I love food (good food, that is)! After I eat breakfast, I am immediately thinking about what I am going to have for lunch, and then supper. When we are on vacation, I wonder what delicious food we are going to partake in along the way. Food...yum! Here are some of our favorites we have tried lately!
Sunny Millet topped with strawberries and blueberries
Tempeh Tacos with Black Beans adapted from "Feeding the Whole Family". This is by far my favorite cook book! We have made a multitude of recipes from it: the millet above, falafel, scones, and pizza dough to name a few.
More Tempeh Tacos. Tempeh is soybeans that are pressed together into a brick. Think of tofu but soybeans and not so dense and mushy.
More of the raw granola topped with bananas, blueberries, and almond milk. Best cereal ever!
Our new favorite snack: equal parts yogurt and peanut butter with some cinnamon and things to dip in it.
This is my favorite lunch meal! I use a harvest blend of grains/beans from Trader Joe's (quinoa, cous cous, dried garbanzo beans, and pasta) and then added corn, edamame, raisins, and red onion although you can add whatever you have on hand.
"Vegan Mac and Cheese". We used a mixture of random noodles we had left and added zucchini and hamburger crumbles (gasp!)
I have been trying to give Lauren more options around meal time hoping that she will pick out something that she will actually eat. The other day I asked her what she wanted (she normally replies, "Pizza!") and she said, pizza and eggs. So we made a delicious egg breakfast pizza.
Crust Recipe
1 pkg (or 2 and 1/4 tsp. of active dry yeast) mixed with 1 cup warm water. Add one tbsp. olive oil and honey. Mix in 2 1/2 cups white flour and any seasonings you like in your crust. Knead for a good while (5-10 minutes by hand or in a standing mixer until it forms a dough ball). Let sit in a warm spot covered by a towel for 15 minutes to rise. Roll out or toss out by hand onto your pizza pan/stone and cover with toppings.
Sauce Recipe
Melt about 2 tbsp butter in a sauce pan. Add 2 tbsp. flour and whisk together to form a rue. Slowly add 1 1/4 cups milk and whisk until thickened about 2 minutes. Sometimes I let it sit a bit and then come back.
Toppings
I used 6 eggs (I think) and cheese but you could add some meat or veggies as well.Be sure to add pepper to your eggs, white pepper would be excellent!
A post all about food! We have been eating some of our favorites this week and I thought that I would share them with all of you. Lauren absolutely LOVES dates. If she could, she would eat them all day. Unfortunately, like all fruit, they have a lot of natural sugars in them and we don't like hyper Lauren so we have to restrict her 'date intake'. The other day I was so proud of her in the grocery store when we were walking through the produce section and she was yelling and pointing, 'apple, banana, grapes, booberries'; glad she knows her fruits instead of candy bars. Evidence here...
This is how she responded when she knew she was put on a strict date diet
Now comes the horrible part of the story. I usually get our dates from the bulk section at Whole Foods but haven't made a trip there in quite some time. Jewel had a nice deal on some good-looking, plump, dates and Lauren spotted them in the grocery store and started screaming 'yum'. Anyways, I gave her one and Kyle gave her three. It wasn't until the last one that Kyle gave her that she spit a little something in his hand...a pit!! That means that she ate three of these suckers...
Now onto the next treat. I really love a good grilled cheese and am looking for fun variations often. My internship supervisor told me about this and I had to try. Here is a fig (similar but not the same as a date)
Put it through the mini-food processor until it was chunky
Put a few slices of brie on my bread (with butter)
Topped the brie with some thin apple slices
Put the fig chunks on top of that
Grilled it up and yummo!
Lauren kept saying 'more please' in sign language. Here she is mid 'more'.
and mid-'please'
Now onto dessert. I am big ice cream lover. I usually have to eat a heaping bowl every night before I go to bed. Since I have been slowly cutting processed foods out of my diet and eating less sugary things, ice cream just hasn't tasted quite the same. So...I made my own! Take about 1 1/2 frozen bananas and plop them into a food processor.
Keep on low and occasionally scrape down the bowl. If you want a 'dippin dot' texture, you can stop here. Otherwise it is a good time to add anything you might like in it.
I added a few carob chips and spoonful of almond maple butter. Cold Stone has a banana ice cream so think about what you would add to that.
Mix it all up on low again until the desired consistency is reached
Because there are no preservatives, you really need to eat it that night otherwise the banana will start to brown up. A yummy, healthy treat that you don't have to worry about your kiddos eating.
