Donuts?

We woke up this morning to a rather blustery day....overcast and windy, it finally cleared up around 2pm and although it's glorious now, it was just gloomy enough to require a quick batch of 'homemade donuts' in the morning.

"homemade" in quotes because they start and end with these:

For some reason, a package of these biscuits has been in my refrigerator. Easy enough to make biscuits at home, I can't account for why I would have these....a monster sale? left at a potluck? I have no recollection. If these are your biscuits, and we just ate them, I apologize.

Anyway, pop open a package (or three) and separate the doughy disks. I heated some organic vegetable shortening (healthy! #winning!) in the electric skillet. I have no authority in these matters, but used the 375 degree setting, in case you are inclined to try these but are as clueless as I am.

When the oil was good and heated, I plopped all ten biscuit doughs right in, browned for a minute, then used silicon tongs to flip them and brown on the other side for a minute. I pulled them all out and onto a paper towel, then rolled them in a bowl of sugar/cinnamon mixed together. No idea how much of either, I keep an old jam jar full of it for cinnamon toast, and I just used whatever was in there. Repeat from the top, when serving my kids.

That's it. Seriously. I didn't even bother with punching holes. And you know what? Not bad at all. A tasty (and more importantly....easy) impromptu treat for a dreary morning!

 (yellow)

Do you have any idea how easy it is to make jam? I had some frozen blackberries from  one of many blackberry picking adventures. (I planted three black berries on the hill above the artichokes...oh someday i will have my own patch!) But in the meantime, I have good friends and wild berries to keep me busy. 

 There are great directions that can be found here for preparing and preserving your own fruit jams. But if it all feels too fussy, there's no reason you can't just do what I do, which is 1) take fresh or frozen-from-fresh blackberries. Around 6 or 8 cups worth. Bring it to a hard boil (meaning, when you stir it, the boiling bubbles don't go down) and add a packet of low-sugar pectin.

 Let it dissolve, stirring constantly, then add 2 or 3 cups of granulated sugar. Let it dissolve, stirring constantly, then I use a hand masher to mush it all up while it's cooking for another 10 minutes or so.

Then I spooned it into jars and let it cool, jar lids on. Let that sit on the counter. Convince yourself that it will never set, that you'll be left with berry soup at the end of the day. Come back in a couple of hours and be pleasantly surprised that it actually worked, and the jam is, in fact, of jam-like consistency.

So store without bothering to water bath preserve them, I just popped these jars in the refrigerator. They'll stay for a couple of months, good as fresh, but they won't last that long anyway, so it was a good solution. I could also freeze it, pretty much indefinitely.

There are all kinds of snappy ideas about adding lemon (acidity helps it set) or using sugar substitutes (only an option with low-sugar pectin), but don't let that stuff intimidate you. You can just ignore it (I do, and my jam is still fab : )

Freshly preserved blackberry jam...and plenty of prepped and frozen berries for a future batch!

Triple berry crisp...yes, again.

Oliver & S free skirt pattern ~ too easy!  And look at the fabric my sweet friends picked out.  I think it's rad!  One down, one to go.  My friend Dana dropped off her six-year-old daughter Cassidy for a 'play date'....with me!  I helped her sew a skirt, she dug up a Starling purse I had on ice (added a felt star and called it her own) and left with a sewing machine that was in my shed.

A very complicated knitting project for Tommy.  All of his ideas are very complicated, in fact.  He's a big dreamer, a grand schemer, and I'm sure gonna jump through every hoop I can to make it happen.  And that includes knitting with black yarn in July.  Ugh.

And, my interest in my 'bee situation' led me to do some searching for bee's wax candles, resulting in this sweet Etsy find of birthday cake candles in various sizes and colors.  With two (count them!  two!) birthdays in August for these boys, it seemed like just the right way to spend ten dollars.

I hope your weekend was equally (no, even more) wonderful.  I've been waking up feeling instantly grateful for a full and happy life.  I recommend it.

Domesticities

The Boys and I had a blissful day here at The Shire.  My mom was visiting Mimi last week (please, don't ask, but I'll let you know the good news...she's hanging in there and she celebrated her 64th birthday last Wednesday...let's save the bad news for another day, shall we?)  and her neighbor's tree was shedding apples.  Nobody cared to harvest them, so my mom brought me a full paper sack!  Since it sounded like some of them came off the ground, and I could see that I would be cutting around soft spots, I first soaked them in water with some baking soda.

We made applesauce, which we ate tonight in the movie theater.  The whole famn damily went to see Dispicable Me.  Which turned out to be really super!  I had no idea what to expect, and I kind of didn't get the whole look of it (what are those yellow things?  I still don't know!) and yes, we ate applesauce.

I also did a thorough cleaning of the linens.  I took everything out of the closet and cleaned the closet.  Then I washed everything (four loads, it took!) and added some Tea Tree Oil to the rinse cycle.  Then everything dried in the sun, on the line. 

I learned how to hang clothing on the line from my Grandma Dot.  She lived in the Oakland Hills, and her house backed right up to Redwood Canyon.  It was so foggy there!  One time, Grandma Dot was driving my mom to school (Skyline High School) and although she assumed it was foggy, as usual, it turned out that it was, in fact, her car windows that were fogged over (it's called a defroster, Grandma).   On a perfectly sunny day, she couldn't quite see well enough to make a smooth drop off...instead, she accidentally drove up the steps in front of the school.  I think it's because my mom drove her to distraction; my mom says it's because "she was just like you, Mia, all brains, no smarts."  Nice.

Anyway, in case you didn't have a Grandma Dot, the trick to a quick-dry on the line is to know which way the wind blows!  Once you know the direction of the wind, just clip your items so they open up to the windy side (you can see in the picture, how only the back of the pillow cases are attached, and there is an opening in the front).  When the wind picks up, it fills the little pocket and that's why everything looks so beautiful and billowy on the line.  Grandma Dot swore by it, and I believe her.  With all that fog, and very little sun, it seems to me that the wind did more than its share of the work drying everything!  And today, which turned out to be pretty warm but definitely breezey, I was able to dry all four loads of linens across two lines in the yard.  Holla!

I folded everything neatly (stopping just short of ironing the pillow cases, you'll be happy to know) and decided that two of the sheet sets for our bed, and one set for the boys' beds, were ready for retirement.  I'll repurpose them for the fabric.  This turned out to be a good thing, because it left me with what I feel is just the right amount of "sheets on hand":  1 flannel set and 2 cotton sets, plus one guest-quality set, for our Cal King and 4 sets for the 2 twin mattresses in our kids' room.  That's a lot of sheets, actually!  Perhaps I could get away with fewer, but that would probably require me to launder more often then I'm strictly prepared to commit to.   I cut some lavender from the bush in the front yard (sorry, bees!  they LOVE this thing!) and tucked a few sprigs in with newly washed and folded sheets. 

You know what?  A thorough linen closet spring-clean (in the middle of summer) while apple-cinnamon fills the kitchen...it's exactly these kinds of "chores" that make me so happy with making a home.

Home sweet home!!!

After being out of town for a week, it felt so good this weekend to settle back into home life!  I took a gaggle of boys to the park.  Tommy and his friend were swinging on one side, and I was alternating pushes between Scotty and my grand-nephew, Matthew.  As I stood there, pushing and giggling, I thought a lot about how all of this was a metaphor for mothering and life in general, but then the sprinklers came on and now I can't remember what it was that I thought was so profound.  I just passed off my push-duties to the older boys and that was that.

Except for our time at the park, there was little reason to get out of our pajamas.  There were legos to be made...

...and based on the number of boxed snacks lining our counters (crackers and fruit snacks and cereals, oh my!) there was an emergency baking session that needed to happen.  Immediately.  My favorite oatmeal raisin cookies, and easy homemade granola bars.   (I assure you that these granola bars are not Laurel approved!!)

It was time for a quick tour of the gardens...the first of the plants meant to be my future butterfly garden on the back hill are doing just fine, and my wonderful husband (who kept my gardens watered in my absence!) is taking a well-earned rest in the back there.

Eggplants and cucumbers, rosemary, tomatoes, squash....check, check and check!

The first of the cucumbers, making an appearance!

Hundreds of green tomatoes...cherry, grape, roma, beefsteak...hundreds.  Slurp!

This giant bumble bee makes me smile!  For the longest time, I thought I had one big fat bumble, but after snapping this picture in my overgrown sage plant out back, I noticed three more just like him in the lavender bush out front.  I love him.

There must have been three dozen honey bees in the overgrown marjoram plant (um, a theme, perhaps?) in the backyard.  They love this!  Which reminds me...we should head out to the front side yard to check on our friends in the green bin...

W

Whoa.

Laurel's Kitchen :: Canneloni

Perhaps the most ambitious LK "project" I have taken on to date was the homemade canneloni.  It's funny...when we redid the kitchen, we got this amazing oven with the 6-burner stove.  The price was inflated by an additional 30% when we had to purchase the industrial-strength hood with the enlarged outtake tube...and when I questioned the need for this (speaking with my checkbook, of course), I was told that it was a safety "thing", because if I had all six burners going at the same time, a regular hood and fan would not be able to pull the heat off fast enough to be safe.  I thanked the sales rep for the information, and when Erik and I got back in the car, I laughed and said, "Yeah right!  When would that ever happen?  It's not like we're a restaurant!"  Well, I will say for the record, I was very close to using all six burners at once with this meal preparation.  It was steamy, my friends.

Part of it was that there was so much going on!  I need to steam the fresh spinach, make the tomato sauce, boil the water, make the cream sauce, and make the ricotta filling.

Just for Brit, I even used my pestle and mortar to prep the thyme and oregano.  Because she loves that.  :P

Frankly, it was all an awful lot of work.  But, I can say, that both the cream sauce and the tomato sauce could be made any time (and in bulk, because both are used in many of the recipes, with small additions for adjustments) and I will also announce, prematurely, that it was fantastic and well worth every moment, pot, and spoon that it took to make it.  Seriously yummy.  Anyway, I've kept a container of each at the ready in the refer over the last couple of weeks, and it works well.

 One little snag?  My whole wheat dough was an epic fail.  It's that brick-like mound in the background.  It was...not good.  I blame the whole wheat flour I had on hand...after this, I replaced it (I think it was too old?) and I haven't had this problem since.

I'm nothing if not flexible, though, so I quickly scratched the offending dough and made a batch of (even more offensive?) white flour dough.  I quickly rolled it out (my little table has a handy drawer that holds several of my kitchen secrets for success...the thrifted wooden rolling pin...a brush for egg white application...and, barely visible, a tube of lipstick.  So I look good, baking.) and it was very satisfying to use the pizza dough cutter to zip-zip-zip it into perfect little rectangles!

When I was young (college, I guess) and first started making my own pasta doughs, I would always get frustrated that it would stick together in the boiling water.  My great aunt Angie did some troubleshooting and let me know that "our people" add a bit of olive oil to the boiling water to remedy that problem.  Laurel's Kitchen mentions the same tip, so in case you don't have a Venetian auntie to set you straight, there is still hope.

Okay.  Homestretch!  All ten little canneloni 'burritos' fit snugly into a 9x13 casserole dish.  (Those are Laurel's whole wheat breadsticks in the far background, and that's an awesome reusable produce bag in the near background.)  And, honesty here:  It's not too early to pop open a bottle of wine and take a little breather.  You've been on your feet for a while at this point!

Now.  Now you can officially sit down and enjoy an amazing dinner with your family.  Everyone loved it!  This version of the cream sauce has a pinch of nutmeg, and it's brilliant. 

I've featured the canneloni incidentally, when I wrote about picnics at the baseball field.  I think it was even better as leftovers...or, at least, as good as leftovers!

Counting Cans

I have a cupboard in the garage where I store "extra" food...you know, things I've bought in bulk at Costco, or things I've "stocked up on" because they were on sale.  That sort of stuff.  It's mostly canned foods, too, with some packages of pasta and mac n' cheese thrown in for good measure.  (What would Laurel think?!? ;)

I had the occasion to clean out both the kitchen pantry, and this garage cupboard, over my Spring Break (girls gone wild!  what what!) and let me tell you, it was quite eye-opening.  First of all, I might not have purchased the cans of black beans on sale at Safeway (10 of them!) if I had realized that I was still working my way through a box of 8 cans of black beans that I had purchased at Costco.  Can somebody 'splain to me who exactly needs 18 cans of black beans?  *sigh*

Look at the cute lime green shelf liner I put into the kitchen pantry!

On the other hand, it did compel me to make a black bean soup which was delicious.  I ate it for dinner...breakfast...lunch...snack...dinner again.  I suppose if you wanted a vegetarian version, you could leave out the bacon (why?  why would you do that?) but here it is, somewhat modified from the back of a back of dried beans (yep.  I've got dried black beans too...apparently, I can never have too many black beans): 

Simple Black Bean Soup
1)   Cook a package of bacon in a stock pot.  (I cut the strips up using kitchen scissors.  It was an awesome way to make diced bacon!)
2)  Drain the fat, then add 3 diced carrots, 3 diced celery stalks, 1 diced onion.  Cook 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3)  Add crushed garlic (to your preference), and 1 teaspoon each of the following:  oregano, thyme, cumin, black pepper.  Stir it all together.  Cook 5 more minutes.
4)  Add a can of chicken broth (15 oz), 3 tablespoons of tomato paste, and 3 cans of black beans (do not drain the beans).
5)  Simmer on medium-low heat for about 30 - 40 minutes.  The recipe was for soaked beans, and to cook 2 hours until it thickens.  But, with the canned beans that come in their own thicker juice, I found that it was ready within about half and hour.

You can add salt and more pepper to taste, but we ate it just like that, with a smidge of cheddar cheese, or you could add some sour cream and chives.  Ooohhhh! Diced tomatoes!  Next time.  Homemade bread didn't hurt, either.

Three down...15 to go.  Wish us luck.

The One That Goes On Forever

There are so many interesting things in this book, and I find it endlessly fascinating how much of it could have been written today, 35 years later.   

When you start thinking this way, your life can never be quite the same.  If we are concerned with wise use of resources, food, for example - this is a cookbook, after all - appears in a new light.  One of the best arguments for serving whole, fresh, unprocessed foods, like homemade, whole-grain bread, is that this practice conserves what is most precious in food - its nutritional value.  When you refine away nutrients you have to replace them somehow, and a whole industry spring sup to manufacture vitamin supplements, at high cost to you, high profit to them.  Processed foods are not just unhealthy; they are wasteful, even before you consider the cost in elaborate packaging and competitive advertising.  In 1974 we Americans spent 10 billion dollars on packaging, five times the amount that the World Food Council in Rome estimated it would take to stave off famine for nine months.

This was written at a time when about 15,000 people (most of them children) were dying of malnutrition each and every day.  Can you imagine what dollar amount might be attached to packaging and advertising today?  And, at the same time, the number of children dying of malnutrition has reached 41,000...per day.  But the fact is, this "call to arms" issued in Laurel's Kitchen (if you will) embodies so many of the very same health, social, and political issues I am thinking about today.  Pathetic, don't you think?  To think of the wasted opportunities; to have come so far, in so many ways, and yet continue to have so many of the same exact (but now even more exacerbated) problems.

*************************************************
Kelly gave a heads-up that some of the nutritional information has changed since 1975.  You only need count the number of times Laurel's Kitchen maligns The Incredible Edible Egg to know she speaks the truth!  :)  There's an entire section at the back of the book that gives a cross-referenced and color-coded matrix of how make complete proteins.

Oh, my aching head.

But then I read something about beans and corn, and that was enough for me.  Have I mentioned that we are not fancy?  If I waited until I was totally sure about what to do and how to do it, I can promise you that we'd be eating Hamburger Helper and Doritos until the end of time.

Cornbread is so easy to make.  And it just tastes good.  Sue me, but I care.  I make it quickly from scratch using this recipe, which is pretty much exactly like every cornbread recipe ever written:

• 1 cup corn meal
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Mix together these dry ingredients, then add 1 egg, 1 cup of milk (I use non-fat), and 1/4 cup honey (oh, the honey!!) and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.  I fold it all together with a wooden spoon, just until it's mixed, and then pop it in the oven in a greased dish at 350 degree F for 30 minutes.  I now use an 8"x8" glass casserole dish.  I finally found one (I've looked for over a year!) at a thrift store for $3. I think if you're willing to purchase it new, it should be no problem to pick one up anywhere, anytime, but I was willing to wait.

Here's a little tip:  I put all the dry ingredients into a bag (I make up about a half dozen at a time), and when I want to make cornbread I just grab a bag, dump it in a bowl, add the wet ingredients, and cook.  I write on the bag which ingredients need to be added (1 egg, 1 c milk, 1/4 c honey, 2 T oil) and the bake time and temp.  That way, I never have to refer to a recipe.  I can reuse the bags many times, also.  (PS, do you see the size of my honey in that picture above?  Seriously, I love me some honey.)

But see, here we have fresh, nutritional ingredients, and it's such a simple recipe, there's no need to buy a box of mix.  Speaking of which, I bought 25 pounds of dried pinto beans at Costco for around ten dollars.  Twenty five pounds!  I gave the woman who cleans my house about one-third of it, and I still have more beans than you can shake a stick at.  I love how deliberate you have to be when you work with dried beans.  You have to think of it hours ahead of time, even though it's no more work than opening a can.  It doesn't take any energy to soak them, but you can't come home and think, hey, I'll whip up some dried pinto beans in 15 minutes.

The last thing I did, for this particular meal, was I made some whole wheat tortillas.  Totally easy, google it, you won't be sorry.  The kids love to help make these...they roll them out, then pass them to me and I actually roll them out, then we pop them on an extremely hot griddle (do not underestimate the importance of a well-heated, dry surface) for a minute on each side.  Perfectly perfect.  (I can do this in 20 minutes, start to finish, with about half that time spent just waiting around....er, finishing the beans and grating cheese I mean.)

Tommy had ordered a quesadilla for school lunch, and he had thrown it away (thrown it away) because it had beans in it.  Holy cats.  So I made him these.

And he loved it.  I just mashed some of the beans with a bit of water, spread them onto the tortillas, and added cheese.  He's also eaten the beans (not mashed, just plain) with a sprinkle of cheese.  He did it to please me, but both boys have grown to like them quite a bit!

I just ate mine on a plate (no tortilla needed when you have cornbread, though I enjoy them immensely both ways!) and I added some plain Greek yogurt, too, because I like to live dangerously.  (And because I can never eat the sour cream before it goes bad, so this is a fine substitute.)

The four of us can destroy a pan of cornbread.

So, there you have it.  Everything made from ingredients that I bought in bulk, and made from scratch.  And it may look like work (which, compared to picking up a box of Jiffy cornbread, a package of whole wheat tortillas, and a can of beans, it certainly is) but it's such a good kind of work.  And it's only really work the first time I did it.  I'm all about setting up a system to minimize my aggravation in the kitchen, so I spend some energy that first time coming up with the exact right order to do everything.  We've had this meal, in it's entirety, twice...and I've had some combination of bean-leftover for lunch at least five times.  Yesterday, in fact!  So I feel good about the quality of the food, the taste of the food, and, just as importantly given how all this started, way up there at the top, I feel good that I used a minimum of packaging.

Hi-Pro Granola

For weeks, I've eaten this exact same meal for breakfast, and I thought it was going pretty well.  Granola (homemade by me), with blueberries, a few tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt, and what I call "a teaspoon of honey" but what is really, actually, at least a tablespoon of honey.  Ahem.

My homemade granola was very simple:  1/4 cup butter (down from a whole cup called for in the original recipe!), 1/4 cup honey (which, again, was probably closer to half a cup...what is it with me and the honey?), and 3 cups of rolled oats.  You know, quaker oats?  Melt, mix, cook.  Couldn't be simpler.

Apparently, though....it could be healthier.  I started using the Hi-Pro Granola recipe from Laurel's Kitchen.  Total drama, if you want to know.  Okay, first of all...

I made a total ass of myself in the bulk section at the Whole Foods in Oakland.  I left there feeling pretty low.  My self-esteem cannot handle the attitude of the employees there.  It took some seriously focused energy to get myself squared away enough to brave the Whole Foods in San Ramon.  (Please to note:  In order to re-align my self-esteem, I did not find it necessary to give myself a pep-talk, remind myself why this was an important mission to the health and well-being of my family, or dust off my college degrees to remind myself that I am an intelligent woman.  No, to set myself straight, I spent about 3 minutes mentally belittling the employees on various fronts.  Don't you think it says more about me, than them, that I would let an eye-rolling nineteen year old on shift between classes at the junior college dictate the mood of my afternoon?  It's exhausting being me.)

But you see all these jars?  They are full of "exotic" (to me) sounding ingredients like soy flour, wheat germ, vital gluten, wheat bran berries, torula yeast, dried skim milk....and a variety of seeds.  Flax, sesame, sunflower.  At the San Ramon Whole Foods (which is near my mom's house) my faith in humanity was restored when I came across a nice young man stocking the bulk bins.  He patiently answered all my questions (do I want hulled or unhulled sesame seeds?  what's the difference between these sunflower seeds?  what does it mean to 'sprout' wheat berries?  does soy flour have gluten?) and kindly directed me to the baking aisle for a variety of items that aren't sold in bulk.  Someday, I will marry him.  haha!

(And yes, I did in fact use my label-maker to print out labels for the repurposed jars.  Totally normal, I swear.)

The book said to "toast the seeds as instructed on the following page"...so I flipped the page and read through the directions.  I got to this line..."remember, the less surface area exposed to dry heat, the better"... and I thought huh.  Being told to "remember" something implies that it's information I have stored, somewhere, for some reason.  I assure you, that is not the case.  Not only do I have no current schema for toasting nuts, I have to admit that I couldn't even make sense of "less surface area".  God, I hate applied mathematics.  I swear, that was my first thought!  Math, to me, is the essence of liberal arts...truth, beauty, knowledge.  I have no interest in actually using math.  I just like doing math.  Alright, so I never could figure out what that meant (should I spread all the seeds out in a thin layer? or mound them up in the middle of the baking sheet?  is it the overall surface area, or is the surface area specific to an individual seed?) so I just skipped it. 
 
I put the recipe together, with my untoasted nuts and all, and cooked it for 45 minutes.  In the end, it was nothing like "granola".  It was not crunchy.  It was not clustered in any way.  A taste test revealed that it tasted, literally, like grass.  Grass.  As in, lawn.  I transferred it all to my cereal jar, where I stared at it for a few hours before deciding whether or not it was a failed experiment.  I couldn't tell if I should trust my taste buds...they'd been marinating in butter and honey, after all, and it was possible that I had a highly skewed perspective on what constituted granola in the first place.

In the end, I told myself that I would eat this batch.  Ultimately, I was going to add blueberries, yogurt, and some honey to make my breakfast.  At that point, would it really matter?  It turns out that no, it does not matter!  Over just a few servings, I became completely accustomed to the new tastes and the new texture, too.

In the book, she says "Hi-Pro is concentrated.  A small serving stays with you all through the morning."  I'd have to agree.  So far, I'm the only person in my family who eats it.  Everyone else loved the original recipe (well, no duh!) so I think I'm going to pursue some kind of hybrid....like, maybe take the original recipe and add some of the wheat germ, wheat bran, soy flour, and sunflower seeds.  I'll have to experiment with quantities, I'm hoping it will be a simple way to pile on the healthy stuff.

...and then my head exploded

It's no secret than I am a complete nut about food anymore.  I work full-time outside our home, I have two growing boys, one man-child, and a cat that all require constant tending.  Yet I insist on having a vegetable garden (zone 10 willing!) in as much as I can, what with all the experimenting and not knowing what I'm doing and all.  My adventures in from-scratch-cooking are sporadically documented right here.  I don't talk so much about what I eat here (you're welcome!) but I constantly strive to do as much close-to-source eating as I can; on any given day, I vary from nearly-perfect to here-let-me-just-get-these-wrappers-out-of-your-way.  It's life.  Well, it's my life, and I just do what I can.

It's hard for Tommy to make healthy food choices.  We've been working really hard on helping him understand that just because food tastes good, that doesn't actually mean it is good.  Oh, son, I feel you....life can be so unfair!  He's doing well, and I have reason to believe that he may actually come out the other side of this a healthy, well-adjusted young man.   Wanting him to grow up healthy and happy was actually the original impetus that spurred me to learn how to make and preserve our own food.  Well, that and the fact that I like to pretend I'm living in the Little House on the Prairie.  That's probably totally normal and not even weird.

So when he comes to me and says he likes a healthy snack, such as air-popped popcorn or fruit or carrot sticks or string cheese or my homemade granola, I don't even have to think about.  I just do it.  Yesterday, when we dashed into the grocery store for a few mid-week replenishments of some of my go-to ingredients, he asked me about bagels.  I guess they've had them for snack at school, and he quite enjoys a blueberry bagel.

Oh, yes, son!  Right away son!  What a wholesome treat!  We found the bread aisle and grabbed a package of bagels...then I read the ingredients.  Not those.  Grabbed another bag.  Not those.  Grabbed a third bag (hippie brand!  gotta be it!) and, well, no.  There was no bagel to be had that didn't list "high fructose corn syrup" as one of the first handful of ingredients.

And then my head exploded.

We didn't buy any bagels.  You could legitimately argue that I'm taking it too far (I've seen the commercials, scolding me for being reactionary and uninformed ahem) and that it doesn't matter because it's in everything anyways and okay...maybe.  Maybe.  But did you see this article?  Short version:  they fed two groups of rats the same number of calories, but one group had access to calories from high fructose corn syrup and those rats?  Those rats were fatter and unhealthier.  On the same number of calories, the high fructose corn syrup rats were fatter.

 

Turns out?  Bagels are not hard to make.  Turns out?  It's not possible, in my home, for a bagel to make it through the 20-minute cool down period intact.  Six ingredients (one is water!), no chemicals, perfectly delicious.