Banana Split Lactation Smoothie

This tastes like a melted banana split! It's a great alternative to lactation cookies, and the sweetness is only from fruit! I'm sure you can sub different frozen fruits, but there is something about the chocolate-cherry-banana combination that rocks my world.

Banana Split Lactation Smoothie

Ingredients:

• 4-6 ice cubes
• 1 C frozen organic black cherries (from BJs Wholesale)
• 1 overripe banana
• 1 heaping teaspoon of each:
• cocoa powder
• brewer's yeast
• fresh ground flax meal
• 3/4 - 1 Cup of almond milk

Instructions: Blend all ingredients in a high-powered blender for 60 seconds--time it, it takes longer than you think!

Happy Valentines Day!

 "Orange Roses" 

Bird's Eye View of Smoothie

Amazing Honey & Poppy Seed Sugar Cookies!

Banana Berry Spinach Smoothie

This smoothie is very easy to make, low sugar, high fiber and surprisingly you can't taste the spinach(or baby kale) at all! Django the cat approves, although he doesn't like the sound the blender makes. The recipe is quite adaptable to whatever berry you have in the freezer (it's winter in CT) and it's a great way to get your greens in without having to eat a salad. I like salad, but am just not in the mood for it every day. I know, shame on me!

Banana-Berry-Spinach Smoothie

• 1 ripe banana
• 1 handful organic baby spinach or baby kale
• 2 T raw almond butter
• pinch Himalayan Pink Salt
• 1/2 - 2/3 cup of almond milk
• 1/2 cup frozen berries
• optional: 1/4 cup finely chopped red cabbage (trust me, you won't taste it!)

Directions: roughly cut the banana and the berries if they happen to be large. Don't forget to blend for close to 60 seconds, it's longer than you think! I sometimes wear earplugs. 

Chilled Overnight Oatmeal (for those hot & muggy Connecticut mornings!)

This chilled breakfast is easy and delish! Overnight Oatmeal is surprisingly good, I admit I was a bit nervous that it would have a weird consistency. 

Chilled Overnight Oatmeal 

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

2/3 cup of rolled oats (not steel-cut or quick-cooking!)

1 Tablespoon Chia seeds

1 cup unsweetened & unflavored almond milk

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1 organic Gala apple

pinch coconut sugar or teaspoon of maple syrup, or agave, etc.

sprinkle of cinnamon

Directions: 

Stir together the oats, Chia seeds, milk & lemon juice in a medium bowl. Cover & refrigerate overnight. Easy, huh? Here comes the hard part: grate or thinly slice the organic apple and add to the oatmeal with cinnamon and pinch of coconut sugar or your sweetener of choice. Enjoy!

If you are one of those people like myself who tend to be very clumsy in the mornings you could pre-slice the apple the night before and toss with a little lemon juice to keep it from oxidizing.

Black Bean-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Cold-weather comfort food at its best! This cozy meal came together quickly, and despite being all out of cheese(gasp!), received a whopping five stars from both my boyfriend and myself.

I had a 6:30 yoga class to get to, so I wrapped medium size sweet potatoes in heavy aluminum foil and left them in the oven on 300F for about 1 hr and 45 min. The potatoes were amazing--every time I actually bake them in the oven versus the microwave, we can taste a significant difference. I also made the seasoned black beans ahead of time and briefly brought them back up to temperature on the stove when I got home.

Black Bean-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

- 3-4 sweet potatoes, rinsed & scrubbed
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil or coconut oil
- small onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon coriander
- 1/2 teaspoon Harissa spice blend (found these at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, but the original recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon cumin)
- 15 oz can of black beans, rinsed well & drained
- 3-4 Tablespoons salsa
- 3-4 Tablespoons sour cream
- shredded Mexican-Style cheese (I was all out of cheese, but my dinner still tasted amazing!)
- optional - fresh cilantro for garnish

Use your own preferred method of baking or microwaving the sweet potatoes until fork tender.

While they are baking: heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add onions & garlic and cook until onions are translucent. Add spices and cook additional 2 minutes or so, stirring well the entire time to prevent burning. Stir in the black beans, and cook until hot. Remove from heat & cover to keep warm until potatoes are ready.

Slice sweet potatoes down the center, and gently scoop & slightly mash the inside of each half, leaving the skins intact in their "boat like" shape. Place about 1/2 Tablespoon worth each of sour cream and salsa on each potato half, and top with a big scoop of seasoned black beans. Sprinkle with shredded cheese & garnish with fresh cilantro.

Pairs well with a glass of red wine!

This recipe was inspired by: organize yourself skinny

Summer Buckwheat Porridge - A work in progress

It seemed so weird to me when I first came across a recipe for a raw buckwheat porridge on one of my favorite blogs! Then slightly different versions appeared on two more of the blogs I often read. So I figured I had to give it a try. My first attempt came out way too runny, as it's supposed to be more like a parfait-style breakfast. I'm wishing I halved the batch, because now I have to finish the rest of it somehow. The too-runny texture is kind of throwing me off, it would definitely be better with less liquid. The taste is great however, falling just short of cookie batter!

This is one of those breakfast that requires getting started the night before. You have to soak the raw buckwheat overnight in water with a tiny bit of lemon juice or vinegar. I checked out three different recipes before I made my own. Here are the inspirations:

http://www.mynewroots.org/site/2014/07/raspberry-ripple-buckwheat-porridge/

http://ohsheglows.com/2011/07/11/raw-buckwheat-breakfast-porridge/

http://www.greenkitchenstories.com/raw-buckwheat-walnut-porridge/

This isn't a perfected recipe, more of a documentation of what I did and my reflections on it!

I soaked (separately) 1 cup of raw buckwheat and 1 cup of walnuts overnight in water, adding just a squeeze of lemon juice in the buckwheat water. This morning I drained and rinsed the buckwheat and walnuts in a colander with small holes. I blended them in a standard blender with a heaping tablespoon of honey, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste, and 1 sliced ripe banana. For the liquid I used half milk-half water to cover the ingredients in the blender. Since it came out soupy, I served it in bowls with heaps of fresh blueberries and blackberries from the farmers market.

Each spoonful of the porridge with the juicy tart berries was quite heavenly, but without them this would have been difficult for me to get down. I feel it must be mentioned that I put a bowl of down in front of my boyfriend, and he just plowed right in and finished before I did. I was impressed, he's usually a good sport about eating the "strange" things I give him.

So this would have been much better with less liquid, and maybe using a food processor would have been a better way to blend? There is a lot of potential here!

Fresh Blueberry Pie

I hate wasting precious fresh fruit on cooked pies! The no-spray strawberries and blueberries come out for such a limited time at the farmers markets I work at. I found a recipe yesterday for an open-faced fresh blueberry pie with reduced sugar. In order to feel less guilty when I eat most of this pie over the course of the next 24 hours, I made the pastry crust with a 2/3rd coconut oil to 1/3rd butter ratio, and substituted spelt for half of the flour. I also forgo the homemade whipped cream which would of course be awesome, but I'd rather sacrifice my whipped and iced creams in order to have cream in my morning coffee. Actually, I think it's better to keep it simple and just enjoy the fresh berries and coconut crust than to have too many flavors going on. I made a streusal last week with my market blueberries, but they were lost in the richness of it! I think using frozen organic fruit is fine if you are going to be cooking it.

I'm not going to post a coconut crust recipe, because it's definitely not perfected yet. I had trouble with the frozen coconut oil forming large chunks, so next time I will try grating it first. Maybe the spelt flour contributed to the difficulty? Not sure yet. I did however notice that the crust did not bubble or shrink at all during blind baking.

I must also mention how much I absolutely LOVE my stoneware pie dish from Pampered Chef. I conditioned it first with lots of coconut oil, and it releases the crust amazingly every time. And so far the coconut oil has not begun to brown or darken the stoneware as it "seasons." The butter seasoning on my stoneware cookie sheet gives my baked goods a certain taste that I'm not always fond of, and the cooking times really vary with it. For your enjoyment:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Open-Faced-Fresh-Blueberry-Pie-101866