Life, Gluten Free

Strawberry Pudding

Sophie isn't allergic to strawberries anymore so I knew I had to make a strawberry pudding! My family loved this pudding and it's super easy to make. It didn't last long. Organic strawberries are starting to come into the stores at a great price so we will have to come up with a strawberry popsicle recipe soon too.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dates

3 cup strawberries

2 small avocados 

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon coconut oil

3 tablespoons maple syrup

2 tablespoons coconut cream

Directions:

Soak the dates in hot water until soft and then discard the water.

Add all ingredients to the food processor and blend until smooth and creamy!

Refrigerate until the pudding is cool and serve with strawberry slices :)

How to Make Fruit Leather

Last Summer we made fruit leather and we are at it again! Fruit leather is simple to make and super fun / easy for kids to help. Sophie loves making fruit leather!

This time we made apple fruit leather with local organic apples. We made one batch with apple and one batch with apple and banana. Sophie prefers the addition of the banana.

There are a couple of ways to make fruit leather, including using your oven. That's not what I do though. We have an excalibur dehydrator. This keeps the oven free for other things and also doesn't heat up the house.

You can use pretty much any type of fruit you want. We've made peach leather and plum leather. I think blueberry fruit leather would be good too, we might have to try that next.

So here's how we do it. We blend fruit with a little lemon juice (helps the fruit not brown) and then spread it onto our dehydrator sheets. We turn our dehydrator on about 105 degrees fahreinheit and it takes about 10 hours. You know when the fruit leather is done because it easily peels up off the sheets and doesn't stick.

Another easy treat to make with your dehydrator is banana chips. Sophie also enjoys helping make those! I think making fruit leather is the perfect activity to transition from Summer to Autumn.

Cake Bars with Plum Icing

Some foods look nearly too good to eat.

Enter these Cake Bars with Plum Icing.

So pink and pretty that you just want to keep taking pictures.

Or maybe that's just me.

Sophie on the other hand, was more than willing to eat them *right away*

Yep. They are that good.

Cake Bars with Plum Icing

makes about 14 bars

no: gluten, grains, dairy, eggs, soy, nuts, sesame

Ingredients:

2 cups finely shredded coconut

3 tablespoons maple syrup

3 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice

2 tablespoons coconut cream (directly from jar, not melted)

Icing Ingredients:

2 black plums (the ones with deep red inside, and black skin)

2 tablespoons coconut cream (directly from jar, not melted)

2 tablespoons maple syrup

2 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice

Directions:

Gather all the ingredients for the cake bars and add to a food processor.

Process until well mixed.

Using a spatula, transfer the batter into a rectangular stoneware or glass pan (not greased).

Pat the batter down with the spatula, distributing it evenly in the pan.

Allow to chill in the refridgerator (uncovered) while you make the icing.

To make the icing, slice the plums to remove the pits and add all the ingredients to the food processor.

Blend until everything is well mixed - including the coconut cream (there may be a few specks, no worries, it hardens and looks pretty and speckled).

Use a spatula to spread a nice layer of the icing onto your cake bars.

Cover and refridgerate for several hours until chilled and firm (it took about 3 hours for me).

Slice into bars (if too firm, leave out for a few minutes before cutting).

Serve and enjoy!

FAQ: We buy our coconut products from Tropical Traditions and highly recommend their coconut cream concentrate, shredded coconut and coconut oil :)

No-Bake Fruit Pie

I have the perfect no-bake fruit pie for 4th of July! With record breaking temperatures around the country, who wants to turn on the oven unless you have to?

I got the inspiration from Heather at Gluten-Free Cat. She posted a recipe for Raw Mango Banana Pie, but it had an almond crust. I decided to make a few changes to the fruit pie filling and use my coconut nut-free crust recipe.

It came out so well, we loved it!

 

No-Bake Fruit Pie

Ingredients:

Crust:

1/2 cup raisins

1 1/2 cups coconut flakes

1 tablespoon coconut oil

Pie Filling:

1 tablespoon lime juice

3 bananas 

1 mango

1 nectarine

Preparation:

Start by making the pie crust. Add ingredients to a food processor and process until it's a cookie crumb consistency.

Add crust to a pie dish and press down with your fingers and/or a spatula.

Let the crust chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or so, and begin to make the filling.

Add lime juice to a bowl.

Chop banana, mango and nectarine into small chunks.

Add to the lime juice and mix well.

When the crust is chilled, add the fruit filling.

Sprinkle with coconut flakes if desired.

Serve chilled. 

 

 

 

Have a wonderful and safe holiday!

Mango Guacamole

Some of my favorite foods include avocado, mango, banana, homemade french fries, coconut macaroons, mashed potatoes and sauteed spinach. 

Maybe not all together at the same time, of course. But then again.. why not? Sounds good to me.

But back to the mango guacamole. Who wants some? 

I didn't put tomatoes in the guacamole, because my daughter and my husband are both not eating tomatoes. I put some in a smaller bowl for me, but honestly you don't need the tomato. It's just as good without it.

I also didn't have any cilantro, since I didn't plan ahead for this recipe. Too bad. I love cilantro! If you have some, add a tablespoon of freshly chopped cilantro and you'll be happy.

Ingredients:

5 avocados

1 cup mango, peeled & diced

1/4 cup onion, diced

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

Mash the avocadoes in a bowl. I use a potato masher, but you can also use a fork or spoon.

Add diced onion, diced mango, lemon juice, and a dash of sea salt.

Mix well and serve!

Sophie likes to eat it with plantain chips, cucumber sticks and carrot sticks. I'm also partial to it along side a plate of fried beet & potato hash (cooked in coconut oil).

Orange Fig Bars

These fig bars that I made for New Years were such a hit, that we polished them off quickly. Sophie ate most of them herself. They are similar to my Apricot Fig bars, but they contain just fig instead of the added raisins. Sophie likes the apricot fig bars, but not as much as she does these Orange Fig Bars. She said the apricot fig bars are "too sweet" and these fig bars, without the raisins, are "just right."

I love them both, and my opinion is that the apricot fig bars are heavier and taste very much like fig newtons, which I used to love to eat. The orange fig bars are also tasty, but taste a bit more fruity and light.

Orange Fig Bars

2 cups dried black mission figs

11 tablespoons fresh squeeze minneola orange juice (or any orange)

2 tablespoon coconut oil (softened room temp)

shredded coconut

Directions:

I like to rinse my figs off first for good measure, and be sure to trim off the stems

Add just the figs to food processor and begin to blend the figs

Once mixed well, add the orange juice and coconut oil

Blend again until thoroughly mixed and there are no chunks of figs (it will be like a fig paste)

In a square dish, pour in some shredded coconut (I didn't measure, maybe about 1/2 cup)

Scrape the fig bar mixture into the square dish

Using the spatula and/or your hands, mx and "knead" into the shredded coconut

The fig mixture itself is sticky, but once coated with the shredded coconut it will be easy to work with

Pat down into the square dish, cover and place in refridgerator

Serve after they firm (at least 30 minutes).

We buy our black mission figs from Made In Nature, they are gluten-free and nut-free. Because we go through so many, we purchase the 32 ounce bags (sold exclusively at Costco stores). You can find the smaller bags  at your local natural grocery store or Amazon.com

Need shredded coconut too? We buys our in bulk from Tropical Traditions.

Sophie has already requested another batch of these, so I better get to work! I am thinking of other variations too. They make a healthy and quick snack to grab.

How to make a good smoothie 101

We really love smoothies in our house, especially green smoothies.

To make a great smoothie, you really just need a few ingredients. For added nutrition, we like to add some type of green vegetable to our smoothies. Spinach is an excellent choice for smoothies, but often times we also use kale. The smoothie pictured in this post had kale in it from our CSA.

The key is to have a good balance of green vegetable and sweet fruit so that you end up with a smoothie that will satisfy even the most picky palate. Our smoothies have been kid tested and parent approved. We've even shared our smoothies with those that aren't used to eating anything green (basically!), and gotten a thumbs up.

So once you have your greens in hand with a sense of power and excitemet to be making your family a nutrition-packed drink that will no doubt make them jump up from the kitchen table and do every chore in the house with lightning speed, you must remember the crucial greens-to-fruit ratio. Basically, you want a bit more fruit than greens. 

It helps to have a basic smoothie recipe. You can check out our green smoothie recipe to get a better idea of what makes a good smoothie. After you make it a time or two, then you can start tweaking the recipe to make a variety of smoothies. We often add mango, peaches, frozen grapes, plums, etc. You can double the ingredients to make more. We usually make a smoothie for the day in our largest vitamix container. And we don't always use coconut water, the majority of the time we simply just use water.

My daughter Sophie loves green smoothies so much that if I forget to make one, she reminds me!

The other day I made one for myself with our small tribest "personal blender" that doesn't make very much,. Sophie had already had one earlier, so I thought she probably wouldn't want more.

Boy was I ever wrong.

Sophie: "Is that a green smoothie?"

Me: "Yes....." (I just knew where this was going!)

Me: "Do you want some?"

Sophie: "Yes!"

So, I devy it up and give her about half.

Sophie: "Is that all?"

Me: "Well...yes...but I can make more."

Sophie: "like, a lot?"

I made another. :)

Apricot Fig Bars

"It's not a cookie, mother, it's a fruit newton!"

If you get that reference, then you probably ate fig newtons as a kid like I did. I ate them with my dad and we would often imitate the popular fig newton commercial (at the time) where a young man told his mom that he wasn't eating a cookie, but a fig newton.

Well I certainly don't eat fig newtons anymore, but after I made these I realized that I just created a smashing gluten-free version of a fig newton. Better yet, no baking is involved. Who wants to turn on their oven when it's 90 degrees outside anyway? Right?

All you need is some dried fruit and a food processor. Basically.

Below, in the recipe, I note that you can use coconut cream or coconut oil. I have tried both and they work fine. I mean, I haven't made about 5 or 6 batches of these over the past few weeks.....

....Okay, I have... but that's just because I was testing the recipe to make sure it came out right each time.  At least, that's what I tell myself.

Coconut cream is a great choice because it adds to the flavor more than coconut oil, but if you don't have it on hand then do not worry. Simply replace it with coconut oil and you are good to go.

Also, my first version of these contains just fig and raisin (no apricot). That works extremely well too. If you want to do that, just add more raisin and leave out the apricot!

Make them. Eat them. Share them.

Apricot Fig Bars

no: gluten, grains, dairy, eggs, nuts, soy

Ingredients:

2 cups soaked figs (calimyrna or black mission)

1 cup raisins, well packed

1/2 cup apricots, lightly soaked

2 tablespoons lemon or orange juice (fresh)

4 tablespoons coconut flour

1 tablespoon coconut cream or coconut oil (room temp, soft but not completely melted)

shredded coconut

Directions:

Soak the figs overnight in water (or, if in a hurry - simply soak in hot water for about 10 minutes)

Lightky soak the apricots in hot water for 5-10 minutes

Do not soak the raisins, just measure them and add to food processor

Drain the water and add figs and apricots to the food procsesor

Place the rest of the ingredients, except for the coconut flour, into the food processor and begin to blend

One well combined, add the coconut flour and blend until thoroughly mixed

Add some shredded coconut to the bottom of a rectangular glass dish

Using a spatula, scrape the fig filling into the glass dish (don't try to spread it yet)

Since it's rather sticky, the best way to spread it is to simply add some more shredded on top and it will spread easily into the rectangular dish (or coat your spatula with coconut oil, that will make it not stick too!)

Garnish with more shredded coconut and place in the fridge, covered, for a few hours

Cut into bar size pieces and serve!

Better yet, eat them on a lazy Saturday morning just because!

Yum.

Perfectly Green Smoothie

My friend Debbie, over at The Gluten-Free Dish, recently posted a recipe for her Energizing Spring Smoothie. It got me thinking about one of our favorite - and simple - green smoothies.

And green it is, perfectly so. Green happens to be my favorite color, but that's not the real reason we like this smoothie so much. It tastes good, with just the right amount of spinach for a good helping of Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Folate.

Green Smoothie

a generous heaping handful of organic spinach

1 organic banana

1/2 - 1 cup of coconut juice

Add to a blender and process until it's completely liquified.

Serves 1 adult and 1 kid, double for a larger crowd!

**We also like to add fresh orange juice to this smoothie recipe!

Warning: side effects may include, but are not limited to, a green moustache

A Grain-Free Diet

Some people with Celiac Disease find that being gluten-free is not quite enough for them to feel completely healthy again and symptom free. Our daughter's doctor told us that when Celiac Disease was first discovered, it was recommended that you eat a completely grain-free diet, not just a diet that was void of gluten found in wheat, rye, barley, etc. 

Since our daughter still experiences some eczema, we've decided to adapt a grain-free diet to see if that alleviates her symptoms further. 

Here are some of the products that we've added to her diet. It was not as hard as I thought. My first fear was that she'd ask for brown rice noodles but we quickly solved that dilemma! Now she doesn't ask. That might tell you something. Often times, once you eliminate a particular food from your diet, you then realize that it didn't really agree with you in the first place.

She's been off of grains for about a month, and her skin is looking pretty great! We are pleased. And since I started to write this post a while ago, I can now say that the transition to grain-free has been very easy. She loves the new noodles and she really, really loves the coconut wraps and calls them "flatbread."

Coconut Wraps: (pictured above)

Pure Wraps are heaven. They smell so, so good. They are made in a nut-free, gluten-free facility. They hold together well. You can cram them with avocado, homemade pickles, lettuce and olives (that's Sophie's favorite combo).

Grain-free Noodles:

These miracle noodles are a hit. They may not be just like rice noodles, but Sophie likes them all the same. I even used them for chicken noodle soup and it was a win!

*This post is purely my opinion on these products that we've found to work well for us, I did not receive any free products from the companies listed above. We just love them!

I'll leave you with a photo of my daughter eating a pizza that we made using the coconut wraps as a crust. It was a major win.