The haps

Thank you for all the prayers given for the Wuollet family. She is home and recovering although I know it will be a lengthy and difficult process. It is really awesome that she lives in the post housing area with the highest concentration of our church members. I know she will be okay--but boy, was that scary!
So things have been kind of interesting for us lately-- I've just become a lot more interested in health-wise things. Not sure why. My sister-in-laws and I actually have another blog devoted mostly to our efforts to be healthy. This is something I have been praying and studying my scriptures about. And when you start to look into something and discover things, more things just start flooding in...so much so that you could literally drown in information. Eat this, no don't...use this, no don't...listen to this, no don't--ugh!! At first it was all I could do not to scream. Any kind of health related article/info/whatever I found, I could find two more things to repudiate it, then two to repudiate each of those and on and on ad nauseum. But general conference put it all back into perspective despite them not really having to mention the word of wisdom specifically at all. How wonderful is that? And the visiting teaching message this month was very aweseome also--Sis. Beck talked about personal revelation. "We can do this work in the Lord’s way only when we seek, receive, and act on personal revelation. Without personal revelation, we cannot succeed. If we heed personal revelation, we cannot fail. The prophet Nephi instructs us that the Holy Ghost will show us “all things what [we] should do” (2 Nephi 32:5). We must allow ourselves to be still enough and quiet enough to listen to the voice of the Spirit." I know we are meant to be healthy. But it is not easy figuring out how to do it. And it is very personal. We are all different and alike at the same time. The following little saying fits my feelings at this moment.
Don't walk ahead of me.....I may not follow
Don't walk behind me.....I may not lead
Just walk by my side.....and be my friend.
So anyway, I won't start going on and on about quinoa or sucanat or kefir or anything else right away but every once in a while, I might have something worth sharing. And you might too. I had my first real success the other night when I made some Lentil Sloppy Joes. Jer even ate them! And liked them! This is nothing short of a miracle. He has been very resistant to me making changes, something along the lines of..."this means no more happiness"... :-) but I cannot ignore what I feel like I should do right now. And he isn't the only one resistant to change. I tease my sister a lot who has a lot of health problems and knows enough about health food to probably write a book--I mention her "weirdo" food--talk about supportive, huh? But watching her try very hard to stick to a diet not shared by others through 2 Christmas seasons because she just wants to feel better has been pretty impressive. That's determination.
So here is my take on the Lentil Sloppy Joes and I'll include the homemade pita bread recipe too.
Lentil Sloppy Joes
Get a bag of lentils and cook them according to package directions. I actually cooked them in an organic beef broth, hoping that little touch of meat would keep Jer interested. I bet you could just use water. I did not follow the directions on the package actually. I didn't keep the lid on. And my lentils remained somewhat chewy but hey, they worked fine in the recipe and none of us are dead this morning (or later this week now). Okay, so then I had this pot of chewy lentils with a bit of broth left and decided to keep it that way. I found a recipe to follow, then had to made a bunch of changes because I didn't have stuff it called for.
I dumped the following into my pot of lentils (keeping the broth in the pot too):
4 cans (the little 6 oz ones) of tomato paste (people who actually eat real tomatoes could make a much better choice than this--just not an option for his house...yet)
2 splashes red wine vinegar (recipe wanted apple cider vinegar)
2 Tbsp honey (I think--I was just squirting it out of the bottle) :-)
1 cup water
Stir, stir, stir.
So then I generously sprinkled on top the following:
minced garlic
basil
onion salt
Stir, stir, stir.
And then not so generously sprinkled on top the following:
cayenne pepper
cumin
tumeric
Stir, stir, stir. How's that for specific? And I just stirred and heated it all for a few minutes, then we served it over these Pitas. Which by the way--again I did not properly follow the directions. Yours will probably turn out better but my family loved them anyway.
Whole Wheat Pitas- Makes 16 (this recipe would easily 1/2 or 1/4, just use a calculator ;-))
2 1/2 cups warm water
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar (want to try honey next time)
5 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cups gluten (I actually had some in the fridge but I think you can try without it)
3 tsp. dry yeast
The real recipe said to mix the gluten with the flour and then add to the mix along with the yeast but true to form, I dumped it all in at the same time. I kneaded it until it was a soft dough which did require another 1/4 to 1/2 cup flour (don't forget it is very humid here though). So then I put it aside in a bowl lightly oiling it (the dough ball) and covering it with a towel for an hour. It didn't get way big but it had risen some, so I punched it down and divided into 16 pieces. Roll those pieces out to about 6 inch circles (or in my case--amoeba-like formations) and let rise for 30 more minutes. Now think about the counter space needed to have 16 of these babies rising separately--oh and you need to cover them with towels. Preheat oven to 500 degrees and cook 2 side by side on a wire rack (like those used for cooling cookies) for 4-5 minutes until puffy and slightly browned. Get out right away and immediately wrap in damp towels to soften. Keep doing this till they are all done. Now do you think I did just this?--of course not. My cooling racks did not look broiler-temperature safe and I just spent all that stinking time making that dough all perfect so I used my huge air-bake pan sprayed with Pam to cook 6 at a time. They did not puff up but they were really good. And I used wet paper towels rather than real towels--it was fun watching the steam come off them. We just slathered the lentil sloppy joes over the pitas and ate them that way. I forgot, I also cut up a small onion and heated it with some olive oil over the stove then added it to half the sloppy joe mixture for those of us whose taste buds are not broken).
This recipe really makes A LOT. We had 3 meals from it before we froze the rest. And I could probably get 3 more meals from what was left.
I think I got the pita bread recipe (I have recipes everywhere right now) from this really great blog called heavenlyhomemakers.com. The lady that writes it is so down to earth and really funny and boy is there a lot of good information there. Check it out if you have the time. I have made her whole wheat hamburger buns and pretzels so far and they were unbelievable. My wheat grinder is getting a workout this week!