eggs

Strategies for Hidden Veggies III- Waffles

January 18, 2011 by KerryAnn 6 Comments

In the first two posts in this series, we examined how to replace flour in a baked good recipe with a vegetable. This time we’ll learn how to replace a liquid with a puree while still soaking the flours in order to make the baked good traditional foods.

In the same vein as the books that promote purees, many baked goods can have some mashed banana, applesauce, sweet potato, pumpkin, butternut squash or the like added to the recipe in place of the water or milk. The problem with many of these recipes is that the vegetable or fruit takes the place of the milk or water, and it’s then difficult to convert that recipe to being soaked. To overcome that problem, I carefully choose recipes that call for enough liquid to work with. I then soak the flour with the minimum amount of liquid needed to get it wet and add the rest that the recipe calls for in fruit or vegetables. This is made much easier if you are baking gluten-free goodies, since most of the recipes call for at least a small amount of starch. Since starches do not need to be soaked, this frees up extra liquid in the recipe to convert to a vegetable or fruit and still have the finished product turn out with the correct texture. Since starch makes waffles crispy, this is the perfect recipe for conversion.

I use this strategy most often when there’s just a little applesauce left in the bottom of the jar, or there’s one lone banana that needs to be used.

I tip my hat to Sue Gregg, whose cookbook is the first place I heard about grinding grain in the blender with liquid so you don’t have to have a grain mill to have the benefits of freshly-ground flour. I used her method to make pancakes for a long time until I could afford a grain mill.

Review- Daiya Dairy-Free Cheese

February 10, 2011 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

Recently on the Facebook CTF page, someone mentioned a new dairy-free cheese on the market that melts and strings like real cheese. Since I’ve been working on developing a variety of pizza crusts, I decided to look into it. [Read more…] about Review- Daiya Dairy-Free Cheese

Strategies for Hidden Veggies I- Black Bean Brownies

January 8, 2011 by KerryAnn 3 Comments

I periodically spend time thinking about ways to hide veggies in most foods, and I’m always on the look-out for ideas. After looking into purees and the books that promote them, I decided that most of them were a lot of work for little vegetable content per serving in the finished product. While I applaud any efforts to get veggies into children, I felt like many of these recipes were too much work for too little results to be the main thrust of my efforts. Many of the published recipes I found only had 1/2 – 2 Tbs of puree per serving and the purees often have water added so you’re getting very little in the way of vegetables. Many of them showed a remarkable lack of variety or weren’t recipes acceptable for a traditional foods diet as they contained unsoaked flours, soy flour, or other undesirable ingredients. Many of the recipes used applesauce to replace the fat or a puree to replace the egg. While it is better than nothing, I felt like I could use different methods to achieve better results while keeping the recipes true to traditional foods. I decided for the most part that the recipes that didn’t try to hide the vegetable flavors but instead complimented them and recipes where the vegetable replaces the flour were good candidates. This is easily accomplished in many brownies, cakes, pies, blondies and even dishes such as custards and puddings. Even some cookies, ice creams and sherbets will work! For breakfast, many pancakes, waffles and other baked goods are a snap to convert, especially those with liquid batters.

By far, I feel the strategy of using vegetables to replace the flour in a recipe is the best way to get veggies into a recipe. Many gluten-free recipes contain bean flours, so using pureed beans to replace the flour while reducing the liquid works very well. It is possible to produce flourless recipes this way! And, by soaking and cooking the beans correctly, you make the recipe traditional food and you eliminate the gastric distress that comes with using unsoaked bean flours. In some of these recipes, adding extra eggs is possible, further increasing the nutrition. The beans increase the nutrition content while decreasing the carbs, so it is a wonderful strategy. Especially good for filling little bellies and keeping them full until the next meal.

This recipe, using black beans, is the first recipe I will post in this series. It is a plain, chocolate brownie. Cocoa powder covers the color of the black beans. For blondies, a white beans such as navy or cannellini work beautifully. In the coming weeks, I will post cakes, blondies, dressed-up brownies and more using this method.

Black Bean Brownies

From the Menu Mailer Voume 4 Week 24

½ cup rapadura
4 large eggs
3 Tbs cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
2 Tbs coconut oil or butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 (14.5 ounce) can or 1½ cups cooked black beans, drained and rinsed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8×8 pan and set aside.

Place the eggs, rapadura, cocoa powder, baking powder, coconut oil and vanilla in a blender or food processor and blend until well-combined. Add the beans and blend until thoroughly combined and smooth. Pour into the pan and bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool before slicing.

This post is part of Food Trip Fridays and the Beans and Lentils Linky.

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Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

March 7, 2011 by KerryAnn 4 Comments

Our Food Storage 101 article on our website was so popular, we decided to expand it into a blog series! Over the next several weeks, we will walk you through the whys and hows of food storage, whether you wish to have a week or a year of food on hand.

Why Should I Store Food?

There are many reasons why people choose to practice some form of food storage, and none of them are wrong. So many people are concerned right now. Since I began working with food storage in 2007, I have seen many reasons to choose to stock a deep pantry.

You wish to be prepared for a hurricane, a snow storm or an extended power outage.
While you might currently have a stable job, you know that unemployment is over 10% nationally, topping 15% in some areas. A recent Gallup poll showed that under-employment was at 19%. You aren’t currently dealing with unemployment, but you’re concerned it might be around the corner.
You’re looking to wisely invest your tax refund, knowing that currently the rising price of food is outpacing the interest rate, so the purchase of bulk food at a discounted price is a doubly wise investment of your funds.
You are a family facing unemployment or struggling through under-employment, or you are facing the end of your unemployment checks.
You don’t wish to have to purchase food on a credit card if you’re unemployed.
You currently know a family who is forced to choose between food and housing or food and heat due to a limited income.
You’re not particularly interested in food storage, but you’ve decided that buying in bulk is the best way to cut your whole-foods based budget.
You have food allergies, and you know that you would not be able to sustain your family between the offerings of a food bank and food stamps should something happen to your income.
You have food allergies, and you desperately need to bring down the grocery bill.
Due to being self-employed, you would not qualify for food stamps in an emergency.
You hate shopping and would rather shop less, or you live miles from convenient shopping locations.
You wish to leave the food at the food bank for those who are less fortunate than you.
You’ve read about the potential looming food shortages from the floods in many countries and droughts this year. Multiple countries have suffered flooding or freak snow and freezing weather in the last few months, and their effects on the price of food has been in the news.
You’ve met a family who sustained themselves with their food storage after a job loss or other tragedy. If you are a forum member, you know that last year we sustained ourselves for eleven months on food storage while my husband went through unemployment.
You see the need to not be a burden on others should an emergency occur, so that those who are less fortunate or can not prepare can utilize the food banks without you also needing to go there. This creates less of a burden on the safety nets meant to help families through a crisis.
You are trying to return to a more sustainable food production cycle in your own family, beginning a homestead or a hobby farm.
You are looking to unplug from a modern life-style.
You wish to save money by only purchasing fresh and in-season.

In 2009, our family sustained a major hit in the form of income loss when my husband, along with 90% of his co-workers, were laid off. Three months prior, everyone in the company had taken a salary reduction in a move to delay those lay-offs. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know the day. Thankfully, we had one year of food storage in place when the lay-off happened. [Read more…] about Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

Good, Better, Best- Choosing Meats

March 8, 2011 by KerryAnn 1 Comment

As I stated with my first post in this series, I fully recognize that some of you have very tight budgets or only have access to mega-marts due to your locations. Others will have the funds and availability to choose the best of the best. Either way, this post isn’t to condemn someone who can’t pick the best of every option, it is to help you make the best decision you can with what you have, where you are.

This week’s installment is on choosing meats. This post is to help you decide what is the best option for your budget. This posting is my opinion, and after research, you might reach a different conclusion. If you do, please comment and share what you found and your reasoning. I’m always open to changing my opinion and updating this post if new or different information comes along.

The Choices

Best– Locally grown, 100% pastured, organic or ‘not-certified but organic practice’

Better– 100% pastured, organic or ‘not-certified but organic practice’ [Read more…] about Good, Better, Best- Choosing Meats

Dollars to Donuts

February 21, 2011 by KerryAnn 16 Comments

We recently had a day that needed a special breakfast but I was having trouble coming up with the right thing to fix. I started brainstorming out loud with my better half, from across the room. We both buried ourselves into Google on our respective computers, looking for a good recipe to try. The word ‘donut’ fell out. We both smiled. We have had donuts only a couple of times since we went gluten-free. I have purchased the Kinninnick donuts twice from the salvage for special occasions, when we could get a box for $1. But I don’t like to use them often, because they contain ingredients that aren’t real food.

The ingredients in Kinninnick vanilla donuts are

Icing (sugar, water, glucose, vanilla), Sugar, White Rice Flour, Tapioca Starch, Water, Whole Eggs, Sweet Rice Flour, Palm Fruit Oil (non hydrogenated), Frutooligosaccharide, Yeast, Pea Protein, Egg Whites, Xanthan Gum, Fruit Concentrate (dextrose, dextrin, fibre), Salt, Rice Bran Extract, Cellulose, KinnActive Baking Powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, pea starch, mono calcium phosphate), Glucono Delta Lactone, Sodium Bicarbonate, Nutmeg

Last time I checked, I wasn’t able to grow lactone or pyropho… pyra…… in my back yard. Yeah. And, for sake of comparison, here’s the ingredients in a Dunkin’ Donut:

Donut: Enriched Unbleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron as Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Enzyme, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Palm Oil, Water, Dextrose, Soybean Oil, Whey (a milk derivative), Skim Milk, Yeast, Contains less than 2% of the following: Salt, Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda), Defatted Soy Flour, Wheat Starch, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Cellulose Gum, Soy Lecithin, Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum, Artificial Flavor, Sodium Caseinate (a milk derivative), Enzyme, Colored with (Turmeric and Annatto Extracts, Beta Carotene), Eggs; Crunch Topping: Sugar, Coconut, Yellow Corn Flour, Caramel Color, BHT (antioxidant); Glaze: Sugar, Water, Maltodextrin, Contains 2% or less of the following: Mono and Diglycerides, Agar, Cellulose Gum, Citric Acid, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Artificial Flavor; Apple Filling: Water, Sugar Syrup, Corn Syrup, Evaporated Apples, Modified Food Starch, Contains 2% or less of the following: Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate (Preservatives), Salt, Cinnamon, Malic Acid, Nutmeg.

I don’t think I need to say much about that list, it speaks for itself. And Krispy Kreme won’t even give an ingredient list online that I could find. Just a statement that they don’t use trans-fats in their shortening blend. Ahem.

So I set out to make healthy donuts my kids would love. [Read more…] about Dollars to Donuts