For whatever reason, the past few months I’ve felt like a deer in the headlights when it comes to eating. I have a few favorite snacks, dinners, and even lunches–and I’ve been sticking to them. But to tell you the truth, I’m really tired of them! So I have been looking for ways to incorporate more good foods into my day as I tend to err on the bread and cheese side of things. I began sleuthing in my kitchen, looking around, trying to figure out ways to spice up my eating, per say. I flipped through a few cookbooks–it’s amazing what an hour a month of doing this can do for recharging the ol’ ideas bank–ransacked my cupboards, the back of my fridge, and pantry and I found a few things to try.
This week, I’ll be sharing with you some of these snacks. I want, no, I need more variety in my diet (the winter can get very bland if you let it!) and I want to start incorporating some more veggies, nuts, seeds, and other goodies into my daily foods. I thought there was not a better place than to share this with you! After all, you have the ability to hold me to this—so I better not let you (or me) down 
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Today, I made two things–kale chips and whole wheat pear muffins. Okay, I know what you might be thinking right now—those sound SUPER healthy and probably not that tasty. Au contraire mon amie, they are both super delicious and, well, good for you! The kale chips were a surprise actually. Andrew even liked them! If you are looking for another way to get a few more greens into your diet, give this a try—you will be surprised! They are satisfyingly crunchy, salty, light, and enticing.
I also made some whole wheat muffins, a recipe from Mark Bittman. Usually, the first thing I think of when I hear of whole wheat being used in anything pastry-like is a brick—heavy, hard, and really sad. But when I found this recipe I thought I’d give it a try—after all, Bittman states right in the title how light they were in texture. And he was right. There are two tricks involved with this recipe: use whole wheat pastry flour AND a cup of pureed or mashed fruit or vegetable–like banana, pumpkin, sweet potato, zucchini, apple. This ensures the muffin is moist and really brings an incredible element of flavor to your muffin. I made mine with apple sauce and cut up two super-ripe pears (those pears were either were going in these muffins or directly to the compost–the best for baking:), lowered the amount of sugar and used brown sugar instead of white. They are amazing when they first come out of the oven and will still be amazing for breakfast (and snacks) for the rest of the week. If you wanted, you could even make a nice crumble for the top with oatmeal, cinnamon, brown sugar, and butter 
. Try these (more recipes to come) and get snacking!
Kale Chips
1-2 bunches kale
olive oil
salt
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F. Pull the leaves off the stem, place them on a baking sheet and drizzle with a little olive oil and some salt. Toss with your hands to make sure all the leaves are coated. Bake for 10 minutes, maybe a little less if your oven gets really hot–they can singe pretty easily–but I like them that way!
Whole Wheat Muffins, via Mark Bittman
1/2 cup melted unsalted butter—I used canola oil for this (because I didn’t have butter on hand) and they were still great
2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
3/4-1 cup white sugar—I used about a 1/4 cup brown sugar and they were plenty sweet!
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup mashed fruit or veggie—this is where I used a cup of natural apple sauce + two cubed pears that were pretty mushy, using more fruit than the allotted one cup is ok.
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract—I added this ingredient in because it goes well with the pear. Feel free to add in any of your own favorite spices too!
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and grease 12 muffin tins. In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, then add the mashed fruit/veggies, the buttermilk, egg, vanilla, and butter or oil. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry, until just combined. Fill muffin tins until full, bake 25-30 minutes or until muffins are puffed up and golden brown on top. Serve warm if possible.
Enjoy!
The other day I made a sweet potato pudding. Coming from a reputable source, I was excited to try it out. I was also excited about the “healthful” qualities it had–no white sugar or white flour. What could go wrong?
Maybe it is the tail end of my cold that wreaked havoc on my taste buds or maybe it was the fact that I tried to go even more healthy (very unlike me by the way) by substituting half of the brown sugar with maple syrup. Whatever it was, this pudding just didn’t do it for me. It came out bland and not sweet enough–I was disappointed.
Andrew, on the other hand, really liked it. Sometimes we have really different tastes for things. He tends to be a bit more picky than I and he will offer me his honest opinion when I ask for it. He has become a great meter for flavors and foods that I could go either way on which has been incredibly helpful for me to discern particular flavors in things. I may have exposed him to a lot of different dishes, but he has helped refine many flavors for me. I have a tendency to get so swept up in the whole process of making food that when the final product comes about and I am still in glow-mode from cooking, things can taste better to me than they actually are. So when he looked at me and said he really liked this pudding (and he’s not an over user of grammatical intensifiers either), I decided to share this recipe with you all.
There are two types of tasters in the world: purists and adders. I definitely fall under the “adder” or laboratory scientist when it comes to cooking, where as Andrew tends to like things a bit more simple and straight forward. And I don’t blame him–his taste for fresh, two to three main ingredient foods has really made me rethink about my tendency to add a teaspoon of this extra or a whole other ingredient(s) all together in a dish. He likes to discern and really taste what he’s eating, not necessarily a mash-up of things that come out as a dish. I have learned that I too like this–and it makes approaching the openness of cooking (as opposed to the fairly strict boundaries that baking has) feel much more doable.
This is not to say that I don’t still add a pinch of this or a splash of that to things when I am doing things–a lot of times my food making comes through instinct. But I do feel much more at ease when I have a recipe to follow. It gives me boundaries that I can choose to stretch, or not. There are those dozen or so recipes that I’ve been making for years and would no way no how need a recipe for them–but when in new gastronomical territory–a recipe becomes like a map. Sometimes discovering things off the map can be greatly rewarding. Other times when led astray, it just gets you lost.
Finding a new food combination is the ultimate in intuitive thinking with the senses and I have a lot of respect for the recipe creators who do this all the time. I feel like the Queen of the Kitchen when I’ve come up with a new recipe on my own–it is so satisfying! So, I re-imagined this recipe as I would like it and have included it below the original. Some days I need less taste-stimulation and more straightforward and simple foods. Other days, I crave spice and lots of different tastes, flavors and textures. Which way do you prefer most often?
The Purists Sweet Potato Coconut pudding
via Culinate via Debora Madison
The pudding definitely has a texture not that far off from pumpkin pie, which is nice.
Pudding
| 2 | cups cooked sweet potato, from 1½ lbs. sweet potatoes | |
| 1 | can (14 ounces) coconut milk (1¾ cups) | |
| 2 | tsp. vanilla | |
| 3 | eggs | |
| ⅞ | cup dark muscovado sugar or organic dark sugar | |
| ¼ | tsp. salt |
Topping
1 cup heavy cream lightly whipped with flavored rum to taste
Instructions
If you haven’t sweet potatoes already cooked, chop them into large pieces and steam until tender, about 30 minutes. Peel, then coarsely mash.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put a kettle of water on to boil for the bath.
Purée the cooked sweet-potato flesh in a blender or food processor with the remaining pudding ingredients until smooth.
Pour the pudding mixture into a 2-quart baking dish. Set it in a larger dish and add the boiling water to come halfway up the sides. Bake until the pudding is firm, 45 to 50 minutes.
Before the oven cools, toast the coconut shavings on a sheet pan until crisp and golden, just a few minutes.
Once the pudding has cooled, whip the cream and flavor it with the rum. Mound the cream over the pudding, cover with the toasted coconut, and serve.
The Adders Sweet Potato Coconut pudding
via moi
| 2 | cups cooked sweet potato, from 1½ lbs. sweet potatoes |
| 1 | can (14 ounces) coconut milk (1¾ cups) |
| 2 | tsp. vanilla |
| 3 | eggs |
| 1 | cup dark muscovado sugar or organic dark sugar |
| ¼ | tsp. salt |
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cardamon (or a little more)
Follow instructions above.
Cheers!
