Vegetarian Chili - from Scratch!

It's been rather cold in Phoenix lately. Well, cold for us. I think it may have gotten below freezing. At night...
Anyway, cold weather is the perfect time to make something warm to eat. We are supposed to be eating lots of beans, so what's better than chili?

Here's the recipe we started with. I didn't have all the ingredients, so I improvised. This made a BIG pot of chili. I used it for a pot-luck and still had leftovers. I thought it turned out pretty good, and the husband and a couple of the kids agreed. The others just wouldn't eat it because,,,beans....

Vegetarian Chili From Scratch

Ingredients:

• 2 cups dry beans - I used a mix of black beans, kidney beans, and chick peas
• 2 15oz cans diced tomatoes
• 1 8oz can tomato sauce
• 3 medium carrots
• 1 onion
• 1 bell pepper
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1-2 tablespoon chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• salt

1. Put beans in a large bowl. Cover with water and let soak overnight.
2. The next day, rinse the beans. Process vegetables in food processor until finely chopped. Place all ingredients in large crockpot and cover with water. Cook on high for 6-8 hours. 

Stuffed Acorn Squash with Rice (FLOP)

So, we've been doing a lot of squash this week because it was on sale. I usually love squash. And acorn squash is especially delicious. And the photos for this recipe were so pretty...

However, this recipe was pretty much a flop. If I were to try this again (and I probably won't), I would NOT use the thyme. The taste was over-powering, and negated the flavor of the acorn squash.
Also, while it was really cute to have the rice mixture IN the squash "bowl", eating it that way was a bit difficult. And I really didn't think the rice mixture really went well with the squash.

With all that said, here is the recipe in case you want to try it. I included my changes...

Stuffed Acorn Squash + Rice Medley
Acorn Squash

• 3 acorn squashes, cut in half lengthwise and seeded
• salt

Wild Rice Medley

• 1 cup rice, dry (I used half black wild rice and half long grain brown rice)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 small red bell pepper, diced
• 1 large shallot or small onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 large handfuls greens (I used spinach)
• 1 can cannellini beans (15 oz), drained and rinsed
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, optional
• sea salt and cracked pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut and seed your squash, place on baking sheet with cut side up. Brush each squash half with a little cooking oil. Sprinkle with salt if desired. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until tender…knife should easily pierce the flesh.
Cook your rice according to package.
While rice and squash are cooking, in large wok or saute pan, heat oil on medium heat. Add onion, garlic and bell peppers, saute for about three minutes. Add beans, one tablespoon thyme, red pepper flakes, a few twists of salt and pepper, cook for another three minutes. Add leafy greens, stir frequently until they are wilted.
Combine rice and sautéed vegetables in the larger of the two pots. Taste for seasoning adding additional salt and pepper as needed.
Scoop mixture into each acorn squash half and serve with any additional seasonings.

Healthy Granola

I love granola. I love the crunch and the yummy taste. But the stuff from the store is always so expensive! So I decided to make my own.

Here's the recipe I started with.

I made a few changes. This has been our breakfast the last few days. With a little bit of almond milk, it's actually quite delicious!

Healthy Granola
Ingredients:

• 4  cups rolled oats
• 1/2 cup oat flour (I made my own in the blender)
• 1/4 cup flaxseed meal
• 1/4 cup chia seeds
• 3/4 cup raw walnuts, chopped
• 3/4 cup raw pecans, chopped
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• pinch of cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 2/3 cup honey
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, mix together oats, oat flour, flaxseed meal, chia seeds, almonds, pecans, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt.
Add coconut oil, honey and vanilla extract to a small saucepan and place over low heat, stirring frequently until coconut oil is completely melted. Pour over dry ingredients and mix well until oats are completely coated.

Next spread the granola evenly in the baking pan and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes stir granola and add dried fruit, if you are using. Return granola to the oven and bake 15 minutes longer or until granola is slightly golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow the granola to cool completely on the baking sheet so that little clumps stay intact. Once cooled, transfer to an airtight container. Best used within 7-10 days. Makes 20 servings.

Black Bean and Butternut Squash Burritos

Squash is the theme of the week. It's been on sale, and I think it's yummy.
So, here's the first squash recipe we tried. I think it was yummy. I even got some good responses from the kiddos after I got them to try it.

Black Bean and Butternut Squash Burritos

Ingredients:

• 1 medium butternut squash, peeled, cubed, & roasted
• 1/2 cup uncooked short grain brown rice (yields: 1.5 cups cooked)
• 1-2 tsp olive oil
• 1 cup chopped sweet onion
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1 tsp salt, or to taste
• 2 tsp ground cumin, or to taste
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, or to taste
• One 15-oz can black beans (about 1.5-2 cups cooked), drained and rinsed
•  tortilla wraps (large or x-large)
• Toppings of choice: (avocado, salsa, vegan sour cream, spinach/lettuce, cilantro, etc)

1. Preheat oven to 425F and line a large glass dish with tinfoil. Drizzle olive oil on squash and give a shake of salt and pepper. Coat with hands. Roast chopped butternut squash for 45 mins. or until tender.
2. Cook brown rice
3. In a large skillet over medium-low heat, add oil, onion, and minced garlic. Sautee for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Now add in salt and seasonings and stir well.
4.  Add chopped red pepper, black beans, and cooked rice and sauté for another 10 mins. on low.
5. When b’nut squash is tender remove from oven and cool slightly. Add 1.5 cups of the cooked butternut squash to the skillet and stir well. You can mash the squash with a fork if some pieces are too large.
6. Add bean filling to tortilla along with desired toppings. Wrap and serve. Leftover filling can be reheated the next day for lunch in a wrap or as a salad topper.

Healthy Broccoli Salad

My kids love broccoli. I know. That's pretty weird. But it's true. And we like to be weird.

If you've been to very many pot-luck dinners, you've probably had some form of a traditional broccoli salad. Lots of Mayonnaise. Lots of sugar. Sometimes bacon. Yummy.

I wanted to find a healthier version for my broccoli-loving kiddos. This is what I came up with.

This version doesn't have any sugar or Mayo. The dressing is made using avocados (Yum!) and lemon juice.

Next time, I won't pulverize the broccoli in the food processor. The kids almost didn't believe me that it was broccoli. It just looked like "green stuff". I think that just chopping it into bite-sized paces would be good enough. Other than that, I thought it was great!

Healthy Broccoli Salad
Ingredients:

• 1 pound broccoli (2 small heads)
• 3 small carrots
• 1 apple
• 1/2 cup craisins (or raisins, or chopped up grapes)
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• Dressing:
• 3 avocados
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons salt

Instructions:

Chop up broccoli into small bite-size pieces and place in bowl. In food processor, grate carrots and apple. Add to broccoli. Add craisins and sunflower seeds. Toss to mix. Seed and peel avocados and place in food processor. Add lemon juice and salt. Process until mostly smooth. Toss dressing with salad and serve.

This was really good stuffed into a pita! The leftovers kept well for a few days.

Enjoy!

Multigrain bread

One thing I have noticed about this new diet is that we've been eating a LOT of bread. And it's not cheap. The good stuff is pricey! And my kids can go through a loaf a day! So, I've decided that I need to get back to basics and start making my own!

I used to make homemade bread all the time. In fact, when I was a teenager, one of my weekly chores was to bake bread for my family for the week. I've gotten out the habit as an adult because it is pretty time consuming, but if I can make large batches, I think it will save us quite a bit. And I will know exactly what is going in to it, so I will have a lot more control over what we are eating.

I made my old recipe a few weeks ago and froze a few loafs. We went through those pretty quick, but I noticed that it was pretty crumbly and a little tough to make sandwiches out of. Plus, the stuff we've been getting at the store is multi-grain, and that's probably better for us, right?

So, I looked for recipes for multigrain bread and came across this one.

The idea of making my own multigrain flour blend was really intriguing, so I decided to try it. 

I used: 

• chia seeds
• flax seeds
• brown rice
• quinoa
• steel cut oats

(You could really use as many different grains as you want!)

I put them in my blender (new!) and put it on the highest setting. It didn't take long before I had about two cups of multigrain "flour". I was impressed. 

I do have a wheat grinder, and I think it would have worked, but it's kind of a pain to get out, and clean, so I just used the blender. It worked.

One of the things we are supposed to avoid is white flour. So, I decided to use whole wheat flour instead. It turned out pretty dense, and didn't rise as much as I thought it would, but I still think it was pretty good. And, I didn't have any vital wheat gluten, so I left that out.

Here's the recipe that I did (I'm not sure about the amounts of each grain I used. I pretty much just put a little of each into the blender):

Homemade Multigrain Bread (makes 2 loaves)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of your multigrain mix
• 2 3/4 cups boiling water
• 4 Tablespoons coconut oil
• 1/3 cup honey
• 4 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl (I used by Bosch mixer) mix together multigrain mix and boiling water. Wait for it to cool - about 20 minutes. Mix in coconut oil and honey. Mix in yeast.  (I think next time I will try proofing the yeast ahead of time. It would probably make the bread rise better). Add flour, a 1 cup at a time until not quite sticky. Add salt. Mix (knead) for 5-10 minutes or until smooth. Allow to rise until double. (About 45 minutes) Punch down. Form into loaves and put into greased pans (I used coconut oil). Sprinkle with oats if desired. (I forgot to do this. oops.) Allow to rise until double again. (About 30 minutes). Bake at 375° for 40 minutes.

The taste was actually really good! I had a piece right after it came out of the oven because I couldn't give it to the kids without making sure it was good, right?? And I made a sandwich with it for lunch with a little hummus, some spinach leaves, bell peppers, and tomato slices. Yummy!

And the kids liked it too!

My two loaves - one almost gone!

Close up of the good stuff!

Black Bean Burgers & Sweet Potato Fries

This is actually take two of attempting to make black bean burgers and I'm still not sure that I have perfected it.

Here is the recipe that I used.

Against my better instincts, I included the egg (I think they would be fine without), and I didn't have enough bread crumbs so I put in some cracker crumbs. Both of those are no-nos on Miss May's diet, and I think I could have found suitable substitutes. I think next time I will use oats instead of bread crumbs. I also included a few carrots and used less chili powder and hot sauce (because, kids).

Here's what I would modify it too:

Black Bean Burgers
Ingredients:

• 1 16oz can black beans, drained
• 1/2 green bell pepper
• 1/2 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 3 small carrots
• 1/2 Tablespoon chili powder
• 1 Tablespoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1/2 cup quick oats

In a bowl, use a potato masher to smash the black beans until a thick paste is formed. In a food processor, finely chop bell pepper, onion, garlic and carrots. Mix into beans. Add seasonings and oats and blend until the mixture is sticky and holds together. Form into patties. Cook in pan on medium high heat. Flip to cook both sides. Serve on a whole wheat bun.

This is what the mixture looked like before it was cooked. I used my Pampered Chef scooper to get all the patties the same size.

The trickiest part was trying to get the patties flat. I cooked them on the stove in a frying pan and used the back of a spatula to smoosh them but it kept getting stuck. Eventually, I got the hang of it. I thought they were really good, and the kids ate them pretty well.

I served them with some homemade sweet potato fries. This is something I have yet to perfect, but I'm going to keep trying because I love them!

Most of the "healthy" sweet potato fry recipes I've found basically say: cut up a sweet potato, put it on a pan with some oil and a little salt (Line the pan with aluminum foil. Trust me.), and cook for a long time. I cooked this batch at 400° for 50 minutes.

The result - delicious but mushy sweet potatoes. I'm not sure they would count as fries because fries should be crispy.

So I'll keep working on that.

Being goofy

My kids love their condiments. I need to find some without sugar/dairy. Working on that.

We had some spinach with the burgers. These kids were being silly with it. But at least they will eat it!

And I can't forget - I love recipes that can easily be turned into leftovers. I had a few bean patties left over the next day. They didn't hold together very well, so I mashed them up, added a little tomato sauce, and called it sloppy joes. Made a great lunch!

Birthday Treats

Miss May had a birthday this month. Trying to decide what to serve was a bit of a challenge because I did NOT want to destroy the diet we had just started. (I know! I'm the meanest mother ever!)
I tried to come up with treats that the kids would enjoy, but were still healthy. At the actual party, some were hits, some were... not.

The husband and I went out of town on the birthday weekend (again, I'm a terrible mother!) We returned just two hours before the party, so I tried to plan ahead and make things before we left. In some ways, that kind of backfired on me.

Date Nut Balls (I thought these were really sweet and yummy. Not all of the kids agreed)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups walnuts (or other nut/seed of choice)
• 1 cup unsweetened shredded dried coconut
• 2 cups medjool date (soft, pitted)
• 2 tbsps coconut oil
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

In food processor, blend walnuts, coconut and dates until crumbly. Add coconut oil, salt and vanilla. Roll into balls. Place on cookie sheet and freeze for at least 1 hour.

I left them in the freezer for nearly 2 days which was way too long. I actually preferred them the day after the party when they were nice and soft. Yum!

Banana "Ice Cream" (This one was a pretty big hit, and it is really simple!)

Ingredients:

• 6 frozen bananas (3 of mine had been in the freezer for weeks, the other three were only in for about 2 hours, and it was actually perfect!)
• almond milk as needed (I actually didn't need any because of the softer bananas)
• mix-in (we used cocoa powder, but you could try frozen berries or other fruit, nuts, peanut butter... the possibilities are endless!)

Blend the bananas in the food processor until creamy. Add almond milk if need to get a creamy texture. Add mix-ins as desired. Enjoy!

It's really amazing how much the frozen bananas become just like "real" ice cream!

Healthy Cupcakes - this recipe I almost totally made up. Truly an experiment. When I first made them on Thursday night, the kids thought they were great, so I thought they would work. I wanted them to last until Saturday, so I put them in the freezer. I think that was where I went wrong. We pulled them out two hours before the party, but I don't think it was enough time for them to defrost. Most of the kids didn't finish them. But they looked pretty....

Ingredients: (Amounts are kind of a guess. I really made things up as I went)

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1 apple, grated
• 3 carrots, grated
• 1 Tablespoon coconut oil
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1/2 cup raisins

Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt in large bowl. Stir in applesauce, apple, carrots, and coconut oil. Add enough almond milk to make a creamy batter. Fold in raisins. Spoon into lined muffin tin. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes or until done.

All cupcakes need frosting, so I tried this one: (It wasn't my kid's favorite, but it looked pretty!)

Coconut Whipped Cream 

Ingredients: 

• 2 cans coconut milk, refrigerated (I left them in the fridge for 2 days)
• 1 Tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Open the cans of coconut milk and scoop out the cream that has risen to the top. Save the rest of the milk for another day. Using a hand mixer, blend the cream until it is creamy. Add honey and vanilla and whip some more. Spread on cupcakes.

I also put some unsweetened coconut in a baggie with a little food coloring and shook it up to make some colorful sprinkles to go on top.

Crockpot Steel Cut Oats

This has become a breakfast staple in our house. Because I am exceptionally lazy in the morning, we used to eat a lot of cold cereal. Too processed and too much sugar for our new diet. Dr. Oskin suggested steal cut oats because they are not processed like rolled oats, and have more nutrients. They take much longer to cook than quick oatmeal, so I've started putting them in the crockpot to cook overnight. And I make batches large enough to feed our family for a few days.

Recipe:

Crockpot Steel Cut Oats

Ingredients:

2 cups steel cut oats
7 cups liquid -- (I use about 3 cups of apple juice as a sweetener and 4 cups of water)
2 Tablespoons chia seeds
1 Tablespoon flax seeds

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients in a crockpot. Cook on low heat 4-6 hours or overnight.

Optional mixins -- When I first started this, I thought the kids would like having extras mixed in. We tried different things including chopped apples, pears, dates, walnuts and raisins with mixed results. Finally, the kids told me they would just rather mix in whatever they choose when they are ready to eat it in the morning and that seems to make everyone happier. Dried fruit works really well. A little almond milk can be added to make a creamier texture.