Black-eyed Peas & Sprouts Croquettes

This is another recipe from the veggie table, once again, I didn't have all the ingredients they required in the recipe, so I came up with my own version of it. I accompanied them with a small salad and half of an egg, so my kids would have a meal packed with proteins. The Croquettes in itself are vegan though.

Measure your beans

Bring them to boil until they are soft enough to smash them. They don't have to over cook.

Once they are ready smash them

While your beans are cooking, measure the sprouts

leave them in water to soften up

Blend them. In a bowl, bring together the smashed beans and the blended sprouts.

Mix together and add the oil, soy sauce, thyme, oregano, salt and black pepper, the rice, the chopped garlic and the Parmesan cheese.

It was already fine with the other ingredients, but I thought, after all it is a veggie meal, it should have something green on it! I didn't have any basil at home so I used some spinach instead.

Once everything is well mixed together, make them into croquette form with your hands, cover them in some bread crumbs. I skipped the bread crumbs and simply baked them as muffins. If you do that, make sure to leave them to cool down a bit before you take them out of the muffin tray or it might fall apart when it's too hot.

Ingredients
3/4 cup Black-eyed Peas
1/2 cup Sprouts
1 Teaspoon oil
1 Teaspoon soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon Thyme
1/2 tablespoon Oregano
basil
salt
black pepper
1 cup cooked rice
1 big clove garlic chopped
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
hand full Spinach

Banana Hazelnuts Shake

What can I give my kids to drink, that will satisfy them and be packed with nutritious healthy stuff and be very tasty at the same time. That must be a banana shake! After reading and reading about the properties of nuts and realizing how good they are for us I started to add them to my kids shakes. It adds a very special nutty flavor! you gotta try it!

I take a full hand of nuts, hazelnuts or almonds, this time I used hazelnuts. Grain them in a blender or anything you have at hand.

I used two ripe bananas, add them to the blender where you already have the nuts!

add some milk, I am sorry I always do eye calculation, I was trying to get three glasses, my two kids and me! Blend it together and taste it, it might need some extra sweet. I used honey, just a little bit. And don't forget to put some ice, it does the trick!!

there you go!

my kids liked it!

Penelope "Lanier" Glamorous

My dear friend Lanie became 40 recently! Yeah! and you have got to see this woman, she looks awesome! I was thoughtful about what to give her for her birthday, and I came up with this womanly soap. Yes Lanie, this soap was thought to be for you!
I took some dove and melted it together with some milk and honey soap from a Dominican artisan. Once the mixture looked good to me, or melted enough, sorry but that is how it goes in this business, it is about touching and feeling ... I poured it into another bowl and added some fresh aloe gel made with the aloe leaves from my garden, some coconut oil, lots of vitamin E, and some left over grounded hazelnuts I had from baking the day before, why hazelnuts?, I don't know! it sounded good to me at the moment ... My only thought was "enriching", and hazelnuts enriched anything very well! Once I was done "enriching" my batch of soap, I made balls in different sizes and put them inside muffin papers to dry. Done!

Banana chocolate chips cookies

These are like one of the best cookies I have ever eaten in my life! and the best of all, they don't have any sugar, they are sweetened with bananas, yes, that is right! Delicious ripe bananas.
The recipe comes from an amazing source, one of my favorite food writer, her name is Heidi Swanson from 101 cookbooks, the recipe is actually from a friend of hers!. Her blog has helped me a lot in finding new ways to venture in the world of wholeness, whole grains, natural sweeteners.

And the recipe goes as follows:
3 large, ripe bananas, well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil, barely warm - so it isn't solid (or alternately, olive oil)
2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup almond meal
1/3 cup coconut, finely shredded & unsweetened
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 - 7 ounces chocolate chips or dark chocolate bar chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, racks in the top third.

In a large bowl combine the bananas, vanilla extract, and oil. Set aside. In another bowl whisk together the oats, almond meal, shredded coconut, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until combined. Fold in the chocolate chunks/chips. The dough is a bit looser than a standard cookie dough, don't worry about it. Drop dollops of the dough, each about 2 teaspoons in size, an inch apart, onto a parchment (or Silpat) lined baking sheet. Bake for 12 - 14 minutes.

Makes about 3 dozen bite-sized cookies.

Note: I have always used olive oil. To make the almond meal at home, simply grain some almonds and there you go! I have also substituted the almonds for hazelnuts or walnuts, anything I have had at hand in the moment and they are always delicious!

www.101cookbooks.com

Give me some chocolate now!

My husband loves chocolate pudding, it is his favorite thing! after a good Tiramisu of course.
One day he came to me with the desire to eat chocolate pudding and asked me if I could make him one. I had no package at all, hmmm how to make chocolate pudding without a package????
I remembered my mom always used Corn starch to thicken up anything. So I thought, why not trying out to make a very rich chocolate milk and thick it up. I did, I used milk and real dark chocolate, no sugar at all, I guess you might want to add some to yours, I think it really needed it some; my husband likes it very chocolaty and almost no sugar.
I used 1 liter milk and melted 4 bars of dark chocolate, dissolve some 5-7 spoons of corn starch in a little bit (3/4 cup) cold milk and brought the liter of milk to boil, once it is about to boil I added the cold milk with the corn starch, stirred rapidly so it would not burn at the bottom. If you are not happy with the consistency it has, add more milk or more corn starch, but remember to always dissolve corn starch in cold liquids otherwise it will form balls and you don't want that!
Once I was happy with the consistency I turned the kitchen off and mixed the chocolate with the milk, allowed it to cool down a bit and then into the fridge. You might want to add some sugar though or honey!

Note: I like to play with food, so if you don't like it don't worry, try to fix it, don't give up, the idea is to learn how things are made so you can find how you like them and be able to make them from scratch. Have fun while you are cooking, that is the whole idea

Homemade Peanut Butter

Deliciously self roasted peanut butter, made right in your kitchen! wow, what can be better than that!
After many, many tries to come up with the perfect peanut butter, I think I finally came up with the one "I" like!



1 kilo Peanuts peeled
3/4 cup olive oil
4 spoons honey
1/2 tablespoon sea salt

I roast the peanuts myself. It is very easy. Place the peanuts on an oven tray and bake until golden, the smell will let you know they are ready!. Don't worry if the ones on the back get a bit extra dark, as long as they are not burned is all fine. It actually adds richness to the flavor.
Let them cool down a bit and then grain them. It depends of how you like your peanut butter, I wanted mine to be somewhere in between creamy and chunky, but is very much up to you. I normally grain them in the food processor in small amounts otherwise there would be too many big pieces in it. Once I have grain them all, I placed them back in the food processor and slowly add the oil and the honey, I like to taste in between and see how it goes, you are welcome to add more honey or salt or even oil. But watch out with the amount of oil, it can turn into a peanut sauce instead.

The hardest thing about this peanut butter is making my children eat the bread!

Homemade Almond milk soap "Goodbye Melissa"

Whenever there is an opportunity to make up something special, I like to take advantage of it. In this case, I have wanted very badly to come up with something made out almond milk. One of our staff was leaving, and I thought what a wonderful opportunity to bless her with some quality homemade (re-batched) soap and even better I can enriched it with homemade almond milk! Yes!
For this batch I used, milk and honey soap and honey soap from a Dominican artisan. Went on with the melting process in a double boiler until it became very creamy, transferred it to a bowl and added the almond milk. Mixed well. I didn't have any nice forms to make a wonderful looking like soap, so I used a nice deep tea cup for the one I was giving away as a gift and the rest of the batch I poured into a plastic container and waited until it hardened. It took me some time to take out of the "forms". Eventually I did it!
The picture on the top is the outcome of the soap dried in the plastic container, it seems obvious!. I sliced it in small squares, around 3 cm. They turned out to be great small gifts.

I learned that people love to know themselves to be thought of, plus they enjoyed the small soap!

this one is gone with Melissa

Kids Veggie "meat" balls

Today, I woke up with the idea to google ideas what to cook for my kids. Something different I thought. We are anyways trying very hard to improve our eating habits. I have always heard it is really difficult to skip meat out of your daily meals, but the truth is that with such a variety of recipes available in the web, it has become really easy to try out new things ... we have actually delighted ourselves with the great taste of pure vegetables! I was concern about how to still have enough proteins for my kids. So I looked and looked and ended up finding so much!! guys all you need to do is do some searching, all the info is out there waiting to be found!
I found an eggplant, Parmesan cheese with walnuts recipe, it sounded good to me (www.theveggietable.com). I didn't have all the ingredients, so I came up with my own version of it. It turned out to be delicious! my husband told me to bring it on, on a weekly basis!.

My version is:

I had a big eggplant, but the recipe called for a medium size one, so I cut a piece around 3/4 of its size

On a frying pan, saute 4 big garlic cloves and the eggplant cut in small pieces with some olive oil.
Remove from the stove and add the walnuts. the recipe advised to puree the eggplant and the walnuts, but it didn't work with my blender. Unfortunately, I no longer have a food processor. I smashed the eggplant with a fork and it worked fine for me.
Now add the remaining ingredients and mix together. Form balls the size you like best. I decided to bake them as muffins, and the size was great.
Bake for 20 - 30 minutes, until baked through.

Ingredients:
Eggplant
olive oil
1 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
salt
pepper
5 cloves garlic
1 lemon zest
1 Teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 cup fresh basil
1 cup Parmesan cheese
2 large eggs

ENJOY!