Whole Wheat Pizza and Breadsticks

Aren't these cute?!

My three year old came up with the idea to use the dinosaur sandwich cutter on the breadsticks. Isn't he brilliant? We used our pizza dough recipe to make whole wheat and spelt pizza (do you need that recipe?). We used half of the dough to make breadsticks and half to make a pizza. (by the way - the one with the "well-done" head, was a little thin on the dough. The rest of the dinosaurs were thicker dough.)

Note- I have a super-picky eater at my house. This child likes pizza, but only likes tomato sauce on the pizza. I wondered what he would think of these dinosaur shapes. I even made some and baked the tomato sauce on top. 

They were such a hit, and he ate them all up so fast that I only got pictures of the ones that didn't have baked on tomato sauce. I only made four or five tomato sauce dinosaurs, so when he wanted more, we just threw some tomato sauce on top of the dinosaurs and he ate a few more! Hooray for fun food!

Here are the breadsticks that I made - with a layer of cheese on top. YUMM!

And just for fun - the pizza. I'm not a supreme pizza kind of girl, so this is how I like my pizza.

Flour in Food Storage & Notes on Hard Red Wheat

Question of the day:  (I haven't done this in a while. I'm glad for the opportunity.)

I have just started my food storage in earnest and... in my eagerness to begin my storage, I went to Costco and bought 300 lbs. of flour. I have come to realize that is A LOT of flour, and I am skeptical that I will go through it before it spoils. I have decided storing flour is probably not the best option.

I have a ton of red wheat in storage, but I have been told that only having red wheat in bread is bad for digestion, and therefore having 1/2 red wheat and 1/2 flour is best. Because I do not wish to store flour as stated above, I am wondering if I can store white wheat to replace the flour and therefore avoid the digestion problems?

I bake all of my own bread, and that is primarily what the wheat in storage would be used for.

Do you have any other suggestions about storing wheat that would help me in my food storage voyage? Any information you can give me would be greatly appreciated!

My Answer: 

Great questions. Well, first of all, hard red wheat is not necessarily BAD for digestion. It depends on the person and their individual digestive system. Though, Hard red wheat is typically harder to digest than others.

I used to store a lot of flour in my food storage. I now only store about 150 lbs for my laziness (when I don't have time to grind flour or energy and just need a quick cup for some cookies or something) and then store several types of grains. As a matter of taste, I do not love to use only hard red wheat. It is too much "heavy" whole wheat flavor and texture for me. I do not enjoy hard red wheat by itself. I do enjoy using hard red wheat in portions, though. I store hard red wheat, hard white wheat, spelt and bread flour. I use the flour, like I said, when I'm being lazy or my kids want to bake something. (At least for now.) Otherwise, I'll grind my own flour from the red, white wheat and spelt - usually in equal portion and use that. The flavor is so much better when I mix my grains. Even if you use 1/2 red wheat and 1/2 flour (so you can use up some of that flour faster than you normally would if you ground all of your own flour for your bread), your bread would be much better than just using whole red wheat and you shouldn't experience such drastic digestive problems.

As a matter of interest, hard white wheat is great in breads and will give your bread a sweeter flavor. Spelt has a bit of a nutty taste to it. So, mixing all of these grains together and storing them for such use is my preferred method.

Does that help?

p.s. Plastic Buckets (5-6 gallons) or large rubbermaid or metal garbage cans are a great way to store your grains (I don't take mine out of the original packaging, though you could) and/or flour. It helps keep the rodents out, helps maintain dryness (supposing things flood sometimes) and basically keeps the air and sunlight off of your food storage.

Until later.

Chicken Fried Chicken

I never thought I would use whole wheat flour as much as I've been using it lately. Last night I made chicken fried chicken with whole wheat flour. It was DIVINE!!

Oh, you mean I was supposed to take a picture? I devoured it too fast.... oops. It was that good. I felt like I had been to a restaurant and someone else had made it.

Not to say that my cooking is bad - I've just never done fried chicken before, of any variety. But I do love a good chicken fried chicken with a little creamy country gravy.

I've also been using whole wheat flour in my cookies lately. I feel like I can eat more cookies when they have whole wheat goodness in them! (Just what I need - more excuses to eat more cookies!)

Do you use whole wheat flour in your baking/cooking? Frequently or just sometimes or never?

p.s. I'd probably use it more often than I do, but I fresh grind it, and I think grinding can be annoying when I have a sleeping baby close by...

Top Secret!

Just to let you know, I've been working on a "top secret lab" experiment lately. (Sounds really cool,  huh?) Well, it is. I'm working on developing some products (dry baking mixes) that have to do with spelt, hard white wheat, flax. I am mostly planning to sell them at the farmer's market in Rexburg, but if there is enough interest, I'll probably sell them all over the US to my favorite blog readers.   =)

So far, the experiments have gone well - there is just so much to do - like packaging, designing a good label, figuring the exact weights of the ingredients. Did you know it took so much? (And that is just the start!) Well, I'm excited about it and hope this venture turns out well for us all.

So, the blog is lacking a little - but while I'm writing - are there any recipes/mixes you would like to see happen? What would you like to see in a package, easy to make, and ready for your enjoyment using more healthy, natural ingredients? Any suggestions?  (Feel free to email me directly at info at histakes-spelt dot com)

Rexburg Farmer's Market starts April 30

So, if you've been looking forward to new posts lately, I'm sorry to disappoint... I realized the Rexburg Farmer's Market starts on April 30 and I've been racing to have something ready to sell.

I've been working on different recipes and trying to perfect them - like Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies and my new Whole Wheat Potato Bread. (Boy, they are good once I get the recipe right.) So, I hope your mouth is watering and my efforts are worth it and I have some to sell to our Farmers Market fans on April 30 (from 4-8 pm in the parking lot just south of the Rexburg Tabernacle).

Meanwhile - I'll get some new posts together and let you know I'm still here.

(And hey, if you live close, ask me about taste testing some of my trials - I need a few more guinea pig critics!)

eating healthy

So, I hear complaints from people now and then about how expensive their food is. I just thought I'd give some information I learned from an economics class I took at USU in 1998. I then realized that, ah, that was over 10 years ago so I did a little digging at USDA/ERS expecting to see the figures going back up because of the recent spike in prices, but found that they were actually holding steady.

In 1929 we as Americans spent 23.4% of our disposable income on food, In 2008 we spent 9.6% of our disposable income on food. In 1998 we spent 10.1% on food (this includes eating at home and dinning out). Entertainment (including recreational toys), on the other hand was closing in on 20%! We wanted to have fun instead of eat I guess.

Well today we are in tough economic times and we need to make choices, but the Farm Bureau, and I will agree, that eating doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. Using fresh veggies and fruit to prepare your meals will cut the price drastically at the counter. If you have a farmer nearby you can ask him if he'd be able to sell you some of his produce out of storage.

For example, we have potatoes in storage that we can sell directly to you the consumer. I dare say that we can give you a 50% discount on potatoes as compared to the stores price, and we will. It really only works for those who can drive out to our farm unfortunately, but then if you put together a big enough order with all your friends, then shipping can be figured out and can be reasonable.

There is also the option of shopping for fresh produce at farmers markets. Market season is almost upon us in Idaho, but in California, markets can be more readily available.

What do you think? Do you use very many fresh fruits and vegetables in your daily eating?

p.s. Follow the link for more information on eating healthy on a budget.

Shopping for Health

The other day I was grocery shopping and remembered I wanted to buy some more cornmeal. (My friend gave me this great homemade cornbread recipe!) I haven't bought very much cornmeal in my life, so I was reading the labels to see what the difference was. Most of the cornmeal I found said something like bran and germ have been removed.

WHAT?!?!

Really?

I suppose most foods do have the germ and bran removed from them so they can sit on the shelf longer - but didn't anyone include the germ and bran in their cornmeal? I know that food is healthier for you if you have germ and bran included - it is the actual WHOLE grain form of the food. Whole grains are good for your body, especially when you include the germ and bran in the mix.

I searched and searched and ended up just grabbing one. They all read about the same.

So, I walked down the baking aisle a little more and happened upon a section of Bob's Red Mill packages. Well, lo and behold, Bob had a fine ground cornmeal that had the germ and bran milled with it and was not removed! I was so happy!!

Bob's Red Mill Corn Meal won. I went and put the other cornmeal back and bought Bob's. And you know, the price wasn't much different for the whole cornmeal than for the stripped cornmeal.

I'll go for health. Thanks, Bob.

Spelt Banana Blueberry Bread Recipe

I usually send these recipes out through my email list... however, I decided to share this one through my blog to all my lucky readers. I will also send it to my email list, but I thought you might need this one here. My friend Cheryl shared this recipe with me and told me I could share with my readers and friends, so here it is...

(Blueberry) Banana Bread

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon butter
pinch salt

Add 1 - 1/2 cups spelt flour and mix.

Then add 2 ripe bananas (sometimes I add another half if not using blueberries)
1 level teaspoon baking soda
Beat lightly.
Optional: Add approximately 6 oz. slightly mashed blueberries. Stir in.

Pour into greased, floured loaf pan. Bake 1 hour in 325 oven.

(my variations: I used frozen blueberries, and didn't even try to mash them)
The end product - I tend to bake all my banana bread in glass cake pans. I just like it better that way. I actually LIKED this banana bread. I'm pretty picky with my banana breads, because my favorite recipe has buttermilk in it. But this recipe was actually good. I expected it to be heavier than it was because I used 100% whole spelt flour (no white spelt flour).

In the end - my blueberries sank to the bottom, but they added a nice touch and I'll make this recipe again. Let me know if you try it and what you think.



By the way, if you need spelt berries to grind into spelt flour, I used HiStakes-Spelt's Berries
Enjoy!

I Need Your Help, Please

I have created a quick poll to see what YOU are interested in - in regards to foods and farmers markets. So, if you are reading this through your RSS Feed or through some sort of Reader, please take time to click over to this blog and answer the poll (2 questions) on the side of the blog.

I am interested in your reasons for shopping at farmers markets (in hopes that you do shop at farmers markets). If you have never shopped a farmers market, please answer the poll anyway. I would like to know which reasons are most important to you and what would help you shop at a market.

Thanks for taking time to answer the question.

(I have a killer spelt recipe coming soon - I just made it and have pictures to share!)

Lactose Intolerance Shouldn't Exclude Dairy From Diet?

So we were reading an article on lactose intolerance and I wanted to share it to see what your views are:

NIH panel concludes lactose intolerant shouldn't avoid dairy

People may avoid milk and other dairy products due to concerns about lactose intolerance, but eliminating these nutrient-rich foods may be unnecessary to manage the condition and could impact diet and health, a panel of experts assembled by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has concluded.


The NIH Consensus Development Conference on Lactose Intolerance & Health was convened to examine the latest research on lactose intolerance, strategies to manage the condition and the health outcomes of diets that exclude dairy foods. Lactose is the natural sugar in milk and some people lack sufficient amounts of an enzyme that is needed to comfortably digest lactose.


After a thorough review of the scientific evidence, the panel completed a draft consensus statement that is intended to correct some of the common misperceptions about lactose intolerance, including the belief that dairy foods need to be excluded from the diet.

Read more here on their website

So, what do you think about this?