In the Kitchen – Page 4 – The Creative Salad

Quick Rice Krispie Treats

Most pregnant women crave pickles and ice cream.

I am not one of those women.

This pregnancy I’ve been craving string cheese and cucumbers. When I was pregnant with my four year old, I craved string cheese and kiwi fruit. No, really. I know, it’s weird.

The other day though a rice krispie treat craving hit that just couldn’t be ignored. I do believe it’s been a full decade since I’ve had that gooie, tasty dessert. Oh, my, was I in for a treat.

This recipe for Gluten-free Brown Butter Rice Krispies took 5 minutes, tops, and was absolutely delicious.

This recipe was SO easy and such an over-the-top tasty treat. Go make it!

Gearing Up For Canning Season: A Call For Fruit Spread Recipes

I feel giddy with excitement over our plans to can fruit spreads, sauces, and butters this summer. I’ve been gathering supplies:

Tattler reusable canning lids, food mill, stainless steel wide-mouth funnel, Pomona’s Universal Pectin, and dozens of pint-sized jars saved from last year’s applesauce canning adventure.

As well as taking out books from the library on preserving and putting up:

Including Put ’em Up!, Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It, How to Store Your Garden Produce: The Key to Self-Sufficiency, and Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry.

Unfortunately I find myself completely out of luck with regard to recipes. Here’s the common thread I’ve found in all the canning books I’ve procured:

Sugar, sugar, and more sugar! Not small quanities of sugar either, but astounding cups (and cups!) of sugar added per batch.

That is simply not how we eat in our house. I want to make healthy fruit spreads for our family, not condiments chock-full of sugar!

So I’ve begun a quest for more natural fruit spread recipes with no added sugar and I need your help.

I’ve found a number of recipes using honey or maple syrup, others that are raw fruit sauces (like our favorite berry sauce from Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook), yet few truly fruit-sweetened jams or jellies.

I know fruit-sweetened jams exist: I buy fruit spreads in quantity at our local grocery or Whole Foods, usually sweetened with apple or grape juice concentrate.

Why isn’t the internet teeming with these sorts of recipes?! I keep searching on Google and Pinterest without much luck. Am I missing something?!

Please tell me you have information to share, perhaps a family fruit spread recipe or favorite low-sugar canning resource or website? I have blackberries growing on our bushes and strawberries to can. Thank you for your help!

Grow It, Cook It

Our daughter has been pouring over a fantastic gardening cookbook for kids: Grow It, Cook It: Simple Gardening Projects and Delicious Recipes. Yes, a book about gardening and cooking — two of our family’s most favorite things! This cookbook aims to get children involved in growing and preparing their own food. What better way to get kids excited about the food they eat than to grow and prepare it themselves!

Let’s head out to the garden and harvest some strawberries!

Grow It, Cook It presents how to grow a particular plant, and then incorporate it into a delicious recipe (with stunning photographs!). Here are some examples from the book:

The book also includes a section on seed saving:

Now to make something with our harvest of strawberries!

I think a batch of strawberry fruit spread is in order. That is if I can convince our daughter to stop gorging herself on the delicious berries. Who can blame her?! Homegrown produce tastes the best.

How to Quickly Cook Dried Beans in an Electric Pressure Cooker

Remember that Christmas present that I was less than thrilled about? Well, I’ve been using it nearly every day. That electric pressure cooker was just the present I didn’t know I needed. (Thanks again, David!)

Here’s how I make a pot of beans. The prep takes five minutes tops, the pressure cooker does all the work (with the push of a button), and the meal costs pennies.

To two cups of dried beans (e.g. chickpea, pinto or black), add two tablespoons of olive oil, two garlic cloves (either whole to remove later or crushed for a more fully infused garlic flavor), two bay leaves, and a whole lot of freshly ground black pepper.

Add water, plug in the electric pressure cooker, press the “beans” function, and about an hour later the beans are done ready for burritos, chili, nachos or salad. (Don’t forget to season the beans generously with salt!)

I love a tasty, quick, and cheap meal, especially one our daughter enjoys helping with:

What quick meals have you been enjoying lately?

A Healthier Popcorn Recipe

I’m not going to lie: I sometimes let our daughter eat popcorn for dinner. I can make all sorts of excuses: it’s late; we’ve had a long day; popcorn is super easy; she adores it. But the truth is we’ve found a way to make regular popcorn into a filling, nutritious, and protein-rich snack chock full of omega-3’s, omega-6’s, vitamins B-1, B-2, B-12, C, E, and carotene, iron, zinc, lignins, and lauric acid.

When the kid says she wants popcorn for dinner, I can’t argue with that!

Here’s our family’s favorite popcorn recipe (thanks to our friend Mariah for the flax seed oil tip!):

We melt coconut oil in the bottom of our stovetop popcorn popper and pop around 1/3 cup of popcorn kernels.

We then thoroughly coat the popped popcorn with 1-2 tablespoons of flax seed oil. On top of that we mix in 1/4-1/2 cup of nutritional yeast, depending on how coated we want the popcorn (my daughter and husband like every kernel completely covered in yeast!), and a pinch of salt.

If you’re like our four year old, than you may want a side bowl of nutritional yeast to go with your popcorn so you can roll each kernel until it’s mounded in nutritional yeast (oh, the protein! oh, the B-vitamins!).

It’s finger-licking good!

Please try it and let us know what you think!