Fun Energy Bars!

For those of you patiently following my blog, you know I don't post often! Sorry! If it is any consolation this recipe was worth the wait!

This time of year we are so busy, easily distracted, grabbing something to eat on the go and quite stressed, not to mention cold! This is a recipe for catching whatever germ is popular! The recipe I have today is a great way to keep energizing snacks close at hand to grab when you know you won't have time to eat something nourishing, helping your body to stay strong. The ingredients include nuts and coconut oil for energy and warmth, dried fruits for sweetness and some Kashi puffed cereal for that wonderful, puffy, crunchy texture. Feel free to add, subtract, substitute ingredients according to your taste, what you have on hand, or what sounds good to you. Just remember to keep the ratio of dry ingredients to wet ingredients roughly the same!

If you are unfamiliar with some of these ingredients, check out the health food section of your favorite grocery store - it may have these. As a general rule, HyVee usually has all of these ingredients. Otherwise try Whole Foods Markets. Many of these are available in their bulk food section and are less expensive than their packaged counterparts.

1 cup old-fashioned oats

1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds

1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup roughly chopped pecans

1/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts

1/4 cup whole or roughly chopped almonds

1 tablespoon golden flax seeds (or chia seeds, hemp seeds, etc.)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

3 tablespoons melted extra virgin coconut oil

1/2 cup unsweetened whole-grain puffed cereal (like Kashi)

1/3 cup chopped dried apricots

1/3 cup chopped dates

1/3 cup apple juice sweetened cranberries (or raisins, or dried blueberries or cherries)

3/8 cup Whole Unrefined Cane Sugar (Rapadura) OR Turbinado Sugar or Sucanet

3/8 cup honey

3/8 cup almond butter

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Optional ingredient - Kelp flakes or powder OR Dulse flakes

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 13 x 9 inch pan with a little oil or butter (If you like thicker bars, use a smaller pan. If you like thinner bars, use a larger pan).

2. Mix oats, seeds and nuts in a large bowl. Drizzle melted coconut oil on top and stir well.

3. Spread mixture on a large baking dish with sides (I use the broiler pan bottom that came with my oven).

4. Bake in oven for 10 minutes and stir. Bake another 5 to 10 minutes being careful not to burn mixture.

5. When mixture is lightly toasted, pour into a large bowl. Mix in cereal and dried fruit.

6. Combine almond butter, sugar, honey, vanilla and sea salt in a small saucepan. Heat over medium-low stirring frequently until the mixture bubbles lightly, about 10 minutes.

7. Immediately pour the almond butter mixture over the dry ingredients and mix with a spoon or spatula until entire mixture is moist. Spread into prepared pan. Press mixture down firmly with your hands to create an even layer (cool slightly if necessary to avoid burning hands). Refrigerate until firm - or not! Cut into bars.

Tips: This recipe is set up to use whatever ingredients you like. Use more or less nuts, more or less oats, cereal, seeds, dried fruit, etc. Use whatever dried fruits you like - you don't have to use the ones listed here. If you don't like dried fruit - use more nuts, oats, cereal or seeds. I haven't tried this with peanut butter instead of the almond butter, but it should work well. If you try this, let me know! Also - if you cool the toasted oats, nut mixture until it is room temperature or cooler, you can add some chocolate chips. The chips will melt slightly when the hot almond butter mixture is added so the bars will get a little chocolaty in color, but not so much that you completely melt the chips. You can make the dry mixture ahead of time - even double the recipe and store some of it in an airtight container such as a mason jar to use later.

As for the optional ingredients - kelp or dulse - I often add either one of these to almost everything I cook or bake. They are both loaded with minerals - something most of us miss getting in our diet. Start by sprinkling some into everything you cook. You will probably NOT notice a change in taste. This allows you to sneak some much needed nutrients into your food or your family's food and not notice the taste. As you feel more comfortable adding these to your foods, keep increasing the amount to suit your taste. Both of these are available in easy shakers from Whole Foods Markets in their Asian food section. If you are allergic to shell fish, be cautious about using either one of these products. Do some research first or ask a health care provider for more information.

Enjoy!

MMMM! Soul satisfying baguette!

I love to play with food and I am blessed because there are very few foods that I don't digest well. The magic in food comes not only from eating primarily whole, unprocessed foods, but also from eating a wide variety of them. This helps to get lots of different kinds of nutrients in your diet, helps keep you from getting bored and opens the way to finding ways to fix foods that even the pickiest eaters will love.

When we eat the same things over and over again, we can develop sensitivities to certain foods. In America, one of the things we eat over and over again - in fact for most of us this may be 3 meals a day - is wheat. Wheat, especially refined flour is in almost all processed foods. If you disagree, try avoiding all wheat for a week and see how difficult it can be!

For many of us, we may have wheat sensitivities without being aware of it as we attribute various symptoms to other causes. For people diagnosed with Celiac disease, wheat can be literally life threatening for them.

So this wonderful baguette recipe is wheat free and really easy to make! My sister sent it to me. You can get all the ingredients at Whole Foods Market, but most of these are also available in regular grocery stores as well - usually in their "Health Food" or "Healthy Living" areas. HyVee in the Kansas City area probably has the best selection, but Target, WalMart, Hen House and Target carry some of these ingredients as well. Most of these stores are also willing to begin stocking these items if you ask them!

Quick Flaxseed and Chickpea Baguette

From The Wheat-Free Cook (Available on Amazon)

by Jacqueline Mallorca

1/2 cup flaxmeal

1/2 cup chickpea (garbanzo) flour

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/2 cup tapioca starch (tapioca flour)

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp fine sea salt

1/4 tsp anise seeds

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp molasses

1 large egg

1 cup water

1/2 tsp sesame seeds

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line large baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In food processor or large bowl, combine flaxmeal, chickpea flour, rice flour, tapioca starch, xanthan gum, baking powder, salt and anise seeds. Process until well mixed, 10 seconds, stir well. In separate bowl, combine olive oil, molasses, egg and water. Stir to blend.

3. Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients all at once. Process long enough to form a firm, sticky batter about 20 seconds, or beat hard with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes.

4. Using rubber spatula, scoop out batter in large dollops and drop them, touching each other, in a diagonal line across baking sheet. Using spatula, form batter gently into a 14-inch long torpedo shape with humps. Do this as lightly as possible so as not to press air out of batter.

5. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake until brown and crusty, about 25 minutes. Transfer loaf to wire rack and let cool.

My notes: My sister and I make this loaf a little bit shorter and wider and bake it 5 minutes longer. You can use fennel seeds or other seasonings like rosemary in lieu of the anise seeds. Feel free to use plenty of sesame seeds on the top. Jars of sesame seeds can be expensive. I get mine from the bulk section at Whole Foods where they are quite inexpensive.

Get creative with different spices!

Xanthan gum is expensive, however, you only use a little at a time so it lasts forever! Keep it in the freezer to keep it fresh. When you start using more of the gluten free flours (and I will be posting some recipes), you will need the xanthan gum to bind the ingredients.

Knock Your Socks Off Bread

When I first started on this journey of discovery, I checked out the "Whole Foods for the Whole Family" cookbook published by La Leche League International from our local library. I was fascinated by the cookbook as it had fabulous recipes that were almost 100% composed of whole, unprocessed foods. Unfortunately I had to return it and didn't have a clue how to obtain a copy (this was pre-internet days!). I recently purchased a copy of it at http://store.llli.org/public/category/4. First published in 1981, the book was revised in 1993 to add the "nutritional information" per serving.

I am always amused when I read the "nutritional information" in any recipe because they list calories, protein, carbohydrates, fiber, fat, cholesterol and sodium. The magic in food doesn't come from these things. It comes from the micronutrients (remember vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, omega 3's, etc.!) and how the synchronicity of the elements in the food impact the body. So, while I love the recipes, I think the nutritional information may cause people to unfairly judge a recipe because it has too much or too little of one of the listed items when in reality, the recipe may have wonderful health affects on the body.

One of the recipes is for a fabulous bread called "Knock Your Socks Off" Raisin Bread. I have copied the recipe exactly as printed in the book. Don't let the recipe scare you off! While the recipe was created prior to automatic bread makers becoming widely available, I modified it for my bread machine. So continue reading through the recipe and see my comments at the end!

1 1/2 T yeast

1 1/2 T honey

1/4 cup lukewarm water

1/2 cup hot milk

1/2 cup butter

2 T honey

2 T molasses

1 T nutritional yeast

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/2 cup rolled oats

8 cups whole wheat flour

4 eggs

1 heaping T ground cinnamon

1 cup dark raisins

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup packed grated carrots

Dissolve yeast and 1-1/2 T honey in water. Heat milk with butter and pour into large bowl. Stir in remaining honey, molasses, nutritional yeast, salt, yogurt, applesauce and oats. Beat in 1 cup flour, eggs and yeast mixture. Add 1 cup flour, cinnamon, raisins, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts and carrots. Add remaining flour, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Knead 10 minutes. Let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in bulk. Punch down; let rise again for 30 minutes. Shape into 3 loaves. Place in greased loaf pans. Let rise 30 to 40 minutes or until almost doubled. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes. Brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake for 10 minutes longer. Cool on racks. A good gift bread. A raisin bread so good it will, as my husband Angelo says, "knock your socks off!" Yield: 35 servings.

My comments: I modified the recipe first by cutting it in half so it will fit in my bread maker. I used 1 package yeast made for whole wheat flour. I warmed the milk long enough to just melt the butter. Then I combined all the ingredients according to my bread maker instructions. I added all the liquid ingredients first including the water, milk, melted butter, honey (all 3-1/2 T of it), molasses, yogurt, applesauce, eggs. Then I added the dry ingredients including the nutritional yeast (available in the bulk aisle at Whole Foods Market - or just skip it), sea salt (I always use sea salt - much easier on the body), oats and 4 cups whole wheat flour, cinnamon, then the yeast. I set the bread maker on the appropriate setting and let it mix the ingredients for a little while. I had to add additional flour to make the proper consistency. My bread maker has an alarm that lets me know when to add additional ingredients like the raisins, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts and carrots.

The bread was delicious. My husband loved it and it lasted several days without going bad.

It was truly worth the effort!

Hummus - with a colorful twist!

I love the magic of food - whole, amazing food - how it feels when I cook it, how colorful it is, the textures, the tastes, how it comes together in ever more creative concoctions, how it makes me feel and how much fun food can be! When I talk about it, I often get the glazed over stares and can feel the eyes rolling like this person is crazy! So, I have learned to keep quiet unless someone specifically asks me a question. However, my students, who get what I mean about food, are always asking for more and more recipes. So, I am going to try to share as many recipes as I can on my blog. My intention is to design the blog to be easy to search and use. I will add my notes - because I rarely make something exactly as the recipe instructs! I will also mention from time to time how a recipe or specific food can be beneficial in creating vibrant health - for, as I hope most of us know that food is medicine! (How boring - I rather think of it as food is magic!)

Today's recipe is for Black Olive - Sweet Potato Hummus and it comes from Delicious Living (http://deliciouslivingmag.com/). I made it just this week and it was absolutely delicious and so easy! It is great as a dip with fresh veggies or crackers. It would be easy to take for lunch. It would be great on a sandwich or wrap. It makes a great appetizer to take to a party or serve to guests. Sweet potatoes are in abundant supply from the farmers markets right now and quite inexpensive as well!

Ingredients:

1 small sweet potato (about 6 ounces)

1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives

2 medium cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1/3 cup fresh basil leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

Minced sun-dried tomatoes, for garnish

Basil leaves, for garnish

1. Wrap sweet potato in foil and bake at 400 degrees F for about 1 hour, or until soft

2. Remove potato from oven, unwrap, and let cool. Scoop out insides of sweet potato and place in a food processor. Add garbanzos, olive oil, olives, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Puree until smooth. Add 1/3 cup basil leaves and pulse for 10 seconds. Season with salt and pepper, and transfer to a serving bowl. Garnish with sun-dried tomatoes and whole basil leaves.

My notes: If you don't have a food processor, you can try this in a blender but may have to add a little liquid or a little more oil to make sure it mixes properly. You can purchase a small food processor pretty inexpensively and make this in 2 batches as well.

For those of you that like spicy foods, you may want to add more red pepper flakes. I added kelp granules to this before adding any salt. I add kelp granules to almost everything I fix because it contains so many wonderful minerals without affecting the taste as long as you don't use too much.

It is very easy to make garbanzo beans from scratch in a large batch and use 2 cups freshly prepared and drained garbanzos in lieu of the canned beans.

Snickerdoodles!

Snickerdoodles are always fun to take on a picnic or a summer pot luck! Kids and adults love them equally. Here is a really great healthier version. This was one of my kids favorite cookies growing up. They are easy to make and this recipe makes a huge amount. Don't let the title of the recipe fool you - it sounds like another one of those boring healthy foods that taste like cardboard! These cookies are fabulous and always get rave reviews.

I have a funny story to share about the recipe. I was shopping at Whole Foods Market one day and ran into one of the partners for Cal-Ann Farms where they grow and sell live basil. She was providing samples of butter cookies made with lots of basil chopped into them. They were great, but I asked her how come she didn't use healthier flour and sugar. She said she hadn't found a recipe that tasted as great as this so they compromised quality and health value for taste. So I sent her this recipe for snickerdoodles. She played around with the recipe and came up with a new snickerdoodles recipe that is posted on Cal-Ann's website. This link, http://calannfarms.com/recipes.html will take you to their website and the recipe for basil snickerdoodles!

The recipe comes from The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook by Jean Hewitt, published by The New York Times Book Co., 1971.

Wheat Germ Snicker-doodles

1 cup soft butter (make sure to use organic butter, or better yet - raw butter freshly made from a local farm!)

1-1/2 cup brown sugar (I use Whole Unrefined Cane Sugar {formerly Rapadura}, or honey)

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup wheat germ

2-1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup raw sugar (I use whole unrefined cane sugar - coarser than white sugar but works and tastes great!)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

3. Blend in the vanilla and wheat germ.

4. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and stir into creamed mixture. Combine the raw sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

5. Form the dough into balls the size of a small walnut; rollin the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place two inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes.

6. Cool on a rack.

Yield: About 6 dozen cookies

Yummy Chocolate Mousse

I promised to post a recipe for chocolate mousse and just got around to it! It is so satisfying. Just in case you are tempted to eat too much of it, put some in a small wine glass and sprinkle some fresh cut strawberries on top - make it special! Also - don't tell your family what is in it. I had my husband taste it and asked him what he thought it was - he said chocolate pudding and that it tasted good!

The recipe comes from a friend of mine - Dotty Sharp (http://www.consciousdwellings.com/). I have cut the recipe in half and in fourths so don't be afraid to play with it. Her recipe calls for agave nectar. Agave nectar has been given a lot of bad press lately. I'm not sure what to believe. All of the articles I have read about it describe a product and a process that is contradicted on Madhava Agave's website (the kind I have used - although I have always used Agave sparingly because I prefer other sweeteners). Granted, Madhava is trying to sell a product, but their information located at http://alteredplates.blogspot.com/2008/12/madhavas-craig-gerbore-responds-to.html (this is a response to all the bad press) is so far from what the slammers say that I struggle to know what to believe. In the meantime, there are a number of other healthy sweeteners you can use. Each of them will give the pudding a different flavor. These sweeteners include REAL maple syrup (read the label - NO CORN SYRUP), honey (preferably from local-to-you sources) or brown rice syrup.

Enjoy the recipe - let me know if you make it and what you think about it! Also - visit Dotty's website for some great other raw food recipes! (My comments/changes are in parenthesis).

4 avocados

3/4 - 1 cup agave (honey, maple syrup, etc.)

2 tablespoons coconut butter

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon celtic sea salt

1 cup raw cacao powder (you can use regular cocoa powder - just not as healthy as the raw stuff)

Dash of cinnamon (optional)

Blend avocados, sweetener of choice, coconut butter, vanilla and salt in a food processor until smooth and creamy. Slowly add the cacao powder, scraping sides of bowl as needed. Refrigerate at least 4 hours (I can't wait to taste it so I eat it while it is still room temp and it still tastes great! Be prepared though, it doesn't taste like Jello brand pudding! I think it tastes better. The first time I tasted it I wasn't sure it was all that good, but after the first few bites, I think it tastes better!) to allow flavors to blend.

Will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator. Freezes very well.

Enjoy!

Eat fat to lose fat? Hmm . . . Sounds too good to be true!

When I attended the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, we learned a lot about fats and oils - how important they are to the body and how our culture created a fat phobia that has actually proven to be quite harmful to our health. I accepted what they said without question and continue to study about fats and oils as well as help my students discover how to incorporate good fats into their body and learn which ones work best for them.

One of those fats comes from coconut. If you read a nutrition label, you will find out that coconut oil is 100% saturated fat - and the fatty acid is the Omega 6 type. Both these things we have been taught to stay away from and thus, coconut oil has a bad reputation along with becoming expensive since the demand for the product dropped so drastically in the late 1900s. That is what comes from fractionating our foods into categories rather than looking at the whole product.

The fat in coconut oil contains a medium chain triglyceride (MCT). The end product of MCT metabolism is ketone bodies or ketoacids. Rather than bore you with what these are or why they are important to the body, I recommend that you science nerds (like me!) visit http://coconutoil.com for more information (there are a number of articles - even one about a study on obese women using coconut oil to lose weight, increase their good cholesterol and decrease their bad cholesteral). For those of you that simply want to understand what coconut oil can do for you, according to Dr. Mary Newport, M.D. (who wrote an article about using this to help treat her husband who has Alzheimers) coconut oil may help you

• lose weight
• have more energy
• balance hormones
• prevent Alzheimers
• potentially treat Parkinson's disease
• potentially treat Huntington's disease
• potentially treat multiple sclerosis
• potentially treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease)
• potentially treat drug resistant epilepsy
• potentially treat brittle type I diabetes and diabetes type II where there is insulin resistance
• help the brain recover after a loss of oxygen in newborns through adults
• may help the heart recover after an acute attack
• may shrink cancerous tumors

In addition to these, it has anti-microbial properties and is being studied for its effect on various bacterial infections. It also feels great on your skin as an emollient!

It is simple to use - I use it in my oatmeal, to fry eggs and saute vegetables, I make popcorn with it and use it in baking. My new favorite recipe comes from a friend, Dotty Sharp's website http://www.consciousdwellings.com/. Dotty provides health coaching, does presentations at Whole Foods and leads groups on raw food cleansing. She has great recipes on her website and uses coconut oil, coconut butter and raw chocolate to make yummy, yummy, good-for-you treats! Her recipe for raw chocolate sauce is awesome! All of these ingredients are readily available at Whole Foods, on the internet and in some regular groceries such as HyVee as well.

Raw Cacao Sauce

1/2 cup Cold-Pressed Coconut Oil

1 1/4 cup Agave Nectar

1 1/2 cups Powdered Raw Cacao

Blend coconut oil and agave nectar in a food processor until well combined. Slowly add cacao powder, scraping down the sides if necessary.

Use as you would any chocolate sauce. Excellent as a dip for fruits or served over raw ice cream.

Dotty told me her favorite way to eat this is to dip some out with one finger and dip some almond butter with an adjacent finger and eat them together as a great snack!

Carrots - who knew how mighty this common vegetable can be!

I have been doing research on adding certain foods to the diet to assist with a particular symptom for a friend. I am always so grateful when someone asks me to do research because I am reminded how powerful food can be - thus the Magic! So, I was reading about carrots and WOW! (REMEMBER, ONLY YOUR BODY KNOWS WHAT IS BEST FOR IT SO LISTEN TO WHAT IT TELLS YOU WHEN YOU EAT CARROTS!)

The book Healing with Whole Foods, by Paul Pitchford (one of my all time favorite teachers) states this about carrots (read on - the list is long!):

• Protect against cancer,
• Treat night blindness
• Treat ear infections
• Treat earaches
• Treat deafness
• Benefit the skin
• Are anti-inflammatory for the mucous membranes
• Are useful for skin lesions, lung, digestive tract and urinary tract infections
• Ease whooping cough and coughs in general
• Increase the milk supply of nursing mothers and help regulate all hormones
• Help ripen measles and chicken pox
• Strengthen connective tissue
• Aid in calcium metabolism
• Help liquify bile and treat constipation
• Carrot juice heals burns when applied directly.

"For these conditions, eat at least 6 ounces of carrots a day or drink a cup or two of fresh carrot juice. Eating carrot sticks daily helps strengthen children's teeth, and in some cases, reduces overcrowding of the teeth by encouraging the development of the lower jaw. Grated carrots are best for parasites and dysentery and have been used as a poultice over cancerous growths to reduce inflammation and odor. Carrots are cooked in cases of diarrhea; when cooked and pureed or as a soup, they benefit infants with weak digestion. For a concentration of vitamin A and other nutrients, fresh carrot juice is ideal - it should be taken only on an empty stomach and should be diluted with water for infants."

He adds a CAUTION: "Carrot juice is very sweet, and regular consumption may lead to weakened kidneys with symptoms such as head hair loss. More than four cups daily is not recommended."

And for the adventurous he adds: "Carrot tops are bitter. They serve as a mineral-rich addition to soups and broths. The stems can be removed before serving. Adding a little of the tops when juicing carrots makes the juice less sweet and a better remedy for cancer prevention . . ."

Carrots are so easy to add to the diet and really inexpensive! So eat carrots . . . lots of carrots! Raw, baked, steamed, sauteed, in salads, in soups, pureed, and add some fresh juice a few days a week to your routine!

By the way - if you eat too many, your body will tell you this by turning orange!