Showing posts with label treats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label treats. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Crock Pot "baby food"- apples and sweet potatoes


This is a favorite in our home. All three kids will mow through a batch of this in no time, and it's so simple. I got tired of making a huge pot on the stove so now we crock pot it.

What you'll need:
Apples
Sweet Potatoes
Lemon or lemon juice
Cinnamon

Peel and cut up sweet potatoes and apples. 

Place sweet potatoes on the bottom of your crock then apples on top- since apples make a lot of their own water.

Add water to the crock. I added just enough to cover half of my apples and sweet potatoes.

Cook for 4-6 hours on low. 

Sweet potatoes should be tender, but not mushy. 
It should look about like this:


Toss apples, sweet potatoes, and water from the crock in the blender (or food processor, but blender holds more). 

Add a squeeze of lemon juice- it's about 1/4 medium lemon's juice for 1/2 a crock's worth. Make sense?

Add a few dashes of cinnamon and blend away! I never really measure anything...

It'll look like this:


And there you have it.

I have a feeling my children will be eating this all the way through college. 

Seriously, they like it that much.



The babes will snack on just the apple flavored sweet potatoes from the crock pot.

In this post I wrote about baby carrots in the crock as snacks. 

You can do carrots in this recipe as well instead of sweet potatoes. In which case I like to add a little ginger.

The other cool thing about this mixture is that it makes a great addition to pancakes or baked oatmeal!
That'll have to be a whole other blog though!

Happy Crock Potting!



Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Kale Flowers

Did you know that you can eat the flowers from Kale?! 

We planted some organic kale in our garden last year and it was amazing. It kept growing and growing. We finally got out into the yard this past (sunny!) weekend and got some work done, which included chopping down the kale that was starting to take over. As I was trimming all of the leaves off, I noticed that the buds and flowers on the tips of the kale looked an awful lot like broccoli rabe. I decided to trim off these pieces as well, separating them from the leaves. 

We washed them, then boiled them for only a couple minutes so that they were still a little crisp. I then tossed a little minced garlic in the frying pan with some olive oil and added my flowers and buds. O.M.Goodness! 



They were so sweet and tender as well as crisp. They were so fresh and delightful that Happy Hubby and I almost fought over the last bite! 

I wish we had more.... 

When we see flowering kale in the neighborhood these days, we're pretty tempted to snatch it! I don't think folks know what a treat these are!


Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Gluten free pumpkin scones



Ok, let's face it. Being gluten free gets easier... Then it gets hard again this time of year. Every. Single. Year.
So last year I found a Starbucks pumpkin scone recipe online and adapted it to be gluten free. YES! You heard, um , read that correctly- proceeding is a recipe for the gluten free version of Starbucks pumpkin scone recipe! I adapted this recipe from a gluten full one and I'm feeling pretty proud about it! ;)

1.5 C Basic gluten free pastry flour mix
1/2 C gluten free oat flour (I make mine from GF oats in a coffee grinder sometimes)
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cloves
7 TBS sugar
1 TBS baking powder
Mix well.
Cut in 6 TBS butter or shortening (I use spectrum palm oil shortening)
Mix it into your dry ingredients until it is crumbly with no huge chunks. Set aside.

In a separate bowl mix:

1/2 C (heaping) canned pumpkin
1/2 C milk (I use rice milk)
1 egg (or equivalent replacer)

Whisk wet ingredients together then mix them with your dry ingredients. Pour into a greased 9" round cake pan and bake for 17 minutes at 350 degrees.
When finished, take the round pan out of the oven and cut your scones into triangles then place them on a greased cookie sheet and bake them the rest of the way for 8-10 minutes (or until done) at 450 degrees. ( I like to eat scones that actually look like scones!)

**My little twist is to drizzle melted white chocolate on top and place a pecan half in the center when they have finished baking and are cooled.  Or melt white chocolate and add in a pinch or nutmeg and cinnamon!
The picture shows this, but we are out of pecans this go round. They're still so delicious. And gluten free is suddenly not hard anymore :)