Picky Kid Seal of Approval- homemade crackers

I've learned a lot about making crackers of the past couple months. I've learned that different flour combinations can really change the flavors. I've learned that in order to make them thin enough to get crispy (and not just hard) I need to roll them directly out on my counters with lots of flour.

Crackers also tend to go from "done" to "whoops, but these still taste good" to "uh oh, toss 'em" pretty quickly, so you have to watch them.

The biggest thing I've learned though, is that there are a million recipes out there on the web that promise to be like Cheez-its or Wheat Thins but that doesn't mean your kids will actually eat them.

I gave up for a few weeks because we got busy, and actually we've gotten sort of used to just not having crackers and pretzels around. I have been meaning to get back to it, because while I have no issues with sending the girls to school without that stuff, it sure makes packing snacks easier since they can't have nuts for snack time. While I have been trying to keep it all as lightly processed as possible, I will admit that I have super picky eaters. So I'm guilty of wanting to take the easy way out sometimes to get a little variety for them. For me, in this case, these crackers are the easy way out.

Anyway, on Saturday I mixed up some dough and stuck it in the fridge to wait until I had some time to rolle them out. It took just a few minutes in my food processor (that includes grating the cheese from the large block of cheese I had). In the future, btw, I think I'd use a sharper cheddar as opposed to the colby-jack mix I used. The colby-jack gave it a very cheesy flavor but I think the sharper tang of a sharp cheddar would make them even more like their processed counterparts. Otherwise this dough came together super easy and before I knew it, I had a flat disc of dough wrapped in the fridge and was washing the few dishes I used for it.

(please excuse my poor photography skills)

The best thing about these is that my two older daughters loved them (those of you who know us personally know that this is a Big Deal. The next best thing is that even though these are slightly higher in fat than the boxed ones, it's from REAL cheese and REAL butter. Obviously, you should still be observing proper portioning because even homemade snacks are still just that, snacks). Finally, the recipe makes just about the same amount as what comes in the box. 

If you attempt these at home, here are some tips:

Don't try to make them perfectly, it won't happen. Poke holes in them, I forgot on one batch and while they still tasted great, they were a little puffier. I used all whole wheat flour, but I'm sure you could play with that some if trying your own versions at home and if you try a gluten free version, I'd love to hear about it!****

Try to rotate out several cookie sheets because you will want to use cooled cookie sheets for each batch since they are so thin. I feel this is a great excuse for me to be able to buy some new ones, plus a few more silicone mats, right?

The biggest thing is to make sure you get them thin thin thin. I rolled them so thin I could see the dark of my countertops underneath (yes, I did it right on a clean countertop). This was the biggest change between this recipe and the past tests. I did NOT get those other ones thin enough. In the future I'll revisit a Wheat Thin copycat recipe and see if I can get it thinner. I'm also working on graham crackers (right now, my favorite is this one)


*** If you are interested,  here are some links to a gluten free recipe I Googled.
My field of Green - Gluten Free "Cheez-Its" - and FYI- that blog is adorable! She uses a rice flour and adds some xanthan gum and corn starch.

What I had for lunch

You know you're curious. How does she really eat?

This is sort of a typical lunch for me these days. I will eat little bites of lots of things based on what I'm feeling like and if I feel like having small bites of many things I do just that. I tend to do it 'salad style' on a bed of greens, depending on what sort of greens we have. My favorite are baby greens with kale and spinach. Baby greens just have such a mild flavor, and can easily be swapped for regular boring iceberg and romaine lettuce. Plus you've just upped your nutritional intake by quite a bit. Note: I typically tend to add the more mature greens like regular kale and spinach to cooked recipes, since their flavor seems to bit a bit stronger to me.

So, in the bowl above this is what I have for today:

- Mixed greens with spinach

- avocado mixed with Fage 0% plain yogurt, red onion, cilantro and lemon juice (avocados are so yummy and pretty cheap right now so this is something we've been doing a lot lately!)

-homemade roasted red pepper hummus

-leftover quinoa, cooked with vegetable broth

-raw zucchini, tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, and sugar snap peas (cut extras of these to have on hand, as I talked about here)

-on the side, in the pink bag I have half a red grapefruit and I am also having a tiny serving of reduced salt potato chips (not a normal purchase for us, but an occasional 'ok' type of thing, as long as the ingredient list is reduced to something like 'potatoes, safflower oil and salt')

- to drink I have water

What are you having for lunch today?

Tip of the Day: Dealing with Cravings

Cravings are something we pretty much all deal with. Men and women. Don't pretend you're immune to the pull of that bacon cheeseburger you've been thinking about. Or that piece of cheesecake that's been calling your name. Just admit it, everyone has them.

The question is always pretty simple: give in or not to give in? I don't know about you, but I give in. In fact, it's been a pretty key tool in my succeeding this time around with my healthier goals. I've never been very good at restricting my eating. Low carb? Forget that. No sugar? No thanks. I just can't tell myself there is any food that is OFF LIMITS. The minute I do, there is a big red OPEN sign over anything I've tried to restrict.

I tried to go gluten free a few summers ago, something my doctor suggested to aid in weight loss when dealing with a bum thyroid. I think I lasted 3 weeks, got past the detox and was feeling pretty good but I just couldn't deal with all the 'no-no' foods.  I realize there are many reasons people just have to do dietary restrictions. It can be required for all sorts of health issues. I think for some of us though, it can spell disaster when trying to over-restrict.

The lucky thing today is that there are so many ways around a lot of those restrictions, if you're willing to put in the work at home. If you can't find some finger-lickin' chicken strips that cater to the celiac crowd, you can make them at home, probably tastier than at your favorite restaurant. By the way, I've done this with Bob's Gluten Free All Purpose Flour and they were fantastic.

The point is, you can have your cake and eat it too. And you should eat it, if it's something you've been thinking about. Better to eat a reasonable piece now, than the whole cake later.

I think that for me, the trick is to make sure I'm not setting myself up for failure. I buy just one peanut butter cup (or a twin pack to share) as opposed to a bag of miniature ones. Heck, that would set my whole family up. Also, many of the foods we tend to crave, I make at home instead of eating out, using healthy ingredients. Pizza is no longer a bad word in this house. It's a great way for me to deliver a healthy dose of veggies to my kids. We eat it several times a week, actually.

What was your last craving and how did you handle it? Me? I wanted a chocolate croissant. My compromise? I stuffed some whole grain french toast with low-fat cream cheese and Justin's Hazelnut chocolate butter. So good and it was exactly the melty chocolate-y filling that I wanted. Dusted with a little 'powdered sugar' (raw cane sugar ground up in my coffee grinder) and a little melted butter and it really hit the spot.

The Clumsy Housewife Tip of the Day

Here is a great tip to keep snacks and makings for healthy meals on hand all the time. When you are already preparing vegetables for meals, cut up extra to have on hand for snacking. 

I know that we are much more likely to reach for carrots if they are already peeled and cut up. My kids and I don't care for the baby carrots. Something about the flavor and texture of them. The whole carrots just seem sweeter to us, but they are more work to prepare. 

This works for whatever veggies you prepare, whether it's zucchini or yellow squash (pretty yummy when eaten raw and dipped in ranch or hummus), cucumber, carrots and peppers.. all kinds of things. Plus, if I have to cut onion tonight I'd rather cut the entire onion (or two) up and have them ready to go if I know I need them again tomorrow. Actually, we're enjoying the avocados available right now, so having pre-cut onions for a quick guacamole is super convenient and easy. 

That also puts them within reach to make quick salads and lunches to go. 

This might seem like a really no-brainer. However, sometimes I go for weeks without doing it at home and I always notice I snack on vegetables less during that time. 

Is there something you do to simplify your routine for making meals and snacks? 

Get on your feet..

So I've written a lot about nutrition so far but I haven't really touched on exercise at all. Considering that for me, this is probably the biggest change I've made, perhaps it should have been the first thing I wrote about.

I have thyroid disease. In the past I've always complained about not being able to lose weight because of it. I'm not always super active, but in the past I've had some commitment to working out 3-4 times a week with cardio and strength training. When I don't lose weight doing that, and eating healthy I assume it's my thyroid wreaking havoc on my metabolism. This causes me to get frustrated and just give up.

So when I first bought the Fitbit, which really motivated me to get that step number as high as possible everyday, imagine my surprise when Ah ha!! It worked! One thing I realized is that I wasn't as active as a mom as I thought. Don't get me wrong, I'm on the go a lot. Eh, but it's a lot of standing and cooking or driving here and there. Or sitting and doing homework, reading, doing puzzles, playing legos. Even laundry is sort of standing and folding. Which doesn't exactly get the heart rate going.

This is when I started my early morning walks, which turned out to be quite therapeutic for me. I also started parking as far out as I could whenever I did have to drive anywhere. I'm still pretty amazed at the changes I started seeing. I had more energy, and I was sleeping so much better at night! No more laying around for 20-30 minutes+ while I tried to fall asleep. I also found that I had no interest anymore to sit and watch tv. I am always too antsy to get moving.

I also started adding in some cardio at the gym. I tend to stick with the elliptical because I have trust issues with my knees. Once I did some research I realized that it wasn't my knees I needed to have a conversation with, it was my hips and the muscles around my knees. So a quick search on the interwebs and I had some exercises I could do that added in some strength training and core training.

Before I knew it, that 60 days and 10lbs were long gone and I was ready to head to Jamaica. Feeling great, full of energy and excited about where I was at. Not to mention that it was fun to get the girls involved. Having dance parties and bowling challenges on the wii and xbox, and going for long walks to visit some of the other play structures in our neighborhood have been a lot of fun for all of us. Grace gets a kick out of asking me how long it's been since I had soda (for awhile we were tracking it in weeks but now it's months).

In some ways, it was really hard. It was hard to give up soda. That first week was a killer. It was hard cutting back on coffee, but now my one a day is like a serious treat. I still pass by fast food places and think how good that might taste. In other ways though, it was really easy. Once I saw how great I was feeling and how strong I was getting, it made it that much easier to drive past the coffee and fast food drive thru. Plus, when I do indulge I often don't feel so hot the next day.

Now, I know that everyone is different. Not everyone can do the same things and get the same results.

What are some goals you set and reached that have really excited you? Did you set new ones once you reached them?

Now that I've reached my goal weight, the next step for me is to try running. I'm also going to try CrossFit. I bought a groupon for a local place here for 5 classes. We'll see how I feel at the end of that 5 and then I'll decide if I want to keep doing it.

Clumsy Housewife Tip of the Day

I missed yesterday. I wanted so badly to post everyday in these early days of this blog but I assure you I wasn't just out having fun without you. I was sleeping. I woke up feeling 'off'. I didn't even drink my daily iced coffee. Yes, I felt that bad.

Whatever the issue, I felt well enough to post this morning so here I am! I was making myself breakfast this morning, trying to get some basic foods that wouldn't upset my stomach. I chose the stand-bys. Scrambled eggs, a piece of toast and a half a grapefruit (vitamin c!). Now if you *really* knew me you would know what is off about that breakfast. I don't eat grapefruit. What? Seriously though, I have always hated grapefruit. I thought. I mean, I sort of don't like them. I mean, ok, so I haven't even tried one. Probably ever. I really don't like them though. Or do I?

How many of you are guilty of that!! "I don't like that". Are you sure? Maybe it's time to give it another try.

As adults we all have foods we don't like. Spinach, cauliflower, cottage cheese, oatmeal, whatever. It could be anything. You had to eat salmon once as a child and you gagged on it and threw up so you don't like it now. Have you even tried it once since then?

So here is my tip of the day. If you're missing out on some really healthy variety because you 'don't like' certain foods, challenge yourself to try them again. Perhaps you don't like poached salmon. So try seared salmon. Maybe you 'hate' instant oatmeal. So try steel cut, and try it with some fun toppings (and if you can't think of any fun toppings, ask me!). Maybe you hate asparagus but your mom used to boil the heck out of them and they always ended up gray and mushy. Hey, whatever. I'm going to share some of my new tries. And yes, they don't always stick.

In the last two weeks, I've tried beets, turnips, grapefruit and sunflower butter (like peanut butter but with sunflower seeds, great source of protein). Two of these things turned out to be things that I really like. I still need to go back to the drawing boards with beets and turnips. Grapefruits and sunflower butter will probably become regular parts of my diet though.

SO there you go. Sometimes you might surprise yourself. Some of my favorite foods now are foods I swore I didn't like before. Just don't give up on a food. Remember what they tell us with our kids. It takes several tries to start liking a new food. That goes for us too, sometimes.

Clean eating can be a lot easier if you are willing to expand your choices for healthy foods.

Clumsy Housewife Chit Chat

I'm not perfect. I wish I was. Maybe that would be too boring though. Isn't that what they say? I probably would be boring if I didn't do things like let A eat pomegranate arils on the carpet. It wouldn't be nearly as exciting if I had all the laundry folded and put away and clean. What would I do with that extra 10 minutes every morning that I don't spend rifling through piles to get the girls clothes for school?

One thing I really would like to be a little less imperfect in is meal planning. I don't do it. At all. I'm pretty bad about waiting until 3 or 4pm before I really settle on dinner. I have a general idea of things I'd like to make during the course of the week, but I don't really have a schedule I keep.

We do ok, my fall back is lots and lots of veggies. I would love to get more organized with that though.  I think maybe I'll start small. Plan out 3 days in advance. Then once I get the hang of it, I'll go by the week. Maybe I'll get a little crazy and do some food prep on Sundays. Luckily, I think Pinterest is a great place to find ideas for meals.

Do you meal plan? What helps you stick to your plans?