Smoked Salmon Egg Bites

November 25, 2024November 25, 2024 Sarah

Expanding on the daily high-protein/low-carb egg bites I make for Kirk to grab when he is ready to break his fast, this time, I used smoked salmon for the protein. It turns out our 12-year-old son loves these. I cannot keep him out of them. No complaints about that; he needs the protein for growth.

Be wary when you buy smoked salmon, as every type but one has added sugar (be it sugar or honey), and the amount of added sugar is very high. Any smoked fish, including smoked trout, would work. Aim for 4 to 6 ounces of fish. But do read the ingredient list before you buy.

There are about 9 grams of protein per bite. Kirk is supposed to eat 6 of these as a serving, but that is a LOT of food. The boy and I eat 2 and are pretty satisfied.

Whether for breakfast, lunch or even as a protein snack, they can be eaten cold or warmed up for a minute in the microwave.

Smoked Salmon Egg Bites

Ingredients:

10 large eggs
1 cup egg whites
½ tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp granulated garlic
4-6 ounces smoked salmon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Line a 12-count muffin tin with parchment paper liners.

Whisk the eggs and egg whites well in a mixing bowl, then add salt and garlic.

Remove any skin from the salmon, discard, and then evenly break the salmon up between the tins.

Pour the egg mixture over the salmon, gently rapping the muffin tin to settle the eggs.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove, let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. Once cooled, transfer to a glass storage container and keep chilled.

Reheat for a minute or so to warm up.

Makes 12 egg bites.

~Sarah

Recipes

Bread Making: Bread Machine Fat Free White Bread

November 24, 2024 Sarah

I found a vintage late 80s bread machine recipe for “lean” white bread. That means no oil or fat was added. If we remember anything about dieting in the 80s-90s, it was all about being fat-free. It was/is a toxic lifestyle, for sure. My Aunt counted fat grams every day obsessively for years. It was not healthy for her at all.

However, even though I like a drizzle of fat in my bread recipes, I decided to try it out to see the texture. Fat is essential in bread, especially sandwich bread, because it helps keep it fresher for longer, and gives better texture – unless you are looking for a dryer, crusty bread.

And I was right for sure – this, while passable for bread, wasn’t one to celebrate. It has a bit of a gummy texture, though it slices well. But it is airy and dry all at once. Even a Tablespoon of oil makes a huge difference when baking in a bread machine.

It had the oddest crack in the center as if you could tear it into two loaves.

Fat-Free White Bread

Ingredients:

1¼ cups water
1½ Tbap granulated sugar
1½ tsp fine sea salt
360 + 120 grams all-purpose flour*
1½ tsp dry active yeast

Directions:

If using a Zojirushi bread machine, add the listed ingredients, ensuring the yeast is nestled into the flour. Only add the first 270 grams of flour.

Set the machine for a basic loaf.

When the kneading cycle starts, check on the dough and add in enough extra flour* so the dough isn’t sticky, and it clears the bread pan while kneading. I used about 120 grams of extra flour.

Once baked, remove it promptly and knock it out. Let it cool on a wire rack before enjoying it.

Store in a plastic bread bag, and eat within 24 hours for the best taste. It will get stale faster than most bread recipes but would also work well cut into cubes for stuffing. Cut it up and let it stale on the counter first.

If using a regular bread machine, follow the method for adding the ingredients (including using warm water).

Makes a 1½ pound loaf.

Note:

I found this loaf particularly hard to remove from the bread pan. It fused onto the kneading paddles. I used a plastic spatula to work the loaf out. That tiny bit of fat I add to bread makes a difference.

~Sarah

Recipes

Lower Sugar Oaties

November 22, 2024November 22, 2024 Sarah

If I want a treat, I must make it. Then, I can control the ingredients, especially the sugar content. Oatie cookies, being rich in oats, are a great way to do this. I used a keto-friendly “honey” to cut back most of the sugar in the recipe.I used Choc Zero’s monkfruit “honey”. You can substitute sugar-free maple syrup and regular maple syrup as well.

They are not sweet cookies, but they satisfy my craving for carbs. No, this isn’t a keto friendly recipe due to containing wheat flour, but I am OK with that.

Large cookies

Smaller cookies

Lower Sugar Oaties

Ingredients:

¾ cup unsalted butter softened (1½ sticks)
½ cup sugar-free honey
¼ cup honey
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp fine sea salt
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°.

In a stand mixer bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add the honey and beat until creamy. Add one egg at a time and the vanilla. Scrape the bowl and beat until combined.

Add the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and oats in a small bowl.

Add to the wet ingredients and beat in.

Drop 12 2-tablespoon cookies on a large cookie sheet; make 12 1-tablespoon cookies on a second cookie sheet. (Or three dozen 1 Tablespoon cookies)

Bake the smaller cookies for 10 – 12 minutes and the larger ones for 12 to 14 minutes. The cookies should be golden brown and set on top, but don’t overbake.

Let cool on trays to finish setting up, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Once cooled, store tightly sealed.

Made 12 big and 12 small cookies.

Note:

The cookies freeze well for school lunches. I made the small ones for this reason.

~Sarah

Bioengineered Foods · Clean Living · MAHA

Make America Healthy Again: The Diet Conundrum

November 21, 2024 Sarah

RFK Jr. is a divisive topic in the United States. The mainstream media is attempting to discredit him, which makes me pause and ask, “Why?” Anytime I see legacy media try to derail a person or a topic that hard, I always question why. It’s not hard to guess the answer, though—legacy media relies heavily on advertising dollars. Two of the biggest are pharmaceutical companies and multi-national food companies. They would rather the USA doesn’t change that much. It’s quite profitable for both sides.

This has caused many liberals to declare how bad he is suddenly. To me, this is odd. Before the COVID years, the Crunchy Mamas were usually liberals. I wrote about this a while back, how it sent them into a fear-driven world where they suddenly wanted the safety of Big Pharma.

So, while RFK Jr may be divisive, he has plenty of good to say. MAHA. Make America Healthy Again. And I have been listening hard. I know we have things I can do so much better with in my life, in my family life. If I don’t put the effort in, who will?

Kirk and I have been working hard this fall to take our clean living much farther. I am not perfect by any means. Living a clean life sustainably and cooking everything from scratch is hard. It takes a lot of time daily, and it requires commitment. I take Kirk’s meal planning and adapt it to feed the boys (low carb/high protein for us, but I add a bit of carb for them). But it also requires me to make them bread from scratch and treats as well, for their lunch boxes. We’ve lived the “homestead life” but not fully. I own up to that. It’s easy to go to the store and buy a box of treats to put in their lunch boxes. To buy bagels to make sandwiches with.

I saw an article on CNN (pretty much anything they publish is bought propaganda these days) about the use of the newer “miracle” weight loss medications and how wrong RFK Jr. is on his stance. Yet, I understood what he was saying. While they criticized him, I wanted to scream, “He isn’t wrong!”.

What it was on was the now heavy use of those medications. Every day I am on social media, I am shown at least a DOZEN ads a day, on Instagram and Facebook, for various weight loss drugs. Touting how I could lose weight with barely any effort. For just $198 to $800 a month, out of pocket. In tiny font, a warning that the medications are made in compound pharmacies that are not FDA approved. That in itself was very troubling. Did I have enough trust in the safety? Where are these pharmacies? India? China? They constantly use the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy in the ads, but you are not getting that.

RFK Jr. said that these medications are not miracles. First, we must solve our problems to get sustainable, clean food in stores. We must help Americans work on their issues with food, learn to make wiser choices, remove BE (bioengineered) and GMO food, lower sodium and sugar dramatically, get rid of artificial colors and flavors, and use heavy preservatives—all the things that fill modern food in stores.

CNN, instead of saying, “Hey, this is a good idea,” doubled down with a quote from a medical professional: “Doctors who treat people with obesity suggest that fixing the food system shouldn’t be mutually exclusive with using weight-loss medications, when appropriate.”

So, instead of saying, “We need clean food and help people detox mentally from how they eat,” they’d rather have people taking medications.

The problem is that those medications are not sustainable. When they started coming out, I did look into them. Even $200 a month isn’t affordable. Even if one is wealthy, can you justify it? Will you change how you eat? How do you view food? What happens when a person taking them can no longer afford it? Or do they have side effects that make it so they must stop taking it?

The weight will come back. That is medically confirmed. Will that crush them mentally?

But you haven’t healed your issues with food.

I know I have a lot of issues with food. I grew up in abject poverty, where we didn’t always have enough food. And when we did have food, it was often dull and bland due to my Dad. So when I taste commercially processed food, it does something to my brain. Is it the high sugar? I often wonder. Or is it the intense flavors that food science creates? I don’t know, but when I eat food like this, I cannot turn off the desire to keep eating. It’s been that way for at least the last 30 years of my life. Chips, crackers, pastries, even lattes. It tastes so good you just want more. I smoked cigarettes when I was in my teens and early 20s, and stopping smoking was incredibly easy. One day, I had my last smoke and threw the pack away. I have never craved them. Same with alcohol. I quit drinking in general years ago. But sugar? Highly processed food? Shopping has become so hard. On a trip this week to the store, all I bought was dairy, produce, and meat. I realized I could not go down the aisles anymore. I will buy things I shouldn’t eat. I felt like a pathetic addict.

I have paid for it by repeatedly gaining weight. In late 2019, I lost three clothing sizes and have kept them off (I did it through exercise). But I am still too heavy. I wear a size 14 in general (it depends on the brand), but I’d like to be a size 10 to 12 to help my varicose veins return under my skin again. So that I don’t have the aches of “getting older”.

It’s tempting to listen to those ads and take the medication. Because I’d get there faster, it would block the cravings. But then I ask myself: Is it worth it? What happens if I get a frozen stomach or nausea from them? Because I HAVE to conquer the addiction part now.

Instead, I remind myself to work out with Kirk, do some cardio, and start weight lifting again to strengthen myself. I also remind myself to keep cooking all our food with simple, clean ingredients.

To opt out of the system.

I won’t judge you, though. If you feel the medication is worth it, I will support you. But we have to heal our food system. It is destroying our country.

~Sarah

Bioengineered Foods · Recipes

Bread Machine Recipes To Get You Going

November 20, 2024 Sarah

Do you own a bread machine that sits hidden, sadly unused, because you don’t have easy-to-pull-together recipes to use?

You might be shocked (or not) that for many bread machine owners, this is their reality. You might be lucky with most brands to get a couple of “starter” recipes with your machine in a tiny booklet. In the 90s, my mom was gifted a tiny bread machine, and bread mixes were all the rage. They are still sold in stores, near the cake mixes, and online, and the price for a single loaf is ridiculous! It’s often $10 a loaf or more. You might as well go to a fancy bakery and buy an artisan loaf at those prices.

Unlike most machine owners, I use our Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker multiple times weekly.

If I buy commercially made bread from the grocery store, it often sits until it’s hard and stale, and then the chickens enjoy pecking at it. I do not like buying commercially made bread due to the ingredient list as well. A simple white bread is nothing more than water, a bit of olive oil, avocado oil or butter, salt, yeast, and flour, maybe a bit of sugar or honey.

You don’t need bread, which uses cheap oil (soybean oil is from GMO/BE soybeans), vinegar for long life, dough conditioners, or mold inhibitors. And far too many brands use worse options.

This is a “simple homestyle” bread sold commercially by Franz Bread in the PNW of the US.

ENRICHED UNBLEACHED WHEAT FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR), WATER, SUGAR, YEAST, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING: VITAL WHEAT GLUTEN, SALTED BUTTER (MILK), HONEY, SOYBEAN OIL, SALT, DISTILLED VINEGAR, DOUGH CONDITIONERS (SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, ASCORBIC ACID), CALCIUM PROPIONATE (MOLD INHIBITOR), ENZYMES.

There are many “extras” we just don’t need, especially if we have a machine to help us. The beauty of bread machines is that they do the hard work, and it is nearly hands-off. I spend about 5 minutes getting the ingredients and a couple of minutes watching the first knead. And then magically have fresh bread in a couple of hours.