Fresh Salsa

I was at Fred Meyer last week and they were having a cooking demo to try to sell me on a nifty product that chops stuff up and makes life oh so simple. Anyway, the lady doing the demo threw together this salsa in like two minutes. It was so good! I almost paid $30 for the cheap plasticy product she was selling. Instead I just bought the ingredients I saw her use, came home, and made myself some salsa with a good old fashioned knife. Mine was almost as good as hers! And it took me longer to make but it was still easy and delicious.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 of a yellow bell pepper
• 1 roma tomato
• 1/2 of an onion
• handful of chopped cilantro (cutting it in with your shears works nicely)
• Big squeeze of a fresh lime
• a snip of a hot pepper (optional, I didn't do this)


Chop up vegetables and cilantro and combine them in a bowl. Squeeze in the lime and stir it all up. Scoop with some chips and enjoy the super fresh flavor!

• 

As you can see this recipe doesn't make much. I was worried mine wouldn't work out so I didn't make much for starters. It did work though and even my youngest two kiddos enjoyed it!

Fiber energy bars

Yes, I tried yet another fiber recipe. It also turned out good, which is why I'm posting about it, but my kids still don't really care for it. However, after trying all these things using all whole wheat, I think I can now start making bread using 100% whole wheat. At least my kids love my wheat bread, although I've never done it with all whole wheat before. I recently switched to hard white wheat instead of hard red, and we like it a whole lot better.

Anyway, the recipe for these bars I found here, but I think you could very well use your own basic bread recipe to do this. I never would have figured that you can just use a basic whole wheat bread recipe and turn it into fiber bars, but they have instructions for how to do just that, along with a bunch of other fun ideas, if you scroll down the page a ways. I'm not going to re post the recipe here because I followed it pretty much exactly except I had no wheat gluten or lecithin however I did use the optional egg which I believe has lecithin in the yolk? Oh, and I omitted the salt, but that's just because I was using salted peanuts. I even ground some flax seed in my blender and it actually worked! I've never dared do that before.

So Mom, you can try some when you get here, I have plenty! By themselves they are a little bland unless you bite into a raisin or something. Kind of like eating a plain piece of raisin bread. They aren't very sweet. They would be delicious with butter and honey on top. This morning I used two of them to make an egg sandwich for breakfast and it was delicious. This is a recipe I will definitely use again. I think it will grow on my kids. Oh speaking of my kids, for two of them I told them it was a bagel and spread cream cheese on it and they ate it.

Delicious fiber packed blueberry muffins!

I have found a truly amazingly delicious healthy enough for my standards recipe! I am excited to share this. I tried it today, and one of my kids gobbled one down, so I think we are making progress. The other two kids just took little nibbles, but that's to be expected. It sounds too healthy to be tasty and I don't think I would have tried it except for all the great reviews but they are delicious! So, here is my adaptation of this recipe from allrecipes:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup wheat bran

1/4 cup quick cooking oats

1/4 cup wheat germ (I think that's what I used, but I'm not sure because it was from an unlabeled bag in my cupboard)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup blueberries

1 banana mashed

1 cup buttermilk (I used 1 cup milk and 1 tsp lemon juice)

1 egg

1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract (oops, I guess I forgot to put this in)

Mix dry ingredients first, then add the blueberries. Then mix wet ingredients and add them all to the dry ones. Fill muffin tins all the way to the top. Bake at 350 for 15-18 min or until top springs back when touched.

Next time I make these (which will be very soon) I will use craisins instead of blueberries. My daughter thought she wanted blueberry because she likes blueberry bagels (probably made with imitation blueberries) but she didn't like the big gooey bluberry blobs in this. I think she will really like it with craisins though and I think the craisins will help soak up a bit of the moisture and dry them out a bit as they were quite moist. I really really liked them, although you wouldn't want to gobble down the whole batch yourself.

Worst looking, best tasting

This moring I made the ugliest most vile looking smoothie you ever saw. It was dark greenish brown and I tried to take a picture for you but my camera is acting up. But it tasted awesome! So I wanted to share the ingredients:

Frozen rasberries

a banana

big spoonful of orange juice concentrate

about 1 cup of water

tons of spinach

and some ice cubes

Oh yeah, and some soy protein powder

This is the first time I've been daring enough to make a smoothie with water instead of milk or yogurt, and I actually liked it even more!

Also, yesterday I made some 100% whole wheat pretzels. It's the first time I've made something with all whole wheat before and they turned out very yummy. To me anyway. My kids for some reason won't really touch them. I was hoping they would love them. So the search is still on for a high fiber snack they will love (besides apples). I used this recipe here. If I do happen to make these again, I will use water or almond milk in place of the milk, and olive oil inside them in place of the butter. They weren't exactly super healthy except for being packed with whole wheat.

Homemade Granola Bars

Here's a recipe for homemade granola bars that I just tried:

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup coconut oil or other oil

1 cup oatmeal

1 cup combination of things like coconut, sunflower seeds, wheat germ, dried fruit, and maybe even chocolate chips

Melt peanut butter, honey and oil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and add the oatmeal, then stir in the rest of the ingredients. Spread in an 8x8 pan and refrigerate for 2 hours or more, then cut into bars.

I just put it together, and it is quite tasty. For the 1-cup combination of other ingredients, I used coconut, sunflower seeds, raisins and wheat germ. Some of my ingredients have been in the cupboard for a while and taste a little old, but it is still good. Oh, and I stirred in a few chocolate chips as well. It works for me!

Ellen