Grawnola

March 9th, 2010

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
  1. 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.
  2. Dehydrate at 105 for 5-6 hours on teflex sheet or parchment.
  3. Once it is dehydrated, you can add goji berries and/ or raisins.
  4. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. After drained well, leave in sprout bag or bowl to sprout overnight, rinsing twice a day.
  3. 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!

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kale chips…. yum!

March 2nd, 2010

The kale at our local health food store looked so yummy and was on sale this week so I picked up a ton! The kids begged for kale salad so I made a nice batch of that and thought I would make them a treat with the rest. These kale chips didn’t even make it off the dehydrator tray!

I would double this recipe or triple it otherwise they may get eaten before you blink! Or before you get some!

kale chips

  • 2 bunches kale
  • 2 TBS olive oil
  • 1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
  • pinch sea salt
  • 1/8 – 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
  1. Wash kale and tear into bite sized pieces.
  2. Add all other ingredients and massage gently with your hands until all the kale is nicely coated with your mixture.
  3. Spread on teflex dehydrator trays. It will take up 3 or 4 trays. Dehydrate 105 degrees for 2-4 hours until crispy. All done!

This recipe is so fun to play around with and does well with all sorts of flavors. Try adding some tahini or cayenne pepper to spice things up. You can also make a more savory chip by adding your favorite herbs. Sprinkle some herbamare for a nice zing.

Beware!! Do not add too much oil or your chips will be soggy. A little goes a long way when it comes to the salt in this recipe.

Make a batch of these yummy kale chips and enjoy as we kick off our week of dehydration exploration!

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A super bowl o yum

February 9th, 2010

Superbowl skatingMy brother took his two older girls to see the Lion King in Hartford on Sunday evening, so we got to spend some time with my turning-3-in-March nephew. He came with a short sleeve t-shirt, so we bundled him up in some of our smaller sweatshirts, mittens and hat and headed out into the yard to feed the chickens and swing the racket and hockey stick that I wouldn’t let him swing inside. Dante mentioned that he’d like to go visit Luke who was skating at the cranberry bog, so we piled into the car and headed out to get the wiggles out before settling down to watch the Superbowl.

little man whacks the puckThe little man and I kept our boots on, but Dante and Lucia popped on their skates and sailed about on the ice for a while. The damn on the bog had broken this summer, so the first half of the winter was sadly skateless. Luckily, it was fixed before the torrential rains we had a month or so ago, and the bog filled back up and froze pretty soon thereafter. We love skating outdoors (and by “we”, I find that I mean Luke and the kids. I like to go along and chase people with my feet firmly tied up in my wonderful new boots that are super-soft and comfortable — everything my ice skates are not) and missed having this convenient skating option so close by.

Dante shoots he scoresIt was pretty chilly and windy on the ice, so once occasional respite by the bonfire wasn’t able to warm us sufficiently, we left Luke and Dante to finish their hockey game with some of the other local kids and headed home to get the party started. Lucia adored taking care of her little cousin, and was glowing with pride at this newly discovered ability. She’s usually playing with his older sisters, getting frustrated with him as he innocently destroys whatever project or game they have going. Now she saw a more charming side of him and she responded in kind.

Lulu skates on thick iceShe ushered him about and entertained him while I made our eclectic fare (which means I didn’t think of how everything would go together, but instead picked random things I’d been craving) -  bean dip, cucumber arame salad, veggies with mayo dip and Ani Phyo’s mediterranean dolmas. I got the bean dip in the oven first, so that the boys would have something warm to eat when they got back. The mayo and dolma filling I’d made earlier in the week, so it was just a matter of chopping some veggies and slicing up the collards. Pretty quick and easy to get to the table. The cucumber salad was also fairly fast to prep, and it hit the table at the same time as the bean dip finished warming in the oven.

superbowl nibbles

dolma ingredientsMediterranean Dolmas by Ani Phyo

  • 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, sliced
  • 1/2 cup fresh dill, chopped
  • 1/2 cup raisins
  • 1/2 cup pine nuts
  • 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
  • Pinch of sea salt
  • collard leaves
  1. Soak the tomatoes in 1 cup of water for 10 minutes, until soft. Mix together the dill, raisins, nuts, oil, and salt. Add the tomatoes and mix well.
  2. Cut the collard leaf from its stem. Cut each leaf piece in half, for a total of four roughly equal-sized pieces.
  3. Fill each leaf piece with a quarter of the tomato-raisin-nut filling. Fold down the top and bottom edges of each leaf, rotate it 90 degrees, and roll it up. Repeat with each leaf piece. Serve at room temperature.

My notes:

I don’t soak the tomatoes, and often forget that they already have salt on them. If I add the salt the recipe calls for, it’s a bit much. I also don’t tend to chop by hand — I toss it all in the food processor and pulse til it’s  chopped and mixed. I also really like this mixture smooshed into the dent in celery sticks, on top of salads, spread in sandwiches, etc. It keeps in the fridge for several days and is a quick sweet and salty snack that really satisfies.

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Earthballs

February 6th, 2010

Stumbled across this and found it to be thought-provoking and inspiring:

So let’s make some snacks that don’t need to be wrapped in plastic! Looking at the ingredients on the expensive Larabar package, it seemed silly not to try to replicate these at home. Scouring the internets, I found recipes out there, and boiled them down to their common denominator. Sheri from green & crunchy calls these Earth balls, and I guess that’s stuck in my head. But online I found them called Laraballs. Either way, they’re chock full of tasty nutrients.

Earth Balls

  • 3/4 lb nuts
  • 1/4lb dried fruit
  • spices
  1. Grind the nuts a bit in the food processor.
  2. Toss in the fruit and process until it starts to whir about as a cohesive “dough”. For this past week’s class, I used 3/4 lb of a mixture of walnuts and cashews, and 1/4lb of deglet dates.
  3. Once the nuts and dates are pretty well mixed, you can add spices to enhance your vision. I added 2 Tbsp of cinnamon and processed til no cinnamon powder was left in the bowl.
  4. Roll out and cut into rectangular bars if you like the shape, but we often roll them into balls. Luke likes them better if I then roll the balls in shredded coconut.

Earth ballsThe options are endless — add some dried apple and apple pie spices. Ditto dried banana and the spices you use in your favorite banana bread. Play with the ratio to make a more crumbly cookie by adding more nuts or less fruit.

I store them in the fridge in my glass-topped pyrex food storage containers. I’m not sure how long they’ll last there because we gobble them up pretty quickly, but if you needed them to be there longer, you could put them in an airtight continer to keep them from drying out.

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