No-fat granola (THM - E)

One thing that I've missed on my THM plan is my homemade granola. I don't really care for oatmeal (okay, I'll be honest. I don't ever eat it.) but I do like oats in the form of granola, bars and cookies. I looked around as to how I could remake my granola recipe to be THM friendly. As it is right now, it's in crossover territory because it mixes carbs (the oats) with fats (the nuts). The book has a recipe for an all-nut granola, making it an S but I really wanted an all-oat granola, making it an E. The problem, besides eliminating the nuts, was eliminating the oil. Although I have reduced the amount of oil in the original recipe, it still has quite a bit of oil in my granola recipe. I needed to find a way for the sweetener to bind with the oats. I decided to try egg whites. That would keep it in E territory and add some much-needed protein to the recipe! (I eat it with 0% fat Greek yogurt for even more protein.)

Here's the recipe, in the rough. I plan on tweaking it some more but it wasn't bad for the first go round. I think it could stand to be a little sweeter and I might consider adding a teaspoon or two of coconut oil next time to help make it more "wet". I'd have to run the numbers to see how that would affect the fat grams. Gotta stay under 5 grams of fat to keep it an E!

No Fat Granola (E)

2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
2 tablespoons nnsweetened coconut flakes
1 egg white (was a little dry, will try 2 next time)
1 tablespoon unsweetened almond milk
2 teaspoons truvia
dash of Kal stevia extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spray a baking pan with Pam. Mix first two ingredients together. Mix egg white through vanilla extract in a bowl. Pour over dry mix. Spread out in a pan and bake, 30 minutes, stirring every 10 mins.

Serving size: 1/2 cup

173 calories, 30 gr carbs, 4 gr fat, 7 gr protein.
With two egg whites: 179 calories, 30 gr carbs, 4 gr fat, 8 gr protein.

Coconut Chicken Curry

I had a taste for curry tonight. Coconut curry to be exact. But my favorite recipe site didn't have what I was looking for. I didn't have any curry paste on hand, only powder. So I went searching. I ended up blending this recipe with this one and came up with my own. Here it is if you want to give it a try. I don't want to forget what I did so I'm going to Pin It in order to be able to make it again! Below is the recipe, the way I made it.

Ingredients:

Olive oil (about 1 T)
1/2 onion, chopped
1-2 cups cauliflower florets
2 T grated fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, pressed through a garlic press
1-2 thai chilis or 1 large pinch cayenne pepper
2 t cumin seed
1T curry powder
2 tomatoes, chopped (can use canned with some juice)
green, red or yellow pepper, diced
1/4 - 1/2 cup water (depending on how juicy the tomatoes are)
salt to taste
1-2 lbs boneless skinless chicken, cut into 1/4 in cubes
1/2 can (14 oz) coconut milk
2 T sugar

1. Heat oil in a 12 in skillet.

2. Add onion, garlic, ginger and chilis. Cook until it begins to brown, about 5 mins.

3. Add cumin seed and curry. Stir to combine, 30 seconds.

4. Add cauliflower and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly about 1 min.
5. Add chopped tomatoes with juice, water, salt and peppers.

At this point, I decided to cook the chicken in a separate skillet as I wanted to brown it first and not just boil it in the sauce. Then I added the cooked chicken to the pan with the veggies. After a few minutes I added the 1/2 can of coconut milk and sugar and let it simmer on very low until the rice was finished cooking.

I served it over jasmine rice. This would be great with some cilantro, but since I didn't have any I had to leave it out. It's still very yummy!

Summer Cooking School

I am teaching a Summer Cooking School series beginning tomorrow night. The idea began when a friend of mine asked me to show her some more simple recipes. I had cooked with her one night and she subsequently has made that same recipe several times for her family and wanted to learn some more easy recipes. I thought back to how I first learned to cook. It was in college, when I was sick of eating out and frozen food. I called mamma and asked her, over the phone, "How do you make Pasta e Fagioli?" And she described the process to me while I took notes. I was used to following a recipe but she didn't give actual measurements.  [Pour a little olive oil in a pan... But mom, how MUCH olive oil? Not too much, just a little...] and so I learned, by trial and error, and began sharing my creations with my roommates, and eventually my (now, but future to me then) husband.

So when I began to hatch my plan, I thought I would invite a few friends and share some of my easy, go-to, cheap, healthy Italian favorites. I then thought I would extend it to my whole church and use our church's wonderful kitchen. I had envisioned younger gals, maybe college-age or even later high school, to young adults, maybe newly- married, or newly-mommied. I was surprised at who started registering for the class: younger, yes - but also older, and even some men! In fact I was standing in the produce section of Publix a few days ago, talking to a friend I had run into. She asked me a few questions about the class, what sorts of things we'd be cooking, etc. and I was describing some of the recipes to her. A man overheard us and asked if I was teaching a cooking class and if it was open to anyone. My husband handed him his business card and told him to email him for directions. How funny is that??

Pasta alla Puttanesca

My plan it to teach one recipe and then explain similar ones so everyone can go home and try making even more easy recipes. Since I am visual and I learn by doing, everyone will have a chance to watch how it's done, then do it themselves. Kinda like med school, right? See one, do one, teach one. We will work in groups and it should be pretty fun.

This week the theme is Quick Red Sauces, the kind of homemade sauce that you can make in the time it takes the pasta to boil (like the picture above.) When the pasta is done, so is the sauce. We will be making Spaghetti all'Amatriciana. Some variations include Penne alla Puttanesca, Penne all'Arrabbiata, Pasta Sciue' Sciue', and Aglio Olio e Peperoncino. Of course we'll get to sample what we make. Interested? Make sure you tell me you're coming! At this point I'm planning on about 20 people.

Local Fare Farm Bag

A couple of months ago I learned about Local Fare Farm Bag from my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. I had heard about CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) from a friend and had read an article about it in Country Gardens but the cost of joining one discouraged us from doing it. So when I learned about Local Fare (and no up front cost) I was hooked! Also hearing about my mother-in-law's and sister-in-law's experience gave me the courage to give it a try.

So what IS Local Fare, you wonder? It's local, seasonal fruits and vegetables delivered to my home. WHAT? Delivered? That's right. I don't have to go anywhere to pick it up. It comes straight to me, every two weeks, on Wednesdays.

What do you get for $25? Here, let me show you...

Oops, I forgot to include the loaf of bread from the French Pantry. But here's an example of what shows up on my doorstep. 5 ears of corn, Italian eggplant, yum yum peppers, zucchini,  white potatoes, spaghetti squash, watermelon, bail and cilantro and a loaf of ciabatta bread. All in this bag:

It's been fun to see what shows up in my bag each week. For those people who like to plan, you can get a head's up by going to the website. But I like to be surprised. You even get a newsletter describing what the produce is (this week we got spaghetti squash and I've NEVER bought that before!) In the newsletter, there are recipes in case you receive something you've never tried before. It's been fun, and sometimes challenging, to try new produce. It beats driving to Beaver Street to the "Farmer's Market!" Did I mention that they deliver??

Carnevale!

Mom and I wanted to do a little Carnevale cooking with the kids so we invited a few friends over to join us. First we made something that wasn't really Carnevale related but yummy none-the-less: taralli sugna e pepe.

Mom already had the dough for these done. We rolled them out, twisted them up and baked them.

Then we moved on to making chiacchiere. We made the dough, then the girls rolled it out and cut them into different shapes.

Once they were fried up we sprinkled powdered sugar on them and moved on to making sanguinaccio.

Doesn't look very appetizing here but man oh man is it good to dip those chiacchiere into this chocolate-y cinnamon-y delight! See what I mean?

The saying goes: a carnevale ogni scherzo vale! (Loosely translated: at carneval, every trick is allowed!)