I am honestly trying to get back into the “posting” mode.

So here it is…………….

Chocolate Cream Pie

This is for the chocolate lover. It is very rich and creamy and delicious!

Made with (soaked) nuts, oats and coconut crust.

I also made another one with added peppermint extract. Divine!

My family loves this pie. This is one dessert I can’t eat because you have to cook the milk. So those of you who cannot tolerate that may want to try making this with almond milk or coconut milk instead. I am sure either of those would turn out great.

Carob Mousse

½ cup carob chips or naturally sweetened chocolate chips

1 tsp unflavored gelatin

½ cup raw milk, almond milk or coconut milk

¼ cup honey

2 tsp vanilla

Dash of sea salt

1 cup cold whipping cream (raw is best, not ultra-pasteurized)

Sprinkle gelatin over milk in small saucepan, let stand several minutes to soften. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture just begins to boil. Remove from heat, immediately stir in carob until melted. Stir in honey and vanilla and salt, blend until smooth. Pour into a medium bowl, cool to room temperature. Beat whipping cream until stiff; gently fold into carob mixture until combined. Refrigerate for several hours.

Nut Crust

½ cup regular oats

½ cup soaked and dried almonds or unsweetened coconut

½ cup soaked and dried pecans or unsweetened coconut

2 tbsp butter, melted

2 tbsp raw honey

Place oats into a blender or food processor and pulse until fine, pour into a bowl.  Grind almonds until slightly chunky, add to oats.  Now grind the pecans, be careful not to over process or you will get pecan butter.  Add this to the oats.

On a low temperature in a small sauce pan melt the butter and honey together.  Pour over oat mixture, stir until well blended.  Press into an 8 inch pie dish, or muffin cups.

Bake in pre-heated 350°F oven for 5-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool completely before adding filling.

Chilean Empanadas

This is total comfort food, made healthy. I made both the meat version and the cheese version.  The crust is a homemade sourdough whole wheat recipe. Grass fed beef, “real” eggs etc. The cheese that I used in these is not raw, it just gets cooked anyway. However, I have made them with raw jalapeno monterey jack cheese before, those are good!

This is part of Tuesday Twister at www.gnowfglins.com

We enjoyed this tuna salad, salad this past week, among many other things. However this is the only picture I have.

This recipe is simple, nutritious, and very easy to make.

I am happy to announce that those greens on that plate all came from my garden! They were and are delicious!! There is lettuce, spinach and kale. Along side that is homemade whole grain sourdough bread.

If you want to learn how to make the best whole grain sourdough bread go to www.gnowfglins.com and check out the eCourse offered there.

Tuna Salad

2-5oz cans tuna fish or salmon

¼ cup sweet onion, chopped

Juice from 1 lemon

¼ cup cilantro, chopped

2 tbsp plain yogurt or 1 tbsp plain yogurt and 1 tbsp sour cream

Greens of choice (lettuce, spinach, kale etc.)

            Drain tuna or salmon and place into a bowl. Add onion, lemon juice, cilantro and yogurt then mix well. Serve over salad greens with additional lemon as needed 

 Enjoy!

 http://gnowfglins.com/2010/04/20/tuesday-twister-blog-carnival-2010-04-20/

Here is a small recap of my past week for Tuesday Twister:

Lentil Soup with Soaked Lentils and Brown Rice using the directions from Wardeh’s eCourse.

Sourdough Waffles from Erin (guest post on www.gnowfglins.com)

Thanks Erin for a great and EASY recipe!

That’s all the pictures I have. I also made Erin’s recipe for Sourdough English Muffins–the first time I made them they turned out PERFECT. This time I didn’t quite have enough flour in them and they were much harder to cook through without burning the outsides. My bad!

I made homemade hamburgers with homemade buns, I made Wardeh’s Basic Soaked Muffins, Quinoa, and Rye Bread.

I will be posting the Rye Bread recipe soon, just have to make it more NT friendly. I tried it without doing that first, to see if I would like it, and if it would turn out okay. It is the ONLY rye bread I have made at home that has turned out really good, and I actually WANT to make it again.

That’s been my week, what about you?

http://gnowfglins.com/2010/04/06/tuesday-twister-blog-carnival-2010-04-06

Well, well, well it has been a VERY long time since I have posted anything on here. Not only am I in school at The Institute of Integrative Nutrition but I have also been taking the eCourse from www.gnowfglins.com which just happens to be the sponsor of this Tuesday Twister. (You have to try Wardeh’s muffin and biscuit recipes, they are to die for!)

I made these cakes over spring break and wanted to share them with all of you.

The cake recipe is okay, could use some improvement. I will give you the recipe and you can do what you want with it. I preferred the honey version, myself.

The FROSTING is the most amazing frosting I have made in a long time! Just make sure you follow the directions exactly.

Do you notice the lighter bunny? It looks a little lumpy in the frosting. Well… that is because I didn’t do things in the right order. I added the flour mixture with the butter and rapadura. You are supposed to beat the butter and rapadura and THEN add the flour mixture and lightly mix after that.

The frosting tasted good, it didn’t feel lumpy when eating it, but it wasnt light and fluffy like it should have been.

I used pasta noodles for the whiskers, black licorice (Panda brand) for the mouth, naturally sweetened dark chocolate, natural food colored candies for the eyes, and half of a health food store gummy bear for the nose, and a cottonball for the tail (non-edible).

Bake the cake in a round pan. Let it cool completely. Cut the cake in half then stand up the pieces (with the rounded side out) next to each other. Use frosting to “glue” the pieces to a plate and to each other. Then frost the whole thing.  Couldn’t be simpler!

Here are the recipes! Enjoy!

Sprouted Wheat Vanilla Cake

1¼ cups fresh-ground sprouted wheat flour

2/3 cup raw honey or sucanat

¼ cup plain yogurt

¼ cup raw milk

¼ cup coconut oil, melted

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp aluminum-free baking powder

¼ tsp sea salt

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

            Pre-heat oven to 350°F. In a mixing bowl blend the honey or sucanat, yogurt, milk, oil, vanilla and eggs. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute.

            Pour into a greased and floured square or round baking dish. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

            Place on a cooling rack and allow the cake to cool for about 20-30 minutes before removing from the pan. Serve with The Best Frosting Ever.

The Best Frosting Ever

6 tbsp fresh-ground sprouted wheat flour

1 cup raw milk

Mix ingredients together in a sauce pan. Whisk and heat until thick, then set aside to cool completely. I usually cook this for about 2-4 minutes.

Add 1 tbsp vanilla, stir until combined.

In a mixing bowl add cream:

1 cup sucanat or rapdura ground in a blender until fine

1 cup slightly softened butter

Beat until light and fluffy.

Add the completely cooled flour mixture to the butter mixture and whip until like whipped cream—not too long about 45 seconds. Store leftovers in the refrigerator. Makes about 2 cups frosting.

**Make sure you cream the butter and sugar before adding the flour mixture, or it will separate!!!!!!!

 To make CHOCOLATE frosting add 4 tbsp cocoa powder—VERY GOOD

Copyright © 2010

By Tiffany Perez

Tiffany’s Table L.L.C.

All Rights Reserved.

http://gnowfglins.com/2010/02/16/tuesday-twister-blog-carnival-2010-02-16/

This week……………………..

I made Roast Chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes.

Chili

Lemon Bars

Salad with Raw apple cider vinegar dressing

Quinoa

Kefir (ginger flavor)

Homemade pizza with sourdough pizza crust

And french fries for my kids

AND, I am so excited. I have found a food co-op to get good produce. I will get a box of produce each week, for an amazing price. During the winter months not all of it will be organic, but during the summer and fall months it will. It’s the best I can find for now, and I’m happy about it.

This is what I got: 1 pineapple, 1 head cabbage, 1 head lettuce, 1 bunch celery, 2 zucchinni’s, 1 red bell pepper, 3 avocado’s, 3 apples, 3 oranges, 1 pear, cauliflower, broccolli, garlic and kiwi.

http://gnowfglins.com/2010/02/09/tuesday-twister-blog-carnival-2010-02-09

I made a few batches of chocolate candies for a cooking class that I was doing and thought you might like the recipes for Valentines day.

The following picture goes with the first recipe:

The texture of the chocolate on these is similar to tootsie rolls. Not the melt in you mouth kind of chocolate, but more chewy.

This recipe is cool because you can handle and shape the chocolate around anything. We did soaked and dehydrated almonds, cashews, pecans and walnuts. We also covered peanut butter balls, dried cherries and raisins.

Chocolate Covered Nuts

½ cup desired whole nuts (preferably soaked and dehydrated)

1 cup naturally sweetened chocolate chips

1 tbsp raw cream

            Place the chocolate chips and raw cream in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water. Whisk until melted then remove from the heat.

            Using your fingers take a small piece of the chocolate mixture and form it around each nut. Place in a paper candy cup or on a plate. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to serve. Makes about 30 Chocolate Covered Nuts.

The next recipe is the dipping chocolate, that IS melt in your mouth good. A little more messy to work with, but well worth it.

Dipping Chocolate

1 cup naturally sweetened chocolate chips

1 tbsp coconut oil

            Melt the chocolate chips and coconut oil in a glass bowl over a simmering pot of water. Do not let the bowl touch the water. Remove from heat when almost completely melted. Continue to stir until melted. Dip nuts, dried fruits, peanut butter mixture etc. in chocolate. Place on parchment paper and freeze or refrigerate until set and ready to serve. Makes about 60 marble size candies.

Peanut Butter Mixture

4 tbsp natural peanut butter

2 tbsp raw honey

            Mix together, shape into balls then freeze for 10 minutes. Dip in chocolate and freeze or refrigerate until ready to serve.

You can increase the coconut oil in the previous recipe if you want it to be even more “melt in your mouth good.”

Make some of these for your sweet heart!

Copyright © 2010

By Tiffany Perez

Tiffany’s Table L.L.C.

All Rights Reserved.

http://gnowfglins.com/2010/02/02/tuesday-twister-blog-carnival-2010-02-02

I really love the flavor of spumoni ice cream, something I haven’t eaten in a very long time. So I decided to try my hand at making spumoni cookies.

Chocolate, almond and cherry flavor.

I started out by chopping some almonds that were soaked and dehydrated according to Nourishing Traditions, AND some dried cherries.

I then made one basic cookie dough recipe and divided that into 3 equal parts.

1-for chocolate flavor

2-almond flavor

3-cherry flavor

I then scopped out a little of each dough onto a baking sheet and placed the 3 mounds next to each other, then baked them.

These cookies were certainly edible, but not pronounced in flavor at all.

No spumoni feeling going on at all.

One thing that I think would have helped, at least with the cherry flavor, would have been to puree the cherries with water and then mix that into the cookie dough. The chopped dried cherries tasted too similar to raisins. Some cherry extract would have helped also I suppose.

As for the rest of the week………………

more homemade spinach tortillas—I’m going to try making a big batch of tortilla’s with beans, rice and cheese and freezing them for quick meals or snacks. I will post about that soon.

Lots of quinoa and brown rice, some beef and chicken mixed in to that.

AND more water kefir. I made some grape flavored water kefir this week with some homemade grape juice that I made last year. It sortof tastes like what I remember grape cough medicine tasting like, not that great, but again, edible.

Next I will be trying ginger water kefir. Can’t wait.

http://gnowfglins.com/2010/01/26/tuesday-twister-blog-carnival-2010-01-26

I’ve been making and eating a lot of quinoa lately. YUMMY!

For breakfast I heat some quinoa with butter, sprinkle some sea salt and cayenne pepper on it and call it good. It’s a quick, warming breakfast.

Last night I made split pea soup that I added quinoa to, again very good. Sorry, no pictures, I’m not sure split pea soup makes a pretty picture anyway.

I made chicken soup with quinoa in it.

A couple of nights ago I made Teriyaki Chicken with quinoa, delicious!

You really need to try this recipe, it’s a favorite of ours.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Tiffany’s Teriyaki Sauce

¾ cup Tamari sauce

1 cup raw honey

3 tbsp raw, apple cider vinegar

2 tsp olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp fresh-grated ginger

2 tbsp cornstarch

            Pour all ingredients into a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and simmer 2 minutes. Serve over chicken and steamed brown rice.

Copyright © 2010

By Tiffany Perez

Tiffany’s Table L.L.C.

All Rights Reserved.

Learn how to eat real food, simply made and can fit any lifestyle!

Check it out!

(http://gnowfglins.com/2010/01/25/giveaway-ecourse-membership/)

Thanks Wardeh, it’s amazing!

http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2010/01/pennywise-platter-thursday-12110.html

Enjoy!

Potato Kale Curry Bisque

2 tbsp butter

2 tsp curry powder

1 medium sweet onion, chopped

¼ tsp fresh-ground black pepper

3 cups chicken broth

2 medium red potatoes

5 large leaves kale, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 tsp sea salt

1½ cups raw milk

Heat butter in a large saucepan. Add the chopped onion, curry powder, pepper, kale and celery. Stir and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add the broth, potato and salt. Simmer for 20 minutes for until the potato is tender.

Puree the soup with a stick blender or do it in batches in a blender. Add the raw milk and serve. Makes 6 servings.

Copyright © 2010

By Tiffany Perez

Tiffany’s Table L.L.C.

All Rights Reserved.