Apple, rhubarb and yoghurt muffins

Apple. rhubarb and yoghurt muffins

My mum gave me a bunch of fresh rhubarb from her garden on the weekend. Having a few ideas of what to do with it, we boiled it up with some green apples and decided to freeze some batches so that I can use it over the coming weeks as ideas strike. In the meantime, I needed to make some muffins for the kids’ lunch boxes and thought apple and rhubarb sounds like a golden idea!

I used stevia in this recipe as I am really trying to move away from the use of sugar and sugar-like products. I like stevia. It doesn’t give me headaches (like sugar) for one thing but some people find it has an aftertaste. I don’t notice that, and the kids don’t seem to either so it is probably an individual thing. If you don’t use stevia, you can use rice syrup or agave or whatever your choice is. You could add dates if you’d like alternative sweetness that way.

Ingredients:

1 cup wholemeal atta flour (or GF substitute)

3/4 cup quick oats

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

3/4 tsp stevia powder (or 1/2 cup rice syrup or coconut palm sugar)

1 cup stewed green apple and rhubarb pieces

1/2 cup coconut yoghurt

1 tsp vanilla

2 T rice bran or coconut oil

Mix the dry ingredients together before mixing in the wet ingredients. Add to a greased muffin tray and bake at 180deg C for 15 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.

*NB if you feel your mixture is too dry, add 1/4 cup non dairy milk. I was deliberating about whether to do this or not and chose not to but it depends on your mix. It won’t hurt it! 🙂

 

Roasted carrot and lime soup

Roast carrot and lime soup

My 3 year old has been asking for carrot soup. Interesting! Years ago Dave and I used to make a carrot and lime soup. I can’t remember why or where we got that idea but it was golden to dig that recipe out of our memory banks today. It is delicious!

1 kg carrots

1 garlic clove

1 inch ginger

2 limes

oil

3 cups water or veg stock

Pretty simple ingredients!

Peel the carrots, remove the ends, and place them in a baking dish. Lightly oil them, dust them with salt and pepper, and squeeze the juice of 2 limes over them before roasting them in the oven at 200 deg C until browning.
Saute the garlic and ginger , add in the roasted carrots and 3 cups hot water. Simmer for 10 minutes before pouring soup into a blender.

Blend REALLY well for a smooth consistency.

Roast carrot and lime soup

Anzac(ish) biscuits

Anzac-ish biscuits

This is a special Anzac Day edition!

In Australia we celebrate/commemorate Anzac day on 25th April each year. On this day we remember those who have fought for this country and lost their lives. Anzac stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

On this day it is quite a strong tradition here to make “Anzac” biscuits. I think Anzac biscuits, although now are a fairly standard biscuit treat, were originally a treat from war time and on a tight budget. Usually they primarily consist of oats, sugar, honey and butter!  Ok, so in this healthy recipe I have kept the oats at least. Hence, they are called Anzac-ish biscuits!

1/2 cup soaked dates, pulverised in the food processor.

1 1/2 cups oats

2 T nut butter

1 T coconut oil

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp bi carb soda, dissolved in 1 T hot water

Process all ingredients in the food processor and form into balls, then press down flat on a lined baking tray. Bake at 170 deg C for 20 minutes or until brown. Enjoy!

 

Healthy peanut noodle salad

Healthy peanut noodle salad

SUCH a lovely, light healthy lunch. Or a main meal for dinner. Given that I have a love-hate relationship with lunchtimes, this one works well for me. It is quick, easy and healthy. And anything that has a peanuts/satay feel to it is a win for me. If you can’t do peanuts, you could always substitute in another nut butter and I’m sure it would be just as delicious.

There are so many substitute options to this salad it’s ridiculous so make it your own! You could make it with pasta noodles if you prefer or soba noodles. But here is what I did:

Ingredients:

Rice vermicelli noodles, soaked in boiling water and drained

Broccoli

Carrot, finely sliced

Celery, finely sliced

Cucumber, sliced using a peeler to make slithers

Spanish onion, finely sliced

cashews

Handfuls of chopped fresh mint, coriander and spring onions.

Toss the noodles, salad ingredients and herbs together with the following sauce:

*NB. The water content in the sauce is important to keep, as tossing the sauce through the noodles will prevent them from sticking together.

Peanut sauce:

1 spanish (purple/sweet) onion, finely chopped
1 small garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon minced ginger (or ground)
3 T peanut butter (100% peanuts. You could easily just process peanuts until smooth as an alternative)
2 T  soy sauce
2 T rice bran or coconut oil
1 tsp rice syrup
1 tsp sesame oil
juice of 1 lime

Whisk together.

Homemade coconut yoghurt

Oh yes. It is here 🙂 And it is worth the wait.

What you will need:

1/2 cup soy or coconut yoghurt with live cultures – (or you could use dairy free probiotic pills or vegan yoghurt culture)

4 cups coconut cream

1 T rice syrup

1/4 cup tapioca flour/thickening agent

1 Thermometer

First, get your jar/s sterilised and ready and warm (either in boiling water or an oven).

Second, put iced water in your sink, ready.

Whisk the tapioca flour and 1/2 cup coconut cream until smooth. Add 2 1/2 cups coconut cream and whisk.

Heat until at 80-85 degrees Celsius (180 deg F).  Whisk in the remaining coconut cream and transfer the saucepan to the iced water in the sink to bring the temperature down.

When the temp comes down to 46 deg C (115 degF), add in the yoghurt (or culture or probiotic) and rice syrup.

Stir through, then add your yoghurt mix to jars.

The trick now is keeping them warm. There are many ways it seems!

You could heat your oven slighlty (as low as it will go), then turn it off and leave your yoghurt in there overnight (mostly people say a 60W bulb in an oven will be enough!). Make sure you don’t heat your oven so much that you bake your yoghurt! 🙂

You could wrap your jars with towels and place them in an esky with a warm wheat pack.

You could always use a yoghurt maker!

Or I’ve even read of someone who placed their bowl (with a lid) on top of their modem and put a desk lamp pointing down on top. Lol!

I placed my jar of warm yoghurt in an oven mit, wrapped it up with a towel and placed it in a small cooler bag which is heavily insulated.

Either way, it should take at least 8 hours for the cultures to grow.

Then you can pop it in the fridge and add passionfruit/raspberries – whatever you like to it as desired. Or eat it as is! YAY! I love having plain coconut yoghurt in the fridge and then of a morning, can decide which flavour I would like it. We have done vanilla, mixed berries and passionfruit so far. Blend it up with strawberries would be gorgeous too.

Here’s what the berry one looked like:

It’s a pretty involved but very quick process actually and saves a TON of money buying commercial yoghurts. Depending on how much you buy your coconut cream for, what I’ve worked out is that this costs 20-30% of the cost of buying commercial coconut yoghurt.

Amazing. EDIT: Actually, I don’t know where I got that figure from. 250ml of coconut yoghurt costs $10 to buy commercially. Say you spend $6-7 on buying coconut cream, that will actually give you 500ml of yoghurt, maybe more. I should work it out exactly but the bottom line is, it is sooo cheap to do.

Peanut banana ice cream

In two ingredients.

Seriously.

Blend 2 frozen bananas (easiest if frozen without skins) with 2-3 T peanut butter.
Totally divine. I personally love vanilla extract in everything so a teaspoon of that works well too 😉

Our peanut butter has nothing but peanuts in it so how good is that for ice-cream – peanuts and banana!

The kids wanted syrup on top *face palm* so I remembered we have some Carob syrup (which is just carob and water)…and this is the fudgey goodness it turned into:

You could add anything to this:

cacao nibs, peanut bits (like we did), cranberries, pistachios…

anything. And people will think you’re a genius. Lol!

‘Fatoosh’ salad

Fatoosh salad

After school one day my eldest and I were watching “Good chef, bad chef” making a Fatoosh salad which is a Lebanese salad. To my surprise he excitedly said “MUM can we have THAT?”. Surreeee…. so we did 😛 Well, this is my version of it.

1 baby cos, roughly chopped

1 lebanese cucumber, chopped

1/2 red capsicum, chopped

1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved

2 radishes, finely sliced

2 spring onions, diced

1/2 bunch dill, chopped

1/2 bunch mint, chopped

1 T sumac

1 lemon, juiced

Construct the salad ingredients and sprinkle sumac and lemon juice over the top.

In the mean time,

mash together fresh oregano, dried oregano, salt, 1/2 clove garlic, oil and sesame seeds and brush over 2 mountain bread wraps.

Bake at 180 deg c until brown and crispy. Break the crispy flat bread over the salad (or leave off if you are gluten intolerant).

The sesame seeds fall all over the salad when breaking the flat bread. This is such a delicious, zesty salad. I adore sumac as a spice, and I hope you love it too! The sumac is the making of this salad (that, and the divine crunchy tasty crispbread) so make sure you go out and get some sumac before attempting this one 🙂

Sunday funny

 

Here’s a little Sunday funny from the Hopeful Herbivore.

Chinese (lentil) san choy bow

(Lentil) San choy bow

San Choy Bow used to be one of our favourite delights when eating out. But it’s one of those things that slipped off the radar once going plant based.

Alas, I have been mulling over this for some time and here is my creation! I don’t “love” mushrooms sadly. You could make this beautifully with all sorts of interesting mushrooms, I have no doubt. You could also do it with tofu (I don’t “love” tofu either). Wow, I’m sounding particular aren’t I.

Well, not being a huge tofu or mushroom eater, and definitely not a chicken or pork eater…I could give up on san choy bow.

NAhhhh…what is worth eating is worth the challenge. This is what I’ve turned to and I have to say, I’m stoked with the results. You can play around with this alot too of course if you’re preferences are different to mine. But give this a go. It does have mushrooms in it but you can’t tell :).

1 cup red lentils, rinsed

1 small tin water chestnuts, diced finely

1 carrot, diced finely

1 celery stalk, diced finely

1 purple onion, diced finely

1 cup mushrooms, diced finely

1 inch piece ginger, grated/crushed/finely diced

2 cloves garlic crushed/finely diced

1 spring onion stalk, chopped finely

1 1/2 cups vegetable stock

Homemade hoisin sauce

Saute the onion and garlic before adding the rest of the vegetables (except spring onion). Saute for  a few minutes. Add lentils and 1 cup vege stock. (You may need 1 1/2 cups, just keep an eye on it, stir it every now and then and add it if the lentils need more time to cook). Reduce the water down and add in 2 T of the hoisin sauce*. Add in the chopped spring onion 1-2 minutes before serving.

*Don’t use store bought if you can help it. This homemade sauce is MILES better :).

Serve in fresh iceberg lettuce cups and drizzle extra hoisin sauce on top if you require the added flavour. Yum!

Homemade hoisin sauce

No lovely pics with this one, just a functional sauce recipe for the Chinese hoisin sauce for use in Asian cooking. Easy and much nicer to make your own so you know what’s in it! 🙂

4 tablespoons soy sauce (use tamari for gluten free)
2 tablespoons peanut butter (sugar free, all natural)
1 T Agave/rice syrup
2 tsp  rice wine vinegar (something like apple cider vinegar will work)
1 garlic clove,  minced
2 tsp sesame  oil
sprinkling of chilli
black pepper

Whisk together to form a sauce.
(Adapted from chinesefood.com)

Mayonnaise (the plant based way) and a waldorf(ish) salad

Mayonnaise – the plant based way

Unbelievable but true. Here is a delicious vegan mayonnaise. I’ve researched this, I promise. And the best recipe yet goes to Veggieful: very impressive. And here’s my version of their version! It really is STUNNING.  And even if you are not vegan, you will love this healthy tasty mayonnaise. (I promise there is nothing about it that tastes soy or tofu ish!).

300g silken tofu (use organic so it’s non GMO)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tspns rice syrup
1 diced garlic clove
3 tspns dijon mustard
1 Tblspn  oil
1 Tblspn apple cider vinegar

Squeeze of lemon.

Add all ingredients into a blender and blend away. Refrigerate for a couple of hours so that it thickens up a little.

Seriously. This is so yummy I kept eating it off the spoon before it even made it to the fridge!

I actually wasn’t sure what to do with mayonnaise. Hmmm….

So I made a waldorf(ish) salad.

Iceberg lettuce

Green apple, chopped

cucumber, chopped

snow peas, chopped

Avocado slices on top

and….it’s supposed to be walnuts (but I didn’t have any so I used almonds and cashews)

Toss it with the mayonnaise – delicious lunch!

Coconut snow balls

Coconut snow balls

This is a super-dooper easy treat to do with the kids – or, if you are a coconut fan, for you! It is nut free, gluten free, dairy free, actually – almost-everything-free except for coconut. Lovely!

3 cups shredded/desiccated coconut (preservative free is great if manageable)

1 T rice syrup or agave

1/2 cup coconut cream*

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Process the coconut and syrup in a food processor until finely ground. (Apparently if you keep going it will turn into a paste but mine doesn’t seem to!). This may take a few minutes. Add in the coconut cream and vanilla, and spoon out. Roll into balls and roll in desiccated coconut 😉
Easy!

*Coconut cream. I know I always say it but make sure you buy the best. Don’t buy coconut cream that is half full of water, don’t buy coconut milk and don’t buy low fat! You need the thick creaminess of full coconut cream for this to hold together.

This is such a simple sweet treat but without the usual dramas of sugar highs. It is also great for nut-free households.

Indian spiced baked vegetables

Indian spiced baked vegetables

The weather seems to have an Autumn flavour to it (finally!) and the nights are actually closing in darker much earlier. The hankering for baked vegetables seems to go with the weather change in the air…

This is deeply divine. Rich in flavour, colour and goodness. And it is perfectly alter-able (nice word) to suit your ingredients in your fridge and your taste buds. I actually think I could eat this every night and die happy. Yum. Yum. Yum. And it is so little preparation.

Also let me just say: My 5 year old and I were arguing over the cauliflower! No, he’s not normally a crazy veggie eater (although he may be becoming one!) but he LOVED this cauliflower. And he stole the rest of mine so we had to negotiate how I could get some back. lol! Great problem to have 😉

Here is what I did.

1 cup cauliflower florets

2 mushrooms, quartered

2 tomatoes, cut into wedges

1 cup pumpkin pieces

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 beetroot, cut into small wedges

1 purple (sweet) onion, cut into wedges

4-6 garlic cloves, slightly squashed and ends removed

1 cup broccoli (but to add later in the cooking process)

Mix together:

1/4 cup water

3 T oil

juice of 1 lemon

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp turmeric

2 tsp ginger powder

2 tsp sweet paprika

salt and pepper

Toss the vegetables in the spice mix and bake at 200degrees C until roasted (45 minutes or so). Add the broccoli into the mix with 5 minutes to go (MUCH  better to keep the broccoli fresh and bright and green!).

You could also add in any sort of potato, eggplant, zucchini, almonds or beans/chick peas. Yum!

Co-yo coconut yoghurt

I hope you didn’t miss Plant Based Munches over the weekend ;). I’ve realised a recipe every day of the week is…welll….intense! So I’m scaling back a little. I’ve noticed there’s not too many of you on the site on Sundays anyway 🙂 Hopefully you are out enjoying yourselves!

Today is a little add for the most divine, most creamy, most delicious healthy plant based yoghurt EVER. I’m pretty excited, can you tell? (I realise many would not call this healthy given it’s fat content. Fat doesn’t worry me anywhere near as much as other health factors (Good fat that is). All things in balance 😉 )

We have struggled with non-dairy yoghurts and have bought Kingland for a while now, being a world better than Soy Life. But this…well…this just takes yoghurt to a whole new level. If it hadn’t cost me so much I would have sat down and eaten the whole big tub of it! (Our local health food shop is way overpriced – but now that I know about this I will find it cheaper!).

From what I saw, there was a natural yoghurt, passionfruit (YUM), mixed berry or mango. It is natural fruit, no sugar, no artificial colours and no soy either. Just a handy tip for those out there seeking alternatives like me 😉

Gosh now I’m craving it.

Yes well I have since been researching how to make this deliciousness myself! When I sort out homemade coconut yoghurt you will be the first to know!

Shredded rainbow salad

Today Dave said he felt like having something for dinner that is raw and shredded. So we got to thinking about the things we could shred in the food processor and whallaa! It’s amazing how quickly a food processor can create dinner 🙂

1 beetroot, peeled

2 carrots, peeled

1/4 savoy cabbage, outer leaves removed

1 lebanese cucumber

1 apple (cored)

Fresh herbs – coriander, spring onions and mint were mine of choice

Place the beetroot, carrots, cabbage, apple and cucumber through the food processor shredding blade. Easy done!

Finely chop herbs and add on top.

Make a quick dressing of:

2 T apple cider vinegar

1 T plain soy or coconut yoghurt

1 T wholegrain mustard

1 T sumac

salt and pepper

Mix together and toss through the shredded salad.

Lovely, nutritious, fresh and cleansing! Thanks to shutterbean for the recipe.