Making Healthy Choices

Dark Chocolate with Ginger, Cranberries and Hazelnuts

Dark Chocolates with Ginger, Cranberries and Hazelnuts

These are so easy to make and fun to assemble! They are just perfect for homemade treats to gift to family, friends, neighbours and teachers. After making the first batch with my kids, they made them on thier own to sell in small packages at the school Christmas Craft Fair. They were a huge hit and sold out so quickly we wish we had made more!

The variations in flavours are endless, although this combination tastes especially seasonal. Have fun experimenting and let me know what you come up with.

Chocolate is a treat but does provide nutritional benefits as well. Dark chocolate contains flavonoids which are phytonutrients that have anti-inflammatory, anti-clotting, and antioxidant properties. Dark chocolate varies in cocoa content and generally the higher the better, so aim for 70% or more.

Dark Chocolate with Ginger, Cranberries and Hazelnuts

Fine quality extra dark chocolate (this one is 72%) cut into smallish squares or pieces
Hazelnuts, chopped
Candied ginger, very finely chopped
Sweetened dried cranberries, finely chopped
Fine sea salt

Heat oven to 150 degrees (on my oven, this is one of the keep warm settings). Anything over 100 will work as chocolate melts at about 90 degrees. Put a silicone mat on a cookie tray or pan and arrange chocolate leaving about 1 inch space between each piece. Depending on the size of the chocolate and your oven temperature it will melt quickly (mine took about 5 minutes). Remove from oven once chocolate is melted. Sprinkle chocolate with hazelnuts, ginger and cranberries and top with a few grains of salt. Cool until set and chocolate is hardened, generally a couple of hours, however the freezer works in case of emergencies. Gently lift from silicone mat (you may need to lift mat up and peel them off).

Caramel Cheesecake

At dinner I mentioned to my family I had made cheesecake for dessert. Cheesecake! It is not like me to make a rich dessert, especially on a weeknight and they know it. My son, immediately suspicious asked “Really?” Is it really cheesecake? You see, they know I am always up to something, trying to add nutritious things into, well, everything. When they tasted it they still couldn’t believe it, even though it tastes like cheesecake, but not as heavy as a typical cheesecake. My son asked, is there anything in this cheesecake that doesn’t belong in a cheesecake? Does it have nuts? Beans? Spinach? They know me. My daughter asked for a second piece. Finally my husband asked “Does it have cheese in it?

This cheesecake is made with greek yogurt and the only sweetness is from moist Medjool dates which also add a lovely caramel flavour. It is a simple dessert which comes together quickly, yet is completely delicious and impressive!

Caramel Cheesecake

Prepared graham cracker or gingersnap cookies crust in buttered 9 inch spring form pan.

8 Medjool dates, pitted

2 cups greek yogurt

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

pinch salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place dates and 1/2 cup yogurt in food processor or blender and process until dates are blended will into yogurt. This can take some time with stopping and scraping down periodically). Add remaining yogurt and blend until completely smooth. Add eggs, vanilla extract, cornstarch, lemon juice and salt, blending well after each addition. Gently pour into prepared crust and bake 30-35 minutes until set. Garnish with thinly sliced ripe pears and pomegranate seeds.

I entered this recipe into a recipe competition with Tree Island Yogurt AND took away the prize for best dessert!

Buckwheat Pilaf (dressing or stuffing)

Whether you call it dressing, stuffing or simply a pilaf, this buckwheat dish is a wonderful addition to a special occasion dinner or any meal where you would typically have a grain based dish. It is vegan and gluten free. It can be made a day or two ahead, kept refrigerated and heated when needed.

Buckwheat is not a “wheat” at all or even a grain. It is a fruit seed related to rhubarb and sorrel. It is an excellent choice for a naturally gluten free dish and a terrific alternative to rice or other grains. Buckwheat is very nutritious and has been shown to be beneficial in heart health and also in controlling blood glucose, making it a good choice for diabetes, pre diabetes and for everyone as part of a healthy diet. It is a good source of fiber and is a plant based source of high quality protein.

My Mom introduced us to buckwheat which she used in Poland where it is much more common than in North America. To this day, Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner doesn’t seem the same to me without her delicious buckwheat stuffing!

If you have left over bread it is easy to adjust this recipe to include it and perhaps makes it a true dressing. Simply cut stale or dry bread into small cubes, add it to the dressing, adding an addition 1/2 cup of mushroom broth. Depending on how much bread you are adding you may want to add additional herbs. Press into pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Buckwheat Dressing or Stuffing

Course Side Dish

Cuisine Gluten Free, Holiday, Vegan

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 8

Ingredients

1 Cup Buckwheat
2 Cups Mushroom Broth
1 Tbsp Olive oil
1 Medium Onion, finely diced
2 Ribs Celery, finely diced About 1 cup
1 Clove Garlic, minced
100 Grams Chestnuts, chopped
1 Tsp Sage, dried
1/2 Tsp Thyme, dried
1/2 Tsp Marjoram, dried
1/4 Tsp Salt Or more to taste
1/8 Tsp Pepper Or more to taste
Fresh sage leaves For garnish
1 Tsp Olive oil To fry sage leaves

Variation: Adding Bread

1/2 Loaf Bread, 2-3 days old Gluten free if preferred
1/2 Cup Mushroom broth

Instructions

Pick over buckwheat and remove any small stones. Rinse and drain. Add mushroom broth and buckwheat to a medium saucepan and cook on medium until most of the water is absorbed. Turn off heat, cover and let sit covered until all the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes.
While buckwheat is cooking, heat olive oil in a medium saucepan. Add onion, celery and garlic. Cook a few minutes until vegetables are soft and getting some colour. Add spices, chopped chestnuts, cooked buckwheat and dried cranberries. Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper if needed.
Heat 1 tsp oil in small pan and quickly fry sage leaves. Sprinkle on top.

Variation: Adding Bread

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut bread into small cubes and add into mixture. Pour extra broth in and mix well. Press into oven proof casserole dish or pan. Bake for 30 minutes.

Healthy Handouts for Halloween Trick or Treat

We live in a neighbourhood where Halloween is crazy big. The displays are awesome with the houses all dressed up, glowing jack-o-lanterns, witches, ghosts, fireworks and more. It is so much fun! Everyone heads out and enjoys the night. Needless to say, it is a very popular area for kids and some houses report getting 500 kids come to the door to trick or treat. To top that off the residents are very generous often handing out 2 or 3 treats to every child. That is a lot of treats which usually means it is a lot of sugar!

With all the tempting sweet treats it is hard to not overindulge, especially when the kids have collected them. How do we enjoy the holiday but not go overboard on sugar, calories and fat? Luckily there are more and more healthy options to handout for this Halloween.

Healthy Handouts for Halloween Trick or Treat

Cheese sticks or strings
Mini Fruit cups (in water or juice)
Apple Sauce
Raisins
Nuts, Seeds, or Trail Mix in small packages
Popcorn
Dark chocolate
Dark chocolate with Fruit or Nuts

What would you add to this list?

Sorrel Pesto

Sorrel is a beautiful plant that is incredibly easy to grow. There is the broad leaf variety pictured above and also a lovely red veined variety that is so pretty with the red throughout. It is a perennial green that produces early in spring and late into the fall. It is a lovely plant to grow in your garden and is a super healthy green that is popping up at more and more farmers market stands. It produces masses of edible green leaves filled with Vitamin A, Vitamin C and potassium. In the spring time, it adds a pop of colour and bright taste to an early green salad and later in the year it works well added to other greens in recipes or in making a sauce (it is kind of like the squeeze of lemon juice). The leaves have a tangy lemony taste that is a little sour and bitter. Some describe it as a sour apple candy taste. I love having it in my garden and have enjoyed finding interesting ways to use it.

This quick and easy pesto is made with sorrel, garlic, sunflower seeds, salt, and olive oil. This fresh light lemony tasting pesto adds a boost of flavour to roasted potatoes, gnocchi, pasta, soup, and sauces. It also makes a wonderful and healthy alternative to butter or mayo on avocado tomato toast or sandwiches.

Sorrel Pesto

20 sorrel leaves

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese

Add sorrel, garlic and sunflower seeds to food processor and process until leaves and seeds are ground up. Add parmesan cheese, salt and olive oil. Taste to adjust seasonings, adding salt, olive oil as needed to desired consistency. This pesto will keep well refrigerated or can be frozen for later use.

Halloween Fun with Fruits and Vegetables

With Halloween only a little over a week away, party planning is well under way! This group of fabulously fun ideas with fruits and vegetables makes it easy to include healthy options at Halloween events. These super cute food crafts offer many nutritional benefits and would be wonderful classroom projects or family activities. Adding healthy options encourages everyone to have balance and resist the urge to over indulge at a time when sugary treats are so prevalent and abundant. Happy Halloween!

Please visit these links to check out the tutorials/recipes.

Vegetable Skeleton from Kraft

Clementine Pumpkins and Banana Ghosts from One Little Project

Apple Bites from Oh She Glows

Cucumber Witch Hats and Celery/Carrot Broomsticks from Little Food Junction

Honeydew Bats from Shaken Together Life

Spooky Spider from Kitchen Fun with my 3 Sons

Jack-o-Lantern Peppers from Hidden Valley

Cucumber Monsters from Pop Sugar

Pumpkin Spice Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

It is hard not to love Fall. Beautiful colours, cool crisp mornings followed by blazing sun filled afternoons. Perfect days to go to the pumpkin patch, a colourful walk in the woods, or stay home and bake up some comforing healthy treats using all the wonderful vegetables available to us during the harvest season. Pumpkins, squashes, carrots, beets, parsnips, giant zucchini that your neighbours left on your doorstep; they are all terrific in baked goods. Cookies, loaves, muffins, cakes, pies, bars, squares; great stuff for breakfast, snacks, desserts. Using vegetables in baked goods usually means we can reduce the amount fat we are using by half. You can adapt your own favourite recipes by using this simple rule. The vegetables add moisture, boost the nutrition and add great flavours.

Moist and delicious, this pumpkin spice cake was a wonderful addition to our Thanksgiving Dinner. Filled with the warm spices of pumpkin pie and topped with a silky smooth cream cheese frosting it can be both a snack or a special dessert. This recipe makes 2 small round cakes or a larger sheet snack cake. It is easy to put together and is much lower in fat and sugar than a typical cake. The frosting is AMAZING. The cake freezes well without the frosting.

Pumpkin Spice Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

125g Light Cream Cheese Spread *

3-4 tablespoons maple sugar

1/8 tsp vanilla

Directions: Place all ingredients in a small bowl and stir until smooth with a spoon. The maple sugar dissolves into the cream cheese and blends beautifully. Adjust the sugar to taste. Place in refrigerator. This is enough for 1 small round cake or 1/2 the large sheet cake.

* I like to use Liberte brand Light Cream Cheese Spread.

Pumpkin Spice Cake

1 3/4 cup pureed pumpkin

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 cup Fancy Molassas

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp cloves

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare cake pans or glass baking pan with butter and sprinkle lightly with flour. Add pumpkin, oil, sugars, molasses and eggs to mixer and mix until well combined. Add in spices and salt and mix well. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and baking soda. Stir into pumpkin mixture until incorporated and pour into prepared pan(s). Bake 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before spreading the top with frosting. Enjoy!

This recipe is adapted from Cooking Light Pumpkin Pie Cake.

Creamy Carrot Soup with Coconut Milk

Bowl of Creamy Carrot Soup pictured with crackers — Creamy Carrot Soup with Coconut Milk

This creamy carrot soup is so perfect for these cooler fall days when you want something comforting yet nourishing. Made with rice to thicken and is creamy and delicious with the added coconut milk. Simple yet elegant it is complimented perfectly by any variation of fresh herbs.

Creamy Carrot Soup (with coconut milk)

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion

2 garlic cloves

4-5 small fresh thyme sprigs

4 cups chopped carrots

6 tbsp white rice

4 cups vegetable stock

1 1/2 cup coconut milk (unsweetened)

salt and pepper

Garnish with coconut butter and finely chopped fresh herbs.

Directions:

Melt coconut oil and heat along with olive oil in large saucepan, over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until translucent and slightly browned. Add thyme, carrots, vegetable stock and rice. Bring to boil and then simmer until vegetables are very soft and rice is well cooked, about 1 hour. Cool slightly, then puree. Return to saucepan and add coconut milk, adding extra coconut milk or water to desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste .

Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins with Blueberries and Lemon

One of my favourite childhood summer memories is foraging for blueberries in the Whiteshell area of Manitoba. We would go almost every weekend to be sure to get enough blueberries to last our family of 8 for the winter. That required a lot of blueberries! On a recent trip to Manitoba, it was high on my list to experience this again with my own family.

What a great day! Starting from Winnipeg and heading east on the Trans Canada Highway, we watched the prairie grain fields slowly change to rocky and evergreen terrain as we began to see the start of the Canadian Shield. We reached the Whiteshell in a quick 1 1/2 hour on the road and then meandered through the lakes to a terrific hike at McGillvray Falls. Although we did the short loop it took us 3 hours. We stopped often to enjoy the picturesque views, climb up immense rocks, and to pick wild blueberries which lined the trails and carpeted the forest floor throughout the area. We quickly filled our containers and our tummies with these delicious sweet tangy blueberries. To complete the day we stopped at Falcon Beach to swim, enjoy the golden sand beach and a little of cottage life.

Having become accustomed to the taste of the cultivated larger blueberries that are grown in BC, what a treat to have these again. They are delicious fresh, easy to freeze and wonderful in so many recipes. One of my favourite blueberry recipes are these moist bright and lemony muffins. Low in sugar, low in fat, a good source of fiber from the oats and the blueberries these muffins make a terrific make ahead breakfast or snack. They also freeze well and are a perfect make ahead muffin to have on hand for busy days.

Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins with Blackberries and Lemon

This recipe is easily adaptable to other fruit. Simple substitute other fruit for the blueberries. Raspberries, blackberries, chopped peaches, nectarines, and plums all work well.

Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins with Blueberries and Lemon

Makes 12

1 cup Buttermilk

1 cup Oats*

1 egg

1/4 cup oil

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

zest of 1 lemon

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)

*I usually use Old Fashioned Large Flake Oats. If you are short on time substitute quick oats and you can shorten or omit the soaking time.

Directions:

Line a 12 muffin tin with paper liners and heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium size mixing bowl mix oats and buttermilk and set aside to soak for 1 hour. To oat mixture, add egg, oil, lemon zest and lemon juice and sugar. Mix well. In a separate small bowl sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin tin to 3/4 full and bake 20-25 minutes or until done.

Molasses Butter with Corn on the Cob

This recipe is incredibly easy and incredibly delicious. It is definitely one of those “Why didn’t I try this sooner?” kind of recipes. I first got the idea from my sister, who got it from her friend. I went on line to credit the source because I know it wasn’t original but could only find recipes that used only a little molasses. Trust me, it needs a healthy dose of deliciously rich molasses flavour!

Molasses Butter

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 tablespoons Crosby’s Fancy Molasses

pinch sea salt

Directions:

Using the back of a spoon, spread the butter in a small bowl. Slowly add the molasses incorporating it into the butter as you go until it is smooth. Add salt to taste. Refridgerate and it will firm up. Remove approx 15 min before serving. *Don’t be tempted to melt the butter, it won’t turn out the same. You can adjust the quantity to any you want but keep the proportion the same – 2 parts butter to 1 part molasses.

This butter is highly addictive and you will find yourself searching for other things to put it on….to keep you from eating it straight from the container! It is wonderful on corn on the cob, popcorn, cornbread, sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, root vegetables, toast, etc. Good thing a little packs a lot of flavour and goes a long way.