Mexican Salad with Tangy Cumin Dressing

Around lunch time at our house you can almost always find Hannah and I eating a salad of some sort. Lately I have been trying to be a little more creative with the ingredients we have on hand, so upon realizing all the fresh produce we had within our reach from our garden and in our fridge, I decided to give your 'traditional' Mexican Salad a new twist! I hope there a few brave souls out there who will be willing to try this new version of Mexican fare:-)

Fresh Mexican Salad
1/2 A head Romaine lettuce, chopped and washed
1/3 c. cooked black beans
1/4 avocado, thinly sliced
4 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1/4 bell pepper, sliced
1-2 T. dressing(recipe below)

Pile lettuce neatly on plate. Top with beans, and arrange peppers, avocado and tomatoes in a orderly fashion. Drizzle with tangy dressing. Enjoy this refreshing salad with a cup of ice cold water!

Tangy Cumin Dressing
Serves 4-8
1/4 c. olive oil
1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. granulated garlic
1 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. dried mexican oregano
Mix together and serve over lettuce.

GF Coconut Banana Blueberry Pancakes

This past weekend I (Esther) decided to try out a new recipe for pancakes, and as you know since we are off gluten they would have to be gluten free:-) This recipe caught my eye the other day when I saw them on Joy the Bakers Blog, I knew that I would have to make them sometime very soon. The original recipe called for the batter to be cooked in a waffle iron. Though as you know with a family of 7 and only 1 waffle iron it was going to be to time consuming a task on a Sunday morning to accomplish! After thinking about it I thought that it could not hurt to try and see if they would work as pancakes, and sure enough they did and some amazing pancakes they they turned out to be! The recipe calls for coconut flour which is basically you guessed.... extremely finely ground coconut,do not try and blend up some of the dried coconut you have in your pantry as it will not work( Hannah and I have tried this before, it doesn't work:-). You will need to buy this flour at your local health food store.

Gluten Free Coconut Pancakes

1/3 cup sweetened or unsweetened shredded coconut, toasted

4 tablespoons melted coconut oil,

6 large eggs

1/4 cup honey

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup coconut flour

2 tablespoon mashed bananas

Toppings:

Sliced banana

Fresh Blueberries

Almond Butter

Maple syrup

Unsweetened coconut flakes

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 200 degrees F.

Place coconut on a baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 6 minutes. Keep an eye on the coconut, it browns and burns quickly.

Remove toasted coconut from the oven and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together coconut oil, eggs, agave nectar, vanilla extract, and mashed bananas. Whisk until well incorporated.

In a small bowl, whisk together the coconut flour, salt, and baking soda. Work the mixture with your fingers to ensure that the coconut flour doesn’t have any lumps in to.

Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Mixture will begin to thicken as you whisk. Add the toasted, shredded coconut and whisk to incorporate. Allow mixture to sit for 5 minutes while you plug in and preheat your griddle. Drop the batter by 1/4 cup fulls on hot griddle that has been greased with coconut oil. Bake about 2-3 min. on first side, flip and cook another minute or so, the 2nd side cooks faster so watch it closely! Put in oven to keep warm while you finish the rest of the batter. When ready to serve dab the top of each hotcake with a little almond butter, slice extra banana and sprinkle blueberries on top. Last of all drizzle with a little maple syrup. Enjoy this absolutely amazing pancakes!

New Poll on side bar!

Homemade Rees' Cups!

A few weeks ago, Esther and I held a tea party at our house for a few of the young girls, and their mothers, that attend our church. While we were planning the menu for that special day, a friend sent us a recipe for homemade rees cups! They looked so cute and petite, we just had to add them to the tea menu. If you would like to indulge yourself on a rees, but don't want to feel guilty;-) Then give this recipe a try, its sure to fulfil any chocolate pb, cravings you have!

Homemade, Healthier Peanut Butter Cups

If you use another nut butter, you may need to add more honey. Peanuts are naturally sweet. For that matter, this is definitely a “to your own taste” recipe! And you can easily adjust the sweeter to satisfy you.

3/4 cup of peanut butter, toasted and salted (or use nut butter of your choice)
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla (if you are making this gluten free, make sure to use gluten free vanilla)
1/4 cup of coconut oil
1/3 cup of chopped soaked and dehydrated nuts, or toasted (I used a mixture of chopped almonds and pumpkin seeds) *
4 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
2-4 tablespoons honey *
1-In a small bowl combine the peanut butter, coconut oil, vanilla, first two tablespoons honey, and nuts. Mix until well combined.

2-Drop by the heaping teaspoon into mini cupcake pans. Place in freezer.

3-Chop chocolate into small pieces and place in the top of a double broiler (or, like I do, in a heat proof bowl that fits on top of a pot you have). Mix in the honey. Bring about two inches of water to a boil in the pot and place the bowl on top. Watch the chocolate carefully so that it doesn’t burn, stirring gently while the chocolate melts. When there are just a few chunks left in the chocolate, take off of the heat and allow it to melt completely.

4-Drop by the teaspoon over the peanut butter mixture and place back into the freezer. Freeze for 20 minutes. Take out, and using a butter knife pop them out. Keep in the freezer or refrigerator and enjoy!

*To toast the nuts, place in a dry pan over medium-high heat. Stir almost continually until they are starting to brown. Take off of the heat.

Del Sisters note: We did not use nuts in our recipe, and they were good anyway!

Also, we would cut down the amount of coconut oil for the PB filling to 2T. instead of 1/4c.

Next time we might double the filling but keep the chocolate amount the same. I personally think that the recipe does not have a very prominent peanut butter flavor....so doubling the filling would fix that problem!

What's your favorite flavor?

Today I'm making ice cream! The flavors I decided on were French Vanilla and Peach. We also made a dairy free "ice cream" that is peppermint chocolate, will see how it turns out:-).

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream, and have you ever made ice cream from scratch?

Other things we have made today are, Coconut Flax Granola,Raw granola,Protein Bars and Raw Brownies. We also picked a large laundry basket full of swiss chard, washed, cut and steamed it. All in under 2 hours!

Great Recipe!

Not much cooking going on around our house lately, just the usual everyday kind of stuff, though we have found this really tasty healthy brownie recipe from Green Kitchen Stories! We modified it a little by leaving out the Chai tea and using almonds and walnuts instead of hazelnuts. Try them for a guilt free pick me up for your next afternoon snack or an after dinner treat!

How daring are you?

Lately Hannah and I have been experimenting with green smoothies. I have only gone a little wild once, that's when I decided to put in a rather large amount of swiss chard:-) I just thought that if a little was good why not add just a little more....right?!?! This morning I made us a very delicious concoction consisting of 11/2 bananas, 1cup strawberries, 4 kale leaves, 2 very small swiss chard leaves, and 2 cups almond milk, this does serve 2. Oh, and just for a side note, all our greens are coming straight from our Mom's garden!!!!

( Because of having this smoothie for breakfast we were not able to capture a picture of this awesomely green concoction......sorry:-)

So my dear readers, are any of you the adventuresome type? Do you like to add those extra greens to your morning smoothies???If so, please do share we always love to try new things!