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Whole30 – Halfway Point Reflections

Posted by Carolyn on September 16, 2015 1 Comment

Jesse and I, along with some friends, have embarked upon a Whole30 journey. I’ve been interested in Whole30 for a while, and when Elise did it, I decided to finally give it a try. I mentioned it to Jesse, fully expecting him to poo poo the idea, but he was on board. We planned to do it for September for a few reasons, mostly because we wouldn’t be missing any of the fun food holidays, and it’s a perfect time with the feeling of fresh starts that accompany Autumn.

The first few days were rough, I’m not going to lie. I had headaches, and basically felt incredibly hungover. I was grumpy and mean and unhappy. It was crazy to me that going without certain foods was making me feel so bad. It wasn’t that I missed the foods – it was that my body seemed to be rebelling against the new diet. How had I become so addicted to such crap? It really felt like I was going through withdrawals (though, I must admit that I don’t really know what that feels like…).

By the third or fourth day, I was feeling much better. I was letting myself eat whenever I felt hungry, trying to keep the temptations to a minimum. I figured that if I was never super hungry, I would never crave the things I couldn’t have.

We have been cooking lots of great recipes, and I don’t have any complaints about what we’re eating. I don’t even miss the things that are forbidden. Sure, sometimes I think that some chèvre or blue cheese would taste good, but everything is good and tasty enough without it.

I thought I would miss bread, but it’s the last thing I miss. I realized that the bread isn’t what makes a sandwich taste good. I’ve been eating tuna on salad and it’s just as good as on bread. No, it’s better. Last night we had people over for dinner and served bread with this amazing shepherd’s pie recipe. I looked around the table and realized I wasn’t jealous of the people eating bread. It just isn’t necessary.

One of the very best things I’ve learned is how to make my own mayonnaise. It’s seriously so amazingly good, I’ll never go back. It’s especially good knowing that the egg used to make it is under a day old. I usually go out, grab an egg directly from the coop and make the mayo that way. It has to be room temperature, so it’s perfect, and oh so fresh!

For the first week, I was snacking more, trying to keep the hangry away. I would eat fruit, almond butter, and Lara bars almost every day. Now, into my third week, I’ve noticed that I don’t need to snack as much. If I need something, I grab an apple – another great reason to do Whole30 in September.

As of right now, I’m planning on starting to add back foods on October 1st. I’m going to start with pumpkin beer. Beyond that, I think I’ll wait until October 8th to add anything else back in (that’s when most of our friends will be done with their 30 days). I’ll start with cheeses and see how I feel. Then probably peas and other legumes. Those are the only things I really feel like I miss, so I might just stop there for another 30 days or so.

If you’re thinking of trying Whole30 for yourself, I say go for it. Give it at least a week before you even start to decide if you’ll continue. The first days are hard, but worth it.

Having risen from the first week fog, Jesse put together some tips for our group that I’m going to share here, too:

I’ve been thinking of what I would do differently if we did this again…so I thought I’d share!

First off make/buy your sauces before you start, including:
-Mayo
-Ketchup/bbq sauce substitute
-Salad dressing
-Ranch

Make a plan for lunches when you won’t have leftovers. I often went out to eat when I didn’t bring something from home and this has been very difficult to find somewhere that has diet-approved stuff. Probably having a steady supply of salad stuff and protein on hand is a good place to start.

Figure out a good snack food. For us it’s mixed nuts (and I throw in raisins for dessert). Also have a decent supply of Lara bars for the emergencies (they’re expensive and pretty processed, but when it’s that or hangriness…)

Screw sticking to the “Whole30” only stuff! I’m eating fruit dammit! And I’m having a glass of apple juice when I want one! Even with a few raisins now and then, it’s still better than a bowl of ice cream.

To save you some time, I’ve looked at all the labels for some things and found these to be good:
-Sweet Creek Dill Pickles (Literally almost the only brand out of dozens)
-Applewood hot dogs (not that hot dogs should be considered healthy in any sense)
-Frank’s Red Hot Sauce

Coffee. Have plenty on hand and make sure it’s the good stuff that you don’t need to cut with cream and sugar. If you’re thinking of giving it up, wait. I tried the first day and was miserable, one thing at a time here folks.

Try not to think of the replacement things that you find as the originals. Any bbq sauce you make WILL NOT be as good as Stubb’s…it just won’t…BUT it still can be good if you just think of it as a sauce you put on your pulled pork, not a bbq sauce.

Try to limit going out or going to other people’s houses (if they aren’t doing the diet as well) for the first week. Watching Alma and Harriet eat corn on the cob, eat chips and salsa, and have dessert was tough, I can’t lie.

That’s all I can think of for now…I think I’ve already lost about three pounds of brain matter on this diet.

These are a couple of our Whole30 meals… see, not too shabby! Chicken nuggets with almond crust (way better than traditional!), sweet potato fries, broccoli and homemade ketchup and mayo. Smoked pulled pork, sweet potato slider ‘buns,’ green beans, coleslaw. Also, I don’t think I’ll ever figure out how to photograph food.

Canning All the Things

Posted by Carolyn on September 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

We’ve had a garden pretty much since we moved into our house. Some years have been better than others. The last few have been pretty lean. Mostly because I have either been pregnant or with a little baby for the past four summers. To me, that made it very difficult to nurture something else – like a garden. We’ve tried lots of different things. This year, it was pretty small, but we focused on spring greens, a substantial herb garden, a sad little flower bed, and a couple tomato plants. In the past we’ve tried to grow enough to can, but it never seems to all be ready at once. This year, I just went out to a farm and bought enough produce to spend a week canning all the things.

The only photo I got of the canning progress... clearly I was busy. Sorry it's a blurry, grainy phone photo. — The only photo I got of the canning progress… clearly I was busy. Sorry it’s a blurry, grainy phone photo.

I bought a case of peaches, a case and a half of tomatoes, a huge bag of cucumbers, a bouquet of dill, and some amazing sweet onions. With this bounty, I was able to make (and can) a ton of stuff that will hopefully get us through some of the darker months.

After a week of cooking, canning, burning myself, washing, sanitizing, cleaning, sweating, I have 35 jars of summer food to eat in the winter months.

I know that it’s easy (and cheap) enough to just buy good tasting and good for us food at the grocery store. Especially the way we are able to shop at our local market. It might even be cheaper (and it’s certainly easier) than doing all the cooking and canning myself, but that’s not the point. The point, to me, is that I know exactly what’s in our food. I know exactly who made it, and when, and where. It’s something I can do to provide healthy and tasty food for my family.

In the past I’ve canned tomatoes a few times, but that’s it. Just plain old tomatoes. Last year, I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and really wanted to try the recipes in the book. I was especially intrigued by the three in a day recipe. You basically begin with a tomato base that starts as barbecue sauce, can it, add some stuff that makes it into a sweet and sour sauce, can it, add some stuff that makes it into a chutney, and can it.

That was the first thing I did. Unfortunately, I started too late in the day and lost steam when I got to the chutney stage. It was late at night and I wasn’t thinking. I ended up skipping the chutney and throwing the remaining sauce away. The chutney was probably a good idea – I’m not sure we’d have eaten much chutney. But the throwing out the remaining sauce? As I was pouring it out it occurred to me that I should not be doing it. Even if I was too tired to can anymore, I could have at least frozen it. Or saved some to eat right away. Ugh. Live and learn.

7 pints barbecue sauce
7 pints sweet and sour sauce

Next up was the tomato sauce also from AVM. I’m not sure I let this cook down enough before I canned it (hey, canning expert readers, is that okay?), there seems to be some water in the jars (you can see this in the above photo). I suppose I can just cook down the sauce more when I’m using it if it’s too runny. I also had three jars that didn’t seal, so I just stuck those in our freezer. Oh, I also gave a quart to my friend Jane who came over to help entertain the kids during the canning process – thanks Jane!

9 quarts tomato sauce

I found my great uncle Chet’s amazing pickle recipe at my mom’s house earlier this summer, so I had to make those. As with many old family recipes, some of the directions were unclear, so I did my best to figure it out. The biggest thing that didn’t make sense was his recipe called for canning in quart jars, but the canning book I have said that canning pickles in quart jars leads to soggy pickles, so I did it in pints. Does anyone out there have an opinion on this? Should I try quart jars next year?

7 pints dill pickles

I decided to just straight up can the rest of the peaches. I already used one jar (because it didn’t seal) to make a cobbler. I know that in the dead of winter, that will taste amazing. I can already imagine it on one of those dark, dreary, foggy nights when it feels like the whole world is void of color – popping one of those jars of summer open and making a sweet, bright dessert.

5 quarts peaches
TOTAL: 35 jars of food!

So, I learned a lot about canning all the things, and I have some ideas of what I’ll do differently next year, but I’m going to hold off on final judgements until we’ve eaten all the fruits of my labor (hahaha… food pun!).

In closing, on the night of the wasted sauce, I didn’t get to bed until after midnight. The next morning Harriet woke up bright and early, and I turned to her and said, “Harriet, you need to be quiet. Mommy was up late preserving the bounty of the season for us to enjoy in the winter.” Jesse cracked up. It’s become one of those jokes.

What have you canned this summer? What are some of your favorite canning recipes? Do you like canning all the things? Do you have any other ways you like to preserve the bounty of the season?

“A Good Food Day” by Marco Canora

Posted by Carolyn on January 27, 2015 1 Comment

I love a good cookbook. There are things that initially make me want to cook a new recipe- good ingredients, something that is new to me, a new take on a classic, and good photos. A Good Food Day by Marco Canora has all these things. Another thing that A Good Food Day has is fun, witty writing. Marco Canora presents his ideas for eating well in a creative, clever way. The English teacher in me loves the fact that the sentence “proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance” is in the book. The breakfast lover in me loves the fact that the sentence “a slew of studies also show that eating breakfast increases mental clarity and the overall ability to get shit done” is also in the book.

Not only is this a book of recipes, but it also has sections describing various things. For example, there’s a section on pantry staples that everyone should have on hand. I love his list of 10 principles of a good food day.

Before every section of the book, Canora describes why certain foods are beneficial to our health. It’s wordy and wise.

The photographs by Michael Harlan Turkell are beautiful and inspiring. Photographs are very important to me when it comes to cooking a recipe. Food is inherently beautiful. It should be seen, smelled, felt, and finally tasted.

I’ve made three recipes out of this book, and all three have been excellent. The first were Oatmeal and Dark Chocolate Cookies. The recipe called for palm sugar (I’m actually a little wary about coconut palm sugar, because I’ve read that it isn’t sustainable, or good for the global environment…), and I just used granulated. I also used whole wheat pastry flour instead of spelt flower.

I had a helper. Alma is always motivated to help me in the kitchen – especially when cookies are the finished product.

The recipe is really unique and tasty – the molasses really adds something special, along with the coconut oil.

Here’s a tip: When you make cookies, save some of the dough. I know that we couldn’t (or shouldn’t) eat a whole batch of cookies at one time. We shape the remaining dough into a log on parchment paper, close it up, cover it with foil, and freeze it. Then, when you want cookies again, you can just slice off a few and bake them!

The next recipe I made was the meatloaf. We all love meatloaf, but we usually just throw things together, and it’s probably not very healthy. Just look at the ingredients that go into Canora’s recipe:

It’s colorful and fresh and tasty! The veggies kept the meatloaf moist and added some interesting flavors along with nutrition. The only complaint we had was it was a bit bitter, so I’d cut back on the lemon peel in the future.

I really loved this next recipe. It is pasta, cheese, and peas. Three of my favorites. Plus, it was quick and easy!

I need to say that I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review, but that the opinions, reviews, photos, messy kitchen, cute daughter are all mine.

Green Goddess Pasta

Posted by Carolyn on September 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

So far, we are doing really well with the monthly meal planning. It helps that we are trying out some new recipes (and still having some of our favorites!). This is one of the new recipes. It is inspired by a recipe I found on Pinterest – from Lauren’s food blog. We changed quite a few of the ingredients, so it’s almost something totally different.

My favorite color is green. Even in autumn, when I’m excited about all the new colors, green remains my favorite. I mean, come on:

This is pretty much just begging to be cooked into something delicious.

And delicious it was. And healthful (ahem, all the green). The avocado gives it a creaminess that Jesse described as “goopy and clumpy” – which I’m sure he meant well. The goopiness was quite lovely – almost cheesy. And if you wanted this to be vegan, I’m sure you could just make it without the yogurt and cheese and it would be fantastic!

Of course, we did add some Parmesan on top, because Parmesan.

So, here you go:

Green Goddess Pasta

1/2 package soba noodles
3 cups green beans, cut in 1 inch pieces
1 avocado
Juice of one lime
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/8 cup taragon
1/4 cup chopped basil
3 garlic cloves
1/2 cup yogurt
1 Tbs olive oil
2 shallots, chopped
4 cups arugula
1 cup spinach
salt, pepper, and Parmesan to taste

Make the sauce. Put avocado, lime juice, herbs, and garlic in a food processor and blend until smooth. Add some olive oil if needed, to thin the sauce. It should be like a paste. Add yogurt and blend to combine.
Put green beans in boiling water. When about halfway cooked, add the soba noodles. Cook according to directions. Drain, and set aside.
In a large saucepan, heat oil and add shallots. Cook for about 5 minutes, until beginning to soften and carmelize. Add arugula and spinach and cook until wilted. Add pasta, beans, and sauce and stir to combine.
Serve hot, with Parmesan cheese grated on top. Don’t you love how when you cook arugula and spinach it basically disappears? It always seems like I’m adding way too much, and totally fill up the pan, then it reduces to nothing. It’s like magic.

September Meals, 2014

Posted by Carolyn on September 3, 2014 2 Comments

I’m trying something new this month. We usually meal plan every week, and do a big shopping trip during the weekend. I sort of hate planning meals and making a shopping list. I figured if I only did it once a month it wouldn’t be so bad!

Here’s my process:

Assign each day of the week a certain theme: Meatless Mondays, Williams Tuesdays, Augustine Wednesdays, Crock Pot Thursdays, Pizza Fridays
Pick something for each day of the month.
Write down all the ingredients for each meal for a general shopping list
The first week, buy all the things for the month that won’t go bad. Buy all our meat and freeze what won’t be used that week. Buy the perishables for the first week.
Write down a shopping list for the other three weeks.
Add to the lists as we need things along the way (such as milk, yogurt, Os, applesauce, coffee…).We’ll see how it goes! I am excited to see a whole month of yummy meals all planned out! And I like to keep the weekends open for dinners out, or with friends and family.

Homemade Whole Foods Sloppy Joes

Posted by Carolyn on June 10, 2014 Leave a Comment

This is another favorite recipe in our house. We love to eat yummy food, and this recipe has the added benefit of having only whole foods in it.

Most sloppy joe recipes include lots of highly processed foods, like ketchup, brown sugar, mix packets, and barbeque sauce. I’ve taken a few recipes and tweaked them so it only has whole ingredients that we usually have around the house.

If you eat these on homemade whole wheat buns, they will still be whole foods – I will share my recipe for this soon! Of course, if you eat it with store-bought tater tots, it is no longer a whole foods meal. Oh well. It’s still easy, cheap, and incredibly yummy.

Ingredients

2 pounds ground beef
1 large onion, diced
1 large green pepper, diced
3 large garlic cloves chopped
6 oz can of tomato paste
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
3 tsp chili powder
2 tsp mustard powder
OPTIONAL: a couple dashes of Worcestershire sauce (not necessarily a whole food)
salt and pepper

Brown the ground beef in a large sauce pan over medium high heat. I like to use my dutch oven since it’s heavy duty and deep. Drain the fat.

Add the onion, pepper, and garlic and cook until the veggies are getting soft.

Add the rest of the ingredients, stir well, and simmer on medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. If needed, add more water a little at a time. You don’t want it to be too runny.

Banana Blueberry Mini Muffins

Posted by Carolyn on May 27, 2014 2 Comments

I’m always on the lookout for good muffins. Instead of trying to find a good recipe, I figured I should try to make one of my own. I scoured the internet, and all my cookbooks to try to devise a simple, basic muffin recipe. I think this one is it.

I imagine you could add many other ingredients, but this time I just added bananas (and one blueberry on the top of each muffin, just for kicks).

Here’s the recipe:

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour (it’s the only flour I use, ever)
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 Tbs melted butter
3/4 cup milk
2 mashed bananas

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Prepare your mini muffin pan. I like to grease mine with coconut oil, and I like to be generous about it.

Mix dry ingredients together. Beat eggs, and add melted butter, milk, and bananas. Combine the dry and the wet ingredients and lightly mix using a wooden spoon. Only stir for about 10 seconds. It should be really lumpy and not pourable. This will make for the best muffins.

Spoon into pan, filling nearly to the top. This is when I added my blueberries. I just let Alma drop one berry onto each muffin, and lightly poke it in.

Bake for about 12 minutes, or until starting to turn golden brown on top.

These are great! We ate them right up. In fact, I left of them on the counter, and after Alma’s nap, I kept finding her with a muffin in each hand. Definitely toddler approved.

Baby Led Weaning: How To Do It and What You’ll Need

Posted by andthenthey on March 27, 2014 2 Comments

Oh, the exciting time when your baby is old enough to sit up, interact with you, smile, laugh, and eat! I’ll be honest with you. I’m not really a baby person. I like the little babies, sure, but I am always so excited for them to grow up a little and become more interactive and fun. Six months is an amazing age – they are doing such fun things, and becoming more of an active part of the family.

In our family, we love dinnertime. It is a time of day that we all gather and spend time together. I remember long, lingering dinners growing up. We sit at the table every night. We light candles every night. We use cloth place mats, and cloth napkins every night. These are important to me

It is also important to me that my kids eat what we eat. There are many reasons for this. It’s nutritious, it broadens their palates, and most importantly, it’s easy. I don’t need to cook three different dinners, and keep track of minute dietary details. This leads us to Baby Led Weaning.

First of all, I want to clear up a misconception. The term weaning in this sense isn’t how Americans typically understand it (as in the taking away of something, like nursing, or bottles). It means that you will start introducing foods to a baby’s diet, in addition to breast milk, or formula. The baby should still be getting the huge majority of their food and nutrition from breast milk.

If you start your baby on pureed foods, you need a huge number of things: food mill, food processor, jars, spoons, time, planning, processed baby food, money. If you make your own purees, it is time consuming, messy, expensive. If you buy pre-made baby food in jars, it’s also expensive, and you don’t really always know what’s in the jars. You also always need to carry pureed food with you.

If you do Baby Led Weaning you need three things:

A baby
Food
A sense of humor (and maybe a bib or two)

Seriously. that’s all you need. For real.

We did this with Alma, and she’s two now. She’s the best eater I know. She eats Thai food, Mexican food, vegetables, soups, and her favorite food is Sushi. So, we are doing it again with Harriet.

I like to start with sweet potatoes, or yams, cut into French-fry shaped sticks, and roasted. The shape is good for beginning eaters because it is easy to grasp and get to the mouth. It’s important to only try one kind of food at a kind, and wait a couple days before trying the next, to make sure your baby doesn’t have a reaction.

We’ve been doing it for about a month with Harriet and she loves it. Her favorite foods are roasted, then frozen cauliflower bites, blueberries, sweet potatoes, peas (so cute to see her pudgy little fingers pick up a pea and get it to her mouth), rice cakes, yogurt, applesauce, green beans, asparagus.

Another plus to BLW is that it really encourages independence and fine motor skills. Harriet can pick up a tiny pea, and get it to her mouth just fine. She’s also getting pretty good at using a spoon to get applesauce from a bowl to her mouth.

It’s pretty amazing to see a little baby feeding herself. She only has the beginnings of her two bottom teeth, but she can chew up all her food, work it around in her mouth, and swallow it, no problem. It is so natural and instinctual (not like purees, if you ask me).

One thing to be aware of is that babies will sometimes gag (this is the case in BLW, and with purees). It is really important to understand that gagging is very different than choking. Gagging is a sign that they are figuring it out, I see it as a sign of success when Harriet gags a little. It teaches her how to keep the food in the right part of her mouth until she’s ready to swallow it.

One of my favorite parts of BLW is that we get to eat dinner as a family. We each sit up at the table and eat. Jesse and I get to enjoy our meals. We’re not constantly focused on Harriet, trying to force feed her. Harriet eats until she doesn’t want to eat anymore.

I think it’s empowering. Harriet gets to choose what she eats from what’s in front of her. She gets to choose the pace in which she eats it. She gets to choose when she’s had enough.

She’s a happy eater, so we’re a happy family! Let me know if you have any fun baby feeding stories, or if you have any questions! Cheers!

Summer List

Posted by andthenthey on June 27, 2012 1 Comment

1. Read 5 Books (at least). Here’s what’s at the top of my list:

These are the five books I have on hold for my Nook through the public library. Gotta love free reading! I’ve also just joined a book club, so we’ll see what that will bring me!

2. Read Alma all her books. I seem to be in a rut with Alma’s books. She was given so many books when she was born and we haven’t gotten to many of them. I tend to read a couple of my favorites over and over to her, but I’m sure she’d enjoy some variety.

3. Sew 3 dresses + some. I am making three dresses for a secret project, but I also want to try some of the many dresses I’ve pinned on Pinterest.

4. Do push-ups and sit-ups ALL. THE. TIME. Jesse and I tried to do 100 Pushups a couple summer ago, but I don’t think we made it. Time for the second attempt. I also want to do 10 minutes of ab work every other night.

5. Take Alma to the coast. Can it be true we still haven’t done this? Terrible, I know.

6. Write 4 letters. I got this idea from Elizabeth and thought it was a lovely idea. I’ve really been meaning to write more letters anyway.

7. Swim ALL. THE. TIME. Wherever I can, whenever I can. I’m hoping to get to the pool a few times this summer, and to spend some time in a river or a lake. I love swimming more than being on land.

8. Hike a mountain. Luckily I am surrounded.

9. Try 10 new recipes. Another Pinterest challenge. I’m going to try to focus on using whole foods and cutting refined and processed ingredients.

10. Blog whenever I do any of these things. This might be the hardest of all.

Quick and Easy Salmon and Brussels Sprouts

Posted by andthenthey on April 18, 2012 Leave a Comment

I love salmon and Brussels sprouts. Separately, they are good, but together, they are amazing! Here’s my quick, easy, foolproof method for preparing both. I had dinner on the table in under 25 minutes, start to finish. That’s a win in my book.

Last night we had our salmon and Brussels sprouts with coleslaw from our fish market. They make the best coleslaw, it’s hard to pass up when we go buy fresh fish. I suppose this meal would be better with a nice rice pilaf or fingerling potatoes, but it’s good with coleslaw, too.

The salmon couldn’t be easier to cook. I used to be totally intimidated by cooking fish, but then I discovered this method. Rub olive oil on both sides of salmon, put on a baking sheet with parchment paper, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Here’s the key: put in a cold oven then set the oven temperature to 400 degrees. In about 20-25 minutes (depending on the size and thickness of the fish) it’s done! I have never overcooked our salmon using this method. A-maz-ing.

While the salmon is cooking, chop up some Brussels sprouts. I usually quarter them, unless they’re really big, then I cut a little more. It’s not a science.

Heat up some olive oil over medium/ medium-high heat and throw in the sprouts. Stir occasionally while you get your relish ready for the salmon. It usually takes 10-15 minutes total to cook the sprouts. Turn the heat down if it seems like they are browning too quickly. Throw some pepper in, if you feel like it. Or some herbs. I put herbes de Provence in pretty much everything, but you don’t have to. Again, it’s not a science.

I love this relish, because it tastes like a summer day. Seriously. It’s seriously easy, too. Chop up some herbs. Last night I used parsley and chives because that’s what I have growing right now. I’ve also used dill and cilantro. Use whatever you like. Throw in some capers, some olive oil and the juice of a small lemon. Add pepper, but not salt (the capers have enough salt!). Taste a little and see if you like it. If you don’t, add more of whatever you think would make it better. Not a science (do you sense a theme yet?).

When the sprouts are almost done, pour in a little balsamic. Yum. Stir it all together until the vinegar has reduced and everything looks good and done.

Take the salmon out of the oven, put it on plates, add some of the relish on top, throw some sprouts on the plate and whatever else. Done! So quick! So easy! So yummy!

Salmon

Fresh salmon (about a half pound per person)
Olive oil
Salt & pepper

Relish

Quarter cup of chopped herbs (parsley, dill, cilantro, chives, whatever)
Juice of a small lemon
Quarter cup capers
Tablespoon or so olive oil
Pepper to taste

Balsamic Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts (about a half pound per person? Cut up however much you think you would eat)
Olive oil for cooking
Pepper
1/8th – 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (just pour it in and see how it looks)

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