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!

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??

cutting down on cow's milk

So far, I seem to be meeting my 6 cup a day goal for water!
Our family has always consumed large amounts of dairy every day. While I don't think that we will or even should cut it out entirely, I would definitely like to cut down.
We used to buy about 4 bags (equal to approx. 4 gallons) of milk each week! I probably drank more than anyone else in our family. We have been going through maybe one bag a week now. We have all been drinking more water recently. When I want a glass of milk, I am now making myself drink a glass of water first and then if I still want the milk then I will have some. Usually, I don't end up drinking the milk.
Also, I made some rice milk a few days ago and the kids seem to like it, especially Ethan. It is much cheaper than cow's milk and if I started making it with brown rice it would be quite healthy as well. I would highly recommend making your own, if you plan to drink rice milk. Canola oil is one of the first ingredients in commercial rice milk. When you make your own you would obviously eliminate that and you also have control over the other ingredients that go in it. I found a variety of recipes with quite a range over how much rice you should put in. I ended up doing this:

RICE MILK
1 cup cooked rice
4 cups pure water
approx 1 tsp vanilla
approx 1 tbsp brown sugar

Blend together for 1-2 minutes. I have a Vitamix (a high speed blender) and do not need to strain it, but if you have a regular blender you may need to strain it before you drink it.

Another area that really has been helping is eating less cold cereal. We have always eaten cereal for breakfast, so this is a really hard one to get away from. I have found some oatmeal recipes that I have been trying, my favourites are ones that I can prepare the night before, so I don't have to cook anything in the morning! I will add those recipes this week hopefully. When we have oatmeal, we don't need milk. When we have cereal, the boys seem to want rice milk now. So we have cut down to about a quarter of the cow's milk consumption that we used to have!
Now to do something about the cheese and yogurt!