Vow to Start Your Monastery Make-over Today!

Coming soon!

Kitchen Madonna Aprons Available Again Soon!

As of November 15, 2009, I am working on getting my etsy.com shop BACK ONLINE!

If you want to query me about a particular apron, just email me at kitchenmadonna@mac.com and put KM apron in the subject line so I will know it isn't a spam email.

Please do not try to order directly from my etsy.com site just yet. I have it in private mode. I'll know in two weeks if I'll be behind my machine again. St. Rita, please pray!

Cistercian Beauty Bread, aka Monastery Makeover Bread

Can we make a mutual support pact to stop clicking on those pop-up ads for dicey colon cleanse diets? These herbal preparations usually hail from some Third World country with no regulations, and most nutritionists believe these short-term, fadish diets do more harm than good. You just end up feeling sore, cranky, and ravenously hungry. I know first hand the temptation to scour the world for health and beauty preparations of every kind, and what is more beautiful than glowing health? Beauty from the inside out. Like Audrey.

There is a better, longer lasting way.

Everyone should knows of the importance of fiber. It acts as a microscopic roto-rooter to carry out all kinds of unhealthful thingies not needed by our bodies: bad cholesterol, an over abundance of hysterical estrogen, heavy metals and all the other detritus of the industrial food complex that causes the bloat we girls have wailed and knashed our teeth over since we first got together in the Red Tent. Men get the bloat but we suffer from double-bloat and PMS. Of course, the men say they suffer from PMS too.

We all want to curb carbs to prevent weight gain, cure our PMS, perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms, short circuit the munchies, and cure our short attention span. What causes these symptoms? The lions and tigers and bears of nutrition or white flour and white sugar and white potatoes. We want to eliminate those and replace them with whole grains and vegetables and fruit.

But there are good carbs and Cictercian Beauty Bread, aka Monastery Makeover Bread, are the best kind and high protein as well. My Cistercian Diet isn't anything new, just repackaged with a monastic twist and a hand cranked grain grinder that will make your arms sleek. Cistercian Beauty Bread, aka Monastery Makeover Bread, is the monastic world's and my 21st century answer to colon cleanse diets (and so much more!) because 100% whole grain bread that is freshly ground is going to take out bad stuff and put in the good. Kinda like confession but with calories, the good kind that deliver lots of vitamins that make girls glow with health. Of course, confession helps with the beauty of holiness. Virtues make your eyes brighter than any mascara or baby blue eyeshadow!

When you make bread from 75% to 100% whole grain that you have freshly ground, you are treating yourself to a boatload of sexy B vitamins, fiber, and high protein. Google B vitamins and see what they do for women of all ages. They are sexy, sexy, sexy. Email me if you want some in depth explanations. I just don't feel like airing it all here, too many men lurking about. Remember, PMS and hot flashes are not sexy. But healthy skin, hair, nails, and a flatter tummy are. Cistercian Beauty bread addresses all of the above! Really!

When you buy whole wheat store-bought bread or make homemade bread with whole wheat flour from the grocery shelf, you are baking up a lot of dead vitamins. The whole grain is nature's fabulous way of keeping the lignans and all the other nutritional goodies safe and sound and fresh until you grind them up and release them for your consumption.

So what is that ab-fab picture of Audrey Hepburn as a nun doing with this article? It's just to remind you to get into a good habit and grind your own grain and make some bread! Nothing could be more beautiful for your family.

Here is my recipe adapted from Beth Hensperger's "The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook" because I decided if I was going to buy the cheaper a hand cranked mill, I was going to use the darn bread machine I already had. Of course you can hand-grind and hand-make your bread, but we want to pick our battles, not bite of more that we can chew, master first one thing and then the other, but a $42 bread machine is just too easy. You can spend about $300 and get a combo mill and bread blender but a year ago I started out with the smaller invesment to make sure I would stick with it. Guess what I want for Christmas?

All I've done to Beth's recipe is add some dough enhancer (to make the heavy flour into a higher, lighter loaf) and made it 100% freshly ground whole wheat instead of using one cup of white flour to 2 cups store bought whole wheat flour as she does. If you want good recipes for making it by hand, here is a good one; this is a fabulous link/website for "going with the grain."

1/3 cup water
1/2 cup milk (I use powdered milk)
1/4 cut honey
1 large egg (room temperature)
1 tablespoon butter, cut into pieces
3 cups 100% whole wheat flour freshly ground
1 tablespoon plus 1 teasponn gluten
4 teaspoons dough enhancer
2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 teaspoons SAF yeast or 2 3/4 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Place all ingredients in the pan, precisely measuring, in the order in your breadmachine's instructions. Set crust on medium and program for Basic cycle; press Start. (This recipe isn't suitable for use with the Delay timer.)

Soon, I'll post a Rosemary Lemon Wheat bread recipe just so you know that Monastery Makeover Bread can be glamorous! Just like Audrey!






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Honey Whole Wheat Bread Recipe or Cistercian Beauty Bread

Coming soon!

Go Monastic: Try the Cistercian Diet

If you get up before dawn trying to stretch your food budget with the discipline of a monk and not a little prayer, then maybe the Cistercian Diet is for you. You don’t have to trade in your car for a draft horse or wear a white robe, although it might be nice to have a uniform that instantly brought you some respect and recognition. But this way of eating takes work, something you are doing already for fewer dollars that buy you less. And it takes organization, which is something most folks are getting better at anyway during these hard economic times. Wouldn’t it be worth it for more, better food for less money?

Hundreds of years ago, monastic communities thrived on one hearty, main meal a day centered on high protein rustic bread. Vegetables, legumes, and fruits and smaller portions of dairy and eggs rounded out the main meal. Perhaps a little animal protein was cooked with other ingredients to stretch farther. Renowned for their soups, frugal monastic cooks made stock from boiled beef or chicken bones and scrap cuts; vegetables, legumes, and herbs grown in the kitchen garden completed a hearty stew. And of course, steaming bowls of goodness were served with generous slices of bread.

On feast days, generous portions of meat, chicken or fish were added to the menu. Maybe a festive dessert. Naturally, monasteries produced as much of their own food as possible, eating locally and seasonally as most experts recommend today. In a monastery, fresh meant going out into the garden, the barn or chicken coup, not to mention the orchard. Or an abundance of something produced within the monastery was traded for someone else’s surplus.

How does this diet differ from the Mediterranean Diet? It doesn’t because it includes a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, diary, eggs, olive oil and fish with low consumption of meat, chicken, and other meat products. But the Cistercian Diet emphasis is on whole grains ground and baked at home which saves a lot of money and dramatically boosts nutrition. The Cistercian Diet also encourages as much food production at home as possible (vegetable gardens are stylish now as well!), something that was part of the traditional Mediterranean lifestyle. Additionally, there is a change of perspective, from passive, individualistic restaurant-menu driven consumption to a communal effort to grow and produce for the common good. And it never hurts to add some prayer to the mix.

Not surprisingly, Spanish researchers just released the results of their study of 11,000 people, and found that those who followed the Mediterranean Diet had a 30% reduction in the risk of depression than those whose diet had few of the crucial Mediterranean foodstuffs.

The Cistercian diet dovetails perfectly with the latest science-based diet weapon: high satiety foods that make you feel full longer, ignoring calories and focusing on the energy density and volumetrics of certain foods. Whole grains, soups, fruit and vegetables, all have a high satiety index.

In a close-knit, self-sufficient society based on shared ideals and religious practices, vices such as greed and gluttony where carefully replaced with moderation. This common sense approach was punctuated by some self-denial. And joyful feast days made one forget a day here or a day there of self-denial, not to mention breaking up the tedium of day-to-day moderation. Let’s not forget how many feast days there were in the Middle Ages; fun and celebration are never far away. This common sense, cyclical way of doing things, added up to a balanced approach to portion control, healthful eating, celebrations, and fasting to decrease vices and increase virtues. Not to mention an increase of self control.

But don't take my word for it. Please read "The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living" if you have not done so already. You will roll in the floor and up the walls laughing and you'll come away with some great feastday recipes with terribly colorful names.

I wouldn’t be surprised if practitioners of monastic medicine – mostly based on herbs – understood on some intuitive level what modern medicine is just now acknowledging: the positive role of fasting in slowing the aging process and preventing disease. Researchers argue internal organs benefit from a rest from the relentless business of digestion. Resetting the brain’s satiety “meter” and recalibrating portions are nice by-products as well. Obesity, and all the diseases that go with it, was not as rampant then as now because super-sizing and industrial food products larded with unhealthy fats and sugars just didn’t exist. Nor did our modern, sedentary lifestyles. Nor did the Food Network where food is entertainment. Or the menu which encourages selfish individualism. And where is the summum bonum, the highest good, in that?

Most people before the Industrial Revolution understood that food is medicine. Conversely, if an ingredient or a food was created by the industrial food complex and a medieval monk wouldn’t know what it was, I wouldn’t eat it. Our bodies weren’t made to digest frankinfoods. No doubt, they do us harm.

A year ago, my food buying habits changed when I purchased my first hand cranked grain grinder for less than $80 and 45 lbs of red winter wheat for $37. Acknowledging my inner abbess, I delegated grinding the grain to the kids, which simply takes a little elbow grease and patience, and learned to make 100 % whole wheat bread in a $42 bread machine. Two cups of wheat makes one loaf. That first 45 lbs of grain lasted a long time and made the most delicious, nutritious bread for a fraction of the cost of a store-bought loaf laden with preservatives and nutritionally compromised bleached flour.

This high protein, vitamin-laden bread is the center of a Cistercian Diet. The lignans and other nutritional goodies in store-bought flour and bread are greatly reduced by the time you put them in your cart, bordering on being nutritionally inert. In my estimation, home ground and baked bread is a super-food.

For millennia, bread had been the staff of life, and you won’t find this bread on any Weight Watchers points counter or South Beach Diet because it is usually homemade or made by specialty bakeries like the Big Sky Bread Company franchise which grinds their grain on site and doesn’t use any ingredients not recognized by a medieval monk.

How about a slice of fresh wholegrain bread and cheese to make a smaller, non-main meal of the day? Try it sometime for it’s delicious simplicity. Add a pat of sweet butter and no one could feel deprived. Say the Angelus beforehand and feel monastic!

Once you learn to properly store your grain, which is cheaper when bought in bulk, then you naturally begin to think about other, cheaper bulk purchases like dried beans, olive oil honey, and baking supplies like yeast. Using common sense and showing rigid food dogma the door, I also purchase bulk white rice, pasta, dried milk for baking because they extend my meals in mostly healthy ways and because my family is used to them. I do buy brown rice but cook it within months of purchase because it has a shorter shelf life. Dried beans, rice, and olive oil are quintessential Cistercian cum Mediterranean Diet foods.

Last spring, I planted a garden like a lot of Americans. This was my second year to grow vegetables on a patio in about 45 clay pots; container gardens lessen the work of breaking up the soil and make weeding virtually non-existent, plus, they can be moved. Self-sufficiency never tasted so good. And I’ve planted fall crops, including more herbs without which I can not cook so many dried beans! What fresh produce I can’t grow, I buy from farmers, freezing, canning, and dehydrating what I can to increase my food storage. I am always grateful for a frozen bag of tomatoes and basil I put up last year to add to my chili on a rainy fall day

Everyone has a role in food production, no one is simply a “consumer” – kids grind grain, help prep food for meals and learn to cook, water and harvest a year round herb garden, and work in the summer and fall garden. In addition to producing for your family, perhaps you can trade home-baked goods for farm fresh eggs or produce, all of which are consistent with eating locally, frequenting farmer’s markets, and participating in CSA’s – food co-ops or community supported agriculture.

Monks and nuns have always had cottage industries such as producing and selling honey, wine, cheese, chocolate, beer, liqueur, and baked goods. I have a few friends who make their own wine and beer. Another friend of mine told me I’d be surprised to learn of the number of backyard suburban honey hives in my county. Same goes for backyard chickens in the city! That is a movement that has really picked up speed. And I can say that making cheese isn’t hard either; finding a raw milk source can be a trick but the point is there are a lot of opportunities to produce food at home and to barter or sell it.

All of these activities should be submitted to the rule of common sense and the art of what is financially possible. Additionally, no one can change their diet overnight, but what if you managed a 25% change in six months? Aim for changing 75% of your family’s diet and see if everyone’s health, immunity, and frame of mind does not improve.

As for fasting, there are many ways to do it, from little except for water, juices or broths, to eliminating a meal and eating two others that would not quite add up to one meal or fasting on bread and water. As someone who doesn’t do well with a strict fast, I function better with a bread and water fast. Of course, children, pregnant and lactating mothers, the old, and the sick do not need to fast. For everyone else, the point is to give the body a rest for a day or so on a regular basis from the work of digestion, to shrink stomachs and readjust portion size, and of course to pray.

But don’t take my word about the benefits of the Cistercian Diet. Pray about it first!

Cheap and Charming Lentil and Coconut Soup for a Rainy Spring Day

1 bag lentils, cooked 20 minutes in salted water at medium high heat for 20 minutes or so
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 onion, 2 red or green peppers, plus any other vegetables like a few carrots, or eggplant to saute and carmelize with generous lashings of olive oil and garlic to taste
1 whole chili chopped or jalepeno pepper or whatever hot you have around (I use a can of chopped tomatoes with chili and chilantro and lime all in one can instead of the tomato paste and the whole chili)
1 inch of ginger root, peeled and chopped finely
1 teaspoon ground cumin or the whole seeds
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 can coconut milk
olive oil
juice of half a lemon
chopped fresh basil and cilantro

Take cooked lentils and add to the 2-3 vegetables (onions, peppers, carrots etc) sauteed in olive oil until carmelized. Cook for 5-10 minutes until flavors marry a bit, adding ginger, cumin, and white pepper. Turn off heat and add coconut milk, lemon juice, and fresh herbs. Stir, let rest for a few minutes, and serve. (Only use lowest heat after you've added the coconut milk so it won't curdle.)

My First Finished Quilt (It's Just a Lapquilt But That Still Counts!)

I shipped it to Mary Grace yesterday; she has a second recurrance of cancer. I made this lapquilt to cuddle with during chemo.

I think she'll like the passamenterie (glassy green "dingleballs") and the buttons to finger while she spreads her angelic cheer to all she meets. She's like that.

I machine stippled it because it was faster. I tried hand quilting - and I'll continue to work on it - but it is HARD! There are lots of women I can learn from in this small town, I just need to go to the quilting guild. In the more than a year and a half we've been here, I've finally found little niches for myself. Can't replace my girlfriends in Birmingham like Mary Grace but that is why we have the mail and phones and internet. And blogs! And blog-HER girlfriends!

The Apronista: Share your Apron Day!

The Apronista: Share your Apron Day!

Be sure and share your apron-love with the girls at The Apronista.
Mwah!
Kitchen Madonna

Today is National Wear Your Apron Day and I Made a New Apron To Celebrate!

This camo apron is for those days when you want to command the respect of a full-bird Colonel! Or a full-bird Mrs. Colonel! You know, the days your house feels like a DMZ zone or a battlefield. Check out the dingleballs - also known as passamenterie - on the bottom.

Maybe, I might call it La Generialisi-mama. That's not original. SFO Mom - Barb - first came up with that name for a camo apron I sent her. Also, G.I. June Cleaver comes to mind as a good name.

Today, I plan to go to the post office, the grocery store, and to an all-girl party with this apron on. Maybe I'll change aprons throughout the day.

National Wear Your Apron Day is May 11th

My Son Cooking in a Talent Contest

Doing a cooking show demo is not your usual talent show fare but leave it to my son to insist on it! Check out that cooking show rig. Check out his confidence. The dude can cook. Here is his recipe:

Penne Rustica

2 cans of basil flavored tomatoes, diced
4-6 cloves of garlic to taste or tablespoon of the chopped garlic in a jar
1 can tomato paste
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely minced
1-2 carrots, peeled and finely minced
copious olive oil
fresh basil and rosemary, chopped
red pepper flakes to taste
1 large package of penne (not the reduced size box for the same, old price)

Saute the olive oil, garlic, onion, celery, and carrot for at least 15 minutes on medium heat, until carmelized; add fennel seed toward end of this process. Chop the can tomatoes and add. Stir in the tomato paste. Cook for 5 minutes or so until heated through at a higher heat. At the last minute - since a fresher, more "rustic" taste is the aim - add the basil and rosemary and red pepper flakes. Serve over al dente penne.

Then say a prayer that Graham is surrounded by angels always, spreading his splendid cheer wherever he goes!

National Wear Your Apron Day is May 11th

National Wear Your Apron Day is May 11th plus a Recipe!

I recently came across this idea of using pumpkin and applesauce to sweeten muffins. For my tastes, I could put 1/2 cup white sugar in this recipe (brown sugar would be even better) and be very happy. As we know, white sugar is part of the White Death: white flour, white potatoes, and white sugar.

Next time, I think I’ll add some of that ground Flaxseed I have.

This is how I actually made the muffins:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar (or use less or use brown sugar or honey)
1 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice (I used cinnamon, freshly ground nutmeg, and allspice)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt (opt.)
2 eggs, beaten
1 can (16 oz) pumpkin
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups chunky applesauce
1 cup All-bran cereal (or less or not at all, depending on your taste)
1/2 cup pecans or walnuts

In large bowl, combine flours, sugar, spices, cereal, nuts, soda and salt. Add beaten eggs (I just mix them up in the same bowl off to one side), pumpkin and oil. Stir well. Add applesauce and mix until smooth. Don’t overmix. Fill greased muffin cups. Bake in preheated 350° oven for 30-35 minutes.

Makes 16 muffins.

My First Quilt Made from Apron Scraps!

Isn't my husband handsome and handy, holding my unfinished lap quilt with a pillow sack (that also holds the quilt) on his head?

I'm making if for Mary Grace, who has had a second round with cancer and it is my hope it will keep her warm during her chemo treatments.

National Wear Your Apron Day is May 11th

After your funeral, do you think your granddaughter will bury her face in your professional looking briefcase or in your treasured apron? When a woman puts on an apron, it makes no less of a statement than a fine leather briefcase. It announces she is on duty to be receptive to whatever happens in her home and everyone that encompasses. And that is a wider sphere of influence than many would allow.

An apron is like a uniform that conveys authority and unconditional regard and motherly wisdom all at once. Who said aprons are just about cooking and cleaning? They are also about emotional availability, hospitality, and femininity. They state in clearest terms that to serve is to reign.

There is an apron renaissance going on out there and much of it is recorded on the internet. Women everywhere are taking pictures of their aprons and posting them on certain blogs. They are scouring the internet looking for vintage patterns and materials. They are writing about what being a mother and a housewife means to them. These women aren’t depressed. They don’t need valium or to secretly drink or to watch a wildly popular television show that is a diabolical inversion of their lives.

I think a National Wear an Apron Day should be the day after Mother’s Day. Amidst the quiet drama of our everyday lives, we can celebrate in gratitude our homes and families by toasting each other with tea and homemade cookies and fresh buttered bread. And go ahead, on Career Day at your local school, invite a girl over to see what your life is like. She most likely will have no idea how to hold a baby or how to make a stew or how to bake a casserole to take to a bereaved family or how soft your apron is for drying tears.

The devil very well may wear Prada but authentically feminine women wear aprons!

If you support a National Wear An Apron Day, please email the Kitchen Madonna at kitchenmadonna@mac.com.

© 2006 The Kitchen Madonna