Hey ya'll! It feels like a lot is changing here in our household and family. I am "in kitchen" for a couple months. So, sometimes when the mornings are busy, I need something quick for breakfast. Overnight oatmeal (oatmeal parfait) is great. One of the great things about this recipe is you can change it to fit just about everybody's taste. 

Ingredients:

1/2 of oatmeal
1 cup almond milk or milk of your choice or water
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla, and or cocoa powder, cinnamon, etc...
sweetener of your choice
Chia seeds
yogurt or cottage cheese
bannanas, peaches, blueberries.....

Here's how you make it! 

Heat oats, almond milk and water in a pan until almost cooked. Mix in vanilla, sweetener, cocoa, cinnamon, etc... 

Now layer- oatmeal, cottage cheese or yogurt, fruit and chia seeds. We usually layer the ingredients about three times. Put the lids on and place in refrigerator until ready to use. This is enough to satisfy a large appetite, so you may need to adjust it a bit.

You can change the order of the layering if you want. Most of my family likes it when we put fruit at the bottom of the jar. Sometimes we use peaches and others bananas or apples. Be creative and have a good time!

Comment and tell me the combinations you come up with! Hope you enjoy the recipe!

                               Blessings!
                                       Lydia :)
                                    

They're peanut buttery, chocolaty and perfect for Passover. Yum. Unleavened Peanut Butter Cookie Balls are the perfect recipe to make ahead for Unleavened Bread/Matzah Week (also referred to as ULB). I found the recipe for these cookies even before I knew what leaven was- then when we started keeping the Feast of Unleavened bread; it occurred to me that these cookies fit the requirement for any food that is to be eaten during the Feast. First of all they are unleavened, secondly they are super easy to make (that's not actually a requirement) and third, they are absolutely scrumptious (actually, that's not a requirement either- but it should be!).

Here's the Recipe I used (altered enough to my own liking that it is almost completely different from the original! ha)

Unleavened Peanut Butter Ball Cookies

1 cup Soft White Flour 

1/3 cup Raw Cane Sugar

1/3 cup Sucanat

1 cup Natural Peanut Butter

1 cup Chocolate Chips

1 Egg

Combine all ingredients. It may seems dry, but trust me, it works. Next, pack dough into cookie scoop and place balls on cookie sheet and bake at 350* for 9 minutes. Let cool and remove from sheet.

So, the good news is- here's a fun recipe to try!

The bad news is that I didn't get this finished before ULB so you didn't get to try these this year :( And the other bad news is that I tried to make a Trim Healthy Mama version but they weren't worth sharing.  Maybe next time.

Hope your Pesach was as awesome as mine!

Bethany

Hello everyone!

We have been getting ready for so many things recently. Passover....Unleavened bread......Emily's graduation.....Joe and Naomi visiting. This year my family and I are going to Tennessee to celebrate the spring feasts. I can't wait! 
So many things to look forward to!

One of the things I did to get ready is make Granola, yum!

Here's the recipe that I use:



GRANOLA

1 stick of butter

1/2 C coconut oil

1/2 C olive oil

1 C honey

12 C rolled oats

1/2 C chia seeds

1/2 C sesame seeds

1 C sunflower seeds

2 C raisins or chopped dates

1 Tbsp cinnamon

In medium pan add: butter, coconut oil and olive oil. Heat on low heat until melted. Add: honey. Stir well, until melted. (Can add 1 tsp vanilla.) In large plastic bowl put: rolled oats. In coffee grinder, grind: flax seeds, chia seeds and sesame seeds. Add to bowl. Add  raisins and cinnamon. Mix wet into dry ingredients, a small amount at a time until very well mixed. Let set for 30 minutes. Preheat oven on 275*. Spray 9X13-inch pans or cookie sheets well. Put granola in pans just until all of bottom of pan is covered (about 1/2 inch). Bake 15-20 minuets, until golden brown. Take out and let cool on racks. Use a spatula to remove. Can store for 3 weeks or more.

Well, I got to go!

Blessings, Lydia

So I was looking for something to have for dinner one night and I found this on www.food.com. It sounded really good so I decided to try it and it was good! Below is me modified version of the recipe, I hope you enjoy! 

Ingredients:

6 cups vegetable broth 
2 Tablespoon tomato paste
4 cups chopped cabbage

1 cup green beans
3 cup chopped kale
1 yellow onion
1 cup carrot
8 garlic cloves (or more!), minced 

2 cups navy beans, cooked
1/2 teaspoon basil 
1 teaspoon oregano
salt and pepper to taste 

1. Spray pot with olive oil and saute kale, onions, carrots and garlic for 5 minutes.

2. Add broth, tomato paste, cabbage, green beans (I used our home-canned ones), navy beans, basil, oregano, salt and pepper.

3. Simmer for about 5-10 minutes until all vegetables are tender then add Zucchini and simmer for another 5 minutes or so.

Serves about 12

We also really liked putting milk or plain yogurt in each bowl when it was ready to serve.
. 

Be happy and Healthy! 
                   Lydia

No one likes to have a cold! The stuffy nose, sore throat and maybe coughing, it can drive you nuts! But what can you do once you have it? Lydia has put together some tips that will help you relieve some of the typical cold symptoms. -Bethany 
Tip #1:
My mom has found a super easy recipe for natural cough syrup. You can take a spoon full of it straight or mix it with some hot tea. I prefer the tea method. When I tried it, it really soothed my throat! Here's the recipe.


Cough Syrup

1/4 cup Olive oil
2 Tablespoons Lemon juice
3/4 cup Honey

Mix all the ingredients together and store in a glass jar.

Tip #2:

If you feel a cold coming on, drink apple cider vinegar diluted in water. It will lessen the effects of the cold. This can also help while you actually have the cold but it isn't pleasant for a sore throat. 

Tip #3:

One of the best ways to relax your throat and stop coughing (When you CAN'T stop coughing) is to suck on really dark chocolate (80% or darker). I know sounds like it would make you cough more but it really helps! 
 
Tip #4:

Have a vaporizer in your room at night. If you like to use essential oils; peppermint, tea tree and eucalyptus are some great oils to put in the vaporizer's cup.

Tip #5

Hot soup also helps. Bethany made up a really good recipe for soup, she is going to post about it soon.

Tip #6

Make sure you're getting enough sleep!

These are some tips that my family finds helpful.

If you have any tips or suggestions please share them!

Blessings,   

Lydia

I had never cooked with rhubarb before... until our friends gave us some from the overflow from their friend's garden. Their friends happened to be our friends too and I want to share this recipe with them :) The friends of the friends I mean.

Since rhubarb has a lemony tartness many people use it in recipes that require large amount of sugar. I am a bit of a health nut and didn't want to make a sugary rhubarb dessert. This is when I turned to my best source for recipe ideas. After googling "Healthy Rhubarb Bread" I decided to get more specific and search the internet for "Healthy Whole Wheat Banana Rhubarb Bread Recipe". I figured that a recipe with bananas in it would help cover the rhubarb's tartness without using as much sugar. If I was making this recipe for myself I would have halved the sugar but I was making it for my family too so I thought it best to leave the recipe alone.

It's a slightly altered recipe from SnoWhite from Finding Joy in My Kitchen

It is a tasty recipe so I thought I'd share it.

Whole Wheat Banana Rhubarb Bread

Ingredients

• 1 C sucanat or sugar
• ½  C honey
• 2/3 C plain yogurt (slightly heaping)
• 3 medium bananas, mashed
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 3 C spelt (or flour of your choice)
• ½  tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• Splash of milk (if needed)
• 1 ½  C chopped rhubarb

Directions

Cream together the sugar with yogurt.  Add in honey, mashed bananas, eggs and vanilla. Mix. 

Pour in flour, salt and baking soda. Stir well. 

If batter is overly thick, add in a splash or two of milk (up to 1/2 C) to thin slightly. The batter will be thick, but shouldn’t be like cement :) 

Stir in chopped rhubarb. 

Pour into 2 lightly greased 8-inch bread pans. 

Bake at 350 for until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (about an hour then check it every 5 minutes). If I remember correctly my loaves took around 70 minutes.

It's a Flip-Flopped Friday because an un-healthy dessert was flipped and made into a  healthy one!

I love peanut butter. Growing up my mom would occasionally make Frozen Peanut Butter Pie. Not healthy.
Basically it was a pie that contained refined sugar, cream cheese (which isn’t too bad… but it’s not from healthy grass fed cows or goats), refined sugar, whipped topping, peanut butter (not the two ingredient kind, if you know what I mean), and refined brown sugar. 

Recently my mom asked me to make this pie to take to my grandparent’s house- actually she asked Naomi to make it and I volunteered to make a healthy version instead. 

So here’s the challenge- How do you make a healthy peanut butter pie? Even if I used our home made peanut butter and replaced the refined sugar with (slightly) less refined sugar it would still be full of refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup (from the whipped topping) and enough calories to feed an army. 

After some brain storming and recipe book searching, I turned to the resource I always turn to when I just can’t do it
on my own…google. 

Googling “healthy peanut butter pie recipe” brought up an abundance of “healthy” peanut butter pie recipes… Not healthy… I don’t know exactly what’s in low-fat peanut butter but I bet it isn’t any healthier than sugar-free whipped topping or fat-free cream cheese. 

My second search (“healthy frozen peanut butter pie whole food”) brought up exactly what I was looking for. Five results down the page was a link to Chocolatecoveredkatie’s blog and a recipe for “No-bake Peanut Butter Pie”.
I skimmed the recipe ingredients and felt confident that this pie would definitely be healthier that the one I ate growing up. Bananas, peanut  butter, vanilla, salt, coconut oil and only a small amount of honey (or stevia)-enough calories to feed half an army but it is all whole foods that weren’t made in a factory! And a crust recipe that didn’t require store bought graham crackers?  *bonus* :) 

So, now you might be wondering, did it taste good? Was it as good as your mom’s pie? 

The answer is more complicated than you may think. I thought it was one of the best desserts I’ve ever tried, but I also prefer a healthy dessert to a non-healthy one. If you usually like whole food desserts better than their highly refined alternatives then you will probably love this recipe. But if you always prefer store bought ice cream to banana ice cream then you will probably find this recipe less than satisfying to your sweet tooth. 

Chocolate Covered Katie has become my all time favorite dessert blog. Check out the Peanut Butter Pie Recipe by clicking this link- Chocolatecoveredkatie

Have fun!

Bethany

p.s. I made this for Shabbat tonight and it was very tasty! Minus the peanuts I threw in for crunch, they weren't such a big hit :p

 

Be sure to rinse the lemons before cutting.

Juice lemons with hand juicer until you have 2 cups. 
 

Pour lemon juice through a strainer to make sure you do not get any pulp or seeds

At this point you might be thinking 2 cups!!!! (finally)

Now start some water boiling.

Pour lemon juice into pitcher.

Pour sugar into pitcher.

Pour in the boiling water (enough to dissolve the sugar).

Stir the sugar until it is all dissolved.

Add ice and water to fill it to one gallon.

Time to taste it.

Tastes great!!!!









We had this batch with Gluten Free Pizza.

Sherman

So, you might be wondering...

What's coming up in January?

Well....

This week:

Emily will be posting a yummy recipe for "Tapioca Pudding". Affectionately called "fish eggs" by some :)

Next week:

Naomi will be posting a recipe and review for homemade lip balm. 

Bethany will be sharing about the beautiful "Shema" Painting she is making for the entry way.

In the second half of January you can look forward to:

Fruits of the Spirit Part 2 by Lydia

Bible Study/Game Night by Emily

Set Apart Reading Part 2 by Bethany

The Importance of Conversation by Naomi

                                                                                    
-Naomi-                                                                                                               
                                                                                                   

Dates and topics are subject to change without notice.  ;)