Healthy Eating | Happy Simple Living

11 Easy to Grow Vegetable Seeds You Can Direct Sow Now and Enjoy an Organic Harvest this Summer

By eliza_cross, on May 10th, 2012%

Radishes in the garden from Happy Simple Living

Photo by Jeremy Bronson

If you never got around to starting any seedlings this spring and now you’re fretting about the expense of buying vegetable plants at the garden center, fear not! Many vegetable seeds can be sown directly in the dirt, where they’ll happy germinate and provide you with a nice harvest. Here’s a list of easy-to-grow vegetables (most of which prefer full sun) that you can plant from seed now:

Beans – pole beans and bush beans are easy to grow, and if you harvest them regularly they’ll keep producing.
Beets – grow in loose, moist soil.
Corn – easy to grow if you have a large garden plot; corn needs lots of space.
Cucumbers – bush or vining varieties are both easy to grow, and give them plenty of water so they don’t get bitter.
Lettuce – plant now! Lettuce prefers cooler temps. If you sow some seeds every week or two, you’ll have a constant supply of fresh lettuce.
Melons – grow well in hot, dry weather but like lots of water. To avoid crossbreeding, plant melons away from pumpkins, cucumbers and squash.
Onions – less expensive than buying onion sets, be sure to buy onion seeds suited for your climate and amount of sun. Onions store well, making them and especially economical crop.
Peas – plant now! Peas prefer cooler temps. If it’s already hot in your area, try planting peas in the fall.
Radishes – like to be grown in moister soil.
Spinach – especially easy to grow. Plant in full sun or part shade.
Squash – zucchini is an easy, prolific plant for beginners to grow, especially if you have lots of friends who like zucchini!

If the danger of frost has passed in your area, prepare your garden bed and amend the soil if needed. Plant the seeds on a calm day at the depth specified by the grower and top gently with a layer of fine soil.

Need a great source for your seeds? These are some of my favorite companies, and they all offer non-hybrid, heirloom varieties:

Happy planting, and I’d love to hear what you’ve got growing in your gardens right now!

A Letter to the Meat Industry

By eliza_cross, on May 8th, 2012%

Photo by Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden

Yesterday I read an article on the PR news site Bulldog Reporter about the meat industry’s “image crisis.” From the public outcry against “pink slime,” to a recent incident of mad cow disease in a dairy cow, to the Harvard study released this spring that suggests eating meat could lead to premature death, this spring has been a PR practitioner’s nightmare.

According to the LA Times article cited in the story, “beef historian and author Maureen Ogle believes the industry should have responded by running polished advertisements featuring ranchers touting their American heritage, as well as billboards proclaiming the safety of products, and executives should have been sent to major talk shows, she said.”

As a PR professional myself, I politely beg to disagree. I don’t think the meat industry has an image crisis that calls for a more polished public relations response. The meat industry has a listening crisis. The reason the media is filled with so much negative news is because the U.S. meat industry is not hearing its customers.

We are a household that still eats meat. I try to purchase from local producers who use organic feed, let animals graze, and treat them humanely, but like most people, sometimes I’m trying to live within the budget or I’m in a hurry and I purchase supermarket meat. I find that our family is moving to an increasingly vegetarian diet for many reasons – not the least of which is our distaste for much the U.S. meat industry’s standard practices. Your feelings may be different, of course, but here’s what I wish the meat industry would hear:

We don’t want animals suffering in fetid feedlots or stuffed in crowded cages – not at any cost. We want humane treatment of animals raised for food production.
We humans don’t want to have to forgo antibiotics when we’re sick, because of your continued overuse in the meat industry. (Factory farm animals consume 80% of all antibiotics in this country. The European Union curtailed use of routine antibiotic use on farms in 2006.)
We don’t want you to pump these animals full of hormones like rBGH to induce quick growth. Let them grow up naturally. (The European Union, Japan, Australia and Canada have all banned the use of rBGH due to animal and human health concerns.)
We want you to feed these animals good food that is part of their natural diet. We don’t want you to force animals that are herbivores, like cattle, to eat feed manufactured with animal by-products.
We don’t want pink slime or other cheap additives in our meat. We simply want good, top-quality meat. (Canada, the UK and European Union have banned pink slime from their meat, but here it can constitute up to a whopping 15 percent of our ground beef without any labeling. Why?)
We want you to take the lead in good practices. We want to be proud of our United States producers and processors, and we want U.S.-raised meat to be the best in the world.

In March 2012, ground beef sales slipped to the lowest level in a decade. Consumers are clearly voting with their checkbooks, and one can only hope that the U.S. meat industry collectively decides to improve its practices, not its propaganda.

What do you think?

How to Make a Pizza from Scratch With this Easy Homemade Pizza Recipe

By eliza_cross, on April 29th, 2012%

Pizza dough recipe at Happy Simple Living blog

A homemade, half-sausage half-cheese pizza

The first time I made a homemade pizza, I was dumbstruck by how much better it was than delivery pizza. The improvement in flavor was like comparing a home-grown summer tomato to one of those hard, pink, grocery store varieties – worlds apart. After I took a pizza baking class from my local Slow Food chapter at the Whole Foods bakery, I was hooked. The professional bakers taught us some tricks for making amazing homemade pizza, and now I’m going to share them with you – along with everything else I’ve learned about cooking pizzas nearly every week in a home oven.

If making homemade pizza sounds like a lot of trouble, I’m going to share our simple method—and you don’t need any fancy ingredients or equipment. I prepare the dough ahead and freeze several batches so we can have fresh pizza whenever we like. I can easily prepare a homemade pizza faster than one can be delivered from one of the pizza chains. Best of all, even though we use all-organic fresh ingredients it’s less than half the cost of a delivery pizza. A simple kid-friendly cheese pizza made at home with organic ingredients costs less than $4.00. What’s not to love?

I’ve experimented with different techniques, and I keep coming back to simply shaping and baking the pizza on a plain ole’ metal pizza pan. I bought ours for $10 about ten years ago, and since I’m aiming for simple, family-style pizza I generally don’t bother with the pizza stone and the peel and all that. But you certainly can if you’re feeling motivated.

The first step is to prepare the dough. I’ve included two recipes here. The first is a variation on the recipe we learned from the professional bakers at the class, and it takes 24 hours from start to finish so you do have to plan ahead. The base of the recipe is a Poolish, or “sponge” that you make one day ahead. This pre-fermenting step allows more time for yeast and enzymes to develop starch and proteins in the dough, which in turn creates greater complexities of flavor. The dough also goes through several steps of rising and kneading. The resulting crust is fantastic – crisp and slightly chewy, similar to what you might get in a great wood-fired pizza restaurant.

The second recipe, which is based on The Pioneer Woman’s, can be prepared on the same afternoon you have a hankering for homemade pizza. The dough is softer and slightly less chewy, but it’s still a hundred times better than delivery pizza crust.

Both recipes call for bread flour, which has a 12 to 14 percent protein content and will make the nice, elastic dough that creates great pizza crust. But if you don’t have bread flour, no sweat! Just use all-purpose flour and it’ll turn out fine. Also, you’ll save a ton of money if you pick up a bag of all-purpose instant yeast instead of using those little packets. The recipes below will work just fine with either type of yeast.

Are you ready to get started?

Pizza Dough Recipe #1

Note: You need to start this recipe 24 hours before you want to bake pizza. For a same-afternoon pizza, see recipe #2 below.

Poolish:

1 1/4 cups bread flour
3/4 cup water at 70 degrees F
1/4 teaspoon instant dry yeast

In a medium bowl, mix together all ingredients until well-blended. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 12 to 18 hours.

Pizza Crust Recipe:

3 1/2 cups bread flour
3/4 cup spelt or whole wheat flour (or just use additional bread flour)
1 3/4 cup hot water at 140 degrees F, or as hot as you can get it from the tap
1 3/4 teaspoons sea salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant dry yeast
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons honey
1 recipe Poolish (see above)

Combine the flours, hot water, salt and yeast by hand, just until incorporated. Let the dough rest, covered, for about 30 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and mix by hand until incorporated, kneading for about 2 minutes. Let the dough rest again, covered, for another 30 minutes.

On a lightly floured work surface, knead the dough for 5 minutes:

Cover and rest for 20 minutes. Knead the dough for another 5 minutes, then cover and rest for another 20 minutes. Divide the dough into 4 or 5 pieces, lightly pre-shape into round pieces and cover and rest for 20 more minutes. Bake according to directions below.

Pizza Dough Recipe #2

This is a good all-purpose recipe for when you want to bake a homemade pizza that same night. The dough needs just one rise, and it’s ready an hour or two after you combine the ingredients. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, now’s the time to use it!

1-1/2 cups warm water
1 teaspoon dry yeast
4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

In a small bowl combine the warm water and yeast. Stir to combine and let sit for a few minutes, until bubbly. In a medium bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer), combine the flour and salt. Using the low speed of an electric mixer or your hands, slowly drizzle in the olive oil and the yeast/water mixture. Mix until the dough comes together, like this:

Pull the dough into a ball and knead it for several minutes, until it is smooth and elastic.

Brush the bowl with a little olive oil, and place the dough inside. Flip it over to coat the bottom with oil, then cover with a damp dishtowel. Let the dough sit in a warm place for 1-2 hours or until doubled in volume:

Divide the dough in two equal pieces if you want a thicker crust, or into thirds if you want a thinner crust.

Easy Pizza Sauce Recipe

True confession time: sometimes I use a can of Hunt’s spaghetti sauce seasoned with a little oregano to top kid-friendly pizzas. A 28-ounce can costs $1 on sale and tops three large pizzas. Most of the time, however, we want a simple, traditionally-flavored sauce with rich tomato flavor to top the pie.

Here’s a super easy recipe that nicely fits the bill:

2 cups tomato puree or 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 tablespoon ground dried oregano
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon ground paprika
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a medium bowl, mix together the tomato puree and tomato paste until smooth. Stir in the oregano, garlic, paprika, salt and pepper. Makes about 2 2/3 cups of sauce, or enough for 2 large pizzas.

For grown-up pizzas, you can simply pulse a can of drained, Italian San Marzano tomatoes in the food processor until they are lightly blended but still chunky. Season to your liking, and you’re good to go. Or skip the red sauce altogether, and try a drizzle of olive oil.

Cooking the Pizza

Preheat the oven to 550 degrees F or your oven’s highest setting, and put the oven rack right in the middle. If you have a convection setting, turn it on. If you have a pizza stone you want to use, put it in the oven on the rack now and let it get nice and hot. If you don’t have a pizza stone, no problem – your pizza is still going to be crispy, chewy and GREAT.

Now, use your hands to pat and stretch the dough on lightly greased baking sheet to the desired shape and thickness. I don’t recommend using a rolling pin, because it will compress the dough and eliminate those wonderful air bubbles that give your pizza crust snap. Initially the dough may keep pulling back, and it may seem like it will never fit the pan. But keep working with it, and in a few minutes it will relax and stretch out. We like our pizza crust quite thin, so I try to stretch it as far out as possible without tearing the dough:

I like to bake the untopped pizza in the oven for three minutes to set the crust. This keeps the pizza from getting soggy when you add the sauce and toppings. Remove the pale, barely-baked crust from the oven:

Next, add your desired sauce. I tend to use more sauce when I’m making pizza for kids:

Finally, add your toppings. For some kids, this may mean simply a generous sprinkling of your favorite grated cheese. You can, of course, make the pie half-and-half for family members who like different toppings:

If you prebaked the pizza for three minutes, you can now easily slide it on a hot pizza stone if you like. I usually just leave it on the pan, but you may not be as lazy as I am. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes if you’re baking it on the pan, or until the edges of the crust are a golden brown and the cheese is bubbly. (One of the things the professional bakers said in our class is, “Home cooks never cook their pizzas long enough.” So make sure the crust is good and golden brown before you take it out of the oven.) Here’s a pie we made with half cheese, half Canadian bacon:

While the pizza is baking, I like to make a little garlic flavor for the crust. Just combine 1 tablespoon of melted butter or extra virgin olive oil with 1 clove of minced garlic:

Right when you take the pizza out of the oven, give the hot crust a quick brush with the sauce:

Cut and serve. (Don’t you love the red pizza cutter? It’s made by Microplane and we got it at Crate & Barrel – a very worthwhile splurge!)

Ingredients for Pizza Toppings

Here’s a pie we made recently topped with sliced fresh Roma tomatoes, fresh mozzarella slices, spinach and basil:

You likely have your own favorite combination of ingredients, but if you’re looking for fresh inspiration you might like to try:

Barbeque sauce
Alfredo sauce
Pesto sauce (make your own!)
Goat cheese
Fresh mozzarella slices
Fresh ricotta cheese (make your own!)
Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
Pepperoni slices
Cooked, crumbled ground beef
Cooked, crumbled sausage
Cooked, crumbled bacon
Meatballs
Sliced grilled chicken
Canadian bacon slices
Anchovies
Sliced prosciutto
Baby shrimp
Fresh tomatoes, sliced and drained
Sun-dried tomatoes
Caramelized onions
Thinly sliced red onion
Sliced mushrooms
Sliced roasted eggplant
Sliced bell peppers
Roasted red peppers
Sliced giardineria or banana peppers
Sliced black or green olives
Roasted garlic
Sliced jalapenos
Roasted asparagus spears
Capers
Thinly sliced roasted new potatoes
Chopped artichoke hearts
Basil leaves
Thinly sliced sage leaves
Lightly sauteed spinach leaves
Arugula
Pineapple chunks
Crushed red pepper

So there you have it. I didn’t mean to write quite such a book, but hopefully this long post will inspire you to bake some amazingly delicious pizza pies at home. Whether you regularly make homemade pizza or are ready to give it a try for the first time, you know we’d all love to hear your thoughts, questions, suggestions and experiences.

Ciao!

P.S. What are your favorite pizza topping combinations? Please share them in the comments section below!

Easy Breakfast Burrito Recipe for Stress-Free Mornings

By eliza_cross, on February 25th, 2012%

You are going to love having a stash of frozen breakfast burritos in your freezer. Once you’ve made a batch (which takes about 45 minutes, not including freezing time), you’ll be able to prepare a hot, well-balanced, nutritious breakfast that’s easy to take on the go—in less than three minutes. Here’s the recipe, which can be widely adapted or varied to suit your tastes and preferences.

Happy Simple Breakfast Burritos

12 ounces breakfast sausage*
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 large potatoes
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 4-ounce can diced green chiles
12 eggs
1-1/2 cups shredded cheese of your choice
12 flour tortillas

(*For a vegetarian version, omit the sausage and add more potatoes, chiles or other veggies)

Begin by browning the sausage in a skillet (let’s call it Skillet #1) over medium heat:

Peel and dice two potatoes:

Heat the butter and olive oil in Skillet #2 over medium heat until the butter melts:

Add the potatoes and sauté them over medium heat, turning occasionally:

Meanwhile, keep an eye on the sausage in Skillet #1 and turn it when it starts to brown.

When the sausage is cooked, remove it with a slotted spoon, drain it on paper towels and crumble it when cooled; reserve.

Return Skillet #1 to the stove and add 1/2 chopped onion and 1/2 cup diced green chiles. Cook until the onion is tender and translucent, stirring occasionally:

Beat the eggs in a bowl until well combined:

When the potatoes are browned, remove them using a slotted spoon to a large bowl, return Skillet #2 to the stove. Add the eggs and cook over low heat, stirring, until scrambled:

Add the eggs to the bowl along with the onion-chile mixture and the crumbled sausage. Stir gently and add 1 cup of the shredded cheese:

Warm the tortillas (I just heat them in the microwave on “high” for ten seconds) and place one in the middle of a plate. Add a generous portion of the filling, and sprinkle with a little more cheese if you like:

Roll the burrito up tightly.

Wrap each burrito in parchment paper.

Cool in the refrigerator, then transfer to the freezer. To prepare a burrito, leave it wrapped in the parchment paper and put it on a microwave safe plate. Heat at 30% power for about a minute and a half. Turn it over and heat at 100% (High) power for about a minute. You may have to experiment with your microwave to find the perfect timing. So that family members can heat their own burritos, thus allowing you to linger in your bathrobe and drink your coffee in peace, you may wish to write out the directions:

and tuck it along with the burritos in a reusable bag.

If this simple recipe makes your morning a little bit easier, you know I’d love to hear from you.

Hugs,

Showing Kindness to My Future Self

By eliza_cross, on February 7th, 2012%

Twins in Sorrento, Italy - photo by Jens Karlsson

Years ago we paid a lot of money for an artificial Christmas tree of the “pre-lit” variety with 1200 little white lights. (We weren’t very green back in 1998, but that’s a topic for another post.) I remember at the time thinking how much time it would save us to have the lights already wrapped around the tree, and it did—for a few years. Then the lights started burning out.

If you’ve ever removed the Christmas lights from a pre-lit fake tree, raise your hand now.

Undoing the tightly-wrapped wires, twisting the clips loose and cutting the plastic zip-ties is a tedious, painstaking job that takes an unimaginably long time. One strand of lights took me more than an hour to remove, and this tree had, of course, 12 strands. So each year, I’ve removed one or two strands before packing the tree up for the season.

This year the tree was down to its last two burned-out light strands, but I was anxious to move it out of the living room and un-anxious to spend two hours on the loathesome task. Suddenly that little voice of reason in my mind said, “It’s a hassle, but this is a gift I want to give you next December. You’ll be happy when you open the box and the tree is finally free of those burned-out lights.”

I sat down for a moment, intrigued by the concept of giving my own self a gift that would make me happy at the end of the year. I soon began a list entitled “Things I Can Do Now to Bless My Future Self.”

Want to try making your own list? Here’s what I came up with:

- Regularly contribute to my Roth IRA. I pay taxes on the earnings now, but when I retire the income will be tax-free.

- Continue to declutter and get rid of unused items, so when I’m older I won’t have to deal with too much stuff.

- Exercise each day and eat foods rich in calcium, so my future self enjoys strong bones and good health.

- Meditate, pray and seek God each day, so that as I age I might grow in wisdom and understanding.

- Floss my teeth daily, so I enjoy a nice smile and strong teeth in my old age.

- Seek sources of passive income, so I can have money coming in even if I’m not working.

- Treasure and pursue relationships and friendships, so my older self enjoys a rich social life.

- Find ways to stretch my brain by trying and learning new things, and embrace challenging puzzles and problems.

You know I’d just love to hear your thoughts about this subject.

Hugs,

Day 21 of the January Money Diet – Cook a Vegetarian Meal

By eliza_cross, on January 21st, 2012%

If you’re accustomed to always cooking dinner that includes some sort of meat, try to sneak a vegetarian meal in from time to time. Pasta, burritos, soup, stir-fry, a hearty salad, bruschetta — many recipes are already vegetarian or just need a substitution (beans instead of beef in chili, for example) for a yummy, meat-free meal. Need a little inspiration? This collection of vegetarian recipes is culled from the best of the best at the award-winning blog, 101 Cookbooks. With food as good as this, maybe your meat-and-potatoes man won’t even notice.

Cook at least one vegetarian dinner this week, and be sure to let us know what you prepare.

P.S. In case you’ve just joined us, the January Money Diet is a challenge to take a 31-day break from nonessential spending. You can learn more about the money diet here — and jump right in!

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Win a Deluxe Happy Simple Living Gift Basket

In honor of the January Money Diet, I’ll be giving away a gift basket chock-full of home and garden goodies plus several books at the end of the month. On January 31, 2012, I’ll draw one random name from everyone who commented during the month and that lucky person will win the gift basket. I hope you’ll stop by often this month and share your own ideas, thoughts and experiences about taking a 31-day break from nonessential spending.

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