Oil free potato pizza, gluten free, high carb low fat

Gluten-free guilt free vegan pizzas that my kids love

I have recently eliminated all oil for my diet. These potato pizzas have been a favorite in my house and now I figured out a way of making it without any oil.

Potato pizza recipe:
Slice potatoes thick-long ways
Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Flat sides down (for the end pieces)
Bake at 450 for 20 min
Flip and top with no oil tomato sauce, I use plain diced stewed tomatoes that I blend quickly.

Cashew cheese sauce:
Blend 1 cup cashews with 1 cup of water, and 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast. Fresh or dried garlic and other herbs and spices can be added to the tomato sauce or cheese sauce.
Top with cheese sauce. If the sauce is runny that’s ok it will thicken in the oven.  Almond, Brazil or macadamia nuts can be used instead of cashew, I find the cashew is the softest texture.

Bake 10 more minutes or until golden brown on edges.

Serve hot

Brazil nut Parmesan:
1-3 garlic cloves
1 cup Brazil nuts
Salt to taste (optional)
1 teaspoon nutritional yeast (optional)
Chop until fine in blender or food processor. Sprinkle on top before eating. Store extra and fridge.

This recipe is compliant for the McDougall Plan, Starch Solution, the Engine 2 Diet, and other high carb low fat Plantstrong vegan diets. Not compliant for the McDougall Maximum weight loss plan (because of the nuts).

Gourmet Vegan Mac and Cheese even children will love

I finally made a vegan Mac and cheese even my children love. Made with only a handful of ingredients, and has a gourmet taste. Can be made raw with zucchini noodles.

Until now any vegan Mac and cheese I’ve made got eaten (happily) only by my husband and I. My children would take a bite and declare “It’s not my taste”. Big frowns for this foodie mama. One time I even used a whole block of follow your heart vegan cheddar cheese, knowing they love it, and they ate only a few bites. This new recipe satisfied all my picky eaters!

This won’t taste like a boxed Mac and cheese, but more like a gourmet one. I would expect to have a dish like this, maybe with some truffle oil (although I don’t eat oil any more) at a gourmet restaurant in New York or California. I can imagine myself eating this in the garden dining room at Post Ranch Inn. It is very similar to the way Christopher’s Kitchen in Palm Beach Gardens, FL makes it, they add jalapeno. The cheese texture is sure to please.

Vegan Mac and cheese
1 tablespoon Brazil nut Parmesan (see recipe below)
1 cup raw cashews
1/4 cup water
Salt to taste

Mix all ingredients (except salt) on high until smooth. Add more water or cashews if needed for the right consitancy, should be a thick sauce.
Pour over freshly made pasta and mix well. Serve with a sprinkle of Brazil nut Parmesan and salt to taste.

My favorite gluten free pasta is Trader Joe’s fusilli made with brown rice. Any gluten free pasta will work for this recipe. Some rice pastas leave a thick starchy water after making the pasta, you can use that in place of the water in this recipe.
For a raw version: use raw zucchini noodles, can be made with a mandolin, shredder or spiralizer.

Brazil nut Parmesan
1 cup Brazil nuts
1 clove garlic
1 tsp salt (or to taste)

Chop on low in a blender or small food processor. Transfer into a shaker bottle, I use a regular mouth mason jar with a Parmesan shaker lid I got from my sister. Store in the refrigerator.
You only need a small amount for this recipe, so you can make much less of you like.
While it has no cheese flavor it works well on pasta and Italian dishes in place of parmesan, and has a similar texture. Adding nutritional yeast will give it more of a cheese flavor.

Options:
Nutritional yeast can be added for extra cheese flavor.
1 tsp Turmeric can be added to make it a yellow-orange color.

For a spicy m&c:
Add jalepeno seeds to taste when blending the sauce.

For a sweet Mac and cheese add some mashed baked sweet potatoes stirred in.

Something different: my husband added garbanzo beans, kidney beans, red bell peppers and hot pepper flakes to it. I couldn’t think of a name for the dish (maybe bean-pasta salad?), he said it was amazing.

We loved this so much we wanted a few servings, but learned quickly that it’s too heavy of a meal for that.

Enjoy
In~joy

Garbanzo bean “chocolate” chip cookies, vegan, gluten free

I have been making bean cookies and brownies for years, my family loves them, and this one the have named the best ever!

As many of my readers may know, I don’t follow a recipe, I use it as a guide. I also don’t always write down what I put in a recipe because I love to just be in the moment. Yes I love to cook. Funny thing is I’m on a cleanse and can’t eat it, but what I’ve been cooking since I started my cleanse has been amazing, according to my family.

So here are the ingredients. To make it McDougall low fat omit the almond butter, as you see I don’t use much. You can replace it with a non dairy milk, or leave it out all together.

NOTE: the amounts are estimates
Makes about 50 small cookies
4 cups cooked garbanzo beans
2 cups oat flour (you can use oat groats or rolled or quick oats, made into flour in a blender)
1 cup ground flax
1/2 cup chia seeds
2 Tablespoon almond butter
2 Tablespoon applesauce
1 cup dates
1 cup water
1/4 cup cashew
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup carob chips (or chocolate chips)
1 cup raisins (optional)
1/2 cup maple syrup or other liquid sweetner
1 tablespoon salt (to taste – optional – omit for the McDougall Plan)

Preheat oven at 375 F
Blend the dates, cashews, maple syrup, baking soda, salt and water until the dates are liquid.
In a food processor blend the date liquid and garbanzo beans until smooth.
Put into large mixing bowl, add all the remaining ingredients except raisins and carob chips. Mix until all combined well. If the batter is too wet add more flax or oat flour. Should be a little thinner than regular cookie batter. Not runny.

Using a ice cream scooper, or spoon, scoop out small balls, about the size of a golf ball, and put on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. The balls can also be cooked in silicon baking cups. You can make them into cookie shapes too by pressing them down with the back of a spoon.

Bake for approx 30 min, or until it starts to get golden brown. Let cool before serving. They can be served room temperature or cold. They tend to get a little more firm if left in the fridge over night.

Store in air tight container in the fridge.

I can’t say how long they will last, in my house that’s about a day or so.

Some more pics from the Bain family photo shoot, even our sons joined in the fun.

Inspiration from my 5 year old

This morning my son had tears in his eyes, telling me that he wants daddy to be home with us. I told him to ask G-D for a way for us to have money so Chris can stay home. Tonight Joshua offered to help clean and cook. We washed dishes together, this is a first! And then made his favorite chocolate chip cookies.

I usually do it mostly myself when making anything “with” Joshua, he will dump a few things here and there into the mixing bowl and fling food all over the kitchen while stirring, but tonight Joshua was on a mission. He was attentive and enthusiastic. All the while telling me funny stories, what a great co-chef. Why had I not done this before? Oh yeah the mess, which tonight was significantly less. He even said to me “Mommy you are my Best friend ever! and Daddy and David too.”

As the second batch was ready to go in the oven Joshua decided to cover them in chocolate chips. I left him to play while I prepared the rest of the batter. He was having a blast, placing each one carefully, but then decided he wanted to push them inside and filled each cookie on the sheet with chocolate chips.

The 3rd batch was ready and Joshua insisted that I sit with him to cover them in chips. He also didn’t want me to flatten them into cookies, he wants them to be mountains. He pushed chips in and happily announced that he had made tunnels. Just as we finished I had an inspiring thought, drizzle some peanut butter on them! We had lots of fun with that. He wanted to fill all his tunnels with peanut butter.

As the cookies baked Joshua started to talk to me about making more foods together. And suddenly it came to me. “Joshua would you like to make a kids cookbook with me, and we will put in all your favorite foods?” He was overjoyed and started dancing around telling me all the foods he wanted in the book and even came up with some clever names, Chocolate Peanut Butter Mountains with Tunnels, Lion Kingdom Pizza. There are about 20 on the list right now, a perfect place to start. I told Joshua we would cook something together every day and add it to our book.

And so starts the beginning of something beautiful. A way to have the whole family together, doing what we love – being together and preparing yummy food!

On a side note, today was also an answer to so many requests I’ve had for the universe.
– a good friend who I enjoy spending time with
– Teamwork, this has been a biggie
– an avenue for creating not only fun times but money as well
-more mutual love and respect between my son and I

Thank You Joshua!

How to keep apples from turning brown

When a good friend was visiting, her daughter was eating perfectly colored apple slices. I thought to myself, that must be a super fresh apple because not since I lived in California have I had an apple that didn’t turn brown within minutes of being cut.
I then noticed something was in the container with the apples, and that is when my friend told me her secret… JUICE!
Genius, just pure genius!

She reminded me how fruit salad always has some sort of juice in it and that keeps all the fruit from turning color.

So I tested it out. All I has on hand was mango juice, and so I sliced up an apple, covered it in a little juice, making sure each piece got some juice on it. I gave my boys half to enjoy, was delicious! And then left some out on the counter, surely that would turn it brown right? No, for 3 days it sat out uncovered and still the apple was perfect in color and was even crisp! I also put some covered apples in the fridge and they did just a little better. Of course we only are the ones from the fridge.

The fun was not only eating apples with a special mango taste but also drinking the juice. Almost any juice will work, apple, pear, orange, mango…

Now this is bottled juice, not raw, but when I make raw apple juice I will test it out. The juice I used was pure juice and water only. I do use raw fresh orange juice in my carrot apple salad which keeps the ingredients fresh.

Brownie bites, Vegan Gluten-free (can be made raw)

No-bake easy to make brownie bites. Can be made raw.

-Mix equal amounts of each:
Almond butter – or peanut butter (or nut butter of choice)
Cocoa powder, my favorite is Rapunzel
Maple syrup, agave or liquid sweetener of choice
-Form into balls or any shape you like.
-Chill in fridge for at least an hour uncovered.
-Serve

Will keep for weeks in a sealed container refrigerated.

For Raw ingredients: be sure they all clearly state raw on the package.
There is some debate on agave nectar, any liquid sweetener can be used, such as pure maple syrup or if your not vegan use raw honey.

Oatmeal chews

Great finger food for babies, toddlers and even older kids, and no oatmeal mess!

This delightful surprise came from a failed (in my opinion) batch of pancake batter. I decided to see what would happen if I put the batter in baking cups and bake it. My 1 & 5 year old ate them up! And the great thing, it’s healthy, very few ingredients and my son who is refusing to eat oatmeal was asking or more.

3 cups rolled oats
1 T baking soda
4 T ground flax
1 T cinnamon
1 t vanilla extract (or pure maple syrup)
1 T coconut oil
1 mashed banana
2 cuts water
1 t sea salt

Topping: 2 mashed ripe bananas
2 T agave nectar or sweetener of choice

Put all the ingredients (except topping) in a blender and blend until the oats break down, keep batter somewhat chunky though.

Fill cupcake cups 3/4 way. Bake one 350 F for 45 minutes, or until top gets golden brown.

Remove and transfer to a cooling rack.

Mix topping, and spread on top the chews.

Make sure it’s cooled before serving to little ones (these are pretty hot inside for a while). Also the topping can be put on anytime, it will actually dry out but still be a little sticky, but not runny.

Options: add raisins or other dried fruit.
1/2 cup of purred fruit can replace the banana in the batter (applesauce, pumpkin, sweet potato, mango)

Notes:
The chews without the topping are pretty bland (at least to me), but my 1 year old preferred them that way, my 5 year old only wanted the ones with the topping.
For chocolate lovers, spread some nut butter + chocolate powder (or carob) + liquid sweetener, on top.
Vegan cream cheese mixed with a little maple syrup would be a great “frosting”.

Oh and how about that photo?! Amazing what great pics I can get from my iPhone+Instagram+red Stamp. I’m trying to make all my pics more fun and appealing, hope its working. As soon as I am out of baby-phase (oh teething) and get good sleep, I’m going to be turning the really great pictures into something fun, but that’s a surprise for later, like in a year or two maybe 🙂

Granola bars

Granola bars are some of the simplest baked goods I’ve ever made. Truly all you need to do is use this base and add anything you like to it. Just be sure it’s not too wet.

Base makes approx 24 1″x3″x1/8″ bars

Dry:
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup oat flour or any flour of choice
4T seeds -nuts of choice, Finley chopped
1T chia seeds
1/2 C raisins or dried fruit of choice (finely chop if dried fruit is large). Can bring this up to a cup if you prefer.
3T sea salt (optional)

1/4 C toasted coconut, finely shredded

Wet:
1/2 c coconut sugar, or mashed dates
1 frozen banana, thawed and mashed
1/2 cup water (or apple juice for sweeter)
6T ground flax
2T unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)
1 T cinnamon (optional)
3T almond butter

Additional dry:
1/2 cup Puffed rice

Preheat oven 325
Mix first set of dry in large bowl.
Mix wet ingredients very well in small bowl, allow to sit. Be sure that any additional spices of your choice are added to the wet so they get full incorporated.
Mix the wet into the first set of already mixed dry. Mix until all ingredients are fully coated. Should not be too wet, not runny, and be able to ball up without falling.
Stir in the remaining dry ingredients- I leave the puffed rice for the end so it doesn’t get too wet, otherwise it will lose the puff.

Put the entire batter on a parchment lined baking sheet. Evenly spread it out and pack down with the back of a spatula. Or put another piece of parchment on top and roll with a rolling pin. Make 1/8 inch thick (can be as thick as you like)
Cut into bars with a pizza cutter.
Cook until golden brown.

Notes:
Using buckwheat flour will result in a richer flavor, cinnamon compliments this flour very well.
Rice crisps, corn flakes, or other cereal type grain can be used in place or addition to the puffed rice.
Can also be cooked into shapes using cookie cutters, kids love doing that.
Can also be baked in a silicon baking cup or silicon muffin tray. I made a few in my heart shaped muffin tray 3 inches thick, they only needed 3 min more the bars, I didn’t press the batter, only spooned it in.

Gluten-free Vegan Mac and cheese

My 4 year old sure gets picky sometimes. A few weeks ago he got a taste of regular Mac n cheese and has been asking for it. Well in the house I try to have only vegan and gluten free foods, so I had to get creative, and was inspired to come up with this ez recipe.

1 cup cashews
1 package brown rice elbow pasta
2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
Sea salt to taste
Water

-Soak cashews overnight, or for 5-7 hours, until the cashews are plump and very soft.
If you don’t have time to soak the recipe should work just fine anyway, soaking makes the sauce smoother.
-Cook pasta as directed on package.
-drain the water and put the pasta back in the pot.
-blend the cashew, nutritional yeast and water. Blend until smooth.
-pour the cashew sauce over the pasta.
-cook on med-low heat for 5 min, stir every minute.
-turn off heat, cover and allow to sit for about 10 minutes or until the sauce gets thicker.
-serve warm or cold, add sea salt to taste.

Notes: goes great with chopped cherry tomatoes on top.
-herbs of your choice can be added during the blending process.
-alternative: instead of putting the plain pasta in the pot, but it in a casserole pan, pour in the sauce, cover and bake in the oven at 300 degrees F, until the sauce is thick, can also take the top off and cook a few more minutes to make the top crispy.
-for a slightly sweeter and orange color Mac n cheese try this “cheese” sauce
-I named this mighty Mac n cheese because my son has been into superheroes lately and the title just seemed fitting.

Quinoa Farina

Farina, oh the memories, snowy NY mornings, a dash of chocolate syrup… yum!

These days I try to make everything I can vegan and gluten free, raw is a plus. A few days ago I got the idea to blend quinoa and see what happens, to my surprise it became a farina constancy and taste!

Cooked or sprouted quinoa
Almond milk (or other non-dairy milk)
Maple syrup or sweetener of choice (dates best for raw)
Sea salt

Blend all ingredients until smooth, a hand blender works best, be aware it’s very sticky.

I didn’t put measurements because it really depends on how smooth or chunky you want it. For chunky put just a small amount of almond milk, just enough to wet it. And for smooth and thin add as much almond milk as quinoa. Everything else is to taste.

And if you want a special treat, like how my mom used to make it for me, add some cocoa powder or chocolate syrup just before serving. For fun, stir into a swirl.

Enjoy!