Category Archives: Food

Cooking Matters

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One thing about my job, is that it is always something new. I have worked in tobaco prevention and education for most of my time with the health department and continue to do a component of that with half my time, but I have also started to branch off into the “healthy eating, active living” (HEAL) side of things which is basically community obesity prevention and interventions. Both obesity and tobacco use cause the majority of preventable deaths and disease -cancers, heart diseases, strokes, diabetes, etc. So it is definitely important work.


Recruiting for the cooking class at Milliken’s Beef and Bean Day

Even before this new assignment at work, I’ve always been interested in nutrition and good food. But I’ve never been much for the cooking side of things. Eventhough I know that people who cook more at home tend to be healthier than those who eat out, I still just never got that into cooking.I love to eat good, whole, homemade, delicious and nutritious food, but always thought of cooking as a pain and only something Britton and I had time to do on the weekends. The work week usually meant (and sometimes still means) a quick throw-together of pasta or rice, frozen vegetables and fish or chicken.

It is still hard to fit in time to cook, but ever since I have been coordinating and collaborating to help facilitate a program called “Cooking Matters” in Milliken I’ve been intrigued with trying a few new things. In Cooking Matters we have a nutrition professor from CSU (Fort Collins) as well as another health educator helping to teach the course which is primarily geared at the underserved populations.

Everyone always has their usual bag of tricks when it comes to preparing food (like our evening throw-togethers), so a healthy cooking class helps to open your eyes to the wonders of all sorts of foods.


Cumin-Would be nice to grow in the garden -I wonder if it would do well in PR

In fact, I think I’ve found my new favorite spice: cumin! I’ve never even paid much attention to it until in the class we made hummus -which is just basically pureed garbanzo beans, garlic, salt and cumin -so easy! And the cumin makes all the difference! It is also what makes Mexican food so delicious. Not only that, but this spice, like many spices boasts health benefits as well such as being a good source of iron, helping with digestion, and even cancer prevention!

Anyhow, we had a bout of cold, rainy weather this week and weekend, so for fun, we stayed in and cooked up a bunch of food. Some of these included:

Hummus with pita chips
Pearl Barley and vegetable chicken soup
Chai tea
Enchilada lasagna -slice up whole grain tortillas into strips about the size of lasagna noodles -do not cook! In a cooking pan sautee chicken, add enchilada sauce, can of tomatoes, lots of spices like cumin and oregano, sliced bell peppers (and jalapenos if you like it hot), black olives, etc. Put this mixture on top of the strips of tortillas in a large dish (13×9) and layer as you would lasagna. Add shredded cheese and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Uncover for another ten if you like the cheese browned. Let sit for a bit. Add fat free greek yogurt or sour cream if desired on top.
Apple Crisp –Made with about 5 fresh apples with the skin still on sliced to about an 1/8 inch. Pumpkin pie spices (ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon), brown sugar and a tiny bit of flour. For the topping (the crisp): A little butter, brown sugar, quick oats, flour and more spices mixed together and put on top. Then bake in the  350 degree oven for about 30-45 minutes.


Slice of Carrot Cake!


Betty Crocker’s Homemade Carrot Cake –Made with 3 cups or about 8 freshly grated carrots and applesauce in a 1 to 1 complete exchange of the oil and decreased the sugar from 2 cups to 1 1/2 cups. Also added nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in addition to the cinnamon that was called for. Added chopped walnuts. And made the cream cheese frosting Betty Crocker called for (but made with lower fat neufchatel cheese). This was SOO good. And not too terrible nutrition wise!


Yum! Lasagna

Then last night we cooked up traditional lasagana only we used ground turkey in place of beef and added a lot of vegetables.

Cooking is still a pain with all the prep work of chopping and dicing, recipe reading and substituting and of course the cleaning up afterward, but the results are sooo delicious and so much better than any pre-processed options out there.

So while I started out as the reluctant coordinator of this cooking class, I am definitely turning into a convert! Plus I’ve been able to meet all sorts of nice people in the class as well. I would suggest to anyone who has “food issues” -like being overweight, picky, or a fast-food fiend that the best help is a cooking class! Very practical and fun! You control what is in your food and therefore what goes into your body. It is a freeing feeling. Cooking matters! It really does! 🙂

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Easter Egger Green Eggs

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We have two chickens who are called Americanas, AKA Ameraucanas, Auracanas or just Easter Eggers. One of them is Greenfoot and the other is Littlefoot. When we got Greenfoot we were excited to see green or blue eggs, but she only laid brown speckled eggs. So this last year when we got the new chicks we got another Americana, Littlefoot and were hopeful that her eggs would be a different color.


Littlefoot the green egg layer

So…one day we went out and found a very obviously green egg! They are so cool. Now you know that the Dr. Seuss story wasn’t completely made up! We CAN have green eggs and ham!

The egg shell color is determined by the breed of chicken. A brown egg or green egg is no more (or less) healthy than a white egg. What makes an egg healthier is what the chickens eat. Because white eggs are from the industry standard Leghorn (like Omeleto) they are often considered less healthy than brown eggs that are from heritage breeds – like our barred rock. But really, it’s about their diet. On the outside the shells may have a different color, but inside the color only changes if they have a more varied diet such as being on pasture eating bugs, green grasses and the occasional mouse. If you want to see the inside difference between a conventional store-bought egg and our backyard hens’ eggs, you can see it here.

Otherwise, here’s the outside cool variety of colored shells.


Variety Pack: carton of eggs including the green eggs and speckled eggs

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Quinceañera Party in Greeley

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This weekend we had a chance to attend a Quinceañera for a girl that used to be our neighbor.  They moved a few years back but they always make a point to stop by at Halloween and it’s always cool to see them and how much they’ve grown!  Well the other week Lizeth stopped by and delivered an invitation to her 15th birthday (Quinceañera). I can’t believe she’s fifteen! She was just a tiny kid when she lived next door!


Cassie with our former neighbor Lizeth

It was held at Island Grove Park in Greeley.  There are numerous buildings out there that are used for a lot of different events.  There were actually two quinceanera parties going on at the same time in two different buildings. We accidentally went to the wrong one at first, but it was cool to see two different ways of throwing a similar party. Island Grove is also where the Greeley Stampede is held every year.

Living in Greeley has allowed me the opportunity to live closely with lots of people with lots of different backgrounds.  There are Russians, Germans, , Mexicans, Somalis, etc.  The Quinceañera is a pretty big Mexican celebration.  I hadn’t ever been to one before.

I’d describe it like a wedding.  It’s a pretty big production with lots of food, drink, music and dance.  The food was good.  Really good.  I love tortillas and meat and there was plenty of it!  In fact there were two buildings being used for separate parties.  From what I understand the whole family chips in.  Someone will buy food, someone entertainment, someone will rent the place, etc.  I imagine that makes these huge celebrations much easier to throw!  It would be pretty expensive for one person to pay for.


We got a visit by the Mariachi Singer that made Cassie turn bright red!


It was fun to see two different parties (Lizeth on the left and the other one on the right)

It really reminded me of a traditional American wedding -for one person instead of two.  Except instead of a garter belt they do a ‘shoe change’.  From what I understand this is a change from ‘flats’ to ‘heels’.  Traditionally in the past women weren’t allowed to wear heels until after they turned 15 and started womanhood. A Quinceanera is sort of like an old fashioned debutante ball. Then they have chamberlains and dance. There are supposed to be 14 pairs of young people dancing together, plus the quinceanera (the girl turning 15) and her partner to represent 15 or in Lizeth’s case, she just had the boys plus her.


After the traditional stuff, it is a big dance for everyone to join in on!

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Falling out of Summer

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The weather has had a pretty big change here.  As I say that Puerto Rico just experienced Irene!  So I suppose change is all relative.

Once a year Cassie and I like to camp out in our backyard in a tent that was given to us as a wedding gift.  I spent quite a bit of time camping up in the mountains when I was growing up.  While it was fun, it’s one of those things that I have done quite a bit so it isn’t something that I feel I need to do.  Sleeping outside under the stars with Cassie is a lot of fun and we don’t have to drive, pack food, pack clothes and figure out all the details involved with a ‘camping trip’.


Our Tent

I used to also camp out in my backyard as a kid and across the street at my friend Matt’s house.  It was a lot of fun and I am sure parents enjoy it because your sleepover (loud kids) is outdoors!

We figured we had better get our once a year backyard camp out done because we have entered into the Fall season (maybe not officially, but you can feel it).  The weather is cooler, the veggies are ripe and the growing season is slowly coming to an end.  We’ve been getting more food from our garden lately too.


Fruit, Vegetables and Eggs

With the change in season we are starting to think about Puerto Rico too!  I hope there isn’t too much damage to the property, but if there is we can just fix and mend like we usually do!  We really enjoy our summer here in Colorado, but the winter is so long it will be nice to have a place to go where we can plant, pick garden and camp out!

I hope all our friends are doing well in PR after Irene.  The few Facebook posts we’ve seen indicate it wasn’t too bad and I hope that is the case.  I’d actually like to be down there for a tropical storm / hurricane at some point.  Just for the experience of it.  Not a major one of course!

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