Raw Tapioca Pudding

This is one of my families favorite these days. Best of all it's so good for you. It might not look as white as normal tapioca, but it tastes just like it!

Raw Tapioca Pudding2 cups of Almond Milk (or whatever type of milk you drink)

5-6 Tablespoons of Chia Seeds

Sweeten to taste with Agave

Splash of Vanilla Extract (optional)

Whisk together ingredients for a couple of minutes and then let set in the refrigerator for one to 2 hours. You can wait longer if it is still watery. You may want to check it and stir it some more if the seeds have flooded to the top. We have also enjoyed it with added fruit to it.

Back again...

Well I am back again with another recipe. It have been coming up with quite a few new recipes to share and hopefully will get motivated to update this and my family's blog.
First I would like to tell you what my goal is in making the food I do. I have been really trying to make healthy meals that I feel my family will only benefit from eating. So often we feel guilty for eating too much of something, but I have been trying to make food that is not going to make me guilty, just satisfied. I also have been trying to get rid of everything that is processed to cut out unnecessary salts and sugars. I have truly enjoyed it and now think it would be really fun to write a cookbook, but since I can't even keep up with this blog, that will have to wait.
Here is a old family recipe adjusted to be healthier. Sorry I don't have a picture, but we just eat them too fast!

Oatmeal Pancake
2 cups Almond Milk
1 1/2 cups quick oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoon honey or agave
2 Tablespoon grounded flaxseed mixed with 5 tablespoons of water
1/2 cup applesauce
1. Pour milk over oats and let sit for an hour or over night.
2. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt
3. Stir flax and water mixture and honey into oats
4. Add sifted dry ingredients to oats.
5. Stir in applesauce
6. Cook on hot skillet with a little oil, turning once. (These can be thick, so if you help spread them onto the skillet with a spoon that helps.)
7. Serve with applesauce or mashed fresh fruit.

These are a little gooey inside, because there is no egg, but we love them that way!!***I like to double this and make waffles with the extra and freeze them. Later I simple toast them and we have our own, much better tasting "Eggo". My daughter loves to help "make" these and will sit by the toaster ready to tell me its "popped".

Finally something new

So I'm sorry I stopped posting. As many know, I'm pregnant and I pretty much stopped when I started feeling crappy. HA! Well I can't promise that I'll be better know, but I figured I would add a couple of recipes that our family has fallen in love with in the last 7 MONTHS! AH!
The first 2 recipes have been on my friend's blog Simplyhealthful.blogspot.com. It's a great blog for healthy living and so these recipes are healthier. I'm just going to copy them from her blog.

Mini loaves for the adults and mini muffins without chocolate chips for the children.

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
¾ cup Oatmeal Flour
¼ cup milled Flax
1 Tablespoon Wheat Germ
1 teaspoon Baking Soda (aluminum free)
½ teaspoon Real Salt
½ cup Egg Beaters*
2 cups Mashed Bananas
½ cup Honey
¼ cup Applesauce
1 Tablespoon fresh Lemon Juice
½ teaspoon Vanilla
1 cup Chocolate Chips or Carob Chips(optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl. Combine wet ingredients together in a large bowl. Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients just until blended. Stir in chocolate chips.

Bake mini muffins at 325 degrees for about 10 minutes or until done. For large loaves bake at 325 degrees for 55 minutes or until toothpick/knife test comes out clean.

*Note: I leave out the eggs and just add a little more banana and flax seed. I have yet to notice a difference in the banana bread.
(I didn't come up with this recipe, I got it from someone that adapted it and then adapted it more myself. HA!)

Quinoa

To cook the quinoa, add one part of the grain (make sure to rinse it well before cooking) to two parts liquid in a saucepan. After the mixture is brought to a boil, reduce the heat to simmer and cover. One cup of quinoa cooked in this method usually takes 15 minutes to prepare. We have enjoyed it warm and cold with the following recipe.

Quinoa Salad

We just eyeball the amounts, if you like lots of veggies do more, and if you want more grain do fewer veggies. All veggies are cut up. This is just what we had put in and found we like, so by all means add your favorite vegetables and take out what you don’t like.

Cooked Quinoa
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Avocado
Basil or any other favorite fresh herb you have
Mung bean sprouts or Alfalfa sprouts
Juice of a Lemon (to taste)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (just enough to coat the grain)
Salt to taste

Quinoa Patties

Cooked Quinoa
Milled Flax seed
Egg
Shredded: carrots, zucchini, cucumber
Fresh cilantro and parsley
Salt and other seasonings you like

Make into patties and grill with a small amount of olive oil. We like putting avocado on the top.

(If you are wondering what Quinoa is go to this blog post and read up. It's an amazing grain and we cook with it ALL the time now.)

Taco Pasta Salad
So this one is really not all the creative, but I ended up liking it. (Sorry no picture.) I got the idea from the Eating For Life cookbook and did it my own way. I think it is a great way to make use left over taco meat or just give another option to using taco meat.
Oh and of course I didn't measure anything, so I would say eyeball it and do how much you like of everything. For example I didn't want a ton of meat, so I didn't put much in, but put a lot of veggies and pasta.

1. Make taco meat your favorite way.
2. While cooking meat, cook your pasta. I used a whole wheat penne pasta.
3. Mix the meat and pasta together then add: Black Beans, Tomatoes, Avocado, Corn, cilantro, cheese, or anything else you like with your taco. After mixing it all together, add either Ranch dressing or sour cream to LIGHTLY coat everything.

Next time I think I might try adding lettuce. This time the bowl just got too full. This also seems like it would be a great left overs for lunch the next day!

More canning???

Yes! I got 3 more boxes of peaches from my Dad, so we did more canning on Saturday. I'm excited though. I got 10 more jars of slices and 6 jars of Cinnamon Peach jam. YUMMY!! It's even better then plain peach jam. All I do is add 1-2 Tablespoons of cinnamon to the jam recipe I get from the Sure Jell box. (I add it to the fruit before we start cooking.) I also get the pink box, because it requires less sugar. However a tip for anyone wanting to make jam, I have heard that it is hard to get the splenda version to set, so think twice about making jam with splenda.Sorry, my camera wouldn't focus. Its probably me, but I took like 10 pictures and this was the best!

Gyros

Every time I ask my brother what we should make, he says gyros, even if I am needing a dessert. HA!! I always laughed and promised that I would find a recipe and help him make them sometime. We finally did it a few weeks ago. It turned out not to be too hard and I liked them, except that there was a little problem with the salt. There was a lot of it. I have never had anything more salty. I am not sure if it was the recipe or my brother. He didn't measure the first bit he put in, so I don't know how much was there before I came to help. Other then that the meat was really tender and easy to eat and the tzatziki was great. Using the greek yogurt is worth it, I have made other tzatziki with regular and it just didn't taste the same.
Homemade Greek Gyro
By: Nancy Gaifyllia, about.com

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 pounds of boneless pork loin, shoulder, or fresh ham
• white wine vinegar
• ----------
• GREEK GYRO SEASONING MIXTURE
• 3 tablespoons of sea salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of sweet paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon of pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon of finely crushed (powdered) Greek oregano (rigani)
• ----------
• FOR PITA WRAP SANDWICHES
• 6-8 pieces of thin pita bread (not pocket pita)
• 1/2 cup of tzatziki (see below)
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 2 tomatoes, sliced
• french fries (optional)
• olive oil

Preparation:

In a small bowl combine paprika, salt, pepper, and oregano.

Make the Gyro Meat:

Slice the meat against the grain as thin as possible and pound with a meat mallet to less than 1/4-inch thick. In a flat-bottomed container, arrange one layer of slices, sprinkle liberally with seasoning mixture, then with a little vinegar. Spread the vinegar over the meat so that all pieces are moistened. Add layers, spices, and vinegar until all the meat has been marinated. Cover and refrigerate for 1/2 hour to 2 hours.

Remove meat from the refrigerator and slice into strips about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch wide and 2 to 2 1/2 inches long. Dry fry (without any oil) in a non-stick frying pan until browned and slightly crisp.

Yield: 6-8 large pita wraps, or gyro meat dinner for 6-8

Tzatziki

• 16 ounces (2 cups) of thick Greek yogurt
• 4 to 10 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of diced or grated cucumber (Kirby or "English")
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of lemon juice

Preparation:

Prepare all ingredients in advance. Combine oil and lemon juice in a medium mixing bowl. Fold the yogurt in slowly, making sure it mixes completely with the oil. Add the garlic, according to taste, and the cucumber. Stir until evenly distributed. Garnish with a bit of green and serve well chilled.

Yield: about 2 1/2 cups

Pizza-Adona style

I came up with this great idea for a pizza for my daughter Adona. I used the butternut squash puree that I had in the freezer as the sauce and pita bread as the crust. Then for toppings I put her frozen vegetables and cheese. I put it in the over on broil and a minute later she was scarfing down her very one pizza. It was a great way for her to get in a couple of servings of vegetables and she loved it!Sorry the picture is out of focus, its my only picture.

Cupcakes

A few weeks ago my sister Erin host a bridal shower. I was very excited to help with the food. I saw this recipe on a blog and was DYING to try it. I think it turned out okay. Some of the problems we had was the frosting was separating, because it had jam in it. I don't know if it was the hot weather or just the recipe. It still tasted great, it just didn't look like I wanted it to. Also it made a ton of frosting. My sister didn't pipe much on the cupcakes, but we only used like a 1/4 of it. If we used more, we still would have had 1/2 of it left. The raspberries tasted AWESOME! I would make them just for a treat if they weren't so expensive!

Devil’s Food Cupcakes with Raspberry Jam Buttercream and Raspberry Truffle

Devil’s Food Cake
Raspberry Jam Buttercream
Raspberry Truffles

Deeply Dark Devil’s Food Cake

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
11 TBSP unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/3 cups warm water

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease and flour mini cupcake pans.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Mix to incorporate.
Beat the butter at medium speed until creamy. Gradually add the sugar and beat on high speed for about 3 minutes. Add the cocoa powder and beat for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides with a spatula. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Beat in the vanilla. On low speed, add the flour mixture in three additions alternating with the warm water in two additions. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix at low speed for 30 seconds. Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake cupcakes for 13-15 minutes.
Let cool for 5 minutes in pan and remove cupcakes from pan. Let cool on wire rack. When cool, frost with Raspberry Jam Buttercream.

Cake Source: Adapted from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle

Raspberry Jam Buttercream
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
6-8 cups powdered sugar
½ cup seedless raspberry jam

Place butter and jam in a mixing bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Cream butter and jam until well incorporated, about 2 minutes. Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time until you reach desired consistency. If frosting gets too thick you can add a little milk to thin it out.

Raspberry Truffles

2 pints fresh raspberries, cleaned and dried
5 ounce semisweet chocolate
1/3 cup heavy cream
¼ cup seedless raspberry jam

Place chocolate and raspberry jam in a heat proof bowl.
Bring cream to a boil.
Pour cream over chocolate and jam and let sit for about 3 minutes.
Whisk together chocolate mixture. If it is still a little lumpy, put in microwave for a few seconds and whisk again.
Put ganache into a piping bag fitted or even an plastic bag(with a tiny hole cut out). Pipe chocolate ganache into fresh raspberries.
Let sit in fridge for about 15 minutes. Top frosted cupcakes with raspberry truffle.