and added blueberries. The second time I forgot to add honey and it was just as good- probably because the vanilla yogurt is already sweetened. Oh- and I did not add any bacon. We all loved this salad and the kids were begging for more!

The other one I made was just a regular veggie salad, with homemade poppy seed dressing.

Poppy Seed Dressing (a Vita-Mix recipe)
1 cup cold water
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1 thin slice onion
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Place water, vinegar, onion, sugar, mustard, salt and cornstarch in Vita-Mix container. Secure lid. Select variable speed #1. Turn on machine and quickly increase speed to #10, then to high. Run for 1 minute. Reduce speed to variable #3. Remove lid plug . Add poppy seeds. Run for 5 seconds. Thicken over medium heat on the stove, whisking occasionally. Refrigerate in airtight container. Note: I actually used slightly less sugar and salt and it turned out fine.

I love my Vita-Mix! It is the most amazing kitchen appliance and well worth the money- as long as you use it!

Also, when you make things like salad dressing homemade, you really get a chance to see what is in it. Obviously, you are eliminating the chemicals and other unnecessary things, but do we really notice how much sugar and salt are in things until we make them ourselves??