Homemade almond milk

On our most recent trip back to America, I was surprised to see the presence of Almond milk in the grocery stores in the dairy section right next to cow's milk. When I last lived in the states in 2003, you had to go to the health food store to get it. I was also impressed at how cheap almond milk is! I spent the 5 weeks we were there drinking almond milk whenever possible. It's lower in carbs than regular milk, same amount of fat, HALF the calories, cholesterol free, loaded in antioxidants, has nearly as much calcium and an impressive array of vitamins. Really, what's not to love? Well, the price of it in Norway, that's what's not to love. Coming back to Norway, I went in search of almond milk. We have soy, rice and oat milks readily available in normal grocery stores here, but no almond milk. I finally found some at the health food store, but it was a tiny box and it was about $10!! Crazy.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. How hard can making homemade almond milk be?? Not hard at all is the answer! I can get raw almonds in bulk for about $11 a KILO here (that's about 2.2 pounds) and I only need a cup to make about a liter of milk, so it's a significant savings over the health food store almond milk. I tend to make small batches, as it only lasts about 5 days in the fridge and I really only use it in my smoothies, so I don't need a whole lot.

Start by soaking a cup or two of almonds in water over night. They will nearly double in size after the soaking:

Drain them and rinse them and put them in your blender or food processor and cover them with 4 or 5 cups of cold water:
Process them on high until the mixture is white and frothy:
Next, strain the mixture into a container. You can use a fine mesh sieve, but I use a bag specially made for nut milks:
That's it! How simple is that? Put it in an airtight container and use it how you would milk! It's delicious, and more importantly, it's so good for you! Now go make some almond milk:

Green beans roasted with garlic and basil in coconut oil

The days are getting longer and warmer and it's that time of year where we are starting to get a lot more fresh produce. Yesterday at one of my neighborhood fruit and vegetable markets there were some green beans I just couldn't pass up, and when Christopher lit the grill tonight, I decided to roast them over the hot coals!
I prepped the beans by tossing them in coconut oil, 2 cloves of fresh garlic, a handful of fresh chopped basil and a pinch of crushed red pepper:
Next, I put them in my roasting basket and put them on the grill:
There was a lot of smoke when coconut oil met hot coals, but the smell was delicious. I just stirred them every 30 seconds or so, and because the coals were so hot, the beans were done in about 4 minutes. The finished result was delicious:
A great way to get one of your 5 servings of fruit and veggies!

Homemade almond/cashew butter

I'll admit it, I'm a almond butter girl on a peanut butter budget, so when I read something about making my own nut butters at home, I did a backflip in my head. I can get raw nuts here in Oslo fairly inexpensively, whereas a tiny jar of almond butter sets me back about $8. If it's possible to make my own for half the price, it's a no-brainer for me. A quick Google search confirmed that I was not the first person to have this idea, so who better to let guide me than a gal called Heather with a blog called 'Heather Eats Almond Butter'? So, if you're tired of paying too much money for nut butters that are older than 10 minutes, look no further. You're going to need whatever nuts you want to use. I used cashews and almonds. I didn't measure, just used enough to cover a baking sheet:

I popped them into the over to roast them. Roasting brings out a really lovely flavor and depth to the nuts, and the aforementioned Heather said the roasted nuts tend to butter up quicker than the raw. I almost burned them, so remember to keep an eye on them:
Put your roasted nuts into your food processor:
Put the lid on and turn the processor on high. You'll get alot of noise and a nut powder first, but keep the machine going, turning it off every now and then to scrape down the sides. Depending on your food processor, this can take anywhere from 9-12 minutes.



Soon you will be rewarded with a gorgeous creamy nut butter:
The sky is the limit as for flavors. You can keep it plain, as alone it has such a glorious depth to it, or you can add maple, chocolate, cinnamon or whatever!

The nutritional benefits of fresh nut butters are too numerous to list here, but this is one thing that is a staple for me in a paleo/primal way of eating. It's also low on the glycemic index, so my blood glucose never spikes when I eat it.

What are you waiting for?? Go and make some homemade almond/cashew butter!

OH Joy! Low Carb Almond Joy bars!

It happened like this: I was walking by my friends office today and mid stride, I suddenly HAD to have one of the 'fun sized' Bounty bars I knew she kept on her desk. For my American friends, Bounty are what the rest of the world calls Almond Joy, sans the almond. It's just coconut and chocolate. Of course the ones she has on her desk are the sugar laden ones and decidedly high in carbs. I ate one anyway. But as the guilt sank in, I resolved to try and make some low carb treats I could keep handy so I wouldn't succumb quite so easily next time. I got back to my office and googled 'low carb almond joy recipe' and you wouldn't believe the number of hits I got! I'm clearly not the first to have had this idea. I then saw that the author of one of my favorite blogs was among the hits returned. Healthy Indulgences, hands down one of my guilty pleasures. It's written by a food GENIUS named Lauren. Seriously check out her blog. She is one of those rare people who comes up with original recipes that make your jaw hit the ground. I bet she could win MasterChef if she tried. Or at least place in the top 4. I digress. I've tried several of her recipes before and have yet to be disappointed, so hers was the one I decided to try.
If you are new to this whole low carb, healthy (yes healthy) way of eating, don't be frightened by some of the strange ingredients we tend to use like erythritol, coconut oil, xylitol and xanthan gum. Seriously, just go buy them. You will thank me for it later.

I started by mixing unsweetened shredded coconut, coconut oil, coconut milk and melted erythritol in a bowl. With my hands I put them on a cookie sheet and shaped them into fun sized candy bars.

Next I pressed a couple of almonds into the top to give it that almond joy feel. Then I put them on the balcony to freeze. Ha! Yes, you read that right. On the balcony to freeze. If you aren't as fortunate as I am to have a huge walk in freezer, simply use your small indoor one, it'll do.

After about 5 minutes, or 10, or 15 or however long it takes you to get the baby to bed, get them off of the balcony (or freezer) and get ready for the dipping phase! Where coconut meets it's lucious lover, dark chocolate ganache. (Don't worry, I'll put the recipe below)
After you've coated them all, and licked the extra chocolate off of your fingers about 19 times, but them back on the balcony to harden again. When you bring them back inside, you'll have something a bit like this:
Please excuse the tacky fingerprints in the ganache, but I've never been known for my finishing touches.
These are so good! Really hit the spot! And the ganache is made from 85% dark chocolate, and for fun I also threw in a few squares of Green and Black's espresso dark chocolate. This is a decadant treat and all your processed sugar eating friends are gonna wanna eat them ALL because they are just THAT good!
Recipe from Lauren at Healthy Indulgences

Makes ABOUT 20 bars

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups fine unsweetened shredded coconut
5-6 tablespoons coconut oil
1/3 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup erythritol or 1/4 cup xylitol
Raw almonds
2 batches dark chocolate ganache
Pinch of unrefined sea salt
1 packet of Stevia

Preparation:
Melt erythritol over medium heat in a saucepan until liquefied. Combine coconut oil, coconut milk, unsweetened coconut, salt, and stevia. Pour in hot erythritol and mix together thoroughly until coconut oil is melted. Put the coconut mixture on parchment paper and do your best to shape into fun sized candy bars. Top with almonds, pressing the nuts down gently into the filling. Freeze until filling is firm and cold.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

1-3.5 oz 85% cacao content chocolate bar
5 tablespoons heavy cream
1/3 cup erythritol or 1/4 cup xylitol, powdered
1 packet of Stevia

Pop it into the microwave and cook on high for about 30 seconds. Take it out and stir to melt chocolate. Keep microwaving for a few seconds and stirring until all chocolate is melted and the ganache gets thick and creamy. You may need to add extra cream to keep it thinned out.

Keep in mind, if you use the ganache, it won't 'harden', so you really need to keep them in the fridge or freezer.

Amazing low(ish) carb and gluten free Peanut Butter cookies!

Pardon me while I dust away the cobwebs around here, it seems as though I just abandoned the blog sometime in February. For that, I apologize. This whole gestating experience has been fairly all consuming! My doctor has put me on a sick leave for the remaining of my pregnancy until my maternity leave starts, so I find myself with time on my hands. I don't do particularly well with time on my hands, but this morning I found myself itching to be the beautiful diabetic and endeavored to create something blog worthy in the kitchen!

Before I got pregnant, I had been actively pursuing a very low carb lifestyle in an effort to control my diabetes. It was really working well, and my blood sugar numbers were quite impressive. Sadly, the words 'pregnancy' and 'low carb' do not get along. My low carb lifestyle, along with my wine drinking, were the first two things my doctor made me give up. I didn't grieve for long, as I now had an excuse to eat BREAD again, so all was good.

Fast forward 7 months and I stumbled upon one of the jewels of the low carb world wasting away in my pantry:

Yep, Organic coconut flour. Word on the low carb street is that this stuff is magical. It has ZERO carbs, which is NIRVANA for any self respecting low carber. It also tastes great and is gluten free. There were several recipes I had wanted to try using it, but as my raging hormones dictate what I make these days, Peanut Butter cookies had been weighing heavily on my heart for about a week.
So, this morning, I decided to try to make peanut butter cookies with coconut flour. There are alot of recipes online for coconut flour, just google it. Here is the one I based my cookies on:

Peanut Butter Cookies

For these cookies, use natural peanut butter, without hydrogenated oil or added sugar. The oil in natural peanut butter usually separates and rises to the top of the jar if allowed to sit for any extended period of time. Mix this oil into the peanut butter. Do not pour it out. If you do pour it out, replace it with an equal amount of melted coconut oil. Maintaining the original fat content of the peanut butter produces the best results with this recipe.

Ingredients

½ cup sifted coconut flour
1 cup natural peanut butter
½ cup peanuts, coarsely chopped (optional)
1½ cups brown sugar
4 eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon salt

Method

Mix together peanut butter, peanuts, sugar, eggs, vanilla and salt. Stir in peanuts and coconut flour. Batter will be runny. Drop by the spoonful 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 190 Degree C (375F) for 14 to 15 minutes. Cool slightly and remove from cookie sheet. Makes about 3 dozen cookies. (bakers note: HA! 3 dozen? If you like tiny cookies, yes. I got 15 good size cookies out of this recipe)

Yes, that does say 1/2 cup of coconut flour! Coconut flour is very dense and you don't need a lot of it. I started with the organic peanut butter:

And followed with the eggs, salt, vanilla and sugar:

See the white stuff? You know, the granular stuff that looks like evil white sugar?? It's not! It's another one of my low carb superstars:

That, my friends, is a little something called Erythritol. It's an amazing product. Has a GI of ZERO, so it has no effect on bloodsugar, so it's great for diabetics, and it is also a sugar alcohol, but has NO adverse affects on the bowels, so it's also great for people who can't normally handle sugar alcohols or Splenda and the like. It is usually derived from melons and it does tend to have a slight 'cooling' or minty taste. I enjoy it, you may not, but try it and see, as anyime you can eliminate processed sugar from your diet, it's a good idea. The recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar, so I did half and half. I find the Erythritol does best when blended with another sweetner, and being pregnant, I don't like to consume mass quantities of Splenda.

Finally, I added my miniscule half cup of coconut flour. You will be amazed at how it thickens when you add it. I stirred everything together really well to ensure even distribution of the flour throughout the rest of the batter and then dropped it in large spoonfuls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment. I also have a sick obsession with macadamia nuts lately, so I chopped up a bunch and added them to the top of the cookies:

Popped them in the over and sat back to see what would happen. I am a fan of crispy cookies in general, with all of the egg in these cookies, I had my doubts about what their degree of crispiness would be. I waited the reccommended 13-15 minutes and then added 2 more minutes and took them out of the oven to let them cool:

My verdict? They are actually really GOOD! They are a cakey cookie, but the flavor is excellent.

Managing diabetes and other food intolerances is a journey. You have to be willing to try new things and adapt your expectations and tastes and try strange ingredients that you never would have considered had it not been for an unfortunate diagnosis. Hang in there. Don't let diabetes or food intolerances steal your joy in food, instead, find ways around it.

These peanut butter cookies with a tall glass of cold milk could just be the perfect start to your new journey:

Enjoy!

Tacos! The Breakfast of Champions.

I think I have been pretty lucky thus far in the pregnancy as far a crazy cravings go. I don't crave anything weird, like pickles and icecream, I just crave things I have no hope of possibly getting here in Norway. Some of the cravings are so intense that I actually SHAKE a little when thinking about them! In no particular order, I have craved:

• Chik-fila combo number 1 with extra pickles
• Arby's roast beef sandwich
• Tater tots from Sonic with a diet cherry limeade
• Whataburger with cheese and jalepenos
• Thin and crispy pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut
• ANYTHING tex mex

Luckily, or unluckily, I cannot get any of that in Norway, so I have an apple or an orange instead and as a result, have only gained about 14 pounds in 22 weeks of pregnancy! Which fits into the whole 'slow and steady' approach to weight gain!

Now, I can't get the restaurant quality tex mex I crave here, but I can make some pretty good homemade concoctions here thanks to my spice collection from Texas, and lately it seems like I cannot get enough of breakfast tacos. I love breakfast tacos, and coming from Houston you have a wide range of possibilities to procure them from Whataburger to the local mexican food stand. Breakfast tacos are easy and tasty and don't require any special culinary skills beyond being able to scramble eggs and microwave tortillas, so they are a great quick breakfast!

I always have bacon in mine. Good crispy bacon:

I also had some leftover chorizo in the freezer from the time I tried to make my own from scratch. It wasn't BAD, but it wasn't GREAT either, but it would work great in tacos, so I cooked it and then added it to the scrambled eggs:

Then to assemble your tacos, heat up a tortilla, add some cheese, put the eggs and sausage mixture in, top it with a strip of bacon, some cilantro and spicy green salsa:

Roll them up and enjoy!! They are so tasty and somehow they always manage to hit that proverbial spot:

I could eat these all the time and never get sick of them!

Good eatin'.

And then there were three

Well, once again I find myself apologizing for being such a bad blog updater. I have so much admiration for people who update their blogs on a daily, or at least REGULAR, basis. Sadly, I am more of a sporadic blogger, despite my intentions otherwise.

But, this time, I think I have what is at least a somewhat legitimate excuse! Around early November things took a stunning change of direction here in our household, all thanks to a magic little stick:
Yes, that's right! I'm PREGNANT! For most of October and November, we were just in shock and I was really not well. I wasn't throwing up, but I really suffered from sheer exhaustion. To the point that I honestly do not remember parts of November and December. It was weird.

Then on January 22, we went to the doctor and came face to face with the fruit of our loins:

That my friends, is my 95% certain little GIRL!! I cannot describe the emotion when that grainy image appears on the screen above you. To see perfectly formed fingers and toes. To see her putting her fingers in her mouth like the picture above. To see an amazingly long leg like this:
I mean, it's just overwhelming!!! I'm pregnant with a she-child and I am still just in SHOCK!
But it's fun, and it's challenging and it's an entire new journey that we are going on.

My diabetic needs have changed and I have begun using insulin which has revolutionized my life! I can't wait to tell you about that another time, but insulin has really given me back my quality of life that I had been missing for a few years now. In a nutshell, insulin ROCKS.

So, that is what is going on here in Norway. It's cold, it's snowy and I am just gestating away and in about 18 weeks, we will have a little mini-us joining our little clan for a whole set of new adventures!

It's quite amazing really.

Leftover turkey = a dang good GUMBO!

Being from Texas I have grown up eating really good Tex Mex, which I talk ALOT about on this blog. However, being from the Gulf coast region of Texas, I have also had my share of really good seafood. Some of my favorite memories are the summers spent at our beach house at Caplan beach on the Boliver peninsula. There was a place called Milt's seafood and my mom used to buy huge buckets of raw oysters. My sisters and I would PLOW through those buckets to find the elusive pearls. We had plenty of shrimp boils, soft shell crabs and barbequed crabs.

Yet we also have a teeny tiny cajun influence. My mother is the only sibling out of 4 NOT born in New Orleans. My grandfather went to Tulane and my grandmother to Sophie Newcomb. Sometime in the 40's they moved to Texas, Port Arthur to be exact, and that is where my mom made her debut into the world. I certainly can't claim to be a cajun, but there are strong cajun influences in Port Arthur. One of my mom's friends, also from Port Arthur, owned a very popular restaurant in Houston called the Rajin' Cajun, so we always had our fill of some pretty amazing cajun food. Countless boiled crawfish, poboys, etouffes and of course, gumbo.

For some reason, gumbo has always seemed really intimidating to me. I waited tables while in college at a high-end cajun restaurant called Denis' in Houston. Denis' gumbo recipe was a tightly guarded secret and he wouldn't tolerate roaming eyes in the kitchen. He just used to mumble something about a good roux being the secret and lifeblood of a good gumbo and then would cuss and yell at you to get out of there. I was satisfied to just eat it and enjoy it. I didn't need to know how to make it, and quite frankly felt sorry for the cooks who got there at the crack of dawn to make it.

Well, a decade down the road, curiosity and cravings got the better of me. We had a lot of left over turkey and I had deboned it and boiled the carcass and had a great stock to use for SOMETHING. Lately, I have really been craving gumbo. I started snooping around the internet, not quite committed to making it, just wanting to assess what exactly goes into this mythical roux making process. IF I was going to attempt to make it, I needed to be prepared. Honestly, I am not sure what all the fuss is about. It seems the hardest thing about making the roux is the constant stirring and something called 'cajun napalm'. I was more concerned about the stirring than the napalm, which in hindsight was a very naive thing.

So, I recruited my Christopher to be a stand in stirrer if my stirring arm were to give out unexpectedly. He got a stern lecture on the importance of jumping in IMMEDIETELY if I called out for him, and with that precaution in place, we got started on the roux.

The bones of a roux is basically a cup of flour and a cup of oil. Using a heavy bottomed pot, preferably cast iron according to the cajuns, dump both ingredients in and start stirring over medium high heat.



Keep stirring. It was amusing for about the first 15 minutes. Keep stirring. The goal is for the roux to turn from light to dark. So, again, keep stirring:


This is about the shade of brown-ness where my stirring arm gave out. Luckily, Christopher had been trained well, and jumped in and kept stirring:
This is also the stage where the cajun napalm warning came in handy. This stuff POPS and SPLATTERS and when it lands on your skin it burns like hell. It kept popping me. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that by the end of the roux making process I had at least one blister on my face and several on my arms! You need to be TOUGH to make gumbo. No sissy's allowed. And after about 33 and a half minutes we had gotten ourselves to this shade of roux:

I'm not sure if it should have been darker or not, but after my time investment and 3rd degree napalm burns, I wasn't taking any chances of ruining it. So to this glorious roux, I proceeded to add what is known as the 'Holy trinity'. Which is onions, celery and green bell pepper. I added some carrots as well, which I am sure would have caused any good cajun to have heart palpitations, but hey, I'm not a cajun, I'm a Texan and we are rebels by nature. You just add them directly to the roux and keep stirring for another 3 or 4 or 5 minutes, or really as long as you dare.

I felt like I was playing a game of chicken with the roux and at any moment the volitile brew would turn on me, so I started slowly adding my turkey broth before the roux could go rouge on me. I also added the turkey, some smoked sausage and okra. I then let it simmer for about an hour.


Meanwhile, I made some cornbread and cooked some rice. And then, the moment of truth, time to taste it. To say I was stunned would have been an understatment. I couldn't believe what I was tasting! It tasted like GUMBO!! Not only that, it tasted like GOOD gumbo!! I made gumbo!! I am still a bit in shock over it and am glad I have these photos that document it to prove that it really did happen:

It was truly a culinary triumph for me and one that I feel very proud of! So, if there is a lesson to be learned here, it's to just go ahead and TRY to make that recipe that you have been scared of for a long time! You just might surprise yourself and make something so delicious you will wonder why you didn't try it sooner! Gumbo. Demystified.


Feels good.

SICK of Christmas food. Must. Have. Tex Mex.

Well, it's that time of year again. Christmas food galore. Here in Norway, it seems as though we start eating Christmas food about 2 weeks before Christmas. And Norwegian Christmas food is like no other I have had before. Rarely is there a vegetable in sight, and the higher the fat content, the better. Needless to say, I am DONE. I can't eat another piece of ribbe, jule polse, kjøttkaker or anything else I can hardly pronounce.

That being said, today I had such a strong craving for Tex Mex that it about knocked me over. I haven't had it in quite sometime, which is unlike me, so I started going through my mental Tex Mex menu. Growing up in Houston, I had the pleasure of having a number of mom and pop Tex Mex operations pretty much on every corner. I remember so many times out to eat with my family ordering the 'Speedy Gonzales' plate. If you are from Texas, you will know that the Speedy Gonzales is single cheese enchilada, a beef taco in a HARD shell and rice and beans. That's it. A perfect plate for a kid and I think my sisters and I must have consumed thousands of these through the years.

What I would have done for a Speedy Gonzales today. But, I didn't have what it would take to reproduce it, so I settled on creating a plate of super nachos! I love nachos because they are EASY. All you have to do is throw everything on some chips and broil it for a couple of minutes. It is nearly impossible to mess up. I say nearly cause if I said it was impossible, inevitably, someone out there would find a way to screw up nachos. So, this way, we cover all our bases.

I had some pintos that I had made a few months ago in the freezer, so I took them out and reheated them and I had some ground beef in the fridge that REALLY needed to be used, so I cooked that and added Penzey's Ancho chili powder and cumin.


After both of these were cooked, I arranged a baking sheet with nacho chips:


And topped the chips with the beans and the meat:


To this I added chopped pickled jalepenos:


And topped it all with grated cheddar. I use white cheddar cause that is what we have in Norway, but I have actually really grown to love it. It's not sharp at all and has a good mellow flavor. Then just slap it in a hot oven. I usually turn the temperature up to just below broiling, which for me, means about 230 celcius.

Meanwhile, I whipped up a batch of Ninfa's famous green salsa. Lisa over at the Homesick Texan has a great post on this recipe, so if you have all of the ingredients, by all means use her blog as a guide! I cheated, and started with a jar of La Costena Salsa Verde and to that, added a ripe avocado and used my stick blender to make it smooth. I then stirred in some sour cream. It really does taste JUST like Ninfa's green salsa and just makes everything taste better:


Take the nachos out of the oven when the edges turn brown and the cheese is bubbly:


Top the nachos with whatever cold things you want. I used tomatoes, lettuce, cilantro and chopped white onion and put a generous helping of the green salsa on the bottom of the plate to put the nachos on top of:


Of course I had to have a diet coke over ice:


And I was in HEAVEN. It was like a Christmas miracle. Those flavors were just amazing after all of the rich and heavy food I have been consuming over the last few weeks. It's times like these that I am so thankful for my Texas roots and even more thankful for my ability to recreate some of my favorite flavors in food:


Who wants turkey now???

Merry Christmas from Norway, y'all!