baking
If you like making healthier recipes for the holidays, you’ll like this one – and don’t forget to check out my Real, Whole Holiday Recipes cookbook. Good stuff!
My husband visited Boston last week. Granted it was a work-related trip, but he got to see all of our friends while he was there. I’m so jealous!! It’s been just about a year since we moved away from Boston. What a sad anniversary.
And honestly, it feels like much longer than a year. When I think of Boston, I see my 18 year old self looking for waitressing jobs on Bolyston Street. My 30 year old self teaching yoga. I remember Cactus Bowls and Red Sox crowds and OtherSide Cafe. Harvard, Porter and Davis Squares. Going out after 6pm. You know. Pre-baby stuff.
It made me homesick as hell thinking about it all.
Anyway, I was trolling the internet looking for a good banana bread or muffin recipe
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November 21st, 2011 | baking, Boston, recipe | 3 Comments »
My husband looked smugly at me, holding a box in his hand.
“What is that crap?” I snapped.
“Banana bread mix.” He said.
Ughh. I proceeded to roll my eyes and give him the usual spiel about homemade being so much better and how store-bought is sugar-laden garbage and banana bread really isn’t hard to make from scratch either.
“But you don’t, like, bake.” He said.
WHAT? What about this, this and this?
“I mean, everything you bake is…experimental.” He meant, I’m always looking to make the recipe healthy. He’s right.
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November 10th, 2011 | autumn, baking, recipe | 3 Comments »
It’s my pat on the back. It’s my comforting hug. It’s my little treat. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s my crack cocaine.
That’s it. Joe Joe’s are now banned from the house!
For the past few months my husband has been buying these Trader Joe’s cookies as a little treat for us. Ahem. He may have eaten…a few. There’s something SO addicting to me about little sandwich cookies! I found myself eating a handful at a time. A row at a time. Going through a box a week. A box every few days. Auughhhhhh!
I think we all know what that something addictive is about cookies – hello, sugar. For some reason I can ignore ice cream and pie and what-have-you, but cookies pull me with brute force into their sugary arms every time.
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September 13th, 2011 | baking, recipe, Sugar | 13 Comments »
New and exciting around here includes: Ikea baby curtains and a fresh batch of Laborade prepped for the big day. We also recently got our co-sleeper set up, which I happily found on CSNstores.com and had delivered. (Have you shopped there? From baby stuff to Delsey luggage, they have pretty much everything.) But the coolest and newest thing to happen around here is that I baked bread with beans! Yah!
No, not bread and some beans on the side. Bread WITH beans. In it.
I guess I was inspired by trying to eat more protein, period. Growing a baby requires mad amounts of protein. But I wanted bread. Augh. What to do, what to do?
It got me wondering, could I cram some protein into bread the way I cram protein into cookies?
Sure can.
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February 3rd, 2011 | baking, beans, frugal living, recipe, whole grains | 17 Comments »
Cupcakes are mini cakes. But muffins? I don’t get the oversized, sugar-coated versions sold at the coffee shop. Is that supposed to be breakfast?
Give me a break.
The truth is, when you stop eating so much sugar you actually give your tastebuds a chance to recalibrate and appreciate more subtle flavors. This is a good thing. Because real food tastes good!
This whole idea of cutting out sugar and appreciating food for real is a huge part of my 21 Day Detox program. Just today I got a wonderful email from a woman who completed the detox back in the fall. She had just been diagnosed with pre-diabetes and wanted to revamp her diet, pronto. I recommended the detox because it’s an immersion in clean, whole food and that’s exactly what she needed. Well guess what? It’s about 3 months later, she’s 15 lbs. lighter and her A1c test is back in normal range. How amazingly fantastic is THAT??
Man, I love my job.
Anyway. When you make these muffins, be prepared for your husband to tell you they’re missing something on first bite. That’s because he’s expecting a sugary muffin, a little cake like the ones at Starbucks. So tell him it’s more like a bread or a biscuit. Then he’ll tell you they’re delicious.
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January 24th, 2011 | baking, client stories, recipe, Sugar, vegetarian, winter | 18 Comments »
It’s baking time! Based on survey results I’m entirely making up, half of you are in the kitchen today covered in flour. Yay! What a fun time of year.
Baking Christmas cookies is not just about the cookies for me. I only bake my grandma’s cookies, and I only do it because Christmas doesn’t feel the same without her around. Ok, ok, I also do it because I LOVE cookies. But the best part is carrying on the traditions I remember from childhood.
Of course, I make some teensy changes to the recipes. If I’m going to eat a boatload of cookies, they need to be closer to real food – meaning whole grains and natural sweeteners. But honestly, I’ve found that using whole ingredients lends a more full bodied flavor to baked goods. White sugar is a hit of sweet on your tongue like cocaine to the brain! But pure maple syrup has true flavor. Think about it.
By the request of one of my friends, here are some tips for upgrading your holiday baking. Depending on how tied you are to the outcome, you might tentatively adjust the flours and that’s it. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous you can completely recreate your holiday favorites. It’s fun!
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December 21st, 2010 | baking, Sugar, try new things, whole grains, winter | 13 Comments »
What’s in your fridge? I mean – really. Not the nice new package of chicken or the fresh head of romaine. What’s there when you go deep into the corners?
Today I cleaned out our fridge in preparation for our move and found a lot of random surprises. Like lemon halves my husband tucked away in tupperwares. Like open jars of tomato paste and chipotle peppers encased in plastic baggies and covered in mold. I found 3 jars of mustard from when I made these beauties. And mountains of different flours, seasonings, oils.
But from the wreckage I saved a good number of usable items that quickly transformed themselves into a cookie recipe before my very eyes. I couldn’t help it!
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November 30th, 2010 | baking, recipe, Sugar | 16 Comments »
It’s happened again. Another set of 21 Day Detoxers have turned down the volume on their taste buds and are beginning to appreciate the subtle sweet flavors of food. To say “ick” to soda. To actually crave dark, leafy greens! I am so proud of these guys – only a handful of days left and we’ve seen some awesome results.
See, what I mean is, when you’re used to high-intensity sweets like white sugar and high fructose corn syrup you can’t quite appreciate the lovely sweetness of, say…a carrot.
But it doesn’t mean that you won’t want to eat yummy baked goods! It just means that a muffin from Dunkin Donuts starts to taste fake. I really like the challenge of baking delicious treats without sugar – something that I can eat for breakfast without a blood sugar spike. And at 22 weeks pregnant, I am craving baked goods more than ever! So it’s important that I can satisfy the craving without going overboard.
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September 27th, 2010 | baking, detoxify, pregnancy, recipe, Sugar, vegetarian | 11 Comments »
Sugar is a topic I could go on and on about (and sometimes I do). Taking sugar out of my diet has been the best thing I’ve ever done for my health. Period. And I see the same effect in anyone who undertakes the same challenge.
Take my detox participants, for instance. Last spring, they hated my guts for the first sugar-free week. But after that, they were true believers – full of energy and amazed at the lack of brain fog. I’m anticipating a similar response from those of you who sign up for September!
But it’s more than just white sugar. It’s brown sugar. It’s Sugar in the Raw. It’s corn syrup. It’s Sweet-n-Low. It’s Splenda.
This inevitably raises a torrent of questions:
- What about agave nectar?
- Which is a better choice, sugar or Splenda?
- I heard maple syrup is ok, is it?
Sure, I prefer natural sweeteners over processed. I eat tons of fruit and will use a bit of pure maple syrup any day over the white stuff. I abhor artificial sweeteners.
But that’s not the point. The point is, the more sweet stuff you taste, the more sweet stuff you’ll want. It’s an endless cycle. Breaking free means you’ll turn down the volume on your tastebuds. You’ll actually appreciate the sweet flavor of carrots and butternut squash instead having your tastebuds blown out by the top-volume sweet flavor of orange soda.
So why, oh why, would I agree to try and review NuNaturals stevia products?
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August 4th, 2010 | baking, recipe, Sugar, try new things | 42 Comments »
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Last weekend I broke through a new cooking frontier. Well, baking to be exact. I’d never really wanted to make pretzels before, but then I got Kim Boyce’s cookbook, Good the Grain, and fell deeply and madly in love with her rye flour soft pretzel recipe.
I’m seriously happy I bought this book. Sure, I already have shelves overflowing with cookbooks but this is one I’d like to work my way through and follow meticulously. Most of the time I use recipes as suggestions but I’d be silly to mess with these carefully calibrated baking formulas. After all, I’ve struggled with using different whole grain flours and here she has it, all spelled out. Rye flour, amaranth flour, buckwheat flour, etc….there’s a chapter on each one. I imagine this makes my gluten-free friends very happy but it makes me happy too because now I can pounce all over the bulk section at our local co-op and buy all those flours I’ve never known what to do with!
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May 27th, 2010 | baking, book review | 18 Comments »
