Tag: Refined Sugar Free

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How I Save Money On Grass Fed Meat (Without Coupons!)

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I stumbled upon this money saving tip this past Father’s Day.

I was at my local grocery store early in the morning and on a whim decided to check out the meat section. It was a nice surprise to see that they had started carrying grass fed lamb (it used to be that in my area only Whole Foods carried grass fed lamb).

The grass fed lamb ribs were pretty expensive though, about $15 / lb and I wasn’t quite in the mood to spend that much. So I kept browsing and saw that they also had grass fed ground lamb.

Then I looked at the price – $6.99 / lb. Eh, not cheap but not too terrible either.

Then I saw the 50% off stickers.

Huh?

Grass fed lamb for $3.50 / lb? That is a great deal!

As it turns out, the sell by date was June 17th (which was the same day as Father’s Day this year) and that’s why the ground lamb was 50% off. That was the last day that they could sell the lamb before they took it off the shelves.

One of my family members told me later that grocery stores also do the same thing with dairy products (they discount them on the sell by date).

The sell by date is not the same as the expiration date. There’s more info on this here.

Obviously, if you’re going to buy meat on the sell by date, you do that at your own risk (’cause no one can completely guarantee the safety of raw meat).

Personally though, I looked for packages where the plastic wrap wasn’t puffy and the meat still smelled ok.

I wouldn’t use this meat for anything like a rare burger, and I would make sure to cook it thoroughly.

I ended up buying 4 lbs of grass fed meat for about $14. The ground lamb was packaged in those vacuum packed blocks and looked just as good as the ground beef that was packaged the same way (but was a week or two away from the sell by date).

So I took it all home, cooked it off in a big pot, drained off the excess fat and spooned the cooked lamb into muffin pans and froze it. I then transferred the blocks of ground lamb into ziptop bags.

The little individual portions of frozen lamb are really convenient and make life a lot easier as they defrost quickly and you can add them to anything for a quick dinner.

So far, I’ve tossed these little blocks of ground lamb into pasta sauce and paleo chili, used them to make Cumin Lamb Lettuce Cups, and made them into a soup with leftover greens and vegetables that I had in my fridge.

Altogether I got 24 half cup servings of ground lamb for $14, which works out to $0.58 per serving. This amount of meat will last me about 2 months (I tend not to eat meat every day).

If I were to do this again – (which I definitely will – saving money is pretty awesome!)

– I would go to my local grocery store and make a note of the sell by dates of the meat was I interested in buying. (This is pretty easy to do during my weekly shopping trip.)

– I would either go to the grocery store the night before the sell by date (sometimes grocery stores will put the discount stickers on the meat the night before) or early in the morning the day of (like before 8:30 am).

– I would cook the meat off that day and freeze it.

I hope that this tip helps to save you some money too!

 

 

 

 

Watermelon Agua Fresca – Paleo, Vegan, Refined Sugar Free

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With summer fast approaching, the weather is getting warmer, and Memorial Day weekend is here!

This means that ’tis the season for backyard barbecues and hanging out with friends and family in the sunshine. This calls for drinks.

One of my favorites is my watermelon agua fresca. It’s cool and refreshing, and along with iced apple green tea is a refined sugar free alternative to sweet tea.

I love watermelon. It’s one of my favorite fruits and drinking this is almost like drinking a cross between lemonade/limeaid and watermelon juice.

Watermelon season in the US runs from May to September, so lots of delicious ripe watermelons are available in grocery stores right now, which is super exciting (yay!) and another thing that makes this watermelon agua fresca the perfect drink for summer.

Watermelon Agua Fresca

Makes 2 servings (4 cups total)

Ingredients

4 1/2 cups cubed seedless watermelon (1 – 1 1/2 inch cubes)*

1 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup water

3 tsp lime juice (I used lime juice that froze previously and defrosted)

Notes – * Use the sweetest watermelon you can find, that way you won’t have to use any added sweeteners. If you’re having a party, you can make a big batch of this ahead of time and it will keep great in the fridge overnight.

Instructions

1. Add all the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Refrigerate until well chilled, making sure to give the agua fresca a good stir before serving. Pour over ice if desired (especially if it’s a particularly hot day) and serve.

banana bread muffins

Banana Bread Muffins – Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free, Comfort Baking

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There is something magical about making muffins. You sift together a few ingredients, stir in a few more, and a little while later 12 mini cakes emerge from the oven ready to fill your heart with joy and comfort.

If there is a practice more conducive to self care than baking, I have yet to discover it.

If I’m ever having a bad day, I bake. It takes focus and when you’re measuring and stirring everything together, the things that troubled you before seem far away.

The scent of delicious muffins wafts through the air and makes any house and home seem more warm and friendly. It’s a scent that makes the world a little softer and everything feel a little more possible.

And once you bite into a freshly baked muffin the spell is complete, and life feels ok again.

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I love blueberry muffins, but there’s something about banana bread muffins that seem extra nourishing to your soul.

When I first cut gluten out of my diet, I really missed banana bread. I missed it’s buttery sweetness, and cozy banana richness.

It took me a couple of tries to get this recipe right, but these muffins taste just like the banana bread that I used to love eating. They also have a touch of cinnamon and vanilla to give them an extra bit of warmth to their flavor.

I like to use the ripest bananas that I can find (overripe bananas work the best as they are sweeter) and baking these muffins is a great way to cut down on food waste and have breakfast ready to go for the next few days (even if you eat 3 – 4 muffins still warm from the oven like I normally do).

I like to make these muffins a day ahead and leave them out on a plate on the counter covered by a paper towel. They dry out a little overnight, and the texture gets even better the next day.

 

Banana Bread Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

 

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 4 – 4 1/2 bananas)

 

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup melted coconut oil

2 eggs

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

 

2 cups oat flour

level 3/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

 

Notes –

* I grind oats into oat flour using a blender. Don’t grind the oats in a food processor because the flour won’t be fine enough.

Any extra oat flour I don’t use in the recipe goes into an airtight container and I use it for another recipe.

If you’re making this recipe for someone who has celiac disease, please use certified gluten free oats, as the oats from the bulk bins can sometimes be processed on the same equipment as wheat.

 

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

Grease and flour muffin pan with melted coconut oil and oat flour.

2. In a large bowl, sift together the oat flour, baking soda, and ground cinnamon and set aside.

3. In a separate bowl stir together the mashed bananas, apple cider vinegar, melted coconut oil, eggs, maple syrup, and vanilla extract until well combined.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry and stir until well combined. Divide the batter evenly between the 12 muffin cups and bake at 350 F for 33 minutes (until golden). Turn the oven down to 300 F and bake for another 10 minutes until the cake tester comes out clean.

Let the muffins cool in the pan. To pop them out of the muffin tin, run a small knife around the edge of each muffin (a small butter knife works great for this) and they should come right out.

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I wish you many happy breakfasts (and memories) with these wonderful muffins.

 

 

 

 

What To Do With Leftover Garlic

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(fresh garlic + raw honey)

Finding giant bags of organic peeled garlic at the grocery store (or at Costco) usually seems like a huge win. It’s not very expensive (yay!) and will save you tons of time peeling garlic when you’re cooking.

Cut to a week later and you realize that even though you’ve been eating more garlic than normal (because you don’t have to peel it, throwing extra garlic into dishes is super easy) you’ve barely made a dent in your giant bag of garlic.

Peeled garlic also doesn’t have as long of a shelf life as unpeeled garlic either, so now  you’re thinking that it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to eat all of it before it goes bad.

But don’t worry! Here are two ways of storing extra garlic cloves so that you can use them up when you’re ready to.

1. Freeze The Extra Garlic Gloves

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This is super simple to do and you can use up all your garlic cloves in your own time.

Instructions

1. Pour the extra garlic cloves that you want to freeze into a bowl and set aside. Add a folded paper towel or two to the garlic cloves in the original package that they came in that you want to keep fresh in your fridge (the paper towel will absorb any excess moisture and the garlic will keep fresher for longer). Replace the paper towel every couple of days.

2. Give the excess garlic cloves a good rinse. Transfer them into ziploc freezer bags and squeeze out as much air as possible, and freeze them flat.

3. When you’re ready to use them, take out as many cloves as you need and run them under warm water for a few seconds to defrost. Chop and use as usual.

They will have a softer texture than fresh garlic cloves, and the flavor might be slightly milder, but you can always add another clove or two to your dish to balance that out.

2. Make Fermented Garlic Honey

I love watching the It’s Alive series on the Bon Appétit YouTube channel. It is hilarious. The editing and the host are fun and you learn a lot about fermentation. Here’s the episode about fermenting garlic in honey.

 

I’ve made garlic honey a few times now. I’ve made a few other fermented things before (red cabbage kimchi kraut and lacto-fermented garlic cloves) but the fermented garlic honey is by far the easiest thing to make if you’re looking to start preserving food using fermentation.

Garlic honey is delicious drizzled onto gluten-free bread, or homemade tortilla chips. I like to eat a few cloves of this when I have a cold. I’m not sure if it does anything to fight off a cold, but it’s a nice treat to have nonetheless.

I’m not a expert in this, so please watch the video above for more info, especially about adding the splash of apple cider and keeping the pH below 4.6 to be on the safe side.

Instructions

1. Rinse off your garlic cloves with filtered water (chlorine can prevent or slow fermentation). If you use straight tap water, that’s ok too. Just rinse them off with filtered water. Drain off as much water as possible and place them onto plates lined with paper towels to dry.

The next day replace the paper towels with dry ones, and leave the garlic cloves to dry another day until they are completely dry to the touch.

2. Pick out the cloves the look a little rough and trim off any blemishes or dark spots on the cloves. Put the cloves onto a cutting board and bash them with a knife or cut them in half. Add all the garlic into a clean dry wide mouth mason jar and cover them in raw honey (leaving about 2-3 inches of headroom in the jar).

I didn’t leave enough headroom in my jar, and the honey has leaked a little out of the top of the jar while it’s been fermenting (not a big deal, you can just wash it off).  Give everything a good stir so that the garlic and honey are well combined.

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3. Put the lid on the mason jar and don’t screw the jar completely tight, leave it a little loose so that any gases produced during the fermentation can escape. Set the jar aside in an area without any direct sunlight where it wont be disturbed. I set my jar on a small plate so that it will catch any honey that might leak out from the top of the jar during fermentation, which makes it easy to rinse the honey off of the plate and the outside of the jar every few days.

Every day for the first few days, screw the lid on tightly and turn the jar upside down so that the honey can cover all the garlic cloves. Turn the jar right side up, loosen the lid, and place it back in it’s spot again.

After the first week, you can just do this every few days or so. After a month, you can just leave it alone with the lid a little loose and it should look after itself. Check the pH periodically to make sure that it stays below 4.6.

I’ve never had a jar of garlic honey go bad on me yet, but if you have any mold growing in the jar or if anything looks funny, when in doubt, throw it out.

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This is what the garlic will look like after 6 months. The flavor of the garlic mellows out over time, and the cloves become sweet and chewy. The longer the garlic sits in the honey, the mellower the garlic flavor and the chewier they get. If you have a friend who loves garlic, a jar of this garlic honey makes a great gift.

 

Nian Gao (Chinese New Year Cake with Red Bean Paste) – Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free

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Nian Gao is a very traditional dish for Lunar New Year.

The word for “sticky” in Mandarin is a homonym for the Mandarin word for “year” so it’s considered good luck to eat nian gao, or “year cake” at Lunar New Year.

This recipe tastes identical to the version that my mom made when I was growing up, but is dairy and refined sugar free.

If you’ve never had nian gao before, think of it as basically a big baked mochi that’s slightly crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle with little pockets of sweet red bean filling.

Doesn’t that sound amazing?

This recipe is very simple to make. It’s basically pour everything into a bowl, stir and bake for a little more than an hour.

When I made a test batch I thought that it would be enough for 4-6 servings, but it’s so good that it was polished off very quickly. So, really, it will probably serve more like 2-3 people, so make extra if your family members are big eaters like mine are.

Nian Gao Recipe (Year Cake)

Adapted from this recipe

Makes 4-6 servings

Ingredients

1/4 level tsp + 1/8 level tsp baking soda

8 oz of sweet rice flour (I used the Koda Farms Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour)

1 egg + 1/2 an additional beaten egg (about 3 tbsp)*

5 tbsp melted coconut oil**

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 cup water

Red Bean Paste Filling

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 1/2 cups drained red beans ***

*You can replace the 1/2 egg with 1/2 tbsp ground flax seed and 3 tbsp hot water. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes before using.

**There is the tiniest hint of coconut flavor from the coconut oil, but most people probably won’t notice. If you can’t stand coconut, you can used refined coconut oil instead. I like the Trader Joe’s one because it’s filtered to remove the coconut flavor instead of being bleached.

*** This recipe uses a lot of the red beans from the red bean soup, so if you’re planning on serving red bean soup for Lunar New Year, I would recommend making an extra batch of red bean soup just to use for the red bean filling in this Nian Gao recipe. You probably have some soup left over which you can send home with guests so it will all be eaten and people will go home happy.

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350.

Grease your baking dish with either coconut oil, or a neutral flavored oil, and flour it with a few tbsp of sweet rice flour and set it to the side.

2. Stir together the 1/4 cup of maple syrup with the red beans. Use the back of a spoon to smush about 1/3 of the red beans against the side of the bowl. This took me about 20-30 seconds. You want some texture in the red bean paste when it’s baked, and some bits that are a little smooth.

3. In medium sized bowl, stir together the baking soda, sweet rice flour, melted coconut oil, egg (and the flax egg), 1/2 cup of maple syrup, and water. Stir until smooth.

4. I used a 8.5 x 11 inch oval casserole dish, but you can bake it in whatever size dish you have, just as long as the batter is an inch thick in the baking dish.

The nian gao batter plus the red bean filling is 4 1/3 cups in volume. If you want to see if your baking dish will work for this recipe, pour 4 1/3 cups of water into the baking dish and see if the layer of water is 1 inch deep. If it is, then that baking dish should work for this recipe.

Scoop 1 1/2 cups of the nian gao batter into the baking dish so that the batter covers the entire bottom of the dish. Spoon over the red bean filling into puddles all over the batter, this doesn’t need to be perfectly even, in fact it’s better if it isn’t as the nian gao will hold together better if there isn’t a smooth layer of red bean filling separating the top and bottom of the batter.

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Spoon over the rest of the remaining batter and use the back of your spoon to slightly swirl the batter and red bean filling.

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5. Bake at 350 for 1 hr and 15 minutes until golden brown on top and a toothpick comes out clean. It will be slightly crispy on top.

Allow the nian gao to cool to room temperature before cutting and serving.

If you don’t want to bother with the red bean filling, you can make the cake without it. I’ve only made it with the red bean filling, but if you make the nian gao without it, it will take less time to bake.

I would bake it at 350 and start checking to see if it’s done after 30 minutes. Other nian gao recipes that I’ve seen online without red bean filling seem to take about 45-60 minutes in the oven.

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Happy Lunar New Year!

 

 

The Very Best Gluten Free Pancakes – Oat Flour, Vegan and Egg Free Friendly, Dairy Free

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(These are the vegan pancakes, made with maple syrup)

When I first started on this gluten-free, food sensitivity journey, I found out that I couldn’t tolerate many of the ingredients in store bought gluten-free flour mixes.

And I missed pancakes.

pancake perfected
I missed eating them with maple syrup, and fresh peaches in the summer time. I missed eating them them with strawberries and blueberries. Pancakes are a very nostalgic and American food, and it really felt like I was missing out by not being able to eat them.

It took me a year and a half to get this pancake recipe perfect, but I’m honestly so glad that I kept at it until I figured it out. These pancakes are wonderful! They are slightly crispy on the outside, and pillowy soft on the inside. They are not gummy at all.

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They are made from simple ingredients, and cost very little to make.

The first time I finally figured out this recipe, I flipped over the first pancake and my heart skipped a beat when I saw how beautiful and golden that little pancake was. I had finally gotten it right, and it was so exciting!

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(The non-gummy cross section of the pancakes).

They are perfectly sweet, so you don’t absolutely need to drizzle over more maple syrup when you serve them, but you can of course! Especially if you like your pancakes extra sweet.

They are pretty hearty little pancakes and very filling. Each batch serves about 2 people. I have been known to make extras, and then eat them out of the fridge cold when I was too tired to think of something else to eat.

They work great for this! Especially after a long day if you’re being tempted by the siren call of those cookies you stashed away in the cupboard from your pre-gluten free days. You can eat these instead, and not feel ill afterwards.

You can pack a few of them in a little Tupperware container with some berries (fresh or frozen is fine) for breakfast. They heat up well in a toaster oven as well.

 

The Very Best Gluten-Free Oat flour Pancakes

Makes 10 pancakes (about 2 servings)

Ingredients

200 gm oat flour – or about 2 1/4 cup + 3.5 tbsp by volume *

scant ½ tsp of baking soda

tiny pinch of salt

 

1/4 cup of maple syrup

1/4 cup tbsp of melted coconut oil

2 eggs **

½ cup of water

1.5 tbsp of apple cider vinegar

 

Instructions

1. Sift together the oat flour, baking soda and salt.

2. In a separate bowl stir together the water, maple syrup, vinegar, eggs and the melted coconut oil.

3. Pour the wet mix into the dry, and stir this altogether until pretty smooth. Set this mixture to the side, and set a timer for 15 minutes.

During this time, make your stainless steel pan non-stick.

4. When there’s about 3 minutes left on the timer, start to heat up your pan.

If medium heat on your burner is a 5, set the heat to 4. You want to be just a little lower than medium heat.

5. When the timer goes off, give your batter a good stir (no gluten means not having to worry about over-mixing this batter).

Spoon 2 tbsp of pancake batter onto your pan for each pancake, and use the back of your spoon to gently spread the batter into a little circle, just to smooth out the shape of your pancake.

Cook the pancakes 1 min to 1.5 minutes on the first side until you see small bubbles forming on the surface of the pancake, and the sides have firmed up.

Flip the pancakes over and cook another 20-30 seconds until they are a pale golden brown, then stack the pancakes on a plate to the side. I usually cook 2 pancakes at a time so that I have room to flip them (I cook them in a 10 inch skillet). If the pancakes start to brown too fast, turn your heat down a little and cook them for a shorter amount of time on the first side.

The batter should be a little on the thick side so that the pancakes cook up nice and fluffy.

If you like thinner pancakes, you can add about 1-2 tbsp of water to the mix to thin it out. If the batter is too thin, stir in a little oat flour to thicken the batter up again.

If you use 2 tbsp of batter per pancake, then they end up about 4 inches in diameter. You can make the pancakes larger by using more batter, and adjusting the cooking time.

 

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(Adult Pancake – 2 tbsp batter, and Baby Pancake – 1 tbsp batter).

* Notes – Ideally you would weigh out the oat flour, but measuring it by cups and tablespoons will work in a pinch.

Costco sells organic maple syrup for $12 – $13 / liter. The oats I grind myself in a blender (wearing earplugs, because it can be noisy). Don’t use a food processor to grind the oats, because it won’t be able to grind the flour fine enough. I put any extra oat flour into an airtight container and use it for other recipes.

** Substitutions – you can sub white vinegar for apple cider vinegar, and any neutral flavored oil for the coconut oil. You can also swap out a few tablespoons of maple syrup for water if you want them less sweet. The maple syrup just gives the pancakes a mild sweetness and a nice brown pancake color.

***Egg-free and Vegan versions – This pancake recipe is the gift that keeps on giving. It continues to amaze me every time I eat them, and make them with or without eggs.

To make them egg-free, just swap out the eggs for an extra 1/4 cup of water per egg. The texture isn’t quite as fluffy as when you use the egg, but definitely still respectable, and much better than when I tried to use a banana to bind the pancakes instead.

I’ve also made a version where I swapped out the maple syrup for 4 tbsp of honey, and used an extra 1/2 cup of water instead of the 2 eggs. They were very good as well, and the honey also acts a little as a binder.

If you make the pancakes egg free, use 1 tbsp of batter for each pancake instead. Making the pancakes smaller makes it easier for them to cook through, and you’ll get a better texture than if you made them larger. I was very surprised at how beautiful the honey egg free pancakes were that I made today. They were a beautiful light golden brown when I flipped them over, and I was happily shocked that it worked as well as it did.

 

I served the honey ones today with a little jam that I made from just cooking down some frozen peaches, blackberries, blueberries and a dash of maple syrup over medium heat until thickened. It was so good!

 

two pancakes perfected

It’s amazing how much joy a pancake recipe can bring. However you make these pancakes, I hope that you enjoy them and get to share them with someone that you love.

Let me know how the recipe works out for you.

Happy Eating!