The last year or so, I've gone back and forth on organic foods.
On one hand...organic food is really expensive!! <----That's really the only complaint I have to say about it. A few years ago, I could have said that lots of times a great deal of what was on the shelves was likely to be stale but with the emergence of so many more organic food sections in 'normal' grocery stores in addition to MORE organic grocery stores that just isn't true anymore.
On the other hand...It greatly disturbs me that food that is natural needs to have an 'organic' label whereas food full of all sorts of weird things--triglyciphosmonoegludite anyone?--is just 'food.' A few weeks ago, after buying some produce at Whole Foods, I picked up some produce at my local 'regular' grocery store the next time around. The grapes had some weird sticky coating that didn't really wash off. The cucumbers had a VISIBLE waxy coating that I could NOT get off. The apples I could scrape off wax with my thumbnail. ICK. And you know? I don't think the flavor was improved one bit by all of this protective coating. If anything, the produce didn't taste quite as ripe.
This has lead me to thinking about food a lot lately. I don't think I want to buy foods that have strange things added to if I can help it anymore. I want to buy as much as organic food as possible. (And hopefully grow some--I've started a few container veggies--but NO zucchini!!--to supplement the CSA I joined) But back to that single complaint I have about organic food.
It's expensive. I'm determined to find a way to purchase organic as much as possible. I think I've might have found the key and it was relatively easy to find too! Say no to pre-prepared foods! Some people might think that shouldn't be very difficult for me and it isn't really because I bake quite a lot and cook almost every meal already.
But organic food is expensive! I keep saying that but it's important point. I've decided to step up my baking and cooking to try to make even more things from scratch because staples and basics aren't as expensive as the pre-prepared stuff. Plus, as a bonus, I'm finding when you use really good quality ingredients, somehow you don't seem to need as much of a thing to satisfy your appetite. Perhaps because there are no empty fillers?
Anyhow, after a recent trip to Whole Foods I got some delicious organic grass-fed ricotta (have I ever mentioned I could eat ricotta with a spoon?) and organic mozzarella. With these two things plus other ingredients I had at home, I was able to use the cheeses for four meals (not all consumed of course yet!) for two adults and 2 children + leftovers to supplement the next day's lunch. I made a large pan of baked ziti (Two meals--reheat the next day during baseball season is really handy!) and raviolis.
Yup, raviolis. And I got to finally try out my cool new (old?) gadget that worked wonderfully. All told, I made 50 (plus one more I cooked and ate as a taste test) raviolis at a little less than 1 minute per ravioli.
I think I would have been able to make these even faster had certain small humans in my house hadn't destroyed my biscuit cutter in a play-doh fight making extraveganza.
It was pretty stressful deciding just how much filling to add. Too much it squishes out. Too little and whoever eats it later gets cheated. Too much or too little goofs up the total filling allotment potentially making you end with leftover filling or leftover dough. Stress. Stress. Stress!!!
My filling-to-dough allotment was perfect. =) Of course I'm bragging about it.
This is the fun part. I'm never going to let Tristyn and Maia see me do this because then they'll want to do it and it's too much fun for them to handle.
They may look small on the plate but each ravioli works out thus: Children--4 bites. Women--3 bites. Men--2 bites. Really Hungry People--Possibly 1 bite?? Oh, hello strawberry jam jar....what are you doing here?
I don't need 51 50 for dinner so I froze 25 of them. Note to self: Very Good Job remembering to freeze individually and not repeating the Gnocchi Incident.
This is about half of the batch of a basic tomato/spaghetti sauce I made 2 days ago. I like to make a great big pot and can it in individual jars. There's something very satisfying in seeing a long row of jars in the cupboard. Maia got great satisfaction out of hearing each jar 'pop!' after it was removed from the hot water bath and it sealed up. (See the awesome techiniques one learns from being poor during first marriage? Making and storing sauce this way is significantly cheaper than buying sauce. Unless you can stomach that 89 cents crap from Aldis) Plus they stack and storebought pasta sauce jars don't stack well.
Ravioli!!!! With a split, wee baby leaf from one of my basil plants to top it off (and lemon pepper grilled chicken butting in) I didn't have the heart to take any more leaves after the stress of a transplant.
Getting four meals out of all that good stuff makes me not begrudge the price at all!
