Amy's Quick Cheese Sauce

The title of this blog might throw you off. A holistic nutritionist promoting cheese sauce? (That she sometimes makes in the microwave no less?)

Here is my rationale. 

Recently a fellow-pregnant friend came to me saying she's not happy with her diet. She feels sick most of the day and struggles just to keep down the foods she can stand. She wishes she would eat healthy food like the stuff she sees on my Instagram. 

My advice is never: shape up! This is your baby- you need to get off the simple carbs! Not at all. Especially when you're dealing with morning sickness it's better to eat something than nothing. And the same goes for someone struggling to eat healthy but lets say, uninterested in eating breakfast. I wouldn't say: if you can't get off the Cocoa Puffs just skip breakfast! But my advice is always: add something healthy. 

For a pregnant woman who can barely stomach a bowl of white pasta noodles with butter- try to add sliced cherry tomatoes. Or bits of flaked tuna. Or if you can handle the noodles cold add tuna and cucumber, and whisk Italian dressing into Greek yogurt for a pasta salad. 

If you religiously eat cocoa puffs for breakfast, will you notice if half the milk is almond milk? Will you let me suggest you add a handful of sliced strawberries? Sunflower seeds? 

See, what my Instagram feed shows are the meals I remembered to photograph. There are things you don't see (although not much, I recently photographed wienies and beans.) No one's diet is perfect but if you make a serious intention to add healthful additions and then follow through and celebrate those victories you will enjoy the perks of nutritious food! 

That's why I make cheese sauce. Because not everyone likes raw veggies or plain eggs or a stirfry on udon noodles. But if you make a batch of cheese sauce, I think those things will go down pretty easy. I use it for eggs Benedict, for an entire head of steamed cauliflower all to myself, and for green Mac n cheese- in which I make whole wheat Mac n cheese with homemade sauce and then any green veggies I can stir in. A beautiful compromise if I ever made one. 

Without further ado: Amy's Quick Cheese Sauce

1 T butter (or vegan margarine)

1 T flour (whole wheat works, so does gluten-free)

1 c milk (or vegan alternative but not vanilla-anything)

A few ounces hard cheese

Salt, pepper, extras (onion, garlic, hot sauce, etc)

In a small saucepan heat butter over medium til melted. If you want to add raw onions or garlic now is the time, cook til translucent and smelling yummy. Stir in flour and cook about 1 minute turning down the heat if it seems like might burn. 

Whisk in milk. Continue heating until small bubbles form then quickly turn down heat. It should thicken in this time. 

Add a few ounces (like an inch off a block) of cheddar or mozzarella. Whisk in until melted. At this point you can also whisk in other add-ins like powered garlic or onion, hot sauce or cayenne powder, mustard, lemon juice. Also add salt and pepper to taste. If you want a very thick sauce like for eggs Benedict, add a raw egg and immediately whisk in rapidly. In theory the heat will cook it but if yore worried or pregnant, turn the heat back on for another minute. 

Can store in a mason jar in the fridge for a couple days. 

Gardens save you money!

Today I plugged all the numbers into an Excel sheet and guess what...

The value of vegetables I grew (so far!) minus the cost it took to grow them equals over $150!

In this photo from Oliver's birthday party you can almost kinda see the organic jungle that is my veggie garden. I think in the bottom right photo I may have caught Chris stealing a tomato. Or it could be a water balloon:

I encourage you to do the math on your garden, every year. It's so excited and that much more motivation to keep doing what you're doing and to encourage others to garden as well.

To find your profit just write down your yield of each veggie. Multiple it by the cost in a grocery store of that product (for example, 1 bulb of organic garlic x $1.99 at Loblaw's) add all of those numbers up, then subtract your expenses. Those might include buying a new hose, gloves, trowels, soil, and of course seeds. If you want your profit to increase you need to of course grow more, but also spend less. Here are some easy tips for making gardening cheap:

• Make your own compost by throwing veggie scraps, coffee grinds, tea bags & egg shells into a makeshift bin. After a year, dump it on top of your existing soil - no need to buy anything new!
• Take care of your hose and other equipment so you don't have to buy a new one
• Make a rain barrel out of any old barrel you can find, and you won't see an increase on your water bill
• Host a seed swap so you can give seeds away and get new ones for free -- combine this with seed saving and you won't need to spend a penny at all!

I find some veggies easier to seed save than others. For example, beans and peas can be left on the vine and once they dry out you just pick them off, open them up, and save the dried seeds for next year. I think I have an inventory of scarlet runner beans in my seed envelopes that will last for the next 3 years minimum, including sharing. Peppers are relatively simple as well, save them while you're chopping one up for dinner - it should yield like 10 seeds which is enough for 10 plants next spring. Squash is majorly easy - even if it's a pumpkin just eat most of them baked with cinnamon and sugar, and save a few raw to dry out for planting next year. Garlic's the easiest - plant a clove and it turns into a bulb before your eyes. Some, like chives and basil, likely go to seed and self-plant themselves for next year. Pretty much the hardest is tomatoes - I have never experimented with fermenting and saving the seeds, mostly because Oliver eats EVERY tomato as soon as its any shade of red, whole, right before my eyes. He easily eats 5 whole tomatoes - not including the cherry tomatoes he eats - per day, unless we spend most of the day away from our backyard. In this case, I just seed save the varieties I can, and I bring them to swap with my friends at my annual seed exchange party, hoping I can pick up some tomato seeds from someone else, in exchange for say, something easy like sunflower seeds. All else fails, I order from The Cottage Gardener.

Now tell me about your gardens and how they save you so much money!

Summer 2013 Update

There should be punishments for bloggers as careless as me.

I believe it's been since I was hired at the hospital that I even wrote an entry.

See, if there were consequences, maybe I would have made more of an effort. Like, if you go ten days without blogging, your Facebook news feed fills up with people from high school that you can barely remember. With emphasis on their selfies and photos from the bar last night. If you go fifteen days, it switches to only distant family members taking photos of their newborn's poopy diapers. If you go twenty days without blogging, your Pinterest will revert to solely weight loss tricks (gross) and tutorials for how to do complicated braids in your hair.

Or if you're like me, and have gone around 2 full months without spending a mere second on Blogger, you will be forced to re-install Vine and be unable to view Video updates on Instagram. Nooooo!

Well, here I am. And I'm sorry! My new role in which I supervise the Food and Nutrition department at St. Joseph's Healthcare has me busy as a bee. When I'm not doing that, I like to have conversations with my husband and son, and once that's over I see if there's time to eat and sleep. I attended a dear friend's wedding last night (and then woke up at 5am for a 12-hour shift? Yes, yes, I did that) and I am attending 2 more this coming weekend. One of which is my very bestest friend's, and I will be standing up with her.

Since I last wrote, our family:

• Spent a glorious week at our cottage in the Muskokas. I swam, canoed, ate more jalapenos than my tongue would have liked. And I didn't eat ice cream! What! (I can explain... see below)
• Celebrated 3.5 years married, and a decade as a couple -- My favourite thing about Calvin is: when I can't reach the buttons at the bank ATM he pushes my back so I can reach farther. 
• Celebrated Oliver turning 2! We had an awesome birthday party in our backyard. Cal smoked pulled pork all day and we also had corn salad, watermelon salad and slaw. And a glorious birthday cake/cupcakes made by glutenfreebyrose.com
• Said goodbye to my sister Angela, as she travelled to Oslo, Berlin, Amsterdam and Reykjavik, then we said welcome back to her on the 3rd
• Found out we are expecting a newborn addition to our family in January of next year!!! We found out pretty late in the game because I let my suspicions go 'untested' and we were quite shocked at our far along I am, but we are thrilled. This is why I didn't eat ice cream-- I seem to get this weird transient allergy-type thing when I'm pregnant, where I can't tolerate sugar... or onions. How weird is that? 

So that's what's new. The garden is going well -- mmm, fresh cucumbers and tomatoes. The best. We are just working away, planning a short vacation in October to make up for the fact that we can't do much in August with how many shifts I'm working. And I'm already looking forward to pumpkin season! But I'll enjoy summer while it's here I guess.

Thanks for still loving me.