Category Archives: recipe

Grain-free Parmesan Almond Meal Crackers

Crackers! When you go grain free, sometimes the thing you miss are the crunchy type of things like pretzels and crackers and the like.  I have seen grain-free cracker recipes and always just assumed they were hard or time consuming.  I was incorrect.  I was inspired by this recipe from Elena’s Pantry, but I wanted to add flax and give it cheese!

My version is Parmesan Almond Crackers

Only 6 ingredients, including the salt!

Ingredients:

  • 1-3/4 cups of almond flour
  • 1/4 cup (26 grams) ground flax seed
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 ounce of  parmesan cheese (I had shredded)
  • 1 tablespoon oil (I used macadamia, but you could use olive)
  • 1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  In a large bowl, combing the almond meal, flax meal, cheese and salt and mix well.

In a small bowl, beat the egg and oil together.  Then add to the dry.

Mix this really well.  You might want to use your hands to make sure it is thoroughly mixed, but I just worked it with a rubber spatula. It will be lumpy, like so:

Get 2 large sheet sheets of parchment paper out.  Place the dough, which I pressed into a ball, onto one sheet.

Then cover with the other sheet of parchment paper and roll it out to 1/8 inch thickness.

The top layer of parchment keeps the dough from sticking to the rolling pin, which it will, so do not just try to roll it out.  You could use cling wrap if you don’t have parchment, but you definitely need something on top or you will have a rolling pin full of mess.

What  country does this look like?

Using a pizza wheel, cut the dough into strips to the size of cracker that you want.

I made my crackers this size, maybe an inch?:

Move the parchment sheet onto a cookie sheet and place into the oven.  I had the baking stone in the oven, so I just slid the parchment paper onto the preheated stone.  Using parchment means you don’t have to try to transfer the dough, which would be hard because it is sticky.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes or so.  It will depend a bit on how thick you have rolled the cracker dough.  After 15 minutes, I removed some of the thinner edge pieces that were getting more brown and put the rest back in the oven to finish off.  You want them lightly golden brown.  These will crisp up a bit as they cool as well.

Remove from the oven and let them cool completely. Then break up the pieces.

These are crispy and flavorful.  John thought they tasted just like grain crackers, which they do.  Yum!   They really are Crack-ers because it’s like crack eating them!

I must say that I am totally patting myself on the back for these.  I never knew cracker making was so easy.  This took maybe 15 minutes to get in the oven.

I might try doing a sweet version of these with some cinnamon as a pseudo graham cracker.

Now, these are a little higher in calories because of the nut meal, so don’t go to town on them… ooops…

The best I can do for the calories is to calculate the whole batch.

1566 calories, 127 fat grams,  29 fiber grams,  44 carbs, 72 protein grams.  Low carb and gluten free to boot.

Now my batch yielded about 11 servings of crackers at 1 ounce each. Like so:

This is approximately 142 calories. This is maybe a bit smaller than say an ounce of pretzels, but so tasty.

I am definitely making more of these – – and soon!

Waiting and Corn and Potato Chowder!

I feel like we are just waiting around here to see what happens with the storm. Being far enough upstate to feel less effects, but not knowing exactly how much we will feel it.  It’s scary seeing all the footage of down state. I think the worst part will be the days of wind since the storm will turn back east as it comes north – so we will have winds through Thursday or Friday at least.  When it is windy, it is really hard to sleep – do you all find that?

Anyway, today it has been breezy and a bit gusty at times.  The power flickered off, which makes me wonder if we will keep power tomorrow or not.  I can’t work with no power, even if the company that I work for has a generator – we do not.

While we are waiting for the storm to pass through, how about I post the recipe for the Corn and Potato Chowder?  My version is based a lot on this one.  This ends up being my 3rd crock pot recipe for the month, even though this was not going to be the planned one.  I wanted something easy to serve for the pumpkin carving party yesterday and this fit the bill!

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound 12 ounces of russet potatoes diced (the most time consuming part of this recipe)
  • 1/2 an onion diced
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 16 ounces of frozen kernel corn
  • 3 cups of vegetable broth
  • 5 ounces of bacon, cooked and crumbled
  • 4 ounces of half and half
  • 2 ounces of low fat milk
  • salt and pepper to taste
Place all ingredients in the crock pot except for the half and half and milk.
Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours. After cooking, either remove half of the mixture and blend in a blender or use an immersion blender to blend the soup partially.  You still want lots of chunks.  Return all mixture to the crockpot, put the heat on low and stir in the half and half and milk.  (You can add more milk if you want a thinner chowder.)  Leave this uncovered to heat through.  It won’t need long as you aren’t adding much liquid.
This was so good!  Especially with a little sprinkle of cheese. I love a thick chowder like this and it wasn’t really a calorie-laden soup.  You could sub the half and half with all milk if you want.  This fed 8 people and was all gone.  I would say it probably made about 12+ cups of chowder.  I was bummed there wasn’t any left because I would have liked to hunker down with some chowder to wait out Sandy!
We are going to settle in tonight and watch football.

 

Today’s pink picture. One of my favorite t-shirts!  I have heard you can get wrinkles out of clothes if you iron them, whatever that means!  :mrgreen:


The Breast Cancer Site

Recipe: Crockpot Red Beans and Rice

I am not a bean fan, really, but I do try them from time to time.  One dish I actually do happen to like after trying it in New Orleans is red beans and rice.  I think the key is the right bean.  I am very picky about my beans.  No kidney beans for me, thank you very much.  Anyway, I came across this recipe  and decided to give it a try with a couple modifications.

Red Beans and Rice

First off, this recipe was super, duper easy.  I mean really easy!  Especially as I had the onions and peppers in the freezer already diced.  I like easy!

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound bag of small red beans
  • 1/2 onion chopped
  • 1 bell pepper chopped
  • 1 garlic clove minced
  • 4 ounces of ham or smoked sausage diced (not hot or italian style). Andouille sausage would be great if you can get it.
  • 3 tablespoons cajun seasoning blend of choice
  • 7-1/2 cups of water
  • Cooked rice for serving

Everything into the pool except for the rice, stir and cover. Cook on high for 7 hours.  That’s it! After 7 hours, I turned it down to low and just left it for another hour or so.  John cooked up some rice and we were all set.

The beans were nice and soft and not grainy at all (my biggest peeve with beans).  I was a little worried that it might be too salty, but considering this made about 8 cups of beans, it was pretty much right on.

I portioned this out and froze a bunch for future meals.  Very economical and tasty!

Red Beans and Rice

 

If you don’t think you like beans, give this a try.  Coming from someone who doesn’t like them actually eating and enjoying them – they are good!

Crockpot Cinnamon Chicken

Okay – here is recipe #1 that I tried this month for the crockpot.  I am making and posting 3 no matter what the result.  😀

I found this recipe for cinnamon chicken on The Gracious Pantry.

I modified it by halving it, first off, and  using sweet potatoes instead of carrots, and I left out the cardamom because I didn’t feel like peeling and grinding the pods.  I was in a hurry on my lunch break!  The nice thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t require too many ingredients.

Ingredients:

  • 10 ounce sweet potato
  • 1 pound of chicken breasts (that was 2 from this package)
  • 8 ounces of canned tomato sauce (plain – I just used what we had)
  • 7 ounces light coconut milk (half a can)
  • 1.5 teaspoons of cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Slice the sweet potato pretty thinly into disks or half moons about 1/4 inch?

Layer those in the bottom of the crockpot.  Then place the chicken breasts on top of that.

In a bowl, mix together the tomato sauce, coconut milk and spices:

Pour over the chicken:

Cover and cook on low for 4 to 6 hours.

Lori’s Notes:  Ours had cooked about 5 hours and we were hungry, but the sweet potatoes weren’t quite done, so I recommend going for 6 hours.  I took out the chicken breasts to shred them and John took out the sweet potato slices and microwaved them for a few minutes to finish cooking.  Then it went back in the crock pot to mix.

This was an interesting flavor.  Just like with Indian food, you don’t notice the tomato sauce like you do with Italian cooking.   It tastes totally different. I happen to like the cinnamon flavor in savory dishes (hello koftas!!!), but John isn’t that fond of it.  I will say that this dish needs some salt added to it before cooking.  It was missing that.

The next day, I actually had the chicken and sauce over rice and it was better the next day as the flavors really melded.

I have a small crockpot (4.5 to 5 quart?).  If you have a big one, you may want to go ahead and double the recipe.

I am not sure I would make this again.  John said he would eat it again, but it wasn’t his favorite.  It’s easy, though – big plus!

Holiday working and easy soup

How many of you had to work today? Raise your hand!  I am raising mine.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to  have work to do, but I ended up with pretty much a full day.  I kind of was hoping to have the day off because I worked about 3/4 day on Saturday.

My work schedule has been pretty all over the place lately and I have to admit that I am feeling the effects of being unsettled.  Plus I am feeling tired and worn out. I  need to relax about the work a little bit, but seem unable to do so.  It’s kind of hard to do when you control your own paycheck.

Anyway, I totally forgot to take pictures of breakfast and lunch today.  See? My head is just not quite where it is supposed to be.  Which ideally would be a tropical island or possibly New Orleans, but what are you going to do?  :mrgreen:

Pixie has been enjoying the work on the floors.  It’s opened up all kinds of new places for her to inspect.  Like the intake vent.

I laughed when I took this picture, then she tries to disappear into the vent.  Do not need a kitty in the duct work, thank you very much!  We have to make sure to replace the vent covers after we work on an area or she gets in there.

I did take some photos of dinner.  I made an easy cheater soup tonight. Cream of turkey and rice soup.  Only 4 ingredients, 2 of which were these.

I don’t know if I have ever posted a recipe with condensed any kind of soup before LOL!  I normally don’t cook with it, but the grocery store was discontinuing this organic cream of chicken (who knew this could be organic?) – so I bought a couple of bargain boxes.  If I had precooked rice, this would have been the quickest meal ever, but I didn’t.  I just cooked up a bigger batch to have leftovers later.

I used 1 box of chicken soup and filled the box with 1% milk for a 1:1 ratio.  Put that in a saucepan.  Then I chopped up some cooked turkey we have been feasting on for a while now from the big bird my sister cooked a week or so ago.

Isn’t soup pretty much the last thing you make with turkey leftovers?

Once that came to a simmer and heated through, I added 1 cup of cooked rice.

This was pretty good, I have to say.  And easy.  I like easy.

Plus it helped clean out the pantry.  Always a good bonus.

Pink picture of the day came courtesy of my friend Julianne!

Pink bike would be pretty cool to have, don’t you think?
The Breast Cancer Site

Pumpkin syrup and headstones.

Wednesday musings today.  I’ve been working a lot and my brain no worky very well.

The pumpkin spice sauce – AKA pumpkin drizz.

This is floating around the web and is pretty easy.

Basically, just simmer

1½ cups water
1½ cups sugar
4 cinnamon sticks 0r ground cinnamon (your choice)
1 tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cloves
3 TBSP pumpkin puree (not pie filling)

Simmer everything together for about 5 minutes. Don’t let it boil or it will congeal.  Cool and bottle.

It is a little thick. Kind of like syrup.  You can use it to sweeten up your coffee for that Starbucks pumpkin spice latte. Or just drizzle it on top of milk foam like I do:

Heck, you could really live high on the hog and do whipped cream!

Yes, people, I have tried the Candy Corn M&Ms.

Now most of you know that I am a candy corn connoisseur. I have preferred brands and freshness is key.  So, how do the M&Ms stack up?  Well, they pretty much are white chocolate with a little interesting undertone to them. I wouldn’t say they tasted like candy corn per se, but they were pretty good.  I still like the coconut M&Ms the best.

I took a walk today and walked through the cemetery.  On the main road, you go by Pizza Hut, McDonalds, another pizza place, Dunkin Donuts, Stewarts convenience store and then the cemetery.  Is fate trying to say something there? You be the judge.

Anyway, this is a very interesting cemetery.  I like cemeteries, actually.  Our most famous resident is Jane McCrea, whom I have talked about before.  She was moved several times before coming to final rest here.

Fall colors are just starting to peep out.

This stone is huge.  Is that really necessary?

There are lots of older stones.  Many from the mid 1800s.

Then this one where the poor mother doesn’t even have a name.

I find it interesting when the headstones are broken and just propped together.

You wonder over all the years if these people are never visited any more or the families moved away or whatever.  Just makes you think a little bit.

Plus you can see how long they have been this way because they are solidly in the ground.

Then there was this family plot.  See the smallest headstone on the right?

I think that might be a family pet because it is a dog or something on top of the headstone!

Anyway, that was interesting.  I guess I should have saved this stuff for October near Halloween!

Recipe – Spinach Rice (aka Palak Chawal)

Here is an easy way to sneak in some veggies a make rice not so boring.  Not that I don’t love rice, because I do – but sometimes you want it to be a little exciting, you know?

First off – I used white jasmine rice for this.  My tummy seems to do better with white rice than brown.  I really don’t know how it will be  or how long to cook with brown rice.  Just so you know.  There are a lot of variations on this dish and I kind of cobbled together what I had in the cupboard.

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • half  an onion diced small
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1 green chili seeded and diced
  • 1 large handful of baby spinach
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 cup of jasmine rice
  • 2 cups of water
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • 1/2 teaspoon of garam masala
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • fresh black pepper

This is how much spinach I used.

In a food processor or bullet blender, add the spinach, garlic, and chili along with 2 tablespoons of water (to help blend it).  Then blend into a paste.

You might need to stop it an push down the spinach a couple times.

In a saucepan, add the oil and heat over medium high heat.  Add in the cumin seeds and cook for a minute.

Then add the onion.  Let this cook for about 5 minutes, taking care not to burn it.

Now add the spinach mixture and the turmeric, garam masala, salt and pepper.

Cook this for a few minutes until most of the liquid evaporates. Then add in the rice and cook for just a couple minutes. Keep stirring this so it doesn’t stick.

Now add the water and the bay leaf.

Bring to a simmer, reduce heat a cover.  Cook for 15 minutes or until all the water is absorbed.

Remove the bay leaf. Fluff up the rice to make sure all the spinach is mixed around and serve.  I garnished with a few cashews.

It turns out such a pretty color!  Calories for this are about 165 calories for 3/4 cup of rice.  Serves about 6. It’s really tasty and looks so pretty and green!

You can experiment with any spices you like or try adding some tomatoes or other veggies along with the spinach and really bulk it up.

Jam making tutorial – Apricot Ginger

I had promised to post this a while ago, but then I forgot!  Jam making actually is very easy.  For some reason, I had this idea that it was an all day process and took forever.  It really doesn’t.  You don’t need a lot of special equipment.  Once you get a few things, you are set for making jam. Most stores will carry a jam making kit with the basic tools that just make life easier.  I got a kit for $15 that included this stuff:

I don’t actually use all of these and forgot to include the jar lifter, which I will show later.  I really only use the funnel, the little magnet tool, and the tongs.

The only other thing you need to purchase initially are the jars and lids.  Unless you give all your jam away, then you need to get more jars. After that, you only need to get the sealing disks because you can reuse the jars and rings over and over.  The sealing disks are only good once.

Now, you can certainly do  sugar free jams and jellies, but I don’t bother with that as I don’t go overboard eating the jam.  The flavors are pretty intense, so a spoonful is all I usually have on something like oats.  You also don’t need to use pectin when making jam, but I do because you can’t mess it up. There are several different kinds of pectin out there and you just want to purchase one based on what you want to make.  There are freezer jams, lower sugar jams, plain old pectin.  I happen to like Sure-Jel.  This stuff always works for me.

The nice thing is that this contains recipes and directions for all kinds of different fruits.

First off, get a large stock pot, put in all your stuff.  Tools, jars, rings – but do not put in the sealing disks. Fill with water and bring to a boil. 

 

On the counter, lay out a dishtowel or two.  I use this as a jar filling station to keep from breaking a jar on the counter if it slips.  You will also need a paper towel.

While this comes to a boil and then proceeds to boil away, I prepare the fruit.  You need another saucepan for cooking.  This jam is apricot ginger.

Ingredients:

  • 6 cups chopped fruit  (or 3-1/2 lb whole apricots)
  • 2 tbsp  lemon juice
  • 4-1/2 cups of sugar (with 1/4 cup of that set aside)
  • 1 ounce of finely chopped crystallized ginger
  • 1 box of pectin

Truth be told here, I cut the recipe in half, even though you aren’t supposed to.  I weighed out the pectin to make sure I had half a box.

My apricots:

You can peel them or not – your preference.  You do need to get the stone pit out and cut into cubes.

Toss the cubes into your pot.  I also decided that some ginger would be a good addition to this, so I minced some crystallized ginger (about an ounce) and added it.

In a small bowl, mix the 1/4 cup of sugar with your pectin, then add to the pot.

Bring this to a boil. Yep, you will cook it with no liquid.  The fruit will make it’s own liquid. It takes a while, and you want to stir a lot to keep it from burning.  I also will use a potato masher to make a more even consistency, but you don’t want a puree.

Side step here. At this time, I will remove the jars and rings and put them on the towel to dry out.  Turn the heat off on this so the water is not boiling any more.  Then add the sealing disks to this hot water. You don’t want to boil the sealing disks until they are actually on the jar or you will ruin the seal.

Once the fruit mixture comes to a rolling boil – which means it continues to boil even if you stir it – then add the rest of the sugar (4-1/4 cups).  Stir constantly and bring back to a rolling boil. When it hits a rolling boil, turn the timer on for 1 minute and cook, stirring constantly.  Then remove from the heat.

Now you are ready to ladle into the jars.  Use the jar funnel – very handy.  You don’t need the jar funnel, but it really keeps the jars clean and makes filling quick and easy. Ladle in the jam until it reaches the bottom of the funnel, which also happens to be right where the ring ridge is on the jar.  Pretty neat how that works out.  Do not fill the jars more than this. You need head room to make a seal.

Once you have filled all of your jars, dampen the edge of the paper towel and run it around the edge of the jars to make sure there is no jam on them.

Now using the little magnet tool, snag a sealing disk from the hot water.

Then lay it on the top of the jar.

See how handy that is? You keep things nice and clean by not touching the lids with your fingers.  Clean as they may be, best to be safe.

Turn the heat back on for the water to bring it back to a boil.  Now you will put a ring on each jar.  Do not forget to put the rings on the jars!  The jars are hot, so use a hot mitt or something – unless you have hands made of silicone. You just need to hand tighten the rings, not really crank them on there.

Now use the jar lifting tool (the one I forgot the picture of) and use it to lift the jar and place it into the boiling water.

When all the jars are in the pot, boil for 10 minutes (unless you are at altitude, then it is 12, I think? Check the instructions).

Remove using the jar lifter and set all jars back on the towel.  As the jars cool, you will hear a little pop of the vacuum seal happening.   Let the jars cool completely and label them.

Couple notes.

–  Make sure you have 2 inches of room over your jars with water in the pot.

– I like to put a trivet into the bottom of the pot to keep the jars from bouncing around as the water boils.

– You will likely end up with a jar that is not completely full.  Do not waste a sealing disk on this jar as you can’t seal it properly. Just refrigerate this and eat it first!

 

– You can test the seal on your jars after they have cooled by pressing your finger into the center of the lid.  If it pops up and down – there is no seal and you need to eat that jar right away.

Cold Brewed Coffee on a hot muggy day

Heat wave!  This northern girl doesn’t like such heat and humidity.  Not to mention what it does to my hair! 😀  One nice thing about really hot weather?  The gym is empty.  Not sure why because going into the air conditioned gym this morning was like a little slice of heaven.

Today was lower reps and higher weights for this set.

Exercise Set/rep/weight
1. Crunches on stability ball 2 sets of 15
2. Complex: High Pull, Front Squat/Push Press, Back Squat, Good Morning 4 sets of 8 each exercise with 20# bar
3A.  Deadlift 4 sets of 5 with 95# bar
3B. Dumbbell Overhead Press with rotation 4 sets of 5 with 20# DBs
3C. Single Leg Squat 4 sets of 5
3D. Bent Over Row 4 sets of 5 with 55# bar

I would have set off the lunk alarm at Planet Fitness with the deadlifts by the 4th set.  Good thing I don’t go there  😈

It was already quite warm when I got back.  I made up cold-brewed coffee for today. It takes a little forethought, but soooooooo much better than brewing coffee and putting ice in it or saving old coffee in the fridge.  The night before, take 1 cup of ground coffee and put it in a container with 4 cups of water.

Stir well.

Stick in the fridge overnight and then filter it the next day.  A french press would be faster.  This is the most time consuming part because you have to wait for coffee to filter through. This is just the basket from our Bunn on top of the carafe.  It works pretty well.

Voila – beautiful and flavorful cold-brewed coffee (with milk)!

I had made up some banana custard oats as well and let them sit out to get to room temp.  I know it sounds gross, but I didn’t want hot oats and overnight refrigerator oats aren’t my thing.

Pixie is hiding from the heat.

Poor girl. I almost have a mind to take her to the groomer and get her shaved for the summer, but I don’t know how she would handle it.  Our AC downstairs does okay, but it really only gets down to about 77 degrees since we just have the one for the whole downstairs.  I don’t know how you Gulf states people can handle it.

Lunch time:

Loving the ground turkey again.

The day went pretty fast with work today.  This whole week went fast.  I took a break for an iced latte.

Hot or cold. Is there any way coffee is bad??

With the heat, I wanted a nice cool dinner.  I had made up some blueberry topping and put it in a bowl with some Cascadian Farm Oh’s and greek yogurt.

This was awesome!  Almost like a dessert 😀

We need to wait until the sun goes down before walking for a little ice cream tonight.  First up will be a movie.  Anyone remember the old Hobbit cartoon from the late 1970s?

Memories.  It’s not a 70’s feature without the guitar playing folk singer!

 

Hope you all are staying cool.

The Great Veggie Experiment – Swiss Chard!

One of my goals this month was to try 2 new veggies.  Well, the month has been getting on and I needed to get to it!  I was at the farmer’s market on Saturday and  saw all these pretty fresh greens.

I know I am in the great internet minority, but kale does not do it for me.  I just don’t like it (sorry Roz!).  I talked with one of the farm ladies about the swiss chard.  It was so colorful that I wanted to give it a try.  She said it would be less bitter than the kale and less tough.

Recommendations were to chop the stems up small and  cook lightly with olive oil and garlic.  Sounds simple.

According to wikipedia, chard is one of the healthiest veggies chock full of vitamins A and C, plus iron (which is why the stems are red – pretty cool).

My recipe:

Serves 1. (John was not interested in the chard)

  • 5 to 6 stems of swiss chard
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil (I used macadamia nut oil)
  • 1/2 clove minced garlic
  • salt and pepper to taste

I chopped up the stems small and did ribbons of the leafy tops.

I am not a huge fan of the garlic, but I don’t mind roasted garlic.  So, we bought a jar of that to use.

You can use fresh if you like.  I like the milder taste of this stuff.  I used 1/4 teaspoon, but use as much as you like – especially if you are not meeting with anyone after eating it 😀

In a large pan, heat the oil and add the garlic over medium to medium high heat.  Cook for a couple minutes and then toss in all the greens.

Cook for several minutes folding the greens around with tongs until they are lightly wilted.  I removed the leafy parts first, which just picked right up with the tongs, and left the stem parts in for another couple minutes to soften them up a bit.

Then onto a plate.

I love how these kept their color!  Sometimes I wish that I actually liked eating veggies as much as I like the idea of eating veggies because they are pretty.

The verdict?  Not bad.  They were not really bitter (yay!) and seemed to have a milder flavor than sauteed spinach, plus they did not get as slimy as sauteed spinach.  The texture is somewhat chewy, but less chewy than kale.  I probably will not add chard to my veggie rotation very often, but I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at it if offered to me.