Pumpkin Pudding for the Peeps! GF, DF, Fast and healthy!

Surely, this should be a post of a strawberry dessert for the holiday, but my goodness it is cold here in Middle TN!  We escaped the snow but it is cold enough for snow and very windy and this weather is making me think of the last of the winter-time foods.  Easter provides SOOOOO many opportunities to over-indulge in nasty high-sugar and fat treats, why not indulge in something that tastes great, is very easy and will win fans among guests and family alike?

We don’t need dairy or gluten for this fine recipe.  Grab that remaining can of pumpkin and some cashews and let’s go!!

SOTW: Crock Pot Creamed Lentil Soup

Yeah, I know we have lentil problems.  A lentil fixation.  A lentil leaning, as it were.  The truth is that lentils may well be the perfect legume, hearty full of all the goodness that the legume family can bring, but so very forgiving because they are so small.  Didn’t soak?  Bah.  Running out of time?  Never fear.  Lentils are the home cook’s best friend.   Lentils are easy, cheap, delicious, nutritious, and friendly to those of us who are a little lacking in the planning department.  If you haven’t drunk the kool-aid (and I am speaking purely figuratively here because I really, really don’t want you to drink kool-aid) on lentils with us before, it is high time that you did.

Oh Those Tasty Sneaky Greens

As Little Sis so eloquently pointed out in “It’s Not You, It’s Them”, just because it’s in the grocery store, doesn’t make it safe to eat.  The safest foods in the grocery store are the whole, unprocessed foods: fruits and vegetables!  And of course it is an age old battle to get children to eat more vegetables.  Our culture’s diet is not based on fruits and vegetables, it’s based on bread and meat and potatoes and meat and lots and lots of sugar.

Although the popular notion that children have different taste buds or stronger taste buds than adults is difficult to tease out scientifically, due to many other factors affecting perceptions of taste, children do seem to have a higher density of ‘sweet’ taste receptors which is offset when puberty increases the ability to differentiate between tastes and the preference for sweet declines.

There’s no denying most children love sweet and most seem to like bland.  Maybe that’s because they can’t differentiate and so complex flavors seem strong.  But let’s get back to the basic problem.  How to get more vegetables into your children, and into you and your adults as well?!  We adults also exist in this culture and have also been inundated with bread, sugar, meat, sugar, potatoes, sugar, meat, and sugar as well!  I am not looking to engage people in a discussion about the relative merits of meat here, but it’s simple math.  If your plate is full of bread and meat – where are the vegetables?  Vegetables are key to good health!

We have lots of vegetable based recipes on board here, but I wanted to share a vegetable-increasing-money-saving-technique especially for the vegetable impaired.

Amazing Apple Sauce

This is so easy, and so amazingly better than what you get in the store that I can hardly believe it.  I have always thought I should make my own apple sauce and apple butter as with apples in particular, I prefer organic and it’s HUGELY expensive.  Commercial applesauce also doesn’t taste all that great in my opinion.

It was a staple on my plate as a child and I was very adept at spreading it out enough that it looked as though I’d actually eaten a good portion of it.  Blecch.  To be honest, it made me gag.  But, homemade is another story.  So when I found an Oh She Glows recipe for apple butter in the crock pot, and too many apples after both my husband and I bought apples on the same day, I thought I’d try apple butter.  I ended up with amazing applesauce.

For this recipe I got to whip out the old apple corer.  Gear enhances the experience, don’t you think?

After roughing up a mixture of the apples I had on hand (just Fuji and Gala – all getting a little old).  Note the peels are still on.  I hate extra work that reduces the nutritional value of the end product.  (Great excuse, huh?)

I filled the crock pot with a splash of apple juice at the bottom to prevent sticking.  I think water would be fine.  Angela Liddon recommends apple juice and I had some, so that’s what I did, and left them to cook for about 6 hours.  I turned my old crock pot from high to low and back several times, but it is a pre-historic crock pot.  You might have a more medium temp that will cook without burning.

Once your apples are very tender.  Smush, bash, mash, pulverize and otherwise maul your nice complacent, soft apples into something resembling chunky apple sauce.  Here is where the departure takes place.  You can thin your mixture by letting it continue to cook for awhile with the lid off, or you can just go with this stage, which is what I did.  It will depend on what kind of apples you used and how juicy they were.  At this point, also add some spices.  I added cinnamon.  No sugar, no salt, just a little cinnamon and a pinch of cloves.  Probably about 1 tsp of cinnamon.  You could add a touch of ginger or nutmeg or allspice if you like.  Just start low and add if you need more.  Again, the line between apple sauce and apple butter may be one of sweetness for you, or of consistency, but either way, you are in the drivers seat of this baby, so just make it how you like it Sister!

Once you’ve mashed and are pleased with the consistency, you can whiz it up in the blender.  (Depending on the thickness you could probably do it in a food processor as well – but I haven’t tried that yet.

I just love the cosmic Vita Mix shots.  Looks like a geothermal pool of bubbling calcium salts, or a galaxy spinning off into the Vita-Verse…  Or like really smooth and creamy apple sauce.

Place this delicious concoction in a mason jar and it’s worthy of the county fair!

Kudos to those of you who thought of this a long time ago.  It was an AHA, followed by DUH! moment for me to give this a whirl.  And I am so glad I did.  Just the kind of simple, yet special preparation to dress up a holiday feast or a regular meal!

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Spicy Sweeties – My New Favorite Cookie

While growing up, my sister my mother and I would all gather in the weeks before Christmas and produce cookies… loads and loads of cookies.  As we got older and moved out of the house, we still often found time to perform our ritual cookie fest.  In more recent years, driven in part by the distance between us and in part by a lack of interest on Mom’s part in making any more cookies (ever, thank you very much), my sister and I have satisfied our pre-holiday baking ritual in our own homes, with sporadic help from those around us, then sharing our holiday booty (er, cookies).  And so, for me (and my chief beneficiaries) Christmas has become inextricably tied to little baked yummies.

Having been pounding on the Sugar Busting drum for nearly a year now, this season of warm gooey sweetness brings a sense of disorientation and a little culinary dread.  What will I do about the cookie situation?  Will I renounce all the traditional goodies I’ve been making my entire life? Will I deny my family ALL the pleasure that a holiday tray of sweets can bring?  Will I hand out cookies in my annual gesture of neighborly goodwill?  Yes, probably; no, definitely not; and, we’ll see how much time I have.

In my desire to still have a treat-y Christmas, I’ve doubled down on my efforts to find baked goodies that I can feel good about giving my little people.  Turns out there’s a lot out there, including Big Sis’ fabulous fudge, but you know me, I can’t simply follow a recipe.  I tend to be inspired by a recipe rather than instructed by it, and this time inspiration was glorious. And so without further ado (because how much more rambling can you really take), I give you…

Spicy Sweeties (GF, V) - inspired by oatmeal and chickpea flour cookies on Taste of Beirut.

• 3 1/2 c oatmeal
• 1 c chickpea flour
• 1/2 t salt, baking soda, baking powder
• 2 medium bananas (very ripe)
• 1 egg ( I used flax)
• 1/4 c + 1 T maple syrup
• 1 t + a dash garam masala (or to taste)
• 1 t vanilla
• 1/8 c sunflower oil (or other oil)
• 3 T tahini (or other nut butter, but the tahini is more delicate than most)
• 1/4 c chocolate chips or chunks or however you like it
• 1/4 c chopped pecans
• 1/4 c shredded unsweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 350.  Grind 2 c oatmeal in food processor or heavy duty blender to make oat flour.  Add chickpea flour and salt, baking soda, baking powder and pulse to combine.  Transfer to bowl and stir in remaining 1 1/2 c oats.  Combine bananas, egg, maple syrup, garam masala, vanilla, oil and tahini either in bowl of standing mixer or in food processor.  (You can, of course also mix these things by hand – I am lazy and have angry finger joints).  The rest of the procedure here is pretty typical cookie stuff.  Add the wet to the dry and mix in whatever way you like to mix cookie dough.  When the dough is fully incorporated, add in the mixy bits and stir to combine.

Drop onto lined or oiled baking sheet with a scoop or tablespoon.  I put my usual dozen on a pan with no drama.  When the pan is full, use a fork (honestly my finger worked better) to flatten the cookies out.  Because there is no butter, they will not melt down the way many butter based cookies do.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until bottoms are brown and there is some browning around the edges.  Cool for a couple of minutes on cookie sheet and transfer to wire racks.  While they are delicious warm because ANY cookie with chocolate in it is yummy warm, the real fabulous complexity of these babies is best appreciated after cooling, when the garam masala shines through.  Delish.

Want to know what else to do with that garam masala? Try warming up with a great big bowl of spicy yum – mulligatawny soup for all!

Leftovers and Spooky Desserts

Once a month my father-in-law joins us for one of our Sunday homemade pasta extravaganzas (and yes, I count myself very fortunate to have Sunday homemade pasta extravaganzas). We always have dessert on Sunday night, but when Poppa comes, we try to make it a little more special in some way. Needless to say the kids have caught on to this particular trend and thus their expectations are always pretty high on Sundays, all day, in anticipation of football, homemade pasta, and some special dessert.

This past Sunday, my husband and I were pretty spent. We used the better part of our weekend preparing for Hurricane Sandy (who I shall now be referring to as the blowy b*&^%) and while my husband trudged valiantly on and made his homemade pasta (green no less, with chard from my garden, yes he is awesome), I was rather unmotivated as regards dessert. And then I realized that I had a secret weapon. In my freezer I had leftover ChocoNana Pancakes. I also had an ample supply of frozen bananas. You see where this is going, right? I warmed up the pancakes. Then I threw frozen bananas, coconut milk, and a splash of vanilla in the Vita-Mix and blitzed the stuffing out of it. I got the ratio a little on the too liquidy side, so I added a fresh banana and some ice cubes. While I blended, the kids used a nifty new cookie cutter to cut out ChocoNana bats. And so a seasonally appropriate, reasonably healthy and super yummy dessert was born. All were happy and satisfied and the kids REALLY enjoyed the chocolate bats. The grown ups enjoyed dipping their bats in their shakes, following the kids’ extremely wise example. Delish… and Boo!

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

If you haven’t had butternut squash soup before, then this is the time and the place my friends.  Fall brings somewhat reasonable prices to the glorious elongated globules of goodness and this is a very easy way to make something that your family and friends will think took a very long time.  Don’t you love that?

First off, I hate peeling squash.  Too many corners… peels too tough, and many of you already know that I have an aversion to peeling.  So I roasted, let it cool and scooped instead.  Here’s the squash before roasting….

Simply cut 2 butternut squashes in half, scoop out the seeds.  Peel and then cut 2 onions in half and brush them all lightly with your favorite oil.  I brushed the bottoms of the onion and the tops of both.

Place on a baking sheet and in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes.  I confess this is an estimate.  You want the squash to be soft.

This can be done ahead of time.  Let the squash cool to the point where you can pick it up – or if you’re like me, until the point where patience is no longer functioning and the asbestos fingers inherited from Grandmother Lillian come into play, along with just a little swearing under the breath… which was not inherited from Grandmother Lillian… and scoop out that gorgeous flesh and into a bowl for later use, or right into the high speed blender, or a pot where you can use an immersion blender.  I do not have an immersion blender and have not tested this recipe, so user beware!  I am blessed with a 12 year old Vita Mix.

I placed one whole squash and one whole onion
2 cups of vegetable stock
1/2 a cored but unpeeled apple (I used Gala)
1/4 – 1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)

in the Vita Mix.  I poured out one blender full into a pot on the stove and then repeated.

Oh man is this stuff good.  My 11 year old who is a devoted hater-of-squash ate it.  It wasn’t his favorite, but hey, we can’t have our favorite all the time, can we?  It builds character to suffer through Mom’s favorite once in a while, don’t you think?

Please share your favorite butternut squash recipe, cause I’m on the lookout for more of those glorious globules

Beet Soup – Ruby Goodness

As a child I loved pickled beets.  Now I have moved away from childish things… actually I’ve just never purchased pickled beets as an adult and I always end up roasting any beets that I’ve managed to coax from the soil.  Beets are oh so companionably roasted with sweet potatoes and other little colorful potatoes.  Anyway, it was nice to expand the beet repertoire with this simple, easy and nourishing use of beets found at Health, Home & Happiness

Being rebels with poor planning skills, we ate this ‘Cold Beet Soup’ hot for dinner and then cold the next day.  I thought it was delicious both ways, and once again, my 11 year old gave a thumbs up to a food that I thought would be stretching the envelope of his tolerance.  Either he is growing so fast that he’s starving and will eat anything, or his palate is broadening with age.  Or maybe this stuff is just really yummy!!

And don’t throw the beet greens away!  I like to saute them (and anything else not tied down) in a little olive oil and garlic!  Or follow these directions or braising beet greens: http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-food/cooking-beet-greens-155600995.html

Cold Beet Soup

4 medium beets, peeled and chopped (I peel the part of the beet that is hardened and dirty looking)
4 carrots, peeled and chopped (I am BiggSis and I never met a carrot that I wanted to peel)
3 cups stock, or more to thin the soup as desired
½ teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper -optional
¼ cup fresh dill, finely chopped -optional (I did not use dill)
2 cloves garlic – add more to taste
Cultured cream, to serve (I used goat cheese, and Little Sis came up with a vegan sour cream that would be great I think!)

Directions for cold beet soup:
Place the beets, carrots, and stock in a crock pot.

Cook on low 8 hours or high 4 hours, until the beets are soft. Add remaining ingredients and puree in a food processor or blender. Add more stock to thin as desired.

Ruby Soup – there’s no place like bowl… there’s no place like bowl….there’s no place like bowl

Chill well and serve topped with yogurt or cultured cream as desired.

Lunch the next day. How I love leftovers!

Enjoy my friends!  (And hey check out the picture of the food actually on the plate, semi-artfully arranged!  I must have not been starving that day.)

http://www.healthhomehappy.com/2011/07/cold-beet-soup.html

Summer Joys

It has long been my belief that a successful healthy eating plan will create a sense of abundance, a feeling of wellness, and will involve joyful eating experiences.  Yeah, right, all the time?  Nobody who has the dubious pleasure of cooking for others regularly can seriously think that ANY dietary choice will create familial nirvana.  I have found that there are some items that do, in fact, hit it out of the park every time…..  Care to guess?

Yes, okay, it’s a dessert, but it’s not just any dessert.  The desserts that score the biggest points around here are those that are the most celebratory and those that are easily associated with good times.  So cake is always good, as it is quite celebratory, but personally, when I think July, I don’t think cake.  Enter the popsicle.  Honestly, what could be more fun than a popsicle?  I’ll tell you what can be more fun than a popsicle….  making your own popsicles from healthful ingredients and watching your children eat them with their friends.  That is MORE fun than your average popsicle.  So when I saw the BPA-free popsicle molds, I heard my daughter’s voice in my head waxing rhapsodic over the high fructose corn syrup ice pop she was given at gymnastics; I promptly set aside my no plastic rule and bought those puppies.

Our first popsicles are the second offering in my Sneaking It In series: Brave Popsicles.  I’m pretty sure you are all aware of how to make popsicles.  Most of you have probably done it at some point, and if you have paper cups and some wooden sticks, you don’t even need any fancy pants molds.  I had also made dixie cup pops as a kid, but somehow while making these incredibly healthful produce concoctions, it never occurred to me that a green smoothie would make a GREAT popsicle base.  Duh.  I corralled my assistants and we promptly began stuffing the blender full of kale (about 2.5 cups packed), 3 large frozen bananas, about 1.5 c frozen blueberries, some fresh pineapple that was on its last legs (probably a cup), a little juice leftover from another recipe,  and about (very approximately) 2 cups of almond milk.  Just as I was about to flip the switch, my boy said: “Mom, we should add some sea veggies.”  I got the spirulina jar and giggled as I put a couple of teaspoons in.  Blasted away in the blender until I couldn’t stand the noise anymore.  Not very appealing looking, but a popsicle is a popsicle, right?

My assistant held the mold as I filled it.  We lined them up as we finished and then carefully put them in the freezer so we could share them with little friends scheduled to come over later in the afternoon.  Our guests arrived.  Adults made fresh pasta and sauce while children (and a few adults) participated in an epic water gun battle in the back yard.  Sprinkler, every kind of squirt gun imaginable, water balloons and a whole lot of fun.  11 of us sat down to a wonderful pasta feast and then the kids broke into their Brave Popsicles.  My children were enthusiastic in spite of the color and the clear lack of intense sweetness.  Our guests were reluctant, but eventually dug in and let’s just say all of the popsicle sticks were licked clean.  Success.  Kale in a popsicle.  Sometimes I crack myself up.

Today we attempt to create a facsimile of my favorite summertime treat – the fudgsicle.  After the prior success, I followed the same formula – made a banana based soft serve that we have enjoyed on its own as a dessert and simply scooped it into the molds.  Tonight after our fourth of July feast (which will hopefully include homemade baked beans – at the moment they look like soup in the crock pot), we shall sample our wares and I’m confident they will be delish.  Then, severe storms permitting, we may catch some fireworks.

I don’t know about you, but there is something about simple pleasures in summer that feels especially wholesome and satisfying.  Something so glorious about sharing a treat with friends and family in the oppressive heat, something so freeing about running through a sprinkler with a five year old.  I don’t know how you will spend your Independence Day, but I think I’m going to go stir the beans, whip up some corn bread, check on the freeze factor of our fudgsicles, and then turn on that sprinkler.

Smoothie Recipes:
5 Year Olds Love Kale Smoothie
Tropical Sneak It In Smoothie
Food Hangover Kale Smoothie
Green Smoothie

Soft Serve:
Choco Nana Milkshake – I added one banana and left the chia seeds out on this go round.

That’s Company Good

Over the years of fiddling in the kitchen, my husband and I have developed a rating system for our creations that ranges from “Hmm, I thought that would work” to “That’s company good.”  In between there are categories like “has potential,” “needs tweaking,” “good kid food,” and “dinner with close friends.”  Well last night, I cooked for about 25 minutes and still scored a rating of “company good.”  The fact that garden vegetables were featured just made the victory that much sweeter.  So for your late spring dining pleasure, I offer you….. Company Good Pea Soup with Crispy Leeks.

Now before all of you pea shunners shrug and click somewhere else, I should tell you that my husband is new to enjoying peas.  Apparently his childhood reaction to the little round greenies was rather on the high side of drama, and yet, when I discovered that the kids would eat ANY kind of peas, he decided to give them another go.  It seems to me that he mostly tolerated cooked frozen peas, and put a good face on it to be a role model.  But when we had pea success in the garden, his love affair with peas truly began.  This soup uses both frozen and fresh peas to the best advantage of each, in my opinion.  If you are not a pea fan, I would encourage you to try them fresh.  It’s a whole different ball of yum.  If you’re already a pea fan, this soup will make you appreciate them all the more.  So here we go……

Company Good Pea Soup with Crispy Leeks - served four for dinner (with enough leftover for lunch for four) with bread and salad

• olive oil for pan
• 1 leek
• 6 c veggie broth
• 5 c frozen peas
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t ground pepper (I used white to hide it)
• 1 t thyme
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• shelled fresh peas (I started with about 4 handfuls fresh, but you can just use however many you can get your hands on)

Let’s start with the Crispy Leeks.  Cut the stiff green and the root end off the leek (save for future broth).  Using the white and some of the light green part of the leek, cut the leek in half the long way and then in half again, you should have what looks like long pickle spears.  Place the leek into a bowl of water and swish them around (leeks tend to hide dirt between the layers).  Pour glug of olive oil into pan and warm on low.  While oil is warming, remove leeks from water and cut into about 1/2 inch pieces (no, I didn’t measure and never will, so there).  Add leeks to pan.  Proceed to largely neglect them for about 20 minutes, stirring periodically. This should be about how long you need to make the soup. They will begin to brown, and this is GOOD. Do not become alarmed. Reduce the heat a bit and keep an eye on them. You want to brown them as much as you can without burning them. If using cast iron, you can turn the pan off when you’re getting close and just let them sit in the pan to finish up.

OK, so while your leeks are browning…  The SOUP!!!  Pour half of the veggie broth in a blender.  Add the frozen peas and go to it.  If your blender doesn’t like dealing with the frozen peas, add more of the broth.  When blended, pour into a pot and add remaining broth, salt, pepper and thyme.   Warm soup over medium heat (and don’t forget to stir your leeks).  When warm and your leeks are browned as you would like, add juice of 1/2 lemon.  Stir.  Serve in bowls, adding a handful of fresh peas and a spoonful of crispy leeks.  The fresh peas will barely cook (my limit on cooking for most fresh veggies) and will add just the right crisp bite to the velvety soup.  Delish.  That’s company good.