Saturday 18 July 2015

Recipe lisiticle

I thought I'd put together a lisiticle of frequented recipes used at our house for you and for my own reference....my bookmarks bar titled 'cooking' is so long, and scrolling through it there are so many recipes I wouldn't use any more...sorry raw sugar, you're out...and our tastes, requirements have changed and developed over the past two years so much, I rarely cook how I used too...and I'm not saying how I cook now is better, although I do believe it's better for us, but that I have so much more knowledge now, and there are whole food areas opened up to me since starting our food journey, foods that I never would have considered before, or placed in the too hard basket...hello anything with meat...

So, I thought I'd put together a little lisiticle....let's see how we go....

Breakfast

Pure Harvest - Almond Cinnamon Granola

I quit sugar granola - Coco nutty Granola

Green Smoothies - my go to breakfast during the week with super early starts is a green smoothie. My staple ingredients are kale, celery + leaves, frozen strawberries, half a carrot, 10cm of cucumber, a nob of ginger. With my green smoothie I always add a little something, a slice of the current loaf on rotation, see breads.

Chia Seed Pancakes - these are Beau's favourite anytime of day snack. They are vegan and we use buckwheat flour in place of plain, don't even bother adding the sweetener and cover them with honey, coconut cream, berry compote, lemon, whatever the day presents!

Breads

Paleo sweet potato bread - a friend recently recommended this too me and I dismissed it straight away, mistaking it for another bread that I had trialled and that did not taste nice...then I tried hers and its delish, so I went home and made my own. yum.

Almond Banana Bread - this is the best banana bread I have ever had, and I am a massive fan of this tasty, sweet, oily, warm bread but haven't eaten it for a long time, and have tried to make a healthified version, but nothing quite hit the spot...until now. amazing, go make it. 

Buckwheat and Chia Bread - we make this often, one of the only 'grains' though it's said to be a seed that he can tolerate, and it tastes ok too. It most definitely fills the gap when a bread craving hits. My biggest tip is to cook it for longer than the recipe states, so that a crust forms on the outside, I'm not sure if maybe that is my pan though, as I use a silicone loaf pan, but it definitely needs a bit longer. Delish, make two, freeze one for later, they wont last. 

Raspberry and Chocolate Bread - let me start by saying this is a recipe for muffins, I make it as a bread because I'm lazy and also, I like the look of a loaf better...weird I know. Also, I used about 2 tbspn of coconut flour to make up the two cups of almond flour for a coconutty touch, just be careful with coconut flour, SO absorbent!! 


Mains - honestly, mains are not my strong point, I'd happily survive on salads, soups, simple vegetable fry-ups...but here are a few I have mastered...

Sugar free pulled pork - I can't even count the number of times we have made this in the past year...it is a taste sensation and is a meal that keeps on giving. 

Slow cooked lamb shanks - these are great, and by following the link you can find out all the benefits of slow cooking. A slow cooker or pressure cooker are such a useful kitchen item, we use ours at least 3x a week, for a variety of things. 

Stuffed sweet potato/ pumpkin. - Roast a whole sweet potato in the oven at 180C with the skin on for about and hour depending on the size of the potato, it will be ready when it a fork is inserted easily. Pumpkin is similar, I cut a butternut in half, scoop out the seeds and lay it cut side down on the tray, cook in the same way until soft. Then fill both with your chosen protein, and a side salad. Yum


Zoodles (Zucchini noodles) - our spiralizer is one of our most used kitchen utensils. Well worth spending the money, and we put zoodles with anything, in soups, with bolognese, with the pulled pork, in salads, you name it. I often keep them raw, but you can lightly fry them off to soften and cook, just be aware that they cook down to nothing quite quickly. 


Having an already cooked go to protein is always useful, we often have something ready to go in the freezer, that we can then jazz up with zoodles or baked sweet potato or even a salad. It makes week nights that much less stressful. 



Dessert 

Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes - make them now. 


Fruit particularly berry or any seasonal fruit crumble. An easy desert, especially tasty in winter with some whipped coconut cream, or real cream/yoghurt. So simple to make, and so simple to make healthy, I always add a variety of seeds to my crumble including pepitas and sunflower seeds, adds a little crunch and taste variation. 



The best Pumpkin Pie - seriously it is! This can be made dairy free using coconut oil and coconut cream in place of butter and cream. What ever why you do it, it's always a winner. 

We don't often have desert, so it's not big on my list of recipes, but desert recipes are easy to find on the interweb. Many of the links I have included have so many other recipes on their sites worth looking through...

Snacks/sweets

Kale chips - so easy to make here is one recipe, but there so many more out there. 


Sweet Potato fries - These are a go to snack in our house. Sprinkle cut up sweet potato with garma marsala, or cinnamon and cumin, or any variety of flavouring you choose, some oil and salt rub them well and stick them in a hot oven for 30mins. We will often add these as a side dish at dinner, or just as a snack, often they are eaten straight from the hot tray.



Lemon Pie Bites - Lola Berry has some lovely recipes, but I find she uses a lot of sweetener, mostly dates and maple syrup, these however are an all time favourite and my mother's go to dish to take to events! I sub out the maple syrup for rice malt. YUM



Coconut bounty Balls - for an easier chocolate coating, just melt dark 85% chocolate to coat these morsels. These are so so tasty, but must be kept refrigerated. No need to complicate them with anything other than coconut and a little sweetener. 


Soups

Angela Liddon of Oh She Glows makes some fantastic soups, I recommend them all. It may often look like a lot of ingredients, but they are usually pantry basics, and the flavour is always spot on. We particularly love the Spiced red lentil and Kale soup and the 10 Spice Vegetable Soup. 


Drinks

Kombucha - I make my own, I'm still on the fence with it, but it is a tasty drink. Sarah Wilson's I quit Sugar does a great break down of the benefits here


Fizzy water with berries - we drank so much fizzy water in summer, and we still don't own a soda stream...with a few berries thrown in or some lemon, to me it is more refreshing than any soft drink. Now it's winter and all I drink is Rooibos, but I can not wait for summer to come around again. 



Staples - that I always have in my cupboard/refrigerator


Roasted beetroot - I buy a bunch, wash them, wrap in foil and stick in the oven when I'm cooking other delicacies for 1.5 hours ish, until softish when pricked with a fork. remove, let cool and then peel away the skin. Store in the fridge and add to anything. 

Roasted Veg - chop up any veg selection, pumpkin, parsnip, carrot, sweet potato, onion, etc drizzle a good lug of oil of choice, I use olive or coconut, rub that in then grind some salt over and stick in a medium hot oven for 30-45 mins. 

Almond meal - I ALWAYS make my own, none of this blanched shop bought stuff in our house. Whole almonds in the blender grind to a meal and stick in the freezer for use whenever you need. If you have a good quality blender, you can continue blitzing till it turns to butter... voila! 
Sauerkraut - infamous Belle Gibson has a great recipe for sauerkraut on her app...if you don't have her app then you'll have to wait for the recipe...I'll post it in the coming weeks, as it's so easy and delicious, but any recipe will work. It's almost foolproof.

Chicken Stock - I use Against All Grain's bone broth recipe. Bone broth and chicken stock being virtually the same thing...I always have this in the freezer ready to use, although a bit of prep is involved, it is so tasty, and so easy once you get the hang of it...plus it's free of all the nasties. 


Final Notes

This is by no means a finished list, I started this weeks ago, thinking it would be a walk in the park, then I started looking through my recipes and realised it would be massive. So these are but a few.

On sweetener; this is such a loaded area of discussion that I will keep it simple and up to you. We chose to use rice malt syrup pretty much exclusively in cooking for a variety of reasons, both including health and cost, as I bake a lot it is a very affordable sweetener, but also, as our taste buds have changed with our lifestyle, we find the rice malt syrup to be plenty sweet enough, I usually use less sweetener than the recipe states and sub rice malt instead of honey or maple syrup. Let me stress though that it is completely personal.

This is not the end....there are so so many more recipes, I don't even feel like I have done justice to half my collection, but it is something, with more to come. 

Enjoy xox




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