I do love sneaking the vegetables into places where no vegetable has gone before. Vegetablization is like charting new territory and is great for your health 😉 What better place to vegetablize than in places where I used to use gluten and can no longer due to Mr. Bigg Sis’ dietary constraints? But don’t let no need to lose gluten slow you down here, because more vegetablizing is always a good, and in this case, a delicious thing.
You may recall that in the past I presented you with a walnut crusted apple pie. It’s delicious but turns out more like a cobbler when all is said and done. So I am still interested engaging the search for a healthy GF crust…. and will go back to the cobbler-y things if it doesn’t work, right? Or try Little Sis’ nectarine cream pie with a walnut crust which is also GF / DF. Oh the possibilities are endless…. and this possibility I combined the idea for a sweet potato crust (also tasty and cobbler-ish) with the walnut idea to see if that might yield something a bit more pie-like.
Blueberry Pie with Sweet Potato/Walnut crust
crust
2 cups shredded sweet potato
1 cup walnuts
2 tsp coconut oil
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp maple syrup
1 pinch salt
3 c blueberries (mine were frozen at home)
1/4 c sugar
1/4 + 1/8 oats (that’s 1/4 cup and then about a half again of a 1/4 cup measure)
Preheat oven to 375 and grease a pie plate (I used coconut oil)
Shred the sweet potato in the food processor
Take it out and put all the other crust ingredients in the food processor and reduce to a fine crumble
Add the sweet potato back in and process into a mash
Spread the mash into the bottom of a greased pie plate (I found fingers more effective than a spoon)
Bake at 375 for 15 – 20 minutes or until it starts to get a little crisp. If your crust is a little thin it will crisp better, but the thick crust was nice as well – just spread out well and evenly and up the sides
While the crust is baking, mix the blueberries, sugar and oats
Pour into crust when it has baked
Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes. You can cover the top with foil if you like to protect the edges of the crust.
Feed it to happy, intrepid, inter-vegetable travellers…
Now I will say that this came out a bit cobbler-ish as well, but the edges of the pie crust were crispy, so I”m thinking that if I made it a little thinner and cooked it a little longer prior to filling that it might come out more crispy. On the other hand, this really rocked, and all 3 of us had seconds… so why mess with it?
I have an unwritten policy as regards dinner planning in my house. It’s important to remind you all that I am the mother of one VERY picky eater. When I say picky I don’t just mean that she makes faces when she eats or that she really loves the foods that all children love most. When I say picky I mean my daughter has about 5 foods in the world that she enjoys, the rest is either nearly tolerable or yucky. We spend a LOT of time in nearly tolerable. When I plan a few days worth of meals I attempt to ensure that at least every few days I make something that Ms. Picky Pants might actually almost enjoy (even if it’s not one of the top 5). If I know the main dish isn’t anywhere near the top 5, I try to make up for it with sides she might like to ensure some level of dinner time tranquility. Which brings us to tonight.
Having backed myself into a grocery corner by running out of time yesterday, I was committed to having my beloved nutshroom burgers. I should mention that Mr. Little Sis and I both love these. My son is not enthusiastic, but is accepting. My daughter USED to love these burgers. That’s the other thing I should tell you about the top 5 foods Ms. Picky Pants enjoys. They rotate out on a daily basis. I’m not making this up. In response to “I thought you liked this dish sweetie,” my daughter will say “I DID like it before, but I DON’T like it today.” Yes, she is going to be the death of me. You can, perhaps, now also see why I don’t accommodate her preferences more than I do. I’d have to actually know what her preferences are on that day to even consider accommodating her. I digress.
In order to make the nutshroom burger dinner a pleasant experience I had decided to make oven fries. Many problems can be solved with my oven fries. When the time came to get started this evening, I realized that I had failed to procure the needed spuds. My own garden spuds are not quite ready for fry size, so I decided to do some creative improvising. Internet search engine to the rescue. Carrot fries coming up, thanks to William Sonoma. Continue reading →
What if some fine morning when you have time to make pancakes you used 3 or 4 bowls? 1 bowl for the pancakes to make that day and the other 2 or 3 bowls to add all of the dry ingredients for another morning’s pancakes? Might make it easier to get those cakes going on a busier morning…..
I’m still thinking about saving time, so when I saw this post from our good friend Annie at Unrefined Vegan, I decided I had to give it a GF go. Please feel check out her version which is chock full of interesting grains and flours as well as the idea that you can flavor up a batch of pancakes or waffles once you start with the basic recipe. Gluten free or Gluten full – pancakes are a lovely way to start the day and we’re going to see if I can whip up a batch of pancakes tomorrow morning before school if I have the head start of pre-mixing all of the dry ingredients. Continue reading →
We have been having a VERY strange summer here. It’s been lovely. Like really nice, pleasant, only hot every now and again, rain every few days. Sounds great, right? Definitely NOT the Mid-Atlantic summer I’m used to. Predictably my Mid-Atlantic garden is having a mixed reaction. Some plants are LOVING it (i.e. zucchini and cucumbers), others are okay, but sort of underwhelming in production (tomatoes) and still others fell to the Japanese beetles that seem to enjoy this weather very much (beans). Our garden haul is predictably unpredicted. I’ve heard lots of folks reflecting on the same problem, with the bounty varying according to their region Thought I’d do a little roundup for YOUR garden bounty.
Here we go again. Salmonella and nut butters recalled for salmonella. That’s enough for me. I’m going to start making my own (and maybe I’ll add chocolate to it like Big Sis does). We are too much a nut butter house to keep having these salmonella scare. My personal jar is not on this list, but that doesn’t make me feel much better about it. I’m guessing that jar is going to cool its heels in the fridge until I get sick of looking at it. Daggone it – details here. Eat well, be well friends.
I am feeling it a little bit lately, although I am trying to dodge and weave and can’t get ‘it’ in focus. Like the hummingbird outside the window I just tried to photograph to share with you, things are feeling kind of fuzzy. I know that if I open the front door to get a shot from the front porch, she will probably fly away so I am enjoying her and will let you imagine her vibrant green back and her tiny wings that look thick with frenzied speed while the rest of her stays steady and immobile. Apparently my steady, immobile persona still fools friends who are surprised anytime (and everytime) we eat anything less than perfectly nutritious, yet my wings are getting a bit tired with the attempt to provide healthy, real food in this culture. So my hard edges as The Food Regulator (TFR) are beginning to blur a bit.
There is a hummingbird out there valiantly staying afloat against all odds.
Not to complain, but between work, graduate school, TaeKwonDo (which my son and I do together) and home and family, I am starting to wear down a little. I don’t tell you this for sympathy or “pride of busy-ness” (the 8th deadly sin),but because I am sure that many of you are similarly stretched. There just isn’t enough time in the day to do all of the cooking and gardening that I used to do and would like to do. So I have decided that a little controlled erosion is in order lest the whole mountain be undermined and bury us in an avalanche of mcnuggets, doritos and moon pies. Continue reading →
These have been out for a few days, but if I didn’t have Food Safety News in my FB feed, I wouldn’t have heard about two of them. Granted, I don’t buy those products, but nonetheless I thought I’d pass the info on. I have to say that I have mixed emotions about all these recalls. The optimist in me says:” Hey, it’s really good that we’re catching these problems and keeping them from potentially making more people sick.” On the other hand… insert cursing and outrage about our food industry here. Eat well, be well friends, and check the news once in a while to see if you’re at risk for something gross.
The garden continues to produce green squash at a startling rate. What a lovely problem to have. If the plants keep up like this I will surely shred and freeze a good bit of it for use in zucchini bread and mac and cheez in the colder months, but it’s nice to have some to use right now, today, when our thoughts are turning toward books, notebooks, pencils (I love the smell of new pencils) and LUNCHBOXES. It is time for Momma to get busy making some reasonable goodies for those lunch boxes.
While I was thinking about the need to start baking for school and noticing the abundant zucchini, the internet happened and mashed them together for me. I was inspired and responded with my usual “Ooooh, that looks good. What ingredients should I change?” The result got a straight yummy thumbs up from 3 of the 4 of us and even earned a “pretty good” from Ms. Picky Pants. That is a good cooking day in my house. Because of the lower fat content, these cookies are a little more biscuity than most, but ring all the necessary cookie bells to satisfy treat eaters who are willing to overlook the little flecks of green, which I think are beautiful, BTW. And so, without further ado, I give you… Continue reading →
Our Pantry Penchants are sometimes quite clear. We have toyed at times with re-naming the blog My Sister’s Sweet Potatoes…. My Sister’s Pancakes….. and now I guess we’ll have to consider My Sister’s Pickles as well. I hope you like pickles as well as I do, so you won’t mind another pickle recipe, and I offer the explanation that my preference for pickles is related to a problem. My son, who used to enjoy lots of raw vegetables has somehow lost his taste for raw veggies. We have a rule that before any non-produce snack is eaten, a piece of produce must be consumed. Fruit is easy and always an option, but in the past he was also willing to eat raw sugar snap peas, grape tomatoes, carrots, green beans, slightly pickled (raw) cucumbers or salad (although that is generally only with a bit of pressure). We do also keep leftover roasted potatoes and other cooked veggies as an option but as far as raw vegetable go, we are down to pickled (raw) cucumbers, carrots (under duress) and salad (duress-er). He eats cooked vegetables and I still freely load any dish with veggies that I can, but I’m thinking that perhaps if I can cold-pickle some more veggies, that would provide us with another veggie snack. These green beans are not strictly raw, but they aren’t cooked much…. so I’m going to give it a go! The recipe I found was a dill-y concoction but my son generally prefers the sweet (surprise, surprise), so I made up a batch of both which are currently getting flavored up in the refrigerator. I leave you the recipes and then I will sleep while my green beans soak in flavor!! Continue reading →
Now I will say that this came out a bit cobbler-ish as well, but the edges of the pie crust were crispy, so I”m thinking that if I made it a little thinner and cooked it a little longer prior to filling that it might come out more crispy. On the other hand, this really rocked, and all 3 of us had seconds… so why mess with it?
May your September be full of pie!
In order to make the nutshroom burger dinner a pleasant experience I had decided to make oven fries. Many problems can be solved with my oven fries. When the time came to get started this evening, I realized that I had failed to procure the needed spuds. My own garden spuds are not quite ready for fry size, so I decided to do some creative improvising. Internet search engine to the rescue. 
While I was thinking about the need to start baking for school and noticing the abundant zucchini, the internet happened and mashed them together for me. I was inspired and responded with my usual “Ooooh, that looks good. What ingredients should I change?” The result got a straight yummy thumbs up from 3 of the 4 of us and even earned a “pretty good” from Ms. Picky Pants. That is a good cooking day in my house. Because of the lower fat content, these cookies are a little more biscuity than most, but ring all the necessary cookie bells to satisfy treat eaters who are willing to overlook the little flecks of green, which I think are beautiful, BTW. And so, without further ado, I give you… 
my sister's pantry 