ACarroll Wellness Blog

Butternut Squash and Mushroom Risotto

 

Risotto is a wonderful dish to make on a cool, rainy day!  This recipe uses butternut squash for a great fall flavor.

 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1 Tb butter
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 3 cups (approximate) broth
• 2/3 cup pureed butternut squash
• 1/2 tsp Herbs de Provence
• salt and pepper

 Directions:

• Sautee the onions and mushrooms in the butter until soft.  Set aside.
• In a large pot, begin cooking the rice with 1 cup of broth, stirring frequently.  Add broth in 1/2 cup increments as needed until rice is done (about 30 minutes). 
• Stir in butternut squash, herbs, salt and pepper, onions, and mushrooms.

Enjoy! 

Pineapple Banana Smoothie

A cold and dreary day deserves a little sunshine!  

1 cup Greek yogurt

1 frozen banana

1/2 cup frozen pineapple

2 tsp chia seed oil (optional)

Coconut water 

Blend all ingredients in a good blender, adding coconut water until desired consistency is reached.

Lentil & Roasted Veggie Shepherd's Pie

I made this for dinner and it is definitely something I'll be adding to my regular menu!

 

Ingredients:

Mashed Potato Topping:

3 or 4 medium potatoes, cut into chunks

2 T butter

1/2 cup Greek yogurt

milk

salt and/or other seasonings

Shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Other ingredients:

1 cup cooked lentils (I used green lentils, but brown would be fine.These take about 20 minutes to cook, but could be done earlier in the day or even the day before.)

Veggie bouillon powder 

1 cup diced sweet potato

1 cup diced carrots

1 medium onion (cut in chunks)

3 or 4 peeled and coarsely chopped garlic cloves

grape seed oil

salt

thyme

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Toss the sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic with enough grape seed oil to coat.  Spread on a pan and sprinkle with salt and thyme.  Roast them until tender (about 30 minutes).

While the veggies are roasting, start your mashed potato topping.  Boil the diced potatoes just until you can put a fork in them. Drain and add the butter and Greek yogurt.  Mash the potatoes with a hand masher or a mixer, adding enough milk to make them creamy.  I like to add a 1/2 tsp of Wildtree's Onion and Chive seasoning to my potatoes. Set this aside.

Add about 1/2 cup of water and a teaspoon or so of the veggie bouillon powder to the lentils. Transfer the lentils to an oiled casserole dish.  Layer the roasted vegetable mixture on the lentils, then add the mashed potato topping over the vegetables.  Sprinkle with sharp cheddar cheese (optional). 

Bake at 350 degrees until bubbly (about 30 minutes).

A new way to enjoy Greek yogurt!

Sorry - no picture.  There was just not a way to make this look good for a picture!  I saw an idea on pinterest to take Greek yogurt and add peanut butter and chocolate chips........  Yum!  (just not pretty).

I took about 3-4 oz of plain Greek yogurt (my favorite is Fage 2%), mixed in about a table spoon of peanut butter, some semi-sweet chocolate chips and a little drizzle of honey.  Mix well.  It is VERY tasty, and I will make it again EXCEPT instead of the chocolate chips, I'd like to try a bit of raw cacao powder!

Try it!

More Bread!

I have a friend who is having some trouble with her sourdough baking and she asked me if I would show her pictures of all the steps. So, here it is for her and for you, too, if you are a 'visual' person!  I used this recipe with a slight change in flours.  For the below loaf, the flour mixture was 3/4 cup fresh milled soft wheat, 1/2 cup oat flour, and 1 3/4 cup AP. I've labeled the pictures to make it easier.

Sweet Potato & Kale Pizza

Last week my CSA box contained sweet potatoes and kale (among other things). I decided to make one of my favorite things for lunch: Sweet Potato Pizza.

This is such an easy thing to make.

You will need:

• Thinly sliced sweet potato (I used a mandolin on the thinnest setting.)
• Thin sliced onion
• Kale 
• Olive oil 
• Italian seasoning 
• Pita bread (or pizza crust)
• Cheese (I used feta this time, but I usually use whatever I have.)

Mix your onion, sweet potato, and kale with some olive oil to coat. Arrange the vegetables on the pita bread, sprinkle with Italian seasoning and a bit of salt. Add your cheese and bake in a 350 degree oven until cheese is melted and potatoes are tender. Enjoy!

Soup: Squash & Pumpkin

Last night was 'clean out the refrigerator' night.   I had some left over pureed butternut squash and pumpkin that I had used in different recipes last week and a piece of red onion.  I chopped up the onion super-fine (if you have gastroparesis and don't tolerate onion, just leave it out) and tossed it into a pot with some minced garlic and olive oil.  I sauteed that until the onion was translucent and then added my squash and pumpkin (there was more squash than pumpkin).  I added vegetable broth until it was the consistency that I like and added some salt. I served it with a dollop of greek yogurt and a slice of sourdough bread!  It was yummy!

My weekend: Sourdough Pretzels and Apple filling

My boys came home from college for the weekend.  I didn't have any pressing activities, so the weekend was free to do things that we enjoy doing.  I've wanted to try this sourdough pretzel recipe.  This is a very time consuming recipe, but the pretzels turned out very good!  If I ever make them again, I won't bother 'shaping' them into pretzel shapes, as that was the most time consuming! 

Then the boys both helped me make apple pie filling.  I still have quite a few apples from our apple picking trip a couple of weeks ago and need to get them processed (although apples do last a long time refrigerated).  I made a cinnamon simple syrup first:

2 1/2 cups white sugar

2 cups sucanat

10 cups water

1 tsp salt

1 cup tapioca or potato starch (I don't use cornstarch for anything!)

2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

3 Tb lemon juice (I used the juice of one lemon)

Put everything except the lemon juice into a large pot and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until thick and bubbly - stir in the lemon juice.    I took my sliced and peeled apples and put them into quart jars and poured the syrup over the apples, leaving about an inch of room in the jar.  Put the lids on and into the freezer!  I had a lot of syrup left over, so I'll probably be making some apple pies and cobblers with the fresh apples still in the fridge.  I guess my husband will just have to suffer!    The next time I make this, I will use all sucanat and skip the white sugar altogether.

 

The weekend ended with me whipping up a quick loaf of gluten-free pumpkin bread for the boys to take back to school with them.  I use this recipe for my gf pumpkin bread and you would never know it was gluten free!

Breakfast

As many of you know, I don't like to 'discard' any sourdough starter.  By keeping my starter in the fridge, I'm able to feed it every other day (or even every three days), but eventually, the jar starts to get full and you need to bake with it!  I'm always looking for recipes that use starter other than bread.  So I tried these sourdough muffins.  The recipe is for blueberry muffins, but I put shredded apple in mine instead.  The recipe comes from this website.

 

 

Ingredients:

1 C “discarded” sourdough starter
1 C whole wheat flour (sift flour prior to measuring)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (optional) and/or other spices
1/4 C melted coconut oil or melted butter
1/2 C honey
1 tsp baking soda
~1/2 C blueberries 

Method:

Combine sourdough starter and whole wheat flour. Once the two are thoroughly combined, cover the dough with plastic wrap ensuring that none of it is exposed to the air. Let sit at room temperature for at least seven hours.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Prepare a muffin pan with papers or grease the cups.

In a separate bowl, mix together all other ingredients except for blueberries and baking soda. Add those ingredients to the dough in the mixer’s bowl and mix together. Once all the ingredients are mixed and have come together as a batter, sprinkle the baking soda in the bowl and mix batter again briefly to incorporate. Fold in blueberries and scoop batter into prepared muffin pan.

Bake for 20 min. Makes 8-12 muffins.

 

The muffins were good, I thought they were a bit on the 'oily' side. So if I make them again, I will reduce the oil.  You do need to remember to start these the night before you want to make them (as is typical with most sourdough recipes).  I also made some yummy juice to go with my muffins:  peach, apple, cucumber and spinach juice!  (I typically just juice whatever is in the fridge!)

Sourdough Banana Bread

I found this recipe on the internet......... I found it several places, so I think it's okay to post it:

 

1/3 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup mashed banana
1 cup sourdough starter
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp vanilla or 1 tsp grated orange rind

Cream together the shortening and sugar, add egg, and mix until blended. Stir in bananas and sourdough starter. Add orange rind or vanilla. Sift flour, measure again with salt, baking powder, and soda. Add flour mixture and walnuts to the first mixture, stirring just until blended. Pour into greased 9x5" loaf pan. Bake in moderate or 350 oven for 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool before slicing.

 

 

This is some of the best banana bread I've eaten, and I'll be making it again............soon!  I modified it slightly, I used butter instead of shortening and I would have liked to have used sucanat instead of sugar, but I'm out until my co-op order goes in. So, I subbed 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup honey and I didn't use nuts because those aren't gastroparesis friendly!  I think this might work well with a gluten free flour mix, too!  If you try it, let me know how you like it!