Simply Amazing Microwave Bread and Butter Pickles

Tuesday I mentioned how well our garden was doing and my subsequent search                       for different ways of preparing cucumbers.


And I mentioned the plethora of almost-identical sites that proclaimed 13 "amazing ways" to use them in reportedly "amazing" ways  and --- the blogger who's personal tests proved them amazingly ineffective.


Yesterday I found yet another plethora of sites touting an amazingly delicious, amazingly simple, amazingly quick method of making bread and butter pickles in the microwave --- in less than 10 minutes from start to finish.


They are amazing FANTASTIC !


Comments from the various sites all followed along the
same lines. As I remember them, they included:


"My mother actually cried when she tasted them -- they reminded her so much of the ones she used to make with her mother."


"I don't even like bread and butter pickles but I LOVED these!"


"My husband ate the whole jar."


"I could hear my kids in the kitchen chomping away."



"This is how bread and butter pickles used to taste."


"My Nana's pickles tasted just like this!"


Since Simple Gail is not into hyperbole . . .


I can't give them higher praise because  I'd hate to oversell them and raise the hopes of bread and butter pickle lovers everywhere.


Finally. . .


THE RECIPE


One large cucumber, unpeeled and thinly sliced 
One onion, even more thinly sliced
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp celery seeds
1/4 tsp ground turmeric


Combine above in medium-size microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high 7-8 minutes, stirring twice, until cucumbers are tender and onions are translucent. 


Put into a clean jar with a lid. Chill (and store) in refrigerator.  Enjoy!


Comments from others included:

• doubling or tripling the batch
• using canning lids and rings and 10 minutes in a water bath to seal them for storing
• adding small amounts of garlic for variety

Gail's comments:

• when I make jam I sterilize my jars in hot water, fill them with the hot liquid, top with canning lids (that have been sitting in hot water) and rings and then I turn them upside down on a towel. This helps ensure a seal. You don't need to water bath jams and jellies because of the high sugar content. Maybe the sugar and vinegar in these would allow you to do the same but for now I am just sealing the jars with my upside-down-way and storing them in the refrigerator. 

• to save bunches of money I buy my spices at a health food or grocery that sells bulk spices by the ounce. One ounce each of the three spices came to $1.74 and is enough for making several batches! 

'til we eat again,
          Simply, Gail

Cucumbers are much, much more . . .

than simply salad toppers !


Our garden has been doing great. As a result I have been searching out new recipes for common produce.
     Among the "amazing" things I found were many almost identical posts heralding the wonders of the cool cucumber for its various health and household cleaning powers. Most fell in the too good to be true category so I went to Snopes to check them out. They rate them  "undetermined."
     Along the way I happened on the post of another blogger who wrote that her earlier Snopes inquiry showed the jury was still out, so she took it upon herself to check out the 13 purported miracle workers.
     She found that most didn't live up to the hype.

My search for new and unusual cucumber recipes yielded much greater success. Until this week, I had no idea you could/would actually cook a cuke!  These are not your typical cucumber recipes but all three were a hit with us.


Richard's Cucumber Soup 
Serve icy cold or piping hot - both really hit the spot


2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and chopped
2 T thinly sliced green onion
2 T butter or margarine
1 T red wine vinegar
4 cups chicken broth (2 cans)
salt to taste
1/2 to 1 teaspoon dried tarragon or marjoram (or to taste)
1 to 2 T. finely chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup sour cream


In large pot, melt the butter and saute the sliced green onions until soft. Add the remaining ingredients except the sour cream. Let the soup simmer for 20 minutes or until the cucumbers are soft. Pour the hot soup in a blender and puree it. Return to the pot and whisk in the sour cream. Serve immediately as a hot soup or chill thoroughly and serve cold. 


Creamed Cucumbers
This recipe is fun to play around with. Adjust the spices and the done-ness of the cukes to suit your taste. It seems lend itself to many variations.


2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and finely sliced
3 T. butter or margarine
1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
few sprinkles nutmeg
dried or fresh dill and/or chopped chives


Melt the butter or margarine in a skillet. Saute cucumbers until they begin to shine. Stir in the cream,  a couple of sprinkles of nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste, stirring constantly over low heat. Add the dill and or chives. Serve warm.


Cucumber Lime Cooler
No cooking this time --- just blend, chill and enjoy.  We really like the pulp in this refreshing drink but if you don't, you can strain the mixture before serving. 


1 cucumber, peeled and cut into chunks
Juice of two limes (or to taste)
1/3 cup sugar


Put cucumber chunks, lime juice and sugar in a blender container. Add enough water to come within 1-1/2 inches of the top. Blend well. Refrigerate until icy cold. 


'til we eat again,
          I am Simply, Gail

What If . . . A Message from Paul Harvey

Yesterday,  while I was preparing a simple post on cucumbers, 
a cool refreshing summertime treat --- 


a chilling e-mail arrived in my inbox.


Do you remember the famous ABC radio news commentator Paul Harvey, known for telling us "the rest of the story"? Millions of Americans listened to his programs which were broadcast over 1,200 radio stations nationwide. 


On April 3, 1965 he delivered a sobering message. He updated it occasionally as time went by.  


Paul Harvey passed on in 2009.  Please take 3 minutes  to listen to his  47 year-old message --- observations from then that are stark realities today. 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/H3Az0okaHig?rel=0

 

Dissecting . . . Soda Pop

      Dissecting is not a word that comes with pleasant images.

The things I am discovering about

edible food-like substances

are also unpleasant. Very unpleasant. 

Edible is probably even an iffy (and overly generous) word to use.

It is becoming more and more common for the common foods we eat to be less and less real --- and it is important to our health and to our family's health to find out if what we are eating is real.

I am going to be stepping on some toes                       
(okay, probably many toes) with this one but,
 as the saying goes,  if the shoe fits wear it or . . . 
take it with a grain of salt  sugar.


Soda Pop


Soda pop is "simply" carbonated water, sugar*, 
flavoring and coloring** --- 
and many/most contain caffeine, a stimulant.


A 16 ounce can of soda pop averages 200 calories --- all from sugar*


A 16 ounce can of soda pop contains approximately 12.5 teaspoons of sugar*


12.5 teaspoons of sugar = 4+ Tablespoons of sugar


4 Tablespoons of sugar =  1/4 cup




Wow!  
Seems unbelievable? 
It is unbelievable.


Would you ever put 1/4 cup sugar in a glass of ice tea or cup of coffee?




Even when the food is real, it is disconcerting to see that sometimes the real is too much of a good thing.


*and even worse, high-fructose corn syrup has replaced sugar in most if not all soft drinks. HFCS is another questionable manufactured product but aside from this small blurb below, I am not going to get into that --- at least for now.




"In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.


"The new research complements previous work demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse."  
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/


What Started Out as Good . . .

• A hundred years ago, the first school lunch programs were started because a 1906 study discovered 2 million American children were so poor they frequently went hungry. The program was run by volunteers serving limited amounts of donated food.
• In the 1930's President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that the federal government should help feed poor children and he instructed the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) to buy food from farmers and ship it to schools. This program helped farmers by giving them money during the Great Depression, and it met the needs of poor children. The federal government hired people to work in school cafeterias.
• In 1946 Congress passed the National School Lunch Act, which expanded the program and announced that its goal was "to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation's children."

Became Ugly!

As the years passed, the needs of children became less important than the needs of companies hoping to sell them things. Soda, candy, and fast-food companies approached school officials seeking permission to put their products inside schools.


The U.S. government worried that selling junk food and soda violated the spirit of the National School Lunch Act.

• In 1977 The USDA blocked the sale of "foods of minimal nutritional value" in schools.
• The National Soft Drink Association and other food companies didn't like that rule and filed a lawsuit against the USDA.
• At first the junk-food and soda companies lost in court but they wouldn't give up.
• In 1983 a federal judge ruled that sodas and junk foods could be sold in schools, with some restrictions.
• By 2006, 43  percent of elementary schools, 74 percent of middle schools and 98 percent of high schools had soda machines, candy machines, snack bars, or stores that served foods high in sugar, fat, and salt.
• A study of the children in the New York City public schools, in 2006, showed more than 40 percent of the children were overweight and almost 25 percent are obese. 

Above excerpted from Chew On This (everything you don't want to know about fast food) by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson.

WARNINGS: Caramel Coloring


**Caramel appears innocent enough but you may want to make note of the following --- especially if  you or any of your family members have allergies.


"Caramel is manufactured by heating carbohydrates, either alone or in the presence of acids, alkalies, and/or salts. Caramel is produced from commercially available nutritive sweeteners consisting of fructose, dextrose(glucose), invert sugar, sucrose, malt syrup, molasses, starch hydrolysates and fractions thereof. The acids that may be used are sulfuric, sulfurous, phosphoric, acetic, and citric acids; the alkalies are ammonium,sodium, potassium, and calcium hydroxides; and the salts are ammonium, sodium, and potassium carbonate,bicarbonate, phosphate (including mono- and dibasic), sulfate, and bisulfite. Antifoaming agents, such as polyglycerol esters of fatty acids, may be used as processing aids during manufacture.^[2] Its color ranges from pale-yellow to amber to dark-brown." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramel_color


In conclusion, if the above is not enough to make you gulp here are two comments I pulled off the net.


The concentrate for 70 percent of Coca-Cola’s 1.5 billion drinks served each day originates in the tax haven of Ireland, where enough concentrate for 50,000 Cokes costs $2.60—including labor. The concentrate’s main ingredient? Caramel.


Yes, America loves its Coca Cola. But keep in mind – with fountain soda running $2.00/glass these days, a family of four that dines out twice per week will save nearly $1,000 per year by skipping the soda pop and instead going with water. Don’t get me wrong – I like a nice, cold, refreshing (caffeine-free diet) Pepsi as much as the next guy. But personally, I’d rather spend that $1,000 on an extra weekend getaway or two. Wouldn’t you?

Piles of Paperwork: What to TOSS and What to KEEP

Judging from the vast number of "getting organized" materials available, I don't think I am the only one

who can't seem to get to the top of my paperwork.

Maybe these REAL SIMPLE guidelines will help me out. And hopefully, if your finances are simple and you suffer from paper overload and uncertainty, they will help you also.

TOSS --- each month

• ATM, bank deposit slips, and credit card receipts, after you have checked them against your statements. 
• Sales receipts for minor purchases, unless the receipt is for an item that has a warranty.

TOSS --- after one year

• Monthly bank and credit-card statements, if you don't itemize deductions. 
• Monthly quarterly brokerage and mutual-fund statements.
• Monthly mortgage statements (if your year-end statement shows the total amount of interest and property taxes you've paid throughout the year).
• Phone and utility bills if you don't have a home office, use the phone for business calls, or anticipate any need to prove long-term residency.
• Paycheck stubs after they are reconciled with your annual W-2 or 1099.

KEEP --- for seven years

• W-2 and 1099 forms
• Year-end statements from credit card companies
• Phone and utility bills (if you deduct any portion for business, have more than one home, or have moved within the past few years.
• Cancelled checks and receipts/statements for annual mortgage interest and property taxes, deductible business expenses, child-care bills, out-of-pocket medical costs, or any other tax deductible expense.

KEEP --- Indefinitely

• Annual tax returns
• Year-end summaries from financial services companies
• Confirmation slips listing the purchase price of any investments you own.
• Home-improvement records
• Receipts for major purchases.

Note: These are simple guidelines for simple household expenses as suggested by REAL SIMPLE magazine. If your finances are not this simple or if you have any questions or concerns,  you should check with your accountant.

Dissecting . . . Vegetable Shortening

In my last post I recalled the story of the            
Velveteen Rabbit who asks 


"What is Real?"


It is becoming more and more common for the common foods we eat to be less and less
real --- and it is important to our health and to our family's health to find out if what we are eating is real.


Vegetable Shortening 

I do a lot of studying in books and on the Internet. I am always amazed how quickly Google provides the answers to my searches. 


That was not the case today.

I was searching for backup proof for my latest disturbing discovery* and discovered the making of Crisco is a well-kept secret --- even though there are zillions of articles on the dangers of trans fats and hydrogenated oils and the like.


The Assumption

Back in the day Crisco was reported to be so pure that we were advised to use it on baby's bottom, on our lips, and our skin. White as snow, we were led to assume, was also pure as fresh-fallen snow.

The Facts

1. To make shortening (or margarine) high temperature and pressure are used on the extract the oils from the vegetables. Then, since the manufacturer's wouldn't want to leave any product behind, any oil still remaining in the seed or grain is removed with hexane solvents ( toxic chemical HEXANE -- a neurotoxic substance produced as a byproduct of gasoline refining.) http://www.naturalnews.com/026303.html
2. The oil is steam cleaned, a process that removes all the vitamins and antioxidants while leaving  the solvents and pesticides. 
3. The oil is mixed with a nickel catalyst and is, as a liquid, put into a high-pressure, high-temperature reactor where hydrogen gas is forced into the oil (hydrogenation). 
4. The reactor changes the liquid to a semi-solid "that looks like gray cottage cheese and smells terrible."
5. Emulsifiers are mixed in to smooth out the lumps.
6. The product is steam cleaned a second time to get rid of the horrible smell.
7. Finally,  it is bleached to get rid of the gray color.   

*Skinny Chicks Eat Real Food (kicking your fake food habit) by registered dietitian Christine Avanti.

BTW, Margarine is made by adding artificial flavors and synthetic vitamins to vegetable shortening. Because manufacturers aren't allow to add a synthetic color to margarine, they add a natural coloring "annatto."  Doesn't that strike you as hypocritical?  Everything else about shortening is synthetic and the government watchers over the safety of our food choose to draw the line at artificial color!   


 Documentation 


I spent a few hours searching for confirmation before presenting  Ms. Avanti's report since I didn't want to offer false information. Finally I found it:


"RE: Classification of Crisco shortening

Dear Mr. Erwin:
This letter is in response to your inquiry, dated July 2, 1990, concerning the tariff classification of two Crisco shortening products under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States Annotated (HTSUSA). A sample of the merchandise was not submitted along with your request. You have requested confidential treatment for this request.
FACTS:
The subject merchandise is described as a one pound block of regular Crisco shortening, and a one pound block of butter- flavored Crisco shortening. The regular shortening consists of the following ingredients: 78.3 percent of refined, bleached, and hydrogenated Canola oil, 17.4 percent of refined, bleached, and hydrogenated Malaysian palm oil, and 4.3 percent of refined, bleached, and hydrogenated soybean oil. The butter-flavored shortening contains the same ingredients plus two artificial butter flavors and food coloring. Both of theses products are subjected to the processes of blending and deodorizing."
http://www.faqs.org/rulings/rulings1993HQ0087546.html#b

I found this one as I searched---

How Crisco Shortening Turned Me Into a Nutritionist…

June 5, 2007

"Might sound a little strange coming from a natural health nutritionist, but I want to thank the makers of Crisco shortening for getting me started on my career. Back in rural North Carolina farming country during the early 1970s, Crisco was a staple ingredient in just about everyone’s kitchen that I knew. We used Crisco shortening in everything from biscuits to cookies, cakes, and pies for that “flaky” crust, wonderful texture you looked for in baked goods and without the after taste of lard. Heck, I even won the “Crisco Award” and still have the trophy! So why would a shortening get me interested in nutrition anyway? Because I asked one simple question………….how is it made? When told that Crisco was actually “man-made,” taking a natural liquid plant oil and turning it into asolid that doesn’t really exist in nature, my response was immediate……… “So if it doesn’t exist in nature, how does my body know what to do with it?”  But no one then could really answer my question. So, that’s how my career got started."

http://www.seattlenutrition.com/diet/how-crisco-shortening-turned-me-into-a-nutritionist/

 There are many sites that offer substitutions for shortening, but since I like to leave you with a healthy way to "copy cat"  I leave you with the following blog  (with the disclaimer that I haven't tried it yet)
http://veganbaking.net/fats/vegan-shortenings/776-how-to-make-vegan-shortening

Once again, I keep wondering WHO would even come up with the idea of, and HOW these non-food items even got in our food products?

WHY is not one of the questions --- the answer to that is simple: 

$ Pure greed $

What If . . . the food you eat isn't REAL food?

The Velveteen Rabbit asked "what is REAL." We need to ask
ourselves what foods we purchase and consume are actually REAL!

"What is REAL?" asked the (toy Velveteen) Rabbit one day. . .

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse.
"It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves
you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but
REALLY loves you, then you become Real. . .

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. 

"You become. It takes a long time. . .Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

If you are not familiar with it, or just want to get reacquainted with these lovable critters, click here. (But please return to this site when you are finished)

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html

As Dave and I have begun eating healthier (and already feeling better as a result) we are doing quite a bit of research and what we are learning is pretty shocking. Much of what we are buying at fast-food places and restaurants is NOT real food. The same goes for the food you eat at home if most of it is bought already prepared, rather than being cooked from "scratch." These processed foods are what author Michael Pollan refers to as 

“edible food-like substances” — 

no longer the products of nature but of food science.'" 

What is REAL? is what we  need to discover. Most processed foods that fill the grocery shelves today are manufactured!!! 

 Manufactured foods  started appearing following World War II. And, unfortunately like so much of our "progress," what starts out as a great thing quickly becomes not so great.

Packaged foods are made in a plant --- even if they originated as a plant.  They are so highly processed that most of their original goodness---the nutrients---have been depleted and replaced with many preservatives and other ingredients (can't call these food either). In the many stages of processing, even their flavors have been eliminated....and then replaced.  It was sad to discover that  a product's flavor comes not from nature and not even from test kitchens, but from closely guarded laboratories---and scary to learn that both "natural" and artificial flavors are created in the same laboratories where basically their only differences are "technical."

Reality in our food production is stranger than fiction ---- and many times scarier than a horror story. 

 I have posted previously on a few of these edible food-like substances and feel the need to share, and continue to share, what we are learning. 

McDonald's Chicken Nuggets - http://thecreativecheapskate.blogspot.com/2012_05_27_archive.html

Burger Kings Strawberry Milk Shake-

http://thecreativecheapskate.blogspot.com/2012/05/scary-news-about-fake-foods-we-eat.html

and from an older post from when my blog first started: I LOVE to READ posted under Notes to Mom

“Twinkie, Deconstructed” by Steve Ettlinger, an interesting and easy read --- “a fascinating exploration into the curious world of packaged foods. . . takes us from phosphate mines in Idaho to cornfields in Iowa, from gypsum mines in Oklahoma to oil fields in China, to demystify some of American’s most common processed food ingredients—where they came from, how they are made, how they are used—and why. Beginning at the source (hint: the ingredients are often more closely linked to rocks and petroleum than any of the four food groups), Ettlinger reveals how each Twinkie ingredient goes through the process of being crushed, baked, fermented, refined, and /or reacted into a totally unrecognizable goo or powder with a strange name—all for the sake of creating a simple snack cake.”

If this makes you want to boycott commercial Twinkies but still crave them, go to your search engine and type in “twinkie recipe.”  There are several. The filling I use is from my recipe for Ho Ho cake — a copy cat of another multi- (mostly unnecessary) ingredient snack cake.     

Ho-Ho Filling
1 cup milk
3 T cornstarch
1 cup sugar
½ cup margarine (1 cube)
½ cup shortening
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
Combine milk and cornstarch and cook until creamy, stirring constantly. In separate bowl, beat sugar, margarine, shortening, salt and vanilla until creamy. Combine the two mixtures, beating  until fluffy.

and

"Food Rules: An eater's manual" by Michael Pollan is a tiny book that adds a little wit to its wisdom with suggestions such as "don't eat anything your great grandma wouldn't eat, avoid foods containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry, and avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce." + 61 more ways to healthier eating.

GRAS

          "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a list of approximately 700 food additives which they label "generally recognized as safe (GRAS), many of which have not undergone any testing! 

          "Congress further defines a safe additive as one about which there is "reasonable certainty that no harm will result from use." Some substances that are found to be harmful to people or animals may be allowed, but only at the level of 1/1ooth of the amount that is considered harmful.

          "In the United States more than 3,000 substances can be added to foods for the purposes of preservation, coloring, texture, flavor and more. It's this stuff that makes a 100-calorie cup of yogurt taste like key lime pie or enables a cream-filled cake to remain edible for decades. "

excerpted from Skinny Chicks Eat Real Food by Christine Avanti, certified clinical and sports nutritionist 

Why the warning about food additives?

          Again, as stated above many of them are poorly tested and possibly dangerous... Some might come from tar or petroleum or other materials humans are not designed to ingest. Some are even mined.

I keep wondering WHO would even come up with the idea of, and HOW these non-food items even got in our food products?

WHY is not one of the questions --- the answer to that is simple: 

$ Pure greed $