Breakfast Bites

Sometimes a little advance effort has a big pay-off. That’s most certainly the case with breakfast — the last thing most of us want to do first thing in the morning is spend a lot of time preparing/scrounging for something to eat. Specifically, something that will taste good, be healthy, and be satisfying enough to last until lunch. All three of those conditions are impossible to fulfill — although those with a sweet tooth would probably argue that the “tastes good” criteria would be met — with what you’ll find in the cereal aisle or the reduced-fat dairy section in most supermarkets. (Also known as the Aisle of Sugar and the Section of Sugar departments.)

If you’re willing to spend a little time making these breakfast bites while you listen to your favorite podcast, though, you won’t face a first-thing-in-the-morning crisis. With three kinds of whole grains, two seeds, eggs, extra-virgin olive oil, and natural sweeteners in the form of raisins and dates, these little guys taste great, are healthy, and won’t leave you hungry by 10 a.m. Plus, they’re bite-size and highly portable. How convenient is that?

Breakfast Bites
Makes approximately 60 bites.

1/4 cup sunflower seeds, coarsely ground in a food processor
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, coarsely ground in a food processor
1/4 cup teff flour*
3/4 cup sorghum flour*
3/4 cup brown rice flour*
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 cup date sugar
1/2 cup raisins
3 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Powdered sucanat for rolling (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F and cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together seeds, flours, cinnamon, baking powder, and date sugar. Stir in raisins, separating them by hand if they’re clumping together.

Crack the egg whites into a large bowl and put the yolks in another large bowl. Whip the whites with the cream of tartar — since the cream of tartar is acidic, it helps set the whites faster — until you have almost-stiff peaks (the kind that very slowly and gently starts to fall over after you’ve lifted up the beater).

Using the same beater, whip the yolks with the vanilla and oil until the mixture is frothy and thick. Stir the dry ingredients into the yolks. The dough will be dry, but that’s okay — you still have to fold in the whites. After you’ve folded them in with a spatula, start rolling the dough into 1″ balls and placing them on the baking sheets. I find that the easiest way to do that is pinch the dough together, use your fingertips to form it into a rough ball, and then give it a little finishing “polish” roll in the palm of your hand.

Bake for 12 minutes until bottoms are golden brown. If you like, roll the hot-out-of-the-oven balls in powdered sucanat to give them a little more sweetness. I do like to roll them, so I bake the bites in 2 batches — that way, I can get the first batch sucanat-ed while they’re still hot. Let bites cool completely before storing them in an airtight container.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use an equivalent of kamut, spelt, and/or whole-wheat flour.

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs & Purple Hash

Let’s not kid ourselves — the best part of the omelet is the cheese. Assuming, that is, the cheese isn’t Velveeta or anything else that calls itself “a pasteurized process cheese food.” Yep, “cheese food,” not cheese. I don’t make this stuff up, folks. Just comes down to reading the labels…

But anyway, back to the good stuff. I opted to scramble an egg with some grated Kerrygold Dubliner white Cheddar, which is a lush and savory cheese made with milk from grass-fed cows. I am a huge fan of Kerrygold cheeses and butters, and as I had suspected, that Cheddar made an incredibly savory omelet. The purple potatoes were the perfect classic-with-a-twist accompaniment. Since they’re such small potatoes to begin with, it’s a snap to cut them into a few pieces and them simmer them briefly before frying them. You could use any kind of potatoes for your hash, of course — leftover, already-cooked potatoes are the quickest to use — but I’d say the purple variety has the most visual panache. The only thing cooler than “Green Eggs & Ham” would have been “Purple Eggs & Ham.”

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs & Purple Hash

Purple potatoes
Eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Grated sharp cheese (Cheddar, Parmesan, Gruyere, any of the aged French Basque cheeses), preferably from pastured animals

Get a pot of water boiling while you cut the potatoes into bite-sized pieces. The little purple ones are so small that often all you have to do is cut them in half. Simmer potatoes for 10 minutes and drain well. Drizzle a little extra-virgin olive oil into a nonstick skillet and cook potatoes over medium heat for about 10 minutes or until they’re crispy and turning golden brown through their purpleness. Stir often to make sure they don’t stick to the pan.

While the potatoes are cooking, heat a drizzle of the oil over medium-low heat in another skillet. Add eggs and sprinkle cheese on top. Cook, stirring often, until eggs are softly scrambled and cheese is melted. That should only take about 3 minutes, particularly if you have fresh pastured eggs. If you want the potatoes and eggs to come out at precisely the same time, don’t start cooking the eggs until the potatoes are halfway done. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon & Honey Millet Cakes

I recently prepared these millet cakes for a cooking class, and reactions ranged from “This would make a good breakfast!” to “It kind of reminds me of rice pudding…except crispy.” My thoughts exactly! I also think these cakes would make a great dessert if you topped them with ice cream and/or fresh fruit and an additional drizzle of honey. Or a dollop of whole-milk Greek yogurt with some honey and cinnamon stirred into it.

You could make grain cakes with whatever grain you have on hand: whole-grain rice (brown, red, black, purple), millet, quinoa, amaranth, even wild rice. The key is to overcook your grain of choice just a little so that it becomes stickier and can better hold its shape when formed into a patty. Using two egg whites instead of one whole egg helps the cakes stick together, too — since most of the egg’s protein is in the white, that’s the part that helps things stick together when cooked. (Then again, all of the vitamins and most of the other nutrients are found in the yolk, so it’s better to use the whole egg from a health standpoint.)

Be sure to save your yolks and use them to make ice cream, custard, or even extra-rich scrambled eggs. Fresh yolks can be refrigerated for up to 3 days if you cover them completely with cold water before stashing them on a shelf where they’ll be in prominent, unforgettable, “don’t-forget-about-me!” view.

Cinnamon & Honey Millet Cakes
Makes enough to serve 4. Recipe can be easily doubled or tripled.

2 cups cooked millet (¾ cup will yield about 2 cups cooked)
2 egg whites, preferably from pastured hens
2 T. honey
½ tsp. to 1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. vanilla
Dash sea salt

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Heat a dab of butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until butter is melted and add millet to the pan 1/4 cup at a time, pressing the millet into the cup with your fingers and then tapping the compressed millet gently into the skillet. Press down lightly on the millet patty with a spatula to flatten it (aim for a 3” patty).

Cook for 5 minutes or until golden brown, then very carefully and gently flip over the patties. Cook another 3 minutes or until both sides are golden brown. Leftover patties keep quite deliciously in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

Scrambled Eggs with Wild Shrimp

One of the many wonderful things about the world of food — perhaps the most wonderful — is that the stuff that tastes the best is also the stuff that’s the best quality and the most sustainable. I’m talking grass-fed beef, eggs from pastured hens, well- managed wild seafood, etc. People who think about the needs of the animals they raise and the land they farm make the effort (and either have or develop the know-how) to produce damned tasty ingredients to put on your plate.

Take wild shrimp, for example. Wild-caught shrimp from Oregon and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico are rated “Best Choice” and “Good Alternative” respectively by the Monterey Bay Aquarium folks. Imported shrimp farmed in open systems are ranked “Avoid” since open farming contaminates ocean environments (and also doesn’t taste nearly as good). In short, what’s best for you is also best for your neighbors. And if you have one of the Aquarium’s handy Pocket Guides with you when you shop for seafood, it’s pretty easy to spot the yummy stuff. Just be sure to read the country of origin and method of production (wild/farmed; sometimes wild is best, sometimes farmed is best) to make sure you’re getting the tastiest seafood.

To make this quick breakfast, I just scrambled some eggs and with some shrimp I had already cooked and enjoyed for dinner the night before. If you don’t have already-cooked shrimp, it’s easy enough to whip some up in three minutes flat.

Scrambled Eggs with Wild Shrimp

Wild shrimp, peeled and deveined
Italian herbs (optional, but nice)
Eggs, preferably from pastured hens

Heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil or a dab of butter in a skillet and add shrimp and herbs. Sautée for 3 minutes over medium heat, turning the shrimp halfway through the cooking time to make sure they cook evenly on both sides. They’ll curl and turn pink when cooked. Remove from skillet and cut into smaller pieces.

Add eggs and another drizzle of oil to the skillet and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes or until eggs have cooked to your satisfaction, stirring often to evenly cook the eggs. (I like mine quite soft.) Stir in shrimp and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Mashed Potato Cake with a Poached Egg

We’ve all been there: you made too much of a side dish and wound up with more than you could chew. Literally. So you stick it in the fridge and figure that you’ll get around to eating it eventually…but then you don’t, and you wind up pitching your grocery dollars instead of eating them. It happens to the best of us.

That nearly happened to me when I had a pot of mashed redskins in my fridge. Luckily, though, when I was pondering what to have for breakfast one night (yes, I think it about it the night before in order to facilitate the whole getting-ready-in-the-morning process), I remembered those potatoes and decided they’d make a great base for a poached egg. Moreover, I decided they’d make great mashed potato cakes upon which to perch the egg. And the best part? The cakes only take 10 minutes total, so if you time the poaching right, you’ll have piping-hot potatoes and eggs to enjoy first thing in the morning.

Mashed Potato Cake with a Poached Egg

Mashed potatoes*
Egg(s)

Shape the potatoes into hamburger-sized patties no more than 1″ thick. Heat a dab of butter over medium heat until butter is melted, then gently lay on the potato patties. Cook for 5 minutes before very carefully and very gently flipping over the patties. Add another dab of butter if the pan is dry. Cook for another 5 minutes, reducing the heat by a notch or two since now the pan will be very hot and the cooking will be in full swing. Patties should be golden brown on both sides.

While the potato cakes are cooking, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Crack in an egg (or two) and reduce heat to medium. Stir the egg gently to make sure it isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pan. Simmer it for 3 minutes. Eggs tend to foam over as they poach, so you want to stand right by that pot and keep an eye on it for those 3 minutes. The goal is a gently simmer the egg, not boil it — you may need to reduce the heat to medium-low or even low. Skim any rising foam off the top and discard it so that it doesn’t splash onto the stove and make a hard-to-clean mess.

Remove poached egg from water with a slotted spoon and place on top of the potato cake. Garnish with herbs and/or cracked black pepper if desired.

Enjoy!

* To mash potatoes, cut potatoes — in this case, redskins — into 1″ cubes and simmer them for 10 minutes. Drain well and mash with whatever extras you’d like: a pat of butter, a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, a soft cheese such as ricotta or goat, some snipped chives, a dash of dried herbs, etc. I mashed mine with some sauteéd garlic and chopped parsley.

Egg & Spinach Breakfast Tacos

Breakfast tacos are a beautiful thing when you make them yourself: you can use whatever filling you’d like, you can use whatever toppings you like, and you can make your tacos as hearty or as light as you’d like. And the best part? These tacos only take about five minutes to make, ten if you make your salsa right there on the spot. (I had made salsa the previous day to accompany a different dish, so I was able to skip those five extra minutes.)

Seeing as these were breakfast tacos, I opted for an egg and spinach filling, but you could just as easily use leftover cooked meat or seafood if you’d like … or you could do an all-veggie taco. Tasty toppings would include everything from cheese to plain whole-milk Greek yogurt (which is even smoother and creamier-tasting than sour cream) to chopped avocados. The only requirement is to have fun creating your Mexican-themed morning meal!

Egg & Spinach Breakfast Tacos
This is sized for a single portion, but feel free to double, triple, or even quadruple it.

For the salsa (which you can make well ahead of time and serve with a variety of other dishes):
Black beans, drained (my favorite brand of canned beans is Eden since they use BPA-free cans and sea salt)
Chopped red bell pepper
Cooked corn kernels (I used thawed organic frozen corn)
Chopped fresh cilantro
Squirt of lemon or lime juice
Dash of sea salt

For the tacos:
3 small or 1 large 100% corn tortilla
Handful of spinach
2 eggs, lightly scrambled in a bowl

See second paragraph for optional toppings suggestions.

To make the salsa, simply combine ingredients in a bowl and toss well. Salsa will keep in the fridge for up to 4 days.

To make the tacos, place the tortillas in a large skillet over medium heat to warm them. The tortillas will probably curl with the heat, so you may have to turn them occasionally and press down on them slightly to try and flatten them out a bit.

While your tortillas are warming, heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil or a pat of butter in small skillet over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the spinach. Cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes or until spinach has shrunk considerably. Add eggs and continue to cook, stirring often, for another 3 minutes or until eggs are softly cooked through.

Spoon eggs into heated tortillas and top with salsa and any other toppings you may wish to add.

¡Disfruta!

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

It’s true: oatmeal makes a great breakfast. But not the flavored, sugared, powdery instant oats that are more chemicals and sweeteners than they are oats. Plain, old-fashioned rolled oats are a much better choice…and you can flavor them any way you want! You could even cook a giant batch once or twice a week and then enjoy “instant” oatmeal whenever the mood strikes you. (Or cook a big batch of steel-cut oats or even oat groats, which is the whole un-steel-cut grain.)

For my breakfast earlier in the week, I had some strawberries that needed to be eaten and a handy bag of rolled oats. I could have opted for sliced berries stirred into cooked oats, of course, but I thought it would be interesting to see what a shake made with oats would be like. The answer? With their thickening power, oats make the ideal shake. And it’s easy enough to make the shake dairy-free if you’d like: just simmer the oats in water rather than milk. So simple! This is a surprisingly hearty and satisfying smoothie to enjoy first thing in the morning or even on the way to work.

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

Blend cooked plain rolled oats with a handful of organic strawberries* in a blender. (To make a single serving, I cooked 1/4 cup raw oats and tossed in about 9 strawberries.) Add 1 T. maple syrup and a dash of vanilla extract and blend again. If the smoothie is too thick and is refusing to blend to a smooth consistency, trickle in cold water and keep blending until you have a milkshake-like smoothie. Note that this idea of cooked oats + fruit would work with any fruit that’s soft enough to blend. Banana-oat, blueberry-oat, peach-oat…the possibilities are endless!

* Seeing as strawberries are one of the most-sprayed crops on the U.S. market and we eat the whole fruit, they’re worth buying organic.

Enjoy!

Blueberry Kefir Cream

Ah, cultured dairy… The brilliance of it (how else would pre-refrigeration-technology peoples have stored their valuable milk?), the taste of it (there’s even a beer inoculated with the same lactobacillus you’ll find in yogurt — ever tried a bottle of lovely Flemish red ale?), the versatility of it (cakes are lovely when made with sour cream; so are potatoes). If you’ve read this blog very often, you know I’m a fan.

This time I opted to make the most of the glory that is kefir (which, according to a Russian woman who has attended a few of my talks, is pronounced “kah-FEER”) by blending it with wild blueberries, an egg, and a touch of maple syrup to make a sublimely delicious and probiotic ice cream. Even though the kefir tastes slightly sour on its own as a result of its culturedness, when combined with fruit, it doesn’t need much sweetener to make dessert. Or breakfast, really, considering that this ice cream packs a lot more nutrition than your typical bowl of cereal.

Blueberry Kefir Cream

1 cup kefir, preferably made with milk from grass-fed cows (this would be a major component of its nutritious aspect)
1 cup wild blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens (you’ll be eating this egg raw, so if you don’t have a good source for eggs, skip the egg; a good egg does, however, add creaminess and nutritional value galore)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup maple syrup (I prefer Grade B for its richer flavor)

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. It truly is that simple.

Enjoy!

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Having just returned from a fascinating — and tasty! — culinary conference in NYC, real food has been very much on my mind. (Although, to be honest, real food is always on my mind. Chalk it up to one of the occupational hazards of being a recipe developer/food writer. In terms of “hazards,” it’s got to be one of the most pleasant.) By “real food,” I’m talking minimally processed foods: grains that are whole, oils that are unrefined, sweeteners that still retain their nutrients, animal products from pastured animals…you get the idea.

Speaking of the pastured animal foods, one of my current favorite dairy products is crème fraîche. It’s still unpopular and un-mainstream enough to be produced by real farms with animals freely grazing. The animals’ state of good health = dairy, egg, and meat products for us that taste damned good and also happen to be the most nutritious. (In case you’re curious about the numbers, pastured animal products have about half the fat of conventional animal products. Pastured also offers higher amounts of anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats and far more vitamins and other micronutrients than conventional products do.)

Along with being produced by great dairyists like Vermont Creamery, crème fraîche is also a cultured dairy product, which means it offers an intriguing tang along with its rich creaminess. It pairs beautifully with everything from fruit to potatoes! The nibs in this recipe add a nice crunch to the juicy orange and creamy/tangy crème fraîche.

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Peel oranges and gently pull apart into segments. Arrange in a bowl or on a plate and top with a dollop of crème fraîche. Sprinkle with cocoa nibs or broken-up chunks of dark chocolate. (When I say “dark,” I mean at least 75%. The sweetness of the orange is all the sweeter when paired with not-so-sweet chocolate.) Serve immediately for breakfast, dessert, or a snack. If you’d like to experiment with other fruit + crème fraîche combinations, try making Strawberries & Crème.

Enjoy!

Medium-Boiled Eggs on Paprika-Dusted Brown Rice

Pastured eggs are my favorite ingredient for several reasons: they’re an integral part of sweet and savory dishes, they’re ideal to enjoy any time of day, and they provide essential structure for everything from baked goods to velvety sauces. You just can’t beat an egg when it comes to artistry AND functionality! The fact that they can be prepared in such a variety of ways — nearly all of which take less than 10 minutes — makes them all the more appealing.

But although poached eggs get my #1 vote, their glaring disadvantage is that they’re one of those make-it-and-eat-it-NOW dishes. Specifically, with a fork, a plate, and an unfolded napkin at the ready. Soft-boiled eggs have a similar constraint since they also tend to have runny yolks. (Which to me is the best part! If you have the space and the resources, messy is fun.) The [lack of] Messy Factor makes hard-boiled eggs the most convenient egg option when you want to make enough eggs to have leftovers or have some to take them along with you as a traveling snack.

Lately, I’ve been playing with the length of the boiling time — I want to see how soft I can get the yolks to be without them being messy. The ideal time seems to be 8 minutes. With 8 minutes of boiling, I get yolks that are verging on runny and are decidedly soft and still dark-orange/dark-yellow in color (as opposed to the much more pale yellow of a fully hard-boiled egg) but don’t try to sneak out of their whites when you cut them in half. If you have a napkin handy and are planning on eating your eggs promptly, though, you can boil them for an even briefer 5 minutes and have soft-boiled eggs.

Medium-Boiled Eggs on Paprika-Dusted Brown Rice
You can make as many servings of this as you like. One egg and 1/2 cup cooked rice would typically be one serving.

Eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Cooked brown rice, either long- or short-grain (I tend to cook my brown rice for 15 minutes fewer than the package instructions indicate since I like my rice on the chewy side)
Sweet paprika

Place your eggs in a pot and cover with water and a lid. Bring water to a boil while paying close attention to the pot. As soon as you hit a boil, reduce heat to medium, set the timer for 8 minutes, and tilt the lid slightly. Lower heat another notch if the eggs are bumping around violently inside the pot. (The smaller the pot, the more they’ll be tossed around in there.)

While the eggs are cooking, place the cooked brown rice on a plate (or on plates) and sprinkle with sweet paprika.

As soon as the 8 minutes are up, place pot under the tap and run cold water into the pot, tilting it to allow the hot water to spill out and be replaced with the cold water. Crack the shells of the eggs you’re going to use right away and peel them, then cut in half and place on top of the rice. Leftover eggs should be left in the pot to cool — with their shells still on — until they’re completely chilled. You can refrigerate them for up to 5 days.

Season your not-so-hard-boiled eggs with a little sea salt and freshly cracked pepper and serve as a breakfast, lunch, or snack.

Enjoy!

Almond Butter & Banana Smoothie

With its focus on nuts and fresh fruit (and coconuts and fresh herbs), I’ve long been a fan of raw food. Every raw dish I’ve ever had has been delicious and innovative. Vegan dishes are tasty, too, but unfortunately vegans seem to rely overmuch on soy and wheat products. I’m not a big fan of soy for a variety of reasons — ranging from health issues to environmental ones — and I avoid gluten, so lots of otherwise-interesting vegan dishes are out for me. Raw food, on the other hand, doesn’t use soy or wheat or anything processed…which means it’s always innovative, always fresh, and always scrumptious.

I’ve been wanting to make more raw dishes at home (especially raw desserts, which are unbelievably good!), but I don’t have a Vitamix and probably won’t any time soon. My trusty Cuisinart food processor just isn’t powerful enough to rip through damned near anything the way a Vitamix can.  (I seriously think you could powder diamonds with one of those.) Chopping nuts and grinding them into coarse meal works in some settings, but raw dishes often call for silky-smooth nuts as a main ingredient.

About a week ago, I finally had a “duh!” moment and hit upon a solution to my sans-Vitamix-but-want-raw-food dilemma: use raw nut butter! Nowadays, you can find everything from almond butter to walnut butter to cashew butter. If you’re lucky, you might even stumble upon jars of macadamia butter sitting next to jars of pecan butter. They all have different flavors, of course, but what they all have in common is that their textures all fall somewhere between velvet and satin. I might still splurge on a Vitamix someday, but in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy experimenting with already-made-smooth nut butters. They make anything taste incredibly creamy and rich.

Almond Butter & Banana (or any other fruit) Smoothie

Note: since nut butters are highly perishable, store them in the refrigerator as soon as you get them home. If you are fortunate enough to have a Vitamix or other warp-speed blender/processor, you can make your own nut butters by grinding shelled nuts until they’re smooth. You may wish to add a matching unrefined oil to give the butter a little more creaminess. (Use unrefined almond oil with almonds, unrefined walnut oil with walnuts, etc.)

Place a heaping tablespoon of almond butter and either 1 full-sized banana or 2 small ones (I prefer the little guys) in a blender. If you use a large banana, break it into three or four pieces before adding it. Add 1 tsp. maple syrup and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Pour in enough cool water to barely cover everything and blend on high until smooth. You can add a few ice cubes if you’d like more froth and coolness.

Enjoy!

Ricotta Poppyseed Muffin

Ricotta cheese is like a reversible coat: it has two distinct sides and both are equally appealing. Ricotta salata (or “salted ricotta”) is a hard, aged cheese that is lovely for grating and garnishing; it reminds me a lot of Parmesan. Fresh ricotta, on the other hand, is creamy and sweet and tastes like summer. Its texture reminds me a little bit of whipped cream cheese, except that ricotta made with fresh milk is incredibly lush and has none of the vaguely plastic flavor/texture of commercial cream cheese.

Seeing as fresh ricotta manages to be delightfully dense-textured and airy at the same time, I figured a heaping dollop of it would make baked goods more moist and fluffy. (Not to mention more nutritious and tasty.) I’m happy to report that my hunch was right — these muffins had a nice golden crust on the outside but were tongue-pleasingly delicate on the inside. The poppyseeds added a nice contrasting crunch.

Should you happen to get your hands on a nice tub of fresh ricotta and already have baked goods on hand, you can use the ricotta as a spread, too, just as you would butter or cream cheese. You could even slather a knifeful of ricotta onto a savory sandwich to add a whole new kind of creaminess.

Ricotta Poppyseed Muffins
Makes a baker’s dozen.

1 cup sorghum flour*
1 cup millet OR brown rice flour*
1 T. baking powder
Pinch sea salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup poppyseeds (OR chia seeds OR chopped nuts OR chopped sunflower/pumpkin seeds; the idea here is to include a crunchy accent)
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese (if you can’t find this, use full-fat cottage cheese that you’ve run through a processor/blender)
4 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup almond oil OR extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tray with paper cups. I find that the parchment-style cups made by If You Care work BY FAR the best.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, seeds, and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together the ricotta, eggs, honey, oil, and vanilla. Scoop the liquid ingredients into the dry ones and whisk well to combine. If you’re using wheat flour, stir with a spoon until barely blended.

Pour into the waiting tins and bake for 18 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Top baked muffins with additional ricotta and honey if you’d like.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make wheat-based muffins, use a total of 2 cups of spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flour.

Strawberries with Crème Fraîche

In the wide-ranging world of dairy, there are two main classifications: fresh (or sweet) and cultured (or sour) dairy products. Fresh-milk products are made with just-milked milk that has not yet had a chance to ferment and age into more complex flavors. This includes fresh whipped cream, most ice creams*, most soft and creamy cheeses, and sweet — or what we think of as standard — milk. Cultured products include buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt, and aged cheeses that are more pronounced and cheesy in flavor. *Note that you could make ice cream just as easily with buttermilk and/or yogurt. One of the best flavors I’ve ever had was made with buttermilk.

And then there are some splendidly confusing dairy products that seem to encapsulate the best of both worlds. Crème fraîche is one of them, because although its name literally means “fresh cream” in French, crème fraîche is nonetheless made with cream that has been allowed to culture and sour. (The sourness, by the way, is not added sourness. It occurs because the friendly cultures gobble up the lactose in the milk as they multiply. The more cultures that are in the product = the less lactose. The less lactose, the less sweet-tasting. A handy bit of knowledge for anyone who has difficulty digesting lactose! And anyone looking for lower-in-sugar dairy products, too.)

Although crème fraîche is reminiscent of sour cream, it’s much creamier and smoother and more complex in flavor. And because crème fraîche isn’t produced on the massive scale that sour cream is, crème fraîche is more likely to be made with milk from grass-fed cows. Vermont Creamery is my favorite producer of crème fraîche and other artisanal, small-scale dairy products like fromage blanc, cultured butter, and quark. (Fromage blanc is a cultured yogurt-like cream made from naturally skimmed milk, cultured butter is more tangy and flavorful than fresh-cream butter, and quark is rather like an ultra-creamy cottage cheese that’s been blended into a harmonious smoothness. I fell in love with quark when I lived in Germany and discovered its velvety, fresh existence.)

Since crème fraîche hits a balance between creaminess and tanginess — and hits the nail exactly on the head when it comes to smoothness — it’s great with strawberries. Simply serve a dollop of crème fraîche alongside your organic strawberries (as the #1 most-sprayed fruit, strawberries are worth buying organic) and sprinkle on a little date sugar, sucanat, or coconut sugar.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin-Chestnut Waffles

I don’t often post recipes that involve special equipment, but these pumpkin waffles were far too delicious not to share with fellow waffle iron owners. If you don’t already have an iron, perhaps knowing that there’s a lovely (and whole-grain!) Belgian waffle recipe out there will spur you into picking up that still-in-the-box, never-used waffle maker when you’re hitting garage sales this spring.

The trick of making fluffy waffles that don’t tear apart when you open the waffle maker is to pour a full cup of batter into the maker before you close the two halves and let the waffle cook into its signature crannies and crenellations. That’s just as important as the more obvious precaution of thoroughly greasing the waffle maker before you pour in the batter. (Both of these elements are exponentially more important if you’re making gluten-free waffles since they’re much more likely to tear apart when you open the waffle maker.)

If your waffle iron is the kind that rotates 180 degrees, that’s even better — then you can make sure that both halves of the maker are well-greased before pouring in the batter. If your maker isn’t flippable, use a heat-safe barbecue brush to “paint” both halves with melted butter or coconut oil.

Pumpkin-Chestnut Waffles
Because these are true Belgian-style, only-raised-with-yeast waffles, they need to sit overnight for the yeast to have a chance to flavor and puff the batter. Simply whisk together the batter the night before rather than in the morning. I prefer to make waffles this way, anyway, because this approach means a lot less work in the morning when you want to make your breakfast with a minimum of effort.

3/4 cup mashed pumpkin, either canned or freshly baked and then mashed
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
1/4 cup melted butter (1/2 stick), preferably from grass-fed cows
4 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup chestnut flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1 T. yeast
1/2 tsp. sea salt

Whisk together pumpkin, milk, butter, and eggs until well-blended, then whisk in remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate overnight. The next morning, heat your Belgian waffle maker until the “ready” light is on (or whatever happens when your waffle maker has reached the desired heat). While the iron is heating, whisk your batter briefly; it will have puffed up overnight due to the presence of the yeast.

Place a little scoop of coconut oil or a dab of butter in the center of each of the four quarters of the bottom half of the maker. Close and flip over to grease the other half. If your iron doesn’t rotate, use a heat-proof brush to brush both halves with the oil or butter. The idea is to have a well-greased waffle iron.

Pour 1 full cup of batter into the waffle maker, flip over if you can, and cook for as long as the manufacturer’s instructions indicate for your desired setting. (For mine, it takes about 5 minutes to cook to a lovely golden brown.) You might wish to flip it back over halfway through the cook time. Carefully use a heat-proof spatula and a fork to lift the cooked waffle out of the maker and onto a waiting plate. Add more oil or butter to the iron before making the next waffle. Recipe makes about 4 waffles.

I like to top my waffles with maple syrup and either pecan or walnut oil — the pumpkin is particularly nice with nuts. Or sprinkle toasted nuts on top of your waffle with perhaps some fresh fruit or freshly whipped cream.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you would prefer to make wheat-based waffles, use a total of 2 1/2 cups of spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour.

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cooca Nibs

Plenty of “convenience” foods are far more convenient to make yourself — while the commercial versions tend to have unpronounceable ingredient lists and a mind-boggling amount of sugars/sweeteners, you can whip up a homemade version with a few simple healthy ingredients…and in less than a minute. Sixty seconds spent preparing AND at least 30 minutes saved by not going to the store? Now, that’s convenience! And using ingredients you already have vs. spending more money on an inferior product = thrifty (and smart) convenience.

Flavored yogurts fall into the “Prime Candidates for DIY Convenient Foods” category. If you keep a container of full-fat plain Greek yogurt in your fridge, you can enjoy the same yogurt innumerable ways by simply stirring in a few extra ingredients. Plus, when you have plain yogurt, you can even go sweet or savory without having to spend extra money. Use it as a basis for creamy salad dressings (use the yogurt in place of oil), as a way to enrich curries and soups (remove the pan or pot from the heat and stir in the yogurt at the last minute to keep it from curdling), or as a substitute for sour cream (to me, full-fat plain Greek yogurt tastes richer and fresher than sour cream does). And remember that fresh herbs make a wonderful companion to yogurt.

To go the sweet route, you can stir everything from spices to jam into your yogurt. For this batch, I opted to go with cinnamon, maple syrup, fresh blueberries, and a sprinkling of cocoa nibs. Any fruit would work, though, and you can use any sweetener you like, from honey to palm sugar to date sugar. Let your imagination run (conveniently) wild!

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cocoa Nibs

Plain full-fat Greek yogurt
Drizzle of maple syrup
Sprinkling of cinnamon
Fresh blueberries (or any other fruit)
Cocoa nibs (optional, but adds an appealing chocolate crunch)

Use a fork or a small whisk to stir the maple syrup and cinnamon into the yogurt. Gently stir in blueberries and top with nibs. Note that any fruit would be lovely — just be sure to cut the fruit into bite-sized pieces before stirring it in. Or you could dip larger-sized fruit slices into the yogurt.

Enjoy!