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Death of a Stranger
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Death of a Stranger
by Anne Perry
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Chocolate Sun Butter Cookies

I was having one of those cravings. Wanted salty and sweet, and chewy….cookies!!! I love cookies, they are my weakness. They are a treat and I treat them as such – wow let’s work the word treat in too many times here shall we? This is MY wholesome version, wholesome because it contains all real ingredients, I don’t do fake sugars or random additives to make them lower in calories because all that does is decrease the quality of the food in my opinion. So nothing that’s going to give this a weir d aftertaste where you feel obligated to eat them because you made them and because they are “healthy”

Chocolate Oatmeal Sun Butter Cookies

1/4 cup Almond Flour (you can use a different flour if you’d like, as long as it bakes well)

1 1/4 cup whole Oats

1/3 cup raw can sugar (you can adjust this according to how sweet you like it, I may try to use a little less next time, you can also use other sugars like date sugar, coconut sugar etc, once again as long as it bakes well. I don’t like the after taste of powder/liquid stevia so I don’t bake with it)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 pinches of salt – I’m generous with my pinches

Dash of cinnamon

1 egg

1/3 coconut oil (you can also use melted butter, if butter is salted might want to omit above salt or lessen it)

Dash liquid vanilla

2 Tablespoons of Sunflower seed butter (if you don’t have it or can’t find it, no worries, another nut/seed butter will work or omit all together)

Dark chocolate

———————-

Mix all dry ingredients then stir in wet ingredients. Once stirred chop  dark chocolate and mix in.

Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes

Let sit for 5 or more minutes

I LOVE sunflower seed butter and it’s great to bake with, it has a strong flavor, stronger than other nut/seed butters. It’s usually safe for those with nut allergies as it’s not a nut. It’s delicious! You can find it at most grocery stores, or you can make it yourself with a food processor.

A note on the dark chocolate, I like 80% or higher, if you don’t want to a large amount then buy a single dark chocolate candy bar and chop hunks off of it, I used three squares off of a candy bar. You can also buy dark chocolate chunks or chips. I recommend this over milk chocolate as it’s more pure in chocolate, doesn’t have a lot of added sugar like milk chocolate and gives these cookies a really REALLY great flavor. Plus keeping that dark of a chocolate in the house isn’t a temptation to me, I’ll nosh on 72% but nothing higher, too bitter by itself.

Enjoy friends, so far these have been a hit, I had to share with the office as it was too tempting to sit in front of Grey’s Anatomy last night and cry and eat my cookies!!!

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The Now Infamous Fig Bars

Man these things ended up rocking. I searched high and low on the internet for a recipe and couldn’t find one, most called for dried figs, sigh.

So I took this recipe and made it my way! http://allrecipes.com/recipe/delicious-raspberry-oatmeal-cookie-bars/

For the filling you’ll need fig preserves

Fig Preserves

In a sauce pan add chopped up figs and water. (about two cups figs to one cup water should be fine)

Add some really thinly sliced lemon – really adds flavor – this ingredient is a must in my book.

Add some cinnamon if you want and about 2 cups of raw sugar can or brown sugar – more if you want it sweeter.

Let boil – and that’s it.

Now for the crust

Fig Bars

Yields 9
Oven 350
8×8 Pan

1/2 cup almond flour
1/2 cup coconut flour

If you don’t like coconut flour or don’t have it you can just use more almond flour. You can use all purpose flour if you like – but I think the almond and coconut give it a really good texture and flavor.

1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt – this is a must – trust me it helps in the flavor
1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup coconut oil – I used this instead of butter – is perfect for baking and a little healthier – gives it an awesome flavor and I think that’s what made these so much better

1/2 cup light brown sugar

Combine sugar, flours, baking soda, salt and rolled oats. Stir.

Rub in coconut oil with hands or pastry blender (I used my kitchen aid mixer and used the whisk tool) to form a crumbly mixture.

Press half the mixture into the bottom of  a greased (I used coconut oil) 8×8 pan

Then spread the fig preserves

Top with remainder of crust mix

Bake 35-40 minutes.

Allow to cool before cutting into bars – I found it’s best to refrigerate it. If you don’t it’s more like a cobbler consistency which is good too.

That’s it!

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In Honor of National Margarita Day

Well I missed this post by a day but who cares right?

One of the best things about making your own juices is you often stumble on some pretty fantastic creations. Like this “Margarita”

Margarita Juice

Serves 2

4 apples
1 key lime – with skin on
1 lemon wedge – with skin on
1 1/2 inches ginger – or as much as you can handle

If you’d like to dilute it a bit try coconut water, it’s delicious and packed with vitamins and nutrients

I know one key lime doesn’t sound like much and if you LOVE LOVE lime go for two – but I used two and had to add more apples in because it was just too much.

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Hearty Irish Wheat Bread

Hearty Irish Wheat Bread

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!

Irish Wheat Bread

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!

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Juice of the Day – Beets Beets I Love Beets

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,manganese, foliate and more from spinach and MORE

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

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Salad Dressing is a Must

I mean let’s be honest – the best part of the salad is the dressing – unless there is some cheese hiding in there. But the grocery stores have failed me – they are all sweet or just bleh tasting and expensive.

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.

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