Betsy Bailey

I used to dislike meatloaf as a kid, but recently I gave it another try. I realized the issue for me was big chunks of onion in my meatloaf. I like the onion flavor, but prefer not to crunch into a hunk of it. It’s a texture thing.

Anyway, I found this recipe which I thought looked pretty tasty. Turns out I didn’t have any breadcrumbs in the house – so I put it to my Twitter friends: Meatloaf with oatmeal or yucky? The resounding feedback was firmly in the oatmeal camp. It improves both the texture and the nutritional value. I have to agree – it was delicious. My first meatloaf in years turned out wonderfully! Very flavorful, with a tender texture. I agree that serving this with buttery mashed potatoes and corn makes the perfect all-American meal.

You can halve this recipe, but this is the amount required to feed my hungry family (and almost isn’t enough!!).

Perfect meatloaf

Ingredients:

1 cup oatmeal
3 pounds lean ground beef
2 cups milk (or less – add slowly and evaluate the mixture as you go – my first loaf was a little too wet)
2 large eggs
1/2 cup onion, chopped VERY fine
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground sage
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1 cup barbecue sauce or ketchup

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Mix all the ingredients except the barbecue sauce together, then divide the meatloaf mixture into two ungreased loaf pans.

3. Spoon barbecue sauce  or ketchup on the top of the meatloaf and bake, uncovered, for 1 hour.

Twitter: 3 reasons to check it out!.

Just put a new article about Twitter up on SheKnows…

Check it out!

What is Twitter?

Twitter describes itself as a microblogging service where you simply answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. But of course, Twitter is so much more. Major news outlets and trendy magazine sites (follow @sheknows and @pregnancybaby!) feed their headlines via Twitter accounts….

More: Twitter: 3 reasons to check it out!.

I often joke with Scott that I’m really NOT that great of a cook. My food is good because I’m a good recipe-picker.

The Internet helps so much with that, especially when you can review hundreds of consumer reviews as part of the evaluation process. These reviews also include useful tips and recipe modifications that may better suit my preferences.

To that end, now that I’m making bread dough all the time (and it makes an awesome pizza dough, too) I was on a quest for the perfect homemade pizza sauce. I found this little gem: Exquisite Pizza Sauce by Angie Gorkoff .

4.5 stars and 641 user reviews can’t be wrong, yeah?

Here’s my adaptation:

Sweet and Spicy Pizza Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
• 6 fluid ounces warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic (or 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder)
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• salt to taste

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients in bowl and allow at least 30 minutes for flavors to blend.

2. Spoon and spread 4-5 tablespoons of sauce onto each pizza crust. Add cheese and toppings. Drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with herbs like oregano or basil. Bake in oven (convection, if you have that option) preheated to 450F for 10-15 minutes.

Makes enough sauce for two pizzas. We like to double the recipe, heat up the extra and use it as a pizza or breadstick dipping sauce.

Homemade pizza tips

1. One of the commentators at All Recipes offers this suggestion – brilliant! If you make pizza regularly, mix up the following dry ingredients:

• 2-1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2-1/2 teaspoons dried marjoram
• 2-1/2 teaspoons dried basil
• 2-1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 4 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• salt to taste

When you’re ready to make pizza, add one tablespoon of this mixture to the regular recipe.

2. Did you know that if you carefully sprinkle the shredded cheese on the bare edges of the pizza crust, that will anchor ALL the cheese to the crust so that it won’t slide around (and right off the slices) when you slice the pizza? Scotty taught me that one just tonight. He worked his way through college at Pizza Hut, so he would know.

Having two midwife-attended home waterbirths I was looking to this 20/20 feature on “extreme” moms with a great deal of trepidation. They advertised a program with segments about orgasmic birth, “reborn” babies, extended breastfeeding, “serial” surrogacy and homebirth.

Which of these things is not like the other? I’m on board for reborns and a dozen surrogacies as extreme behavior (though not impressed with portrayal of these women as freak shows). Orgasmic birth is not necessarily a choice, let alone an extreme behavior – it is what it is; too bad more of us don’t get to experience that way of birthing.

Extended breastfeeding until the age of eight? Yeah, extreme.

But midwife-attended homebirth IS NOT an example of “extreme” mothering.

Just the fact of its inclusion in this program did not bode well for how they’d handle the topic. So, anxious and frustrated before the show even began, we tuned in.

Orgasmic birth
The orgasmic birth segment was the best of the show (and that’s damning with faint praise). The other segments were incredibly biased, sensationalistic, judgmental. The whole premise of this show was misogynistic (let’s paint women, especially mothers, as weirdos so you lot can point and laugh).

Extended breastfeeding
The extended breastfeeding segment wasn’t *really* about extended breastfeeding. It was about statistical outliers – people so far off the curve that they would be considered… extreme. No false advertising here lol. My gripe with this, aside from the aforementioned problem I have with the entire premise of this show, is that mainstream society already thinks breastfeeding past a few months old is extreme and wacky. Which puts pressures on mamas to make decisions for their children that are not necessarily in the best interest for their health and well-being just to conform.

If ALL babies weaned on their own biologically-appropriate timeline, you’d have an extreme few weaning between 6-12 months and another extreme few weaning upwards of 8 yo. Outliers. The average age of weaning when it is child-led is between ages 2-4. (That’s me nursing my two year old toddler circa 2002, she weaned completely not too many months after the shot was taken.) Not extreme.  But now we’ve got this show painting all moms who nurse past the first year painted with the same outlier brush.

Worse than all that, the developmental “expert” they featured was an IDIOT trotting out the children “need to be taught independence” myth. Raise your children secure in their attachment for you and you will not need to teach them independence. They are more likely to take risks when they don’t feel insecure about their parents’ love. And, incidentally, the healthiest adult mother/child relationships I know of are those where the adult child can STILL count on their mamas for comfort and support. ♥ Seeking support and comfort from your mother does not necessarily equal dependence on her. Mr. So-Called-Expert is neither informed nor analytical enough for me to have any respect for his opinions.

The mom nursing her six year old son, on the other hand, came off as sensible, reasonable and intelligent – an excellent counterpoint to the so-called expert of developmental psychology whose outdated views on “detachment parenting” contribute to much of the dysfunction we have in society today.

Check out Custom Made Milk for an even more detailed analysis of this segment.

Reborn dolls
Who cares? Not my thing and yeah, those women seem pretty weird, but it’s a harmless eccentricity. Those dolls are works of art – wow!

“Serial” surrogacy
Who cares? As Scott pointed out, most professional athletes use their bodies to make a living and take far greater risks with their health (boxing??) with exactly zero philanthropic motivation. And they are revered.

Ah, on to the homebirth segment…
First, they totally edited the footage from Ricki Lake’s movie so it looked like Abby Epstein was a failed homebirth emergency, when, in fact, she went into preterm labor with a breech presentation. Unless she was parking at the hospital for weeks, this “transport” to the hospital would have happened regardless of where the birth was planned. At least she had the advantage of having a professional healthcare provider attending her before she went to the hospital.

They don’t make a clear delineation between unassisted birth and midwife-attended homebirth. Unassisted birth is an extreme choice, but that choice does not represent the way most families choose homebirth. Again, outlier.

I was glad Ricki Lake was interviewed, but ultimately they focused on Abby Epstein’s experience and how it represents “everything people think is wrong with homebirth.” (ARGH) I bet the Business of Being Born camp was mighty disappointed at how the homebirth segment was produced. I know I was.

Other annoyances
In general, I assume most of these families were given some indication that a segment on 20/20 would give them the chance to participate in a balanced view of their cause. (Were they even told this was for an “extreme moms” segment and what that meant?) I doubt they tell these moms, hey we want to make you out like a freak show, can we interview you?

I was frustrated with the parents who let their children be interviewed for the breastfeeding piece. I don’t think they’re damaging their children by breastfeeding them – I do think putting them on TV to talk about it when our culture is so poisonous on the topic is a particularly unfortunate lapse in judgment.

All the fathers/husbands on the show were painted as long-suffering spouses putting up with their wives’ wacky behavior. Never once were we shown a spouse who demonstrated that he was a participant in the parenting/decision-making.

As I expected, the show was tabloid journalism at its worst – a segment produced for no other purpose than to exploit base human behavior (let’s make fun of weird people). And it was a segment that did no favors for couples who make well-researched, well-considered decisions about birthing and nourishing their babies, making informed choices that just happen to be outside of mainstream behavior.

Crate training is reinstated for Gilligan. It seems he has forgotten the (carpeted – argh) living room floor is  NOT a pottying facility.

Jake is giddy. He thinks the crate is his own personal play BOX. Bonus that it even has a door to open and shut and open and shut and open and shut and open and shut.

Big boy enjoys a snack with big brother (he’s kinda done with the high chair <sigh>):

Scott is doing a renovation on our camper that is going to be pretty cool. It came with a bench seat (with storage under the seat and it converts to a bed). He took all that out and is building a dinette – with storage and bed conversion also) in its place. Will be much more comfortable to have a little table and seating instead of the bench. Hopefully it will be basically done by this weekend. I will post before/after photos once it’s done!

In the meantime, Jake is proud to be wearing daddy’s shop goggles!

Ever since Jake saw his baby friends Mia and Leland dining tidily with eating utensils, he has decided he also MUST hold a utensil while he eats. That’s all he does with it, tho! Well, he tries to spear microscopic crumbs of food and occasionally he will lick the empty fork tines, but I know this will turn into competency eventually.

That’s also his first experience with ketchup on the french fry that he’s eating. He, of course, loved it. The french fry you see here was at least triple-dipped.

It all started with my brother-in-law, who brought bread to our Thanksgiving feast this year. (When Andrea said, Jay will bake bread for the meal, I was like, “really? Jay bakes bread??”)

It was a delicious loaf of white bread with molasses. And he told me I needed to try it for myself – he sent me an email right that moment with a link to the recipe for a simple crusty bread that requires no kneading and no lengthy rising times. (Adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day). I watched this video, and couldn’t get over the simplicity!

And so began my obsession.

That gorgeous loaf on the right was my third batch of dough, where I sprinkled some rosemary into the dough while mixing it up. These loaves turn out so beautifully, my kids gather around the cooling rack to admire the freshly-baked  bread whenever it comes out of the oven. It’s almost like a shrine!

It pleases me that even as a VERY busy working and otherwise multitasking mom I can bake bread for my family nearly every day. Especially when they react so favorably, as if it is the greatest gift that MOM! Bakes bread! For us!!

Finally, a food I make that they can truly appreciate.

If that’s not revolutionary…

The method
The dough you mix up with this no-knead bread method has a high yeast and high water content (it’s also called “high moisture dough”). The extra yeast aids a faster rise (saving time!). The high moisture content breaks down the gluten in the wheat flour – a task normally accomplished with kneading.

My first time
I was so excited to put this bread in the oven and watch it bloom and bake. The whole house smelled just amazing. Bailey and I were in raptures (she thinks homemade bread every day is quite luxurious).

I can’t get over just how easy this is! I messed it up my first batch in a couple ways and it still turned out PERFECTLY. I used bleached flour before realizing that was a no no. Besides adding chemicals, bleaching removes some of the protein and that throws off the recipe because the dough will be too wet.

I read that AFTER I mixed up my first batch of dough with bleached flour and of course I fretted about it all night.

However, it turned out PERFECTLY. My future loaves might be better with other flours, but this was still quite amazing. The crackly crust is divine.

I made four loaves of bread with bleached flour they were tasty!

The texture with the unbleached is definitely different (not quite as dense), but everyone was still in raptures about the bread I made with bleached flour.

I’ve read elsewhere online that this recipe is incredibly forgiving and found that to be true!

I also did a crappy job portioning out those first loaves and forming them (see photo above), but I already feel much more practiced about that.

Like sourdough?
One of the cool things about this dough is that you make a large batch (enough for 4 one pound loaves) and refrigerate it for UP TO 2 WEEKS! The longer it’s refrigerated, the more it ferments and the more if achieves sour dough tang (without any starter maintenance!). You don’t stir it, knead it nor mix anything further into it.

One of the tips they have in the book to get even more sourdough-y goodness is to NOT wash your dough container when you make a fresh batch. Just scrape it down and incorporate the aged dough remnants into the fresh dough mixture. They call it the lazy sourdough shortcut. How inspired is that?

Oh, and I’ve read some people mention that between day 10 and 14 it does start to lose it’s rising ability. Tired yeasties. That’s when it’s a good time to roll it out into pizza dough!

I’m trying to imagine this dough lasting anything like 2 weeks around here, though. I might have to make bigger batches at one time!

Challah fun

Make sure to also spend some time on the authors’ website. After browsing the many recipes and variations in the book, I found myself anxious to try a different bread. The next dough I mixed up was the challah.

I found this recipe on the authors’ website: Braided challah filled with spinach, feta and pine nuts

It was amazing – Scott is becoming more seriously impressed with this method.

Since making the challah I’ve also made the Broa (Portuguese cornbread), the Vermont cheddar bread (will use more cheddar next time), the chocolate bread, which I then made into chocolate bread pudding (which has a super chocolate-y custard – divine!) and onion pletzel (don’t forget to sprinkle with kosher salt – that makes it!).

I feel like I’m cheating to make such easy bread and have it look/taste so awesome!

Tips and hints
For more analysis, discussion and variations with the 5 minute bread method, don’t miss this cool interview with the book’s authors.

There is much discussion there about how to get higher, airier loaves of bread, and the positive impact of longer rising times during the second-rise stage. The longer rise has definitely improved my breads.

Also, using parchment paper to transfer bread to the baking stone has greatly simplified the process (as if it was ever complicated!). I set the bread out to rise on a cookie sheet covered with a piece of parchment paper. When its time to put the bread in the oven, I slip the loaf onto the pre-heated baking stone, parchment paper and all. After about 15-20 minutes – when the crust is good and firm – I slip the parchment paper out so the bottom crust can bake directly against the stone. This is a particularly superior method for transferring pizza and pletzel and other flatbreads to the baking stone.

For the past 10 hours or so, this entry was dated December 29, 2008 – rather than its rightful January 25, 2007.

I have a lot of interesting email this morning – sorry for the scare!!! I am so completely not pregnant!!! <knock wood>

But I AM almost done porting over my old blog entries from vox. Yay!

I was just porting this old entry about parents taking their young kids into rated-R movies (Knocked Up, in this case) over from my archives and I had to laugh at the irony. Particularly the part where I said:

Sex, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, profanity – you name it, it was in there. I can’t sit through quite a number of PG-13 movies with my teenage stepson. When so many PG-13 movies are so much on that edge of being too uncomfortable to watch with your kids, what are people THINKING taking an under-13-year-old to a rated R movie????

Not that the following incident was nearly so heinous, but… still.

First, some background. We are a family that caught on to the Dr. Who craze just this year. We started by Netflixing the first disk in the Season 1 set. Immediately, we were hooked. The kids like watching and re-watching the episodes, so Scott went online and purchased Seasons 1-4. And we devoured them in less than six months with no self-control whatsoever – all 140+ episodes and the DVD extras.

We were all a little melancholy a couple weeks ago as we watched the final episode of Season 4 (especially when we learned that Season 5 is all a mess. Three Dr. Who specials in 2009, but no full season until 2010!).

But we consoled ourselves with the plan of watching various Dr. Who spin-offs, like the Sarah Jane Adventures. And Torchwood. Maybe check out some of the old Dr. Who episodes from the 80s that Scott remembers with fondness.

It was with this in mind that Scott purchased the Torchwood Season 1 DVD and presented it to me as a gift on Christmas Eve. The kids were so excited! Dr. Who has really captured their imaginations – they talk about the episodes obsessively. The read about them online. They write fan fiction. Even my 16 month old toddles around the house singsonging the Dr. Who theme. True story.

So it was with much anticipation that we settled down to see the story of Captain Jack Harkness resumed in our lives. Boy were we in for a surprise.

(This is what happens when you don’t vet your children’s programming!!)

Where Dr. Who is sunny and bright – with a lot of day time scenes, I realize in hindsight – this first episode of Torchwood was dark and gloomy – a lot of nighttime, a lot of drenching rain. Where Dr. Who stops short of gruesome violence, Torchwood let’s the blood spurt (vividly). Where Dr. Who is rated G for language, Torchwood dropped the F bomb at least a dozen times.

Not that my kids have never heard the F word in real life, goodness knows. But I guess we’ve sheltered them adequately, because they are NOT used to it on TV. They aren’t even allowed to watch most PG-13 movies until they are 13. So they were visibly flinching with every instance of profanity.

So, yeah, obviously kids are not the intended audience here. We were chagrined. Bailey and HM were berating me for letting them watch such a horrible show: “Maaahhhhm. We are not OLD ENOUGH for this yet!”

I wasn’t planning to let them watch any more of it for several more years. But they caught the preview for the next episode. Whoa, there goes Captain Jack running NAKED across the screen. The girls erupted with squealing. So I don’t think they heard the part about how the aliens in that episode are somehow activated by the sexual act.

Yep, okay, this is NOT Dr. Who. No mistake about it. Oops.

The episode was great, though. Scott and I really enjoyed it (and the girls enjoyed the storyline, too, actually) and are looking forward to watching the rest. It’s just not gonna be family TV night is all.

The Sarah Jane Adventures it is. (After we watch the first episode ourselves and read up a little on the reviews first, just in case.)