Banana Ice Cream

For those of you who are my facebook friend, here is the recipe for the picture of the ice cream I posted yesterday:

 

http://www.eatingrules.com/2013/10/banana-soft-serve/

 

Banana Soft Serve

Author: Amelia Winslow

Recipe Type: Dessert

Cuisine: American

 

Ingredients

• 4 frozen bananas, broken into chunks (peel and break before freezing!)
• ½ cup plain organic Greek yogurt
• 2 tablespoons chopped organic dark chocolate (optional, this is the “half” ingredient!)

 

Instructions

1. Place the frozen banana chunks in a food processor fitted with the S-blade attachment.
2. Press the Pulse button until the large pieces have broken into smaller chunks, then press On and let the food processor go for about 1 minute.
3. Scrape down the sides, then add the Greek yogurt and blend another 1-2 minutes or until mixture is completely smooth and appears somewhat whipped.
4. Add chocolate chunks, if using.
5. Serve immediately, or remove mixture to a bowl and freeze 1-2 hours or until consistency is more like ice cream. Enjoy!

 

Oh my goodness.  Delicious and easy.  And lets be honest, I've been dying to polish off the carton of ice cream in my freezer since October Unprocessed started.  I put 4 bananas in the freezer last weekend (because that's what the recipe calls for) but a friend of mine had tried the recipe last weekend and said that it didn't freeze very well.  So I decided to only use one banana and cut the recipe down so that there wasn't anything left over. 

 

 

I paired this with a piece of peanut butter toast and it was the perfect dinner for a night alone at home.  Yummmmmmm.

 

I paired it with a new favorite drink thanks to the Renaissance Festival.  They called it a snakebite.  It's 1/4 mead and the rest cider.  I'm enjoying one as I type this too. :)

 

Weekend Prepping

Oh man.  It has been a loooong time since I've prepped my meals for the week.  Don't get me wrong, I fill out a meal plan every week (I'm not an animal after all) and I grocery shop for the ingredients, but I rarely prep the meals at the beginning of the week.  This week Sunday was pretty empty so I figured I'd give it a try.

 

 

I started the day by making egg muffins.

 

I put torn up pieces of bred in the bottom of the muffin pan, then chopped red peppers, then poured egg mixed with milk over top.  I topped it off with cheese and bakes at 350 for 25 minutes.

 

They were pretty good, but next time I will probably smoosh the bread into the pan a little bit.  The pieces kind of floated around in the muffin a lot once the egg was poured in.  I was hoping they'd be a nice base on the bottom.  Oh well, still good and worked out really well this morning for breakfast on the go.

Next up was stuffed peppers and tomatoes.  I mixed together a recipe I had tried before with one from pinterest and ended up doing this:

Empty out two tomatoes and two peppers.
Cook 1 lb ground turkey.
Mix with oregano, garlic powder, and the inside of the tomatoes.
Spoon back into the peppers and tomatoes.
Top with parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
Cover and bake at 350 for 20 min.

 

 

 

 

I labeled everything that was done and went into the fridge so my husband would know when he could eat it and when I would get mad at him for eating it.... the stuffed peppers and tomatoes were just because and can be eaten anytime this week.  I have one of each packed for my lunch tomorrow.

 

 

Next was sesame chicken.  I've blogged this recipe before and it was delicious.

http://www.food.com/recipe/sesame-chicken-44321

 

Since I've never used the cornstarch before, its always been kind of thin and not exactly Chinese food like.  This time I used arrow root instead of cornstarch.

 

 

 

OMG look at this!  It turned out amazing.  I can't believe how much thicker it was then the last time I made it.  AWESOME.  I had some reheated with brown rice for dinner tonight.  Yumm. 

 

 

I needed roasted red peppers for this next recipe so I decided to try making my own.  All I had to do was spread out the peppers on a pan and broil them until they were charred. Then cover them and let them steam for 15 minutes or so before peeling. I think I probably should have charred them for a little bit longer because the skin was a little hard to peel... but they turned out pretty good. 

 

I used the red peppers to make this:

http://www.food.com/recipe/sesame-chicken-44321

This isn't on the docket until later this week, I'll be sure to post and let you know how it is.  But the chicken is stuffed and sitting in the fridge waiting to be cooked.

 

Sooooooo all of this to say that it was AMAZING to come home today and take my dogs for a long walk because I had basically nothing to do to get ready for dinner.  After our walk, I cooked some brown rice and heated up the sesame chicken.  I may have used a little too much red pepper bc it was a little spicy for my taste, but I'm sure Tom will love it tomorrow night (he's at work tonight).

Here's the rest of the week:
Tuesday: Tom-sesame chicken, Jessi- sandwich (staying at work late)
Wednesday: Dinner at a friends house
Thursday: Crock pot buffalo chicken (did not prep this ahead of time because, well its a crock pot meal, there isn't much to prep)
Friday: Greek stuffed chicken

Will keep you posted but I'm really excited about dinners being ready to cook without making a mess of taking the 30-60 minutes to get it ready every day. 

 

Cookies... finally!

Anyone who's been reading the blog for a while knows that I have been searching for a healthy cookie recipe.  I have gotten close but never quite found something that tastes enough like a Nestle tollhouse chocolate chip cookie (I blame the whole wheat pastry flour...).

 

Anyway, Tom had posted this recipe on my facebook page so I decided to try it:

http://hasfit.com/healthy-recipe/desserts/healthy-chocolate-chip-cookies/

 

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flours, coconut sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon) and mix well.
In a separate bowl, combine all wet ingredients (egg whites, honey, coconut oil, and almond milk) until evenly combined. Once the wet ingredients are well mixed, add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient bowl until all a cookie dough batter is formed. Once well mixed; fold in the chocolate chips into the batter.
Bake on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or sprayed with non-stick cooking spray for 8-10 minutes.

Ingredients:
½ cup gluten free all-purpose flour
½ cup oat flour
2 tbsp coconut sugar
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup egg whites
1 tbsp coconut oil or butter (softened or lightly melted)
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp almond milk
¼ cup semisweet chocolate chips



 

 

I made some substitutions because I don't really care about the gluten free part.

Whole wheat pastry flour, oats instead of oat flour, stevia instead of coconut sugar

 

And yes, I know, this recipe is not unprocessed.  I decided to let the baking soda and baking flour slide because I have not been successful with cookies actually looking like cookies without it. 

 

 

 

 

They turned out to be delicious.  This recipe is a winner.  I might add a little more oats next time.  I also love that the way the recipe is written, it only makes 12 cookies so you don't end up with a million cookies to eat.

 

Eating out, eating in, basically just eating

 

So I'm starting with the picture of the yummy pizza.  After being really proud of myself for the week before and girls night in.... the following week we decided to go for a girls night out.  We went to this place that has a great happy hour... Social Pub and Pie in Fed Hill.  Half price wine glasses and bottles ($4 a glass or $16 a bottle) and $5 8 inch pizzas.  We got BBQ chicken, White pizza with onions and blue cheese, and Margarita.  I'm sure the BBQ sauce probably had sugar in it, and the dough was made with white flour not whole wheat flour.... but never the less it was delicious, and I feel like it was a pretty good option as far as eating our goes.  I mean, it was at least homemade, even if all the ingredients were not unprocessed.  A good time was had by all. 

 

 

Saturday night we had a friends wedding to go to.  Normally at weddings I drink mixed drinks, but tonight I was determined to stick to unprocessed wine instead (I was also hoping this would minimize my hangover... the last wedding we attended involved the worst hangover of my life the next day).  Anyway, we get to our table and there is an assortment of beautiful, fall colored peanut m and m's.  I actually resisted the urge to eat them ALL NIGHT.  Wa hoo.  

 

 

When it was time for cake, I was determined to resist that too.  Tom got me a cupcake from the table, and then proceeded to shove it in his mouth when I started to take a bite of it so that I couldn't eat it.

 

 

But, alas, I did eat some.  I mean its a wedding.  It seems mean to not eat the cake.  I did leave some behind though, so that's a half win for me.

 

                  

 

 

So after our weekend of eating out, we did a lot of cooking at home during the week.  One of the things we made was from one of my favorite cookbooks called Faster I'm Starving.  All the recipes are 25 minutes and under:

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Im-Starving-Kevin-Mills/dp/B005HKP3YQ 

 

 

Russian Chicken Sticks... mix together garlic, paprika, Greek yogurt, lemon juice and hot sauce.  Cut the chicken into strips and cover it with the yogurt mixture.  Then, dip it in bread crumbs (not unprocessed... because despite the fact that I made bread crumbs the day before, the bread I used was not quite stale enough, so we were not able to smash the bread crumbs into small enough pieces to work). 

 

 

Put it all on a baking sheet and bake at 475 for 8 minutes.

 

It turns out like this, and it is delicious!

 

I also decided to try making mashed potatoes for the first time to go with the chicken.   



I mixed the potatoes, cream cheese, butter and milk. It could have used a little less milk, but they were still very good.

Cut to this morning and my strong desire for pancakes.  However I had just scrubbed my stove the day before was didn't really want to get it dirty.

 

Obviously though, my desire for pancakes won.  I used a recipe I've used before from Eating Rules.
http://www.eatingrules.com/2010/05/healthy-pancakes-that-taste-good/

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other news, I've gotten really good at slicing bread.  It's amazing what happens after 20 or so loaves (when we first started the pieces were so thick you could barley taste whatever was on the sandwich you made because all you could taste was bread).

Girls Night In

Last Thursday was on the google calendar as girls night with two very lovely ladies.  I was a little nervous.  The week before, girls night had taken place at this delicious restaurant... Joe Squared.  It involved really yummy pizza and fried ravioli.  Needless to say, I'm sure there were some unprocessed ingredients in the mix.  This week we were planless until Thursday afternoon when we started texting madly to figure out what we were going to do.  I had already figured that I would go home from work, eat something, and then meet them out so that I was hopefully not tempted to eat anything (I know the October unprocessed challenge can be what you want it to be.... and eating out once would not be the end of the world... but I was really trying to stick to it, especially in the first week).

 

 

Anyway.... in the midst of the text messaging... I suggested my house.  Both ladies were on board.  It's now 2 pm and I have about 4 hours to finish work, get to the grocery store, and figure out what to cook.  Yikes!  Luckily I had just received an email a few days before with a recipe for 4 ingredient Thai Curry Chicken from this blog I follow, girls gone strong:

 

http://www.girlsgonestrong.com/four-ingredient-indian-fusion/ 

 

I couldn't find the green curry paste in the store but I bought red curry paste instead.  Another issue was the coconut milk.  I don't have a whole foods or trader joes terribly close to me (there is a whole foods near my school but I wanted to get home).  I couldn't find coconut milk at Giant without sodium metabisulphite in it.... the one I bought at least advertised that it only contained 0.003% of it.  I felt like that was better than nothing (and at this point it was 5:20 and I told them I'd be home by 5:30).

 

 

Luckily I have several dip recipes that are my go to's for whenever people come over.  This one was on deck for the evening:

  Olive garden spinach and artichoke dip!

 

Side note: For those of you reading this from Unprocessed October.... I saw that there was some discussion the other day about cream cheese.  What kind of cream cheese are you buying?  Most Xanthium gum is a deliberate exception of mine so cream cheese passes the kitchen test for me. 

 

Moving on.... spinach dip was easy to get ready.  Once that was in the oven I started on the main dish... Thai Curry Chicken.

 

Ingredients:
1 pound of chicken, thawed and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 tablespoons green curry paste
1 bag of spinach fresh spinach
1/2 can unsweetened organic coconut milk (full fat)

Directions:
In a big pan, cook your chicken on medium heat preferably using coconut oil (which is a kitchen staple, so not counted as an ingredient). While your meat is cooking, saute your spinach in another pan. Add a few dashes of salt to it.
Once your chicken is mostly cooked through, add the coconut milk and the green curry paste. Mix and let simmer on low for 5-10 minutes. If you prefer it soupier, use more coconut milk.
Add the spinach to the pan of chicken. Add a few liberal dashes of sea salt or salt sub. Season to taste. I prefer it on the saltier side, so mine ends up with several liberal dashes of salt substitute, and a pinch or two of sea salt.



 

 

 

I made brown rice and served it over that.  It was DELICIOUS.  I still have half a can of coconut milk to use up so I'm going to make it again this week. 

 

Of course the night also involved wine... 

 

And dark chocolate and almonds for dessert.

 

 

Very delicious.  Good company.  And cheaper than if we had gone out.  I'm calling it a success. :)

  

Weekend Adventures- Success and Failure

 

This weekend involved lots of fun stuff.  Seriously... how could you not love a blog post that starts with a picture of Ax throwing?  Just wait, we'll get there.

 

 

So Friday I'm sick.  Go to patient first, get medicine and come home and go to bed.  Saturday I wake up and still feel like crap.  After several hours of being home and awake and not feeling better I decided to go to my team's football game (we play in a social touch football league) because I couldn't stand being in my house any more... The combination of beer and fresh air made me feel a lot better really quickly. :)

 

After the game the team walked from the park over to Fells Point festival.  Along the way we stopped at this house party when total strangers (sorry Mom) invited us to try their ice luge.  Luckily that picture is on Tom's phone so its not making it into this blog post.... So we stop by this party and then continue on our way to the festival.  I had not been expecting to be gone this long (I left the house at 3 pm and it was now after 5 pm).  I had packed some snacks but not a full meal.  So here I am, the super cool kid that I am, walking around Fells Point festival with a Tupperware container full of almonds and dark chocolate.  It gets better...  I also peeled 2 clementine's while walking around and ate them.  By the time it reached 6 pm I needed real food.  This left me with LOTS of unprocessed options.  I went with a buffalo chicken gyro.  I figured that at least there are not too many ingredients (plus anything is healthier then the fried oreos I really wanted to get).  

 

 

I had half and then Tom finished up the rest.  Shortly after, we went home and I ate the quiche I had bought at Whole Foods the day before.

 

The next day we were headed to the Maryland Renaissance Festival to celebrate a friends birthday.  I was disappointed by having to buy food the day before, so I decided to pack a tuna sandwich for the Renn fest.  I did not feel terribly cool pulling out my ziplock bag with a sandwich in the middle of the side show we were at.... but, it was good and cheap and unprocessed.  Go me.  I even resisted the urge to get cheese cake on a stick.  There will be no pictures of the cheesecake because if I had gotten close enough to take a picture I probably would have also taken a bite.

 

 

So now its Monday, which I know is not part of the weekend, but we happen to have plans for Monday night so I'm including it in this post.  Friends of ours came over for dinner.   I definitely made the spinach and artichoke dip again since these were different friends.  I have no problem eating that dip every day!  Tom makes the most delicious turkey burgers so those were on the menu too.  All unprocessed except for the breadcrumbs we used.  Normally we make our own but we just happened to run out a few days before and I hadn't made a new batch yet.  I have a bunch of half loaves of bread in the freezer just waiting to be made into bread crumbs.  Anyway... here is the handsome kitchen help and yummy burgers....



 

 

I had my burger on our homemade cheese and onion bread.  We served the burgers with a salad.  Delicious.  Yay for fun filled weekend that are (almost) unprocessed.

 

oh yeah!  I never went back to the ax throwing.  We did that at the Renaissance festival.  Along with drinking mead and watching jousting.  Fun times. 

Strep Throat Food

Friday morning I'm driving to work and my throat is hurting.  This is now like the third day of this.  Usually after an hour or two of being awake it goes away and I'm fine.  I take that same attitude on Friday morning and I get to work early to go to boot camp. 

Cut to the afternoon and it now feels like there are tiny pins sticking out of my throat.  Gross.  Luckily a good friend of mine on our kindergarten team is a mom (for some reason I think that only moms can look at someone's throat and tell if they should go to the doctors).  She tells me my throat is red with white things sticking out of it.  Yup.  Strep.  Awesome.

A patient first opened near my school recently so I went over right after school.  The rapid test came back negative but the doctor said he was pretty sure it was strep.  Antibiotics and sleep.  I can do that. 

On the way back to school (I had driven to patient first with another co worker who needed an xray on her ankle... its been a rough week in kindergarten!) my friend convinced me to stop at Whole Foods so I could get something to eat for dinner.  I really wish there was a Whole Foods close to my house.  There is one like 15 minutes away but its in the city and parking is annoying and the aisles are really skinny.  Anyway... I digress.  So we're at Whole Foods and I decide I want mac and cheese.  I check out the stuff in the hot bar but it has corn starch in it.  I found an Amy's organic frozen mac and cheese.  I also got tomato soup and a piece of quiche (impulse buy on the quiche... going to have it for lunch today). 

I got home and had the mac and cheese and tomato soup (for the record... Amy's organic is just not as delicious as cheesy, processed, chemical filled shells and cheese.  Seriously... what do they put in that stuff that is so delicious???  Also- this Amy's was low sodium so maybe that effected the taste?). 

 

 

As I'm writing this I'm enjoying a cup of green tea with a box of tissues next to me. 

 

I want to get better enough in the next 2 hours to play in my touch football game but I'm guessing that's not a reality.... so instead I guess I'll keep typing blog posts. 

 

Oh yeah.... and here is the delicious omelet I made for breakfast.  I used leftover spinach and artichoke dip in the omelet.  Yummm.

Staff breakfast

 So my school is awesome.  Every month one of the grade level teams hosts a staff breakfast.  It is always delicious.  ALWAYS.  So before I show you what we had at this staff breakfast let me show you what I had for breakfast on Friday....

 

 

 

Greek yogurt, honey and granola.... delicious, but not compared to this.....

 

 

Bagel, quiche, doughnut, and cheesy potatoes.

 

 

 

 

Oh yea, and don't forge the most delicious scones ever.  Cinnamon chip.  Yummm.  But made with regular flour, sugar and other processed things for sure. :( 

 

 

So obviously it's safe to say that when Unprocessed October is over I will be partaking in staff breakfast once again.  But here it is.... my plan.... going forward I will only eat home made things at staff breakfast... cheesy potatoes, scones and quiche.  I'll stay away from the doughnuts and bagels.  Sounds fair right?

Morning snack

 Yesterday a student comes in with this bar in his hand and says "This is your morning snack."  I was only half paying attention so I say to him "You know your morning snack goes in your cubby.  Please put it there."  Then I turned around to keep taking attendance....

 

 

 

10 seconds later he is tugging on my shirt going "No Mrs. Ceiri... this is your morning snack.  Look."  He turns it over and sure enough he has written my name in marker.  He goes on to say "You never have a morning snack so I brought you one."

 

 

I'm reading the list of ingredients thinking I might actually be able to eat it.... but then you get to the end and see "soy lecithin, mixed tocopherols added for freshness." I slid it into my lunch box and told him I would have it at lunch today.  After lunch he was sure to ask me if I liked it.... I don't generlaly like lying to 5 year olds but I figured telling him it was delicious was better then telling he I refused to eat it because it has gross checmicals in it....