Adventures in Nutty Granola

A few weeks ago, M and I went up to Southern Vermont for Family Work Day for the Jenckes Foundation. Family Work Day is filled with trail work aka lopping, chainsawing, hacking and stacking. We spent most of the day removing fallen trees from the ski trails in the form of chucking 60lb logs into the woods.

We started the morning at M2's house with a delicious granola breakfast care of my Mama. I broke my "no grains" rule to indulge in some coconutty, oaty granola from Healthy Living, an amazing health food store up in Northern VT. Mostly, I broke my rule so that I could have some of my mom's homemade fruit compote, which is soon to be replicated, but the granola was phenomenal.

Since tasting the forbidden granola, I've wanted to try and make my own. I found a guide on Girl Gone Primal and modified it a bit to make my own, nutty granola.

Nutty Granola

Ingredients:
Almonds
Cashews
Walnuts
Unsweetened shredded coconut
3 Tbs maple syrup
5 egg whites

I put all of the nuts into a bowl to soak for a few hours.

Chester was curious. I'm not sure of my exact nut measurements: I used an entire bag of raw almonds from Trader Joe's, half a bag of raw cashews and 1/2 cup walnuts.(This recipe can be modified for any amount of nuts: you just have to change the number of egg whites and maple syrup.)

I soaked the nuts for about three hours-- until they had soaked up almost all of the water in the bowl and looked nice and soft.

I ground the nuts cup by cup in the food processor,

and whisked the maple syrup and egg whites in a separate bowl.

I combined the nut and egg white mixtures, making sure that all of the nuts were covered in egg.

After lining a baking sheet with parchment paper, I spread out a 1/2 inch layer of the mixture. I baked the nutola for about 10 minutes at 350, stirred (or flipped) and then continued to bake for another 10 minutes.

I completed this flipping/stirring step a few more times before the nuts were browned and toasted looking.

Once the nuts were done baking, I added the coconut flakes.

I attempted to shake the nuts and coconut together in a plastic bag. However, we are cheap, so our plastic bags are ghetto and don't seal very well (and I'm a gross kid), so there was a granola explosion.

I managed to salvage most of the goods and we ate them with almond milk, blueberries and some demon peanut butter for our Sunday Breakfeast. Needless to say, I'm all nutted out-- I can't even think about nut butter without longing for some cold, crisp vegetables. The granola is great though, and I'm going to attempt to make some fruit compote in the next week or so-- it needs some fruit to lighten it up-- all of those nuts just go straight to my chins!

Sometimes I Get Jealous...

I love eating the way that I eat. I love eating the foods that I eat. Eating this way has helped me gain energy, changed my body composition and allowed me to comfortably stop counting calories and worrying all the time about gaining weight.

How do I eat, you ask? Well, I try very hard to follow a Primal way of eating. I'm not strictly Paleo, but I do avoid grains, legumes and dairy* whenever possible. I use unsweetened almond milk in my coffee and I enjoy the occasional spoonful of peanut butter. I will eat special goodies made with wheat flour at family get-togethers, but for the most part I bake with almond meal and sweeten said baked goods with honey or maple syrup. No oats, spelt, amaranth, sorghum, barley, buckwheat or kasha for me.

That being said, sometimes I get a bit jealous when I go through my daily food blog rounds. Carrots 'N' Cake, KERF, Oh She Glows and The Edible Perspective (to name a few) are always creating amazing looking oatmeal or pancake breakfasts. Oatmeal and pancakes with nut butters, chia seeds and berries and coconut! Drool-worthy overnight oats. When I look that the pictures of these concoctions, I sometimes feel like I'm missing out. I want to put all of those delicious toppings on top of something, but I choose not to eat grains. Thus, a grainy base is out.

Last weekend, I gave in to my jealousy and created an almond meal pancake monster, which I topped with blueberries, almond butter and maple syrup. Totally hit the spot!

Monster Almond Meal Pancake

Ingredients:

1/4 cup almond meal
1 egg
1 tsp cinnamon
1Tbsp chia seeds
~2Tbsp shredded coconut
blueberries

I fried this puppy in coconut oil over medium heat until cooked through and browned on each side. Once finished cooking, I topped it with maple syrup, almond butter and additional blueberries.

This was going to be a single serving sized pancake, but it turned out to be gloriously dense and pretty gigantic, so M and I split it. It was everything I'd hoped it would be and more.

The primal way of eating works incredibly well for me. Not only do I feel and look healthier, I've also made huge gains in my workouts since switching away from the standard American diet. Eating this way, on top of my exercise routine, has given me the fitness results that I've always wanted...and I'm still improving everyday. A lot of that has to do with the way that I work out, but, they say, your body composition is 20% exercise and 80% diet.

I rarely crave grains, legumes or dairy and I don't really miss them either. Peanut butter is an exception: I do crave PB every now and then, but because my diet is pretty clean otherwise, I allow myself to give in to this craving (within reason). I eat so many vegetables and such a wide variety of vegetables that I never really want breads or baked goods.

* Okay, so lately I've been less than stellar with the avoiding of cheese. I really don't drink cow's milk, eat yogurt or consume any non-cheese dairy products. I try really hard to avoid cheese...but sometimes it sneaks into whatever I'm eating...mostly because other people put it there to sabotage me. Cheese is delicious, and I'm pretty sure it has addictive properties. I try to avoid it...really, I do.

Drooling for Days

Ever since I started reading Mindless Eating, I can't stop thinking about peanut butter cups. Well, actually, I came across Heather Eats Almond Butter's post about the "World's Most Brilliant Combo" and my mouth hasn't stopped watering since. I've been trying to be good lately, aka keeping the sweet, chocolaty goodness to a minimum, but yesterday afternoon I broke down and made my own version of that delectable Reese's favorite.

Almond Butter Coconut Cups

Ingredients:

85% Cocoa Dark Chocolate
Almond Butter
Coconut Butter (grind unsweetened coconut in the food processor until buttery, about 8 minutes)

Paper Muffin Tin Liners
(I used enough chocolate to make two massive candies: I made a limited quantity, one for me, one for M, to keep my chocolate habits in check)

I melted the chocolate over medium heat using a ghetto double boiler method (a metal bowl floating in a small frying pan), and poured the melted chocolate into the muffin liners. The first pour should be enough to cover the bottom of the liner, and to coat the sides.

After freezing the muffin liners for about 30 minutes, I mixed together about one Tbsp of almond butter and one Tbsp of coconut butter and put a dollop of this mixture into each chocolate cup, and covered with the rest of the melted chocolate.

After an hour, I had the biggest peanut butter cups EVER. I might have gotten carried away with the chocolate...


They were about the size of the muffin liners...huge. The sweetness of the almond butter coconut mix was essential to balance the bitterness of the chocolate (I mean bitterness in the most delicious way possible). The almond butter cups were so rich that M and I could only eat half of a half each! Maybe I'll make a pact with myself to only eat chocolate candy that I make-- that way I know what's in it, and I have to go through the "trouble" of preparing it myself. That should keep my peanut butter chocolate peanut butter craving in check.

On another note...Chester and Jack look kind of like dark chocolate and peanut butter...no?

Please pardon Chester's alien eyes...

No chocolate for Chester!

Whil Wheber Strikes Again

A few days ago I was spending my entire paycheck...err...visiting my favorite grocery store, and I decided on a carnivorous impulse to buy a family sized package of steak tips. One million dollars later, I was at home marinating steak. I'd actually never prepared red meat before! I was a vegetarian during and after college, so basically my Mama made the red meats before college, and M usually makes them now. There wasn't really much to the steak tip prep, but I was still nervous that I was forgetting something...It turns out you can't go wrong with steak tips!

I marinated them in some Organicville Sesame Teriyaki, and let them steep for a day or so. We chopped up one red pepper, a yellow pepper and a large red onion to go along with the tips.

Oh Whil, you do such a great job grilling stuff...You put delicious meats in my belly and a smile on my face.

We ended up with a great big pile o'meats/vegetables

The steak was sooooo good! I think grilled steak tips might be my new favorite food! The sesame teriyaki marinade was just right-- you could taste the teriyaki, but it wasn't overpowering. The tips were a bit chewy, maybe next time I'll tenderize them...or something...

For dessert, I made some chocolate covered bananas. I had a bunch of these ripe bananas that I didn't want to go to waste. I don't eat bananas very often, and when I do, I only eat them if they're a little bit green...I usually make banana bread, but this time, I tried something new.

Ingredients: Green & Black's 85% dark chocolate, almond butter, bananas, unsweetened coconut flakes.

I melted the chocolate and almond butter in a pan over low heat, and rolled the banana pieces around until they were covered.

I put them on a tray and drizzled the remaining chocolate over them along with some coconut flakes.

I put them in the freezer for about an hour and then served.

mmMMMMmmmm...chocolate bananas. A match made in Heaven. The dark chocolate balanced the sweetness of the ripe bananas perfectly.

Lazy Paleo Cookies

I call the following endeavor "Lazy Paleo Cookies" for the following reasons:

1. I used a vegan recipe from Eat Me Delicious, but replaced some ingredients I didn't have with ingredients I did have, because I was too lazy to go grocery shopping.
2. The cookies are not really "paleo" cookies, because they have maple syrup and honey in them...which are better than regular, white sugar, but some paleo sticklers will say that any sweetener is no good.
   
3. The finished product was not actually a "cookie" per se...mostly because I was too lazy to grind my almond flour fine enough...
   

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup almond meal
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
  
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 Tbsp maple syrup
• 2 tbsp almond milk
• 1 tsp raw honey
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp coconut oil
  

I mixed all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and stirred to combine.

My coarsely ground almond flour

The rest of the ingredients went into another bowl. The recipe called for flax meal, but when I tried to grind my flax seeds, they just kind of spun around in the food processor...and I was lazy, so I just added some kinda-broken-flax seeds to the mix.

I combined the wet and dry ingredients and stirred until they were just barely mixed together...


Plopped about 1 Tbsp of "batter" onto an ungreased cookie sheet and cooked for 10 minutes at
350.


The result was more of a granola than a cookie. I have a feeling that the cookies crumbled because the almond flour was too coarse, and because there was no flax meal. The next time I attempt this recipe, I will make sure to be diligent with my almond flour, and maybe add an egg to keep everything together. Granola is fine. Granola is great! Something for M to put on his oatmeals in the morning.

Have you ever had a recipe turn out differently than you...err....expected?

Before You Go Nuts...

I came across an article in the New York Times today about a new nutritional study stating that eating about two ounces of nuts a day can lower your cholesterol. The study looked at data from 25 preexisting nut consumption trials that involved 583 men and women from 7 countries with normal and elevated blood cholesterol levels. A analysis of the pooled data revealed that eating 67g (2.4 oz) of nuts a day could significantly lower one's cholesterol.

Don't get me wrong, I think nuts are great. I eat them everyday (mostly almonds). Nuts are full of good fats and have a fair amount of plant-based protein. They are, however, very calorie and nutrient dense. A serving of nuts is typically one ounce, which is usually characterized as "one handful." One serving of almonds has about 160 calories and 14g of fat, while one serving of walnuts as about 200 calories and 18g of fat. According to this study, you should be eating almost two and a half servings of nuts a day if you want to lower your cholesterol-- If you chose walnuts, this would mean an additional 500 calories and 45g of fat per day. Most diets, such as The South Beach Diet, and even the Primal Blueprint recommend eating no more than one serving of nuts per day.

I am not a medical professional, nor do I want to sound preachy... but before you go nuts with the nuts, maybe consider some other ways to lower your cholesterol...like taking a look at your red meat consumption, and maybe increasing whole grains. I love almonds and pecans and walnuts-- I eat about an ounce pretty much every day (I might be a little too addicted to almond butter for my own good), but I know that if I were to eat two servings a day, my waistline would most definitely increase. Definitely eat nuts, but maybe consume them in moderation...everyday...just a little bit...