Strawberry-Almond Milk & Peanut-Maple Milk

A lot of things are better off made than bought.  I’m talking simple things, like salad dressing (unrefined oil + vinegar/citrus juice) and fruit-flavored yogurt (plain full-fat yogurt + fresh fruit).  And it isn’t just a matter of the end product tasting better or being a more nutritious choice — which it does and is — it’s also a matter of getting to completely customize what you’re eating AND save time and money doing it.

I mean, which is easier: looking at what you already have and then making something with it in a minute or less, or going to the store and spending nearly an hour in the process?  (Getting there, finding a parking spot, traipsing through the aisles, locating your desired section/product amidst the 44,999 other items on the shelves, scanning the full array of what’s there and trying to figure out what you want, glancing through the labels because you’re trying to make a good choice and getting justifiably frustrated because the labels seem to be purposely misleading to the consumer and prevent you from knowing what you’re buying, cross-checking prices to get the best deal, dodging other shoppers on the way back to the registers, standing in line to pay…you get the point.)  It’s just easier to make it yourself.  Even muffins only take 30 minutes from start to finish, including baking time and clean-up time.

But I digress…back to today’s easy DIY treat, namely: flavored milk.  Anyone with kids knows strawberry milk’s magnetic appeal, and even adults like hazelnut milk.  (Although most would add coffee to it, order it from a barista, and call it something fancy and grown-up-sounding.)  Unfortunately, as Jamie Oliver pointed out in his Food Revolution series, commercial flavored milk has more sugar than pop does.  Then there’s the dye used to make strawberry milk that shocking shade of pink.  Not exactly a good beverage choice.  I would even hazard the statement “not a sane beverage choice.”

If you have fresh strawberries on hand, by all means make a smoothie with strawberries, honey, and milk.  If you don’t have fresh strawberries, though, and if you want more of a milk than a smoothie, you can use naturally sweetened strawberry jam instead.  To make this glass of Strawberry-Almond Milk, I blended 1/2 cup of whole milk with 2 T. naturally sweetened strawberry jam and just a dash of almond extract. It will be much creamier, less sweet, and fresher than the commercial variety, and it won’t be very pink: in other words, you’ll have a rich milk gently perfumed with the essence of strawberry.  The almond adds a nice nutty backdrop.  You could use whatever jam flavor you like, actually: raspberry, blueberry, cherry, even fig.  They will give you a delicious variety of flavored milks to choose from whenever you like.  You can vary your selection even more by opting for non-dairy milks like coconut milk, (unsweetened) rice milk, and (unsweetened) almond milk.

To make the Peanut-Maple Milk, I blended 1/2 cup whole milk with 2 T. peanut flour, 1 T. maple syrup, and a dash of vanilla extract. You could use 1 T. natural peanut butter rather than the peanut flour if you’d prefer.  This milk has a more intense flavor than the jam-flavored milk does — I like to have as a dessert milk.  Or go with 2 T. cocoa powder, 1 T. maple syrup, and a dash of vanilla to make chocolate milk. Want a hint of hazelnut?  Add a dash of hazelnut extract, too.

Flavored milk really is that simple, and if you use good-quality ingredients — i.e., whole milk from pastured cows, naturally sweetened jams, and natural peanut butter — your flavored milk will not only taste spectacular, you can think of it as a health food.

Enjoy!

PB&A (Peanut Butter & Apricot)

Interesting things happen when you have to — or choose to — stay away from traditional (i.e., gluten-oriented) breads and baked goods.  First you go through bread withdrawal.  Then you start exploring the wide world of non-wheat-containing breads and crackers and cookies and cakes and realize that life is not all about French baguettes.  Globally speaking, in most places, life is about corn tortillas or crepes made of rice and lentils (Indian dosas) or fluffy flatbread made from teff (Ethiopian injera).

Then you realize that actually some things that have become bread-oriented in our culture just don’t need to be about bread at all, and in fact taste better when they’re unencumbered by non-essentials like bread.  Cheese, for example.  Exquisite cheese is best eaten alone at room temperature and perhaps alternated with sweet fruit for contrast.  Creamy cheeses like Brie only need a thin cracker (say, a corn tortilla chip) to make them practical to eat.  Less bread = a more flavorful cheese = you need less cheese = you can afford to spend a bit more on cheese (plus you save the money you would have spent on bread) = you can buy better-quality cheese = the cheese is so tasty you wouldn’t want to mar its flavor with bread = less bread.  Talk about a non-vicious circle!

My latest take-the-bread-away foray was into the world of the classic lunchtime PB&J.  In this case, I replaced the “J” part of the equation with a flattened, dried fruit, then sandwiched the PB between the fruit “slices.” Any dried fruit that’s shaped like a slice would work, so probably anything except berries would be a good choice.  Dried peaches, dried banana strips, dried pineapple…you have plenty of PB&[fill in the blank] options.  Trader Joe’s even carries chili-spiced mango slices — make it a PB&M and kick it up a notch!

Indonesian Peanut Noodles

Natural peanut butter is one of my favorite foods.  Not only does it taste so good that it’s addictive, it transcends sandwiches and chocolate cups to create lusciously creamy soups, sauces, and sautées.  PB is also easy enough to make yourself: just put 1 cup of unsalted peanuts, 1 tablespoon unrefined peanut oil, and a dash of sea salt into a blender or food processor and whir away.  You can determine how crunchy you want the PB to be by simply blending it until you reach your desired consistency.  Same goes for the salt level — you decide.  Or try various brands of natural PB until you find the one you like best.  (My favorite is the Trader Joe’s Organic Crunchy Salted PB.)

Indonesian Peanut Noodles with Carrots & Snap Peas
This serves 4. Recipe can easily be doubled.

4 servings whole-grain noodles (I used brown rice noodles, but 100% soba noodles — made entirely out of buckwheat — would be another great choice)*
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1″ matchsticks
8 ounces snap peas
Drizzle of unrefined peanut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 or 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce, depending on how salty you’d like your stir-fry to be (be sure to choose wheat-free tamari/soy if you’re making this a gluten-free dish)
1/4 cup natural peanut butter
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp. ground ginger
Fistful of fresh cilantro leaves (I adore cilantro, so I use a lot of it in my dishes, but you can notch down to a few stems’ worth of leaves if you’re not a huge cilantro fan)

Bring large pot of water to a boil and add pasta. Take a look at the cooking time required for the noodles, then subtract 5 minutes from that. When the timer goes off, add the carrots and peas to the same pot and keep simmering for another 5 minutes. (My noodles took 10 minutes to cook, so I simmered the noodles alone for 5 minutes, then added the veggies and simmered it all for another 5 minutes. This saves you from having to cook the veggies separately.) Drain noodles and veggies and set aside.

While the noodles and veggies are cooking, drizzle the oil into a pan and heat over medium-low heat for 1 minute. Add garlic and sautée, stirring often, for 3 minutes or until garlic is starting to soften. Stir in tamari and PB and let the mixture cook for 1 minute. Add lime juice and ginger and cook for 1 or 2 more minutes. At this point, the mixture will be fairly thick and bubbly, so add 1 or 2 tablespoons of water (start with one and see how it looks) to thin the sauce. You should wind up with a creamy, light-brown sauce.

Remove pan from heat and stir in cilantro. Toss sauce with noodles and veggies and serve immediately, garnishing with a wedge of lime if you’d like.

Enjoy!

* Both brown rice and 100% soba noodles are gluten-free, but whole-wheat noodles would work in this recipe, too.

PB & Soy Carrots

Some side dishes are place holders — they just occupy a parcel of real estate on the side of the plate without actually contributing anything to the property.  (White buns, anemic iceberg lettuce, bland mashed potatoes…)  But then some side dishes are so dang good you wish they were the main dish.  This is one of those.

Thanks to the inclusion of umami-rich soy sauce and (nearly) universally beloved peanut butter, you get a huge flavor return on your efforts.  And for a main course, you could double or triple the sauce and cook strips of chicken or beef along with the carrots.  Brown rice would make a nice accompaniment.  So much for those dull buns!

PB & Soy Carrots
Makes enough for 4 side dishes.  Use wheat-free tamari instead of soy sauce if you’d like to make them gluten-free.  (Most tamari is made from soy beans, salt, and water; soy sauce is usually made from soy beans, wheat, salt, and water.)

8 medium carrots, preferably organic (they really do taste better!), peeled and cut into 2″-long matchsticks
1/4 cup 100% peanut butter, salted or unsalted depending on your taste buds
2 T. soy sauce or wheat-free tamari
2 T. maple syrup (check the ingredients list to make sure it really is maple syrup!)
1/2 c. water

Place all ingredients into a wide-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir to make sure the peanut butter is evenly distributed, then cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Check to make sure there’s still enough liquid to cook the carrots — if the carrots are getting dry and starting to stick to the bottom of the pan, add another 2 T. water. Continue simmering for another 5 minutes and then poke one of the carrots with a knife tip to make sure your desired level of tenderness has been reached.  You may wind up simmering the carrots for as long as 25 minutes if you like them fairly soft.

Serve warm or cold. These carrots are equally delicious cold out of the refrigerator the next day, so you may want to double or triple the recipe and then enjoy the leftovers as snacks. Carrots will keep in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

PB&C (Peanut Butter & Cocoa)

Who doesn’t like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?  Peanut butter and chocolate just go together.  But I guarantee that once you make your own PB&C in solid form or smoothie/shake form, you won’t ever want to go back to the prepackaged kind.  The homemade variety tastes better, it’s a whole lot better for your health, AND you probably already have the ingredients for it on hand.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll just put it this way:

Milk Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Milk Non-Fat, Milk Fat, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, PGPR, Emulsifiers, Peanut(s), Dextrose, Salt, TBHQ (off the Reese’s label)

OR

Whole milk , 100% peanut butter, cocoa powder, maple syrup (out of your own blender).

Seriously, you gotta try making your own!  I swear you’ll never want a commercial PB&C again.

Liquid PB&C

Blend 1 cup whole milk (preferably from grass-fed cows, like Calder’s or Organic Valley), 1 T. 100% peanut butter, 1 T. cocoa powder, and 1 T. maple syrup (preferably Grade B) until smooth.  Enjoy!

Traditional PB&C

Dunk a square of dark chocolate (at least 70%; I go for 90%) in 100% peanut butter.  Enjoy!

Indonesian Soup with Peanut Butter & Coconut

In the States, we eat it with jam or in cookies.  If we’re getting really creative, we might throw in an apple or a stalk of celery with raisins.  (Remember your childhood “ant-on-a-log” snacks?)  In other regions of the world, though — notably Africa and southeast Asia — peanut butter is incorporated into everything from porridge to poultry.

Not only do peanuts have a stunningly rich nutritional portfolio, they add depth and creaminess to whatever they come across.  They’re also easy to grow and easy to shove into your pocket and carry with you.  Not bad for a misnamed plant!  (Peanuts aren’t nuts  — they’re actually legumes and grow underground.  Most other nuts grow on trees, which is why allergen labels discern between peanuts and tree nuts.  If you’re anywhere outside of the U.S., in fact, you would be calling peanuts “groundnuts.”)

Peanut butter is an intrinsic element of the sauce served in Thai restaurants alongside chicken satay, and peanut butter also forms the base flavors for Indonesian soups and sauces.  (Along with coconut, lime, and cilantro.)  Groundnut stew can be found across the African continent, and like their counterparts in southeast Asia, African cooks also like to pair PB with their poultry dishes.  I think we ought to use PB more often in our own meals — we’re missing out!

An easy way to segue into using PB in savory settings is to try this simple glaze for carrots.  You might want to use unsalted PB since you’ll be using soy sauce as well.

Peanut Butter-Maple Carrots

Simmer carrots in boiling water for about 5 minutes, then drain and set aside.  In a separate bowl, stir together soy sauce, maple syrup, and PB.  While you can adjust the amounts as you see fit, the basic proportions are equal parts soy and maple + a spoonful of PB.  (I like PB a lot, so I would use 4 T. of soy, 4 T. of maple, and 3 T. of PB for about 8 carrots.)

Sautée PB mixture and cooked carrots in a nonstick pan over medium-low heat for about 8 minutes, stirring often to prevent the maple from clotting and scorching.  Serve hot.  (Tip:  because this is such a flavorful side dish, it would make a great side to pass at Thanksgiving!)

Enjoy!

PB & J Pancake "Sandwich"

Technically, a sandwich is a bready dough filled with something.  Hoagies, gyros, calzones, quesadillas … they all fall into the “sandwich” category.  You can stuff them with veggies or meats or cheeses or herbs or condiments or whatever your tongue desires.  Sandwiches are, in short, the ultimate custom dish.

In the spirit of adding to the roster, I’d like to introduce my new pancake sandwich concept — not only is it a great way to elevate a mundane filling to triple-decker status, it’s a great way to use up leftover pancakes.  In this case, I warmed up three silver-dollar-sized pancakes I’d enjoyed for breakfast the previous morning (I made them with cornmeal and quinoa, but any type of flour makes great pancakes to use with savory fillings), then liberally doused them with apricot jam and crunchy 100% PB.  The result?  One heck of a tasty sandwich!

The next time you have leftover pancakes and some random sandwich fillings, I heartily suggest you try coming up with your own triple-decker.  Or quadruple-decker, or even quintuple decker.  Maybe pancake sandwiches could become the next dinner party sensation:  just whip up a few batches of ‘cakes, lay out some assorted sandwich insides, and step back to see what your guests come up with.  You could even make pancake ice cream sandwiches for dessert!

Peanut-Butter Cinnamon Cookies

What’s your style — crunchy or creamy?  Salted or un-?  Virginia or Valencia?  Seems like there are just as many varieties of peanut butter as there are wines.  (And we haven’t even gotten into blanching or skins…)

I think the #1 thing you can do with really top-notch organic 100% peanut butter is use it as a dip for 90% dark chocolate — it’s Reese’s magnified by 100!  The second-best thing you can do is make extreme-style PB cookies…which I’ve done here.  Using unrefined, straight-from-the-shell peanut oil adds even more flavor, and using honey in addition to sucanat gives the cookies more depth and keeps them soft and chewy.  (Honey is a natural humectant, which means that it absorbs water from the air and therefore maintains a nice moist cookie.)  Cinnamon rounds out the peanut-and-honey base with its warm tones.

Peanut-Butter-Cinnamon Cookies*

These cookies are gluten-free.  To make them with standard wheat flour, simply use wheat flour in place of the peanut, teff, and brown rice flours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper.

1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup unrefined peanut oil
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup 100% natural peanut butter (crunchy or creamy, salted or un-, Valencia or Virginia…it’s your call)
1/2 cup sucanat
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp. sea salt (you might want to omit this if you’ve used salted butter and salted PB)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 T. baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup peanut flour
1/2 cup teff OR sorghum flour
1/2 cup crushed/chopped peanuts (optional)

In large bowl, mix butter, peanut oil, applesauce, and peanut butter. Add sucanat, honey, sea salt, cinnamon, and baking powder and thoroughly combine. Stir in eggs, then flour. (You can either use a blender or a wooden spoon to mix the batter — you’re not trying to aerate this the way you would a lighter cookie or cake.)  Stir in crushed or chopped peanuts if you really want to go nuts.

Use a teaspoon to drop rounds of batter onto the cookie sheets. If you want them round and a bit pouffy, leave them as they are; if you want your cookies to be a bit flatter, you can press them down lightly with a greased fork (that will also give them an interesting ridged pattern on top).

Bake for about 10 minutes, then remove from oven and let cool for another 10 minutes before removing the cookies with a spatula. Sprinkle additional cinnamon over them just before serving if desired.  Store uneaten cookies in a tin, jar, or any other airtight container.

Enjoy!

A Trio of Sandwiches

Although John Montagu–the 4th Earl of Sandwich–probably didn’t invent one of the staples of modern-day American cuisine, he certainly ensured its popularity.  What other eighteenth-century dish is served in almost every restaurant in the country?

The sandwich is truly an elegant solution:  it allows for extreme creativity in both base and toppings, it’s a great way to use leftovers, and you can (usually) eat one without getting your hands too messy.  The sandwich’s only downfall is that it tends to get shoehorned into mediocrity:  more often than not, it’s composed of PB&J, ham and swiss, or (if it’s lucky) barbecued chicken and onions.  But why stick to such a limited repertoire?

As you can see in this picture, a sandwich can be whatever you want it to be.  Witness the Turkey, Hummus & Carrot sandwich, the PB & Apple sandwich, and the Goat Cheese & Fig Jam sandwich, all on whole-wheat Tuscan bread.  (Also known as The Leftovers I Had in My Fridge That Night sandwiches.)

So the next time you think about fixing yourself a sandwich, go wild!  Remember:  sandwiches come with everything except rules.