Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice

Let's face it, I could have titled this blog numerous different ways.

• How to Start your Morning Right
• How to Waste a Lot of Time and Make a Giant Mess
• How to Make Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice the Hard Way
• How to Make Orange Juice with the Bare Essentials: Oranges and a mug
• I Hope you Like Pulp
• How to Spend your Morning Laughing

Yes... soo that's my morning in a nutshell.  

I got to work at around 8:15am this lovely Saturday morning... Note when I say lovely, I don't actually mean lovely... I mean Gray... This gray, drizzling, sad kind of Saturday morning... It has been raining non stop in Rome for the last week, so this Saturday morning is no different. 

In any case I got to work and decided I needed a pick me up. 

I wasn't in the mood for coffee but orange juice, now that seemed like a good idea.  

The crate of oranges I bought

Now, normally I would go downstairs to the bar and order myself a nice spremuta, or freshly squeezed orange juice.  However, earlier in the week I bought a case of oranges for €3 for the office. It was a lot of oranges.  I have no idea how much the crate weighed but it was A LOT. Luckily I only had a block to walk with them and the price was SOOO worth it. 

I bought a lot of oranges and even though we've been snacking on them all week, there are still a lot left.  So between having extra oranges, and getting the idea from one of my coworkers yesterday, I decided to make myself a freshly squeezed orange juice in my tea mug.  Laure had started squeezing the juice out of an orange yesterday since she's been sick.  I didn't see how much juice came out of her orange, but it seemed like a good idea.  

So his morning half awake I decided to make myself orange juice.  

I grabbed a bunch of oranges, some napkins, a coffee mug and a knife and I started making myself some orange juice.  

Let me tell you, I made a GIANT mess because I squeezed the oranges by hand.  I cut them in half and slowly and with an attempt at being careful attempted to squeeze each half into my mug that I regularly use for tea.  I struggled to aim. I squirted myself in the eye.  The orange skins split.  It was kind of hilarious.

The yield of one orange lol

It is not easy to squeeze oranges into a mug by hand. I would highly recommend either using a bigger bowl to squeeze your juice into or getting an actual kitchen aid, to help you squeeze out the juice. Either would have prevented the majority of the mess I created. I got juice and pulp all over the table and made a sticky disaster that I had to mop up later on.
Plus, in case you didn't know, the yield of one orange is relatively pitiful.  So I wound up needing five oranges to make a decent glass of orange juice.  

That being said, it was totally worth it.  The oranges were very fresh, so the juice was absolutely delicious.  A little pulpy but amazing.  If you like pulp, try it my way.  I also have to say that it is an utter pain to squeeze five oranges by hand.  It takes a long, long time.  I think I wasted about a half hour. Again, it was a half hour really worth it but it would have gone quicker with actual kitchen aids.  

But that's ok.  

I definitely spent the morning laughing. I was super entertained by the time my lesson started and therefore in a good mood.  Vitamin C and a little exertion make mornings go well!

My Mug of orange juice and the cookie that would've been breakfast:
Lucky for me, my student brought me a pastry instead :)

  

What you need:
5- 6 oranges
a mug... but let's face it, something bigger would be preferable
LOTS of Patience and the ability to laugh at yourself

Bonus if you actually have a kitchen aid for making orange juice!!

Ten Ways to Get Kids to Eat "Green Things"

As children my brother and I were prone to shouting, "EWWW, green things!"  It was one of those hilarious (or not so hilarious things) our mother and grandmother had to put up with.  We were challenging to say the least and when we were trying to behave it was kind of comical how often adults seemed to have the same opinion.  I will never forget the night my mother took my brother and I to a restaurant with two of her coworkers. I don't remember what I ordered at that Italian restaurant but I do remember that my brother was so picky that he could only order pasta with butter and cheese (yes, I facefaulted even then). When it came out, my mother and I had to hold our breath, the plate was sprinkled with some kind of green herb garnish. Luckily for us, my brother decided to dig in anyway without commentary.  Her coworker, after a brief moment shouted, "Eww, what's that green stuff?"  I thought Mom was going to die, goodness knows I was laughing very, very hard.  Adults are supposed to like vegetables. Kids are the ones who are supposed to be difficult about fresh vegetables.

We were such pains about most vegetables. Goodness knows, I only ate a handful of veggies and my brother ate even fewer than I did. In retrospect, I don't know why I wouldn't eat vegetables because now I love them. I know that sometimes I didn't like the texture of vegetables, other times it was a flavor issue and sometimes it was sheer stubbornness... When Mom or Grams would put their foots down, I would eat the bare minimum to avoid their anger. Now, I think vegetables are delicious and I've been thinking of some ways to make them look appealing to even kids.

Besides force feeding, here are some suggestions on how to get kids (and some adults ::wink::) to eat their "green things."

1. Set a good example! Eat your vegetables, and they'll start to pick up good habits. Not to say this always works, afterall Grams and Mom ate their veggies and I couldn't be bothered.  But it's still a good place to start.
2. If not, try making vegetables playful! Kids love make believe so bring pretend play to the table. Broccoli can be trees. Celery can be logs, especially if served with peanut butter and raisin ants. An octopus out of red pepper served with ranch or french onion dip is fun to play with. Pack a lady bug garden bento box. Or a cucumber racecar! Build a jungle on your plate with string beans, carrots and different kinds of greenery. Or maybe a grilled cheese and veggie train.  An edible rainbow would be colorfully delicious!
3. Get the kids involved! Have them help you prepare the meal, either by picking the vegetables at the store or by cleaning the veggies during prep time.  They'll be more inclined to eat the veggies if they're actively involved in the process. When I was younger, I helped my grandmother with our garden in the backyard. I was far more interested in eating the vegetables that I had helped plant and grow. 
4. Don't force kids (or picky adults) to finish their plates.  I know, seems counterintuitive, but if you force someone to eat something, they will develop negative associations. However, you should enforce the one bite rule.  They need to at least try the new vegetable each time it's on their plate. So one bite, but no fighting.  One of the reasons that I hated string beans for so long was because I associated them with my grandmother and brother trying to force me to eat them and clear my plate. The last straw for me was when my lovely brother shoved a handful into my face, and effectively into my nose. I could not and would not eat string beans again until I was 20 and even then I wasn't thrilled with them. 
5. Basic bribery: Every time they eat their veggies, or a bite of a new type of vegetable, some kind of reward can be offered.  I loved stickers growing up so if someone had said, if you try these beets you get a sticker, I pretty much would have jumped at the opportunity. I really liked my stickers. 
6. Don't tell them how healthy vegetables are.  Kids tend to think they're invincible so health is not high on their list of priorities.  However, kids do want to get bigger and stronger. I ate spinach because I thought it would help me become like Popeye who was, in my mind, super cool and super strong. 
7. Make it colorful. Little kids like bright colors, so serve up some colorful vegetables seperately rather than in a casserole. 
8. Use butter, garlic and bacon!  You can absolutely make veggies more appealing by cooking them with things that have big flavors.  Positive associations after all. :D 
9. Hide them: Add the veggies like spinach, beets, carrots, salad and other neutrally flavored vegetables to smoothies with fresh fruit. They don't add flavor but they add to nutrition. Super healthy and delicious! I had a delicious berry, banana and spinach smoothie the other day and you couldn't tell their was spinach in there by sight or taste. You can also cut and freeze the fruit ahead of time and then you won't have to add ice to the smoothie. 
10. Hide them: Sweet tooth? Shred up your veggies and bake them into a cake or cookies, like my Double Chocolate chip zucchini cookies, Carrot Cake, and Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread. Don't mention the veggie and the kids will eat up their dessert, not knowing that they're getting a dose of vitamins. If you're worried about sugar content you can always cut the quantity of sugar in most recipes and skip the chocolate. I seem to have chocolate chips in most of my recipes because I LOVE chocolate.  And the great thing about this is that almost any cake can be made with veggies, it will just add some moisture. 

Mind you, 9 and 10 are really kind of last resorts. They absolutely work to get kids (and adults) the nutrition they need but at the same time they don't solve the basic problem. Smoothies and cakes with hidden vegetables don't make kids like vegetables. They simply add nutrition to a diet. My other suggestions are far more realistic if you want a child or adult to get enjoyment out of their food. The ideas can help people actually start to enjoy eating vegetables and new foods. Enjoyment of healthy foods is the first step to leading a healthy lifestyle.

Kitchen Blunders

This past December I was baking sugar cookies with some friends and I got the brilliant idea of making glitter sugar.  Sugar cookies always seem so beautiful when paired with sugar decorations.

The recipe seemed simple enough. Sugar, food coloring and bake for 10 minutes or so at 350 F.
EASY. And the end result looks like glitter!!

And yet, I messed it up.
Not once.
But twice.

Well, you see, the first time, I kind of forgot to check the sugar... Sooo no glitter. Tasty, melty sugar... Not quite caramel, but pretty good.

I would have stopped there. There was no more sugar in the big cupboard, but my friend, naming no names went hunting for more in the small cupboard and she found some! We were so excited to try again, so we made an even larger quantity of red and green sugar glitter!

I let it bake for 10 minutes precisely and then checked. However, no glitter. No melting, but no sugar. I had lowered the heat a bit so I thought, well maybe another 5 minutes.
All in all, I let this batch bake for about 20 minutes. No glitter, no melting just a slight deepening of the color.

I didn't bother to question why. I had simply failed... again. 

No matter though. I figured it would be a good decoration in any case, since it matched our Christmas themed cookies.

Once it dried, I decorated 5 cookies, threw them in the oven.

About an hour later, when the cookies had cooled I decided to try one.

I went from smiling, laughing to screaming in about 15 seconds flat.  We made colored SALT!!!  We never actually tested our found "sugar". We just assumed it was sugar, which was apparently, not a good decision.

My face must have looked so ridiculous as I sputtered and screamed "It's salt!  How the hell did we use salt?" I hadn't even put a small quantity of "sugar" on the cookies, NOOOO, I had coated them thoroughly.

My friend could only laugh, "No wonder they wouldn't start to glitter."

Some of my "Sugar" decorated cookies... Thank goodness I hadn't made more of them

Gahhh the horrible taste stayed in my mouth after a bottle of water and 2 regular non salted sugar cookies...

MORAL:  Always taste your non labeled spices. You may guess incorrectly...

~Raspberry Truffle