Mama Kay’s Reflections

Nourishing Days is having a give away of Nina Planck’s new book: Real Food for Mother & Baby. I read her first book Real Food and found it to be an encouraging and practical guide to eating whole foods. I highly recommend it! I’m looking forward to reading this book as well!

I’ve posted a couple things over here: http://investmentcooking.com/wordpress/ at my new blog. I’ve included some of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes.

A couple weeks ago we went to IHOP for breakfast and I had the most wonderful carrot cake pancakes. They were so good I decided to make our own. Here’s the recipe I came up with.

2 cups whole wheat floor
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 [...]

It took me awhile to get back to it but I finally wrote another newsletter for Investment Cooking. This month it is on making muffins for the freezer. You can sign up for the free newsletter at www.investmentcooking.com. I hope to put a new newsletter out every month again. I hope you enjoy it!

I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver.

I loved reading this description of how one family decided to grow as much of their own food as they could and only purchase what they could find in their own county for one year. They moved from Arizona to Virginia [...]

Here is the recipe for one of our family’s favorite cookies from when I was growing up.

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup coconut

Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 1 minute.

Remove from heat then stir in the [...]

Monday:

Breakfast: English Muffins & Fruit

Dinner: Cheesy Chicken Pot Pie

Tuesday:

Breakfast: Quiche

Dinner: Pizza (small group Bible study night)

Wednesday:

Breakfast: Muffins & Smoothies

Dinner: Chicken Strips (We didn’t have these last week; they are in the freezer.)

Thursday:

Breakfast: Oatmeal

Dinner: Soup & Salad

Investment Cooking: whole chicken in the crockpot for meat & stock

Friday:

Breakfast: Dutch Babies

Dinner: Lentils, Rice & Fried [...]

Here’s my recipe for White Chicken Chili.

I usually prepare a crock pot full of beans overnight for this and freeze half of the beans for another meal.

1 pound boneless skinless chicken
1 pound prepared navy beans
2 Tablespoons taco seasoning
1 (4 1/2 ounce) can of chopped green chilies
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup sour cream
chopped green [...]

I decided to start doing weekly plans again for our meals. I usually plan breakfasts and dinners. Lunch is usually leftovers, sandwiches or something easy. Here’s my plan for this week:

Monday:

Breakfast: Banana Muffins (from the freezer), cantelope and orange juice

Dinner: Teriyaki Chicken, stir fry veggies and steamed rice

Tuesday:

Breakfast: Baked Oatmeal, fruit and OJ

Dinner: White Chicken [...]

This story is a great example of how buying organic makes a difference:

Dole Organic