Crazy-Good Cookies ( You could maybe call them healthy)!

I don't have a picture of these because we gobbled them up too quickly.  I'll have to say this is a supreme creation (I am patting myself on the back right now). You can try to tell yourself that these cookies are healthy (and they're healthier than your average cookie) but let's get real- they're just good, not healthy.

Ingredients:
3/4 c. softened butter or butter substitute (I use Earth Balance for dairy free)
2/3c. white sugar
2/3c. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 c. flour (use brown rice flour for gluten free)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
3/4 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 c. old fashioned oats
1 c. granola (I usually use Bare Naked but now I use Nature's Path Pumpkin Flax Plus- unlike the name implies, it does not taste like pumpkin, it just has pumpkin seeds.  I do not recommend this if you have a strong gluten allergy because it has a disclaimer that it has been made in the same factory as products containing wheat.  If you just have an intolerance for gluten, you should be fine.)
1/2 c. raisins (or 1 c. if you choose not to use craisins)
1/2 c. craisins
1 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Instructions
1. preheat oven to 375
2. cream butter and sugars until well combined (maybe up to 10 minutes if you're feeling patient).
3. add in eggs and vanilla
4. in a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder
5. add flour mixture to wet ingredients until well combined
6. turn mixer to low setting to add oats, granola, raisins, craisins, chocolate chips and nuts

drop tablespoon (ish) sized cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

You're going to love these things!

Late Summer/Early Fall Dinner

So, we've been working on this special diet for about 3 weeks and it seems to be doing the trick for Russell We're going to keep at it and hopefully decrease the need for meds!  I'm going to try to get better at posting my recipes that get the thumbs up from both Russell and me.

As always, I'm terrible at measuring so my measurements are usually approximate.

More recipes to come but I'll start you off with these two!

Curried Butternut Squash and Chickpeas with Jasmine Rice and Asparagus

Why this rocks: packed with vitamins and protein and low in calories, this meal is filling and well-rounded.  It's Indian-inspired flavor is exciting and is an easy step away from your nightly "no-brainer"

Ingredients:
1/2 lg. butternut squash
1/2 yellow onion
1 pkg Tasty Bite seasoned Chickpeas (these are already seasoned they are so yummy)
1-2 lg carrots
1T garlic
pinch of salt
1tsp yellow curry spice blend
1/2 can chicken broth
1 c. Jasmine rice
asparagus (however much you think you can eat...this replaces the salad part of your meal)

Instructions:
1. follow instructions to prepare the jasmine rice (I love this rice because it's very light and fluffy and takes half the time to cook as regular rice)
2. chop carrots, butternut squash and onion into bite sized pieces and saute with garlic, when it begins to soften add salt and curry spice blend
3. add chickpeas and stir together with chicken broth.  add chicken broth in small batches so that it doesn't make the food soggy
4. while butternut squash mixture is cooking, prepare asparagus by trimming the ends LIGHTLY coating with olive oil, salt and pepper and putting into a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes
5. serve dish as pictured, yields 4 servings.

Note: We discovered half-way into dinner that the curry has red pepper in it.  Russell's diet says no pepper flesh.  Keep this in mind if you're supposed to steer clear of peppers.

Grilled Peaches with Cinnamon and Honey

So simple and so delish!!

Why this rocks: This dessert is super easy to prepare and you can put in on to cook right before you sit down for dinner.  It's warm and satisfying- like cobbler without the added sugar and calories!  Not to mention the vitamins you get from the peaches and when you use local honey you're going green and possibly building up your immunity to seasonal allergies!

Ingredients:

1 peach per person halved, peeled and pitted

cinnamon
honey

Instructions:
1. Heat your grill or grill pan to a medium- medium high heat
2. sprinkle the flat side of each peach half with cinnamon
3. place peaches flat side down onto the grill pan.  Do not move them around or flip them or they won't have pretty grill marks.
4. Cook for approximately 10 minutes.
5. Remove peaches from the heat and lightly drizzle with honey.
This dessert can be eaten alone or with ice cream or sorbet.  I thought raspberry sorbet would be a great accent!

Yum!  Eat up :)

...and that's all!

Gluten Free Dairy Free "Ice Cream" Cake

Russell turned 29 this week, or as our friends Peter and Katelyn call it "30 minus 1".  I always make Russell an ice cream cake for his birthday but this year I had to be  a little more creative.  Russell is on a new diet that we are trying in lieu of meds that were prescribed to him that came along with some pretty undesirable side effects. The point is to try to keep his digestive tract working efficiently and limit the number of foreign bacteria in his body.

So here's the diet: no gluten, no dairy, no shellfish, limit red meat and pork, no tomatoes, no peppers, no eggplant, no potatoes, limit eggs, limit chocolate.

"Yipes" you say.  "Yipes" is right, but we're making it work and I plan to blog about my recipe creations throughout this diet trial.

Off I went to Target to get inspiration for this birthday cake experiment...

At target I found a decent selection of gluten free, dairy free products which I was really excited about!  I brought home Pamela's Vanilla Cake Mix, Haagen Daaz Peach Orchard Sorbet, and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter butter substitute (which I'll have to say, I'm really sad about using fake butter...so not healthy).

I created a vanilla cake with peach sorbet filling frosted with caramel butter cream.

Here's the cake story in pictures:

All of the alternative ingredient options- I'll say one thing: this diet is expensive!

The cake mix gives three options: basic, light and fluffy, and dense.  I went with light and fluffy which I recommend, I can't imagine the texture of the other two options but the light and fluffy seemed like a normal cake.  I baked the cake in 2 greased 8" rounds with parchment paper lining the bottom.

Time for the frosting!  In a medium saucepan melt 1 stick of butter with 1/2c. (ish) of brown sugar, 1tsp cinnamon, 1tsp vanilla and 2 cranks of sea salt.  Stir throughout while cooking over medium-low heat until sugar has dissolved.  In your mixer, add room temperature butter (or fake butter) with 1-2tsp vanilla and 1 c. powdered sugar start mixer on low setting and increase to med-high setting.  Be patient, it looks like the butter and sugar will never come together but it will. Once it begins to form butter cream substance, continue adding powdered sugar in 1/3c. intervals until it forms a stiff paste kind of like fresh playdoh.  You want this mixture to be stiff because you're going to add in the caramel sauce next.  Make sure you cool your caramel mixture to room temperature before adding it into the butter cream.  If you pour it in warm, it will melt the butter in the frosting and pretty much ruin it.  Slowly add in caramel mixture.  If frosting becomes too thin, add more powdered sugar.  Sorry for my lack of a perfect formula.

Once cakes are done, remove them from their pans and let them cool on a baking rack.  Once they have cooled, layer them into a spring form pan.  The smallest spring form pan I have is a 9" but I didn't want to make a cake that size so I made 8" cakes, cut them down to 6" cakes by using a bowl for a stencil and used the leftovers to make my spring form pan smaller.  Once I put in the leftovers, I put plastic wrap in to form a barrier then began layering my cakes.  I used about 1 1/2 pints of sorbet for the filling and then topped it with the remaining cake round.  After all of that, I covered it with parchment paper to prevent sticking in the following step.

Now it's time for the cake to set.  I placed a dinner plate over the top of the cake to weight it down and then put frozen fruit bags on top of that (mostly because I didn't have another place to put it).  You should probably let it set for about 2 hours but I didn't have that long so I let it set for 40 minutes. 

To remove the cake from the pan, I just lifted mine out with the plastic wrap that I placed in before.  If your cake is actually the size of the spring form pan, just release the spring and slide the cake out of the pan.  I placed the cake on a cold glass serving plate to prevent melting.

Since I didn't have time for my cake to set as long as it should've in the freezer, there was a little bit of sliding while I frosted it as you can see from this picture...oops!

Here's the finished product! It's actually pretty and trendy with it's neutral color combination :)

I'll have to say for a non-dairy, non-gluten, non-chocolate cake, this was pretty darn good!

Chicken Asparagus and Mushroom Crepes

Once again, I have forgotten to take pictures of the food I made before it was devoured...just trust me on this one, it's REALLY good!

Makes enough for 6 crepes (not perfect on portions yet, you'll have some stuff leftover)

Crepes:

3/4 c. flour

2 eggs

1/2c. milk

1/4 c. buttermilk

1/8 t. salt

1-2 t fresh rosemary

a few cranks of the pepper grinder

1/8 c. grated Parmesan cheese (or hard cheese blend)

put all of the stuff above into a blender and blend until smooth, transfer to a bowl and let set for 30min.

Filling:

1 to 1/2 chicken breasts cut into chunks and seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic powder

6-8 asparagus spears cut up

1/4 onion (purple or yellow) cut up

5 strips of bacon already cooked and crumbled (use half for filling and half for sauce)

some chicken broth

3 T sour cream

2 T flour (maybe)

in a pan, saute onions and asparagus for 3 minutes (maybe with a little bit of butter), add in chicken and cook until chicken is done. Add in bacon, sour cream, and chicken broth. Add the chicken broth about 1/8 c. at a time. Add in flour to thicken and reduce until it tastes good.

Sauce:

1/4 onion

1 carton portabella mushrooms, sliced

1/8 c. flour

chicken broth

1/4 c. shredded cheese, white cheddar or monterey jack

1/4 c. half and half

a pinch of thyme

saute onions, thyme, and mushrooms in a splash of chicken broth, when softened add bacon, more chicken broth, half and half, cheese and flour, reduce and continue adding chicken broth until desired consistency is reached, shouldn't be pasty.

Prepare crepes, I used a crepe maker but if you don't have one you should look up the best way to make them.

Add chicken filling and roll up then drizzle with mushroom sauce. Garnish with chopped green onions. I gave each person 2 crepes.

...and that's all!

Quick Recipe Great for Snacks and Get Togethers

Cinnamon-Chili Pepper Popcorn

I know, this sounds interesting and maybe like these flavors shouldn't go together but this is a major crowd pleaser (and it's cheap and easy to prepare)- trust me!

preheat oven to 200 degrees

2 bags of popcorn pre-popped lightly salted, light to no butter (in microwave or on stove)

1 stick butter

1/4 c. white sugar

1/4 c. brown sugar

1/2 t. salt

1 t. vanilla

2 t. cinnamon

2-4 t. red pepper flakes

1 T red chili pepper paste (you buy it at the grocery store near the packaged salad, it's in a tube)

1 jelly roll pan covered in foil and sprayed with cooking spray

1- spread the popcorn on the prepared pan

2- melt all other ingredients together over medium heat for about 5-8 minutes

3- pour the mixture over the popcorn and toss to evenly coat, I use kitchen tongs for this.

4- bake in the 200 degree oven for 20-30 minutes.

5- let cool and serve.

This give s a perfect mixture of salty, sweet, and spicy. You can change the recipe up any way you want. Here are some other ideas:

- add pumpkin pie spice to the above recipe

- butter, Parmesan, garlic, black pepper

- butter, sugar, brown sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla

...and that's all :)

Fast Easy Dinner (much healthier than the last recipe)

This is a great meal to serve to last-minute guests. It looks like you spent a long time cooking (but you didn't) and it's relatively healthy. It'd say total prep/cook time is 20 minutes. I call it....

Ravioli with Chicken and Sauce with Roasted Asparagus and Tomatoes

( creative huh?)

You'll need the following:

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

salt, pepper, garlic powder

1 can tomatoes (doesn't matter if they're whole or diced)

1 stick of butter

minced garlic 1 T? more?

cracked black pepper

premade raviolis from the freezer or refridgerator section

8 small, campari tomatoes (or other mid to small sized tomatoes)

1 bunch of asparagus

a little bit of mozzerella

shredded parmesean cheese

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

bread crumbs

Preheat oven to highest setting

1- put water on to boil for raviolis

2- prepare chicken with salt, pepper and garlic powder on both sides and put in pan on medium heat

3- in a saucepan, melt butter with minced garlic, add tomatoes with juices and cracked pepper (to taste)

4- prepare veggies: use a jelly roll pan covered in foil that is sprayed lightly with cooking spray, on half of the pan put the asparagus, try not to pile it up. The flatter it lays, the more evenly cooked it will be. Slice the tops off of the tomatoes and a thin slice off the very bottom just so they will sit still on the pan. lightly drizzle olive oil over asparagus and tomatoes, cracked pepper and salt (lightly on those as well). For the tomatoes, pour a tiny amount of balsamic vinegar on the tops of each tomato followed by a bit of mozzerella and a sprinkle of breadcrumbs.

5- turn the chicken

6- pop veggies in the oven

7- add ravioli to boiling water

8- here's where I get really technical so read carefully- watch all of the stuff above til it looks done. While you're waiting, it's a great time to set the table and clean your work area.

9-for the last 2 minutes of veggie cooking, switch the oven over to broil to give everything a little brown crisp (not burnt, just a little color)

10- just before everything else is finished, remove sauce from heat and blend- I use an immersion blender. If you do not have one, use your regular blender. Just be sure to give the sauce time to cool down and blend it in small batches. If you're wondering why, refer to my previous blog post with the picture of our kitchen post soup blend.

11- remove chicken from heat and dice

12- plating- place raviolis on plate followed by dice chicken on top and tomato sauce. Place asparagus and tomatoes on plate

13- Serve it up! Ta-Da!

I made some really great cookies last night...but I don't have time to share the recipe.

...and that's all :)

Yummy Enchilada Recipe

This is just a quick post to share a super-yummy dinner. Most of the ingredients are canned and I can't say that it's particularly healthy, but it's low cost and feeds a lot of people...or gives you leftovers for most of the week!

Ingredients:

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 can chicken broth

1/2 packet of fajita or taco seasoning (lower sodium)

1 small tub of sour cream (regular or low fat, I don't recommend fat free)

1 small can of fire roasted chiles

1 can of red enchilada sauce

1 can/jar of green enchilada sauce

flour tortillas (about 6)

cheese, shredded any kind that you like

9x13 glass pan and cooking spray

Preheat Oven to 350

1.) boil chicken in chicken broth and taco seasoning

while chicken is boiling, complete the following:

2.) in a medium sized bowl mix together green chiles and sour cream (don't smell this, it doesn't really smell very good)

3.) shred cheese if needed

4.) preheat oven

5.) spray pan with cooking spray

6.) pour green sauce in the bottom of the pan

7.) chop or shred the chicken and add to the sour cream and chile recipe (do not add liquid from the chicken). Stir well.

8.) spoon the chicken and sour cream mixture into tortillas, roll them up and lay them in the pan however they fit best.

9.) once you have added all of the tortillas, pour red sauce over the top and put cheese on top of that.

10.) bake in the oven until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbling.

...and that's all :)

Oh, if you want to decrease the need to eat such a large portion, add this as a side:

1 can black beans, drained

1 can white corn, drained

1 can rotel, drained

1/2 purple onion chopped

cilantro and salt to taste

white vinegar

mix all of the veggies together in a bowl and sprinkle with salt. Fill bowl to about 1/2 inch from the top of the veggies with vinegar. add cilantro.

THANKS MOM AND DAD FOR TEACHING ME THESE YUMMY RECIPES!