Cookies

I got a question today, whether I had a recipe for oatmeal cookies. I didn't so I decided to make some. Now, I didn't have oatmeal at home and also I found a very interesting almond cookie recipe in my grandmother's recipe book that I wanted to try to fix (leave out the sugar). So instead of oatmeal I made almond cookies.

Soak 3 dl of almond (good if it is for more than 3 hours, I only soaked for aprox 10 minutes, this is to get rid of the phytic acid that is on top of the almonds). Soak 100g of dates.

While soaking, whip 2 egg whites to white foam. Then mix the dates and the almonds in a mixer. Add the almond/date mix to the whipped eggs. Distribute the dough with two tea spoons on the oven plate.     Place the cookies in the oven for 10 minutes on 200 degrees.

If you want chocolate cookies add 1-2 tbsp cocoa to the batch, and a mashed banana if you want sweeter cookies.

Pardon my English... it has been a looong day.

And this was the result (the darker ones are the chocolate cookies).

The big question

Spinach pancakes, Gluten and milkfree

I do not give up on these ones. After over a year of practice, I consider my pancakes being good enough for sharing. The secret? Bone broth, buckwheat, and psyllium husk, and tallow skimmed of the last batch of meat bone broth that I made. Never happened before, but seems like the bones delivered last Thursday were extra fatty. Me thank the supplier, fat is always welcome in this house, as long as it is natural.

Here you go:


Spinach pancakes:

2 tbls psyllium husk
0,5 l water
0,5 l bone broth
4-5 eggs
2-3 dl buckwheat flour (maybe more if too watery the batch, depends a bit on other quantities)
200-300 g frozen spinach (remember spinach is among the most treated veggies out there so you might want to look for "organically grown")
fat to fry in (coconut oil, butter if your lads can stand it, or our option this time tallow)

frozen lingon berries to enjoy with them, if you are so lucky to find some... cranberries might do just as well!

Mix liquid with psyllium, let the psyllium thicken the batch. Add eggs. Add the buckwheat and the spinach (I threw the spinach in the mixer just to get it in the size that our kids agree to eat them, if your kids are more hardcore then just get the spinach heated in a frying pan and add to the mix, not hot though as that might affect the rest of the ingredients).

Now the frying. This is the tricky part since we are dealing with a glu(e)ten free mix. My first pancakes always turn out terrible and if they just do not seem to "stick together" then I add another egg or some flour to the batch. However, the trick is to heat the frying pan enough before the making AND not to start messing with the pancake too early. Also make sure there is enough grease in the pan...it will make the pancakes more delicious and it will be easier to flip'em over. But be aware! You do not want to flip them over before they are ready... because then the whole thing falls apart. My last pancakes are always the finest. Good thing, because those are the ones on to of the pancake mountain when you start eating... if you aren't to hungry that is, and you eat them straight from the pan.

This is what happens with when you go messing with the pancakes before they are ready... And check the mess - my nick in this house is "Swedish Chef", burnigiri burnigiri! They should be happy they get real food and not mess with this mama! (I do not usually clean, that is hubby's area of expertise...)

Enjoy!

(oh, and isn't it a miracle - yes you can make your own spinach pancakes - no need for those processed ones in the processed food aisle...power to the kitchen!)

Milkfree yogurt recipe

I have long been frustrated that the only option for my milk allergic child is either soy yogurt without flavor (soy is NOT good substitute for milk) or sugar filled oatmeal yogurts. Actually the only thing I really miss (a part from butter) in our daily life with a milk allergic child is the all natural yogurt options. Life would be easy if we could have yoggie for breacky or as evening snack. But we can't. And I am trying to deal with it.

A few days ago I thought of trying an experiment. I mixed gelled chia seeds (left overs from my own breakfast, didn't know what to do with it), an avocado, some frozenblueberries and soaked dates (which also originally were thought for something else) - guess what?!? By adding some Kefir yogurt culture I suddenly had a nutritious mousse that included all the ingredients for a very nutritious snack, or breakfast!


Here are the ingredients and how to do it:

2 dl Chia gel (1 part chia, 2-3 parts water, let it swell for at least an hour, three hours optimal)
1 avocado
5-6 pitted and soaked dates (good if you leave them soaking for a couple)
200 g strawberries / 100g blueberries, frozen
1 spoon flaxseed oil (optional and be careful with the amount, might give it a bitter taste)
1-2 teaspoons vanilla powder
0,5 dl oatmeal milk (optional and I do not think it is necessary really)
1 serving of probiotic powder or 2-3 spoons of kefir yogurt (if you can stand a little bit of milk)


Mix all ingredients well (at least 1 minute, more if the dates and chia have nor dissolved). Note that is should be the liquid mixer, otherwise there is a risk that the Chias are not dissolved well enough. My milk allergic kid does not like chia gel so it is necessary to blend well...


Here some pictures from my experiments (have done three already, the kids and hubby ate them all, and I have also done some home made müsli filled with nuts and seeds...and some ecological raisins).

Blueberry milkfree yogurt (the while bowl is my kefir culture, the blue the chia gel)

And this morning I fortified the strawberry yogurt with 2-3 spoons of vitamin c... because it seems like the flu is knocking on our door...

Oh, and check the headline on the newspaper... milk price war between Finland and Sweden... how suitable...

Chris Kresser show

I just happened to see this on my blogroll and read through the show (hubby is working next to me so I had to respect the silence code...)


Gluten triggered IBS and Twisted Food Politics


Anyway the whole thing is REALLY interesting (as his things usually are), both the gluten/wheat stuff and the stuff on how all the nutritionists are paid by Big Food companies (there's a project on studying critically CSR!). But what mostly struck me was his description of a sugar binge that he had experienced with his girl and his reflections on that (he didn't let his girl dig into what the rest of the kids were eating, he said she is gluten-intolerant...haha same ol' ol', I have increasingly heard other parents having this strategy that also we adopted, and we did it for a reason, not only wanting to protect our kid from unhealthy stuff).

Anyway this is his reflection:

What struck me about that is that I’m really convinced that all of those parents want the best for their kids, and as a parent myself, I think that for most parents that’s true.  But what I also was thinking about at that time is that — And I was sitting there going, OK, so what’s happening here?  Do these parents just not even think about it?  Or do they think about it and go:  Oh, yeah.  We know sugar’s not that great, but so what.  It’s not the end of the world, and they’ll live.  You know, just kind of discounting how significant of an issue it will be?  Or do they know it’s an issue but they feel socially awkward about saying no, which I think was maybe the case for some of them?  Or was it some combination of all of that?  I don’t know, but it struck me that it was, I think for at least a significant portion of those people, just not really on their radar.  And when their kid later, like an hour or two later, goes home and is like a complete basket case, they’re not even going to make the connection between the food that their kid was eating and the behavior later on.  My wife used to run a preschool co-op, and she saw this firsthand all the time.  The kids that would eat all of this sugar and flour were just wrecks later, and their parents did not understand that connection.  And she struggled a lot with what was appropriate for her to talk about with them, and I just think it’s still, even with the increased awareness of food and the role of food in health, I think a lot of parents just don’t really get the connection.

I have many many many times thought about this thing. So many times that I almost went crazy for a while reflecting on it. For a while I haven't had to deal with it, maybe because we have been living in our own little bubble for almost half a year now...

But the conclusion I have made can be explained in two hypotheses (except for what Chris mentions above, that are all valid points as well): either parents act as they do because they haven't dealt with their own problematic relation to sugar, or they simply have never ever had a problematic relation to sugar and thus do not understand that others (including their own kids) can develop a problematic relation to sugar. As long as you haven't said goodbye to this harmful product you cannot pass on other values to your kids. And recognizing you yourself have a problem is the first and biggest step of them all....

Lately, I have allowed myself to have some milk in my coffee and have a milk chocolate now and then (today after the crappy lunch for example... I should really bring my own food to work... its so not worth eating there...). Still, I know the risks and so far I have been able to keep it at that. But the day I find myself binging, I'll be sure to cut it all out again, the dark chocolate included!

Bones!

Is anyone in need of bones to make some broth? I got a few kilos extra to share!

Making my own broth right now, in two batches!

E-codes and Real Food

Finnish radio channel discuss why the public does not want the e-codes, while the establishment is arguing that this is the best way to keep the food safe and healthy.

My question: what food are we talking about here? Aaah, processed food! That is what we are talking about! And if the public wants to stay away from e-codes, why doesn't the public stay in the real food aisles of the supermarket? Better yet why doesn't the public shop outside the supermarket? And according to season, no need for long shelf-life there...No need for suspicious codes...

I am happy to see that the old market at Hietalahti has opened its door. Please tell me dear friends in Helsinki that you can get real food there? That it isn't just another tourist trap with different jams and Finnish foie gras in glass jars?

This weekend we ate what I had shopped at the square on Friday. And some fresh fish and ecological meat to go with that. And may I add, we ate well! The veggie lady recommended making mashed potatoes together with some other roots. Esquisit! And the kids ate parnsnip (palsternacka) without even noticing. There, introduced a new taste, success! I also forced them to have some beet roots that I had spiced up with chevre cheese (ok, this one was from the supermarket, I confess) and honey. May I brag about how deliciously good it was? And then the meat, left in the oven for almost 2 hours while we were out sledding. Our ecological meat never fails us. Yesterday it was just perfect!

I also made a fish dish, from scratch, inspired by a distant memory of a Oriental Fish Soup that we made in school years back.  This, although it was not the kids favourite, we got them eating it all up, twice! And I added kefir yougurt on top, to boost immunity.

E-codes "throw yourself in the wall" as we would say in Swedish. You're not needed anymore. Power to the kitchen!

Fatty Sunday Buns

While the Brazilians celebrate their carnival, we here up north take our sleds and head out to the snowy hills to celebrate the Fat Sunday, or Fat Tuesday, which is the adequate day for the event. Afterwords it is tradition to have some traditional pea soup with a fatty Tuesday bun. The bun is filled with all the ingredients that we in our family try to avoid: wheat & sugar in the bun and whipped cream in between. You'd think I'd skip that tradition then and go on with my normal life. Flat wrong. Today I dug up my buried inspiration and made my own "muffin" version of the bun.

Here is the recipe:

4 eggs (that you whip until almost white)
1-2 banans
1 big carrot
1 tables spoon cardamom
1 tesaspoon vanilla powder (optional)
1 dl buckwheat flour
2-2,5 dl almond flour

Filling:
Cooled coconut milk (the creamy part)
1 banana
vanilla powder
100% natural apple sauce

Whip eggs until white in separate bowl. Shred carrots and mix in the mixer together with the rest of the ingredients. until smooth, add the eggs. Add to muffin molds. Bake in 180- 200 degree for 15-20  minutes. Let cool.

Mash the banana and mix with electric mixer together with coconut cream and vanilla powder, keep cool until you use it.

When the muffins are cooled, slice the top off and grape a whole in the bottom, add the apple sauce to the whole and on top the "whipped cream", place the hat on when finished. Voila - Fatty Sunday Bun. Enjoy!

Sweet dreams of a potato cellar

I dream of a winter storage for my own grown veggies... It feels like a long walk to get there. But if it ever comes through, this is what my dream kind of looks like:

Long walk because first we have to find a place to live and then I have to learn how to sow, weed and harvest my veggies. And then still learn how to store them in this ancient pre-frigerator way...and hope that the family will dig into the fermented food...

Today I talked to my veggie dealer, the one and only - the only lady at the square these days, she said to store roots she keeps them in a 50 m2 pantry at +2 degrees, potatoes at +4 or else they will turn sweet. You learn something new everyday. 50 m2, Jees, that's big - but then on the other hand, she is feeding all the farmer's market customers of this town for a whole year... so in that respect, it's quite small.

I'll keep on dreaming!

Sweet dreamer is back!

I stopped blogging here because I thought my blog started populating my mind too much. However, the message is too important to be silenced. So I will post something once in a while here again.

One of the interviewed experts in this documentary says:

"People cannot make good choices if good choices are not available."

And those choices can only be available if we open our eyes and start building a new reality in our own minds.

In our mind, we create our world, our visions of what is possible and what not, what is acceptable and what not, what is healthy and what not.  And we, only we, are in charge of our own reality! Let's create our own new reality and marginalize all those unhealthy habits so omnipresent in the current modern way of life!

I think it is our only way forward... empowering ourselves!

Sweet dreamer welcome back into my world, my reality.