Trial and Error

Well, we are going on month three of our trek towards living a little more green and altering the way we buy and eat our food.  Today, I will happily say the kids no longer run straight for the pantry at snack time.  Natalie's favorite snack is pears, or an apple with some peanut butter.  Gavin loves his grapes and bananas.  The girls take at least one piece of fruit with them to school, or else they have it when they come home.  I have yet to find a food Spencer will not eat.  The hardest thing to break so far has been the chips and crackers.  One step at a time I guess. 
When we found out our beef would not be ready until April, we bought a small sampling from the same farmer.  Earlier in the week I made some steaks.  What I didn't realize was the steaks were from a top round.. this is a particularily tougher piece of meat and I would have been better off cutting it up and adding it to the package of stew meat.  Oh well, the flavor was undeniably good even if it could have been a bit more tender.  I also burned the potatoes that I fried to go along with it.  Why oh why can't I make them the way mom does?  Last night, I made a barbeque beef brisket.  I trimmed the fat, seasoned it a little, put some sauce on it and put it in the crock pot.  To go along with it, we had baked potatoes, steamed carrots and some corn muffins.  All I can say was everyone wanted more and there wasn't enough to go around.  It was delicious.  For every not-so-good meal I seem to have a really good one not to far behind.  I suppose that isn't too terrible. 

I made a homemade pizza crust not too long ago and it turned out ok.  Gavin scarfed down three pieces but the crust was a little soft and bread like and, well, not very crusty.  This is one of the things that is going to take practice.  Breadmaking in general is not a very easy task.  There is much science behind it.

We have cut back on the amount of milk we drink since I started buying it at the co-op.  We literally cut our milk consumption in half and are being a lot less wasteful.  The milk there is from a local dairy with grass fed cattle.  The taste is soo much better than that bought in plastic jugs (these are in glass half gallon jars).  You really learn to appreciate what you are eating and how your food is processed before it gets to your home.  I am a little sad, Gavin is still sick so I will be missing my Master Naturalist class tomorrow.  We have a field trip to the wastwater treatment plant and I will need to stay home with Gavin.  This also means we will be out of milk for another day since I do the milk run on Tuesdays when I finish class since I am downtown as it is.  I will just have to make a trip there Wednesday as long as Gavin is feeling better.  I really hope he begins to feel better soon.