Roasted Broccoli with Parmesan and Stuff {Secret Recipe Club}

May 6, 2013 By

Roasted Broccoli with Parmesan I love broccoli. I mean, I looooovvvveee broccoli. Steam it, drown it in butter, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and MMMMmmmmMMMM! That’s pretty much as close to heavenly as a vegetable can get.

So I was super excited (probably more than one should be regarding cruciferous vegetables) to see that my Secret Recipe Club assignment for the month, Life of a Modern Housewife, had a delicious recipe for broccoli! Um, yes, please! Heavenly vegetables? How could I resist!

If you, too, like roasted vegetables, The Modern Housewife has a great roasted carrots recipe as well. I absolutely love Chinese dumplings, so I’m definitely going to be trying her Steamed Chinese Dumplings recipe because she makes it look awfully easy (and way cute). If you’re more into desserts, try her Lemon Meringue Cupcake!

But back to the broccoli. What I love about this recipe is that it’s a sprinkle-this-and-drizzle-that kind of recipe. Totally my favorite way to cook! Honestly, there are so many recipes I come up with at home that I never blog about because I never take the time to sit down and measure them, and I know you all get tired of my ambiguous directions. But really, this recipe is so simple, and you can start with a whole pile of broccoli, or just a handful, and go from there with a sprinkle and a drizzle. I will say - for the inquiring minds that want to know - that I had a little less than a pound of broccoli florets, and I used 2 cloves of garlic. Other than that it was seriously just drizzling and sprinkling.


Roasted Broccoli with Parmesan and Stuff

Ingredients

  • Broccoli Florets
  • Garlic Cloves, Sliced
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • Sea Salt
  • Black Pepper
  • Lemon Juice and Zest
  • Grated Parmesan
  • Pine Nuts (or Sunflower Seeds, or Sliced Almonds)

Instructions

  1. Place the broccoli florets on a rimmed baking sheet. (I used my cast iron pizza pan.)
  2. Sprinkle them with the sliced garlic cloves (as many or as few as you want!)
  3. Drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  4. Roast for about 20 minutes in a 425F oven. Remove from the pan into a bowl, and drizzle with a little bit more olive oil and a splash of lemon juice. Stir in some lemon zest and pine nuts, and top with Parmesan cheese before serving.


If you’d like to give the Secret Recipe Club a try, you can apply to join here.


18 Comments Filed Under: On The Table, Sides Tagged With: , ,

Maple Cream Scones {Secret Recipe Club}

February 4, 2013 By

Can you believe I have never made scones before? (Oh, wait. I take that back. I did make them once, about 5 or 6 years ago. As I recall, they were really quite good, but for some reason I have never made them since.)

Until just recently. I was inspired to give them a try again after browsing through PheMOMenon, my assignment for the Secret Recipe Club this month (If you’re a food blogger, find out how to join here - it’s so much fun to cook and bake from other blogs!). Holly, PheMOMenon herself, writes about her family and her kitchen adventures as she “conquers the world one recipe at a time”.

I had some trouble figuring out which of her recipes I wanted to conquer myself, so I pinned a few recipes to try later. Her Super Almond Granola is at the top of that to-try list, and I promise will be made in the very near future. Since I’ve been on a bit of a mug cake kick lately, I also want to try her Chocolate Mousse Mug Cake, which sounds divine and has only four ingredients! And these Cinnamon Roll Waffles look like they’d be great for a decadent weekend or day-off breakfast, don’t you think?

But what I actually made was her Maple Pecan Scones - I love the maple flavor, and I was interested in trying my hand at scones for the first time in years.

Unfortunately, my scones did not turn out very scone-like, but that was 100% completely my fault. Although I did fiddle with the ingredients, my biggest mistake was cramming the triangles into too small of a pan so that they smooshed together, making them look more like a coffee cake or something than actual scones. Next time, I’ll know, and will use a bigger pan! But otherwise, they turned out quite delicious in my opinion, and I’m going to be adding scones to my regular breakfast repertoire.

I used freshly ground white wheat flour, made in my WonderMill grain mill from soft white wheat berries, and you would never know these scones were made with whole grains. Delicious with a tender crumb… yum!

Recipe: Maple Cream Scones

Ingredients

  • 2 cups freshly ground soft white wheat flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 3/4 cup cold butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • Cream (optional)
  • Raw sugar (optional)

Instructions

  1. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
  2. Chop the butter into small pieces, and cut it into the flour mixture using a pastry blender or a couple forks.
  3. Combine the liquid ingredients into a smaller bowl or measuring cup and whisk together until the egg is blended. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir just until combined.
  4. Dump the dough onto a lightly floured counter-top, and pat it into a circle about 8 inches across. Use a pizza cutter to cut it into 8 triangles.
  5. Place the scones on a baking sheet, leaving plenty of room between each one to give room for rising and spreading (a couple inches).
  6. Brush the scones with the cream, if desired, and sprinkle the raw sugar (if desired).
  7. Bake at 350F for about 25 minutes, or until scones are golden on top.




6 Comments Filed Under: Bread, Breakfast, On The Table Tagged With: ,

An Easy Pasta Side Dish {Secret Recipe Club}

January 7, 2013 By

“Grumpy’s Honeybunch” , aka Shelby, writes about her life and the people she loves, and those subjects often revolve around food. Her extensive collection of recipes includes quite a few that caught my eye, including Sour Cream & Chive Potato Bites, Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts, and her Mom’s Cheese Ball (I love family recipes!).

I was in need of a simple side dish for dinner and was thinking that pasta would work nicely, so I decided to make her Pasta with Garlic and Oil, originally by Mark Bittman, one of my faves. Whenever I typically make a simple pasta side dish, I just drizzle it with olive oil and add a few herbs, but adding the garlic takes it to a new level of deliciousness that’s elegant enough for guests yet retains its simplicity. I took out the chili peppers because we don’t eat those around here, but I kept with her idea of basil because I love basil! I wish I hadmore fresh basil on hand, because nothing beats fresh basil, but I supplemented my little bit of (frozen) fresh basil with some dried. It was still delicious, but the fresh basil would take it over the top!


Pasta with Garlic, Herbs and Olive Oil

Ingredients

  • 1 pound pasta, cooked
  • 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • pinch of salt
  • 1/3 cup fresh basil, or 1 TBSP dried basil

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil and garlic with a pinch of salt in a pan over medium-low heat until the garlic is golden, shaking the pan gently to stir as necessary.
  2. Pour the garlic sauce over the noodles, adding extra oil or reserved water from cooking the pasta if it’s dry. Add basil, salt and pepper to taste, and serve.


The Secret Recipe Club is a great way to find new blogs and bloggy friends… and of course, some pretty awesome recipes! Find out how to join here.



7 Comments Filed Under: On The Table, Sides Tagged With: ,

Vegan Spelt Chocolate Chip Cookies {Secret Recipe Club}

October 8, 2012 By

Wheat-Free Dairy-Free Egg-Free Nut-Free Spelt Chocolate Chip Sunflower Seed Butter Cookies

My most profound apologies to Noelle of An Opera Singer in the Kitchen. Although I love to sing and I love music, I have to admit… I’m not a big fan of opera. Like real, actual opera, where they dress up and sing tragical stories where everyone dies.

However, I am a big fan of the well-trained classical voice, and I can’t help but feel a thrill when I hear the depths of passion and power an excellent voice can exude. As a choral singer, I’m particularly fond of oratorios (Handel’s Messiah is a famous example) and the like, but as long as I’m being honest, I must say that my favorite music genre is pop opera. I know that makes me totally plebeian, but there you have it. Sarah Brightman, Amici Forever, Il Divo, Josh Groban… yes, I confess I am a fan of all of these.

But you don’t have to be an opera fan to enjoy Noelle’s blog! You just have to be a fan of food… and I think we all qualify. Noelle has got quite a fabulous collection of recipes there, including a large number of vegan recipes. Now is the perfect time of year to try out her Fluffy Vegan Pumpkin Biscuits or perhaps Almond Quinoa Hot Cereal. Her BBQ Chickpea Burgers are on my list to try.

As you know, I love spelt, so I was quite happy to discover her selection of spelt recipes. In fact, I ended up trying her Spelt Choco-Peanut Butter Cookies as a treat for My Certain Little Someone to share with his Wednesday night class at church. They were a huge hit! I have to admit, that despite the fact that I am avoiding carbs and sugar right now, I snuck one or two. Or maybe three.

I made a few adjustments to the recipe to make them allergy-friendly for The Boys, the most notable being eliminating the peanut butter chips because they can’t eat those. I still wanted to retain the “peanut butter flavor”, though, so I thought maybe I could try replacing the margarine in the recipe with homemade sunflower seed butter. It didn’t exactly work like I thought it would, and I ended up having to make additional adjustments. The final result was delicious, though! Thanks, Noelle, for a fabulous recipe!

Spelt Chocolate Sunflower Seed Butter Cookies

Ingredients

  • 2 cups freshly ground spelt flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 1/2 cup sunflower seed butter
  • 4 TBSP coconut oil
  • 1/2 cup raw sugar
  • 2 TBSP flax meal + 6 TBSP hot water
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
  2. In a separate bowl, combine the sunflower seed butter, coconut oil, sugar, flax meal and water, and vanilla.
  3. Stir the liquid ingredients into the wet ingredients just until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
  4. Form dough a tablespoon at a time into balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
  5. Bake at 325F for about 10 minutes or until lightly golden in color.


Now, go and listen to some of Noelle’s beautiful singing. Why, yes, even this non-opera lover enjoyed it!

Read more about The Secret Recipe Club and find out how you can join! We’d love to have you.

Sharing at some of these wonderful link-ups: Homestead Barn Hop, Mom’s Monday Mingle, The Bulletin Board, Better Mom Mondays, Open Call Tuesday, Delicious Dishes, Teach Me Tuesday, Titus 2sDay, Hip Homeschool Hop, Tiny Tip Tuesday, Titus 2 Tuesday, Tip me Tuesday, Trivium Tuesday, Healthy 2Day Wednesday, Allergy-Free Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Women Living Well Wednesday, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Real Food Wednesday, Whole Foods Wednesday, Keep it Real Thursday, Tastetastic Thursday, Homemaking Link UP, Simple Lives Thursday, Thought-Provoking Thursday, Life in Bloom, Frugal Thursday Rewind, Fellowship Friday, Fight Back Friday, Feast in Fellowship Friday, Frugal Friday, I’m Lovin’ It, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Snacktime Saturday, Show & Share Saturday, Weekend Whatever

11 Comments Filed Under: On The Table, Snacks Tagged With: , , ,

Healthy Cookies. Yes, HEALTHY Cookies! {Secret Recipe Club ~ August 2012}

August 6, 2012 By

My secret blog for this month’s Secret Recipe Club was Everyday Mom, written by Kim, whose love of baking is evident when you browse through her Recipes page! I’m pretty fond of baking myself, so I had fun looking through her archives and trying to decide which delicious-sounding treat I should make: Apple Cake with Maple Frosting (when autumn comes, for sure!)? Maple Mousse (I’d never heard of that one!)? Or maybe Yeasted Coffee Cake (complicated, but - I imagine - totally worth it)?

Delicious Vegan Cookies

In the end, I settled for none of these, and instead made a treat that was angelically good in comparison: Banana Oatmeal Cookies, which happened to be her Secret Recipe Club post from last July. If you leave out the chocolate chips (but really, now, who does that?), they have absolutely no added sugar! And while I personally could probably never bring myself to make them without the chocolate chips, I think they would still be perfectly sweet without them because the bananas offer all the sweetness necessary.

You may or may not need quite as many bananas, depending on how big they are. I think mine were larger than usual, because 4 made the mixture very liquidy. I ended up adding some oat flour to make them more of a cookie consistency, but next time I’ll probably start with fewer bananas and see how it goes. Below is the recipe exactly as I made it.

Banana Oatmeal Cookies (Sugar-Free, Wheat-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free… But Full of Deliciousness!)

Ingredients

  • 4 bananas, mashed
  • 2 cups oats
  • 1 cup oat flour
  • 2 TBSP nut butter or seed butter (I used sunflower seed butter)
  • 1/4 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. Stir everything but the chocolate chips together until blended. Gently stir in the chocolate chips. Place a tablespoon at a time onto greased cookie sheets and bake for about 15 minutes at 350F.

If you’re curious about the Secret Recipe Club, you can read more about it here.



12 Comments Filed Under: Dessert, Home, Snacks Tagged With: , ,

The Three B’s: Blueberry Breakfast Bars {Secret Recipe Club}

July 9, 2012 By

Did you know that veggies dance? They do! At least, they do at Dancing Veggies, a blog that focuses on vegetarian food on a budget (I like that word budget. A lot.) Dancing Veggies was my assigned blog for July’s Secret Recipe Club.

I’m not a vegetarian (Ha! Not even close!), but I still found a lot to love at Dancing Veggies: Salted Caramel Apple Bliss (Hello, you had me at “caramel”.), for example, or Very Berry Terrine (I’m not exactly sure what a terrine is, but it certainly looks lovely.), or Herbal Tuna Salad with Hummus.

After browsing through the blog multiple times, trying to make up my mind, I finally settled on the Blackberry Breakfast Bars. Only I had no blackberries, but I did have a rather large box of blueberries. Also, I wanted to make one batch that everybody in the family could eat, so I used oat flour and shortening instead of wheat flour and butter. Still amazing! You can use either one with good results.

 

Blueberry Breakfast Bars

Ingredients

Crust:

  • 1 1/2 cups oat flour or white whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup sucanat or other unrefined sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup palm shortening or butter
  • 2 TBSP cold water

Filling:

  • 1/2 cup applesauce (I ran an apple through my Vitamix)
  • 1/2 cup oat flour or white whole wheat flour
  • 2 TBSP honey
  • 2 cups blueberries

Instructions

Crust:

  1. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the shortening or butter with a pastry blender. Stir in the water, a little at a time, until you have the right consistency. (Mine was a little too wet, but it still turned out great.)
  2. Press about 2/3 of the crust into the bottom of a 9×13 pan. Reserve the remaining dough. Bake the crust at 350F for about 10 minutes.

Filling:

  1. Stir together the applesauce, flour, and honey until well blended. Gently stir in the blueberries.
  2. Spoon the blueberry mixture onto the cooled crust. Top with the remaining reserved dough.
  3. Bake at 350F for about an hour or until fruit is bubbly and top is golden brown.

It’s not exactly QUICK for breakfast, but we enjoyed ours on the weekend.

It is very EASY, though.

The original recipe called for 3 cups of berries, but I’m just too CHEAP for that. I reduced it to 2 cups, and it turned out perfectly. I think I probably wouldn’t have liked 3 cups; that would have been too many cooked blueberries for my taste. As it was, I liked how the blueberries blended nicely with the crust.

It’s an indulgent breakfast… but a HEALTHY one. All those blueberries… all those antioxidants!

Join the Secret Recipe Club here.

 

Sharing at Women Living Well Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Allergy-Free Wednesday, Whole Foods Wednesday, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Tastetastic Thursday, Simple Lives Thursday

22 Comments Filed Under: Breakfast Tagged With: , ,

SRC: Avocado Ranch Pizza Sauce

June 4, 2012 By

Chicken Pizza with Avocado Ranch Sauce

Whew! I’ve got a lot going on around the blog here today. If you missed it earlier this morning, the first post in my 5 Days with Whole Wheat Series went live: it’s all about the different types of wheat and wheat flours available on the market today, as well as their different uses and purposes. And I’ve got a great giveaway that’s still open: win a gallon of Tropical Traditions Coconut Chips!

It’s also the first Monday of the month, and you know what that means! Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day!

This month, I had the privilege of browsing through The Cookin’ Chemist’s great selection of recipes. (You know what’s funny? Almost a year ago, The Cookin’ Chemist had ME in the Secret Recipe Club, and she made my Springy Casserole. Check out her rendition here: A Springy Casserole.) If you are looking to make something for dinner that goes beyond the typical ho-hum, Tessa’s got you covered! From stromboli to runzas to tortas to squash bowls, she’s got an intriguing collection of lunch and dinner recipes.

As it happens, I was indeed looking for a creative recipe for dinner when I was assigned The Cookin’ Chemist for SRC. Since it was pizza night, I wanted a fun yummy pizza using ingredients I had on hand. Tessa did not disappoint! I soon found her recipe for Chicken & Avocado Pizza and immediately chose that one.

I am not afraid to experiment with my pizza a little, but my DH is another story. Give him a Meatitarian Pizza and he’s a happy happy man. Guacamole Pizza? Not so much. I had to dress up the “mock-guac”, as Tessa called it, a little to make it more palatable to his conditioned taste buds… and it worked! Instead of a guacamole-flavored sauce, I ended up with more like an Avocado Ranch dressing; it was perfect, and even my DH said it was pretty good. We will definitely be making this again!


Chicken Pizza with Avocado-Ranch Sauce

adapted from Chicken & Avocado Pizza by the Cookin’ Chemist

Ingredients

  • 1 recipe pizza dough
  • 2 avocados
  • 1/3 cup plain yogurt
  • 1/4 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tsp dill
  • 1 tsp parsley
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 cup cooked shredded or cubed chicken
  • 2 cups Monterey Jack cheese

Instructions

  1. Roll the pizza dough out onto your pan (or on your pizza peel).
  2. Mash the avocados with a fork and stir in the yogurt and buttermilk until well blended. Add the seasonings and stir well.
  3. Spread the avocado sauce on the surface of the dough. Sprinkle with the chicken and cheese until well covered.
  4. Bake at 450F for 12-15 minutes.


Tessa used tomatoes in her original recipe, which would be delicious, but I didn’t have any on hand and my DH can’t have them anyway. I did sprinkle a few chopped red onions on my half of the pizza, and they added some great complementary flavor!

This pizza sauce is one of the QUICKest you’ll ever make.

And it’s pretty EASY, too.

It’s CHEAP when avocados are in season. Or if you get them at Harris Teeter where they are always $1.47 for a package of two.

Avocados are full of HEALTHY fats, and of course, they are a fruit/vegetable, so it counts for one of your 5-9 servings a day. On pizza, no less!

Want to join in the fun? Read all about the Secret Recipe Club and how to join.

And for all you friendly folks visiting from the SRC link-up, if you like what you see, consider subscribing! (Subscribers get a free gift, so it’s totally worth it!)



10 Comments Filed Under: Dinner, Home Tagged With: , ,

SRC: Orange Chocolate Macaroons

May 7, 2012 By

Wow,Secret Recipe Club time came around fast this month! It totally caught me by surprise near the end of my OAMS cycle, and due to poor planning on my part, I happened to be completely out of flour and oats. That pretty much eliminated any baking, and I didn’t have time to try any main dish recipes. Thankfully, Cupcake Muffin, my assigned blog, came to my rescue with a simple recipe that not only requires minimal ingredients (that I happened to have on hand, miracle of miracles) but that also tastes amazingly delicious. Even better? I’m the only one in the house that can eat them, so they are all mine. Muahahahahahahah! There are some perks to being the only person in the house without any dietary issues.

As for next month: I will not run out of wheat flour and I will finish my Secret Recipe Club long before it’s due. I’m trusting you all to keep me accountable, OK?

Now back to my assigned blog: Cupcake Muffin is written by Sara, a grad student at Berkeley who cooks up some pretty amazing stuff. From creative ways to serve vegetables (Carrot Fennel Salad, for example), to delicious new twists on old dinner-time favorites (try the Chicken Tinga Tacos), to decadent desserts (how about some Grapefruit Mint Tarragon Chocolate Tart?), she’s got you covered! After all, she’s been blogging since 2007, so there’s a lot of great content to be discovered.

For reasons already mentioned, I chose to make her Orange Chocolate Chip Macaroons, which turned out to be quite serendipitous. Orange and chocolate is a combination I love , and I always enjoy trying new recipes to utilize it. These macaroons were no exception! Delicious, in a word. You definitely won’t be able to eat just one.

I made only a portion of the recipe, since, as I mentioned, I’m the only one in the house who can eat these. So here’s my small batch version, which doesn’t differ much from Sara’s original recipe.


Orange Chocolate Macaroons

Ingredients

  • 5 oz dried coconut
  • 1 tsp orange zest
  • 1/4 unrefined sugar
  • 1/4 cup chocolate chips
  • 1 egg white

Instructions

  1. Place the coconut and orange zest in a bowl, and smoosh together with your fingers until the orange zest is evenly distributed throughout.
  2. Stir in the sugar and chocolate chips until well blended.
  3. Stir in the egg white until the mixture begins to hold together.
  4. Use a tablespoon to scoop out the mixture, making sure to pack it in tight. Turn upside down onto a cookie sheet or stone lined with parchment paper.
  5. Bake at 325F for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned.

Number of servings (yield): 12

I would recommend using Let’s Do Organic or Tropical Traditions dried coconut for this recipe, as most other versions have lots of sugar and other unnecessary ingredients in them. If you use the right kind of coconut, these will actually be some pretty healthy cookies!

These cookies were so QUICK to make - they do take a long time to bake up (25 minutes) but the prep time was minimal, 10- minutes or less.

Deliciously EASY, too. For some reason I always thought macaroons were hard, but not so!

This recipe uses minimal ingredients (especially in a small batch, which is great if you don’t need a large quantity), so it’s a great CHEAP treat.

If you use the right kind of coconut, and chocolate chips with real ingredients, these cookies can be relatively HEALTHY. They still have sugar, so they’re not a health food, but they’re a healthier option for snack than most cookies (especially store-bought ones!).

Intrigued by the Secret Recipe Club concept? Join here!


Linking up at:
Hearth & Soul Traditional Tuesday

 

14 Comments Filed Under: Dessert Tagged With: ,

SRC Cream of Buckwheat Cereal

April 9, 2012 By

I’d never had Cream of Wheat cereal before, let alone Cream of Buckwheat! But when browsing through this month’s Secret Recipe Club assigned blog, Sustainable Cooking for One, I stumbled across Stephanie’s recipe for cream of buckwheat and determined to give it a try.

Why buckwheat? For one thing, it’s not related at all to wheat, so it’s safe for my wheat-allergic little guys. For another, it’s not a grain but it cooks and bakes up just like one, which is a really great quality if you’re trying to reduce your grain consumption. I am also intrigued by the fact that (according to Wikipedia), it was widely cultivated in American during the 18th and 19th centuries but was replaced by wheat, which responded better to chemical fertilizers. I always prefer to eat what previous generations ate because I consider them, in general, to be much healthier than our current generation!

I highly recommend that you check out buckwheat for yourself - it comes in a few different forms: flour, kasha (hot cereal/cream of buckwheat) and groats. The groats are the whole “grain” (fruit seed, actually), and are often available in bulk bins at health food stores. I personally prefer to buy the groats because I can grind them up to make either flour or hot cereal. I use my Vitamix to grind them up; if you don’t have one, you’ll probably want to grind them in small portions in a coffee grinder.

A word of warning, though: buckwheat can have a strong flavor if you’re not used to it, especially the flour. I really despised the flavor when I made buckwheat pancakes for my little guys (although they loved it!) from store-bought buckwheat flour, but when I grind it myself, it tastes SO much better. My suggestion is to mix it first with other flours or grains that you do enjoy before trying it straight.

You can also do the same with this cereal: try mixing it with steel cut oats if you’ve never had buckwheat before.

I modified Stephanie’s original recipe only slightly, using strawberries (what I had) instead of the berries she recommends, and significantly increasing the amounts in the recipe to make one large batch.

Berry Cream of Buckwheat Cereal

Ingredients

  • 1 cup buckwheat groats
  • 3 cups water and/or milk/milk substitute
  • 1 cup frozen strawberries
  • 1 TBSP ground flaxseed
  • 1-2 TBSP raw honey
  • dab of butter or ghee

Instructions

  1. The night before, grind the buckwheat groats in high-powered blender or coffee grinder until chopped fine. Mix the buckwheat with the water, and cover lightly. Let it soak overnight.
  2. In the morning, bring the buckwheat and water to a boil; simmer until thickened and smooth. Stir in the strawberries and flaxseed and cook until strawberries are softened and warmed through.
  3. Remove from heat and stir in honey. Scoop into bowls, and top with butter or ghee and additional honey, if desired. Garnish with strawberries, if desired.

This is not as QUICK as instant oatmeal; but about the same time as steel cut oats.

It’s very EASY; you can skip the extra soaking step if you want, but it increases the cooking time.

Buckwheat groats are not as CHEAP as more common grains, but they’re definitely affordable.

And they’re very HEALTHY; buckwheat has great antioxidants and high levels of magnesium. It’s also an excellent source of fiber and protein, making it an excellent candidate for a healthy breakfast!

Be sure to browse around Sustainable Cooking for One for more great healthy recipe ideas, and tell Stephanie I sent you! And check out the Secret Recipe Club website to find out more about this regular monthly event and how to join in on the fun!


24 Comments Filed Under: Breakfast Tagged With: ,

Secret Recipe Club: Brazilian Chocolate

March 5, 2012 By

Brazilian Chocolate #diycoffeeshop

Welcome to the March edition of the Secret Recipe Club (Group A), the part of the show where the bloggers sing write about each others’ recipes (which they have secretly been testing on the sly).
My secret assignment this month was none other than our host for the week, The Heritage Cook. Jane, the heritage cook, is the one who keeps our Group A organized and ready to go every month. (Thanks, Jane!) Jane is passionate about eating local, organic and seasonal food, which appeals to me, as you can imagine. She has tons of recipes, and she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to the kitchen, so go check out her blog and be inspired!

My absolute favorite feature over at The Heritage Cook is Chocolate Mondays! Monday is bad, but Chocolate Monday? Good. Very very good.

So of course, I had to choose one of her delicious chocolate recipes; I simply had no choice! One of her more recent Chocolate Monday posts caught my eye because it featured not one, not two, but three chocolate drink recipes! You could take your pick of Orange Chocolate Ice Cream Shake, Copacabana Milkshake, and Brazilian Chocolate Drink.

Brazilian Chocolate #diycoffeeshopI went with the Brazilian Chocolate drink because:

  • It was hot and I was cold.
  • The other two had ice cream. I was cold.
  • And I didn’t have any ice cream.
Excellent choice, if I do say so myself! Brazilian Chocolate is kind of like a mocha in reverse: instead of a little bit of chocolate added to coffee, it’s a little bit of coffee added to chocolate. Either way works for me - those two are a match made in heaven! - but I think this Brazilian Chocolate drink would probably appeal even to die-hard coffee haters. The addition of strong coffee doesn’t really add any extra flavor, but it does bring out the chocolate flavor in a delicious way.
Really, the only change I made to the recipe was that I scaled it down for an individual serving. Sadly, my DH does not share my obsession with either chocolate or coffee, and my Certain Little Someone is allergic to milk. Baby Boy is too young for chocolate and coffee. So I just made one little delicious cup all for me. Ahhhhhh…
Oh, and the original recipe does not specify what kind of chocolate to use, but all I had was semi-sweet, so that’s what I used. If you use darker chocolate, you may need to add a bit more sugar or other sweetener.

Recipe: Brazilian Chocolate

Summary: from “Chocolate” by Jean Pierre Wybauw

Ingredients

  • 1 oz chocolate
  • 1/4 cup strong coffee
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1-2 tsp raw sugar (or a few drops of stevia)
  • 1 TBSP whipped cream
  • cocoa powder for garnish

Instructions

  1. Place the chocolate in the bottom of a large mug. In a small pot, bring the milk and sugar just to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour the milk over the chocolate, stirring until melted. Add coffee.
  2. Top with whipped cream and a sprinkling of cocoa powder.
Brazilian Chocolate #diycoffeeshop


23 Comments Filed Under: Beverages, Home, On The Table Tagged With: , ,
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