Bagels Every Sunday

In our family, Sunday is the ONLY day that NONE of us have work, school, activities or anything else.  It is our official family day, and we are pretty stingy with it.  Most Sundays we spend at home just enjoying not having to go anywhere.  Depending on the weather and season, sometimes we garden (while the kids play outside or help, their choice), sometimes we spend the afternoon canning stuff from the garden, sometimes we do crafty stuff, sometimes we sit around all day and don't do a darn thing. 

Regardless of what we spend the bulk of the day doing, I almost always make fresh bagels. While it is a 2 step process, they are not difficult, and they are easy to make without any of Cassidy's allergens. Since they also freeze well I've started making 2 batches so we have a couple of different flavors, although by Tuesday we have yet to have any left over to freeze!  As far as Mark and I, our current favorite is jalapeno cheddar, but we like them pretty spicy, so the only kid that will eat them is River.  I'm on the last jar of jalapenos that we canned last summer, though, so in another week or two I'll have to try something new.  As for the minions, they really like fruit bagels. Sometimes we make cinnamon raisin, and 2 weeks ago we had fresh blueberries so we used those which they loved.  But the current favorite is cherry vanilla.  Someone told me that Panera has a cherry vanilla bagel, but I have never had one so I don't know how my recipe compares.  Regardless, I'd love to know what you think if you try any of my bagel recipes!

Please note that while I really don't care for instant yeast for making bread, I do use it in my bagel recipes.  ALWAYS make sure you are using the kind of yeast that a recipe calls for, or things will usually not turn out as planned :)

Let's start with one for the kiddos, just scroll down for the jalapeno cheddar variation.

Cherry Vanilla Bagels (dairy, egg and nut free!)
yield: 8 bagels

Ingredients:

4 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tsps salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tsps instant yeast
about 1/2 cup of dried cherries, coarsely chopped
1-1/4 cups of warm water

Dump everything into a mixing bowl and combine until it all comes together to form a stiff dough.  If it is too sticky, add a little flour, or if it is so stiff that you cannot get all of the flour mixed in, add a little more water. 
Turn the dough out onto a clean counter and knead for 10 minutes or so until it is smooth and uniform in texture.
Divide dough into 8 even dough balls, and set them aside for about 20 minutes. 
Once the dough has rested, put a large pot of water on to boil.  I use a stock pot because I can fit more bagels in it at once, but you could use a saucepan and just do fewer at a time.  Some people even use a deep frying pan with just a few inches of water in it.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and grease a large cookie sheet generously with vegetable oil. 
Take each dough ball and use your thumbs to make a hole in the center, stretching it gently to be about an inch in diameter.  Some people prefer to hand roll bagels, but this method works just fine for me. 
Set the bagels aside on the counter for another 15-20 minutes.  By the end of this time, they should look a little puffier, and the water should be boiling. 
Carefully drop the bagels into the water one at a time, you'll have to do this in batches. Don't over crowd them! The bagels should float. 
Boil them for 2 minutes,then flip them over with tongs and boil for another minute or two. 
Take them out and set them on a plate to dry a little. 
Go ahead and add the next batch to the water, and after you turn them, move the first batch over to the prepared cookie sheet and dry the plate so the ones boiling have a place to dry.
 Continue this until all of the bagels are on the cookie sheet, then pop it in the oven for 22 minutes.  Since ovens vary, you might want to peek at the bottom of one after 20 minutes to make sure they aren't getting too dark. 
Take them out and let them cool for another 20 minutes. 
We love these with plain cream cheese, but I bet if you mixed some cherry preserves into plain cream cheese it would also be good.  For Cassidy, since she is allergic to dairy, we use Tofutti dairy free cream cheese substitute.


Jalapeno Cheddar Bagels  **Please note that these DO contain DAIRY!!**
yield: 8 bagels

Ingredients:

4 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 tsps salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tsps instant yeast
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
about 1/8 cup chopped jalapeno slices, more or less to taste (use the kind that you buy in a jar, we use the ones we can from our garden)
1-1/2 cups of warm water

 Combine everything in a mixing bowl until it forms a stiff dough. Add a little more flour if it is too sticky, a little more water if you can't get all the flour worked in. 
Turn the dough out onto the counter and knead it until it is smooth and a uniform texture. Take care not to touch your face until after you have washed your hands, the hot peppers can burn your eyes.  Divide the dough into 8 equal balls and set aside for 20 minutes.
 Once the dough has rested, put a large pot of water on to boil. 
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and grease a large cookie sheet generously with vegetable oil. 
Take each dough ball and use your thumbs to make a hole in the center, stretching it gently to be about an inch in diameter. 
Set the bagels aside on the counter for another 15-20 minutes.  By the end of this time, they should look a little puffier, and the water should be boiling. 
Carefully drop the bagels into the water one at a time, you'll have to do this in batches. Don't over crowd them! The bagels should float. 
Boil them for 2 minutes,then flip them over with tongs and boil for another minute or two.  Take them out and set them on a plate to dry a little. 
Go ahead and add the next batch to the water, and after you turn them, move the first batch over to the prepared cookie sheet and dry the plate so the ones boiling have a place to dry.  Continue this until all of the bagels are on the cookie sheet, then bake for 22 minutes. 
Since ovens vary, you might want to peek at the bottom of one after 20 minutes to make sure they aren't getting too dark. 
Take them out and let them cool for another 20 minutes.

We also like these with plain cream cheese, or jalapeno cream cheese.  They also make excellent pizza bagels!  Just slice them in half and top with pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzerella and bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or so, until the cheese is melted and slightly brown on top.  Yum!

Now that I think of it, maybe my next creation will be a pizza flavored bagel, with the sauce, mozz and pepperoni baked right in...stay tuned, if it works out I'll be sure to share!

Waste Free Wednesday!

Let's talk lunch.  Every Wednesday I get up even earlier than usual, because on Wednesdays I have to pack 3 lunches instead of just one. Next school year, when the twins start kindergarten, I will be packing 3 lunches every single week day, and 4 lunches on the 2 days a week that the little peanut has preschool. I'm not an early morning person as it is, but I do feel good about making sure my kids, when eating away from home, have a safe and nutritious meal.  That doesn't mean I'm not cursing the sun for staying in bed longer than I do on those cold, dark mornings, but it is one of the things that I get up and do no matter what.  It's more nutritious because they eat fresh fruit and veggies, a sandwich or homemade soup and often baked goods made here, and therefore free of all of the extra salt, sugar and weird, unpronounceable and unnecessary crap that is in prepared packaged food from the store.  Sometimes I toss in oreos or something like that as a treat, but generally they eat what we call "real food".  Safe, because of some serious and necessary dietary restrictions for my oldest daughter. More on that in another post. 

So that is one part of stumbling, bleary eyed and half asleep, into the kitchen to pack lunch before the sun comes up, and yet feeling good that it is the right thing to do and also, for us, a necessity. **Feel free to leave a comment if you have interest in future posts about packing fun and healthy lunches that kids actually eat!** In the mean time, that brings me to the actual reason for posting today.  From my perspective, packing food from home has no down side.  It's healthier, cheaper, and easier to tailor to picky eaters or food allergies and sensitivities.  I have actually heard the argument, however, that it is more wasteful.  Once I stopped chuckling, I realized that this was being presented as an actual argument.

On one hand, I could sort of understand.  According to the EPA, "The average American school-age child throws away 67 pounds of lunch waste a year. With the population of kids in the US alone accounting for over 70 million, that’s over 4.6 billion pounds of waste that could be easily avoided."  I remember taking a family trip to the zoo with my husband and all 4 kids.  For each kid we packed pretzels, a sandwich, some grapes and carrot sticks with a little tub of hummus to dip.  Mark and I had veggie wraps and celery with hummus.  Grand total? 20...yes 20 plastic baggies...in addition to 6 single use plastic hummus containers and a stack of paper napkins. Yikes. Passing that giant landfill on the way in and out of Philly didn't make me feel any better. Thank goodness everyone had sippy cups or thermoses, and we packed everything in a reusable insulated lunch tote.  That was over 2 years ago, and that day is still fresh in my mind. The point here is that it certainly can be more wasteful, but it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't have to be difficult, either.

Now, I'm not opposed to taking short cuts for convenience sometimes.  In fact, I think it is necessary for the sake of sanity.  We cloth diapered our kids, but certainly used more disposables with each new addition to the family. But when it comes to something like packing lunches, the little plastic baggies aren't saving me any time, and neither are the paper napkins.  We have a system now that works so well for us, and is essentially waste free. First of all, each kid has their own insulated lunch tote.  I made the ones that our kids carry, but there is certainly no shortage of cute and durable ones available in stores or online. You could buy brown paper bags, but why?  They are cheap, but buying pack after pack for the number of years that a lunch tote will last makes them actually cost more, plus they end up in a landfill, if you do a little reading you will find that paper doesn't break down any faster than anything else in a landfill. A head of lettuce takes 7 years to decompose in a landfill environment.  Just saying...



Moving on.  Plenty of people already carry reusable lunch boxes, bags or totes.  The nitty gritty of what I'm getting to is coming up now.  Reusable snack bags.  Sandwich wraps.  Bento boxes. Thermoses. This is what we pack food in now.  There is absolutely no difference in the amount of time it takes to stick a handfull of pretzels into a reusable cloth baggie vs. a plastic sandwich baggie.  No difference in sealing the velcro top vs. sealing the ziploc top. Much cuter and just as easy for your kid to open. Reusable.  No waste.  No landfill. Same deal as the brown paper bags and lunch boxes, the reusable option costs more up front, but over the course of a year, it's no more expensive, and actually is likely to save some money.  For sandwiches, we use sandwich wraps. You can find them in different sizes and shapes, but ours are basically a square that you lay the sandwich on, then fold opposite corners over (on ours they fasten with velcro) to hold the sandwich in.  Added bonus, when my kids unwrap the sandwich, they use the open mat as a placemat on the dirty public table.  As far as clean up, they stuff everything back into the lunch box and bring it home.  After school, I brush the crumbs out of anything that needs it.  Anything that is icky (Juice from grapes in the snack bag, mayo on the sandwich wrap, etc.) I just toss in the laundry pile.  Machine wash and dry, no special care needed.  Everything is lined with rip-stop nylon.  If they have something really juicy, I just use small Tupperware type containers (pudding, for example, is too wet for the nylon snack bags.  Although I doubt most people would use a ziploc bag for pudding anyway...) We invested in a decent hot food thermos, a flip straw drink thermos and a bento box for each child. Laptop Lunches makes great bento box sets.  The lunch totes that I sell in my etsy shop, like the one pictured above, are insulated, machine washable, and designed to fit Laptop Lunch bento boxes perfectly.  These items will last close to forever.  I'm pretty sure my mom still has my old school thermos in her basement someplace.  Last but not least, each kid has a set of 5 (one for each day of the week) lunchbox napkins.  These are small (about 11 inches square) cloth napkins we use exclusively for packing lunches. Since there is one for each day of the week, they go into the laundry pile as needed and as long as you do laundry once a week,you should be fine.