So back in December I decided to start making all of my own bread, no buying in the store. Why? Cost mostly and waste. As much as I love artisan healthy breads they are expensive ranging from $4-$8 a loaf, then halfway through it’s just meh and I waste it.

I’ve made some great ones, apple walnut was a hit, cranberry, healthy grain and nut breads etc. But the biggest hit came with this baby. And where did I get the recipe – well 85%  of it at least as I tweak just about every recipe. My mom found it in the back of her fiction novel.

It’s some of the best bread I’ve had – and was SO easy – took about 10 minutes to make and an hour to cook. No yeast, no rising and so good!

Recipe is as follow – items marked with an * are what I added.

Yields 1 Loaf

• 2 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 3/4 cups buttermilk
• 1/4 cup cracked wheat *
• 2 Tablespoons wheat bran or oat bran *
• 1/4 cup crushed walnuts *
• sunflower or sesame seeds to sprinkle on top 8

Mix all dry ingredients well. Add buttermilk and mix thoroughly into a thick paste.

Empty batter into a greased bread pan – sprinkle seeds on top.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes and make sure it has risen. Bake an additional 45 minutes. Make sure when you touch the center it springs back a bit – I usually dip a knife in the middle and pull a bit out to make sure it’s fully cooked.

Multiple the recipe for additional loafs and give to friends, family or just freeze so you don’t have to make more Enjoy!

Having troubles finding cracked wheat, in Austin the only place I found it was Natural Grocers though I didn’t check the large Whole Foods, small Whole Foods didn’t have it. So check your local hippie natural foods shop!

No I did not take this photo, I drank my juice before it dawned on me, but it’s beet juice so it pretty much looks like this.

This is random – because I haven’t posted anything about the fact that I’m juicing, but I have for about a month and it’s great and I feel 100% better and I love it! Minus the disaster “V8″ juice I made – it’s been spectacular.

So juice of the day goes to beets – will I post a juice every day – no – cause I simply know myself, but this is the first one that was so good that I promptly wanted another.

Beet Cocktail

serves 2

2 beets – scrubbed well to remove any lingering dirt

2 handfuls of spinach – just grab a bunch of spinach this is juice not a cake – we don’t need to measure

4 small apples – cored to remove seeds, skins on

1 inch of ginger – 2 inches if you want an extra kick

enjoy!

Nutritional value is too much to even list – but loads of antioxidants from the beets, anti inflammatory from both beets and ginger,Detoxing properties from beets, Vitamin K,A,C,maganese, folate and more from spinich and MORE

Nutritional info found at http://www.whfoods.com/

So I’m on the hunt for a collection of fantastic sald dressing recipes.

The qualifiers

• Not sweet!
• Somewhat healthy – I mean by no means do I want oil and lemon – the standard 1980 diet throwback – but let’s be reasonable.
• I hate blue cheese
• Fairly easy to mix – please don’t turn my salad into a 30 minute need degree from culinary school, experience.

If this works I’ll post some new recipes here for us all to try.

The premise of the show is to take the foods you love (mac n cheese, enchiladas etc) and make a lower calorie version without cutting the taste. The guests get a 6 week challenge to cook themselves down a dress size and most usually accomplish that and then some.

Today for instance they cooked a 1000+ breakfast casserole down to a 200 calorie frittata.

So check it out if you are interested, I want to snag the book as well. Now that I have had my work out and spread the word on cooking thin I am off to Cinco de Mayo happy hour – yeah I know…