Chocolate Cake w/Beets: Not Quite Red Velvet, But Delicious!

Posted by Jennifer Cote

A search for a naturally-colored “Red Velvet” cake led to this delicious dessert. Alas, experiments using beets to recreate the beautiful, rich red color of the classic Red Velvet Cake proved futile, but a wonderful “Chocolate” cake was discovered in the process.

For homemakers looking for ways to incorporate more healthy ingredients into the family’s diet, this recipe may help. It has very little actual chocolate in it, and spices can be added to change it up some. But the beets, which are added raw (and processed until finely chopped) add moisture and body. Not to mention, they do give this cake a rich, dark color, and bring a few extra nutrients to the table as well. Serves 8 or so.

Grateful-Table-Chocolate-Cake-w-Beets-Red-Velvet

CAKE INGREDIENTS

  • 1 1/4 c. peeled, chopped red beets, processed fine
  • 1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
  • 2 TBS. cocoa powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 2 large eggs, room temp.
  • 1/2 c. buttermilk, room temp.
  • 3/4 c. sugar
  • 1/3 c. olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp. white distilled vinegar
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

FROSTING INGREDIENTS

  • 3 TBS. flour
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 1 c. milk
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 c. butter

CAKE PREPARATION

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 8″ pans.

2. Process dry ingredients together, or hand mix well, being sure to break up any clumps of cocoa powder: > 1 1/4 c. flour > 1/2 tsp. baking powder > 1/2 tsp. baking soda > 1/2 tsp. salt > 3/4 c. sugar >  2 TBS. cocoa powder

3. Peel beets, cut into small pieces: > 1 1/4 c. peeled, chopped red beets

4. Process beets until finely chopped. Set aside in medium bowl.

5. In a separate bowl (or in a glass measuring cup), mix: > 1/3 c. buttermilk > 1/3 c. olive oil > 2 eggs > 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract > 1/2 tsp. white distilled vinegar

6. Stir dry ingredients into the processed beets. Slowly stir wet ingredients in as well, mixing until smooth.

7. Bake in the oven for 25-35 minutes, until puffed and a toothpick in center comes out clean.

8. Cool, split each cake in half (to make four layers), and frost.

 

FROSTING PREPARATION

1. Make roux using small saucepan on the stove, or use the following microwave method: Choose a larger, microwaveable bowl (quart-size or larger) to mix flour and sugar in, as mixture might bubble up some- this will reduce chances of spills in the microwave. To the large, microwaveable bowl, mix together: > 1 c. sugar > 3 TBS. flour

2. In separate, smaller bowl, microwave 1 minute or so, until hot: > 1 cup milk

3. Add hot milk to flour/sugar mix slowly, to avoid lumps. Microwave 2 minute more, stir. Return to microwave for 30 more seconds, if necessary, until mixture’s bubbly hot. (Watch to make sure it doesn’t bubble over.) Add to hot milk/flour/sugar mix: > 1 tsp. vanilla

4. Cover bowl with plastic; cool completely in refrigerator.

5. To a standing mixer, add: > The sugar/flour/milk mix > 1 c. butter, room temperature

6. Cream until light, on high speed, until very fluffy. Split cakes to make four layers; frost the layers and outside of cake.

Thai Curried Rice Soup

Posted by Jennifer Cote

Thai foods can seem fairly complex, with unique herbs and spices lending a distinct taste. But substituting a few common pantry items for more exotic ingredients still yields a tasty soup. Although not ideal from the purist’s view, fresh or ground ginger works in this particular soup, if the aromatic ginger known as “galangal” is unavailable. Galangal is quite unique from regular ginger and can usually be purchased at international markets; it produces a fiery, “woody”, almost piney flavor.

The crushed leaves of the Kaffir lime also have a distinct taste; substituting zest of lime or lemon can still add a note of refreshing citrus if access to Kaffir leaves is limited. Substituting lemon leaves also works, for a next-best option.

The bright purple Japanese eggplant traditionally found in many Thai dishes is delicious, but retaining the bright purple color is tricky. Restaurants often deep-fry it, as oxidation turns it brown. An alternative to deep-frying is to use the method below, which allows the eggplant to cook with minimal exposure to air. The more common globe eggplant can substitute for the long purple ones, if necessary.

To achieve a beautifully green colored broth (as seen in traditional green curry dishes), fresh spinach, basil, parsley and cilantro can be juiced or blended; it can then be frozen in an ice cube tray, handy to add to many batches of such dishes.

This recipe will serve 6 or so.

 

 

INGREDIENTS

  • 1/2 TBS. curry powder*
  • 2” piece galangal (Asian aromatic ginger, or substitute regular ginger, or ginger powder)*
  • 3 Kaffir leaves, crushed (or substitute zest of 1 lime or lemon)*
  • Boiling water (plus chicken stock, if desired)
  • 1 c. brown rice (or white, if desired)
  • 1/4 c. coconut oil (or substitute peanut, sesame, or other oil)
  • 1 red pepper
  • 1-2 eggplant (Japanese, bright purple, if available)
  • Large handful spinach
  • 2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
  • Optional: fresh basil, cilantro, parsley (and spinach), either chopped or juiced (as mentioned above)
  • Optional: toasted, chopped peanuts or cashews

PREPARATION

1. To make a flavorful broth, simmer the following in soup pot. Add the boiling water slowly, mixing into curry powder to avoid lumps: > 1/2 TBS. curry powder > 2” piece galangal (or ginger), cut in thin strips > 2-3 Kaffir leaves, crumbled (or lemon or lime zest) > about 4 c. boiling water (part chicken stock if desired)

2. In separate pot, cook rice until done, 45 minutes (or 15 minutes for white rice): 1 c. brown rice > 2 c. boiling water

3. Prep the eggplant by cutting lengthwise, so that one side of the piece will have skin on it. The skin side will face down in the pan, to cook. (With rounder eggplants, some middle pieces won’t have any skin on them.) Use: > 1-2 eggplants

4. Preheat large iron skillet until quite hot. Have handy a piece of foil and another heavy pot or pan to set on top of the eggplant. Into hot skillet, add: > 1/4 c. coconut oil (or other) > the eggplant, skin-side down

5. Turn skillet off, letting eggplant remain in pan until tender and cooked through (about 10-20 minutes).

6. In another pan, grill peppers until browned some. Use: > 1 red pepper, cut into strips or chunks

7. Remove Kaffir leaves and the ginger strips from the stock pot, if desired. Bring the stock up to a boil, and add: > Large handful spinach > 2 tsp. salt (or to taste) > Optional greens (basil, cilantro, parsley) > the grilled red pepper > the grilled eggplant, cut into chunks

8. To serve, add the cooked rice to each soup bowl. Ladle the broth and veggies in, and garnish with chopped peanuts or cashews, if desired.

* Green curry paste is available at international markets; a mix of ingredients which typically includes galagal, Kaffir leaves, and cumin. If desired,substitute 1-2 TBS. or so green curry paste for the first 3 ingredients.

Water Kefir: Turning Water to Wine?! Or, Probiotic, At Least

Posted by Jennifer Cote

My sister-in-law’s on the cutting edge. She’s the one who told me about Water Kefir. I was kind of surprised that I didn’t even know that kefir has way (way) more probiotics than bottled supplements, or yogurt.

Grateful-Table-Probiotic-BrewMichelle (daughter-in-law) gave me a few milk “grains” to culture my own milk kefir. I’m not much of a milk drinker, and I don’t like how commercial milk is treated. But, I didn’t want to spend the extra money to get fancy, organic milk either. Besides, it still wouldn’t be raw, and I can be such a purist sometimes. Plus, my husband is still not letting me get a little goat, much less a cow, so… my heart just wasn’t in the whole milk-kefir-brew thing.

Grateful-Table-Directions-Kefir-Water-ProbioticsThen I started hearing about water kefir. (For my full recipe on how to make that, go here: Full Water Kefir Recipe.) Thank you, sis-in-law, for mentioning this to me! She’s one of my more health-conscious relatives, who introduced me to “Diet for a Small Planet” back in the 70’s. She had heard you could culture kefir with coconut water.

Well, what was stopping us?! I didn’t want to just talk about it. Why didn’t we already have some brewing?! What was slowing us down?! With Amazon at my fingertips, it was easy to order a small package of water kefir grains. It came with a nice little instruction sheet that answered most of my questions. Yay. (I took notes, as you can see on the scrap paper I gave to my friend Vanessa.)

Local friends and family don’t need to order their own grains, since the grains multiply. I’ve been able to get the girls at work started on this stuff, and some other folks too. Again, if you want the detailed directions, check out my simplified, easy water kefir recipe here.

But what’s all the excitement about? Kefir cleans the digestive tract, so no toxic contents in food go into your bloodstream. It’s enzyme-rich, full of electrolytes, amino acids and active live cultures, it’s loaded with vitamin B-12, vitamin K and biotin. And, it’s bubbly and rather delicious!

When you start drinking kefir regularly, you’ll probably notice that your digestion and metabolism improve. It might even help those battling leaky gut syndrome and colon cancer, yeast infections and general immune system issues. And, it helps regulate cholesterol and blood sugar levels. SIGN ME UP, right?

Probiotic-WomanBut… where do water kefir grains come from? Wikipedia says they have been found on a type of Mexican cactus; granules of the water kefir could be scraped off and cultured in sugar water. Other stories suggest that the grain was a gift from God. Maybe it’s both!

Heat’s On: PUFAs Under Fire (Or, How to Cook Healthy w/Oils)

Posted by Jennifer Cote

In this post on What’s So Bad About Polyunsaturates, I gave a rundown of why PUFAs are dangerous. They increase inflammation, for one! Plus, they can’t take the heat- it leads to rancidity, which leads to free radicals and other adversities.

Grateful-Table-PUFA-Oils-No-HeattIf you’re looking to decrease your intake of PUFAs, here’s a little rundown of the PUFA content of a few common oils and fats (see a full list here):

  • Grapeseed oil- 71% PUFA
  • Safflower oil- 75% PUFA
  • Sunflower oil- 65% PUFA
  • Corn oil- 59% PUFA
  • Soybean oil- 58% PUFA
  • Walnut oil- 55-63% PUFA
  • Cottonseed oil- 50% PUFA
  • Sesame oil – 41-45% PUFA
  • Canola oil- 30-37% PUFA
  • Peanut oil- 29-32% PUFA
  • Almond oil- 17% PUFA
  • Duck fat- 13% PUFA
  • Lard- 12% PUFA
  • Avocado oil- 10% PUFA
  • Goose fat- 10% PUFA
  • Palm oil- 8% PUFA
  • Olive oil- 8% PUFA
  • Butter- 4% PUFA
  • Cocoa Butter- 3% PUFA
  • Coconut oil- 2-3% PUFA
  • Palm kernel oil- 2% PUFA

What does this mean? For one, cook with oils that have 10% PUFA or less.  Anything that’s high in polyunsaturated fatty acids is prone to oxidize and deteriorate under heat. Ironically, the more saturated fats (coconut oil, palm oil, lard, tallow, poultry fat) hold up very well under fire. You can cook with them without creating toxic byproducts. A far cry than what they were saying in the 70’s…

Canola oil has been touted as being healthy, but it contains alpha-linolenic acid, which should never be heated. When cooking, note that the extraction processes can affect the quality of the oil. Organic, cold-pressed virgin oil is best.

Friends ask me questions. There are concerns. What?! Canola isn’t the best oil?! What oil’s safe to cook with?! For stove-top cooking, you can always use coconut oil or butter (or leftover fats from cooking a free-range chicken or grass-fed beef). For baking, or lower cooking temperatures, you can use almond, macadamia, virgin palm or olive oils. But you could also consider using some as “finishing oils”. This means you cook, sear, saute, grill (whatever) your foods, perhaps in a minimal amount of your preferred oil as needed, then before serving, drizzle a little virgin olive oil on top (or sesame oil, etc.). The flavors can be more pronounced this way, and it’s healthier too.

Some folks say, “but we don’t like the taste of coconut oil”. You might do what I do sometimes- I get an iron pan quite hot, adding the food I want to sear or brown. A good metal pan, once hot, is more “sealed”; in the process of heating, the molecules of the metal move around faster, closing up more “space” than a colder pan. With a cold pan, the metal molecules are moving slow, with more space between, and they kind of “grab”, making meat and veggies stick more. Weird, right? I saw a video of it once… very interesting!

In any case, if the pan’s hot, you can add your food to it, which will cool the pan down a bit. Then you can add olive oil, butter, coconut oil, or other favorites, and you won’t be subjecting it to as much heat. Olive oil can take some heat, and it is much healthier oil choice that other common “polyunsaturated” vegetable oils.

“Smoke point” is a “hot” issue here. Almond oil, hazelnut, macadamia, olive oil, palm oil, peanut, rice bran, sesame oil, and other monounsaturates or saturated fats can typically take the heat, with smoke points above 400 degrees: Avocado oil can withstand even up to 520 degrees- whew! Butter and coconut oil can’t quite take temperatures above 400 without burning/smoking, although if butter is rendered to remove the milk solids (making “ghee”), it can move to a smoke point of 475. Bring on the clarified butter!

Oh, and posted here is a breakdown of the PUFA content of some of my favorite whole foods: Seeds and nuts!

PUFAs: The Facts Mom Never Told You About

Posted by Jennifer Cote

Don’t blame mom. Actually, I probably need to revise that statement, since so many of you are now much younger than me. More aptly, I might say, “don’t blame great grandma”. Since I’m talking about a generation that lived back in the sixties, when TV commercials were loaded with ads for vegetable oils…

In any case, mom, grandma, whoever it might be- she only knew what she heard on the television. She didn’t have the internet to use as her research library. Even now, a lot of my friends don’t know what PUFAs are. Noting the apparent increase in many diseases, a friend remarked, “It must be all the saturated fats in the American diet”. She majored in nutrition and dietetics back in the late seventies. But let’s take a closer look…

PUFAsHow things have changed! In my virtual world online, I come across countless latest findings from grass-roots studies. It’s not info you found in our text books fifty years ago, for sure!

Let’s look at vegetable oils– touted as being “heart-healthy in so many ways”. But chemicals and high heat and intense mechanics have extracted the oils out of stuff like cotton, canola, safflowers, soy and corn- how much oil can these things contain?! And they get added to almost every commercially-prepared food on the planet. Those very processes make the oils highly unstable; they become oxidized and rancid quite quickly. Not that you would notice; so many oils have been refined and “deodorized” enough that you’d never taste anything off. Ew.

Not scared yet? Oxygen and heat turn those PUFA oils into toxic lipid peroxides, carcinogens and mutagens (much more than what’s found in saturated or monounsaturated oils).

That’s why I get sad if a friend says they add flax seed oil to their smoothies. That flax seed oil is not likely to stay fresh. I imagine that if it’s in capsule form, it will stay fresher, as it’s protected from oxygen. It’s probably been cold-pressed too, so that helps. But, I’m giving you flack about flax! Unless you grind it fresh in a little electric coffee/spice grinder, or in a Vitamix or the like, it’s probably rancid.

Besides rancidity, PUFAs have another problem: They are inflammatory, due to their high Omega 6 content. I mentioned something about the Omega 6 to 3 ratio in this post. To sum it up, that ratio is highly unbalanced due to the average modern diet. Food industry advertising doesn’t mention that. But you can decide who you’re going to believe: Profit-seeking companies producing “information” (in the form of commercials), or doctors who aren’t bought off by those companies. There’s also the anecdotal info from individuals, speaking from personal experience. Do word searches and you’ll find countless blogs written by folks who have challenged the conventional wisdom, have applied new food rules, and have seen victory over all kinds of symptoms.

I’ve posted here, on the PUFA content in various oils, and what that can mean for you in the kitchen. (How do you cook and keep it healthy?!) And I’ve posted on whole-food sources of PUFAs here. At least those nuts and seeds are lower in Omega 6s than most vegetable oils. They are our bad guy today, since they have a far greater chance of being fresh.

For now, start checking out labels. Almost every trendy prepared food I find (at Trader Joe’s even), uses canola or other PUFA oils… I guess there’s more profit in using those, and more expense in using olive oil. I know, I know- it may seem like a small deal compared to the giant issues we have to deal with these days. I’ve updated this page in 2022, to make sure links and such still worked, and there certainly are bigger issues on the horizon… In any case, may all your food be blessed by Jesus. That’s really our best hope, haha!

New Recipes, for Jen’s Upcoming eBook

Posted by Jennifer Cote

Grateful-Table-Golden-Pear-Soup

We did a taste test today for a recipe I’ll include in the new soup ebook (due out this fall). Just roasted some yellow peppers, adding to a puree of poached pear and corn. A dash of nutmeg and salt (plus chicken stock, if desired) was all it took to put this over the top. We added creamy goat cheese to ours at the deli, since we always have fresh goat cheese around. Yum!

So I’m back to work on that ebook. It took a lot of research. A lot of pondering. And that was after working up bunches and bunches of recipes, tweaked hundreds of times, for home cooks’ kitchen success.

I personally thought it would be pretty cool to have all my recipes in one spot (like, in an ebook), that I could access on my phone, wherever I might be (grocery shopping, in the deli kitchen, in my home kitchen, or at a friend’s). A few other folks might agree. (At least a few at the deli concurred.)

 But I’ve been held up on the project for a year. Where did a year go?! Well, I had to research my publishing options. To start, I looked into the cost for publishing a hard copy of over two hundred and thirty recipes, including photographs.

Cost prohibitive, that’s what that is!

So I looked into how to format for ebooks. I couldn’t publish that large of an ebook either; there’s a file size limit of 5 MB, and with photos, mine would be bigger than that.

But that helped me develop a plan. Lord willing, I will soon join the ranks of self-published authors putting out their own ebooks; I’ll start with one on soups. I’m excited!

I had some “custom self-publishing” done for my first cookbook (From the Land of Milk and Honey), which went out in hard copy. But that gets expensive. I love it that I can put out an e-cookbook for less of an investment (except of my time). And no trees will be cut down in the process. Welcome to the 21st century, right?!

Feral Cats in a Snowstorm (Or, “How Can Man Be Saved?”)

Posted by Jennifer Cote

Soul Food Sunday

(This is the day I might go off-topic and talk about whatever God’s been putting on my mind. Hope you don’t mind!)

My brother-in-law waCat-Been-Saveds a slave to sin, with a drug addiction that controlled him for years. But he finally gave that up, and found the Lord in his last few years of life. I thank God he became a born-again believer before he died! In those later years, his body had been irreparably damaged by the drug abuse. His spirit had been reborn, but there wasn’t much hope for his body. He went to be with the Lord.

He left behind a wife of five years, twenty years younger than him, that he’d met near the end of his druggy days. Perhaps she was just as reckless and wild in many ways, as he had ever been. They seemed like a good match. That is, until he starting getting a revelation about Jesus.

She had already come from a “religious” family, and appeared to be looking for something as far from that as possible. She and Bryan grew apart. And then he passed.

Now, she’s on her own, society’s rebel, finding alternative lifestyles. She knows what her husband had professed in his dying days, and she’s had an earful from a sister-in-law (me). But she’s yet to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. It will only be by the power of his Spirit that she will ever know that.

Meanwhile, she’s discovered ISKCON (The International Society for Krishna Consciousness). Back when Bryan (her husband) got caught up in that (in the early eighties), it was called Hare Krishna. My husband and I knew it as the thing we wanted to avoid. We may not have been Christians at the time, but we weren’t going to be tambourine-shaking, shaved-head vegetarians wearing purple, pink and turquoise gowns, either. Does that make us sound politically incorrect? Were we mocking another religion? Well, we were just scoffers, if anything, back in those days.

That my husband’s brother fell into that for a time was no surprise to us. It seemed to go with his propensity for weirdness. We might have been the gray sheep of the family, but he was definitely the black one.

Bryan is at peace with the Lord now. But he’s left a widow, whom I’ve have the pleasure of corresponding with through the years. I’m up on her latest (the Hare Krishna thing), yet I don’t know how to respond. Jesus says, “…if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” (John 8:28) I will continue to lift up His name.

I’m reminded of a story. An old man sat at a window, looking out at a snow storm, watching a litter of feral kitties shivering and starving. He had tried to get near them, to take them to shelter and feed them, but they always ran away. He said, “If only I could become a cat for  a bit, I could communicate with them what they need to do, and they would listen.”

His wife responded, “That is exactly what Jesus did for us. We were out shivering in the storm, but we were too afraid of the very thing that could help us (God), so He came down in the form of man, as Jesus, to tell us what we needed to do to be saved.”

That cat story reminds me of another one- the story of the peaceful, beautiful cat in today’s picture. “Samantha”. She had been a stray. She was so beautiful–we always wanted to pet her. But she would never let us near. She came to love us though. We would leave compost buckets (leftover scraps from the deli), in the garage for a day or two, before taking them out to the compost pile. This wild cat would sneak into the garage for her meals, feeding on the compost scraps. She eventually became tame, even having a litter of kittens up on a shelf in our garage later that year.

We adopted all the kitties, and Samantha too. She had come to know and like us, as her friends. All because we had fed her.

Maybe that’s all I need to do with Bryan’s wife.

 

Healthy Chocolate Fix: Easiest, Cheapest Way to Get It

Posted by Jennifer Cote

Grateful-Table-Chocolate-Fix-Easy-SmoothieI’m the mad scientist in the kitchen, and my quest is to explore healthiest foods and find the easiest, tastiest, most economical ways to eat them. So, in this study, I went full circle. I had tried unsweetened cocoa powder in various recipes, but it didn’t seem wise to take the fat out. I’m a stickler for eating whole foods as much as possible (the way God created them). I don’t want to wait around for scientists to explain how they just found one more incredible, brand new nutrient in some whole food, that we could’ve been getting all along if we just ate stuff whole to begin with.

But I rabbit-trailed. I was curious about cacao butter. The name alone sounded so delicious. So I ordered some online for a very reasonable price.

It did not taste like chocolate butter. It was a bit waxy, not exactly melting in my mouth. But I used it up, mixing it in with unsweetened cocoa powder and other goodies. Then it was pretty tasty!

I began to think, there had to be a better way. I needed something that contained the whole cacao bean. I discovered that that thing was “cocoa mass”. It’s basically unsweetened cocoa powder plus cacao butter, before they separate the two. It’s also pretty much what you get with “unsweetened chocolate squares”, but had you noticed how expensive that’s gotten?

So I got some cocoa mass (AKA Raw Cacao Liquor/Paste, but it was pretty pricey too. (What?! $17/lb.?!) Again, I doctored it up, adding coconut oil and palm sugar. Basically, I could create delectable sweets using better quality, healthier ingredients than what’s in your standard chocolate bar.

But then I got a Vitamix, with amazing powers. It will even grind grains into flour! I could give up my dream of getting an attachment for my Kitchen-aid, and just get one machine to do the work of several. And I did want to put it to work. So I figured I would process the raw, whole, organic cacao nibs I buy on Amazon (by the 5-lb. bag, for under $9/lb, including shipping), and see what I could come up with.

I processed the cacao nibs, but, alas, the raw nibs didn’t process completely smooth. I finally had success when I toasted them in the oven first, and I decided that was the perfect way to do ’em anyway. I’d been reading more and more about how cooking can increase the nutritional qualities of many foods (and decrease the quantity of annoying phytates and such). So this was a perfect solution.

To the processed cacao nibs, I added several other superfoods (coconut oil, cinnamon, turmeric, and palm sugar), and created “Chocolate Fix” (recipe here).

And now I can tell you: There is a way to get a healthy, economical “chocolate fix” using top quality ingredients. Perhaps you’ll want to try it yourself!

Chocolate Fix (Easy to add to Smoothies- High-Octane Fuel!)

Posted by Jennifer Cote

Update: I think Michael Pollan has made a great point, about how raw foods don’t always release as many nutrients as properly cooked foods (article here). So I toast my raw cacao nibs first, for 10-15 minutes in a 375 degree oven (and then 10 more minutes with the oven off), until darker-colored. They then process in the Vita-Mix into a creamy, fragrant, chocolatey butter. Perfect!

Here’s a recipe for a quick, healthy, paleo style smoothie. It’s also a recipe for time-saving. By making a big batch of a puree I call “Chocolate Fix”, one just has to add a scoop of that per smoothie, along with other fave ingredients. (Frozen banana chunks, ice cubes, probiotic brews, nuts and yogurt are all possibilities.) It’ll already have antioxidant-rich, nutritious cinnamon, turmeric, and cayenne in it, blended with metabolism-boosting, immune-system-improving coconut oil, lightly sweetened with low-glycemic coconut palm sugar. Adding raw cacao nibs lends the endorphin-stimulating, heart-healthy, blood-oxygenating, detoxifying element of one of our fave foods (chocolate!), pureed into a delectable base for all kinds of smoothies. Wow- don’t you feel healthier just reading about it?!

I will admit that you should have a Vitamixto whip up the “Chocolate Fix”. Check prices. I got mine on sale for $379, regularly $489. My friend has success with her Ninja, which would be the next best thing. The dry blender attachment for the Vitamix works particularly well, to make a smoother mix. If you can find the Vitamix Container with Dry Blade for under $99, you’re getting a good value.

Grateful-Table-Chocolate-Fix-Easy-Smoothie-RecipeINGREDIENTS FOR “CHOCOLATE FIX”

3/4 c. coconut palm sugar

2/3 c. water

1/2 c. coconut oil

2 c. cacao nibs, toasted*

1/2 tsp. (or more) cinnamon

1/2 tsp. (or more) turmeric

1/4 tsp. cayenne

1/4 tsp. sea salt

PREPARATION

1. Bring water and palm sugar to a boil to dissolve the sugar: > 3/4 c. coconut palm sugar > 1/3 c. water

2. To that mixture add: > 1/2 c. coconut oil > 2 c. cacao nibs, toasted (see toasting directions in purple section at top of page)*

3. Add to blender/Vitamix, along with: > 1/2 tsp. cinnamon > 1/2 tsp. turmeric > 1/4 tsp. cayenne > 1/4 tsp. sea salt

4. Add more water if necessary, to allow mix to blend smooth. Store in glass jar in refrigerator, using large spoonfuls in smoothie blends. This also makes an excellent hot chocolate, with hot water added.

* Toast nibs for 10-15 minutes in an iron pan, in a 375 degree oven. Stir, then leave in for 10 more minutes with the oven off, until darker in color.

NOTE: If using a regular blender, cacao nibs may not puree smooth. It might just add a little more “texture” to smoothies!

 

Fourth of July, Paleo-Style (Awesome Deviled Eggs)

Posted by Jennifer Cote

I saw this cute idea on Pinterest- set some hard-boiled eggs in bowls of water colored with food coloring for two hours, then proceed with your fave deviled egg recipe.

Grateful-Table-Deviled-Eggs-Paleo-Style-4th-of-JulyI was game for that! Our friend has been blessing us with extra duck and chicken eggs from her egg-layers, and I’ve been putting ’em to use. (A hard-boiled egg makes a great snack, if you’re into eating Paleo style.)

What better an appetizer today, before the grilled stuff gets done, but some festive deviled eggs? Did I mention they don’t even have mayo in them?! I’ve been trying to avoid the weird GMO oils, sweeteners, and chemicals found in most mayonnaise, so I figured I’d mash the yolks with some avocado. I added a splash of olive oil and a giant pinch of salt, plus… a secret ingredient, which makes the deviled eggs lighter and delicious- homemade chicken stock. The kind that actually gels up ’cause it’s got so many good things in it. (Not the kind out of the box/can, as I don’t think it would hold up as well.)

I heated the stock and added enough to the yolk mixture to make it creamy (a few tablespoons). After I chilled ’em, the stock firmed up some, which means the deviled eggs weren’t sloppy, but were definitely delicious!