Not your Granny's Toffee Bars

It feels like 2012 just started a few months ago, but as you can probably tell, the 2012 holiday season is right around the corner.  With that holiday season, comes holiday parties with co-workers, friends and family.  If you are in my family, the holiday parties are not complete without grandma's toffee bars.  For as long as I can remember, the night doesn't end until grandma breaks out her round metal cookie tins filled with toffee bars and we all fight over who is stealing them and taking the loot home.  While my grandma's will always, always taste better than mine, I really wanted to find a way to come up with a healthier version to indulge in while everyone else is enjoying the real deal.

Toffee Bars
2/3 C-Coconut Oil (I measured this white the oil was in its solid state)
2/3 C-Honey
1 TB-Blackstrap Molasses
2-Cups of Gluten Free Flour (I have listed the mix that I use below)
3 TB Vanilla
1 TB-Ground chia seeds (mix with 3 TB of water first)
2 bars (about 6oz) of chocolate of your choice-I used Ghirardelli Midnight Reverie 86% dark chocolate
1/4 C-walnut pieces (optional)

Gluten Free Flour Mix
There are many options out there for mixing your own gluten free flour, but a lot of them use coconut flour and my husband is not a fan.  I usually have this on hand ready to use, so this mix makes more than needed for this recipe
3C-Sorghum flour
1C-Tapioca flour
1/2C-almond flour
1TB-Xanthan Gum

Preheat oven to 350

Begin by mixing Coconut oil, honey and molasses in a stand mixer or a bowl with a hand mixer.  Add the flour slowly and then the vanilla and chia seed mixture.  Allow to mix thoroughly.  For anyone reading this that is in my family, yes, the consistency will be slightly wetter than grandma's, but trust me on this one.

Oil an 8x8 pan and pour dough into the pan.  Use the back of a spoon to spread the dough as evenly as possibly over the pan and stick in the preheated oven.  Let cook for about 15 minutes.  Watch carefully, you want this still slightly soft and golden brown around the edges, but not still cakey and super soft.  My oven took about 17 minutes.  Take the pan out of the oven and break your chocolate into chunks and distribute the pieces across the dough.  Stick the pan back in the oven for about 2 more minutes to melt the chocolate.  Lastly, take the pan out, spread the chocolate with the back of a spoon and sprinkle the walnuts.

Cut into pieces while still soft and allow to cool on a cooling rack.

Enjoy!

Gluten Free Cheese Sticks-Cheat treat

Of all the food that I miss from Illinois now that we are living in the south, it's the fried cheeseballs.  Between The Pub and Green Gables, you can get slightly crunchy, super cheesy, balls of fried cheese that can almost make you forget how incredibly unhealthy they are for you.  After spending about 2 months on strictly fruits and veggies, I have begun to add some foods back into my diet....within reason.  As much as I love cheese, I have managed to steer clear of all dairy.  Tonight, however, I was craving a little bit of home.

I wasn't going to go full force and just fry up some mozzarella, but I wanted it to taste similar, yet healthier.  My husband has been begging me to cheat a bit and try to make egg rolls with spring roll paper (since I am grain free, the rice starch in these make them a no go).  As I was walking through Whole Foods today, I figured I would give it a try, but use them for cheese sticks.  I grabbed some mozzarella goat cheese (goat cheese proteins are smaller and much easier on your digestive track than cow's milk cheeses).  Pretty much anything with goat cheese is a sure hit for me, so finding this mozzarella goat cheese made my day!

Making these is super easy, you just have to have some patience.

Fried Cheese Sticks

1-Package of Spring Roll Skins
1-Block of Cheese of choice cut into sticks(I used Mozzarella goat Cheese)
about 1 cup of Coconut oil-or enough to fill up 1 inch in your pan of choice
Shallow pan filled with about 1/2 inch of water

Start by dipping your first spring roll skin into your pan of water for about 10 seconds.  Create each cheese stick one at a time, do not stick them all in at the same time or these will begin to disintegrate before you roll them up.  Once you pull the skin out of the water, shake some water off of it and lay it flat.  Put your first cheese stick on the edge closest to you and begin to roll away from you and fold in the sides as you roll.  You may need to press the edge of some of the rolls to get the edge to stick.  Move on to your other rolls until you are out of cheese.

Pour your coconut oil into the pan and heat  until it just begins to boil and turn the heat back to medium.  Place your cheese sticks in one at a time until you get the hang of the oil temperature and then start frying 2 at a time.  My husband found the most success turning the pan a bit on the side so the cheese stick could float in the oil instead of sitting on the bottom of the pan and burning a bit.  Once you see a golden brown, scoop out of the oil and let cool slightly before enjoying!

**Note-The goat cheese Mozzarella does not stay solid and gooey like cows mozzarella, but still adds a cheese flavor like a "normal" cheese stick.

Avocado Chicken Salad

It's Detox Monday in our household.  Over the weekend we had a family wedding...the first of 3 weddings out of state 3 weekends in a row....and for the first time in 3 months I most definitely fell-off-the-wagon.  I thought I would be a bit disappointed in myself and, I guess, to an extent I am; however it feels great to eat whatever I want, not have any big side effects, and then wake up knowing I choose to go back to the healthier way I have been eating.

It is amazing what a few months of deciding to change the way you eat and live will do to the way you look at things.  Even my husband made a comment tonight as he was going through yesterday's newspaper coupon that it is amusing to him to see coupons and ads for "nutritious" cereal bars or fruity toaster breakfast options.  I think watching the changes in my husband is far more rewarding for me than seeing my own progress.  He doesn't have the digestive issues that I have that push him to change his eating habits, but he makes so many better choices without me nagging him at all.  I have really tried hard not to let my eating changes affect him too much, I really wanted him to WANT to change on his own and not force things on him.  That being said, one of my FAVORITE summer chicken recipes before my stomach issues got bad was this awesome Balsamic Chicken salad.  I am a sucker for balsamic vinaigrette, my husband and my stomach, however, hate it.  This avocado chicken salad is a big winner with both of those critics, though.

Avocado Chicken Salad

2-boiled chicken breasts
2-avocado
1-lime juiced
1/2C-Chopped cilantro (optional, I really go back and forth with it)
Dash pepper
Garlic Salt to taste

Optional
pecan pieces
red grapes cut into pieces

Cut up your 2 boiled chicken breasts into small pieces (I have tried shredding them, it doesn't change the taste, but you need to add more avocado or there isn't enough to cover).  If you have just taken the chicken out of the water, place the chicken pieces into a bowl and stick into the fridge to cool off.  While the chicken is cooling, stick your cilantro, lime juice, avocados, pepper and garlic salt into a food processor.  I use my vitamix and it works perfectly, you just need to use the stick to move it around a bit.  I have also tried mashing the avocado and chopping cilantro by hand.  This works, as well, it is just more effort on your part.

Once all ingredients are combined, pour into bowl of chicken and stir until mixed.  You can stick this back into the fridge to get even colder or serve immediately.

Serves 4....or 2 with enough for lunch the next day.

Stay tuned!

I've caught the raw cheesecake bug!

I am working on perfecting a new "adult" recipe for a cheesecake idea I came up with for my husband.  We made it on Labor day when we made a bunch of mini cakes to try different flavors.  The "adult" cake was the best of the bunch, but still needs a little tweaking!

If it ain't broke.......make it better!

After the success with the first cheesecake, I spent the weekend creating new flavors and coming up with future ideas to share with you.  The first one that came to the husband's mind was raspberry.  Quick trip to the grocery store and a few ideas later I came up with the above raspberry and vanilla bean raw cheesecake!  I even impressed myself a bit with the chocolate drizzles.

I stuck with the same basic vanilla bean recipe in the Vanilla Bean, Chocolate, Peanut Butter Cheesecake recipe, except I added another full lemon to see if it would give it a bit more of that tartness that cheesecake usually has.  The crust stayed the same as well.  The only thing that changed was the raspberry topping and the dark chocolate drizzle.

Raspberry Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

Crust and Vanilla Bean filling-Follow the recipe found hereVanilla Bean, Chocolate, Peanut Butter Cheesecake
Add juice of 1 additional lemon

Raspberry topping
1-small container of raspberries
2-3 ts of potato starch
2 tablespoons of honey

Chocolate Drizzle
1-2 squares from a chocolate bar.  I used 85% dark chocolate.

Place all ingredients in a pan and heat on medium-low.  Using a spoon or spatula, squish the raspberries so they become a liquid with seeds.  The sauce should thicken with the heat and the potato starch.  Once it reaches a thickened sauce state (about 3-4 minutes) pour over the vanilla bean filling.

Now, place your chocolate squares in a glass bowl and put in the microwave.  If you have the history like I do of over cooking chocolate, you will know why I say to watch this closely.  Stick the chocolate in the microwave for :30 intervals.  After the first :30, take out and stir.  Depending on your microwave, you may not need a full second :30 cycle.  Once the chocolate has reached a nice liquid state, used your spoon and roll it in the chocolate and then drizzle across the cake.

The raspberry takes a bit longer to solidify, so I kept this one in the freezer over night and then moved to the fridge.

Cheesecake for Breakfast?!

One of the ironic things that I have learned along this path to healthier eating is when you cook with healthy whole foods, there really isn't an 'inappropriate' time to eat anything.  The past few months I haven't been eating dairy and have been staying away from all the sugar add-ins most ice creams have, instead I have been freezing slices of bananas, tossing them in the food processor and enjoying some banana ice cream.........I may or may not have indulged for breakfast, too.

This little creation of mine is no different.  I have been experimenting with numerous grain, dairy, egg, sugar free recipes for awhile now, but I wanted something a little bit more 'gourmet'.  I looked around and found that many people use cashew cream for raw cheesecakes.  I had a little experience in making cashew cream after making these chicken pot pies from the spunky coconut http://www.thespunkycoconut.com/2011/01/pot-pie-pockets-gluten-free-casein-free.html.  Her recipes are incredible and really motivated me to get more creative about what I am making.

Truly, the hardest part about this recipe is waiting for your cashews to soak.  I have seen some people say you don't really need to soak them for more than an hour or so, but I have always just thrown them in water before going to work and by the time I get back, we are ready to go.  For this recipe, you don't need to save the water that the cashews are soaking in, but if you have more cashews in soaking than you need, throw the extra in a food processor with some of the water you soaked them in.  Blend it up and stick in the fridge.  You can use the cashew cream for so many things!

I wanted to create a recipe that was strong in flavor and really resembled a 'normal' dessert.  Naturally, my first instinct was peanut butter and chocolate.  Ok, yes, I usually avoid legumes and peanuts are legumes, however, you can sub in almond butter if you prefer.  I preferred a little cheat.  If you know me well, you know how crazy it is for me to now think of peanuts and peanut butter as "cheats" in my diet haha!  I am going to keep developing some new flavors, but for now, we have Vanilla, Chocolate, and peanut butter Cheesecake! You can also cut down on some of the vanilla if wanted.  I was concerned with the cake having too much of a cashew, nutty flavor so I put much more vanilla than I intended to.

Vanilla Bean, Chocolate, Peanut Butter Cheesecake
Crust

The carb lover in me really likes crust.  That being said, if you don't want as much of a crust or don't want a crust that goes up the side as well, feel free to cut the recipe in half. 

10 Dates

Half Cup of Almond flour

1 Cup of Pecans

3 tsp vanilla

Filling

• 2 c raw organic cashews, soaked overnight (just put in a bowl and fill with filtered water about an inch above the cashews)
• 5-6 large dates
• 1/3 c coconut oil, melted
• Juice from 1 lemon (about 1/3 cup)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract or seeds from 1 vanilla bean (I used both)
• 1/4 c almond milk
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

• 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp water

• ·         1/3 c +2 TB of peanut butter

• ·         3 TB agave nectar

• ·         1 TB vanilla

For the Crust

Combine all ingredients in a food processor.  Blend until the crust sticks together when squeezed in your hand and is a darker brown color.  You may need to add a few more dates as needed.  Put a piece of parchment paper into an 8” spring pan and pour crust into pan.  Press the crust into the bottom of the pan and up the side about an inch or as crust allows.

Filling

Vanilla-Combine all ingredients up until the cocoa powder in a food processor.  After all is blended and VERY SMOOTH, remove 2/3 C and put into a separate bowl.

Chocolate-With the 2/3C you set aside, add the cocoa powder and water until well blended

Peanut Butter-Combine the peanut butter, agave nectar, and vanilla in a separate bowl and stir until well mixed.

Pour  the vanilla  into the crust and spread evenly with the back of a spoon.  Follow this with the peanut butter and then the chocolate.

Tap on the counter to even out.  If you don’t plan to eat it for a while, you can put it straight into the fridge.  We were eager to eat it, so we stuck it in the freezer for about an hour and then moved it down to the fridge and it was perfectly set!  Keep this in your fridge for up to a week……if it lasts that long!

I'm Back! Beware of the long post!

Remember me?  The girl bound and determined to change the way she cooked, ate, lived and make everything she loved about cooking taste just as good gluten and dairy free??

Well I'm back.  It has been quite the roller coaster the past few months for me.  When I began this blog I wanted to show people how easy it was to cook delicious and "normal" meals without gluten and dairy.  Cooking and baking (more so baking) has always been a source of stress relief for me.  It's a way I can pass time, get lost in a creative project, and, in a way, feel like a child again.  Growing up, my grandma was always the baker.  I like to think that my love of baking comes from her and in turn, that makes me feel closer to her.  When my food problems started to get worse, I started to get very discouraged and down on myself. I am someone that loves flavor, loves a complicated recipe and loves a great tasting meal.  Some of my favorite moments with my husband involve cooking a big meal together and sitting down to a good bottle of wine and this fantastic meal we created.

When I last blogged, I was eating anything I wanted (within reason of course) as long as it didn't include dairy or gluten.  I was also on a prescribed PPI from my gastro doc.  Everything seemed great for about a month or two.  Things calmed down, I could enjoy food again, and I felt my spirits lift as well.  The thing is, when you are like me and have GERD....and anxiety things are bound to pop up again.  My gastro doc also failed to mentioned those same PPI drugs that were making my stomach feel good for a bit were depleting me of some key nutrients.  I came off the pills after my GI doc said I was "cured" and about a month later, I was in the throws of it again.  It didn't matter what I ate, I had heartburn, indigestion, chest pain, bloating, and gross gut issues I won't even get into.  Things then progressed by the end of June that I had 3 nights straight of heart palps giving me very little sleep.  My GP told me that he, too, has GERD and when it 'flares up' he gets heart palps and it is just something I need to learn to ignore.  Thankfully I was also seeing a great chiropractor.  We sat down and had a hard talk about nutrition and what is was that I was eating.

The week before the 4th of July, I went on an all fruits and veggies diet.  Believe me folks, if there is anyone that I thought would fail this miserably, I would have told you it was me.  No meat was hard, but even harder was no grains.  I was very compliant and open to what he thought would help me based on just cleaning out my body and allowing it time to heal and let all the inflammation in my digestive system subside.  When we began, this was going to be a 2 week plan and then we were going to slowly add animal proteins back into my daily diet.  Oddly enough, the 2 weeks flew by.  I got a juicer and began making a juice for breakfast and dinner.  Lunch was a big salad with everything from nuts to seeds to raisins.  After getting past focusing solely on the food I was without and all the negative thoughts that went with it, I began to notice changes in myself.  The best part was when others noticed those changes, too.  My skin cleared up.  I never had a huge problem before, but it just looks so even-toned and clear.  I was dropping weight like crazy, even my "I feel like stuffing my sausage legs into these tonight" jeans were loose on me!  The best part was not feeling all the digestive symptoms.  No more bloating, no more tender pouch just above my belly button, no GERD symptoms, no heartburn.

I was elated to say the least!  Week 3 we added plain chicken breasts back into my diet and the next week was egg whites.  I was loving it!  At the start of week 5, I had to admit, however, that the bloating and indigestion was back.  Much to my chagrin, we went BACK to fruits and veggies the last week in July, but this time we included no legumes in there, too.  It wasn't really that I had awful emotional ties to food, so much as I kept getting down on myself because I couldn't just have the freedom to go out to dinner with my husband.  I had to really think before I put something in my mouth.  The hardest was my brother's wedding......but I did it.  The following weekend was my best friend's wedding shower and bachelorette party at a winery.....and I did it.  Girls brought dips, chips, cookies, brownies, hummus, all the things that would have normally done me in BUT.....I did it.  At week 6 I still had had a few nights of random heart flutters, but my indigestion was gone, my GERD was gone, I was on new meds that were actually working to put acid back INTO my stomach (turns out low stomach acid has the same symptoms as too much acid, so all those acid meds I have spent years on didn't do me any good), AND I had lost 25 pounds and almost 4 inches off my waist.  It wasn't that I was starving myself (as my parents feared) it's that I was filling myself up with good whole foods that my body not only needed, but responded well to.

The most important part of this entire journey is the lifestyle change.  I don't look at food the same way anymore.  I couldn't tell you the last time I read a food label.  It's ironic because mainstream media convinces you it's all about the Calories, fats and carbs and I spent years trying to remember what it all meant.  I would be 'that girl' in the aisle, holding up a can of food trying to determine if it was 'healthy' according to the label.  It really is just as simple as reading the ingredient list.  Who cares what some chart on the back of the package says.  It could have ZERO fat and calories, but if it's loaded with sugars and words you can't pronounce, what good does it do for your body?!  Stepping away from food really allowed me an opportunity to look at things from a different perspective.

Here I am at 9 weeks off any kind of gluten, grains, and processed sugars and I still feel great.  I have added turkey and chicken back into my diet, tried out bacon, and even "cheated" with some hummus and my stomach is doing remarkably well.  I have always believed in a more holistic approach to medicine, bringing things back to the basics, but it wasn't until this experience that I really had my eyes opened.  My big focus now is back to food, but in a healthy way.  I have really searched for a reason or purpose behind this journey I have gone down the past 5 years and I have come to at least one conclusion....the journey was not without purpose.  I have learned so much and changed so much and I love being able to help others with similar issues or others just wanting to change things up in the kitchen to offer their families a healthier way of eating.  I am not exactly sure yet where this will lead me, but I do know I am armed with a bunch of new recipes to share with you and a new determination!

Trial and Error

At first when I started on this journey it was easy to contain my food change to just myself.  As much as I wanted my husband to jump on board, I didn't want to force it upon him.  The further I got, though, the more my cooking changes seeped into his "food world".  Luckily I am blessed to have an amazingly supportive husband.  Not only has he been very open to trying new things, new versions of old things, and just plain weird new things, he has also opened up and adopted a new way of eating, as well.  That being said, you can still find him cracking open a can of coke every now an then.

I knew from the beginning that the key to me successfully adapting to such a big change in the way that we ate, was to be able to incorporate things we have always eaten, but with a newer, healthier approach. Sure, we eat a lot more organic veggies, we cook with coconut oil, we loosely follow a Paleo diet, but what about when your sweet tooth comes a'callin?  As much as I would love to be, I am not someone that can satisfy a craving with a few almonds and peanut butter chips or something of that variation.  We want our future kids to eat even healthier than we do now, never knowing McDonald's and not rewarding themselves with food,  but we still want to celebrate occasions with cake, right!?   That has sparked the biggest motivation in me, I love a challenge.  Lately I have tried my hands at gluten and sugar free banana/chocolate muffins & banana muffins, GF, SF, and Dairy Free raspberry lemon bars, gluten free and sugar free sandwich bread and today I am taking my second crack at gluten and dairy free yellow cake.

The first time I made this cake, it turned out phenomenally well!  I want to keep trying it and changing it so I can make it GF, DF, and sugar free.  My first go-round, the only sugar was in the icing and the pudding mix I put inside the cake.  Today, I am trying the same recipe, however I subbed in sugar free pudding mix and subbed coconut oil for olive oil.  I also wanted to mix the flavors up a bit.  I have become a huge fan of our local Farmer's Market and I bought a pint of fresh strawberries from a vendor yesterday, so I decided to make it a strawberry cake and then try out some homemade strawberry buttercream frosting.

This has proven to be a day of lessons in the kitchen.  The cake has turned out great, once again....I think I have the recipe nailed down.  The icing, however, is a whole other, fishy story.  Lately I have been using Earth Balance Buttery Spread in place of any butter that we would have once used.  Anyone that has used this stuff, would probably agree with me that it has a bit...ok quite a bit, of a fishy taste and smell.  When cooking with it or spreading it on something, I don't really notice the taste or smell, so I figured I could easily sub it for usual butter in the buttercream recipe.  WRONG!  I creamed the "butter", cut up and added my fresh strawberries and then added the powdered sugar.  It looked delicious, for a moment I was quite proud of myself, I must say.  Then came the taste test.....fish food all the way!  I even added every last bit of strawberries that I had in hopes of the added flavor covering up the 'fish essence'-no such luck and my frosting became to liquid-y.  Thankfully, I have learned over the past few months of eating well that Pillbury icing is actually dairy free....even the buttercream!  Now, of course, this leads me to wonder what in the world they put in it then, but at this point, I just wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. 

The cake turned out great, other than being slightly overdone, but now I think my next challenge will be dairy free buttercream that doesn't taste like it came fresh from the nearest lake and then eventually sugar free icing of some sort.  I now sub Agave nectar in all recipes when they call for sugar, however since it is a liquid, I don't think it will make for good frosting.  Stay tuned!

Yep, I've really started a blog

So here it is, in all it's glory-my first post.  My first, of hopefully many posts, for something I swore I would never be interested in.  It's funny how things can seem so foreign and unnecessary at one point in your life and, given some time, can turn into something you are insanely passionate about.  That is where this blog has found me.

I have lived most of my life like the majority of people, bowls of pasta, cans of pop, lunch snacks teeming with sugar, oils, and chemicals with names that, even as an adult, I can't pronounce.  I loved holiday parties and getting together with friends, not just because of the company, but also because of all the FOOD!  It's what we ate, what I knew, and what I loved.  It wasn't until about 4 years ago that I started realizing my gut "issues" weren't things that everybody experienced.  I went from counting bar food as a staple of my diet to living off bottles of Pepcid and learning what anxiety felt like.  I was soon diagnosed with GERD, which explained the heart attack-like chest tightness.  I had begun to surround myself with positive, healthy people, but as much as I bought into the fitness aspect of "healthy living", I had yet to grasp the concept of making a lifestyle change in the way that I ate. So......my "issues" continued and only worsened.

Fast forward to the past six months and I have undergone more tests than I ever imagined for myself.  Now, by no means am I comparing myself to some one who has a serious illness, but for a while with all my tests and symptoms and feeling so sick, I was really beginning to think and treat myself as if I was seriously ill.  That only led to depression and anxiety, which, of course, fed my stomach issues.  Through a stomach scope we learned I had an ulcer and gastritis, through a hyda scan we learned my gallbladder was perfectly normal, through trial and error we learned I had IBS and issues with dairy, through an echocardiogram, EKG and numerous ER trips over the years we learned my heart was perfectly fine.  Even through all of this I still find myself a ball of nerves everytime I feel a spasm in my stomach or throat, I have to convince myself for the millionth time, IT'S NOT MY HEART!

All of these experiences have finally forced me to consider my diet as a contributer/cause of my gut issues.  I started trying to change the way I ate in a serious way in February 2012 and really hit it hard for a month.  Within that month of no dairy and gluten, I found myself developing a passion for healthy food.  For someone that loves to cook and bake already, it became almost a game and challenge to me to take recipes I have always known and loved and turn them into something that I wouldn't regret eating later.  I heard a great quote from Wayne Dyer that I has been running through my mind lately, "when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change".  It's so odd for me to look back at things I used to shovel into my mouth and now look at them with no want or desire.

Through this blog I hope to share my experiences, good and bad, on my journey to a healthier, guilt free way of life and eating.  The greatest joy of this journey, so far, has not come from the changes in the way I feel, but from the changes that I have sparked in others.