Healthy baking...yes there is such a thing!

I have never really enjoyed baking but recently decided to try baking some muffins. In my never-ending quest to find healthy snacks for my 4 year old, I decided to try making some bran muffins with the wheat bran that has been sitting in my fridge for quite sometime. Plus my son LOVES to help me in the kitchen and baking is a fun, easy to way to let him be my little helper. After tweaking the recipe 3 times I finally came up with some really delicious muffins that the whole family likes. I started with the recipe on the front of the Bob's Red Mill package of wheat bran, then added a few things to make it my own. I changed the sweetener from molasses to the honey/brown rice syrup mixture and it worked well to help keep them moist. I also added some pumpkin and pumpkin spice seasoning which added some nice flavor. Here it is:

Pumpkin Apple Spice Bran Muffins

1 C wheat bran (I used Bob's Red Mill, of course!)
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour
1/4 C chopped walnuts
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
3/4 C milk (they are best with regular milk, but I have used both hemp & almond milk)
1/2 C mixture of honey and brown rice syrup
2 T oil
1 egg, beaten
1/2 C unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 to 1 C canned pumpkin
1 t pumpkin spice

Stir together all dry ingredients. In another bowl, mix wet ingredients, except for apple sauce and pumpkin. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just moistened. Add apple sauce, pumpkin and pumpkin spice to mixture. Spoon into greased muffin tin and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until the pull away easily from cups. Yum!

Spending the day with Watercress

On my quest to add more green, leafy vegetables into our daily diet, I have found myself buying too many greens at a time and then struggling to use them all before they go bad. So, I have decided to focus on just a few leafy vegetables each week and building daily menu/recipes around just a few of them so I don't end up with too much in my produce drawer. On Saturday I focused on watercress. Watercress is a fairly pungent cruciferous green that has a peppery taste, though not as strong as arugula. It is also amazingly nutritious, with almost three times the calcium than spinach! I used two recipes out of the book, "Greens Glorious Greens!" by Johnna Albi & Catherine Walthers. This is a fantastic book with many delicious recipes all broken down in sections by each green. I made Scrambled Eggs & Watercress for breakfast and Kristen's Wilted Watercress Salad with Shiitake Mushrooms for dinner, which I paired with a delicious Bulgur and Flax Pilaf. I found it interesting that both recipes had carrots, even with the eggs! I wasn't too sure how it would be, but was pleasantly surprised it was delicious! Here's one of the recipes:

Kristen's Wilted Watercress Salad with Shiitake Mushrooms

4 cups Watercress
1 carrot
1 T canola oil
2 t freshly grated ginger
2 to 3 cups thinly sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms (@ 1/2 lb), stems removed
1/4 cup thinly sliced scallions
1 T toasted sesame oil
1 t tamari
3 T water
1 T maple syrup
1 T plus 2 t brown rice vinegar
toasted sesame seeds to garnish (I used Gomasio)

Strip watercress leaves from stems and wash in cool water, then spin dry. Chop slightly, but leave mostly whole leaves. Peel carrot and slice on sharp angle in think ovals, then slice into tiny matchsticks. Place watercress & carrots in large serving bowl.

Heat canola oil in a large skillet over high heat. Saute ginger and mushrooms for 4 to 5 minutes. Some bits might stick to pan. Stir in scallions and cook for 30 seconds. Remove from pan and set aside.
To deglaze pan, add sesame oil, tamari, water, maple syrup and brown rice vinegar. Cook together with ginger/scallions/mushrooms for 1 minute over low heat
.
Pour hot dressing over watercress and carrot mixture. Toss gently and garnish with sesame seeds.

Label me, what?

As I have been doing many food experiments over the past 6 months I have been really surprised by some of the results. I have found that people really like to give themselves a label like, "I eat low-fat", "I am a Vegan", "I am a low-carb eater", "I only eat organic", "I am a Vegetarian". I have been fascinated by the fact that I truly have no taste for red meat and pork anymore. I think there are many factors: I have found so many other things I like eating more, I feel better, lighter, and able to maintain my weight without eating meat and I did happen to read some terrible information on slaughter houses...accidentally. With that being said, I think I would most identify with a Vegetarian, however I eat cheese and eggs, and small amounts of chicken and fish. I find that without any animal protein at all, I don't have as much energy. So what is my label? Am I a  lacto-ovo Vegetarian who sometime eats chicken? I discovered the term Flexitarian and I feel it fits me well. As the founder of IIN says in his book, Integrative Nutrition, "It is important to have balance and a flexible attitude...Being a health food addict can be isolating." Even though we should eat healthy most of the time, we still need to live! We are social beings who will always have relationships with people that eat differently than us. Without acceptance of not only how we feed ours, but of how our friend eat, we can never be truly happy. Life is too short to be inflexible. I am a Flexitarian.

After the cleanse...

No regrets. I am so glad I had the chance to give it a try and do it for 8 days. However, the next day I had some protein and felt a lot better. I was no longer freezing and had much more energy. I felt like I could go out and exercise again which for me is so important, especially at this time of year. Once the rain and cloudy skies are upon us, doing cardio exercising frequently helps to keep my happy endorphins going! On Halloween I made a yummy black bean soup. It was delicious and I was happy to be cooking soups again. The recipe includes pumpkin, chipotles and lime juice. Here is a link to the wonderful blog where I got the recipe: http://enlightenedcooking.blogspot.com/2008/01/black-bean-soup-with-pumpkin-lime.html.

Even though I wasn't eating all raw anymore I decided to make the Raw Chocolate Chip Cookies since I had bought the ingredients. They were surprisingly good, of course very different than warm, gooey, fresh out the oven traditional chocolate chips that are my absolute favorite dessert, but I thought they were pretty tasty. Here is the recipe:

Raw Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 3/4 cup ground cashews

3/4 cup ground oats

1/4 cup agave

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup melted coconut oil

3-4 tablespoons cacao nibs

Stir together all ingredients. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a parchment paper lined tray. Chill in the fridge until firm.
I used a coffee grinder to grind the oats and cashew, which was really easy. Also, I substituted brown rice syrup for the agave. I used Navitas Cacao nibs that I purchased on amazon.com. They are fantastic, loaded with antioxidants and I put them in my morning green smoothies too!