It’s review week at Kitchen Stewardship…sort of.

Every once in a while I like to take a break from new Monday Missions and give you a chance to look back over the list to grab one you may have missed, whether it’s from before you discovered KS or just one of those busy weeks that wasn’t the right time.

This week I’ll ask you to take a particular focus on grains, since for the next two weeks I’m going to be breaking down my family’s experience with going grain-free, then gluten-free, for all of Lent. We did this in the fall, but this time, we included the kids.

I’ll share a few new recipes (like the grain-free apple flax muffins, above), tons of resources for grain-free and gluten-free living, awesome giveaways and even how I ended up using that cow’s tongue in my freezer. (When you cut grains, you eat more meat. It just makes sense.)

Not every family needs to do something as drastic as grain-free or gluten-free, but I bet there’s a step you’d like to take with grains, whether it be making your own bread, soaking whole grains, or just cutting down on the grains to decrease overall carb load. Here are some featured Monday Missions to help you out:

• Soak Your Oatmeal:  Increase the nutrition of a frugal breakfast and make it more digestible.
• Eat Fewer Grains:  In the midst of such research controversy on the health benefits or dangers of grains, let’s try to eat one grain-less meal each day this week, just to raise our consciousness of how many grains we consume.
• Soak Your Grains:  To increase digestibility, some  research suggests proper preparation of grains is to soak them.
• Bake Homemade Bread or Grind Your Own Wheat: If you want the healthiest bread, you might want to try it at home.  Even healthier?  Freshly ground flour.
• Seeking the Perfect Homemade Whole Wheat Bread series, for inspiration
• Make a Sourdough Starter: Research shows that sourdough is the healthiest way to prepare grains.  Capture your own yeast for free!
• Sprout Something:  Sprouting increases nutrients in seeds and legumes.  All you need is a colander.
• Learn About Celiac Disease and Gluten Intolerance:  Often under- and mis-diagnosed, allergies and sensitivities to wheat deserve a little attention. Part of the Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk Out! Carnival.
• Upgrade Your Eggs: Take a step in the right direction on the spectrum of white store eggs to pastured, organic, local eggs.
• Examine Your Milk Source: Where does your milk come from? Where should it come from?
• Increase Your Grains Consciousness: Become more aware of how different preparations of grains affect your system.
• Watch for Gluten: A short primer on how to find gluten in ingredients lists, for your curious information or your family’s health. It’s difficult to avoid!
• Watch Your White Flour: 3 reasons to eat less, 3 reasons you might still want to include white flour in your diet.

You can find the complete list HERE and browse all the way back to February, 2009.

A Not-so-Humble Request

I’ve been blogging for just over two years now, and I often see other bloggers who have won very prestigious-sounding blogging awards. I admit it – I’m jealous. I’ve never been nominated for anything like a "So-and-so’s Top 50 Food Bloggers" and didn’t really know how it all worked.

Now, if you’re willing to help, I can get a fancy title (and ego boost) too.  

I’ve been nominated as a Reader’s Choice blogger for Babble’s Top 100 Food Mom Blogs, and I’d be so honored if you’d take 60 seconds to place your vote for me, if you love what happens here at KS enough!

How to cast you vote quickly: Go HERE to Babble’s voting page and click the tab for "alphabetical" – kitchenstewardship is on page four. Just click "I like this" and you’ve made my day. How simple is that? I’m not sure how I got in there looking like a password instead of a site, but hopefully that’s not a bad sign! Thanks a bunch to whomever nominated me, by the way!

Winner of the Kroger $50 gift card

Thanks to the 146 people (393 entries) who grabbed the chance to win $50 toward their grocery budget to close the inaugural run of the Eat Well, Spend Less series. The winner is:

Maria (maria.whi…@…)

Congratulations! Email me with your address and we’ll get that right on its way.

By the way, did you see the Farmers’ Panel last week? I think I’ll be breaking down my opinions on the subject sometime this week in a wrap-up post, so watch for it!

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

See my full disclosure statement here.