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Chicken salad is something I make often. It’s easy, tasty and the ingredients are readily available. I like that it has fruit and little bits of sweetness even though it’s a savory dish. I usually eat a scoop of this all by itself but also serve it along with veggies or on top a bed of greens. It’s a go-to lunch item but I’ve also made it for company to glowing reviews. If you fancy, you can swap out the cranberries for other dried fruit (raisins are a favorite), add some walnuts or pumpkin seeds, use celery instead of carrots.
Apple Cranberry Chicken Salad
Serves 4
1 pound cooked chicken
1 medium to large apple (I like Fuji but any variety will do)
1 medium carrot
1/2 cup dried cranberries
2 – 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon grainy mustard
1 – 2 teaspoons TJ’s 21 Seasoning Salute (or other herb mix)
1 teaspoon dried dill
Salt and pepper
- Cut up the cooked chicken, apple and carrot into pieces that are roughly the same size and place in the food processor and pulse. Process until everything looks crumbly.
- Add the remaining ingredients and process just until everything is well mixed.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Serve with a salad or raw veggies.
I’ve mentioned before how much I like using bananas in making espresso banana muffins or the cocoa banana loaf, but this one just might be my new favorite simply because it doesn’t use any sugar. All the sweetness comes from the bananas and dates. There isn’t any stevia, either. So if you hesitate to use stevia because you don’t love how it tastes, this could be the banana bread for you. I use two bananas that are pureed to help sweeten the batter and a third that’s chopped up and mixed in because I like to taste the chunky pieces. The number of bananas or dates can be adjusted to suit your sweet tooth.
Date Sweetened Banana Bread
Makes 1 loaf (7¾ × 4½ × 3)
3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup medjool dates, pitted (5 – 6 dates)
5 eggs
1/2 cup butter or coconut oil, melted
1 /2 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
1/2 cup of pecans or walnuts, chopped
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan.
- To a blender add two peeled bananas, pitted dates, eggs, and melted butter or coconut oil. Puree until smooth.
- Sift all dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.
- Add wet ingredients to the dry and stir until there are no lumps.
- Chop the remaining banana and add to batter along with the nuts.
- Pour into loaf pan bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
- Let cool completely on rack before serving.
If making these into muffins, bake for 22 to 25 minutes. For even more sweetness and some melted gooeyness, mix in some dark chocolate (72%) chunks. It’s all good.
Happy new year! I know it’s the third week of January and my greeting is a little late but I have to be honest – the holidays wiped me out. I must have fallen into the old age time warp or something because time is speeding up on me. Once Halloween hit, Christmas was right behind and before I knew it, it was time to take down the tree. It doesn’t help that the Santa Ana winds are blowing right now either. One day it’s a frigid 55 degrees outside (don’t laugh) and then all of a sudden it feels like summer. I’m quite happy with the warmer temperatures, though, it suits me just fine. All the rain we’ve had this year has kept us indoors a lot and made us a little cuckoo.
So now that I’m back to do a bit of blogging, I want to first say thank you. THANK YOU! 2010 was a good year for my little webdom. I managed to post some stuff people actually wanted to read and got many more visitors than I could have imagined. Thanks for checking out “What I Crave” and giving me your feedback – keep ’em comin’!
My first recipe for the year is a simple one and requires no cooking. I’m sure there are a ton of people out there who’ve not yet fallen off the new year’s resolution health wagon, so this is one food that can keep them on for a little while longer. I’m a big fan of chia and I created this for my husband who is a cereal junky. He was getting a little burned out on the Nutty Granola, so this was a good change of pace. There are chia-based cereals that you can find in the health food stores but they’re kind of pricey and contain more sugar than I’d want to eat. You can add cold milk and enjoy it right away, like hubby does, with some crunch. Or, if you prefer, and I do, you can add warm milk, let it sit for a few minutes and have something more akin to a pudding.
Chia Cereal
Makes 5 1/2 cups
2 cups chia seeds
1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
1 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
1/2 cup dried cherries, chopped
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins
pinch of salt
Toss everything together and store in an air tight container.
The cereal will keep for at least a couple of weeks. You can add any type of nuts or fruit and flavor it with any spices you crave. I kept it simple and didn’t add any sweetener because the dried fruit was plenty sweet for us but a tablespoon of coconut sugar with some cinnamon would probably taste really yummy. Try it out and let me know how you like it.
Over the weekend, my sister, brother-in-law and their two kids came up to stay. We wanted to have our cousin Elsie, resident family photographer, photograph the kids so that we could surprise my parents for Christmas (shhh..). I see my sister fairly often and when we get together, it’s a zoo. I always imagine that the mornings will be leisurely, where my sister and I lounge around with our coffee cups and chit chat about this and that. In reality, the kids go nuts and run around in circles until someone barfs or drops from dizziness and we get to clean up the mess. But it is fun. And we do get to talk a bit over coffee.
Knowing it would be a little chaotic to whip up a big breakfast the next day, I made a cream cheese coffee cake the night before. I served it at room temperature the next day and it was good but it would be great warmed up.
Cream Cheese Coffee Cake
Makes one 8-inch round cake
Filling
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 egg
1 teaspoon maple syrup
1/8 teaspoon stevia
Cake
6 eggs
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup yogurt
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon stevia
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon coconut flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup pecans, chopped
1 tablespoon coconut sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease one 8-inch round cake pan.
- Beat together all ingredients for cream cheese filling. Set aside.
- Combine wet ingredients for cake then add the dry ingredients through the salt. Mix well.
- Toss pecans, cinnamon and coconut sugar together in a separate bowl.
- Pour cake batter into pan and drop bits of the pecan mixture throughout batter.
- Top with cream cheese filling and use a knife or tooth pick to swirl it around.
- Bake for 25 minutes and let cool slightly before slicing.
I made a cake the other day with the ripening pears on my counter to serve as a quick snack. It was pretty good but the whole time I was eating it, I thought it needed more pear and less cake. Pears are plentiful this time of year and whether they are fresh and crunchy or ripe and juicy, they are full of flavor and taste great cooked. So I decided to change the fruit-to-cake ratio and turn the recipe into one for a cobbler. Mmm! The result was lots of chunky, baked fruit with the cinnamony pears and the tart blackberries, and just enough cakey topping to complete the ensemble. I served this dessert after dinner with my in-laws and parents and no one could tell that it did not contain any wheat. My dad, who isn’t big on sweets had a second helping.
Pear and Blackberry Cobbler
Makes one 9 x 13 dish
Filling
6 pears (8 – 9 cups)
10 ounce bag of frozen blackberries (1.5 cups)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon stevia
2 tablespoons arrowroot
1/3 cup water
Topping
2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
1/4 cup coconut sugar
1/4 teaspoon stevia
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter, cold
2 eggs
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish.
- Wash, peel and core pears, then cut into 1/2 inch cubes.
- Combine pears, blackberries and cinnamon in the baking dish.
- Mix honey, stevia, arrowroot, and water together and pour over the fruit.
- In food processor, pulse almond flour, coconut sugar, stevia and salt just until combined.
- Cube the cold butter and add to processor and pulse to a coarse meal.
- Add the eggs and pulse again just until combined.
- Spoon the batter over the fruit and smooth slightly.
- Cover the dish with foil and bake for 30 to 40 minutes until pears and blackberries are bubbly.
- Remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes until the top is golden brown.
- Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.
The fruit takes center stage in this dessert so not much sweetening is needed. Either the coconut sugar or the stevia can be omitted if you have really ripe pears. Other fruit can be used also, like apples or peaches, or any combination of berries. There’s just something so homey and comforting, though, about baked pears that I’ll keep making it this way for a while.
For me, Thanksgiving is THE feasting holiday, more so than Christmas, because all the attention is focused on the food. I am really looking forward to having some turkey come Thursday. Lots and lots of turkey. And let’s not forget all the side dishes, most of which are pretty carby. So my compromise is this herb dinner roll. I used my coconut flax bread recipe as the base and added some fresh herbs. These rolls are made in muffin tins and smell like Thanksgiving when they are baking. I will also be making croutons for stuffing using these rolls. The original bread recipe is so versatile – throw in some cheese, add bacon bits, mix in fruit and nuts – it will all come out tasty.
Herb Dinner Rolls
Makes 8 rolls
1/2 cup coconut flour, sifted
1/2 cup ground flax seed
1 /2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 teaspoon fresh sage, finely chopped
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, finely chopped
5 eggs
1/2 cup butter or coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together.
- Combine all the wet ingredients.
- Add the dry ingredients and herbs to the wet and beat well.
- Pour into muffin tins and bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
- Serve warm with lots of butter.
The rolls freeze really well so you can make a big batch, store them in the freezer and take out as many as you need for a meal. Reheat in the oven at 200 degrees F. I don’t use the microwave but if you do, you can defrost them in there, too.
There’s something about blueberry muffins that feels so homey and comforting. When I was eating wheat, I had a favorite blueberry streusel muffin recipe that I made frequently. It was simple to put together and the crunchy, sweet topping made eating the muffin feel very indulgent. Now I’ve adapted the recipe using coconut flour and I got to keep the topping with some changes.
Blueberry Crumb Muffins
Makes 9 muffins
6 eggs
6 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons maple syrup (or honey)
1/4 teaspoon stevia
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup coconut flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup frozen blueberries
Crumb Topping
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup coconut sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons butter, softened
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease or line muffin cups.
- Prepare crumb topping by placing walnuts, coconut sugar and cinnamon in food processor and pulse until walnuts are chopped.
- Add butter and pulse until mixture is roughly combined. Set aside.
- Mix wet ingredients together. Mix dry ingredients separately.
- Combine wet and dry and mix thoroughly then fold in blueberries.
- Fill muffin cups and top with crumb topping.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.