We’ve had some sick kiddies around here lately, so I’ve been doing my best to make tasty, visually appealing treats to tempt compromised appetites. One day, I made a raspberry banana smoothie with only a small handful of spinach leaves — not enough to change the color at all — and I put in a tablespoon or so of hemp seeds and ground flax to boost the nutrition. I layered it in a glass with coconut milk vanilla yogurt and topped it with buckwheat crunchies.
To ease the earache, I sliced an onion and tipped some of the juice into the offended ear. You can also add this juice to oil as well, but you want to make sure when you’re doing so that the eardrum has not burst!
Next I made up a hot sock to keep the heat on it. I found an old, unmatched sock (not a challenge around here!) and put a pan on the stove with a little less than 2 cups of rice in it, and turned it on medium heat.
Once I could feel the heat by putting my hand an inch or so above the surface of the rice, I removed the pan from the heat. It’s tough to spoon the rice into the sock, so I use the canning funnel to make pouring it a breeze.
I knotted the top of the sock tightly enough to keep it sealed, but loosely enough so I could reheat the rice as needed.
I love the Go Raw brand of snacks but it tends to put a big dent in my purse. After trying their granola, I decided to give it a whirl myself. I changed it up a bit and came up with a great recipe.
Grawnola is quick to make so make lots as it will keep for awhile. It is a satisfying breakfast when you are wanting something more substantial to stat the day. We like it as a snack and it is a perfect travel food.
River and Gatlin are both fans of this grawnola and my hubby finishes off whatever is left so I feel it safe to say this is a family winner.
My Homemade Grawnola
2 cups sprouted buckwheat or buckwheat crunchies*
1 large apple, finely chopped
1/8 cup chia seeds
2 TBS sesame seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
2 TBS yacon syrup
Mix all the dry ingredients together. Add the yacon syrup and mix, mix, mix. It takes a little time to get it incorporated into the mixture, but keep mixing and it will all become covered with the yacon.
Dehydrate at 105 for 5-6 hours on teflex sheet or parchment.
Once it is dehydrated, you can add goji berries and/ or raisins.
Serve with fresh almond mylk and some fresh berries if you got ‘em.
Feel free to play around with adding other seeds to the mix or other dried fruits. You may also enjoy adding some other spices for variety.
*To make buckwheat crunchies:
Soak raw buckwheat groats for 1-2 hours. They will be very slimy so be sure to keep rinsing until the water is clear and no longer slimy. This can be done in a colander but I find it handy to do in a nut mylk bag or my inexpensive version which is a nylon paint strainer from the hardware store. They are about $5 for a pack of 2! Do get the large or extra large size.
After drained well, leave in sprout bag or bowl to sprout overnight, rinsing twice a day.
For this recipe, you may use the buckwheat now or dry them in the dehydrator on 105 a few hours until completely dry and there you have it… buckwheat crunchies!
As you have seen in other posts, buckwheat crunchies are great to have on hand to add on top of smoothies. I recommend making these in a big batch since they keep for a very, very long time in a glass airtight container.You can also sprinkle them on top of fresh fruit or banana with a fruit puree for a yummy dessert!
My kids love their breakfast cereal. Except much of what you find on the store shelves is relatively devoid of nutrients, and is pretty pricey to boot! So we’ve experimented with alternative breakfasts. Smoothies make up the bulk of our morning meal these days, or sometimes we’ll do the mono-meal thing and eat an entire cantaloupe, honeydew, or pineapple. But sometimes they tire of the fresh fruit thing, and are looking for something completely different. The spiced apple oatmeal fits the bill on a cold day, but on the warmer spring days we’ve been having, muesli answers the call.
I tend to make this at night, in big batches, so that its ready for breakfast the next day. I soak the nuts or seed for the milk, and since I’m rooting around in our dried fruit/nut drawer in the fridge, I pull it all out on the counter and go to town. I start with a base of buckwheat crunchies if I have a lot prepared and can share them out from my smoothie addition supply. Last week I didn’t have enough to use as the bulk of the muesli, but I did have a surfeit of rolled oats, so we went with that.
I don’t really have a recipe for this. I pour a large amount of oats into a bowl. On top of that I toss things like raisins, dried tart cherries, dried cranberries, golden raisins, and goji berries. I chop up bigger dried fruits like dates, apricots and prunes before adding them to the bowl.
Next up are the nuts and seeds. I chop bigger nuts like almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia nuts and cashews. I do tend to roughly chop bigger seeds like pumpkin and sunflower too. Then I toss in hemp and chia seeds. If I have it pre-ground, I also add some flax meal. Sometimes I have pre-soaked and dehydrated nuts on hand, sometimes I don’t. If I don’t, I rely more heavily on fruit and seeds and use the unsoaked nuts sparingly. Lucia prefers her muesli without nuts anyway, hence the second, smaller jar of her own private nutless batch. I topped all this with a couple handfuls of my precious crunchies (is it me, or do I sound like the lovechild of Gurgi and Gollum, with my precioussss crunchings and munchings?).
Sometimes I add coconut flakes, sometimes cacao nibs. After this last batch Dante specifically requested that I leave the cacao nibs out, while I found them to be a yummy addition. Muesli is like my veggie soup — it all depends on what I have on hand, and no two batches are exactly alike. But I can whip up a batch pretty quickly and it lasts a few days if I make enough. Luke likes it too, and can put huge dents in the supply.
They will all eat it by the handful or from a jar with a spoon on the go, but they adore muesli for breakfast with nut milk.
In the winter here in New England, I find that our family is wanting warm food for breakfast. Partly because I turn the heat waaaay down at night to something in the high 50s, and party because it’s winter and our bodies are craving warm comfort food. So I make oatmeal. I make enough so that I have extra to pop into the dehydrator to make lovely cookies and bars for those days we’re out and about.
I usually just toss these together and don’t measure, just mix stuff in to taste, but I measured mostly this time around. Don’t feel obligated to make this my way — adjust it to your tastes and seasoning preferences. You could make a savory version of these for use as crackers or a sandwich bread using basil, oregano, onion, garlic, lemon juice and salt. Or a mexican version spiced with chili powder, cumin, lime juice, salt and fresh cilantro to top with guacamole, and indian version with curry, etc. The oats are a great blank palette and can go in many directions. The original recipe that got me started making this was in Kate Wood’s Eat Smart Eat Raw, but she used lots of olive oil. I tried it that way, then tried cutting down on the oil, then using coconut oil, but in the end I’ve concluded that I like them better without the fat. You may disagree.
First I made date paste. I don’t often do this, but wanted to try it for this recipe. Usually I just chop some dates and toss them in, or just use raisins. But today I made
Date Paste
1 cup dates
1 cup water
Let dates soak for at least 20 minutes (I soaked mine overnight because I didn’t get around to making the oatmeal when I planned, and they really plumped up nicely — these are the deglets from the bulk bin at WF), then pour both dates and water into a food processor (or a blender if you don’t have one) and whizz it up.
I soaked the oats overnight, drained them and rinsed them with warm water so the oatmeal would be warmish. This time I had the kettle on so I used hot water since I was using steel cut oats and wasn’t focused on them being raw.
Oatmeal Cookies/Bars
5 cups soaked oats
1/2 apple, diced
1/2 cup raisins
3 Tbs date paste
3 Tbs maple syrup
cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger or other spices to taste
Blend these ingredients in the food processor until you reach a consistency you like. We like it sort of chunky, so we don’t puree it too long, maybe 30 seconds. I have made it into something smoother, but felt like I was eating wallpaper paste and have since left the oats a little chunkier. If you can find oat groats, great, use those. I have had a hard time finding them lately, so I have been using steel cut oats. Due to the way they’re processed, steel cut oats are not raw, but since we’re not 100% raw anyway, I don’t sweat the small stuff.
Once you’ve done with this step, add in the garnishes. Sometimes I do this in a bowl, mixing them in by hand to keep them whole, sometimes I add them into the food processor and whiz it for 5-10 more seconds.
1/2 apple
1/2 cup raising
1/2 pear
Voila, you’re done! If you drain the oats and rinse them with warm water, they will make a warmish oatmeal. Or if you have a dehydrator you can pop the bowls in there for a bit to warm them up.
For our leftovers, I made oat bars and oatmeal cookies. I sprinkled the cinnamon on last and used that batch for the cookies since my honey is allergic to cinnamon. This way everyone can have a little oatmeal love, and not have a fit of sneezing on the side.
I sprinkled chia seeds on part of the oatmeal bars I spread on the dehydrator tray. The cookies were the perfect texture — crunchy on the outside, softer and chewier on the inside. The bars got a bit overdone because I left them going while we were out, so they were crunchier than I like, but were still snarfled within a day, so not too bad after all, I’d say.
Cookies ready for the dehydrator, and below, in the dehydrator with the bars and 2 bowls warming for the kids. You can see some escaped buckwheat groats on the floor of the dehydrator from our last batch of crunchies.
and all done! Inspired by the recent Olympics, Dante and Lucia made little Olympic figurines to support our breakfast of champions! Can you guess the events surrounding the cookies?
crunchy oatmeal bars ready for the road
getting up close and personal with some cinnamon oatmeal cookies
And what would a post about oatmeal cookies be without your friend and mine, the cookie monster. Cookie learns to ask nicely for — you guessed it! — oatmeal cookies:
We’ve had some sick kiddies around here lately, so I’ve been doing my best to make tasty, visually appealing treats to tempt compromised appetites. One day, I made a raspberry banana smoothie with only a small handful of spinach leaves — not enough to change the color at all — and I put in a tablespoon or so of hemp seeds and ground flax to boost the nutrition. I layered it in a glass with coconut milk vanilla yogurt and topped it with buckwheat crunchies.
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