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Warm, creamy, rich, vanilla-y, filling and very nourishing. What more could you want from a breakfast? I have to admit, I am not hungry most mornings until I’ve been up for a couple hours. But I’ve been reading some suggestions that you should eat within 30 minutes of your feet hitting the floor. Instead of just saying “Ain’t gonna happen” and writing off that principle as an impossibility, I decided to try to find something that I could enjoy.
I like eggs, but most days even the thought of eggs that soon after rising makes my stomach do back flips. But I love cream. I’ve been making this custard to start my day, and it is something I could eat every day.
Mama’s Breakfast Custard
2 1/2 cups cream
6 egg yolks
1/4 cup (or less) maple syrup
pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 300°, put a teakettle of water on to boil. Warm the cream gently in a saucepan just until it steams. Beat the egg yolks with the syrup, salt and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Add the steaming cream to the eggs and beat well. Pour into six custard cups (I use the one-cup size) and place cups in a casserole dish. Carefully pour boiling water around the cups until the water on the outside is almost as high as the custard on the inside. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the custard is set all but right in the middle. Tip: Use a canning jar lifter to get the custard cups out of the hot water without burning your fingers!
You can enjoy them right away (my favorite) or store them in the fridge after letting them cool. This version has half as much sweetener as the recommended amount for a dessert custard, and I generally use much less than 1/4 cup. I’m not a big fan of sweets, especially in the morning, but find that a little sweetener brings out the flavors of the egg and vanilla nicely. This recipe has also worked well substituting honey or coconut sugar for the syrup.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, Fat Tuesday and Fight Back Friday.
These super simple (and inexpensive!) cookies are bursting with peanut flavor, easy enough for a kid to make, not altogether unhealthy, and you probably have all the required ingredients for them in your kitchen right now! Added bonus: if you have gluten-free peanut butter, the cookies will also be gluten-free. So, next time you are looking for a sweet treat, don’t hit the Little Debbies aisle, just whip up a batch of these!
Three Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
Warm the peanut butter in a small saucepan over low heat until it is very soft. Add sugar and mix well. Add egg and mix until smooth. Cool in the refrigerator until the mixture firms up. Roll into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for 8 to 10 minutes. Makes about 20 cookies.
Notes:
Yes, this is an old recipe, hence the “sugar.” Honey and maple syrup don’t work quite as well as rapadura or coconut sugar in this recipe, and 1 cup makes for very sweet cookies. If you have already weaned your family from sugar, a half cup might be enough. Creamy peanut butter works better than crunchy, and the very BEST cookies come from the peanut butter that is only peanuts and salt.
Please come back every Monday in June for the Real Food Emergency Preparedness blog carnival! There’ll be tips, suggestions, questions, answers and a very cool prize for one lucky entrant! Hope to see you all here starting June 6.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.
I make coconut muffins from time to time. A couple of my kids aren’t thrilled with them, but I really appreciate the convenience of not having to soak something overnight, especially when company is in town.
Coconut flour is rather expensive on the shelf, but it is used by the tablespoon, not by the cup. There are definite advantages and disadvantages to coconut flour over even whole wheat flour. It’s a high-protein, gluten-free flour that is naturally sweet, but has high fiber, something that can cause problems for some people. It is very filling and doesn’t spike insulin the way wheat flour can.
For me, the expense comes not from the cost of the flour, but from the medium used to give the muffins “fluff”: eggs. Each muffin contains a half an egg! While this is great for the protein and fat balance of the muffin, it also raises the cost of the dish. I balance the cost by serving these alone. I don’t feel the need to have eggs on the side the way I do with wheat muffins.
Most of the time I will stud the muffins with fresh or dried fruit, but occasionally I will toss a few chocolate chips on the top of the muffins to encourage my reluctant diners. Amazing what five chocolate chips will do, isn’t it?
Before diving in to the recipe, I have a couple suggestions. I find it helpful if all my ingredients are room temperature, rather than fresh from the fridge or warm. I also find I get a more consistent rise from the muffin if I allow the batter to sit for just a minute or two before scooping it into the pan. Too long of a wait and the muffins will be flat. Too short and you might overfill the cups. Also, you will want to rub some coconut oil on your muffin cups to prevent sticking. When the muffins come out of the oven, give them a good 15 minutes to cool and they will be much easier to remove from the cups.
This recipe makes 6 muffins, but is easy to double (or triple!)
Chocolate Chip Coconut Muffins
3 pastured eggs
2 tablespoons melted butter (not hot)
2 tablespoons raw milk
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
30-36 organic chocolate chips
Blend together the eggs, butter, milk, honey, salt and vanilla. Separately combine coconut flour and baking powder and then sprinkle onto egg mixture, whisking until there are no lumps. Pour batter into prepared muffin cups. Top each muffin with 5 or 6 chocolate chips. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes. Makes 6 muffins.
It’s finally over and I’m so glad! It was NOT easy to go a whole week with no grains. I didn’t notice a lot of improvements in diverse areas, but those few complaints which were affected went away completely and stayed away until I started the grains up again. Hm.
I gained three pounds. I know. Everyone else loses weight when they stop grains. I’m one of those who just doesn’t lose weight anymore no matter what. I’m still working on accepting that and trying to get to a place where it doesn’t bother me.
Our food bill went up, and it’s already on the high side for what we can afford. That would be the primary reason I would not choose this diet for the long term. We still have significant almond allergies, so using almond flour is not an option. Coconut flour is more doable, but still something we prefer on rare occasions rather than everyday.
Kate made a treat one evening when I was nearly insane from sugar craving. It’s a grain-free peanut butter cookie and two of these really hit the spot!
Grain-free Peanut Butter Cookies
Grain-Free Peanut Butter Cookies
1 cup freshly ground creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup rapadura
1 egg, beaten
Warm the peanut butter in a pan on the stove on very low heat until it is smooth and soft. Add the sugar and mix well until the sugar is dissolved. Remove mixture from heat, allow to cool a minute or two and add egg. Mix until smooth. Roll into one-inch diameter balls and place on cookie sheet. Flatten with a fork and bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm with milk! Makes 6 large cookies, but we prefer making 1/4 inch balls for bite-sized cookies.
eggs in cream by Francesca Tronchin
So, scientists have set out to make a healthy ice cream, they tell me. I hope they have as much fun testing their as we have ours. See, the way we make it, ice cream is full of good, healthy fats. It’s rich with real, whole RAW cream and egg yolks, and flavored with homemade vanilla and just a nip of pure maple syrup for sweetness. We’ve been having this treat as our once-a-week dessert all summer and long into fall. It’s been different each week because we mess around with toppings and add-ins. One week we’ll steep mint leaves into the milk and have mint. The next week, fresh peaches from the farmer’s market will cradle a scoop. Chocolate chips are always welcome. I’ll post my recipe below, but let’s take a quick look at this new “bionic ice cream” scientists hope to deliver.
First big mistake: Take the good stuff out
Why would you want to mess with ice cream? Well, if you perceive fat from egg and milk sources as evil, and if you’ve abandoned less-processed sugars for highly refined ones, and if the food is full of artificial colors, flavorings and preservatives, you have an end product that is not health-promoting. That “food” (and I use the term loosely) needs improving upon.
Second big mistake: Put the fake stuff in
But real ice cream, made at home in your own kitchen with real food? That’s about as functional as it gets. No need to add probiotics because raw cream is full of them. No need to add antioxidants because pastured chicken egg yolks already contain them.
Third big mistake: Mess with the food only as a marketing ploy
Mass produced, hyper-processed ice cream really is bad for us. We really can just say no to eating it. But real ice cream is a healthy food when eaten in reasonable serving sizes and as an occasional treat. There’s just no reason to mess with it. Oh, wait…money.
Gruen and his colleagues chose the added ingredients because they have been shown to contribute to a person’s health and also because they are familiar to consumers.Gruen said people buy a food for two reasons: either because they really enjoy the food or because it’s good for them. If the researchers were to add foreign, albeit beneficial, ingredients, consumers might pass right by the treat. “We’re trying to hit the big three, so to speak, of what consumers know about,” Gruen told LiveScience.
(Emphasis mine.) The “big three” Gruen refers to are probiotics, antioxidants and dietary fiber. So, in other words, childhood obesity is a serious problem, but you can feel good about feeding your kids this dreck because it has these scientific-sounding words that you’ve been told are good! Yeah? NO!
With the recipe we make, there is a whopping big total of 1 tablespoon of maple syrup per serving. That’s not a lot for a dessert (it’s less than some breakfast cereals, for heaven’s sake) and it really is enough. I want to encourage you to try this recipe with this morning’s pastured chicken eggs, cream skimmed from this morning’s milking and real Vermont maple syrup. This recipe makes a quart, which is eight half-cup servings. If you’re used to eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, a half cup of this gem will probably satisfy you.
Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream
4 egg yolks from pastured hens
1/2 cup real maple syrup (we’re not talking maple topping here, folks)
1 tablespoon organic vanilla extract
1 tablespoon potato starch
3 cups whole, raw, fresh cream
Whisk egg yolks and blend in syrup. Drizzle in vanilla while whisking. Sprinkle starch evenly over the top of eggs and blend in. Whisk in cream. Pour into bowl and let rest, covered, in the refrigerator for an hour or more. Pour into ice cream freezer and process according to manufacturer’s instructions. When frozen, scoop into a glass bowl, cover and store in freezer. I take the bowl out about 10 minutes before serving to make scooping easier.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop, a fellow ice cream lover!
One of the things I love best about this foodstyle is that the meals are cooked so quickly. I’ve never been one to stare at the fridge at 4PM and throw together a culinary delight. No, that would be Blair. She’s creative and instinctively knows what food flavors work together. Me? Not so much.
But, I’ve got my menu plan, my rice is soaked, I know I have all the ingredients and Nourishing Traditions is open to the recipe page and in the cookbook holder (nifty birthday present, that.) So, after a morning trip to the eye doctor with Christy and an afternoon trip to the dentist with John, it’s a short hour until dinner.
First order: start the brown rice. Because it was soaked overnight, it will only take 45 minutes to cook up fluffy and soft. My store didn’t have fresh wild-caught salmon this week, so I bought some frozen Coho fillets. Coho is denser than Silver or King Salmon, and doesn’t have the same delicate, layered flavor. I made a marinade/salad dressing with some sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, chopped green onions, grated ginger and minced garlic and marinated the fish in a 9×13 pyrex baking dish in about half the marinade for about 20 minutes, then put a piece of foil over the top and baked it at 400° for 20 minutes because it was still partially frozen. Fully thawed it would have only taken about 10. By the way, the marinade is terrific to sauce up the cooked rice, too. While the fish marinated, I scrubbed and shredded six carrots, and tossed them in a bowl with a half a bunch of chopped green onions, a new little green bell pepper from my garden and used the other half of the marinade as salad dressing.
While I was out running errands, Kate found this recipe for homemade chocolate candy I’d printed out and whipped up a batch. We usually have dessert on fish day to entice reluctant eaters, but I had totally forgotten to get anything together for that. What a wonderful surprise to find these little fudgy buttons in the fridge! They were very good, too. They were softer than I was expecting, more on the order of fudge than candy, and so very good. The kids said they weren’t quite “right,” (that’s what they say when something is really good and they want it again right away) and we needed to test with some mint extract once, and could we find a way to test with raspberry and cherry, too? In my house of food critics, that’s a rave review! Thanks, Kelly The Kitchen Kop, for the great recipe!
Early in the day, I started making Chicken Stock. I broke the wings and legs off a whole chicken, broke the wing bones and put the whole chicken in a stockpot. I covered the chicken plus an inch with cold water and let it set for about twenty minutes before turning the heat on. I brought it to a fast boil, skimmed off the flotsam, then turned it down to a very slow simmer and covered it. It will sit on the stove, simmering, for the next 24 hours. Before I left the kitchen, I cut up some local, tart organic Granny Smith apples and put them in the slow cooker for applesauce. I started the Bavarian Cream before I started the lunch dishes. After dinner I added a couple large-cut carrots and quartered onions to the stockpot.
My middle daughter and I are great fans of Wild Pacific Salmon. It reminds us of Oregon, which we both would like to call home. Our first Fish Tuesday featured some Wild Pacific Salmon I found at my grocery store at a wonderful price. While not a local ingredient, it was delicious and healthy. I made Buerre Blanc to serve over the fish, not only as a delicious sauce, but to educate dearest Hubby. He is preparing to be the next Ken Jennings on Jeopardy and food is a category he needs a little experience with. What better way to learn about food than enjoying it? I made some homemade cinnamon applesauce to serve with the fish, and some organic frozen peas, since peas and applesauce seem to “go with” fish in our house. Dessert was a very light Bavarian Cream.
The fish was surprisingly well-received, even one of my no-fish-please kids said it wasn’t awful! Hubby said I could make him homemade applesauce any time I wanted to, which is nice to hear. There were some complaints about the Bavarian Cream, as I used very little sweetening in it. But I thought it was just sweet enough to cleanse the palate without knocking you over. I used the following recipes directly from “Nourishing Traditions” and will not reprint them here:
Baked Salmon NT page 260
Buerre Blanc NT page 153
Applesauce NT page 541
I adapted the Bavarian Cream to our tastes, and the final recipe turned out thus:
Bavarian Cream
1 packet gelatin
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup maple syrup
4 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa powder
pinch of sea salt
2 cups heavy cream
Place water in small saucepan over very low heat. Sprinkle gelatin on top, stir once and allow to melt slowly. Meanwhile, place egg yolks, cocoa, syrup and vanilla in bowl and mix with hand mixer for about a minute. Slowly stream in gelatin mixture while the blender is running, incorporate then place bowl in refrigerator. In spotlessly clean bowl with spotlessly clean beaters, beat egg whites with salt until stiff. Put that bowl in fridge, and remix first bowl for a second or two and return to fridge. In a third spotlessly clean bowl with spotlessly clean beaters, whip cream. Gently fold cream into the egg yolk mixture, then gently fold egg whites in as well. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
