The past several weeks have been extremely busy for my daughter and me,
Sauteed portobello mushrooms with cilantro and purple onions
but even though the weeks passed by in a blur,
Sauteed collards, carrots and purple onions with spicy noodles
we’ve still been eating a large variety of whole foods. With some noodles, sprouted breads, and homemade flatbreads issued into the mix. Some of the dishes featured in this post were taken within the first week of this month. Flour based products, even gluten-free are rare in our house. We treat them as an occasional supplement.
Sauteed portobello mushrooms and gluten-free sprouted bread
I will say that a lot of the meals eaten, were prepared several days in advance,
Gluten-free Chapati (homemade Indian flatbread)
frozen and brought out to consume either by itself, or
Chapati and Dhal
in addition to another quickly prepared whole food dish meal. In total, none of the meals took over 15 minutes to prepare. How’s that for quick, nutritious food that’s great for the body?
In other news…
Knitting a twin sized afghan (100% merino wool). This yarn is incredibly soft.
In addition to food, I was able to knit a bit more on this blanket. This picture was taken about two weeks ago and is posted on my crafting website, it’s grown a LOT since that time. My daughter loves the colors and calls it… Insanity.
What’s our first meal of the day? A slight (ok… huge) twist on the planned hash browns. I wasn’t thinking about deviating from that… but as happens when I’m creating in the kitchen, what I had intended to make became something else.
I remembered that I still had purple cabbage and so I decided to let that be the main ingredient and the red potatoes took a back seat.
The purple cabbage added sweetness to the dish. I’d added a small amount of oil (perhaps a tablespoon) to the skillet, added my freshly ground spices/herbs before adding the vegetables. In doing this, the flavor from the spices/herbs is infused into the oil. It sure makes the house smell amazing.
Snack Bowl
This snack bowl has raisins, cashews, and walnuts. The foods that we eat are whole foods (food in its natural state) which is something the body needs/craves. Proper nutrition enhances our health and can help prevent a variety of health-related diseases.
This is how we eat all the time, so it’s nothing new. We eat most of our meals at home. Yes, even with my hectic schedule. It’s much more nutritious and naturally, I save much more money by not buying processed foods, purchasing takeout or eating at a restaurant. Don’t have the time to cook? My meals are usually ready in ten minutes, with a few it’s thirty minutes. Still shorter than going out to eat, and again, that’s more money for me that I can save/invest. We make time for what’s important.
My daughter loves frozen treats (especially those that are fruit based). I’m thrilled that she doesn’t like the artificial based fruit pops and I know that has everything to do with eating a mainly whole food plant based diet since she was born. She’s now 14.
My daughter eating her fruit popsicle
Yesterday, my Bapon Organix popsicle mold stainless steel popsicle molds arrived and I made her the frozen fruit pops that you see above. As you can see, she’d already taken a bite out of the fruit popsicle!
Years ago, I had plastic popsicle molds, but I tossed them away almost as quickly. Since then, when my daughter wanted a frozen treat we simply placed it into a glass or stainless cup and placed it in a freezer. Recently, I decided to purchase a dedicated popsicle mold, but I didn’t want it to be plastic, which is why I chose stainless steel.
The popsicle ingredients which are about to go into my Vitamix
Pineapple, strawberry, spinach fruit pops
1 pineapple cut up and cubed
1 cup strawberries
1 cup spinach
1 tablespoon of hibiscus flower petals
Directions
Combine everything into a blender (I used my Vitamix) and blend. The hibiscus petals were finely ground in my high powered blender.
Place blended fruit into a bowl
Slowly add blend to the popsicle molds
Place in the freezer and leave until frozen.
Notes:
This makes 12 fruit pops. Since my mold only holds six popsicles, the remaining batter was placed into a container and will be made into dehydrated fruit cookies later today. My daughter really loves these fruit pops. She was impatient and ate one after three hours. She did tell me that it was almost frozen. She had another after it had been in the freezer for five hours and she said it was completely frozen.
About my Bapon Organix popsicle mold
I purchased this popsicle mold from Amazon Prime. Since I’m an Amazon Prime member and my order was over $35 (and it was available at the local Amazon warehouse) I received it the same day. It’s much too soon to give an honest review, however, my initial reaction is that I really like it a lot. It’s made out of steel, it’s solid so with proper care it will last a very long time.
I made this dish. It’s a purple cabbage stir fry and chana masala.
In a large stainless steel bowl, I combined the purple cabbage, sweet red, yellow and orange peppers, cilantro, and I added some freshly ground spices and herbs. The chana masala was leftovers from a dish that I’d prepared about two weeks before. I made a lot and simply placed the large batch into two serving size containers and stored in our deep freezer.
Meal prep is perfect for anyone, but most appreciated by those (like myself) who stay extremely busy. The times that I really don’t feel like preparing a meal, all I need to do is decide what meal that has already been prepped, that I want to eat. Not only does it save me a lot of money doing this, it also ensures that the foods I eat aren’t loaded with preservatives and there are countless studies that prove that following a whole food lifestyle is superior to consuming processed foods. Knowing this and definitely seeing the benefits (47 and still medication free, my last cold was in 2002) when compared to others, why in the world would I settle for something less? Yes, at times it takes an effort to prepare meals, but I’ve long ago I learned that we make time for what we think is important.
My daughter and I are still experimenting with gluten-free flours. Last week it was gluten-free chocolate chip cookies and yesterday we made a gluten-free pizza! We don’t eat too much pizza in our household. I can’t say why exactly, my daughter and I do enjoy preparing pizzas, but there are so many other foods that we enjoy also. We don’t eat too much processed food, the ‘processing’ that is done is conducted by us.
Gluten-free pizza and an herbal tea
This is the first gluten-free pizza that we’ve made using gluten-free flour and it definitely won’t be the last. In the past, I have used veggies/mashed beans/flax to create a gluten-free crust and I love those also.
I’m slowly doing my research about gluten-free cuisine. Over the past several years here on this blog and my now defunct VeganMomma blog (started that in 2003) I mentioned that I avoided flour because it didn’t really agree with me. My reactions were slight nasal congestion and occasional stomach bloat. If I avoided it, I didn’t have that issue. But back to the pizza making. Yesterday, I was able to use three new kitchen appliances to prepare our pizza.
My handcrafted cutting board. Isn’t it gorgeous? It’s 17″ x 12″. I told the woodcarver what I wanted and he made it to my specifications.
Here’s my brand-new customized cutting board. I’m loving this board made from exotic wood and I’m calling it Ruth. I rarely name inanimate objects and this is only the third item that I’ve ever named. The others are my Kromski Sonata spinning wheel (which I’ve named Ruth) and my Toyota Prius, which I’ve called, Naomi. I must say that it was a pleasure testing this board out for the first time yesterday.
I clean my hands before, during and after cooking.
Before I even started making my pizza dough, I washed my hands thoroughly. Handwashing is something I do often during meal preparations.
My gluten-free dough was made using brown rice flour and tapioca flour. I added all the ingredients, mixed for a few minutes with my Kitchen Aid stand-alone mixer and placed everything into a bowl. I set the dough aside for a few hours, came back and
placed the pizza dough on this cutting board.
I proceeded to roll it into a ball
and flatten it out to gain the appropriate pizza shape.
I kept the toppings very simple, just tomatoes, onions, curry leaves, and a variety of other spices and herbs.
I transferred my pizza dough to my brand-new bamboo pizza peel and added the toppings.
Once my daughter and I had added all the toppings we proceeded to place it on the steel baking stone (the last new kitchen item) but… that didn’t work. Whoops! Why did this happen? I think my sauce was too liquidy, which made the pizza crust to moist to slide off the bamboo pizza peel. My way of getting around that was transferring the pizza to my perforated pizza pan.
I placed the pizza into the oven for five minutes (baking at 500 F) and then I took it out, slid the pizza onto the bamboo pizza peel and then I was able to easily place it on the steel baking stone. I positioned the peel towards the back of the baking stone and gently shook it back and forth! Viola, the pizza slides onto the baking stone. Why did I purchase a baking stone? For the crispy crust of course. I’d been sitting on this want for several years. I must say, I was not disappointed with this purchase. The baking stone made the pizza crust very crispy, which is just the way my daughter loves her pizza crust!
Even with the minor setback of the pizza not sliding of the bamboo pizza peel (at least the first time), I must say that this small pizza turned out amazing! Although we kept the ingredients simple, it was bursting with flavor and the added bonus was the crispy crust! I could not replicate that level of crispness with my perforated pizza pan. We plan to create another pizza (or possibly a calzone) tomorrow. The main gluten-free flour I’ll be using is extra fine white rice flour.
I must say that I really enjoyed using my new kitchen appliances; handcrafted cutting board made with exotic wood, bamboo pizza peel, and steel baking stone. They will be receiving a lot of use in our household.
My daughter loves sweets. A lot of the sweets she does eat are fruits, but occasionally she’ll eat cookies. The thing is, if/when she does consume them, they cause skin issues. I suspected it might be related to flour/dairy and after some trial and error, that has been confirmed. How did we find out? Well… I challenged her to go whole foods plant based only for two weeks and I gently pushed her along with a few murmured protests from her. Of course, this meant no dairy or white sugar. The whole foods plant-based she was fine with (It’s mainly how she eats anyway), but eliminating the dairy and sugar? Oh boy… now that was a challenge, and she was successful. At the end… she did see that mom MIGHT be right when it came to what triggered her skin issues. Her skin is brighter and the skin disruptions are starting to subside. Guess what? She’s still eating this way.
Last evening, we made gluten free chocolate chip cookies, and… they’re vegan. However, they taste like your regular cookie. I didn’t think I had time to make anything today, but… we managed to squeeze in the time to prepare the cookies.
The semi-sweet chocolate morsels (Sunspire) was 75% Cocoa and the cookie dough sweetened with natural fruit juices. It’s how I make most of my desserts (naturally sweet) when I do prepare them. I was introduced to that when I was 21 by a young lady, who avoided white sugar because of yeast infections. Although I didn’t have that issue, sweetening desserts naturally captured my interest and so I willingly tumbled down that creative rabbit hole. 🙂
I don’t bake too much, however, since my daughter loves her sweet treats, I will have to step up my game and give her more few baking lessons. I am not a big sweet eater (I much prefer savory) but I did have a cookie and I must say that I did like it a lot My daughter loved them and had a few… without milk. I do believe I’ll tweak the recipe a bit.
Which means… making more cookies, which of course makes my daughter very happy.
What was the flour that was used? Sorghum flour and Tapioca flour and I added Xanthan gum. I’ve been sitting on purchasing a ‘proper grain mill’ for years, most likely I’ll get around to purchasing that sooner rather than later. If any of you follow my website, you already know that I’ve narrowed it down to two (although one is clearly ahead) and the added bonus is all the parts are made right here in the USA.
Instead of the canned cooking sprays (check out those ingredients some time and research the ingredients) I use an oil mister as seen above. I paid a little over $20 for it, but it will last me a long time. This particular bottle contains olive oil and I must say it does an excellent job spraying my baking trays.
My idea for creating the grain/free chocolate chip cookies was the above book. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. However, it was my source of inspiration.
I’ve made my own supplements for over twenty years. Last evening, I decided to make some more herbal supplements. I make them for some of the herbs that I purchase in bulk. I’ll take them if I don’t feel like consuming them in a tea or adding to a meal. Last evening, the herbs that made their way into my vegetarian gel capsules were all bitter herbs and while I do drink this blend (or other bitter herbs) as bitter tea or consume bitters in my food, at times, I like adding them to capsules also. 😉
One of the many fabulous things about making your own herbal supplements is you know exactly what’s going into what you create, it’s cheaper, the herbs I purchase are much better quality since I get it from a trusted source (and harvest my own), and you get more of the actual herbs in each supplement because… there’s no filler. 😉 I’ve been creating my own supplements for over twenty years. I use The Capsule Machine, it holds 24 capsules. The capsules used are vegetarian. I use the largest size, 00. The only thing left for me to do is grind the herbs and… put them together.
Here’s my completed herbal supplements. I made 72!
I’ve taken quite a few herbology courses and as I mentioned in an FB post, that I wrote a few weeks ago, my “go to” Herb Bible is Planetary Biology.
(I’d recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about herbs. I met the author back in the late 1990s.
By the way, I’ve had this book in my possession for over twenty years.
Many nutritionists, herbalists, and other health experts believe that far too many modern industrialized humans are deficient in bitter substances, which in part contributes to our epic rise in digestive related illnesses, inflammatory conditions, immune challenges, diabetes, and more.
Some of you might already know the importance of consuming bitters, but others might be thinking… why do I consume bitter things? Bitters are great for your liver, it stimulates digestion, controls sugar cravings, and an entire host of other benefits.
I placed my bitter herbal supplements inside this mason jar.
Of course, understanding, respecting herbs/spices, and their benefits are something that I’m passing on to my daughter. God has placed created many natural things in our world that we can use to enhance or heal ourselves of a variety of ailments. I’m honoring him, by utilizing what’s available to me.
In other news…
This evening, we’re making gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. Actually, they’re in the oven now and my daughter has already taken a few pictures.
My daughter loves sweets. A lot of the sweets she does eat are fruits, but occasionally she’ll eat cookies. The thing is, if/when she does consume them, they cause skin issues. I suspected it might be related to flour/dairy and after some trial and error, that has been confirmed. How did we find out? Well… I challenged her to go whole foods plant based only for two weeks and I gently pushed her along with a few murmured protests from her. Of course, this meant no dairy or white sugar. The whole foods plant-based she was fine with (It’s mainly how she eats anyway), but eliminating the dairy and sugar? Oh boy… now that was a challenge, and she was successful. At the end… she did see that mom MIGHT be right when it came to what triggered her skin issues. Her skin is brighter and the skin disruptions are starting to subside. Guess what? She’s still eating this way.
