Recipes: Apple Crisp Anyone?

 I've been harvesting the early producer in our little apple orchard.

What an abundance!

I've already made about twenty jars of apple sauce for the freezer and several pies and apple crisps.

My husband says the crisps are his favorite and I'm having fun adjusting recipes to reduce the sugar and increase the nutrition. So here are two recipes that started with cookbook recipes but took a turn.

Have you ever tried Kimchi?

Kimchi is a Korean dish reputed to be excellent for detoxing your body and improving your gut flora.
I read years ago that all disease starts in the gut, so what we eat makes a tremendous difference to our overall health. I haven't tried this yet, but next time I go to the market, I'm getting everything I need to prepare it. Here's the recipe which sounds pretty easy.

4 cups of water
4 tablespoons sea salt
1 head cabbage, shredded
1 cup daikon radish grated or 1 cup asparagus cut into one-inch pieces

What's for Dinner? Turkey Alfredo -- Sort of....

Well, I am dealing with lots of holiday leftovers. and yesterday I decided to work on the turkey. It was leftover from Thanksgiving but was in the freezer and I took it out to make turkey soup. But I still had a lot of the white and dark meat separate from the carcass that I didn't want to put in the soup. What to do?

Hmm...why not a sort of Alfredo. So here it is.

Alfredo noodles if you have them or spaghetti or just about any noodle even Ramen would do, enough to serve 2-4. I used regular thin spaghetti because that's what I had on hand.

Three cups of cut up turkey meat
1/2 onion chopped
3 large mushrooms chopped
2 Tbs. butter
1/2 cup light cream
2 eggs
1 cup parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

(Set water on to boil and add spaghetti while you are making the Alfredo Sauce.)

 Cook onion and mushrooms in butter. Add turkey meat and heat through. Remove from heat while you mix up Alfredo Sauce.

Alfredo Sauce: In a microwavable bowl heat cream until warm but not hot enough to cook the eggs. Beat the eggs and add to the warm cream with the parmesan cheese (I used the Kraft powdered because it's what I had on hand. Fresh would be better.) Mix well. Return turkey mixture to heat and add Alfredo mixture. Cook about five or six minutes until sauce thickens. Serve over spaghetti. Serves 2-4.

What Would Jesus Eat?

I'm reading an interesting book about the way the French eat and why we're fat and they aren't despite a diet fulled with butter, real cream, delicious breads and wine at lunch and dinner. The answer, according to the author, is that they eat real food while we stuff our faces with faux food filled with: artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, etc. Some pre-packaged foods aren't too bad. Take the Kellogs raisin bran I ate this morning. The ingredient list includes: whole grain wheat, raisins, wheat bran, sugar, brown sugar syrup and less than 2% salt and malt flavor. Compare that list to Post's Honey Bunches of Oats: corn, whole grain wheat, sugar, whole grain rolled oats, brown sugar, rice, high oleic vegetable oil (canola or sunflower oil), whet flour malted barley flour, salt, corn syrup, whey (from milk), honey malted corn and barley syrup...here's where it gets interesting...caramel color, natural and artificial flavor, annato extract (color), BHT added to packaging material to preserve product freshness. Read more here....

I don't know about you, but I'm really not interested in consuming BHT and products that have a large liquid content (like cheese) are the ones that tend to have BHT leach into the food. Maybe that means cereal (without fruit) is fairly safe with BHT packaging, but I'm not interesting in being anybody's guinea pig. Besides, you can make your own wonderful, healthy cereal without any artificial ingredients. I made an apothecary jar full of granola this morning that will provide us a healthy morning option for one or two weeks until I make a new batch.

Good Morning Granola

Preheat oven to 400 degrees 

Add to a flat baking dish (I use pyrex) 4 cups rolled oats and bake 15 or 20 minutes, stirring every few minutes until oats are lightly browned. 

Stir in one cup coconut and bake five more minutes stirring once or twice. 

Add 1/4 cup oil (I use coconut oil. If it's congealed I liquify it by heating the jar in a pan of simmering water.) and 1/4 cup honey. (When we get our beehives producing we will happily use our own organic honey from our hives.) Bake five more minutes. 

Remove from oven and place in a bowl. Add chopped dried fruit and nuts. I had a large assortment today so I put in chopped candied cantaloupe, apricots, cranraisins, regular raisins, dates, pecans, almonds, sunflower seeds, and peanuts.  

A bowl of this with milk direct from the cow to our table is one great start to the day!

Father's Day and Frozen Daiquiris

Well, we had three fathers at our house today. Larry, David, and Jonathan. In honor of the day I made frozen strawberry daiquiris from the last of the three flats we picked about two weeks ago. It's wonderful living out in the country where you can pick your own fruits and vegetables. You can't get fresher than that.

I froze the last of them a few days ago before they spoiled. They added to the frozen effect. My recipe has a secret ingredient (which I forgot to add to this batch), perhaps fortunately, because Jes, David's wife, doesn't like coconut.

So here's my version of the strawberry daiquiri:

one twelve ounce can of limeade
twelve ounces of rum
2-3 cups of strawberries fresh or frozen
a tray of ice cubes
2 heaping tablespoons of coconut cream

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth.

Add a strawberry on side of glass for garnish and enjoy.

Makes six daiquiris.

I like to make these for the children without the rum (and the expectant moms too). Very festive for any occasion.