Easy Dairy-Free Ice Cream

Ice cream is a big comfort food for me, and unfortunately with baby's reflux I can't have it. My husband who loves me found a recipe for dairy free ice cream on the internet. Then I improved it. I have to say this stuff is pretty darn good. It doesn't give you the "full" feeling that a bowl of ice cream and chocolate give you, but it sure tastes like ice cream, which is good enough for me. It is also significantly better for you than regular ice cream, but you do have to plan for it at least a few hours ahead of time.

Dairy-Free Banana Ice Cream
Ingredients:
1 banana
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
cashews (optional)
caramel (optional)

1. Select a ripe, but firm banana. Peel it and break into thirds. 2. Freeze chunks until solid (at least three hours). 3. Puree bananas and vanilla until creamy. You need a pretty good blender for this. Usually I blend them into a chunky mush and then I have to scrape the size of the blender to get the much all back and the bottom and then I blend again until I get the desired product. 4. Top with caramel and cashew if desired. (Honestly you can top it with anything that you please, but those are just some of the few things that don't bother and infant with reflux, so I take it.) Makes one serving

I'm taking a break for the next few weeks. We've got family stuff going on, Christmas, birthdays and I studying to become a Certified Pediatric Nurse. But rest assured that I have many more things to say.

Food Storage Friday: Raspberry and Spinach Pasta Salad

I created this recipe with my extremely limiting dietary restrictions in mind using things I happened to have in my fridge and pantry. So if you aren't married to a vegetarian and you aren't breast-feeding an infant with moderately severe reflux, feel free to add some grilled chicken strips, mandarin oranges, feta cheese and/or chopped kiwi fruits. I actually can have kiwi, I'm just out.  You can serve it as a side (I had mine with grilled fish) or eat it as a light meal. Whatever floats your boat.

Raspberry and Spinach Pasta Salad
Food Storage Ingredients:
3 Tablespoons toasted almonds
2 cups cooked pasta
2 teaspoons of olive oil
1/4 cup raspberry vinaigrette dressing (I used Private Selections from Smith's because it doesn't use soybean oil.)

Fresh Ingredients:
handful of fresh raspberries, torn in half
1 Bartlett pear, chopped
1 large handful of baby spinach

1. Coat cooked pasta with olive oil. 2. Toss all ingredients together.

I love this because a) I'm allowed to eat it, b) it's healthy, c) it's delicious and satisfying and d) it's super quick and easy to make. We have a winner! If I were in a situation where I was using only my food storage I could use reconstituted dried raspberries and canned pears and probably just forgo the spinach. The fresh is better, but I could make do without.

Food Storage Friday: Vegan Pumpkin Waffles

 Lately I haven't been doing much with my food storage because there is so much of it that I can't eat due to the fact it makes my breast-feeding baby scream and vomit. Because of my dietary restrictions, I'm also getting very tired of the things that I can eat. I've gotten to the point where I usually would rather go hungry than have oatmeal for breakfast again. Enter friend Julie, who has also done a stint as a vegetarian. She gave me a recipe for these great pumpkin waffles that are satisfying and were a hit with all family members. Now that's saying something when you're cooking for my crew.  Thanks so much Julie! Of course I made a few changes so I was incorporating food storage and making them a little healthier. They're great with maple syrup or Apple Cider Sauce. Makes 12 waffles.

Vegan Pumpkin Waffles 
Food Storage Ingredients:
1/2 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 15 oz can pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
1/3 cup canola oil
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

Fresh Ingredients:
2 cups rice, soy or almond milk*
1 Tablespoon ground flax seed*
1 Tablespoon wheat germ*

1. Thoroughly mix wet ingredients and sugar in a bowl. 2. In a separate (large) bowl, mix dry ingredients. 3. Combine wet and dry ingredients. 4. Spray waffle iron with non-stick cooking spray and prepare according to waffle iron instructions.

Notes: Currently I can't have soy or dairy, so I made these with almond milk. I imagine that someday when my diet is less restricted and I'm in a pinch, I'll use the powdered milk from my food storage. From what I have read whole flax seed has a shelf life of three to five years, while ground flax seed can go rancid in as little as a week. I generally grind a cup at a time and store it in the fridge. Ground flax seed is great vegan source of Omega 3, 6, & 9 fatty acids as well as fiber. Wheat germ is a good source of fiber and B vitamins. Whenever I make waffles I add both wheat germ and ground flax seed for their health benefits and the fact that you can't taste them. Both these ingredients are optional, but I figure if I can get my family to willingly eat better, why not?

Food Storage Friday: Plum Sauce

 Several weeks ago we found ourselves with a surplus of plums from our Bountiful Basket. I remember when I was growing up my mom and grandmothers canned plums and I thought that they were gross. But I decided that there had to be something delicious that I could do with these. The answer: Asian Plum Sauce.  Now this recipe itself calls for both fresh and food storage ingredients, but the real beauty of it is that once prepared it makes preparing quick and healthy meals  with food storage a snap. It goes well over stir-fried vegetables and rice.

Asian Plum Sauce
Food Storage Ingredients:
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon canola oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon cornstarch + 1 Tablespoon water


Fresh Ingredients:
3 lbs plums, pitted and chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 oz ginger
1 small onion, minced
2 cups water
1/4 cup lemon juice

1. Puree fresh ingredients. 2. Combine all ingredients except cornstarch and Tablespoon of water. 3. Bring to a boil and simmer 30 minutes. 4. Mix water and cornstarch, add to sauce and simmer until thickened. 5 Can in a water bath according to canner directions. (The recipe I found said 10 minutes, I felt more comfortable with 20.) Makes 4 pint jars

I served this over brown rice I had prepared in my crockpot and four cups of chopped and stir-fried mixed veggies. My husband added some stir-fried tofu to his, but you could just as easily stir-fry some chicken or pork and add that.

Food Storage Friday: Stir-fried Green Beans with Rice

Sometime in the last month we got green beans in our Bountiful Basket. My husband has a tendency to turn his nose up at green beans and my kids won't try them either. One day I mentioned that we should eat them and my husband said "I can't imagine that there is anything you can do to green beans to make them delicious." I took this as a challenge. Heather has a tendency to be fairly irritated when someone tells her that she can't do something. When I was in college my department counselor laughed at me for a good 15 minutes when I told her I was thinking about graduating with University Honors. I did it and in less than four years too, so there.  So I turned to How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food  for ideas. I found a recipe for Twice-Fried Green Beans, that sounded like it had potential, except it involved deep-frying, which I am pretty aversive to. So I took all of the ingredients, stir-fried them and served them over rice. My husband loved it and admitted that green beans can taste good as long as they don't come from a can. He liked it so much that I caught him multiple times sticking his finger in the empty pan to scrape out the remains of the sauce. Mission accomplished.

Stir-fried Green Beans with Rice
Food Storage Ingredients:
rice, prepared per package directions
4 Tablespoons of oil
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
dash of salt

Fresh Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs fresh green beans
1 Tablespoon chopped garlic
1/2 cup scallions, chopped*

1. Stir-fry green beans in oil for ten minutes on medium heat. 2. Add cashews and cook until they just start to brown. 3. Add garlic, scallions, and red pepper flakes. Cook until onions turn clear. 4.  Add soy sauce and salt. 5. Sprinkle sugar evenly over vegetables. Saute until evenly coated with sauce. (It will be thick and sticky.) Serve over rice.

*The original recipe called for scallions, but I used the small red onions that I had just harvested from my garden with very satisfactory results.

Food Storage Friday: Breakfast Cookies

Using your food storage at dinner time is great and all, but if you were to be living off your food storage, I certainly hope that you would be eating more than once a day. You need to plan for breakfast and lunch as well. So let's do a few breakfast recipes, shall we?
Today's recipe comes from my very own mom. The smell of these cookies brings back memories. My mom used to make a big batch of these, freeze them and send a few with me on field trips. And they're certainly healthier than many other quick breakfast options. (The original recipe calls for 1 cup of Crisco, and although the characters in The Help raved about it's greatness, I find the stuff revolting. They still taste great with mashed beans and applesauce instead.)

Breakfast Cookies

Food Storage Ingredients

1 cup extra crunchy peanut butter
3/4 cup cooked and mashed white beans

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup wheat flour

1/2 cup oat flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 3/4 cups oats

1 cup raisins

1/3 cup dried grated carrot
3/4 cup dried apple pieces (broken up)

1/4 cup flaked coconut
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup apple sauce

(1/4 cup apple juice)
(1/4 cup water)

Fresh ingredients

(grated carrot and apple if you don't have the dried variety)
 2 eggs

1.If using dried carrots and apples put in a bowl with apple juice and water. Heat oven 350 degrees. 2. Mix peanut butter, bean puree, apple sauce, vanilla, and sugars with eggs. 3 Mix powder ingredients and gradually add to wet. 4. Mix in apples, carrots, raisins and coconut. 5. Bake 9-11 minutes or until brown around the edges.

They taste even better than they look.

 A few notes:  When I made this I added an extra 1/4 cup of apple juice to the apples and carrots because I put my raisins in the mix and they were really hard. The original recipe calls for only all-purpose white flour. I used the different kinds of flour to make it healthier, but if you don't want to bother, that's cool. The original also called for fresh carrots and apples. I used dried because I had them and it meant that I didn't have to grate anything and I hate using my grater. For the mashed beans I previously took a can of cooked white beans, rinsed them, mashed them, measured them into 1/4 cup blocks, and froze them in some Tupperware. It made things a lot quicker. I was inspired by this recipe.  I promise that you can't taste the beans. But if you would rather use Crisco instead of mashed beans, go ahead ;).