Nut fruit balls, version 2

These vegan snacks rely on a mix of dates & nuts. I made these to use up what was in my pantry.

Blend in food processor, then knead and shape into golf ball sized pieces.

- 1/2 cup raw almonds

- 1/2 cup unsalted sunflower seeds

- 3/4 cup pressed pitted dates

- 1/4 cup dried cherries

This yielded 8 balls for me, about 125 calories each.

Easy breakfast

I worked 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. after having 4 days off... I'm trying to eat cleaner after falling into bad habits (using all of my calories left for the day to eat food that doesn't exactly have nutritional vale-- like a beer or a chocolate or salty snacks).

I wanted to eat something before I got locked away in my little room... (Cash office at Target). 

So I toasted half an English muffin, spread less than a tablespoon of cream cheese on it, sprinkled on a little Bulgarian feta and topped it with a sliced medjool date.

A little bit of everything thing

Last night I walked to the neighborhood "corner store," a place full of candy and oddities.

I got a soursop smoothie that child and I split as part of our massive but healthy breakfast before she heads out to the amusement park with her grandparents.

This coupled with big glasses of water and the following constituted our "this might be all the fruits and veggies you get for the day" breakfast:

- medjool dates 

- half a banana, sliced in banana split fashion to serve as bread for peanut butter and imported Turkish "crushing nuts" with honey (crushed nuts = pistachio, hazelnut, apricot kernel and peanuts)

- salad tacos, both with one six inch flour tortilla and about 1/2 cup of iceberg garden salad mix and 1/2 cup green and crisp salad mix and about 3/4 ounce Bulgarian feta. Hers had Annie's Goddess dressing. Mine had hummus.

Bacon wrapped dates

This morning I mixed cream cheese, cinnamon and raisins in my big Kitchen Aid mixer. 

I cut a bunch of fresh medjool dates in half, pitted them and smeared the cream cheese inside and put the lids back on.

Then we had the rest of the cream cheese with toasted baguette.

I wrapped the dates in raw bacon...

Baked at 450 for 15-20 minutes until the bacon cooks. 

Mini fruit and almond balls

In my house, this recipe may be colloquially known as "baby balls."

It's based on a recipe I found on a gluten-free paleo blog, which I mentioned in my first adaptation of this recipe: http://bit.ly/XCh5On

MINI FRUIT AND ALMOND SNACK BALLS

Ingredients:
- 1 cup (and a few more) raw almonds, soaked in water a few hours and then well drained
- 8 fresh medjool dates, pitted
- 1/4 cup dried blueberries
- 5 dried pineapple rings

Grind the nuts in a food processor.

Place them to the side.

Grind fruit.

Add nuts.

Process until combined.

Shape as desired.

Refrigerate until cold. Store in fridge.

Pumpkin breakfast bars

Adapted from:

http://www.thedailycrumb.com/2011/11/01/chewy-pumpkin-breakfast-bars/

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix wet ingredients:
- 1 cup pumpkin
- 1/2 cup peanut-almond-cashew butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup natural unsweetened applesauce
- 3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses

In separate bowl mix dry ingredients:
- 1 cup rolled oats
- 1/2 cup unbleached white flour
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- cinnamon
- nutmeg
- ground cloves
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2/3 cup brown sugar

Add dry to wet ingredients, slowly.

Add:
- 1/8 cup organic apricot preserves
- 3/4 cup golden raisins
- 4 medjool dates, chopped

Bake 30-40 minutes

Raisin-stuffing dates

It's 9 p.m. and after a rather odd day, we need a snack. So I opted to try another variation of the stuffed dates that have proven popular in my universe.

This is the original recipe I invented in February:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/02/fancy-dinner-breaded-herb-pork.html
(I served it as an appetizer with the pork)

This is yesterday's version:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/08/tammys-lunch-warmed-stuffed-dates.html

This fruity version was trying to make up for the fact that we were on our final dates...

RAISIN STUFFING DATES
(makes six little appetizers)

Ingredients
- 3 dates, pitted, and sliced in half
- About 1 tablespoon walnut oil
- About 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 dash nutmeg
- About 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- About 1 tablespoon raisins
- 6 slices morningstar vegetarian bacon
- About 2 tablespoons plus one teaspoon cream cheese or neufchâtel

In a warm skillet (on low) spread the walnut oil and sprinkle with the cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar. Add the raisins and the dates. Let cook for about three minutes and flip the dates.

Meanwhile put the cream cheese in a bowl.

Stir the raisins around. Remove from skillet as soon as they are shiny and puffy. Add to cream cheese and try to stir into as close to a whipped filling as you can get.

Once the second side of the dates have been cooked for about three minutes, remove to a dish. Throw the bacon into the skillet. Do not wipe the skillet clean first. After a minute flip the bacon. Cook another minute. Remove to plate.

With a butter knife, smear some raisin-cheese filling onto each date half. Then wrap with the bacon and return to the skillet, "seam" of the bacon down. When all six are in the pan, increase temperature to medium and cook for about two minutes.

Remove from pan.

*These do not get as crisp as the ones from the oven. You could probably roll them and cook each side if you wanted that crispness without turning the oven on.

Tammy's lunch: Warmed Stuffed Dates

The salad for Tammy's lunch was simple: spring mix my mother-in-law brought with the Very Veggie Dole prepackaged salad, added some cucumber from the store, a diced green pepper from my garden, and lots of raisins and sunflower seeds.

Dessert was fresh pineapple and strawberries.

The entree was leftover sicilian.

The beverage was the house specialty of green tea and rose tea.

But the warm appetizer stole the attention.
I modified my stuffed date recipe.

I sliced the dates in half and coated my skillet with walnut oil. I warmed the skillet on low, added a dash of cinnamon across the bottom of the pan, and added the dates. I increased heat to almost medium and let the dates cook for about four minutes. Then I flipped them. Waited four minutes or so and removed them from the skillet.

I turned the heat off from under the skillet, added a slice of morningstar vegetarian bacon for each whole date, waited a minute, and flipped the bacon. Since the heat was off and the skillet was slowly cooling, I left the bacon in there and swiped some cream cheese into each of my date halves. Then I closed the dates and returned them to their original shape.

Once all the dates were stuffed, I wrapped each date in fake bacon and returned them to the skillet where I baked them in a preheated oven (400 degrees) for about ten minutes.

Monday morning update

It's amazing how fun meal planning is when you have food in the house.

My family had yogurt and homemade granola at 7 a.m.

I had my breakfast at 10:30 and made a second breakfast for daughter Bug. We eat had half a peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich on Target's Archer Farms Honey Wheat bread. And the last of the dates, 2 each. Apple juice for her. A second cup of coffee for me. (We both had a full water bottle during our bike trek.)

Carbohydrates. Not including the jam for the PB&J, two of the items in this morning's meals have lots of carbs. Bread, that's obvious. And yogurt, may not seem so obvious. When I had gestational diabetes, I was allotted 3 servings of carbs with my lunch, not including one fruit, and 4 with my dinner.

That's why to this day I make half-sandwiches instead of whole. Because each slice of bread counts as 1 serving, and 13 doritoes/potato chips etc is also 1 serving. If I wanted the chips, I usually skimped on the bread. And I learned that a half-sandwich is just as filling, and depending what's on it can end up tasting really thick, as if you put double meat or cheese on it. I still don't miss that extra slice.

Compare this to yogurt. Because yogurt is made with milk and lactose is a sugar, and then our American palate likes it sweet so we add MORE sugar... A low-fat yogurt that has that thick creamy pudding-like taste had 2-3 servings of carbohydrates. That's an entire lunch worth. For a diabetic pregnant woman (who, by the way, gets more food than your everyday diabetic). And fat free yogurt sweetened with asparatame STILL has 1 full serving of carbs. With that choice, I'd rather opt for a low-fat oatmeal cookie. Probably leave me more emotionally satisfied.

So that's my rant.

For lunch we will probably have leftover spaghetti and sausage my husband made over the weekend with grated romano from Calandra's cheese in Nazareth.

Oatmeal Cookies

The original recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar (I only used 3/4 cup and I didn't pack, I added about 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses)
  
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1/2 cup wheat with 3/4 cup white)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups quick cooking oats
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (I used pecans)
• I added: 1 cup dried strawberries in bitesize pieces, 3/4 cup chopped dates and probably 3/4 cup raisins.
  

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon; stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in oats and nuts until just blended. Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Cookies should be at least 2 inches apart.
3. Bake for about 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool cookies on a wire rack.

The original web site:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Excellent-Oatmeal-Cookies/Detail.aspx

Oh! They turned out AWESOME. Now to make them bigger and with a tad more weight to serve as a breakfast bar.

Tea Party

We had raisin bran and soy milk for breakfast and a 9:30 a.m. tea party with Celestial Seasonings sugar plum spice tea, homemade multigrain biscuits with Wegmans raspberry jelly, fresh dates, and dark chocolate (powder) coated almonds.

Life is good.

New and improved oatmeal bars...

Hi, my name is Angel and I can't follow a recipe to save my life.

This is the original oatmeal bar post:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/09/oatmeal-bars.html

This is what I combined and pressed into an 11 x 7 pyrex dish:

• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 2 cups old-fashioned oats
  
• 1/4 cup chopped dates
• a handful homemade granola (leftover)
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup dried strawberries, chopped
• 1/3 cup brown sugar

And then after I pressed it into the pan I trickled a stream of blackstrap molasses across the top.

Okay, so last time I thought I didn't use enough butter. So I stuck to the recipe in that regard this time and used all the butter. Now they turned out too buttery and still won't stick together, except for the corners that looked brown and overcooked. They stuck. Does that mean I have to leave it in the oven longer? Hmmm....

Now, they taste delicious but like butter candy or some sort of oatmeal fudge... Let me tell you, the strawberries are the best. Next time, I'm going to make oatmeal cookies loaded with extra oatmeal and lots of fruit. Because if I want them to stick together, let's use good old-fashioned flour and egg.

Fancy dinner: Breaded Herb Pork

I have a small loaf of my homemade multigrain baquette in the oven thawing from the freezer... My daughter is arranging a platter of fresh veggies... I have French butter on the table and a nice place setting...

I have four thin boneless pork chops, that I breaded in a mix of breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, seasonings from the spinach rigatoni from Aldi, four color peppercorn. I warmed some extra virgin olive oil in the skillet, with two shredded leaves of fresh sage and about two teaspoons of oregano. I cooked the prokchops over medium, for four minutes on each side. Then I put them in the oven with the bread to keep them warm.

Meanwhile, I have my daughter making some pepper ranch dip (for the veggies) Two teaspoons sour cream with an equal amount of ranch dressing, and some fresh ground four-pepper.

Now for the appetizer... I'm going to cook some veggie bacon and some dates in a bit of olive oil, then wrap them and put them in the oven. Debating whether or not to put some cream cheese in the dates first...

Okay... what I wrote before this point was written while cooking, so let's try to organize our thoughts better and present everything in a more manageable fashion.

First course: 'Bacon'-Wrapped Dates
Inspired by Gayle
Ingredients:

• Six dates, in this case sliced in half. I used pitted dates from Aldi's that weren't exactly fresh, but they weren't exactly dried either
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 6 slices Morningstar Vegetarian bacon
• About 3 teaspoons Neufchâtel or Cream cheese

Heat oil and dates in skillet. Add bacon and cook until thawed but not crispy. Flip dates and heat primarily to soften. Remove bacon and dates from hot skillet. Spread cheese on half the dates and top with other half. Wrap in bacon. Broil on high in oven until the bacon browns.

These turned out fantastic. (On the bottom shelf in the oven.)

Second course: Crudités with tangy ranch dip
Using up leftover vegetables my mother-in-law brought Wednesday
In this case some broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, red pepper and green pepper
Ingredients for dip (combine and serve):

• About two teaspoons sour cream
• About two teaspoons ranch dressing
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground four color peppercorns
• about 3/4 teaspoon It's a Dilly

Main course: Herb-Parmesan Breaded Pork with corn and greenbeans
Ingredients for the pork (photo on top):

• Four thin boneless pork chops
• About 1 cup breadcrumbs
• About 1 cup parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper from four-color peppercorns
  
• About 1/8 cup seasoning from the spinach rigatoni I buy at Aldi (it's cheese and Italian seasoning mostly)
  
• One tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• One tablespoon butter
• 2 leaves fresh sage, shredded
• About three teaspoons fresh oregano

Combine the breadcrumbs, cheese, pepper and seasoning in a bowl and bread pork chops with it. Under medium heat, heat the oil and the sage and oregano. Add porkchops. Cook about 4 minutes, flip, add butter, and cook four more minutes.

For the vegetables:
I cooked the pork first and kept in hot in the oven. Then I wiped the pan and prepared the appetizers. Without cleaning the pan again, I dropped half a can of corn in (leftover from last night's casserole) and the rest of a bag of frozen French cut greenbeans. Cooked in the pan until warm.

For the bread:
I think this was the batch... http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/01/multigrain-dill-bread.html

For dessert:
Blueberry bread pudding (from the freezer) with a dollop of vanilla bean ice cream.
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/01/blueberry-crumb-bread-pudding.html

Another yogurt mix-ins platter

I am so disappointed that I got yogurt products with artificial sweeteners. I think they taste nasty and I don't approve of putting those chemicals into my daughter's body. I try not to make foods that have preservatives, so why I earth would I approve of artificial sweetener?

My daughter is calling this trail yogurt, because I compared it to trail mix. Since we had eggs and sausage an hour ago, I had to find a hearty snack that would tide my daughter through kindergarten.

So, I made a yogurt platter. Which she mixed everything into her vanilla yogurt:

• blueberries, from the freezer, and the juice
• rainbow sprinkles
• raisins
• chopped dates
• graham cracker
• one oreo cookie

Date breakfast

What my daughter has on her plate right now appeals to me as the perfect breakfast. Three sliced dates, some animal crackers, and a hearty handful of cashews with almond milk to drink.

I made the traditional breakfast offers:
"We have pumpkin waffles in the freezer. Bananas. Dates. Those would go well with animal crackers. We have eggs. Do any of those sound good?"

"Dates," she replied. "And animal crackers."

"Okay, but you need some protein. How about cashews or the chocolate dusted almonds?"

"Cashews."

"Would you like almonds too?"

"Just cashews."

"Pick a drink from the fridge: apple juice, grape juice, almond milk or water."

"Almond milk."

Now, I'm off to make myself a platter.

Broccoli omelettes

For dinner last night, I was starved. I called my husband from the office and said, "Make Food!"

He took the remaining everything bagels from the freezer, buttered them and layered them with frozen vegetables in cheese sauce and real cheddar cheese and baked them and topped them with bits of Morningstar vegetarian chicken nuggets. It was awesome! (And for dessert we had more pineapple tatin.)

For lunch today, I made a huge omelette of broccoli cheese and some cheddar, sprinkled with romano cheese. I served with sliced dates, tea and my 'flea shampoo potatoes' (sliced potatoes from a can cooked in oil, soy sauce and parsley).