We make our own chicken stock. I have friends that taught me how a few years ago, and it's so easy and so healthy that we do it all the time. Talk about saving money, too! http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2009/03/26/food-for-thought-health-and-nutrition-of-traditional-homemade-chicken-brothstock/ After I cook a whole chicken or pull all the meat off of a rotessouri chicken I throw the bones and fat into a big pot. Then I cut large chunks of a couple carrots, celery stalks, onion, and 3-4 garlic cloves and add those to the pot too. A splash of apple cider vinegar, a couple bay leaves and then I fill the pot with water! Put over low heat after breakfast and simmer all day. At the end of the day strain and refrigerate. Give the now brittle chicken bones to the dog. If he is like Jack he will leave the carrots! : ) The End!
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It might not be fair to call these brownies. They are more like very moist cake. I found some recipes, tweaked and compared them and came up with this. Dark Chocolate Zucchini Brownies 2 eggs 3/4 cup of raw sugar 1/4 unsweetened applesauce 1 Tbl vanilla 1/2 cup of White Whole Wheat Flour 1/2 cup of Almond flour 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup of cocoa powder 2 cups of shredded zucchini 1 cup of chocolate chips Stir eggs, sugar, applesauce, and vanilla together and let sit. Stir together flours, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder together in a separate bowl. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir till just moistened. Fold in shredded zucchini and pour into a 9x9 dish. Top with chocolate chips. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. The kids loooove them! And because I worked at making them with less wheat flour the carbs aren't quite as bad, so I can enjoy them and not keep gaining weight! I'm sure they could be made with all almond flour but as a result they would be a bit more dry. Which wouldn't be awful because they are very moist! They are more dark chocolate tasting than sweet but just sweet enough to make you want more!
I think they will be a repeat around here! Especially since my friend and I's garden is pouring out zucchini faster than we can harvest! We shredded a bunch of zucchini in my food processor on Saturday and ended up with 60 cups to freeze! So there will be lots of experimenting with baking and cooking with zucchini around our house! Here is a picture of one morning when we did a big morning of fruit dehydrating. We sure do love that! We did a few trays of peaches, apples, and bananas. My personal favorite is bananas. I also love my apple peeler, corer, slicer. It makes life so much easier! I got a steal at the commissary the other day. They have a table for reduced produce (God bless them!) and there was a big 'ol box of bananas! $3! So we gonna have us a pile of banana bars! Deakin lept over bags of groceries in a single bound to get to the box! Ha! He was so excited. I have an Excalibur food dehydrater with nine trays. I filled every tray up, it took over an hour of slicing! I would estimate it took about 35-45 bananas. I still have fifteen bananas left so maybe we will make several loaves of banana bread to freeze. Although I don't doubt that my kids could put fifteen bananas away within a couple of days if I just put them in the fruit bowl! We ended up with between 300-400 dehydrated banana bars! Yum! Next time you're at the store check out how expensive dehydrated banana chips are! We paid roughly $2.50 for all these banana bars! I also burnt (and I mean to a crisp) two banana bread loaves. But I still have enough bananas leftover to make two more banana bread loaves. So I will do that today. : )
I've finally settled into a routine with breakfasts that we seem to like. So I thought I would share it along with our recipes because I have had to do some tweaking of favorite recipes for dairy and soaking reasons. First, let me explain that I consider myself one of those huge fans of cold cereal. I was raised on it and I loooove it! Golden Grahms, Lucky Charms, Crispix, Rice Crispies, Frosted Flakes.... mmm mm mmmmm! Love 'em! Well, a couple years ago I started having friends share info with me about the unhealthiness of cold cereal. Notice, I didn't say they were judging me, they just educated me. And I said thank you, cataloged the new information and kept on keeping on shoveling the cold cereal down the gullet! Ha! You can get some pretty magnificent deals couponing while shopping for cereal. I was good at it! : ) But I knew my friends were right so I started cutting back on it slowly. Until we got to the point of only eating cereal once a week (or mama sneaking some after bedtime for a snack!). Then Deakin was born and I realized he was allergic to milk. I did give some alternative milks a shot in my cereal but none were good enough. And since I'm a meanie and couldn't handle watching everyone else enjoy one of my favorite things, I stopped buying cereal all together. That was almost a year ago. Since then I have tweaked and shifted and tried all sorts of recipes and ways of making breakfast. And the following is what we have fallen into and are enjoying quite well! The soaking steps I have developed on my own according to the reading I have done on soaking. I'm not 100% sure I'm doing it correctly, but it turns out well. So if anyone with more knowledge in that area knows of something I'm doing wrong, please tell me. Sunday and Wednesday: Typically we do muffins. I serve the muffins with smoothies or fruit on the side. I have adapted a muffin recipe from Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking to suit our dairy free lifestyle and a few other preferences. Here's what we came up with. Banana (or blueberry) Muffins - 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour - 1 tsp baking soda - 1 1/2 tsp baking powder - 1/2 tsp salt - 3 ripe bananas mashed (or for blueberry muffins, 1 cup blueberries & 3/4 cup applesauce - 3/4 cup of honey - 1 egg, lightly beaten - 1/3 cup of coconut oil, melted Soaking step: The day before mix together the flour, coconut oil, honey, and 1 Tbs of water and 1 Tbs of lemon juice. Cover and let sit for 12-24 hours before finishing recipe. Preheat oven at 375 degree F. Put 12 muffin tins in a muffin pan. (12 is enough for just me and the kids with a little leftover for snack, but if we have visiters or Daddy is home then I double the batch) In a large bowl add baking soda, baking powder, salt, bananas (or blueberries and applesauce) and egg, mix together well. Fill muffin tins nearly full. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes and then cool on racks. Monday and Thurday: We usually do eggs on these days. I actually do eggs a lot more often but on these days I feed them to the kids too. Whenever the kids have muffins or pancakes I typically make myself a couple eggs instead. And I serve the eggs with a side of fruit. Here, since I don't have to share a recipe for eggs, I will share my favorite smoothie recipe. Our blendtec came with a recipe book and Robert discovered this recipe. While he was home he would make it at least once a day and sometimes twice! I didn't drink it much then but since he has left I've started having it often too. It's soooo filling and loaded with healthy fats! Again it's tweaked for our dairy free lifestyle. Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie 1/2 cup coconut milk 1 1/2 Tbs peanut butter 1 Tbs honey 1/2 Tbs cocoa powder 1 banana 1 cup of ice cubes (our ice maker makes big fat rectangles so I just count out 8-9 rectangles and that is perfect) Put all ingredients in the blender and blend! On the blendtec it's one round on the "sauces" mode. Tuesday and Friday
Here we do oatmeal! Here is my soaking, DF recipe. Oatmeal: 2 cups oats 2 cups water 2 Tbs lemon juice Put in container, mix, cover for 12-24 hours. Pour into a pot add about 1 cup of water and a dash of salt. Heat over medium heat for about 10 minutes stirring often. I set out chopped apples and dried cranberries on the table as an optional topping. And give the kids a choice between a sprinkle of brown sugar or dolop of honey. Saturday Pancakes or Waffles! If we have time. Some Saturdays we hussle out the door to go to the Farmer's Market in Manhattan and can't make the time to do this treat. Most often I do pancakes because they are easier. The waffle recipe I use takes a long time to cook and so I have two waffle irons going at the same time. Still it takes a good 45 minutes to complete a whole double batch. It is a recipe I found in Go Dairy Free book. I have tweaked it to soak the oats. The following pancake recipe is just barely enough for just my kids. If I want some or we have guests I double it. Again, this is a recipe that I have tweaked a LOT since I found it years ago on line. It's barely recognizable anymore. Soaked DF Pancakes: 1 cup whole wheat flour 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 2 Tbs honey 1 large egg, lightly beaten 1 cup coconut milk mixed with 2 Tbs lemon juice 3 Tbs coconut oil, melted The day before mix the flour, honey, milk, lemon juice, and oil together. Cover and let sit for 12-24 hours. Mix in baking powder, baking soda, salt, and egg with soaked mixture until well blended. Cook in a skillet greased with coconut oil on medium heat, cool on racks. We use maple syrup or honey to spread on top. Oatmeal Blender Waffles: 4 cups rolled oats 4 cups water, plus extra as needed 2 small, ripe bananas 2 Tbs coconut oil 2 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 tsp salt The day before mix the rolled oats and water and 2 Tbs of lemon juice in a container. Cover and let sit for 12-24 hours. Pour soaked oats into blender. Add bananas, oil, vanilla, salt, and a little water as needed. Blend until blended well. Pour into waffle iron. I have to leave this batter in my big belgian waffle maker twice as long as usual. This recipe is enough for just my kids, but I increase it by 50% if we have guests. |
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