Portable Post Run Recovery Snack

Wanted: a healthy snack that can survive an eight mile run while bouncing up and down under the hot sun in a very unrefrigerated pocket.

Having a small snack after a serious run is supposed to do all sorts of helpful things to aid in muscle recovery so that we can feel well and get back out on the trail again sooner.  Problem is, we walk almost a mile to and from the trail.  By the time I get home to prepare a fresh snack, we've missed the half hour window where that post run recovery snack can make the most difference.

We had to find a portable snack that we could eat on our walk home.  It couldn't be too messy, it had to be nutritious.  The obvious choice was to buy a nutrition bar, but we wanted fresh, home made food, not something loaded with preservatives that came out of a box.

So today we auditioned Soft & Chewy Sugar-Free Granola Bars from OhSheGlows.com.

Thanks to the Vitamix this recipe was very easy to put together.  I used the dry container to grind the oat flour and the wet container handily made the paste of dates and water.  The bars turned out great- not too sweet, palatable, and gentle on the stomach.  We put both bars in a little Ziploc in my husband's pocket (yes, Ziploc snack bags are BPA free- I checked!)

The only snafu in our experiment was that the two thin bars I packed came out of our 8 mile run completely fused into one big bar.  Kind of romantic, in a sugar-free, nutrition bar kind of way.  We just broke the two-become-one bar in half and enjoyed!

Try freezing the tasty stuff

When it's time to clean out my produce drawer, there's always a bag of withered ginger, wrinkled thai chiles, and a few blackened curry leaves lurking shamefully at the bottom of the drawer.  Recently I've been experimenting with freezing small to medium batches of ingredients I know I'll be using in upcoming weeks for cooking Indian curries.

I've frozen a lot of things over the years- ice cream, ground espresso, leftover cookies, an overabundance of plums, veggie burgers (store bought and home made), the impossible-to-find curry leaves I used to order from ishopindian.com.  Whenever I freeze food it is either because I bought it already frozen, because I have too much of something and don't want it to go to waste, or because I need I need a way to preserve something precious.

I've long known that freezing curry leaves works surprisingly well.  Even now that I can walk to an Indian grocery, when I buy fresh curry leaves I use half fresh and freeze the rest, unwashed, directly in the plastic bag in which I bought them.  When it's time to use the frozen curry leaves they're so easy to pluck from the stem, rinse under water, and pat dry.  The process of rinsing them easily defrosts them, and the smell of curry leaves fills the kitchen the moment the leaves hit the hot oil.

This week I've frozen ginger root, turmeric root, garlic, and jalapeño.  I had read that frozen ginger could be easily grated using a microplane grater.  Sure enough, when I grated my teaspoon of frozen ginger using my trusty parmesan cheese grater, the ginger fell like powder into a neat little pile on my prep board.  And, as promised, I didn't have to peel it.  Although the process worked well, getting more than a teaspoon or two out of a small piece of ginger is just as time consuming as grating it fresh.  I've frozen some larger pieces to see if, with greater surface area, I can get a better bang for the buck on my time when I grate.  In the meantime, I keep a half cup of fresh ginger paste made in my Vitamix ready to go in the refrigerator.  It also makes great ginger tea!

I've  successfully used small pieces of frozen turmeric root and ginger root in smoothies.  I chop them into one inch pieces and dry them before freezing, so that I can easily add them in the Vitamix.  

This week I also started experimenting with freezing peeled garlic.  I never have any trouble keeping garlic fresh, this is purely a time saver, so as not to have to stop and peel a bunch of garlic while busily prepping the many ingredients used in starting an Indian curry dish.  I was shocked by how easily I could mince frozen garlic straight out of the freezer!  The first curry I made using frozen peeled garlic was received with rave reviews, my husband had no idea I'd done anything differently than usual.  Tomorrow I'm going to try introducing frozen garlic into a pesto sauce.

From nutrition and aesthetic standpoints, fresher is always better.  For those who only use ginger paste or curry leaves once or twice a week, freezing these potent flavor and aromatic powerhouses may equate to fresher food, and will certainly mean less waste.  And if having speedily prepped ginger and garlic means more home made weeknight meals, I say give it a try.  The worst that can happen is you decide you just can't give up fresh from the refrigerator instead of the freezer.

How to get a vegetarian to eat you alive (adventures in home made veggie burgers)

There is something comforting about a sandwich.  Two fresh slices of bread cuddling a nice chunk of protein, maybe some fresh vegetables as well, with a little spread of mustard.  Yum.

Unfortunately for vegetarians the chunk of protein between those two slices of bread is all too often a heavily processed, salty, packaged, veggie burger.  So the idea of home made veggie burgers combined with my love of lentils, made this recipe for Vegan Lentil Burgers from forealslife.com seen quite attractive.

So attractive that I didn't even consider the dangers of making my own veggie burgers.

The recipe for Vegan Lentil Burgers didn't look too daunting.  It required me to cook some lentils, do some grinding in the food processor, shape the resulting dough into patties, and bake for 35 minutes.  I slated the recipe trial for a weeknight dinner and, armed with whole wheat bread I'd baked earlier that day and my favorite mustard, I felt confident about dinner.

However the dinner I embarked on making veggie burgers happened to coincide with one of our evening workouts.  I got a late start making dinner because of the workout, then went through the inevitably slower process of carefully reading and measuring ingredients for a brand new recipe.  By the time I had a dough ready to form into patties, my post-workout, ravenous hubby wanted to know why dinner was taking so long.  The starving glint in his eye threatened that if I didn't hurry he was going to eat me alive...

...or order pizza.

In a happy ending we both survived the late dinner.  My starving hubby thought the lentil burgers tasted fine (though he might have eaten an old shoe at that point), but I was less impressed.  In subsequent experiments I pan fried the veggie burgers in a little oil, once before baking, once after- and on both occasions the pan frying improved the texture so that no one had to be starving to enjoy them.

What I learned from this adventure (aside from not letting my husband get that hungry) was that part of the comfort of a sandwich is in the ease and speed of its preparation.  Sliding a frozen veggie burger out of its plastic wrap into a skillet or onto a cookie sheet, and having dinner ready in twenty minutes, is part of the innate comfort of the sandwich.  A sandwich is all about having your work done well ahead of mealtime- bread baked, condiments prepared (by you or the manufacturer), requiring at most the cooking of the protein and a quick slice of bread and tomato.

As suggested in the recipe, I froze leftovers of the lentil burger dough into patties to make them more convenient for the future.  Cooking these home made prepared veggie burgers still involves the foresight to thaw, the time to fry, and then the half hour to bake the burgers.  But having seen some improvement in texture with frying and decrease in prep time by freezing the patties, I plan to experiment with pre-frying and pre-baking the burgers before freezing so that I can get closer to the fast and easy convenience of the veggie burger as I've come to know and love it.

I'm also interested in changing out the oat flour used this recipe for lentil flour made in the Vitamix.  I think the protein chunk satisfaction would be even more satisfying if there was less grain in the sandwich and more lentil.

The idea to fry before baking the burger comes from Vegan Burgers Every Which Way by Lucas Volger.  Some of his recipes also incorporate chickpea (besan) flour, which was part of my inspiration to try making my own lentil flour.

Veggie Burgers Every Which Way

Assuming I can get dinner on the table before anyone eats me, I'll have some more adventures in making veggie burgers to share soon.

Honey-Roasted Peanut Butter Banana Pie

I'm a devout peanut butter lover, and my husband goes nuts for bananas.  When I came across this recipe from love & olive oil, I knew that, sooner or later, it was our destiny.

Honey-Roasted Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie (No Bake!)

In my version of honey-roasted peanut butter banana pie, I made some changes.  Instead of crushing chocolate wafer cookies to make the crust, I used chocolate granola.  I pulverized the chocolate granola into fine crumbs and adhered them with some melted Earth Balance spread.  I left out the sugar.

For the honey-roasted peanut butter banana cream, I eliminated the sugar called for in the whipping cream, but otherwise followed the recipe as written (choosing to refrigerate, not freeze the pie).

For anyone who doesn't have a Vitamix, look in the bulk section of your local grocery store for a peanut butter grinder dedicated to honey roasted nuts.  There is one at my local Whole Foods.  The rest of the recipe can be made without the Vitamix.  I, personally, used a regular food processor to make crumbs for the crust, and used my Kitchen Aid to whip the cream.

I also skipped the whipped cream garnish on this pie, which cut out half the heavy cream.  We didn't miss it, either- the pie was already treat enough for us as pictured above.  Adding some freshly sliced bananas also makes a yummy and healthy garnish.

Next time I make this treat I'm going to experiment with eliminating the crust, entirely.  Making just the honey-roasted peanut butter banana cream, then putting it in a parfait cup with chocolate granola and sliced banana would make a beautiful (and lower fat) dessert.

Heather Vs. Home Made Nutella, Round 1

First round standings: Heather, 0; Chocolate Hazelnut Spread, 1.

I used to live in Turin, Italy, home of Gianduja chocolate hazelnut spread.  We loved walking to the annual chocolate festival held at Piazza Castello, where we'd cruise the artisan booths not for chocolates, but for the amazing chocolate hazelnut spreads.  There were white chocolate spreads, dark chocolate spreads, milk chocolate spreads.  And they came in every flavor imaginable, including hot pepper!

So these days grabbing a jar of Nutella off the grocery store shelf leaves me a little cold.  I came across this nifty recipe from Vitamix for Chocolate Hazelnut Spread and was so excited!  

I was really surprised by the Vitamix recipe, since it required making a thick syrup from sugar and water on the stovetop, then letting the mixture cool until it became brittle.  I was then supposed to break the caramelized sugar into pieces, grind them in the Vitamix, and add the nuts.

But of course I couldn't execute the recipe as written, I had to try to make it just a little healthier, using wholesome turbinado sugar (Sugar in the Raw) instead of white granulated sugar.  As a result, my cooled caramelized sugar never got any harder than a thickened paste.

A series of misadventures followed, in which my poor Vitamix overheated from the effort of grinding both nuts and sticky sugar.  I took frequent breaks, and eventually made a gritty, but delicious paste.  I soldiered on, adding olive oil and vanilla as per the recipe.  And then I made a huge mistake.

In an effort to cool the mixture and to blend the paste into and even smoother cream, I added a little cold water.

The hazelnut cream immediately curdled.  Water and hot oil began to separate.  The water actually started to boil in my blender!  And the hazelnut chocolate paste grew gummy and tough.

Hours of hard work and four cups of hazelnuts went down the garbage disposal.

But I learned some valuable lessons in the process of my kitchen disaster.  Most important, never add water to nut butters while grinding!  Although I've added water with no problem when blending sesame paste (tahini) in the Vitamix, tahini and hazelnut paste are clearly two different beasts.

Since that epic disaster I've been itching to have another go at the chocolate hazelnut spread.  I have some ideas to even the score, like grinding the hazelnuts into butter before adding the sticky sweetener.  I'm also planning to use brown rice syrup as my alternative sweetener instead of making the caramelized sugar paste.

Who knows, my quest for home made, wholesome sweetener "Nutella" may just end in another disaster.  But there will be a Round 2, Chocolate Hazelnut Spread.  Oh yes, the rematch is coming.