Hummus for days

What is up?! 

Who else has been trying out new recipes during this quarantine? I'm currently in Sweden so there is no actual quarantine going on but I am being especially careful! 

I decided to make some hummus because it's a beautiful day out and I love hummus! I mean who doesn't?

I don't remember where I found the recipe I used but here it goes! 

1 1/2 cups chickpeas (cooked)
1/3 cup tahini
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice 
1 garlic clove
1/2 tsp salt
5 tbsp water (or as needed)

I obviously thought this wasn't going to make a lot of hummus so I decided to double the recipe and tweak it here and there. 

I used three garlic cloves (cuz I love garlic)
and
I added a bit more lemon juice than 4 tbsp.

Once you have all the ingredients together you just blend them! 

And that's that! 

Easy Peasy and totally delicious! 

Here are my step by step photos and end result *drool*

Beet hummus

Happy Sunday! Don't forget to put your clocks ahead an hour? I guess for the most parts your phones will do that for you. I forgot about the time change until now.. but I guess it makes sense as to why i'm extra tired.

This is another recipe from Run Fast Eat Slow that I made last weekend. I've tried the store-bought beet hummus from farm boy and really liked it, so I thought it would be fun.

A few short-cuts that made this recipe come together in 5 minutes:
- I had some cooked chickpeas in the freezer that I'd made from dried ones int he INSTANTPOT - so convenient to have on hand. If you have an instantpot you can cook chickpeas without even soaking them overnight in less than an hour-say what!!! love my instant pot. Canned chickpeas would work too.
- I cheated in terms of roasting the beet- I used "Just Beets" organic packaged cooked beets from Costco. They are awesome to have on hand. I highly recommend them. Alternatively cook up a few beets so you have them on hand for hummus, smoothies, etc..

I cut up a whole bunch of celery and carrots and Stefan made some pita chips to go with these. The cookbook also has a recipe for Chipotle Hummus, that I will try soon.

I highly recommend the butterfly exhibit at the museum of Nature in Ottawa for those who haven't checked it out yet.

Run Fast. Eat Slow

I finally went out yesterday for a run. It wasn't fast. it wasn't glamorous. It wasn't far. But I did it. I'm hoping that as spring approaches I'll get back into a routine of going more and more.

I wanted to share a few recipes with you from this cookbook, Run fast, Eat slow by Shalane Flanagann and Elyse Kopecky. A friend recommended the book and I ordered it, made one smoothy from it and promptly forgot about it. Last week, I was in Victoria for work..with a quick visit to see Daniele, Paul, Skylar (who despite me being scared of dogs, is so cute and the most gentle dog!!) and of course the latest addition- little Brielle.

When your best friend becomes a mom to the sweetest little girl and makes it look easy <3

So anyway, Daniele had the cookbook as well. She actually does run fast and ran almost the whole time during her pregnancy. Yesterday we were chatting on the phone and she mentioned she was going to make these superhero muffins. Very appropriate name for superhero mom, baker, cleaner! Really, I called at 9am BC time and she was vacuuming.. who does that? :P

I realized I had all the ingredients too. So we both made the muffins, and although we are over 4000 km apart, it almost makes me feel like we are baking together :) ! Here is the superhero muffins recipe and I'll be sharing more soon.



Superhero Muffins

These muffins are so moist and are quite healthy. I admit they look a little out there, but hey don't judge a book by it's cover. Stefan ate them right up. He just told me again how good they are.. and asked why they have chocolate in them because It doesn't go well (see note below about chocolate or raisins).

I always laugh when cookbooks have recipes that "hide" vegetables.. like hmm.. these muffins wouldn't fool anyone. if your kid is a picky eater and you want to trick him/her into eating carrots and zucchini, these would NOT be for them. for everyone else, enjoy!!

We are off to see the Butterflies today at the Museum of Nature! Can't wait!

Lemon Squares

My friend's grandpa died and I decided it would be nice to bake him something. This friend is also a neighbour, and it's always nice to bring food over to neighbours' in times of need. I wanted to make something comforting and practical and was thinking about making muffins. I started sifting through my cookbooks and these lemon bars from Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman (the original not the new cookbook) jumped out at me. My friend likes Lemon meringue and lemon cake so i figured he might like these too. I saved a couple for my friend Stu who is recovering from an inner ear infection and Stefan ate as many as he could before I brought these upstairs... fine I may have eaten a few myself. They taste so yummy and fresh. I would definitely recommend these and will be making them again.

It's funny, I have really bad time management when it comes to baking or cooking. I always underestimate the time it will take me. The bars take a bit longer than you'd expect because you first bake the bottom later for 20 minutes, than add the top layer and bake 35-40 minutes more. This time, we had plans to meet friends at the Museum of History's Christmas Market and we wanted to walk over and needed to make a stop on the way. We quickly realized we would never make it on time and pushed back our meeting half an hour. Anyway, the market was really beautiful! I have been going for the past couple of years, and each year i buy less and less. It's still fun to browse and admire the beauty of the Museum.

Note the recipe uses a food processor. I imagine you can also just use by hand, but a food processor makes it quicker and easier.

Crostini

My mom gave me some salsa from Farm Boy, and we didn't have any tostitos- first world problems, I know. We did have a little bit of baguette left, so I decided to make some crostinis to tide us over until dinner.

They were so easy and delicious. I love using up food and not wasting anything. Stefan and I are both committed to eating things up before they go bad. It is challenging for me, as I always want to go out and buy more.. but i've halted my spending until we use up what we have on hand.  I find produce goes badly so quickly this time of year. I bought blackberries on Sunday and they were already moldy this morning :( Moral of the story, don't buy so much all at once.

Ingredients:
- baguette, slices thinly
- olive oil
- sea salt
- any topping you'd like: salsa, feta, balsamic reduction

Instructions:
- preheat oven on broil
- brush baguette slices with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt
- broil for 6-8 minutes flipping once
- remove from oven and top with topping of choice. Enjoy!

Fudgy Chia Brownies

Even though I have 10 million cookbooks and food magazines, I always want more. I can't resist buying them. It's an addiction. I saw this magazine on healthy recipes by Better Home and Garden in the pharmacy in the building where I work and all the recipes looked so good, had to buy it. Pas de choix.

I decided to make these brownies to bring to a wine and cheese at friends'. I soaked the chia seeds as recommended and thought I'd be good to go. Unfortunately I didn't realize that I was missing several key things: sugar,  enough flour, and a brownie pan.. Remember what I said about how sometimes, the stars line up and you have all the ingredients?  Well other times, you just have to make due, or make something else.

Note to self: check that you have the ingredients before baking something the morning you need it, in a rush before work.- scratch that- stop baking in the morning before work. you won't have time, even if you have all the ingredients!

It turns out, I do have a brownie pan but I only found it after (of course!). Anyway, I decided to use this silicone pan from Epicure, "Perfect Petites" intended for small bars (granola bars etc). I hadn't ever tried it yet and it worked great.  Because they are non-stick, I didn't need to grease the an at all. So there really is no butter or oil in this recipe, which is pretty sweet!

I used brown sugar instead of white sugar- I substituted 1-1 but maybe there is a known ratio? Does anybody know?  And I used half all purpose flour and half almond flour..hey extra protein right?

They turned out well and were all eaten up.  Even my friends' little 1.5 year seemed to like them and ate several.

Cherry Pumpkpin Nut Bread

Hello!! It has been a while :) Spring is in the air and the sunshine just feels so nice.

My friend Daniele came to visit a few weeks ago for March break. She mostly came to see her little baby nephew, who is so cute, but I got to see her and hangout for a few days which was really nice. Why is BC so far?

Hi Daniele! 

Anyway, Daniele said she was thinking of getting a stand mixer but wasn't sure if she would use it. I suggested she pick a  bread recipe from my Kitchen Aid cookbook and I could show her how it works. Well, she ended up picking a recipe that had didn't even use the Kitchen Aid. Oops. And it isn't so much a bread in the normal bread sense but more of a bread in the almost cake-banana bread variety. It is still pretty healthy and tasted really good. It was one of those times where the stars just lined up and I had all the ingredients on hand..dried cherries.. pumpkin puree.. walnuts.. what are the chances?

Full disclosure Daniele pretty much made it on her own. I didn't help much as I was busy preparing a chicken to cook.. wow who are we? so domestic ;)

We couldn't stop eating this and it didn't last long. Daniele brought some over to her sis and cousin and fam and they all really liked it too.

The only disappointment for me was when I forgot it had dried cherries and not chocolate chips..They  really look like melted chocolate once cooked. Might try with chocolate next time.

CLIF Organic Trail Mix Bar

I discovered CLIF energy bars a few years ago and went nuts for them. I used to stock up on the various flavours and was sure to always keep one on hand for after yoga or before a workout. My brother in law would tease me. What long hike are you doing? How many miles did you bike? CLIF energy bars are great source of protein and provide energy for extreme athletes.

I  brought CLIF  Energy Bars with me on my hike through the alps.. 

A steep descent

 Shepherding these goats was hard work ;)

I  also brought CLIF energy bars with me when I went to China, in case we got hungry and needed fuel throughout the day. My friends were laughing at me, because 5 minutes of walking on the Great Wall of China and I said I needed to stop and eat a CLIF bar.  Hey- I definitely needed energy to climb all these stairs!

Juliet, A, D (back)  and me (front)

Looking a bit tired

So needless to say, I was thrilled to hear about CLIF Organic Trail Mix Bars. Good for any time and perfect for when you might want a lighter snack. They come in several flavours:

• Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter- these ones are my favourite! 
• Dark Chocolate Cherry Almond
• Dark Chocolate Pomegranate Raspberry
• Dark Chocolate Almond Sea Salt
• Coconut Almond Peanut

Notice a trend? As a chocolate lover, these flavours are right up my alley. I will forgive Clif Bar Company for having one flavour without chocolate. But only because it has coconut.  These bars are gluten free and don't contain oats. All the bars are Vegan and vegetarian.  

They retail for $1.99 and can be found in most major grocery stores and natural food stores such as Loblaws, Whole Foods, Sobeys, Wal-Mart, Longos, Safeway, Thrifty Foods, Save on Foods, Federated Coop, Calgary Coop, IGA, Costco, Shoppers Drug Mart, London Drugs, Rexall, Jean Coutu, most airports, Mac’s, Couche-Tard, Shell, Canadian Tire, 7 Eleven, Moutain Equipment Coop, Running Room, Sport Chek, Amazon.ca, Spud.ca.

For more information, check out the CLIF bar website. 

** Disclaimer: I was provided with CLIF bars for the purpose of doing this review. All opinions are my own.

COCONUT AND SEA BUCKTHORN RAW CHOCOLATE

So a couple of months ago a friend of mine A. came to visit me in Austria from London. I had just read up on these Arctic Power Berries and asked her to bring me one of each.

Of course I automatically wanted to make something with the powders and as you may or may not know my family loves chocolate, so what better thing to make than some yummy chocolate.

In the end I didn't spread out the liquid equally so some bits of my chocolate bar were very bitter whilst the other bits were nice and sweet :D

Here the recipe and some photos:

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cacao powder

3 tbsp honey or maple syrup

banana/coconut chips

 1 tbsp sea buckthorn powder (or cranberry or blueberry!)

add sea salt if you wish!

1. Melt the coconut oil in low heat and remove from the heat as soon as it is melted

2. Add the cacao powder and whisk until they are completely combined

3. Add honey/maple syrup, crushed banana/coconut chips, sea buckthorn powder (and sea salt if you wish!)

4. Pour the chocolate into moulds or on a baking sheet and let it set in the fridge for about 15 minutes

This recipe is fully vegan, gluten feee, raw and refined sugar free! (Yuhuu nice and healthy)

I ended chopping the chocolate up and adding bits to my müsli or yoghurts :) 

Here are the ingredients I used

This is what the melted chocolate looked like

This is what it looked like before I put it in the fridge, as I said not spread equally :/

All in all I was quite happy with the result, it's something I've never tried before but enjoyed making as it goes super quickly and is super easy to make :) I'll definitely try making this again in the near future! 

Dark Chocolate Whole Wheat Muffins

This past weekend I jetted off to Boston.. or more accurately, Somerville, to visit my sis and bro-in-law. The weather felt downright tropical after the -20 we have been having here. Ahh to feel the sun warming your skin- marvelous!

As my sister had an appointment in the morning, I met her by the T station near her place, and had a few minutes to peruse a cafe/bookstore while I waited for her to get there. I have so many cookbooks and yet I found myself in the cookbook aisle of the store and had to restrain myself.  I was drawn to this cookbook called "Seriously Delish" by Jessica Merchant. The recipes looked  seriously delicious but also pretty healthy and have quality, healthy ingredients.  Once Claire got there, we decided to try and make these muffins later in the day.

It was pretty funny, we picked  up some ingredients at the store that  Claire thought we might need: yogurt,dark chocolate and whole wheat flour. It turns out, Claire had all of these at home already. Hmm..Something tells me, E is the one doing most of the cooking. [ note: this was later confirmed by all the delicious meals E cooked for us while I was there... delicious salads, barbecued sausages, pancakes, eggs with mushrooms..mmm he is a great chef and whips meals up like it aint no thing.. Claire is a lucky lady.]

We didn't pick up a muffin tin however, and Claire didn't have one. E quickly went on amazon and ordered a silicon muffin tin. Alas, amazon is quick, but not THAT quick. So we decided to make this in the form of a cake- or, as it would turn out "Chocolate mess".

Well, let me tell you, this  mess definitely brought us to tears from laughing so hard. Sometimes, there is nothing better than baking with your sister!

Get all the ingredients out 

Start mixing

laughing

and crying

The texture wasn't quite what we expected..

what the heck? 

oh well, i'm sure it will still taste good

I recommend making these with moderately dark chocolate or bittersweet. We used a really very dark chocolate and I didn't find it sweet enough. My bro-in law, likes things not too sweet so he loved it. Also, we used whole wheat flour, but it would have been better with a whole wheat pastry flour. We ended up serving it in a bowl, topped with blueberry preserves. It would also be good crumpled in Greek yogurt.

Monday Muffins- Blueberry Banana

I know, I know, it's Tuesday. But Monday muffins sounded so much better. Besides, if you think of today as Monday, the weekend will come that much sooner!

I feel like muffins got a bad rep a few years ago, as all of a sudden people started saying that muffins were full of sugar and fat and were worse for you than donuts. I am prone to being influenced by these things and laid off muffins for quite some time. Although this may be true for store bought muffins (for example, say, triple chocolate muffins from Costco that are bigger than your face), home made muffins can be a lot healthier.

So,  I am back on the muffin bandwagon. And, they are super convenient for snacks. With my dad recovering from his knee surgery, I have been trying to make some regularly to bring over. This recipe is based on the Banana Berry Boms muffin recipe from the Looney Spoons Collection cookbook. Bill got it for me for me and I have been wanting to try more of the recipes. A friend recommended some recipes from it, so I got it off my shelf and now I have a whole bunch of recipes flagged to try.

I really like these leafy muffin wrappers ( thanks P) - perfect for fall! I believe they are from Michaels

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

So I'm home again, I had my wisdom teeth pulled and I'm bored which has got me baking some Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins mhmmmm..

I got the recipe off of twopeasandtheirpod.com, not following it fully as I never do and didn't have all the ingredients available..

So what you'll need is:
2/3 cup sugar
Grated zest and juice of one lemon (The lemon I used was too squishy and I wasn't to grate it so no zest for me..)
2 cups of Flour (this I sifted so it's nice and fluffy)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt 
3/4 cup sour cream or plain greek yogurt (I used greek yogurt)
2 large eggs (not sure mine were large, then again I do live in Europe and the sizes tend to be smaller here)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
113 grams unsalted butter
2 tablespoons poppy seeds


First off you're meant to mix the sugar with the zest, obviously that didn't work for me so I just mixed all the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt) together in one bowl and all the wet ones (melted butter, vanilla extract, eggs, greek yogurt and lemon juice) in another. WAIT with the POPPY SEEDS!! 

Then I added the liquid ingredients to the dry ones and mixed those together, when that was done I added the two spoons of poppy seeds and dished them out into the baking tray (I used cupcake cups as I don't have a baking tray spray thing) then I shoved them into the oven and voila.

The oven I preheated to 200°C and the muffins I put in for 13 minutes..

Twopeasandtheirpod.com also gives and icing recipe, not sure yet if I'll be using it or not but incase you're interested here it is:

1 cup sifted confectioners sugar
2-3 spoons lemon juice

You mix the two together and dribble it onto the muffins. 

Bonne Apetit!