Raw zucchini pasta with raw marinara sauce

This weekend my family and I went to our first slow food potluck. If you are unfamiliar with the phrase slow food, it’s “an idea, a way of living and a way of eating. It is a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.” The goal of our slow food potluck, organized by my friend Melissa and hosted by my friend Alison, was to use as many local ingredients as possible. In addition to local foods, we also had local drinks including wine, beer, mead, cider and a few flavors of homemade kombucha. I will write more about the potluck and delicious foods everyone brought later.

After reading about and seeing a picture of a Meatless Monday meal – zucchini pasta and marinara Leslie at Recycle Your Day made recently, I knew that was the dish I wanted to make for the potluck. She sent me the link to the YouTube video (produced by Larry Cook at The Beginner’s Guide to Natural Living) where she got the idea. It’s a very simple meal to make – using zucchini, tomatoes, red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil, oregano, salt and pepper, as well as a vegetable peeler and a food processor – and it tastes delicious.

Because my garden isn’t producing much more than strawberries, cucumbers, and a few tomatoes at present, I went to the farmers’ market to get the bulk of my ingredients. I got the zucchini, tomatoes, and garlic there, had the spices at home, and got the peppers and sun-dried tomatoes at Vitamin Cottage.

I was happy to hear that everyone liked it, even those who were skeptical at first. Even my husband who’s not a big zucchini or tomato fan thought it was really good. (I’m holding him to that and planning on making it again!) :) What I found really interesting is that the pasta, which is just thinly sliced zucchini (I used my vegetable peeler to make ribbons), tastes so much like “real” pasta when you have a flavorful marinara all over it.

More on the rest of the slow foods potluck, including pics of all of the tasty dishes, later.

Related posts:

• Alison wrote her own post about our slow food potluck
• Abbie from Farmer’s Daughter is taking the Connecticut Grown Challenge to eat locally for a week. She has several helpful resources listed.
• Nature Deva wrote “what to do with all of your zucchini” – make raw zucchini hummus
• Tiffany at Nature Moms Blog wrote 24 reasons to gather at the dinner table again
• From Nature’s Harmony Farm blog comes Slow Food, Pro Food, Mo Food
• From the EcoScene blog, How to cook with seasonal, regional vegetables
• Chive Talkin’ is a flexitarian foodie with a raw twist who is always looking for flexitarian, vegetarian, raw, whole foods, seasonal, local, gluten free menu planners to join her Menu Plan Blog Roll.
• Over at Doodlebug’s Planet is a great post: Why Eat Local Foods

Have you written about eating local, slow foods or have a raw recipe to share? Include your link in the comments and I’ll link to you. :)

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So you want to dye your Easter eggs naturally – without chemicals and artificial colors? While it takes longer than the commercial egg dye kits you buy at the store, dyeing your eggs with natural foods is better for you and your child(ren)’s health, produces much more interesting colors and is, quite arguably, more fun!

Why dye with natural colors instead of artificial?
According to Organic.org, “Many food colorings contain color additives such as Red No. 3 and Yellow No. 5, which, according to a 1983 study by the FDA, were found to cause tumors (Red No. 3) and hives (Yellow No. 5).” I wrote about the drawbacks of artificial colors a while back if you’d like to read more on the topic.

It is more time-consuming than using a store-bought conventional egg dye kit (and I highly recommend preparing the egg dye baths a few hours before you plan to dye the eggs with the kiddos), but it is healthier for your kids and the environment. “Dyeing eggs the natural way gives you the opportunity to spend more time with your family, teaching kids to use alternative project methods that are healthier for them and the environment.” I think it will be a lot of fun and a great family project.

To get started you will need:

• Hard boiled eggs (preferably white eggs since they take on the dyes better than brown eggs)
• Ingredients to make your dyes, which I will discuss in more detail below – As a guideline, use up to 4 cups for vegetable solids and 3–4 tablespoons for spices per quart. Mash up fruits.
• White vinegar (2 Tablespoons for every quart of water)
• Several pots and bowls
• Optional: stickers, rubber bands, and crayons for decorating the eggs and making interesting patterns
• Egg cartons for drying the dyed eggs

Natural egg dyes can be made from a variety of ingredients. Here’s a list of what I used last year along with comments on the colors that resulted.

RED

• 3 cans of beets in cranberry juice (instead of water) – produced a dark reddish hue

PINK

• Frozen cherries – made a very light pink

RED-ORANGE

• 3 tablespoons of chili powder produced a nice reddish-orange color

YELLOW

• 3 Tablespoons of tumeric produced a great yellow

GREEN

• A mix of spinach leaves, canned blueberries and their juice and a few tablespoons of tumeric produced a gorgeous earthy green color – I think it would work without the spinach leaves, but I happened to have some that were wilting so I threw them in.

BLUE

• 3/4 of a head of red cabbage (chopped) made a beautiful blue

GREY BLUE

• 2 cans of blueberries and their juice made a grey-blueish color

GREY

• Frozen cherries mixed with blueberries yielded a grey color (not the purple I was going for).

Instructions:
Last year I found a couple great web site with tips on “Natural Easter Egg Dyes” and Natural Dye from Organic.org. The natural dyes come from spices like paprika, tumeric and cumin; vegetables like spinach and red cabbage; fruit juices and even coffee. All of your dye ingredients can (and should) be composted after you are done.

On Organic.org, there is a boil method (which produces darker results) and a cold-dip method, which is suggested for children or if you plan to eat the eggs, which is the method we used last year.

The two methods are:

Method 1—Hot
Place eggs in a single layer in a large, nonaluminum pan. Add the dyeing ingredient of your choice—it’s best not to mix until you are comfortable with experimenting. Cover the eggs and other dyeing “agent(s)” with one inch of water. Add 2 tablespoons of white vinegar per quart to help the color adhere to the egg, and bring to a boil. Next, simmer for 20–30 minutes or until the desired shade is achieved. If you cook the eggs longer than 15 minutes, they will become rather tough.

Method 2—Cold
The cold method is the same as the hot method with the following exception. Once ingredients have simmered 20–30 minutes (depending on desired shade), lift or strain the ingredients out of the water and allow the water to cool to room temperature though you may wish to try keeping the ingredients in the colored water to give the egg more texture as the dye will become concentrated in areas where the vegetable touches the egg. Submerge the eggs until the desired color is achieved. You may keep the eggs in the solution overnight as long as it is refrigerated.

The longer the egg stays in the dye, hot or cold, the deeper the hue will be. Using vinegar will also help the color deepen.

Definitely feel free to experiment and try out other foods and spices. For me, that was a big part of what made it so much fun, trying out different things to see what colors would come from them. For example, the dye from the spinach, tumeric, blueberry mix looked orange or brown, but the eggs came out green! And the red cabbage dye was purpley-pink, but the eggs came out blue. It was like a fun science experiment that the whole family could get involved in. Happy egg coloring! :)

Pictures:
The process of making the dyes:

And the results:

Links to other people’s natural egg dyeing results:

• Michelle at What’s Cooking Blog tried three different concoctions and got three lovely results
• Phyllis at Ima On and Off the Bima created Passover eggs using cilantro leaves and onion skins
• Shutterbug Mama, who had good luck using turmeric and curry powder, paprika, and blueberries
• Inexplicable Ways tried out a variety of ingredients and got some beautiful results
• Green Baby Guide – Natural Silhouette Easter Egg Dyeing

If you dye your eggs naturally and blog about it, please leave me your link and I’ll add it to the list. :)

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I got this delicious whole wheat honey pizza dough recipe from my friend *Heather (A Mama’s Blog) a few months ago and have been enjoying it regularly ever since. It’s quick, easy and sooooo good. My family loves it too!

Whole Wheat Honey Pizza Dough

Ingredients:
4 1/2 teaspoons yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
4 tablespoons honey
2 to 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cornmeal
1 tablespoon olive oil

Mix yeast, water and honey and let stand 5 min.

Combine flour through cornmeal in a large bowl.

Add liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients, stir up a bit, then add in olive oil. Knead until everything is well combined. If it seems a little dry, you can add a bit more water at this point, but I don’t generally need to.

Cover dough in a bowl with a towel in a warm place for 30 min.

Punch down and roll out dough, add toppings and bake @ 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until done.

Makes enough dough to cover one whole cookie sheet (which is what I do) or (probably) two round pizza pans. I usually end up with a little extra dough too that the kids like to roll into balls and eat or last night I used the extra dough to make a big cinnamon roll for the family to share for dessert.

Enjoy!

* Recipe adapted from MyRecipes

Note: You should be able to use more wheat flour and less AP flour, but you might need to adjust other ingredients (like add more oil) to make the consistency work.

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Thanks to tifi who tweeted this peanut butter granola recipe to me the other day. I made a few modifications to it (like cutting the amount of honey and sugar in half because it seemed like a lot, using whole wheat flour, and adding in flaxseed to it). The results were quite delicious. Here’s my version of the recipe:

Peanut Butter Granola Squares

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Ingredients:

4 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup whole wheat flour (or another kind of flour if you prefer)
1/3 cup ground flaxseed
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (optional)

1 cup butter*
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter (preferably organic PB with no sugar added)

Directions:
Combine oats through salt in a large bowl. Stir to combine.

Heat butter through peanut butter in a sauce pan until all are melted.  Add melted mixture to the dry ingredients in the bowl. Stir to make sure oats are completely covered.

Spread the mixture into a 13 x 9 baking pan. Bake at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes. Let cool and cut into squares. Enjoy!

* Farmer’s Daughter asked about cutting back on some of the butter and suggested applesauce as a replacement. I think this would probably work well and cut down on the fat. I plan to try it out the next time I make them. :)

Update 1/30/09: I made this recipe again, but this time used only 1/2 cup of butter and added 3/4 cup of mashed ripe bananas. This worked really well. It cut down the fat and the squares held together a lot better and were a lot less crumbly. And they are delicious!

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As I sit here typing with a belly full of turkey, trimmings and pie, I have to admit that the idea of baking cookies is the farthest thing from my mind. Yet I know when I wake up tomorrow my desire to bake (and eat) will be renewed again and as the holiday music fills the air over the next few weeks, I’ll be happy to have this list of tasty recipes to look back on. Because even though I can’t imagine taking one more bite of food at the moment, these recipes look really darn good.

I put together some of the best recipes I could find and broke them down into categories. I think there is likely something here to satisfy everyone’s sweet tooth, but if you don’t find something you like, please feel free to link to your favorite cookie recipe in the comments. After all, whenever cookies are concerned, the more, the merrier.

If you are like me and have a bunch of pureed pumpkin to use up, you welcome any recipe that involves pumpkin. Did I mention my neighbor dropped off a container full of 13 cups of pumpkin this week? Oh yes, she did. Ordinarily I would welcome such a gift, but when my freezer was already full of pumpkin puree, it forced me to get a little creative. That is why we had chocolate pumpkin cake for my son’s birthday earlier in the week, as well as two kinds of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving this evening (and probably pumpkin soup later this week). Luckily for me there is no shortage of good pumpkin cookie recipes out there.

Pumpkin Cookies

• Mommy Wizdom claims she has a recipe for The Best Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever and told me that anywhere she takes her cookies, people ask her for this recipe.
• At Green Hour, there’s another recipe for kid-friendly Pumpkin Cookies (scroll down to the third recipe), where the kiddos can help “press raisin eyes, a nose, and a smile on each warm cookie.”
• Julie at Persnickety Palate posted one of her childhood favorites, Mom’s Pumpkin Cookies. This variation includes almonds and chocolate chips.
• Last in the pumpkin category is the recipe for the easiest cookies I’ve ever made. Seriously. This recipe for Pumpkin Spice Cookies (AKA The easiest cookies I’ve ever made) literally has only two ingredients (though more can be added, but that’s totally optional).

Speaking of simple cookie recipes, here are a couple more that even the most inexperienced baker can handle.

Simple Cookie Recipes

• Jenn from The Green Parent told me this recipe on Twitter. It’s so short and easy, she gave me the whole recipe in 140 characters or less, and I quote, “3cups pb, 3 cup sugar, and 3 eggs…mix and bake then press a Hershey’s kiss in the top. Yum Yum and soo easy!” And hello, chocolate and peanut butter (which is what the “pb” stands for above) together? In my book that’s a combination that can never go wrong.
• Brandy from Savin Some posted a Cake Mix Cookie recipe that uses white cake mix and just two other ingredients.
• And at Cindy’s Desktop, Cindy confesses, “I cannot cook hard recipes!” Her solution is to only cook easy recipes and she offers up a variety of Cake Mix Cookie recipes.

Chocolate chip cookies are a favorite in my house. I always say that you can add chocolate chips to nearly any recipe and it will only make it better.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

• When I first read about Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies on Twitter, I was a little taken aback. Sure, bacon is good and chocolate is good, but combining them? Hmmm. According to Michelle Baker, AKA the Urban Eater, “The salty, crisp bacon is MAGIC with the sweet chocolately cookie. Perfection. I recommend NOT eating these straight from the oven as you will not stop.” I’m not sure if I will try these out myself, but I’d love to know if anyone else does.
• If you are looking for a little more traditional chocolate chip cookie, you might like these Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies from Teresa Long of Intent Blog.
• These Black and white chocolate chip cookies that come from Jessie at the blog The Hungry Mouse use Oreos as one of the ingredients look pretty darn tasty.
• Flour Girl, ironically enough, posted this recipe for Flour-less peanut butter banana chocolate chip cookies. Again, peanut butter and chocolate. Yum!

Of course, ’tis the season and a post about cookie recipes wouldn’t be complete without some holiday recipes.

Holiday Cookies

• Cabaret Squidoo includes a list of several different types of Christmas Cookie Recipes.
• Jenn from Frugal Upstate recently made this recipe for Gingerbread cookies with her kids.
• Linda from Make Life Sweeter made Spice cookies.
• These Whole-wheat raspberry almond thumbprint cookies from Pinch My Salt look like something I’d like to try with my kids. I think they’d really enjoy sticking their thumbs in the cookie dough.

I should probably apologize to all of the vegans out there for that bacon chocolate chip cookie recipe above (sorry), but if it’s any consolation I found a handful of vegan recipes to help make it up to you.

Vegan Cookies

• From Priya’s Easy and Tasty Recipes comes Vegan Peanut butter Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies.
• Half Pint Pixie made these Banana Figgy Cookies for her toddler daughter and was pleased her daughter loved them and that “there is no crap in them, excellent!”
• Isil from Veggie Way posted this vegan recipe for Ginger Cookies.
• Another good way to use up your pumpkin puree comes from Healthy Vegan Blog’s recipe for vegan Pumpkin Cookies.
• And Kathy from What Do I Know? posted this tasty vegan recipe for No-Bake Double Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies.

Since I included so many recipes that include chocolate (how did that happen?), I want to throw in this non-chocolate recipe for good measure: Lemon cookies from Mennonite Girls Can Cook. (Honestly, I had to include it just because it looks really good.)

And lastly, because we should not forget our canine friends, here are some cookie recipes for the dogs.

Dog Cookies

• Lisa from Condo Blues had to get creative when she recently found herself out of dog treats before an agility class. Because her dog has allergies to wheat and corn, it is hard to find dog treats in the grocery store anyway, so she developed her own Allergy-free apple and banana dog cookies.
• Ali at Home of the Lazy Dog has a recipe for Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits. She says she’s made a lot of different kinds of dog treats over the years, but these are her favorite. They’re “easy, healthy, natural, crunchy and taste great.”

Have a favorite cookie recipe you’d like to share? Please leave a comment with a link or the whole recipe, I’m not picky. Happy baking.

*When buying chocolate chips (or chocolate of any kind), I recommend buying organic and fair-trade whenever possible. If it’s just not in your budget (it’s unfortunately, not usually in mine), then I suggest avoiding Nestlé products and buying a store brand (generally cheaper) or another brand. Why? You can read about the Nestlé boycott here. This is a boycott that I continue to stand behind.

Cross-posted on BlogHer

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On Sunday morning, I whipped up some homemade playdough for the kids. It took maybe 20 minutes from start to finish and was so easy it left me wondering why I never made it myself before!

Playdough

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
food coloring

Mix flour, salt, cream of tartar and oil, and slowly add the water. Cook over medium heat, stirring until dough becomes stiff. Turn out onto wax paper and let cool. Knead the playdough with your hands until of proper consistency. Use as is, or divide into balls and add a few drops of the food coloring to make various colors.

I love how soft it turned out and the unique colors. If the kids didn’t love it so much, I think I could spend hours just playing with it myself. :)

Here are some variations of the playdough recipe.

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