Lentil Brownies!!!

INGREDIENTS:
1 3/4 C. cooked red lentils
4 eggs
1/2 C. melted butter or coconut oil
3/4 C. cocoa powder
1/4 tsp. real salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/2 C. evaporated cane sugar
1 tsp. baking powder

Milk to make it vita-mixable

Add all ingredients into a vita mix and add milk until you can puree it.

Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes

Breakfast Powerhouse Pudding!

This pudding is now my new favorite breakfast food! Its a real powerhouse for sure! Loaded with: oats which contribute both soluble and insoluble fibers, cranberries packed with antioxidants, pre-biotic apple, eggs loaded with protein, biotin and healthy thyroid boosting cholesterol, sprinkle in a few mineral rich pumpkin seeds and to top it off I added a kick of digestion/circulation/etc. boosting cinnamon! Yay!



Bring to a boil:
7 Cups of water

Then add:
2 Cups of steel cut oats
2 Cups of whole fresh cranberries
1 apple diced
2 Tablespoons of cinnamon
1/4 Cup turbinado sugar

Beat together:
1/4 tsp salt
8 eggs beaten
1 Cup un-homogenized milk

Then drizzle in bits of the egg mixture and stir in quickly, repeating till its all mixed in. (make sure you stir very quickly so there's no egg chunks)

After the eggs are mixed in add:
2 Tablespoons butter
1/4 Cup pumpkin seeds

And enjoy!

NOTE: This makes a HUGE pot so I can have it in the fridge for a quick breakfast! If you want it for a single serving you might want to make something like 1/4 of a batch!

100% Wild Yeast Sourdough English Muffins!

RECIPE
1 cup lukewarm milk
1 cup %100 hydration sourdough starter
2 tb avocado oil
2 tb honey
1 tsp salt
1 3/4 flour

METHOD
Mix all the ingredients together, let sit for 10 minutes, then mix viciously for 5 minutes to develop the gluten. Let it sit for 2-3 hours on the counter, then put in the fridge overnight. Take it out in the morning allowing several hours to return to room temperature.

FRY
Heat a cast iron skillet to medium low-ish heat. Take small balls of dough, dip in flour and roll into shape. Lay the ball a plate of corn meal and flatten, flip and repeat. Place on the heated skillet, cooking on each side for about 6 minutes. Ta da! Now eat those tasty little muffins all up!

BONUS IDEA!

Make a jumbo English muffin, cut the crust off one side and hollow it out like a little bread bowl. Fill it with some garlic, tomato, lemon thyme and a bit of salt, then crack an egg on top of all that. Lay a few slivers of Havarti over the whole thing and pop in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes to bake in an oven proof bowl.

Drizzle with a little olive oil and chow down on it! ....but wait till its cooled for about 10 minutes....its super hot...if you don't heed my warning, the roof of your mouth will be singed :S But it was SO good! :D

Third Time's s A Charm! ;D

     Ta da! Finally a beautiful sourdough loaf! Each loaf pretty much doubled in size from the first! And #2 and #3 were defiantly the same size of a batch, #1 was probably a smaller amount of dough, which contributes to its minuscule size...but the oven rise on it was pretty pathetic :S

     But this loaf, was a whole other story! Ever since I was about 12 years old I desperately tried to make a bubbly chewy focaccia bread, but sadly never produced a satisfying loaf... 

     Until today! Now this loaf...this is the loaf of my dreams...ah! At long last! :D Look at those beautiful bubbles! The texture: the crust is crisp and flaky, when I give it a squeeze I can hear a soft cracking noise and feel the spongy crumb that lies beneath the surface. Then when I release the pressure, the bread springs back as quick as a cat on a trampoline! And will you just look at that bread rise! When I spied it through the oven window, in gleeful triumph I exclaimed "it looks like its just going to keep puffing up like a balloon and float off into space!" And then I fluttered off with a hop and a skip only to return to peep into the oven once more to check the progress: crouching on the floor, eying the bread like a mother hen awaiting her hatching chicks! I looked up a lot of artisanal sourdough pictures on Google and most all of them have a very flat bottom...not so for this loaf! Mine went from sagging over the edge of my too-small baking stone, to actually lifting up into the air! ...crazy, I never have I seen bread that could do that! 0_0 ....its a bird, its a plane, no...its SUPER BREAD! Duh da da daaaaa!  

I used a 100% hydration sourdough starter and this fantastic recipe by Jacob Burton:

And by the end of the day, this beautiful loaf came out of the oven:

Notes on My Process:

     As I was mixing the dough initially, I noticed it was quite wet, so I added more flour until it was quite stiff and was a very "shaggy mess" indeed, so then I left it to autolyse for 30 minutes. I then began to do the slap and fold method of kneading, it was a sticky mess, so I proceeded to add in more flour (and the salt) until it was just manageable and I wasn't going to end up with webbed mitts! I kept working the dough until it was able to form a nice "window" and then did the "stretch and fold" technique and let it bench rest for 10 minutes. I did a total of three "stretch and folds" followed by a 10 minute bench rest and then put it into a bowl for a couple of hours to bulk ferment while I went shopping. When I came back I did another stretch and fold and then a bunch of tension pulls and put it into a floured cloth lined bowl to rise for about 30 minutes then I looked at it and thought "this dough is definitely 1.5 to 2 times the size, I'm just going to bake it now!" (even though I knew that most instructions always say to let it rise 3-4 hours [and my first loaf I left to rise overnight it was so slow]) So I preheated the oven to 500º F (and forgot to put my soap stone baking stone in right from the start [which resulted in a slightly underdone bottom crust {that was remedied by flipping it upside down, placing it near the top of the oven and putting the broiler on to 450º F and watched it until it was browned]). I turned down the oven to 450º F then placed the dough on the bottom rack with a pan of about 1/2 cup of water underneath it for steam. I baked it for about 45 minutes until it started smelling "toasty" and then I took it out and let it cool on a rack for 1 hr, then sliced into that yummy round of bread for a taste! Yum! 

Just take a look at that crumb! ;D

Ramen Soup!

Healthy yummy food doesn't have to be hard! This took me about 30 minutes to whip up and this soup needs to be repeated often! Simply cut up half a onion and finely dice a small clove of garlic, fry it until the onion is translucent, add a cup of finely diced purple cabbage, a couple of carrots and about 3/4 cup of broccoli, add in 2 cups of broth and add some natural salt and a few generous pinches of ginger powder. Crunch up one cake of organic millet and brown rice ramen and add to the pot, then simmer untill the noodles are cooked!  About 5-10 minutes before you serve it, add in 1 cup of chopped fresh spinich to let it wilt. Serve it up and yum! It's such a soothing warm soup, it makes a good comfort food :)

Gluten-Free/Refined-Sugar-Free CHOCOLATE PANCAKE PERFECTION!

    

Now, its not often I say that a pancake is perfect...but I honestly couldn't think of anything that could improve this pancake! (and its a very rare occasion indeed for me to not have written a note to myself on the margins of the recipe: observing little details that could be improved upon the next time around!) What is this wondrous morsel melting in my mouth and electrifying my taste buds?!! Let me tell you of the ways this pancake will delight your senses: its rich and chocolaty, holds together well enough to flip even the largest luxurious pancake (no dry crumbly gluten-free pancakes for this girl!), moist and tender inside with a delightful crisp exterior! Ahhhh! Even people who regularly eat refined-gluten-filled "normal" food would love this one! (in fact, I've just spotted such a person eagerly scarfing a few!)

Now lets get cooking shall we? (^ U ^)

THE RECIPE:  

Dry Ingredients:

2/3 Cup - Whole Grain Buckwheat Flour 

1/3 Cup - Arrowroot Flour

1/2 Cup - Dutch Dark Cocoa (or more arrowroot flour if you don't want chocolate pancakes)

1 Tsp - Baking Powder (aluminum-free)

1/4 Tsp - Baking Soda (aluminum-free)

1/2 Tsp - Ground Cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:

2 Frozen Bananas - Thawed and Smoothly Mashed 

2 Tbs - Melted Butter

2 Eggs - Beaten 

1 Tbs - Pure Maple Syrup 

1 Tsp - Unsulphured Organic Molasses

1/2 Cup - Water (or Nut Milk)

+ Hexane-Free Coconut Oil for Frying! (I like Nutivia)

DIRECTIONS: 

1. Measure out all the dry ingredients into a nice big mixing bowl. 2. Warm up your frozen bananas to thaw them out and add the butter to the warm bananas to melt it! 3. Once the bananas have cooled enough, you can add in the eggs, maple syrup, molasses and water/milk. 4. Use your handy whisk to whip it all up to a nice even consistency. 

The completed batter! Yum! Now lets get cook'n!

5. Put your stainless steel frying pan (for the good health of all involved, please don't use a Teflon pan!!!) on the the stove on medium high-ish heat (the key here is to have it nice and hot to make a good crisp coating on your pancake to seal in the moisture, but not so hot that its going to char your poor pancake into a BBQ briquette!). 6. Put in about a 1/2 Tsp of coconut oil into the pan (you want to be able to see a nice glossy coating of it all over the pan [not so thin of a layer that its barely detectable, but not huge puddles of it to drown the pancakes in {the perfect amount of oil is key to getting buttery crisp, and not oily or dry pancakes. These are important details, so pay attention people!}]) 7. Pour the batter in the pan and watch it bubble! 

*bubble, bubble, bubble*   

8. Wait until bubbles stop forming and the top of your pancake changes from glossy, to matte and leathery....then flip it!

All matte and leathery. Perfect...lets flip it!

 

 TA DA!   

What are you waiting for? Pop one on your plate, then drizzle it with a little maple syrup and slather it with some butter! 

This is more like it! *chomp*

The recipe will make this towering plateful of these little delights! (Plus the two I already ate and the one still in the pan)

      

Now wipe that drool off the keyboard and go make yourself a batch! 

A Refreshing Summer Breakfast :)

This is the perfect breakfast for a sunny day in my favorite dress! I first chopped up a banana, topped it with a few scoops of chocolate chia pudding (from the Minimalist Baker), a few spoonfuls of balkan natural yogurt, and sprinkled on some coconut, maple syrup, cinnamon and pecans! Its tasty, refreshing and the chia makes it great for hydrating yourself right from the get go!Yum!