Pink Slime???

This post is just a rant of sorts...Who the heck decided our food should be so depleted of all natural ingredients?  "Pink Slime" (abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/is-pink-slime-in-the-beef-at-your-grocery-store/) are you kidding me!  It is so sad to me that people can't just walk into their local store and find foods that are one local, but two actually what they are supposed to be...unaltered, grown in nature, non-GMO (nongmoproject.org), and what is says on the label.  I mean even food that says "natural" can also include chicken that has been grown only indoors without ever seeing the light of day, that has then been injected with salt water or "natural juices" as they call it.  I just really can't believe some human being said let's take all the left over parts from the cows that aren't even considered meat and wash it with ammonia and then grind it all up and mix it with ground beef and feed it to people who have NO IDEA...what a great idea!  Who does stuff like that?  Who thinks it's ok to label food as "ground beef" when it is really nothing of the sort.  What I really want to know is, do the people who come up with that sort of awful idea actually eat the food?  Do Monsanto (see non gmo info above) employees actually buy their corn and use it at summer bbq's, or do they grow their own organic corn so someday they won't grow a 6th toe?  Do the people who came up with the wonderful idea of "pink slime" feed their kids beef/ammonia/ligament "hamburgers" for dinner?

I just wish food could be like in "the olden days" when food was just that, real, organic, raised in a pasture, pure and simple food.  Don't get me wrong, I buy pre-made pasta, and rice, and grains that have been ground for me.  I also occasionally use food coloring and I love dairy products.  But can't they just all be grown and made humanely and ethically, so they actually benefit the people that eat them, not potentially harm them?

Soft and Chewy Granola Bars

Don't you want a bite!

I have tried a few granola bar recipes over the last year or so, and I have never quite been pleased with them.  They are either too dry, too hard or didn't have enough flavor.  So I thought I'd give it a shot and try my own mix of good stuff.  One of our kids has nut allergies, so I needed to find some good seeds that were not processed with nuts (this is hard to do) and I finally did...there is this raw food section at Fred Meyer and they have pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and all kids of other goodies that are allergy friendly.

First I put all the dry ingredients into one bowl and mixed it all around, in a separate bowl I put all the wet ingredients...make sure to let the butter cool just a bit before you add it to the eggs so it doesn't partially cook them. On a side note, I cracked into an egg while making these the other day and it was bloody!  It was awful, I thought I may vomit and cry all at the same time, but the kids were helping so I just quickly discarded the entire bowl of ingredients and started over.  Note to self, always crack eggs into a separate container!

Give a little stir here just to incorporate all the ingredients so there isn't a big clump of anything.

This picture is just to show what steel cut oats look like, I was a little surprised when I opened the container for the first time.  They are mild flavored like rolled oats, but they have a much chewier texture, I think they are a great addition to a granola bar.

When you add the wet ingredients the mixture should be pretty wet, almost like a no bake cookie batter.

Use a spatula or your hand to spread the mixture onto a parchment lined cookie sheet...this mixture will cover about 3/4 of a jell roll pan, or if you like a thicker bar, use an 11x13 baking dish.

These are nice and chewy, but dense enough to fill you up.  I have tried a few different variations, and this is my favorite.  I also make a protein bar for my hubby and I'll add those extra ingredient on to the end of the recipe if anyone is interested.  Of course try to use as much organic ingredients as you can find I don't want to write organic on every ingredient list if you read the intro to the blog you get it...happy baking!

Dry mix

3/4c steel cut oats

2c rolled oats

2/3c ground flax meal

2/3c whole grain flour of your choice

1/3c pumpkin seeds

1/3c sunflower seeds

1/4c flax seeds

1/4c chia seeds

1/4c dried fruit (cranberries or raisins)

2/3c unsweetened shredded coconut

1/2t ground ginger

1/4t ground nutmeg

1/2t cinnamon

1/4c sucanat (see pic at bottom of page)

2t salt

*for protein bar add 3 scoops of whey protein powder of your choice

Wet mix

3 eggs

1/3c light agave nectar

1/4c light flavored oil (I use evoo)

1/2c raw honey

2T melted butter

1/3c sunbutter (or any nut butter you like)

*for protein bar add an extra egg or extra nut butter

Bake at 325* for 25mins in a jelly roll pan, if you use a baking dish they will bake for 30-35mins.

 

Here's the sucanat pic, it has a nice light sweetness.

This is my favorite sunbutter because it is made in a designated nut free facility.

Crab Cakes For One

This afternoon (by the time I worte this up this was about 2 weeks ago) we decided to take a trip down to the local seafood shop (Olympia Seafood Company).  We picked up some fresh steelhead, king salmon, black cod and some house made crab cakes.  So, I did not make these crab cakes, or eat them but I hear they were delish!  My favorite part was the side dishes for this dinner...something I should probably mention is that I do not eat meat.  I cook it for my family and friends, but I haven't eaten it for almost 16years.  So as long as the meat or fish is local, organic and raised in a natural setting I will cook it...and these crab cakes were made on site with fresh crab so they made it home with us for dinner.

All I had to do to the crab cakes was add a little fresh cracked black pepper and pan fry them in a little extra virgin olive oil.  They each cooked for 3-4mins a side.

So now for the sides...yum!  I cut up some red potatoes and yams all into big chunks and tossed them with evoo, chunky onion seasoning, chunky garlic seasoning, thyme, salt and pepper and sauteed them in a cast iron skillet until they were getting a nice crunch on the outside (probably about 10mins) then I popped them into a 375* preheated oven until they were cooked through (about 15-20 mins).



The next side is one of my families favs!  I just put some asparagus in a pan a drizzled with evoo and topped with this chunky garlic seasoning, and chunky onion seasoning I love, it's made by a company called Wildtree, and it is awesome stuff, check it out! wildtree.com   I sauteed the asparagus for about 7mins. I like it to still have a bite to it, other wise I think it gets all soggy and stringy and that just isn't good.

Here is the final plate, I thought it looked pretty with all the different colors.





"Winter" Veggies

Last week we had a rare day of sunshine in the middle of winter, we were outside in the sun and fresh air all day playing with the kids and doing some sprucing up around the yard.  When the weather is like that it makes us want to fire up the grill and pretend it's summer time...so that is exactly what we did!  I had some delicious local organic carrots and onions that I needed to use up, and some broccoli stems that I had saved from dinner a few nights before when I had just used the florets, and some asparagus that was definitely not in season, but the kids were begging for it at the store.

I cut up the broccoli stems (like they were carrot sticks), asparagus spears, carrot sticks, and some big slices of red and yellow onions.  I covered them with grape seed oil, salt, pepper and a ranchers steak rub. 

We put the onions on skewers and threw them directly onto the grill and the other veggies we cooked in a veggie basket you can place right onto the grill.  Grilled them for about 20mins, and we all devoured them!

I hope this picture inspires you to take advantage of a nice sunny day and enjoy some fresh grilled veggies with your dinner! Enjoy!

"WINTER" GRILLED VEGGIES

3-4 organic broccoli stems

6-8 organic carrots

2-3 organic onions of your choice

15 organic asparagus spears (if you can find them)

drizzle with oil of your choice

salt and pepper to taste, and a rub seasoning of your choice

grill for 20 mins



Ladybugs



The little Ladybugs

As I start this post, I am realizing I may seem a bit hypocritical from my opening statement.  These are cupackes with food coloring in them.  However, the rest of the ingredients are fairly natural.  I like to use as many foods as I can find from our local organic food store, in this case it was a special occasion, so I used a few ingredients that aren't a part of our every day lives.  One of my favorite things to do is to find a recipe and make it my own, my husband says I am the 3m of cooking.  This recipe came about because our daughter wanted to have a ladybug themed birthday party which of course included ladybug cupcakes!  She has tree nut and peanut allergies so I have learned to make everything from scratch.  Back to the recipe...this was originally a red velvet cupcake recipe full of sugar and oil, so I tweaked it and made it more on the healthy side of things, and oh was it delicious!  I did not take pictures of the batter making process, but here are the steps for the decorating. 

The eyes

After I made all the cupcakes, I let them cool over night so
I could make sure the frosting wouldn't melt
and so I could make sure they were as
fresh as possible.


The cream cheese and butter sat at room temp all
morning to get nice and soft for the
frosting.  I don't like to use food coloring
but to make ladybugs, I kind of needed
to have some red frosting.  I've seen blogs
where people have used Hyacinth flowers
to make red coloring, but I have never been
able to find them here.  So I opted for the Duff
brand coloring paste.  It takes much less to get
the correct color than normal liquid food coloring.

A few days before the party I melted white bakers chocolate in a double boiler (large glass bowl sitting on top of a pot on the stove, with water simmering in the pot) and piped out little circles.  These were on parchment paper on a jelly roll pan, then while still warm I pressed an organic chocolate chip in the middle to make the eyes.  After I did this about 1000 times, I put them in the freezer and left them there until the morning of the party.  I let them get to room temp before I stuck them onto the cupcakes.

The morning of the party I did all the assembling and made the frosting.  The frosting turned out nice and creamy and I put that on as smooth as I could with a frosting knife.  I wanted it to be covered, but nice and thin so with all the decorations it wasn't a huge mound of mess for the kids.

The next steps were pretty simple, I bought a little tube of black sparkly gel for the wings and head of the ladybug, and tried to make this a thin layer also, and make it look like a bug as much as I could.



Step 2

Step 3 I tried to just blend the outline and the dot together so not too thick

Step 4

The final product

I think they turned out pretty cute for my first time making ladybugs, but the best part was all the little kids just loved them!  They had purple tongues from the black gel, so of course they thought that was great too.

So finally for the recipe...I made it for 5 dozen cupcakes so it looks big but it can be halved for a smaller party.  The cupcakes are nice and moist and not too sweet.  Also, I added in the substitutions I made, but classic ingredients can be used instead.





CUPCAKE BATTER

preheat oven to 350*

4c white whole wheat flour

2 1/2t baking soda

2 1/2t salt

3/4c cocoa powder

1c veg oil (or sub 1c organic applesauce, or flax meal)

2c low fat organic vanilla yogurt

1 1/2c organic sugar (you can use all brown rice syrup, or agave nectar)

1c organic brown rice syrup

2 1/2c low fat organic milk (or sub rice milk)

6 organic free range eggs (room temp)

2 1/2t white vinegar

5t vanilla

~sift all dry (flour, salt, baking powder, cocoa) ingredients in one bowl and set aside.

~mix all wet (oil, yogurt, sugar, syrup, eggs, milk, vanilla, vinegar) in another bowl or stand mixer.

~once wet ingredients are well mixed slowly add the dry, just until mixed.

~put into lined or greased cupcake pans, I use a batter scoop (like an ice cream scoop) so they are all equal, a quarter cup measuring cup works great for this also, so the cupcakes are all the same size.

~place into a preheated oven and bake for 18-20mins.

~let cool on a wire rack

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

1 cube of organic butter at room temp

1 brick of organic cream cheese at room temp

1 bag of organic powdered sugar

2T vanilla

1/2c low fat organic milk

~cream together cheese and butter, once it's nice and light, add vanilla and slowly add powdered sugar and milk alternately until  you get a nice creamy texture.  You probably won't use all the milk, but it helps the frosting spread a little easier I think.