Culinary Updates

Have I been cooking? Of course! And I've been taking pictures but have just been too busy to post them. It's winter, so I've got more time to cook. I also just got a cute new apron for Christmas from my friend Crystal, but I don't have a photo of that yet. I'll take some tomorrow as I cook Christmas dinner.

For Thanksgiving I went to my aunt's house in Arizona. I'm proud to say, the boys all liked my cranberry sauce (perfected last Thanksgiving) and they are not cranberry sauce people. It's the Cranberry Extraordinaire on Allrecipes.com. I would like to say that I come up with my own recipes but I don't. I just make other recipes well.

On my way home from Arizona, I got stranded in Denver due to weather in Medford. My uncle came and picked me up, and my aunt and I got to spend the next day roaming the streets of Boulder. We stopped in a really cool cooking store and since I couldn't take new pans and knives on the plane, I settled for a couple cookbooks. One of which was 50 Best Crepe recipes.

I don't cook with flour. It's far too close to baking. I don't bake. We won't get into that. So I was really surprised with how easy and healthy crepes could be. I got 100% whole wheat flour instead of white flour and used coconut oil instead of butter.

For the first crepes I simply added greek honey yogurt and sliced bananas. For how simple and healthy it was, it was so delicious! I also experimented with goat cheese and walnuts as well as almond butter, bananas and chocolate sauce. Amazing! You can go sweet or savory with crepes, simple or complex. And you can make them as healthy as you want!

Well being as I was getting into using flours, I naturally decided to attempt whole wheat flour tortillas, again with coconut oil in place of lard.

There was flour everywhere, but they turned out very soft and scrumptious. I ate a few while I cooked and then one thing led to another and next thing you know, I was eating homemade quesadillas. Delicious! What's really great is that both the tortillas and crepes can be made ahead of time and filled later, which makes life a little easier. Next on my list of flour foods is yeast free bread and pizza crust.

So today is Christmas Eve and I used one of my Christmas dinner recipes for lunch today, since I didn't have much else planned and needed some healthy food. I got this recipe off of Simply Recipes and it's called Golden Beet and Pomegranate Salad. I didn't have red wine vinegar so I used apple cider vinegar, and I replaced the Triple Sec with orange juice. I also substituted agave nectar for sugar and used no salt. It turned out so awesome! It's beautiful, simple and so flavorful!

For the white wine I used a Gewurztraminer which is pretty sweet. I also drank a glass (or two) with it.

On the menu for Christmas dinner is a Roast Leg of Lamb with a citrus rosemary marinade, Butternut Squash Apple Cranberry Bake and Wild Rice Cranberry Pecan Salad. All of these recipes actually came from Simply Recipes.