Peanut Cinnamon Date Balls

Mr Bus driver man has headed south with a buddy for some serious guy time. This involves dirt, motorbikes, sunshine and more dirt. I suspect beer will be involved somehow as well.

Before he left he requested some healthy snacks to take with him. While I applaud his request, I think he is secretly looking forward to eating at those truck stops down the I5 (shudder).

At any rate, I took him at his word and sent him off with some apple pecan spelt muffins (recipe to come later this week) and these little energy balls. I found both recipes on fANNEtastic food, another foodie whose blog I follow.

This couldn't be any easier to make, although if your food processor is anything like my food processor, the ingredients will have to be encouraged to get back in the line of the blade every few seconds until they reach perfect pulverization.

Start by getting your food processor out of the back of the cupboard. Don't forget to grab the accessory box while you're there. Use your small bowl and blade if you are only making a single batch. You can easily double or triple this recipe which is a good idea because they pack easily and are perfect for hiking, camping, or even having in your car when you are on the go.

Throw all the ingredients into the bowl and start processing. My dates were really hard. Probably bought them during the last ice age (not the one we had last week but probably the one before that). I put them in a pot with a bit of water and let them cook for a bit. That softened them right up.

Oh, make sure the dates are pitted. Very important.

Process a bit and then using a spatula, push the ingredients down off the side of the bowl. Do this a few dozen times. Eventually they will look like this. Only not as blurry in real time.

Scoop them up into your hands and roll into little balls. Then scrape the yummy goodness of your hands and eat it.

Tada! One recipe makes 6 of these little guys, but each one is packed with peanut power. Don't eat these if you are allergic to peanuts.

The Recipe - Peanut Cinnamon Date Balls

3/4 cup pitted dried dates
1/2 cup peanuts (get the unroasted and unsalted if you can)
1 Tbsp oats
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp water (not needed if you soak the dates first)

Toss in the food processor and pulse until everything is all ground up and sticking together. Form into balls. That's it!

Time for a flu shot

When I was a kid and driving my dad crazy with a cough or sniffles, he'd head to the kitchen and make me a hot whisky. I figure he would pretty much be arrested for doing that today but there's something to be said for how effective those old remedies were. That's what I thought this was when I tried out this recipe given to me by my friend The Good Food Dude. Mr bus driver man and his buddy were hanging in the man cave playing with motorbikes and sounding retchedly sick so I whipped up a batch and delivered 2 steaming hot mugs.

It's pretty easy to make and is worthy of turning your nose up at it and even making gagging noises if you are so inclined. But trust me, when you are sick of being sick and those off-the-shelf "remedies" haven't done a darn thing to make you feel better, give this one a whirl.

Start with these 3 basic ingredients



Slice the green onions and ginger root. Don't worry about peeling the ginger - you won't be eating it. Throw it all in a pot like this

Add the garlic. I like to press the garlic cloves but if you don't have a garlic press, well, it's probably not the end of the world if you diced it up really fine. But just this once. A garlic press is an essential tool in my kitchen and I think everyone should have one. A good one, not one of those crap plastic jobs. But I digress.

Add some water and boil for about 5 mins. Strain the mixture into a cup.

Add a heaping tablespoon of honey and stir it up.

 It loses its appeal as it cools so drink up while its hot.

The recipe - Flu Shot

3 green onions, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 T fresh ginger root, grated or chopped

2 cups water

2 teaspoons honey (unpasteurized if you got it)

Boil onions, garlic and ginger for 5 minutes in the water. Strain and add honey. Drink while hot!



Tomato Chickpea Soup

It was a cold wet day today and I thought I would try making a new soup recipe for dinner. The bonus for me was it could be made in the slow cooker which meant I could throw it all together and just walk away. Then if someone catches me reading a book on my window seat I can tell them I’m busy cooking!



Start by dicing up some carrots and celery and put them in the crock pot.

Add the chick peas.  You can use dried beans and soak them overnight but I prefer to use canned beans. You just have to rinse them really well.

Add 4 cups of vegetable broth.

In a separate saucepan, heat some olive oil and add some minced garlic.



Stir in the cumin and paprika and heat for five minutes. Then add some raw sugar (we only have raw sugar in cubes so I tossed a couple in), bay leaves, tahini, salt, tomato paste and water. Stir it up to make a paste.

Pour the mixture over the beans and vegetable mix. Turn the heat to high and cook for two hours.

Turns out two hours isn’t long enough so use the crock pot only if you have all day. I didn’t ‘cuz I had to feed Mr bus driver man before he went to work so I finished cooking the soup in a big pot on the stove.

Once all the veggies were cooked, puree small amounts at a time in your blender until the soup is smooth and creamy. This is actually trickier than it sounds. Or at least a lot messier than I thought it would be.

It’s not a bad idea to start the blender off slowly and give it a little bit of air so some of the heat can escape.  Although the clean-up was enough to give someone a small heart attack, the finished product was actually pretty tasty. Mr bus driver man added some hot sauce to his bowl (of course).

The recipe

Ingredients

1 cup dried garbanzo bean sor 2 16 oz cans, drained and rinsed

6 ripe plum tomatoes (or 1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes if you can't find fresh)

2-3 large carrots, sliced in rounds

2 celery stalks, diced

2 cloves garlic

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp spicy paprika

2 large bay leaves

1 Tbsp raw cane sugar

1 Tbsp tahini

1 tsp salt

1 can tomato paste

4 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp dried basil or 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

2 Tbsp Braggs liquid aminos

Directions

Dice tomatoes, carrots and celery. Put in pot and add rinsed and drained beans, 4 cups water and 2 veggie cubes along with bay leaves, basil, salt, tomato paste, tahini and sugar. In a separate pan, heat olive oil on medium heat. Add diced garlic and brown in the oil. Stir in cumin and paprika and heat for 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup hot water to the spice mix and stir to make smooth paste. Add to vegetables and beans. If using pot, bring to boil, simmer covered for an hour. If using crock pot, turn heat to high and cook for approximately 3 hours. Blend soup with blender stick or in batches in blender. Add Braggs and salt and pepper to taste.

You're awesome!

It's a cold morning here on the wet coast, and Mr Bus Driver man has just fired up his motorbike and headed off to work.

He woke up to find a little something special in the kitchen.

Yes, its a bottle of hot Awesome Sauce made right here at home (well, not my home, but the town of my home!) with a single chocolate heart (also not made here in my home). If ever there was a way to my man's heart, it's with hot sauce, and something delicious to pour it on.  He refrained from adding it to his toast this morning, but I fully expect to see him drizzling it over tonight's dinner. As you might have guessed, in our home Valentine's Day is not a serious holiday but a time for a little fun and an extra little gesture.


Except, the little gesture from him was quite a bit bigger than I expected. Mr Bus Driver man, you're awesome!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Turkey Chili

Despite the sunny days we had last week, winter has not yet loosened her clutches on us and continues to give us cold nights and rainy days. Which is a long way of saying it's still chili weather.


This recipe is courtesy of David Kirsch, The Ultimate New York Body Plan. It uses ground turkey which you can get from pretty much any butcher counter these days. Make sure to thaw the turkey if you’ve got some in the freezer. Cooking it from frozen makes it kind of tough and not so pleasant.

Mr bus driver man gave it a 6/5 score the first time I made this so we have it quite often in our house.

Start with melting some butter in a large saucepan. We cook with Paderno pots on a gas stove. Good quality pans with steady heat really helps turn out good food.
 

Add the turkey and season well with salt and pepper.

Cook the turkey for 2-3 minutes or until browned. Okay, turkey doesn’t really brown, it goes more gray but you get the idea.



Put it in a bowl and set aside. Now chop up your veggies.

Throw them in the pan you just took the turkey out of, and add the garlic. You’ll want to add a bit more butter as well so the veggies can sauté on low heat.

Add your spices. I didn’t have any cayenne pepper so I used chili flakes instead.

(Did someone go a little wacko with the label maker? Trust me, when you have kids in the house, it helps to label EVERYTHING!)

Turn up the heat to medium and add in the tomatoes, stock and bay leaf. We had some kale in the fridge as well so I chopped some of that and threw it in.

Very pretty!


Bring the whole mess to a boil over high heat and then turn it down and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the turkey and let it cook for another 5 minutes so the meat gets hot again. Don’t forget to take out the bay leaf before you serve it up.

 
Turkey Chili (the recipe says serves 4 but we only get 3 helpings in our house)


2 tsp butter, divided
1 lb lean ground turkey
Fresh ground salt and pepper to taste
1 cup coarsely chopped red bell pepper
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped (about ¾ cup)
2/3 cup coarsely chopped celery (about 1 stock)
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp ground cayenne pepper
14 ½ oz canned plum tomatoes
½ cup chicken stock
1 bay leaf

Heat 1 tsp butter in 3 quart saucepan over high heat. Add the turkey and season to taste with salt and pepper. Break up the turkey and cook for 2-3 minutes or until browned. Remove to a bowl and cover to keep warm.

Reduce heat to low, heat the other tsp of butter and cook the red pepper, onion, celery and garlic for 3-5 minutes or until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the chili powder, paprika, cumin and cayenne and cooking, stirring for one minute. Increase the heat to medium, add the tomatoes, stock and bay leaf. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.

Add the turkey and simmer 5 minutes more. Remove and discard the bay leaf before serving.

Calling a do-over

Remember when we were little kids and we could call a do-over, say if the ball fell out of our hand instead of throwing it hard like we intended? Or you tripped on your shoelace when you were in a skipping competition with your friends? Well, I'm calling a do-over on my blog.

My friend Jodi has been asking me when I'm going to update my blog (it's been oh, a few months since my last post) and I didn't have an answer. I knew I wanted to blog about something but really didn't know what I wanted to blog about. Well, now I do. After some thought about my dreams and passions, I saw what I really love is art, making a difference and cooking. Oh, and coaching people to reach their optimal health. Put all that together and I'm creating a blog on food. But not what we have come to call food in the 21st century, but REAL food, you know, the kind of stuff your grandma would recognize.

There are lots of really great food blogs already, I know. And I subscribe to a few of them and get really inspired by some of the recipes they post. So what's different about mine? Well, first I'm going to try and stick to few basic rules. Use real ingredients, keep the recipes simple, make sure they taste good and well, that's about it. Simple real yummy food. No calories to count, no nutritional breakdown, nothing more than something easy to make that will fuel your body in the way your body wants to be fuelled. I'll include some photos of the recipes as well (an added bonus for me - playing with my camera AND my food).

So, I'm collecting recipes, charging the batteries in my camera and getting out the pots and pans. Stay tuned...I've already got the first recipe picked out!