How to eat Brie

I love having an appetizer to serve when I invite people over. I’m trying to make appetizers a part of our daily dinners. Here’s a quick, easy, yummy one!

Cut a (small) wedge of brie. Let come to warm, room temperature. Slice some tart apples. Or sweet ones. I’m partial to the look of a tart red apple, but I have yummy tart greens in my fruit bowl. Use what you’ve got.

Cut a small slice of cheese and place it on your “apple cracker”. Either eat it as is (yum) or –

– sandwich it between another apple slice.

Enjoy!

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Shared with Real food Wednesday!

Food Lately

Why yes, we are still eating here. We are eating, healthy, nourishing foods quite often actually – for at least three meals a day! However, I’ve run into a creativity block. I seem to have no desire to create any recipes! If you’re looking for nourishing, normally grain free, always gluten free links though, I can do that!

Really yummy lentil salad. Ignore the fact that I overcooked my lentils. It was still amazing!

<Now imagine that I didn’t delete the picture off the camera because I wasn’t thinking. Uh huh>

Breakfast Pancake – loaded with protein and FLUFFY! Ok. It ended up being more like a pie for us….. but really, no added sugar (I cooked my apples in butter and cinnamon and nutmeg. Yum.

Sloppy Joes – It’s a crockpot recipe that, when doubled, made enough for us to have 5 meals – with leftover from each meal! – so we ate it one day and froze the rest into 4 bags in the freezer. I can take it out and heat it and have dinner on the table. The tomato is from my garden and the broccoli is from my friends garden! To the recipe I added extra of all the vegetables and a couple of carrots. Yum.

Sandwich Bread from this book – I wouldn’t eat it as a sandwich bread but it made a pretty decent snacking bread!

Whew. We’ve also done a ton of canning, freezing and getting the pantry ready for winter!

zucchini “crackers”

What do you do when you need dinner on the table in under 5 minutes? You open a can of chicken (home canned from your mother-in-law ~ thanks!) and make a quick chicken salad (a good handful of chopped celery, chopped onion, salt pepper, spices – curry powder or chili powder are both favorites here, mixed with a mix of mayo and Greek (or strained)  yogurt). So, normally I would pull out my container of homemade gluten free, grain free almond flour crackers. But we had just ate the rest of the crackers on the camping trip! What could I do?!

We cut up the fat end of a yellow crook-neck squash (one of the few items we had left in the fridge after the camping trip!) and used it as crackers. It was phenomenal. Give it a try!

Raspberry Tart with a recipe for Pastry Cream with Opera Cream variation

I am always looking for new recipes to try, new ways to make food amazing. When you are a gluten free house with a grain free/refined sugar free member you have lots of flops – things that should have turned out – but didn’t!

This wasn’t one of those recipes!

In order to get that perfect raspberry tart, you should start with the best raspberries available. In this case, we went to the farm and picked the raspberries. Yes, that is her throwing a fit.

Beauty.

On the top of you pie crust (which I still need to tweak the recipe a little – so no pie crust recipes now! Here’s a great grain free pie crust recipe that will probably work great for this recipe) you use pastry cream blended with whipped cream to make a delectable mouse like cream. Yum

Refined Sugar Free / Gluten Free/ Grain Free Pastry Cream:
Adapted from this recipe.
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup liquid sweetener (maple syrup)
~in a large bowl blend thoroughly with electric mixer. To this mixture add:

3 Tbsp arrowroot powder
Mix.

In a small saucepan, heat 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp whole milk to just boiling. Remove from heat. Slowly add milk to the egg mixture while blending constantly.

Place the mixture into a clean saucepan and heat, stirring constantly until it boils. Let mixture cook for 30-60 seconds, letting it thicken. Immediately remove from heat and mix in

1 tsp vanilla syrup.

Pour into a heat proof bowl and place plastic wrap over the top. Let cool to room temperature and place in the fridge until it is ready to be used.

Refined Sugar Free / Gluten Free/ Grain Free Opera Cream:
Adapted from this recipe.
Whip 1/3 cup milk with electric mixer until stiff peaks form. In a separate bowl, whip 1 cup of cold pastry cream until smooth. Add 1-2Tbsp of the whipped cream to the pastry cream and beat the mixture unitl smooth. Add half of the pastry cream to the whipped cream mixture and whip until smooth. Add the rest and whip. Eat. Yum. Wow. Really Yum!

Add berries to the top with the help of an overly ambitous 4 year old. Devour.

Enjoy!

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Shared with Real Food Wednesday!

Using greens as wraps

Did you know that you can use large greens (chard, collards) as a wrap to hold all sorts of yummy fillings. I’m just picky enough that I don’t really like the taste of greens by themselves so I suggest using a recipe that has a little spice or a lot of flavor. Something Mexican, Asian, Indian, Argentinian. Yum.

• Bring a large pot filled with water to a rolling boil.
• Dip each leaf (I did 2 or 3 at a time and was fine) into the water for 1 minute (I … ahem … forgot and did 3 minute a few times and they turned out great still. Don’t really worry about it.)
• Pull out the leafs and lay them on a plate (they’ll be fine in a stack).
• Once they are cool enough to work with cut out the thick middle stalk.
• Fill with your filling
• Fold in the ends that are parallel to the middle stalk, then roll into your burrito- type wrap.
• Eat!
• The best part? This is a great gluten free, grain free way to eat all the yumminess you want!

Beet Greans #1

I have a confession to make. I do NOT purchase beets because I like the greens. I purchase them because my daughter likes the beets. I’m not a huge fan of the beets either. But then I know that my favorite food are not greens of any sort. I eat beets. A lot of beets. And I’m happy because I can eat beets. I have the money and the means to be able to purchase them. So I’m not complaining. Whoa. Now that was a tangent – back to the recipe!

Saute up some beet greens in butter. Sprinkle salt and add a splash of lemon juice. Let this cool slightly while you mix together equal parts cream cheese and yogurt. Take your crackers and smear the yogurt mixture on the crackers. Top with a  big spoonful of greens. Eat. Repeat.

Yum.

Coconut Waffles for Sandwiches

Before a month ago, I never considered using waffles as sandwich bread. In my mind, bread came in a loaf . And if you were really creative, you might make it yourself and have to cut it yourself. With the forgotten bread knife in the knife block. A few years ago, bread was made with whole wheat flour. And I wasn’t very creative: I found a wonderful recipe online where the kneeding was done in the food processor and I considered my duty done. That being said, it was really good bread.

We haven’t had wheat flour in our house in almost 3 years. When C was diagnosed as a celiac, I gave away everything containing gluten. Oats, bags of whole wheat flour, pretzles, a gallon of soy sauce – it all went to the neighbors. I tried rice flour and tapioca starch. I bought mixes, galore. I tried (and LOVE) sorghum flour, oat flour, millet flour, corn flour. I tried coconut flour – twice – and hated it. I borrowed cookbooks from the library and eventually ended up buying lots of cookbooks.

I fell in love with almond flour. And, just as a teaser, I’ve updated my chocolate chip almond flour scone recipe and I will be posting it soon! Seriously, what’s NOT to love about a chocolate chip almond flour scone. I even love the name.

This low carb, body in ketosis thing though was killing me the first week. I missed sugar and pizza, I craved cookies and cakes. I thought that polenta and sandwiches were the holy grail. And then someone, some random blogger mentioned using waffles as sandwich bread. Coconut waffles, to be exact. Even though I never liked coconut flour, I decided to give this “holy grail” of gluten free, grain free cooking a try.

I’m glad I did.

Coconut waffle recipes are a dime a dozen. Now, that coconut flour is readily available, EVERY gluten free blogger has their own recipe. If you want a gluten free, yummy waffle recipe, try this on here or here. But, as much as I like waffles for breakfast, I am more interested in the other incarnation of the waffle: The Sandwich.

Now, it’s also true that all those bloggers are the ones who turned me onto waffles for sandwich bread. But their waffles are sweet, made with up to 1/3 cup liquid sweeter. I was never a fan of wheat, carb loaded sweet – breads  for my sandwich when I was eating a carb filled glutenous life. These waffles are savory. Slightly cheesy. Very slight – if any – coconut flavor. I tortured my husband trying to come up with JUST the right amount of sweetness to the savory – Hey C, sweatheart, you have to try EACH batch. I hope you enjoy these little gems of goodness like I do!

Coconut Flour Sandwich Waffles: gluten free, grain free
Perfect for sandwich making. Enjoy.

4 tablespoons melted butter
6 eggs
2 tablespoons yogurt 39 g
2 T Parmesan cheese 16 g
1 tablespoons honey 22g
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup coconut flour 38g

1. Melt the butter.
2. Add all the ingredients minus the coconut flour into the melted butter.
3. Using a sifter (or a sieve like I do!) measure out and add the coconut flour to the butter mixture
4. Using your hand mixer, mix on high for one minute, scraping down the sides
5. While you are letting your mixture rest, heat up the waffle iron. Use 1/2 cup for each 4 waffles (4 “sandwich” slices”) made. Spread with your rubber, plastic, metal, silicone (or the like) spatula to cover all the way to the edges.
On my waffle iron, this recipe makes 16 sandwich sized waffles. I use 1-2 per sandwich.

The official breakdown:
69 calories
5.1 g fat
79 mg cholesterol
3.2 g carbohydrates
1.4 g dietary fiber
1.0 g sugars
3.0 g protein

You choose if this recipe fits your idea of healthy. It fit’s mine! Shared at Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday!