Mochi

We are always looking for wheat-free alternatives for Matthew, and I found something at our local health food store that I had never heard of before:  Mochi

It is a traditional Japanese food made from short-grain sweet rice that is boiled and then pounded into a dense form.  You must use a very strong knife to cut into 1 inch squares (I used a butcher knife).  Note:  do not bake the Mochi as closely together as I did below or they will merge together as in the second picture below.

Bake at 450 for 8 -10 minutes.

We had a large salad and Mochi for a very filling meal.  I've include a close-up shot of the package below that contains a recipe that we haven't tried yet.

Matthew didn't have a negative reaction after eating this food made from rice, so it's something we'll include again from time to time.

After-school snacks

The boys are hungry for a snack each day after school.  We've discovered a few snacks that have all my favorite elements:  quick/easy, inexpensive and healthy!
Healthier "Banana Split":
Split a banana in half & smother with any of the following ingredients:

• Raw almond butter 
• Cinnamon 
• Coconut flakes 
• Slivered almonds 
• and top off with 100% fruit spread 

Rice Cake Supreme:

• Slather raw almond butter on a rice cake
• Top it off with a dollop of 100% fruit spread

Indian/Thai Lentil Stew

This was another "made-up" dish that may be an actual recipe somewhere, but this meal was a combination of a bunch of things that sounded good together to me.  It got a 10 out of 10 from the boys!

This meal is very hearty, filling, inexpensive and quick to make.  I sent left-overs in addition to the boys salads for school lunches the following day.  Feeds 3 hungry boys, a Mom IN ADDITION TO leftovers for next day!

Recipe:

• 1 28oz can of Organic diced or stewed tomatoes
• 1 can Organic coconut milk (use Light for lower fat content if that is a concern)
• 2 cups dried organic lentils
• 1 cup brown rice
• 3-6 cups of water, depending on your preferred consistency (I start with 3 and add more if needed)
• Several stalks of diced celery (reserve some raw celery for garnish)
• 1 diced onion
• Several diced tomatoes (optional)
• Sea salt to taste
• Cumin or Curry to taste
• Garlic powder or diced garlic to taste
• Garnish with fresh basil, raw celery and/or corn (only raw celery garnish pictured below)

I dumped everything into a pot, brought it to a boil and turned it down to simmer for 45 min to an hour.  Check water level and stir occasionally.

Once cooked, I served over a bed of raw spinach.  The warm stew softens the spinach to a very nice consistency.  The raw spinach and celery provided enough raw green nourishment that I didn't feel it necessary to serve with a salad. 

Sun-dried tomatoes- some ways to use them

Use sun-dried tomatoes to add more nutrients and flavor in your salads and dips.  (For very observant Bloggers:  how many of these pictures do you remember from previous entries?)

Sun-dried olive and tomato salad (look for my all-time favorite food- sun-dried olives- in a future blog entry)

Add a small bowl of miso soup for a light fall or winter dinner that contains a taste of summer!

Add sun-dried tomatoes and dehydrated, Tamari and garlic-soaked mushrooms to turn a plain salad into a delicacy.

Include sun-dried tomatoes in Mexican fiesta night when you can't get garden fresh tomatoes.

No Hummus dipping would be complete without rich, flavor-filled sun-dried tomatoes!

Dehydrator Foods- Sun-Dried (dehydrated) Tomatoes & Banana chips

One of our family staples has become sun-dried tomatoes-- ok- we don't really sun-dry them, we dehydrate them instead-- but, we get the same effect.  I've read about all the folks in California and other continually warm climates that actually "dry" tomatoes in the sunshine.  I tried that in the summer, but couldn't seem to keep the flies and bugs away, so I prefer the easier, in-door method of dehydrating.

We make a myriad of snacks and food in the dehydrator, but my all-time favorite is the tomato!

During the summer, I try to keep at least one to two dehydrator trays of tomatoes going each day.  With a plentiful summer tomato harvest, I can end the summer with 5 to 6 gallon-sized bags full of dehydrated tomatoes.  We use them all winter long in salads, soups, recipes and just to snack on.  They look and taste very different than the pale shrunken looking "sun-dried" tomatoes you get from even a nice health food store.

Check out the beautiful vibrant colors below!  The golden tomatoes are my favorite for flavor.

I've learned the best way to keep them fresh all winter is to freeze them once they are thoroughly dehydrated (they will be crispy like chips when you store them in the fridge or freezer).

Another very tasty dehydrated food is the banana!  Once again, we dehydrate at 110 or below which does take a little longer, but it's totally worth it in order to keep the raw nutrition intact.

Thinly slice the bananas and spread in a single layer on a vented dehydrator tray.  One extremely yummy (but somewhat time consuming) treat is to roll each sliced banana piece in shredded coconut and dehydrate.  They seriously tastes like candy!  Store them in the fridge to keep crispy, otherwise they will be chewy at room temperature, even when thoroughly dehydrated.

Another great thing about the Excaliber is that you can dehydrate many flavors at one time with no fear of "flavor bleeding"--- tomatoes will not taste like bananas and visa versa.

Dehydrator Snacks- Crunchy Flavored raw sunflower seeds

One way to make inexpensive, healthy snacks is to invest in a dehydrator.  Once I had kids and began making all their food and snacks myself, it was time to splurge on a good dehydrator and after much research, we chose the 9 Tray Excaliber.  It looks similar to a small oven, has a thermostat so you can control the temperature settings, and the capacity to dehydrate large volumes of snacks at once.  It costs around $200 online and you can generally get free shipping within the U.S.

We dehydrate at 110 degrees or below, as that keeps the food in a "raw" state and preserves the enzymes which are the life of the food.

There are also less expensive varieties you can purchase at Wal-Mart.  The key is to make sure it has a temperature gauge so you can maintain the nutritional integrity of the raw food by dehydrating at low temperatures (below 115 degrees).

One very inexpensive snack is flavored, dehydrated sunflower seeds.  I buy raw sunflower seeds in bulk at our local health food store. 

Recipe:

• Soak raw sunflower seeds for a few hours or overnight and rinse well
• Spread evenly over vented dehydrator tray
• 
  
  Spray with Bragg's Liquid Aminos or Wheat Free Tamari
• 
  
  Sprinkle with your favorite herbs or spices (garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, chili powder, hot pepper for added spicy zing)
• 
  
  Dehydrate on 110 over night until crunchy 

Tastes like roasted sunflower seeds- except they are raw!

These are great to eat as snacks, include in kids school lunches, sprinkle in salads or on soups.

Stewed Tomato and Okra Gumbo with Brown Rice

My father-in-law grew a lot of okra this year so that means we've had to find something to do with a lot of okra!  Noah and Taylor like it raw in their salads- but no on else signs up for that!  A second use we've found is making Stewed Tomato and Okra Gumbo.  The rest of it gets cut up and frozen (you can it freeze raw- just wash and cut up).

Matthew, who is not an okra fan, was hesitant when he took his first bite... but his expression quickly turned into one of delight!

Brown rice is another safe grain for Matthew, so we coupled that with our gumbo, plus a small salad to complete the meal.

Simple Summer Recipe:

• 1 28oz can organic tomato sauce
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 5-6 large fresh tomatoes or 10+ Roma tomatoes
• (in the winter, substitute canned organic diced or stewed tomatoes)
• fresh basil and thyme (fresh or dried)
• garlic to taste
• sea salt to taste
• (experiment with chili powder and cayenne for a spicier palette)

Many recipes call for cooking the okra first then mixing, but I prefer the easier method of getting all ingredients and dump them into a big stainless steel pot and let all the flavors cook and simmer together.  The okra is soft when it turns from bright green to darker green.  Serve over a bed or brown rice.

After School Snacks: Banana Splits

We've been spending some time making healthy snacks from ingredients we already have at home.  Some of the things we almost always have on hand are bananas, raw almond butter & shredded coconut flakes.  So, I thought I'd suprise the boys with something special.

Now, the pictures just don't do this special treat justice!  When I was taking pictures Taylor said "I wish you could get "smell" into a picture".  And Matthew piped up, "I wish you could put "taste" in a picture".

The first step is to split the bananas in half and then slather each half with raw almond butter.  Note the tray the bananas are on... that is a dehyrator tray from an Excaliber dehydrator (more on that in upcoming blogs).  I wanted this snack to be warm and yummy, but still raw (with enzymes still intact), so I dehydrated on 110 for a few hours (anything over 115 begins destroying enzymes). 

(The boys think it would have been even better to dehydrate them overnight so the bananas were almost dried--- but they didn't want to wait!)

Other Options: 

• Serve without dehydrating--- still very satisfying!
• Use oven as dehyrator- set on the lowest setting possible

After a few hours in the dehyrator, we sprinkled shredded coconut flakes and vegan carob chips to garnish

Chef Taylor: Apple Nut Sauce breakfast

Since we've been eating a lot of  "splurge" meals during our summer "Kids Chefs" project, Taylor decided to make something containing all raw food (except the drizzle of pure maple syrup) for his breakfast. 

This is a meal we used to make even more frequently when the kids were young. 

Apple Nut Sauce recipe:

• Sliced apples
• Several cups of raw nuts (we used almonds... choose your favorite)
• Raw organic maple syrup (optional)
• Cinnamon (optional)
• Shredded coconut flakes (optional)

Cut apples into wedges and chop them into apple sauce using a food processor.  Empty them into a very large bowl and pour nuts into food processor and finely chop.  Empty nuts into large bowl and mix thoroughly.  Add cinnamon for taste.  Serve in bowls and drizzle with pure organic maple syrup and/or shredded coconut.

Chopping apples to place into food processor

Making sure all apples get chopped for sauce

Combining the nuts and apple mixture

Happy boys!  The nuts make this a filling yummy meal.

The Garden-fresh Tomato- one of God's greatest creations

Is there anything better than a ripe garden tomato?  This time of the year I am hard-pressed to think of anything better!

The recent hot sunny days preceded by all that rain has turned tomato ripening potential on full-blast!

Below was what I harvested today-- note all the varieties of peppers and tomatoes

This year Jeff planted some crazy looking varieties of tomatoes--- they taste great but I've had to learn how to tell when they are ripe because they are so unique looking!

Check out these striped guys...

Look how beautiful the flesh is!  And the flavor is spectacular!

These yellow and green striped tomatoes have green flesh

All these colors make for a beautiful bowl of salsa!
Harvesting- 20 minutes;  Cleaning & making salsa- 10 minutes;  Eating fresh, raw, organic salsa within 30 minutes of picking tomatoes from vine- PRICELESS!

Chef Matthew: Omelet Breakfast

In our welcome blog entry, I noted that although we eat a large quantity of raw fruits and veggies, we are not completely vegan.  The animal products that we will "splurge" on occasionally are organic eggs and seafood.
Matthew had never seen an omelet, but had heard of one and wanted to make omelets for his Chef Breakfast.  He decided to make "cheese omelets" with almond cheese and he used fresh tomatoes in both Taylor and Noah's and tomatoes and onions in his.  He added a little sea salt and black pepper to finish out the recipe.

Before adding the cheese:

Matthew found flipping the omelet a bit challenging:

See how well the almond cheese melts?

The finished product:

Chef Noah--- Ice cream for Breakfast

This week Jeff is out of town and Noah has 2 T-Ball games, so we decided that "Chef Breakfasts" made more sense than dinners.

Noah chose something we call "ice cream" but is really frozen fruit pushed through the juicer (with the solid filter).  This fruit sorbet is the consistency of soft-serve ice cream.  For a long time, my kids thought this was ice cream and only in recent years have they experienced soy ice cream and realize there is a difference.

But, they still love OUR homemade ice cream!  Noah used frozen bananas and blueberries for his ice cream breakfast.
Pouring in the frozen blueberries

Noah alternated between pushing the bananas and blueberries through so he created varying shades of purple sorbet

Does this remind you of a playdough factory?

Noah and his "ice cream"

Doesn't this look tasty?  I drizzled on a little organic vanilla extract, some shredded coconut and a few carob chips

Chef Noah--- Watermelon/Celery juice: healthier Gatorade

Did you know that celery is a great form of natural sodium?  And that watermelon is made up of almost all water?  Is it any wonder that combining the two foods would made a great sports drink?  It's also DELICIOUS!

Since I was planning for an out of town meeting, we only had one "chef" event this week.  Noah made Watermelon/Celery juice using our Champion juicer.

For those of you interesting in juicing vegetables for family health advantages or disease/illness recovery, it's important to invest in a good juicer that is also easy to clean.  We've found if it's not easy clean-up, usage declines.

If you google Champion juicers, you can get a better price online than in any health food store (under $200).  You can also check Craig's list for used Champions.  This is my favorite brand of juicer because it not only is great for juicing, easy clean-up, but it also makes wonderful fruit sorbets that are the consistency of soft-serve ice-cream (more to come on that in Noah's "Chef" meal next week).

Chop the watermelon and celery.  You do not need to remove seeds-- they can be put through juicer along with the watermelon flesh.

Celery should be put through at the end of the juicing, because the celery stringy fiber tends to get caught up in the gears and can slow down the process unless saved til the end.

Noah has always loved to help with the juicing.

We'll include more juice recipes in future entries.
Enjoy!