Simpler Living | 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!

Mini Raspberry Custard Tart Recipe

By eliza_cross, on April 16th, 2012%

For a recent baby shower, I was hankering to bake something pretty and petite that would pair well with fresh raspberries. I was envisioning a crispy, sweet little tart shell filled with vanilla custard and topped with whipped cream and raspberries. When I couldn’t find a recipe with that particular combination, I improvised. I modified my favorite sugar cookie pie crust to make the little shells, and reduced the quantities on my cream filling and topping recipes. The tarts were enthusiastically received, so now I can safely share the recipe with you.

You can prepare the tart shells and custard the day before, and then all you have to do is whip the cream (up to two hours before serving) and assemble the tarts (up to an hour before serving). These little tarts would also be nice for a Mother’s Day brunch, a ladies’ tea, or a sweet ending to a springtime dinner.

One note: try to use organic raspberries for this recipe if you can. Red raspberries are on the list of top 12 pesticide-retaining fruits and vegetables, and you can check out the other produce on the list here.

Mini Raspberry Custard Tarts

Sugar Cookie Tart Shells
Custard Filling
Whipped Topping
1 pint fresh raspberries, gently washed and dried
fresh mint sprigs for garnish

Sugar Cookie Tart Shells:

nonstick cooking spray
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and spray a mini tart pan or mini muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray. In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter until light. Beat in flour, salt, milk and vanilla, until mixture is moist and crumbly. Roll the dough into balls that are 1 heaping teaspoon each. Press the balls into the prepared mini tart pan or mini muffin pan and work the dough until it is pressed thin and up the sides of the pan about 3/4 inch. You can use a spoon handle or a small pestle to press the indentation into the dough if you wish. You should have enough dough to make about 28-30 tarts. Prick the bottom of each tart.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until just barely golden on top.

Custard Filling:

1 1/4 cups milk
3 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
tiny dash of salt
1 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

In a heavy saucepan, heat the milk over a medium-high flame until bubbles appear around edge. Beat egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl with wire whisk or mixer until pale yellow and thick. Beat in flour and dash of salt until well mixed. Gradually beat in hot milk; pour all back into saucepan. Cook, whisking constantly, over moderately high heat until mixture thickens and comes to boiling, lower heat. Continue cooking 2 to 3 minutes, over low heat, whisking constantly. Mixture will be quite thick. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla. Place a piece of wax paper directly on surface of filling to prevent skin from forming. Chill at least 2 hours.

Whipped Cream Topping:

3/4 cup chilled heavy cream
1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Chill a metal mixing bowl and the beaters from an electric mixer in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Whip the cream in the chilled bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually add the powdered sugar just until the cream forms stiff peaks. Add the vanilla and whip just until combined.

To assemble the tarts, spoon about 1 1/2 teaspoons custard filling into each mini tart shell. Use a teaspoon to put a generous dollop of whipped cream on each tart. (You may have some filling and topping left over. Feel free to sit down and eat this directly from the bowl as I did.) Top with a fresh raspberry, and arrange on a platter. Garnish with fresh mint sprigs and additional raspberries. Makes about 24 tarts.

Win a Copy of a Great Book from My New Blog

By eliza_cross, on April 10th, 2012%

My name is Eliza, and I have too many blogs.

I’m a…a…blogaholic.

Along with Happy Simple Living, I have a blog on my professional website:

I blog at Bensa International, the exclusive society for bacon lovers:

And my latest project is 100 Things I Want:

100 Things I Want is a place for people to share their hopes and dreams, and experience the powerful results that can occur from getting clear about your goals and writing them down. Inspired in part by the classic book, Write It Down, Make It Happen by Henriette Anne Klauser, this concept is also at the heart of my new novel (more details to come!) about a woman who writes down everything she wants in her ideal soul mate.

Between now and May 1, 2012, if you submit a list you”ll be entered in a drawing for a new, hardback copy of Write It Down, Make It Happen. Your list can be about any topic related to your hopes and dreams, and it can contain five things, 23 things, 57 things or 100 things – the length is totally up to you. Try to keep the language positive and affirming, and e-mail your list to mylist@100thingsiwant.com. I’ll be featuring selected lists all month, and give away the book on May 2.

In the coming days, I hope you’ll stop by, say hello, and perhaps be inspired to share your own list.

Meanwhile, like any good addict, I really think this is the last blog I’m going to start…the last one, I tell you!

Really.

Save the Bees and Two Simple, Free Things You Can Do

By eliza_cross, on April 8th, 2012%

Save the bees at Happy Simple Living blog

Photo by Karen Roe

American honeybees are disappearing at an alarming rate, and some think the EPA knows why. A growing body of evidence shows that widespread use of nicotine-based insecticides called neonicotinoids is linked to Colony Collapse Disorder.

Several countries, including Germany and France, have already banned clothianidin. And – Halleluia! – after the bans, bee populations began to rise again.

But in the U.S., clothianidin is still used on millions of acres of crops of corn, soy, wheat, cotton, sorghum, peanuts and more. American beekeepers report losses of up to 90% of their bees, and many worry that their hives won’t survive another season.

Here’s how to help:

1. Sign Change.org’s petition to urge the EPA to end the harmful pesticide’s use. As of today, the organization has gathered nearly 125,000 of the 150,000 signatures it seeks to present to the EPA. The form is quick and easy, and Change.org won’t share your personal info.

2. Post a link to your Facebook or Twitter page urging others to do the same. Here’s a ready-made tweet:

Save the bees! Sign your name to support urging the EPA to ban harmful pesticides now http://chn.ge/Hoh9Yr via @change

That’s all there is to it. Change.org has provided the impetus for numerous citizen-led causes, and every signature helps send the message that we care about our planet.

P.S. If you want to welcome bees to your garden this summer check out Urban Bee Gardens for tons of ideas, from bee-attracting plants to creating bee-friendly habitats.