Raw strawberry almond balls

I made a mess of the kitchen. I may have broken the food processor. I didn't eat enough and am now suffering weakness, dizzyness and shakiness... But these were worth it.

My plan was to make homemade granola and put it in my breakfast yogurt.

It's 11:45. So that didn't happen.

I haven't made granola in so long I forgot the sugar and I didn't add my secret ingredient (black strap molasses). I have presented my granola in many forms on this blog so I'm only posting a photo.

But what got me completely sidetracked was homemade protein snacks... Like Larabars. Only I make balls. 

The basic mix is 1 part nuts to 2 parts fruit. Typically 1 of the fruit parts is dates. 

I purchased Baroody pressed and pitted dates at the Turkish store in Allentown for this project almost a month ago. It was $2.99 for 500 grams. And vacuum sealed so it was shelf stable. Not that dates ever last long enough in my house to rot.

I took about 1.5 cups raw almonds and ground them in the food processor. I placed those aside and mixed the following fruits in the food processor:

- 1/3 cup dates

- 1/2 cups raisins

- about 1/4 cup golden raisins and dried cherries

- about 1 cup dried strawberries

Now by the time this got mixed, the food processor was unhappy. So instead of putting the nuts back in with the fruit, I kneaded them into the fruit like working with bread dough.

Them I formed into balls. Golf ball size. Refriderate. About 125 calories each.

Armchair traveling via ethnic food

It's no secret that I love food. Part of the reason you haven't seen much activity on this blog recently is because I'm trying to break some bad winter habits, primarily too much eating, too much eating calorie high and nutrient low and practically no exercise except walking the kid to school...

So I've lost about 10 lbs and starting biking, walking, doing yoga, punching the Everlast bag, and lifting weights.

Meanwhile, my daughter went to Girl Scout camp. 

While she was gone, I really wanted Turkish food so we went to Aci Halal in Allentown. 

First course was a spicy vegetable dip that tasted primarily of red pepper. And Turkish pita.

My husband and I both got lamb dishes. Mine turned out to be like a meatloaf.

And can I just tell you how much I love that little bit of lettuce with cilantro and spices? I could eat a pound of it.

But I was really dying for good coffee.

Enter Turkish coffee, "medium." And a bubble gum soda to take home for the child.

Dinner (without tip) was $39. 

But I didn't stop spending. I bought a couple things in the grocery dept.

Pressed dates for baking. Plain halva, which the Mediterranean Deli calls halawa. It's a sugared sesame paste almost like fudge. But lighter.

The pretty jar is "crushing nuts with honey." It's a combination of various nuts with honey so dense that the calorie counts resemble candy. I put a little in my plain yogurt.

My husband picked out the cookies-- light chocolate wafers with marshmallows between layers dipped in chocolate.

Now today I finally stopped at the Mediterranean Deli. I needed my imported cold pressed extra virgin olive oil from Beirut.

Bought half the store.

Fig & nut jam. Dried cherries. Big bag of sesame sticks. Dried strawberries. Dried kiwi. Dried cantaloupe. Medjool dates. (I plan on making homemade fruit & nut bars before school starts.) hummus. Three bags of zaatar bread. One bag of mini pita. One pound kalamata olives. One pound Bulgarian feta. A big hunk of Armenian string cheese. A soft homemade cheese in olive oil and zaatar spice. Cucumber and yogurt dip.

I think that was the whole $85.

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.

Vegan Paleo fruit "cookies"

I'm neither vegan nor paleo when it comes to eating but I appreciate recipes focused on unprocessed foods with minimal animal products.

This recipe is very clean. No added or refined sugar. No gluten.

It's based on a recipe from Against All Grain, posted on Paleo Parents. I have adapted it to what is in my pantry.

Ingredients:
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 4 madjool dates, pitted
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil

- 1/3 cup coconut flour
- about 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 2 tablespoons each: raisins, dried cranberry and dried cantaloupe

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Combine first block of ingredients in food processor and combine until a fine purée like baby food
3. Add next block and pulse until just combined
4. Add dried fruit and nuts and mix just enough to incorporate
5. Place golf-ball sized cookies on cookie sheet (lined with parchment paper) and press into cookie shapes
6. Bake about twenty minutes, carefully flipping after the first 15

Mine got a tad dark, and are still very soft but so delicious. I think I need a touch more coconut flour in my mix.

But that said, I could eat the whole dozen.

Hey Sandy!

For about a week, I've been talking about Tuesday. October 30 is my 13th wedding anniversary and it's the first day in weeks that I don't have school, work, volunteer commitments, internship and/or job interviews.

I was very much looking forward to this day.

Now we're getting a category 1 hurricane.

We have filled buckets, pitchers and other spare containers with water. We cleaned the yard, put the car in the garage and scrubbed the bathrooms and the kitchen with bleach.

We ate the contents of the fridge and freezer. Stocked dried fruit from Forks Mediterranean Deli. Have home canned salsa and corn salsa and tortilla chips. Bananas, apples, nuts and mocha bread. Peanut butter. Juice in boxes and bottles.

Flashlight batteries changed. Candles and matches gathered. Electronics charged.

So, we're ready. And right now we're having hamburgers made from ground beef from the farm made with spinach in them, homemade French fries, and the burgers will be served on zaatar bread with Bulgarian feta and calamata olives and a side of cole slaw.

I also stopped at the liquor store for wine and brandy.

Gluten Free Fruit Bars

I almost broke my food processor this morning, jamming all the pieces together the wrong way and somehow still managing to get the thing to run.

This recipe is based on:
http://nourishedandnurtured.blogspot.com/2011/02/apple-raisin-snack-bars-gaps-legal.html?m=1

Basically, match 1 part nuts to 2 parts dried fruit.

I soaked raw almonds and chopped pecans overnight like the recipe suggested. I used chopped pecans because I bought my food processor when I got married 13 years ago and it's a cheap Black and Decker and I thought this recipe would kill it.

The nuts chopped fine. The fruit made it groan and convulse.

This recipe gets mixed in three parts. First nuts. Then fruit. Then fruit and nuts together.

- about 1/2 cup raw almonds
- about 1/2 cup pecans
- about 1 cup dates
- the remaining one cup for me was a helter skelter mix of raisins, dried cranberries, dried blueberries, dried strawberries and dried kiwi.
- instead of spices, I used about 2 tablespoons poppy seeds

Grind nuts. Transfer to bowl.

Grind fruit, using rubber spatula to pull sticky goop from under blades and the sides.

Add nuts back to goop and blend and mix and rubber spatula until combined.

I greased my hands and a cookie sheet with walnut oil. A plate would have been big enough. Or a brownie pan. And shaped them.

Refrigerate for a couple hours.

Daddy's Oatmeal

My husband made delectable oatmeal this morning. He used:

- old fashioned oats
- vanilla soy milk
- cinnamon
- brown sugar
- finely chopped dried pears
- golden raisins
- finely chopped banana

Back on track?

Yesterday I had one of my meltdowns. Between my health (anemia-related issues still kick myass from time to time), the final weeks of school and working too many hours, I was overextended.

And as my psychologist once told me, being overextended makes me crazy.

So I called out sick.

Between the exhaustion, the multiple open wounds on my hands from a fall I took on Saturday, minor babysitter issues AND spilling stuff all over my last clean pair of khakis, I was done. And I was in bed by 7:30 and slept until 7.

Part of my problem stemmed from not eating proper dinners because I had worked 4 nights in a row and of those four nights, the last three I ate dinner on a fifteen minute break. That gets compounded by shifts that start at 3 or 4, meaning even if I eat a good meal before I leave home, it's not enough.
Last night, I let child pick a restaurant and we went out to dinner to celebrate her report card. She selected a franchise based on her desire for chocolate pudding until I pointed out the dairy issue. She selected a kid and ice cream oriented franchise instead, saying she'd forego the ice cream if we gave her a tofutti cutie at home.

Considering the quality of our meal, I should have talked her out of that too. She ordered processed chicken on sticks that was supposed to come with salad, carrot sticks and celery sticks. It came with lettuce. I'll save my other complaints...

This morning I read the label for the apple fritter bread and as I suspected, it has milk. It has more salt than milk, but it does have milk.

Finally, in an act of desperation, I made my famous homemade granola that the child is munching on right now.

The dry ingredients measures about seven cups, with the dressing consisting of 3.5 tablespoons raw local honey, 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses, and 1/2 cup canola oil.

The dry ingredients were about:
- 3.5 cups oats
- 1/2 cup unsalted raw almonds
-1/4 cup dark cocoa dusted almonds
- 1/2 cup unsalted cashews
- 1 cup dried fruit and peanuts from a commercial trail mix
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons tiny chopped candied ginger
- 1 teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
- 1 box sour peach flavored golden raisins
- 1 cup golden raisins, dried blueberries and dried strawberries

Mix and bake at 300 for 45 minutes in a thin layer on a cookie sheet, turning every 10-15 minutes.

A variation of the Imus Ranch cookbook recipe

Expanding Salad

BEFORE

Since I work at Target café, I have a familiarity with our salads. I adore our California salads, which are made with romaine, blue cheese, walnuts, dried cherries, and poppyseed dressing. I think a vegetarian version of this salad would be awesome since the walnuts provide plenty of protein.

The directions for making salad instruct us to use "the black scoop" for cherries, walnuts and cheese, but we don't have a black scoop. When I asked what the measurement of the black scoop was, I was told to use my judgment.

One of my colleagues stuffs the salads so full that you can't eat them without emptying half the salad into another container.

Occasionally, I buy one of her salads and augment it with a bag of fresh spinach to make a meal for the four of us.

 The last time I did this, I spent $3.63 for the salad ($3.99 minus 10% team member discount and 5% red card discount) plus I spent $1.50 (pre discount) for the spinach, since it was on clearance. That's $5 for dinner.

AFTER

Cool.

Broccoli slaw

I bought broccoli slaw at wegmans to use as filling for egg rolls and forgot the egg roll wrappers. I decided to prepare a cold broccoli slaw salad using this dressing from Cooks.com:

1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. Miracle Whip
1/4 c. oil
1/4 c. vinegar

But we all know I won't stick to the recipe so let's see what I throw in my pot.

- left the sugar at 1/2 cup because my family doesn't like vinegar, so the sugar will balance that.
- not quite 1/2 cup Miracle whip (the Aldi kind)
- oil: split 50/50 between olive and canola, with a tablespoon of walnut
- vinegar: 50/50 apple cider vinegar and champagne vinegars

Now, the recipe says to heat until combined and add nuts, golden raisins, carrots etc. as desired.

I have 12 ounces of broccoli slaw, which is strips of broccoli [stem], carrots and red cabbage. I'm going to use some really good peanuts I have and chopped some of my dried pineapple. I don't know if I'll add anything else. Probably sunflower seeds.

Chill 1 hour before serving.

Okay, so I ended up adding three grated organic carrots and I probably could have added more. I added about 1.5 cups unsalted kettle cooked peanuts, about 1 cup sunflower seeds (unsalted), about 1/4 cup raisins, 2 dried pineapple rings chopped into tiny squares.

This could easily be vegan if you use a soy mayonnaise instead of Miracle whip style product.

I ate THREE servings. Got my veggies for the day.

Salad again...

Since it's amazingly hot today, I opted for quick salads for dinner, especially since my daughter didn't finish her lunch and had snacks at the neighbors and said she didn't want dinner. But she needed some fruit and/or vegetables.

So salad. With crumbled tomato and basil feta, raisins and organic ranch dressing. And a side of dried fruit (raisins, dates, papaya, strawberries, pineapple), cashews and peanuts.

But tell me... How do they manage to suck all the nutritional value out of dried fruit? That urks me. Especially since it's yummy.