By no means am I trying to become a food blogger, but I have decided to start sharing some of my easy veggie creations.  My number one goal is to expose my boys to absolutely every vegetable in the produce section and with this dish I succeeded in sneaking in turnips and beets.

All you have to do is peel and cube the turnips and beets, cut the Brussels sprouts in half, and slice the mushrooms (you can leave them whole if you like).

Since I am a purest and the veggies really don’t need it, I don’t use any oil, salt, or butter.  Roast them in the oven for 20 minutes at 350 and then give them a shake.  Pop the bad boys back in the oven for 20 more minutes and ta-da:

I have also been known to throw some tofu into the pan and eat the whole thing for my meal.  For less than 200 calories it is very filling.  Oh and a word to the wise, beets change the color of your pee and poop.  My boys love that.  Who am I kidding, my boys love anything that changes their poop or makes them have gas.  I sometimes wonder if little girls are the same way…

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>Aaron is convinced that life as we know it in the United States is going to end.  He thinks we are headed into a major recession and a war with Iran or North Korea or both.  I can’t really argue with him, he makes valid points.

Let me rephrase all that.  He is not a crazy militia man that thinks we should stock pile weapons or build a bunker.  He just thinks we need to start practicing things that our grandparents taught us, so last week he built some rabbit traps from scratch.  He came up with an idea, scraped around in the barn and found the wood, and built the stinking things.  He is so talented when he wants to be.  He baited them with a cut up apple and ta-da he trapped a rabbit

He trapped a rabbit.  He is cooking it for dinner tonight.  I am nervous.  I have eaten squirrel, duck, and deer, but never a rabbit.  I did some research and it has 147 calories per 3 ounce serving and is high in iron, niacin, phosphorous, and selenium.  It is also very high in vitamin B-12.  The only bad thing is that it is high in cholesterol.  That is weird to me because the little furry things only eat grass and veggies.  Oh well…

I had him make baked potatoes along with the rabbit, so just in case I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t starve.

>One of Aaron’s favorite things to do is find something that appears to be useless and find it a use. This week, he set out to find a use for all the stinking cactus we have growing around here. Normally, we have an amount that is tolerable, but I think this year since it was so hot and dry they flourished.

This is what they look like out west:

But ours are smaller.

Aaron decided to make cactus juice. Seriously, he made cactus juice.

First you harvest the little red balls off the tips of the cactus. That is the fruit they make, but be careful because they have stickers in them too. After you get all the stickers off and cut them in half you boil them for about 10 minutes.

They have a slimy consistency to the inside of them like boiled okra, so be prepared. After boiling you strain the seeds and chunks of fruit through cheese cloth and chill the juice.

Ok, it doesn’t taste bad, but it doesn’t really taste awesome either.

A lot of different websites brag about how great the juice is for your body and I have been drinking a cup of it every day just to see. One of the best things I read was that it would bind with fat in your food and not allow your small intestine to absorb the fat molecules, now that, my friend, would be wonderful and I would drink it every day for the rest of my life. Who knows, but I don’t think we will be making another batch for a while