Bread

You may not know this about me, actually i don't really know why you would, but I really love to bake bread. I love (and also sometimes hate) new recipes and I am always looking for a decent healthy alternative to what has been sitting on my grocery store shelf for who knows how long, high fructose corn syrup or not.
My love for baking bread in countered by the tremendous trouble I have baking it. I always do something wrong and my husband always ends up taking short little crumbly sandwhichs to work. Once I forgot the yeast, seriously, the yeast. Frugality sometimes overrides the common sense part of your brain so I just mixed in with water and tried to knead it in... I did that with an egg once too.
This recipe has been pretty good to me though.
It does have white flour and butter in it but im okay with that since it has so much fiber...
The original recipe is for "2 medium loaves" so I just make one loaf and it is nice and big!

High Fiber Loaf

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 pkg yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
2 tsp salt
2 cups hot water
1/4 cup butter (room temp) (I'm working on changing this one)
2 TBL honey
1/2 cup granola
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 cup bran flakes
2 cups flour

Combine the wheat flour, yeast, and salt. Add hot water. Stir. Add butter, honey, granola, germ, and bran flakes. Keep stiring. Mix in 1/2 cup flour at a time. Knead for 8 minutes. Rise in a covered bowl for 1 hour. Press down, form and place into bread pan. Rise again about 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 400. Baked for 20 minutes then reduce heat to 350 and bake 20 more minutes. Cover with foil if it is browning too fast.

Indian Fish

I'm positive that I don't have to tell you all the health benefits of fish, BUT I may still have to convince many of you to eat it. I don't particularly like fish, I don't hate it either. I have found many really great recipes that taste wonderfully and make me really enjoy fish. This recipe sounds really funky and even I, in all my funkiness nearly didn't try it. But, alas I did and it was great and several of my friends think so too (and even some self proclaimed fish haters)! So without further ado...

Indian Fish
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Fish fillets
2 TBL honey
2 TBL lemon juice
1/3 cup yogurt
1/8 cup oil
3 garlic cloves

1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup cilantro
1/2 tsp dried mint

Combine in a small bowl the first 4 spices: coriander, nutmeg, chili powder and cinnamon. Add to that 1/2 tsp salt. Rub the fish with garlic cloves then with spices and oil, really in any order. Throw that onto the skillet (or the oven, your choice) and while it cooks blend up the rest of the ingredients in a food processor or blender (you can actually make the sauce up to 8 hours before you meal if you feel the need). The sauce can be adjusted (of course). I like less lemon and more garlic. After you have cooked your fish pour the sauce over it and serve it up. We always eat this meal with couscous because it soaks up the sauce too and its wonderful!

Pumpkins

Let me apologize profusely for neglecting this blog lately. The end of summer (moving, traveling and birthdays) left me in a spin. Things seem to be settling down now so I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite things about this season... pumpkins! I want to create a movement called "get your pumpkins off the porch and into your dinner".
I am chalk full of pumpkin recipes but here is one that we made tonight.

Black Bean and Pumpkin Quesadillas
1 jalapeno chile (I don't add this... I have a toddler!)
1 cup fresh pumpkin - peeled and grated
2 cups black beans
1 small onion - chopped
1/2 bell pepper - chopped
couple cloves of garlic
1/4 cup pumpkin - cooked and mashed
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
handful of cilantro
2 1/2 cups cheddar cheese
tortillas

Preheat the oven to 350 (if you want them toasty and the cheese melted)
Saute the onion, pepper and garlic for a couple minutes. Add the chili pepper and fresh pumpkin, saute about 5 minutes longer. Add the mashed pumpkin, beans and spices. After you remove from heat add the cilantro. Fill each tortilla with the mixture and some cheese. Bake for a couple minutes... I don't know 5-10! We like to top this with plain yogurt at the table.

Cauliflower Cilantro Soup

It was pretty chilly here today and soup seemed like the perfect dinner. Look out for more soup recipes as fall approaches. Sorry there is no picture, It really won't photograph very well, I mean its white and well uh white!

~Now I must say that a really great tasting and good quality stock is what makes this soup. I use Rapunzel's vegan vegetable bouillon cubes and I have NEVER tasted anything better.

Cauliflower Cilantro Soup
1/2 onion, chopped (I just use one small one)
3 or 4 garlic cloves
1 tsp coriander
1 small head of cauliflower
4 cups stock
1 - 2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 TBL cilantro

Saute onion, garlic and coriander in your soup pot with a bit of oil. Chop up the cauliflower and add it to the pot followed by the stock. Bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes. Add mustard and cilantro. Then put in the blender what percentage of the soup you don't want chunky, I usually do about half. But you could do all if you wanted, your choice. We love this with cheese on top, but then again we just really love cheese.

Cream of...

I am so sorry that it has been so long since I have shared a recipe with you. We have just moved and life has been up, down and all around for the past few months. Now that my family is back together in one household I am much more motivated for trying new recipes so I have lots of them on my mind... be ready!

Here is a recipe I ran across. In my opinion is is bland when eaten plain but once you add a bit of honey and a dollop of whatever butter you deem healthy....wow delicious.
You can make this recipe with barley, wheat berries, rice, millet, whatever you choose. We've tried them all but the rice. The accompanying picture is of cream of Barley so that is what I'll write in the recipe.

Cream of Barley
1 cup barley
pinch of salt
5 cups water

Toast the grain in a skillet for about 5 minutes. Cool. Grind into powder (or mostly powder or whatever you can accomplish) with a food processor or blender. Whisk the grain into the water and boil uncovered for 20 minutes.

Product Placement

So sorry it has been a long while since last posting. Our family is traveling alot this summer and I haven't been keeping up with new recipes... much less posting about them! I'm working with some new recipes this week and a couple I want to try. But for now I'd like to tell you about a couple of things that I have found as replacements for foods that periodically pop up in my recipes.

Soy sauce:
First of all, this is the most amazing tasting soy sauce I have ever had!
Commercial soy sauce is full of preservatives and as most commercially produced products are, it's lacking in nutrients. I have read that it's basically colored water and tons of salt... and smidgen of soybeans that have been defatted using chemicals... blah. I really haven't thoroughly researched it but I do know that this tastes alot better!

Salt:
Salt has become something that people really stress out over. Salt is actually very good for you. With tons of minerals that come with sea salt (calcium, potassium, sulphur, magnesium, iron...) you can't afford to ditch it from your diet. That bleached nutrient stripped table salt stuff is what you need to get rid of. With this stuff I never ever feel guilty about putting salt in my food, but truthfully you won't need much of it.



Mayonnaise: Now I have little use for mayo, especially since plain yogurt will do the trick. But I do have a husband who does like sandwiches and not always with avocado as its moistener! So I thought I'd venture to the fake stuff aisle at the natural food store. I'm not terribly fond of making or using fake stuff but occasionally I like it. It turns out that I really really love this stuff. Which has led me to dolloping a bit in my guacamole... don't tell anyone ;) Anyway, I love the ingredients in this, good fats and no eggs. Let me explain. I love eggs, I am an egg advocate. We eat eggs all the time, but I'm not so sure about such a large amount of processed eggs swirled into one jar topped with some soybean oil...frown. Regardless of what you believe about mayo, this still tastes better!

Sweetener:
Honey and agave nectar are my go-to sweeteners. But I do love to keep and occasionally use molasses. Molasses is the only form of sugar (besides malt) that has significant nutrients in it. Click here to see a chart. You've got manganese, copper, iron, calcium, potassium, B6 and Selenium. There are a whole slew of other benifits but you can research that on your own, that website its helpful for that too. Here is another one.

Stuffed Zucchini

There are a million great ways to stuff a zucchini. Here is one on the healthier side. First let me explain the pictures. We were visiting family in Oklahoma and one of my Aunt-in-laws gave me the biggest zucchini I have ever seen, we are talking 1st place in my made up county fair. So, no I don't normally cook this dish with insanely huge zucchinis and no I also don't normally put so much cheese on it. At home we use the block of cheese and since grating isn't as fun as it was when I was a kid, minimal cheese is the key. On vacation we had a bag of shredded cheese and I went crazy.

Olive, Tomato and Millet Stuffed Zucchini

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 TBL olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 cup millet
4 medium zucchini
1/2 tsp each: rosemary, thyme, marjoram, basil and salt
pepper to taste
1 tsp paprika
1 22 ounce can whole tomatoes (I use about 4 fresh Roma tomatoes)
2 cups broth
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives

The recipe needs you to steam up your zucchinis, so I'd figure out how you intend to do that and get it going while you do the rest of this. In the case of the giant zuc, I did it in the oven covered with water in the bottom. You can do the same in the microwave I've heard, I use the steamer. You can boil them if none of those options appeal to you!
Saute the onions for 5-7 minutes, add the garlic for a few minutes. Add millet, herbs and spices, saute 3 more minutes. Add the tomatoes, crushing them as you put them in, throw in the broth (and tomato juice if you used canned ones). Cover and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. In the meantime, cut the zuccs in half lengthwise: steam or boil them until soft. Remove the pulp making a little boat and add it to the millet mixture with olives. Simmer about 5 more minutes. Place the zucchinis in a casserole dish and stuff them with mixture. (I top it with cheese). Bake for about 20 minutes at 350.