What we're eating these days

I love it when friends post recipes on their blog. It makes me feel like if we were closer, I would have invited myself over to eat with them. If you're willing to step over the bird seed and wade carefully through the leaves in the carport, we're finally eating again and everyone is invited. (This reminds me, I need to write about our Christmas vacation.) We're eating better than we have before, digestively speaking.

1) We eat fresh eggs every day, thanks to the chicky chickens. They have been laying all through the winter, to my pleasant surprise. They take turns taking days off and we get 3-4 eggs a day. I usually fry one in olive oil for lunch and a kid or two will usually ask for one as well. A fun side note: I am starting to tell a difference in the eggs that each chicken lays. Rooster lays smaller oval eggs. Dorkas and Coopus lay larger, darker eggs. I'm not sure which is which, but either Eggy or Mrs. Bock lay speckled or pinkish eggs.

2) Walmart stopped selling Horizon Chocolate Milk. Without anything to bribe the children to stay in their beds at night, and because all the chocolate syrup I can find has artificial flavors or costs $6 for 16oz, I had to make my own. I'm a huge fan of Alton Brown and he has a recipe so I made this and canned it.

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups Dutch-processed cocoa
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup

In a small pot, bring water and sugar to a boil and whisk in cocoa, vanilla, salt, and corn syrup. Whisk until all of the solids have dissolved. Reduce sauce until slightly thickened. Strain and cool to room temperature.
(http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/cocoa-syrup-recipe/index.html)


3) At my friend Amy's suggestion, we're eating plain ole Cheerios off the floor. This was a secret plan to get Millie crawling. You make a trail of Cheerios and try to get Millie to follow it like Hansel and Gretel. We got a new carpet that no one has spilled milk or spit up, laid out the trail, and voila! It worked. Millie is crawling, thereby achieving her #1 new year's resolution.


4) Now this next pile of foods is going to sound bragadocious. But I don't have a lot of other accomplishments going for me right now so I'm going to write all this anyway. I've been baking quite a bit. Fresh bread boules, sour dough loaves, blueberry cornmeal muffins (thanks Andrea), cinnamon rolls, batman birthday trifles, chocolate chip cookie sandwiches...

5) There's bad news though. Our dietary changes this year have meant some losses and I'd like to take a minute in remembrance.

:( Chick Fil A is officially O-U-T of our diet. Since we went from eating there every week after church (that's right. After church. We go to church on Saturday night, you know.) to never again, I really miss it. But I think we're doing the right thing, and we're committed. The culprit here? Mainly TBHQ, a preservative. I've written Truett Cathy a letter, but he hasn't written me back OR changed any recipes.

:( Almond Joy Coffee Creamer is out. For a while I was happy drinking half and half with my coffee, but I'm trying to get skinny for Laura's wedding this summer and it also had to go. I'm now drinking 2% milk and one sugar cube.

:( Poptarts and mini-muffins from Sam's are out. I miss these a lot because on Silas' go-to-school days, they were so fast and easy. There are dye-fee, organic pop tart varieties, but no one likes them as much and even though I can bake nearly gourmet style muffins, no one is interesting in eating those out of the freezer. Lamentations.