Friesencold

This is a great recipe from that cookbook Simply in Season that TJ got me for Easter. Even though I almost never prepare dishes with meat, I decided recently that I wanted to buy some organic chicken and prepare this salad. Turns out, the chicken didn’t impress me much at all, so every time I’ve made this dish since, I’ve left out the chicken and loved it even more.

Recipe 33: Sesame (Chicken) Couscous Salad

1 1/2 cups chicken or veggie broth
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil or olive oil
Combine and bring to a boil.

1 cup uncooked couscous
Place in large bowl and stir in boiling broth. Cover and let stand 5-8 minutes. Fluff with fork.

2 green onions, sliced
1 large red pepper, chopped
Stir into couscous. Cover and refrigerate until chilled.

1 1/2 cups sugar snap peas or snow peas
3/4 cup broccoli florets
Steam peas 1 minute. Add broccoli and steam 2 more minutes or until crisp-tender. Rinse in cold water and drain.

OPTIONAL: 1 cup cooked chicken, chopped
Add to couscous with broccoli and peas.

1/4 cup lemon juice
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sesame oil (optional)
Combine and mix into couscous mixture.

1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted
1 Tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
Mix in immediately before serving. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Serves 3-4.

I would serve this with steamed greens of some sort and maybe some of that spelt bread (toasted) from Trader Joe’s. No need for bread, though if you plan to eat a bunch of the main dish and not have leftovers.

Here’s a fabulous variation on the Fudge Babies I was in the habit of raving about all the time last fall when I first started making them. These Pecan Pie Babies are my attempt at combining the date/nut ratio of Fudge Babies with a recipe I found online for homemade Larabars a while back.

Recipe 32: Pecan Pie Babies

230 grams pitted dates (1.5 cups)
60 grams raw pecans (just over 1/2 cup)
60 grams raw almonds (just under 1/2 cup)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Blend all ingredients in food processor really well. Using hands, roll dough into balls (If you feel like the dough is a too crumbly to form into balls, it may help to knead the dough with your hands a little bit before rolling into balls). The amounts above yield 20-24 balls, depending on size. Keep at room temperature or in fridge, depending on preference.

The most recent time I made these, I hadn’t had a lot of sleep over the previous few nights, so when it came time to add the cinnamon, I accidentally added 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract instead. Then I realized what I’d done and decided to add in the cinnamon too. They are still good, but I feel like the vanilla flavor masks the pecan flavor, and the pecans are what really make these. I heart pecans!

We had fun with the letter C the last few days. Below is a sampling of what we did:

Bauer made a letter C with his body.

I picked out a couple of our books to be the C books, including one of my all-time favorite children’s books: Cookies by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

TJ read the C books to the kids at breakfast one morning.

For a special C treat, we made Chocolate-Avocado Cupcakes.

Bauer wanted to put a candle in his, and I couldn’t say no since candle starts with C too!

Deli-C-ious!

Unrelated to C, I just wanted to share some pics of our dinner last night. These burgers were a big hit! I have made them before but Bauer wasn’t really into them. Last night, however, he loved them. With the burgers, we had a box of Lundberg Farms butternut squash risotto with chia gel added in (those are the little black seeds that you see); peas; and steamed kale. I thought it would be fun to take pictures of each of our plates before we ate last night.

First is Bauer’s plate. He didn’t finish all the peas, but he ate 2 burgers!

Next is Cash’s plate, minus the ketchup. He liked the risotto and the peas the best, but he also ate some veggies and about half of his burger.

TJ’s plate next!

And finally, my plate.

I actually ate a third burger too. I made the burgers a little smaller than the recipe I just linked to. I couldn’t remember whether to use 1/3 cup or 1/2 cup scoop to make the patties. I chose the smaller and ended up with 10 burgers instead of 7. There were plenty to go around and a couple left over for the kids to eat today.

For the letter B, Bauer helped me make Banana Ice Cream (ingredients: frozen bananas). The Champion Juicer is the b-b-b-b-b-bomb!

These next shots are from a couple nights ago at dinner. TJ was doing something across the table to crack Cash up, and of course then Bauer wanted in on the action. The ketchup on Cash’s plate was to dip homemade potato chips in (but Cash also likes to dip his cucumbers), and the pasta in Cash’s bowl is this.

Last, here’s a picture of the salad I had for lunch yesterday. It was the best salad I’ve made in a long time, thanks to the leftover roasted potato strips and green onions, which both added terrific flavor.

Here’s what’s in there: Organic mixed baby greens, organic spinach, broccoli, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, yellow pepper, celery, cucumber, green onion, avocado, sliced raw almonds, roasted potato strips, and Newman’s Own Light Honey Mustard salad dressing.

I am not sure I want to keep numbering the recipes I post on here anymore. I know I’ve posted a few recipes as part of posts recently and didn’t number those because they weren’t stand-alone posts. But sometimes I like to be able to tell someone to go on my blog and look for Recipe 7 or whatever.

I was actually wanting to go back and sort through my recipes on here and tag them in categories so it would be easier to find certain types. I am anal that way. I just want everything to be in order and make sense and be easy to find.

For today, though, I’m just glad to be getting these on here for you. Here are two great recipes we’ve tried recently from Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat for Health. I made a few changes to them, which I’ll note below.

Recipe 30: Pomegranate Muesli

1/2 cup pomegranate juice
1/4 cup oats, steel cut or old-fashioned, not quick or instant (I have found that it helps to use a little extra of the oats, maybe 2T or so)
1 apple, peeled and diced
4 raw cashew or hazelnuts, coarsely chopped (I used raw pecans and pumpkin seeds one time, and raw pecans and walnuts another time – so I really think any combination of raw nuts would be fine. And I also used more than 4 nuts!)
1/2 cup halved grapes
1/2 cup cubed cantaloupe
1/2 cup sliced fresh strawberries (both times I made this recipe, I did not have grapes or cantaloupe on hand, so I just used extra strawberries)
1 T currants (optional; I omitted the currants)

Soak oats in pomegranate juice overnight in refrigerator. Oats will absorb the liquid. In the morning, combine oats with remaining ingredients.

This next recipe is really quite good (well, so was the first!). It’s a quinoa bean salad that can easily serve as a main dish if you pair it with an additional side or two. I steamed some Swiss Chard which is the bomb. We also had a few pitas in the freezer which I thawed just in case we needed a little more substance. Bauer was the main one who ate a pita with his. The salad is quite filling and very flavorful.

Recipe 31: Quinoa Bean Salad

2 cups cooked quinoa
1 15-oz can white beans, rinsed and drained (I used a can of “White Beans” the first time I made this dish, but the next time I soaked and cooked a package of dry navy beans as a way to save money)
1 cup grated carrots
1 cup currants (we found that reducing this to 3/4 cup is plenty)
1/2 cup raw walnuts, chopped
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/2 orange or yellow pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 T chili powder
2 teaspoons Bragg Liquid Aminos or low sodium soy sauce (I used the soy sauce)
1/2 cup Goji berries (optional; I omitted)

Cook quinoa according to package directions. Place all other ingredients in a large bowl and mix. Add cooked quinoa and toss. The recipe states that this is even better when refrigerated overnight to blend the flavors. It’s true because we tried it both ways.

I hope somebody tries these

This morning we spent some time at a nearby park and then had our first outdoor picnic of the season.

When we got home, Bauer decided he wanted to do a puppet show for Cash. I was so surprised to see what Bauer had improvised for making a puppet stage – he took down the curtain rod with curtains from above the couch – that I didn’t even make him put it back. Bauer’s stuffed animals were the puppets. We have one creative builder on our hands.

Bauer’s two favorite books from the past few days are both by Kevin Henkes: Chester’s Way and A Weekend with Wendell. We love Kevin Henkes at our house.

This morning I made a new smoothie based on a recipe from Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat for Health. The smoothie is called “Eat Your Greens Fruit Smoothie.”

5 ounces organic spinach
4 medium bananas
1 cup frozen wild blueberries
1/2 unsweetened almond milk
1/2 cup pomegranate juice
6 T chia gel
Ice cubes for coldness

Blend everything together in Vita-Mix.

This made 6 cups of smoothie: 1 for Cash, 1 for Bauer, 2 for TJ and 2 for me. It was very dark and very delicious.

Here is one last picture for today. Bauer and Cash have really been enjoying playing in our backyard in the afternoons after they wake up from naps and while I am fixing dinner. Cash can usually be found with a big happy grin on his face.

Has anyone ever seen such gorgeous Swiss Chard?

I steamed some to go with our dinner tonight. We had Roasted Veggies with Quinoa. It’s one of our favorite meals. I added carrots to the roasted veggie mix for the first time tonight.

I plan to try my hand at sprouting some seeds pretty soon. We went to Whole Foods this morning after church so I could buy the seeds. I’m going to start with hulled raw sunflower seeds, hard red winter wheat berries, hulled raw buckwheat groats, and alfalfa seeds. Now all I have to get is either nylon tulle from a fabric store or gray fiberglass screens from a hardware store to go over the tops of the quart jars I will use. Maybe I’ll send TJ to Menards since those types of stores are his favorite and my least-favorite.

Coleslaw!

When we were in NC a couple weeks ago (see the great pictures under Photos tab at top), we had some barbeque and coleslaw, and ever since, I just haven’t been able to get my coleslaw fix. I keep buying cabbage and I keep making slaw. My version is super-simple: just use the shredding disc on my food processor to shred green and red cabbage, plus a couple carrots. I mix it all together in a big bowl with lid to store in fridge. Then when I want slaw, I scoop some of the shredded veggies into a bowl and pour a little Newman’s Own Light Honey Mustard Dressing over it and mix it all together.

I love it, TJ likes it, Bauer likes it, and Cash spits it out. He kept thinking he would like it at first and pointed at the bowl, grunting. But once those little shreds made it to his mouth, out they came.

Today for lunch I made veggie sandwiches with mashed avocado, red pepper, mushrooms, cucumbers, lettuce and coleslaw. So delicious! Reminded me of the sandwiches at Which Wich, which TJ and I love because they put coleslaw on them. Now we can just make our own at home.

I am reading Dr. Fuhrman’s 2-book set called Eat for Health, which includes a ton of recipes. There are several versions of coleslaw that I want to try. That and about a zillion other things. I haven’t forgotten about my homemade bread experiment either. Did I mention a friend recently gave me a breadmaker? I’m thinking that’s about the only way I’m going to get myself going on making homemade bread, i.e. let the machine do it for me. And no, in this case, I’m not the machine.

I first posted this recipe back in June of last year, and it is more of a summer recipe. But I made it recently just to have something different than our recent staples of super-stuffed tortillas, corn chowder, bean burgers, and spaghetti, and discovered that Cash loves it, especially the edamame. Another reason I wanted to make this recipe is because I wanted to try this variation, which calls for black-eyed peas and roasted yellow peppers instead of kidney beans and roasted red peppers. I actually like the black-eyed peas better because I think I just got tired of eating kidney beans in everything and because the black-eyed peas seem milder. When I made this recipe a week and a half ago, I used all the yellow peppers from the jar of roasted red and yellow peppers I bought at Trader Joe’s, so last night I had to use the red peppers. At dinner last night, Bauer, of course, asked why there were red peppers instead of yellow this time.

Yes, I already ate some before I remembered to take the picture. Served with corn and homemade potato chips!

Recipe 29: Three-Bean Salad with Quinoa (Variation)

1 cup uncooked pre-rinsed quinoa
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
1/2 lb green beans, trimmed, cut into 2″ pieces, steamed, and then rinsed in cold water
1 1/2 cups frozen organic shelled edamame, thawed
1/2 cup chopped roasted yellow peppers
1 15-oz can black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup Newman’s Own organic Tuscan Italian dressing
1 tsp dried tarragon (I omitted this)

1. Combine quinoa and 2 cups of water with a pinch of salt in a medium pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 10-15 minutes until water is absorbed. Let quinoa cool uncovered or put in the fridge for several hours to cool even more.
2. Put cooled quinoa, green beans, edamame, peppers, black-eyed peas, dressing, tarragon, salt and pepper into a large bowl and toss well.
3. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Serves 4.

I know, I know, I already wrote about Fudge Babies here, but I really wanted to get the recipe typed up on my blog to make it easier for everyone to reference. Plus, since that last post, I’ve made the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Babies (a variation of the Fudge Babies) and they are just as amazing.

You’ll see I’ve listed some of the ingredients by weight as well (just as the creator of this recipe did on her blog). It is hard to know exactly how tightly to pack the dates to yield the precise measurement, but 230 grams is always 230 grams. I love my little kitchen scale and use it regularly for precise food measurements, so it is definitely worth the investment. I even dropped my scale off the kitchen counter a while back, and it no longer worked. I took it back to Bed, Bath & Beyond, where I had purchased it, told them what happened (my fault), and believe it or not, they happily let me trade it in for a new one. Here’s the exact one I have.

Recipe 27: Fudge Babies

1 cup raw walnuts (120 grams)
1 1/2 cups pitted dates (230 grams)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 Tablespoons cocoa powder

Chop/blend all ingredients in a food processor. Roll into little balls. Makes 24.

Recipe 28: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Babies

1/2 cup raw cashews (60 grams)
1 cup pitted dates (160 grams)
2 Dove dark chocolate miniatures (16 grams)

Note: I changed the chocolate part of the recipe a little bit; if you prefer to see the Chocolate-Covered Katie version, click here.

Chop/blend cashews and dates in a food processor. You can either blend the chocolate with the other ingredients or chop it separately, then mix the pieces into the dough. Roll into little balls. Makes 16.