Mom's Cream of Wheat

- slightly more than 1/3 cup cream of wheat

- 1 cup unsweetened almond milk

- 3/4 cup vanilla coconut milk

- 1 tablespoon local raw honey

- about 1 cup strawberries

- about 1 cup homemade applesauce (local apples)

Boil the coconut and almond milk with the honey and strawberries. Add cream of wheat. Continue to boil about two minutes while stirring constantly. (The cream of wheat will stick to the strawberries making a kind of fruit nugget. I like these.)

Let simmer on low while casually stirring until desired consistency. Stir in applesauce before serving.

Peanut butter, honey and cashew

Today I made a rather funky sandwich that I anticipate will taste great with th Pacific Foods soup (carrot cashew ginger bisque) that I'm making for lunch.

I started out with graham crackers as the bread and smeared them with peanut butter. I topped the peanut butter with ground roasted, unsalted cashews and drizzled with local raw honey before putting a graham cracker lid on.

Apple Butter 2013

I slept until 9 this morning, but that didn't stop me from having apple butter assembled in the crock pot by 10.

The family starting peeling and chopping and we had the crock pot full of apple chunks.

My daughter scooped about a tablespoon of local raw honey into the pot with some cinnamon and ground cloves. I poured in some lemon juice. We set it on high, put the lid on, and stirred it every hour.

At 1 p.m. we had applesauce and I scooped it out to have with lunch.

The whole house smells like apples and the flavor was delightful but a tad tart. We used Jonagolds from a local farm.

By 4 p.m., the applesauce had turned a lovely caramel color and I removed the crockpot lid so more liquid can evaporate. As soon as the liquid boils off, I can process in a hot water bath.

After about seven hours, the last hour with the lid off, I loaded the dishwasher with my Ball jars and got the hot water bath ready.

It's been about eight hours now and the dishwasher is approaching the rinse cycle and the apple butter looks like this:

My daughter is getting so adept at filling jars, I couldn't keep up! She also ate the last jar-- you know the one that wasn't quite full enough to process?

Awesome peanut butter toast and parfaits

It's been a rough couple weeks. First I drowned my iPhone in a lovely solution of bleach and water. Then we ran into a rough patch financially. Then we received some medical bills and some bad news from the bank about our refinancing. 

In the middle of this, I picked up extra shifts at Target. Child went to resident camp for a week. 

Now the appraiser is coming to the house. I have a second interview with a local entity I really really like. I had a good report from the dentist (and when your teeth are broken like mine, that is always a relief). Husband is scheduled to work overtime next week.

But the stress has left me with bad eating habits and riddled with perpetual exhaustion.

I started the bad habits again this morning. Woke up and had a cup and a half of coffee and a glass of water.

Began cleaning like a fiend. At 9:30, I was exhausted because I hadn't eaten anything. 

We haven't gone grocery shopping in weeks so the "pickins" are slim. I found some store bought wheat sandwich bread, which I toasted, and mixed up commercial peanut butter 50/50 with local raw honey. I let the bread cool (I hate warm peanut butter) and sprinkled liberally with my homemade peanut butter.

To go with it, I made parfaits of frozen berries, thawed, YoPlait "protein" yogurt, a touch of homemade granola and honey roasted almonds from Trader Joe's. 

Washed it down with decaf chai.

Breakfast after bloodwork

As some may know, I have a past history of stress-induced severe anemia. This is what ended my almost decade of a vegetarian lifestyle. This also ended my relationship with my former doctor, and led my to a new team of medical professionals who make me feel like they care whether I live or die.

That's a good thing in a doctor. 

So, today I pledged I would take care of my annual bloodwork. Fasting. And of course, my child, the early riser, sleeps until 9. 

But I manage not to eat and we walk to the lab about a half-mile from the house. It's about 9:30 and I'm sweaty already. 

We get home at 10:10 (walking home I'm mentally calculating the distance to the nearest diner). I am completely inept at making coffee. No matter what I do, my coffee turns out double strength. This made me very popular in the Lehigh Valley News Group newsroom. Reporters like caffeine.

To make a decent cup of coffee, I have to use my little espresso machine. Which I did. I took advantage of the fact that I had the espresso brewer out to warm and steam some almond milk to give my daughter a hot cup of chai with local raw honey. I drank what didn't fit in her cup and it was good!

Breakfast was scrambled egg wraps, with a pinch of garlic pepper and a drizzle of Annie's Organic Cowgirl Ranch and a few sprinkles of parmesan cheese.

Summer Fruit Molasses Bites

I really need to learn to follow a recipe.

I wanted to make strawberry rhubarb muffins. I researched a few recipes online and had to work with a few substitutions since we don't have eggs or milk in the house.

I made something delicious and very dessert-like, and hearty, but because I decided to throw in some coconut flour... Well, I was concerned my dough would be too dry and as a consequence I made it too wet. Oops.

I put about one cup strawberries and two cups chopped rhubarb (and sprinkled some white sugar onto it) into the food processor and made it into something the consistency of jam, or maybe chutney. I set that aside.

Preheated the oven to 350 and smeared 30 muffin cups with a generous layer of room temperature coconut oil.

In a BIG bowl, I mixed the following dry ingredients:
- One cup unbleached white flour
- 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
- about 1/2 cup coconut flour
- about 1/2 cup sourghum gluten free flour
- about 1/4 cup flax meal
- 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons cinnamon

In my kitchen aid mixer:
- 1/4 cup local raw honey* (Omit for true vegan cooking)
- 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses
- 1/2 cup agave nectar
- 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1/4 cup warm coconut oil

In a mixing cup, combine:
- one cup coconut milk
- 1.5 teaspoons strawberry basil balsamic vinegar
Stir and add to mixer when it appears "curdled"
(this is my substitute for buttermilk)

Combine dry to wet ingredients, add fruit.
Poor into muffin tins. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon.

I think I baked these for an hour.

They have a crisp outer coating and are gooey in the middle like a brownie.

Crockpot Teriyaki Chicken

We're throwing a whole chicken in the crockpot, though we didn't take the guts out before we froze it. So, now, despite taking it out and putting it in the fridge yesterday, it was a wrestling match of man vs chicken to get the organs.

The sauce I'm starting with is the juice from one large can of pineapple chunks, some brown sugar and some low sodium soy sauce. I will throw the pineapple in and set the crock pot on low for about eight hours.

I also added some local raw honey.

Apple nut butter crêpes

Crêpes:
- 1 large tablespoon local raw honey
- 1 cup vanilla almond milk
- 3 tablespoons coconut flour
- 2 tablespoons ground flax
- 1/4 cup sourgum flour
- 2 eggs

Cooked in a cast iron skillet in coconut oil.

Filling:
- chopped gala apples, skin still on
- tablespoon of quince jam
- teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
- teaspoon local raw honey
- dollop coconut oil for the bottom of the saucepan

Cook until soft but still crisp.

Spread some nut butter on each crêpe before filling with apples.

My nut butter was homemade almond-cashew butter.

The nut butter quest

I have been on a quest to make the perfect homemade nut butter. This will take a while, but the results-- every batch-- has been delightful.

Once I master texture, I'm going to turn my attention to nut blends. But not yet...

Today I have reached true nut butter consistency. Not gritty but butter. But smooth!

I still think the secret -- as those who came before me say -- is patience with the food processor. Grind, scrape, grind scrape. Forever and a day.

So this is what I did for my latest:

I poured some water into approximately one cup of mixed raw nuts. That was what was left in the jar. I let them soak two hours and drained.

I tossed them in the food processor with one tablespoon room temperature coconut oil and one teaspoon local raw honey.

And I hit the magic button. Round and round she spins. When you stop seeing nuts flying around, you scrape. Repeat. Scrape. Repeat. At first the texture will be chopped nuts, then it will be chopped nuts that somehow stick together. Keep scraping and processing and eventually when the spinning starts, a ball forms and the ball gets bigger! Scrape, process, scrape, process.

And when your patience is completely spent, you give up and eat what you created.

Mixed nut butter

As anyone you read last night's entry will know, I found some mixed raw nuts on clearance at Target last night. I prefer to buy my nuts raw and unsalted so this seemed like a good deal.

The mix includes hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pistachios and almonds so I thought I could make a mixed nut butter.

I started with one cup nuts. Didn't roast them or soak them or anything. Just dumped them in the food processor. Added a generous dollop of local raw honey, about 2-3 tablespoons full, and about 1/4 cup warm coconut oil.

After the initial 5-7 minutes of grinding and scraping, I feared I wouldn't hit the creamy texture my family has been requesting. So I thought it would be a good idea to add about three tablespoons water.

Then I had nut soup.

I added another 1/4 cup and ground another 5-7 minutes until my patience ran out.

So it's chunky nut butter. Tastes fine, but not as perfectly scrumptious as the almond cashew butter last time. But I intentionally wanted something simpler and with less ingredients.

We'll see how it tastes when the family gets home.

Homemade deluxe nut butter

So, child and I embarked on our first nut butter adventure in a hand-me-down food processor with a cute French name.

I had roasted my raw almonds after a hearty soak. The cashews came roasted but unsalted.

This yielded almost a quart of nut butter. I was surprised at how much it made!

Child and I ground everything in stages, constantly scraping down the sides of the food processor with a rubber spatula when the blade began to struggle.

- one cup cashews
- one cup almonds
- 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla
- 2 tablespoons local raw honey
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- about four tablespoons water (toward the end)

Scrumptious. Perhaps to heavy on the honey. Texture reminiscent of Cream of Wheat.

Apple Butter, part one

I have wanted to make my own apple butter for a long time. My daughter loves the stuff. I occasionally like it. My husband is not real fond of it. So if I buy it, it often goes moldy.

We have awesome apple orchards locally so the idea of canning our own apple butter makes sense.

We can preserve the butter in smaller jars that won't spoil before we use it.

I found a recipe online using the crock pot, from Simply Canning, a canner I also follow on Facebook: http://www.simplycanning.com/canning-apple-butter.html

My Better Homes and Gardens canning book also has a standard on the stove recipe, but that one requires lots of liquid. The crock pot version has no liquid.

We overfilled the crock pot with chunks of fresh apples. 6 pounds seems to be the estimate provided on the recipes. I added a few splashes of local apple cider, a few splashes lemon juice, some local raw honey (about 1/4 cup) and spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and just a pinch of ginger.

The Simply Canning web site says to cook on high one hour, stirring, and leave on low overnight. By morning you should be able to whisk instead of stir.

We've almost done loading the crock pot.