Fix Me A Snack

Not too long ago, Serious Eats was kind enough to share a recipe from Thomas Keller’s cookbook Ad Hoc at Home. I have been looking at roasted nuts recipes for a while now and was feeling a little overwhelmed. But Keller’s recipe for Candied Pecans is everything I was looking for. The honey is roasted along with the nuts so it is hardened; my husband does not enjoy nuts that get his hand all greasy. In addition, the amount of honey is small. Therefore, the nuts aren’t converted into sugar bombs. Lastly, and most importantly in my book, the nuts are roasted a long time at a low temperature. From what I gather, this makes for a crispier nut.

Keller’s recipe calls for pecans only. While I used a mix of cashews and pecans just for kicks, I’m planning on going with only pecans next time. They are utterly flakey and smooth. If I close my eyes, it feels like I’m eating a croissant.

1 1/2 cup raw pecans
1-1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1/8 teaspoon salt, plus more to finish

Preheat oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

Spread nuts out on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 5-7 minutes. Transfer warm nuts to a medium bowl. Quickly drizzle the honey and salt over the nuts and stir until they are well coated.

Return the coated  nuts to the parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, rotating once. I took them out of the oven when it smelled like the honey was starting to caramelize – a tiny bit smokey.

Remove the nuts from the oven, sprinkle on a pinch of salt, and quickly separate any clumps as the honey will harden as the nuts cool. Allow to cool completely and serve. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week.

Yield: 1 1/2 cups nuts (easily doubled)
Prep time: 5 minutes
Bake time: 1 1/2 hours

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A friend of mine emailed yesterday asking what I knew about soy. She had read that it might inhibit nutritent absorbtion and contain harmful levels of isoflavones (a.k.a. phytoestrogens). I tried to find some answers to this question a while back and came up with nothing conclusive.

Should I be recoiling in fear when I pull this container of tofu out of my refrigerator? I did another quick search today and here’s what I came up with:

From the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Soy fact sheet (updated Mar 2008) including Side Effects and Cautions. Sounds like soy supplements might be a bad idea, but otherwise generally okay.

From Nutrition Data Blog (which I find to be a seemingly grounded and balanced source of nutrition information) I found two articles cautioning against labeling soy as an evil food: Phytoestrogens: Helpful or harmful? and Soy isn’t affecting men’s hormone levels…but something is.

For those of you who need even more (!)…from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is a summary report on the Effects of Soy on Health Outcomes (Aug 2005). I gave it a skim and it seems to sing the same tune: not enough conclusive evidence at this time.

Now if you enjoy freaking yourself out with non-mainstream approaches to medicine and nutrition, you’ll probably have other sources of information saying radically different things. But it looks to me like soy is basically okay as far as my family goes. Next year I’ll probably have an entirely different approach or hopefully none at all.

Turns out you can have a delicious smoothie and sneak some tofu into your diet. I started experimenting with this because tofu contains a bit of Iron, and Vitamin C boosts the absorption of said Iron. So this seems like an easy way to get a little extra Iron into our low-meat diet. Miraculously, my kids loved it.

 

1/2 cup silken tofu
1 medium ripe banana
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

Put the tofu, banana, strawberries, blueberries, and maple syrup in a blender and puree until smooth. Serve.

Yield: 2 cups
Prep-time: 10 minutes

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Whenever I eat guacamole, I feel like it might be okay to become a vegan someday.  The creamy goodness an avocado imparts is right up there with cheese and butter in my book. 

For more “authentic” guacamole, omit the beans, chop the cilantro, and mash all the ingredients up with a fork.

 

1 small clove garlic, peeled and chopped fine
1/3 cup canned cannelli beans, rinsed (optional)
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ripe hass avocados, pits and skins removed

Place the garlic, beans, lime juice, cilantro, cumin, salt, and avocados in the bowl of a food processor. Cover and process until smooth, about 30 seconds. Serve with tortilla or pita chips. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Press a piece of plastic wrap on top of the dip to keep browning to a minimum.

Yield: 1 1/4 cups
Prep-time: 10 minutes

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How to make Pizzadillas ! from Ohdeedoh.

Spicy, crispy kale chips from Nutrition to Kitchen

When the less nutritious choice is right from It’s Not About Nutrition

How far do we need to go to avoid processed foods? from NutritionData.com

Healthy & Delicious: Three-Ingredient Banana, Honey, and Peanut Butter Ice Cream from Serious Eats. Nutrition as Nature Intended has a similar recipe for Five Spice Banana Cream.

Instead of welcoming my child with a cookie when she comes home from school, she gets raw veggies. It’s a bit sneaky, but she’s starving most of the time when she gets home so she’ll eat anything.

In my defense, I’d like to point out that my youngest would not even think about eating her dinner (which is only an hour or so away at this point) if we had any other sort of snack. Heck, half the time she fills up on crudites, but I’m alright with that.

Anyway, my point here is twofold: a) Buy whole organic carrots and peel them. Their taste is vastly superior to “baby” carrots. b) We don’t eat fancy snacks all the time. Fruits and veggies are actually the backbone of our snack diet.

On a side note, my three-year-old started “making recipes” yesterday. Here she is writing out all the ingredients for her “recipe”. The great part is that she actually expects me to get cookin’ after she’s written it all down.

 

Here we have a chocolate meringue with fresh whipped cream and crushed strawberries – a mini pavlova. 

As I was preparing the meringues, my husband was kind enough to tell me they look like pertrified dog poop. So I guess this snack doesn’t score a 10 for presentation, but the kids didn’t seem bothered in the least.

This recipe is substantially lower in sugar than any other pavlova recipe I’ve seen.  It’s a relatively light snack all around, except for the whipped cream. But you can’t not have the whipped cream.

 For the meringue:

3 egg whites
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1 ounce dark chocolate, chopped very fine

For the whipped cream:

1/2 cup heavy cream
1-2 tablespoons sugar

For the strawberries:

6 frozen strawberries (about 1/3 cup), thawed
1/2 teaspoon sugar

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a standing electric mixer, whip the egg whites, sugar, cocoa powder, and vinegar on medium-high speed until semi-stiff peaks form. Gently fold in the chocolate pieces with a rubber spatula. Spoon the meringue mixture onto a parchment-lined baking sheet about a 1/3 cup at a time. Create a heart shape, if desired.

Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until outer shell has formed and the meringues are not terribly difficult to remove from the parchment. Allow to cool on the pan.

Meanwhile, make your whipped cream by pouring the heavy cream and sugar into a bowl and beating it with an electric mixer until peaks form. If it’s an especially hot day, put the bowl in the freezer for a while before you begin. Store the whipped cream an airtight container in the refrigerator until the meringues are ready.

Meanwhile, drain any excess liquid off the strawberries. Crush the berries and sugar in a small bowl with a fork until they are broken down. Cover and keep at room temperature until the meringues are ready.

To assemble simply place a dollop of whipped cream on top of each meringue and top with 1-2 teaspoons of crushed strawberries. Serve immediately.

Yield: 10 mini heart-shaped pavlovas
Prep-time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 1 1/2 hours

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My first-grader has her 100th day of school coming up. The teachers turn the day into one big party about the number 100. So I thought we could do our part at home and make a snack in honor of the day. We happened to have some chocolate candies, raisins, pretzels and Os cereal. We got them all out and counted out 100 pieces of each ingredient (give or take).

At school, they’re also doing some work with measurements in Math. So we chatted briefly about which ingredient would make the longest row and so on. But mostly it was fun to gather it all up. I think I’ve got school snack covered for next week now!

This snack is inspired by the Salad Bars recipe in Julie Van Rosendaal’s cookbook Grazing. If you’re feeling extra fancy, top them with some vanilla greek-style yogurt!

1 cup white whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon ketchup or tomato paste
1 cup grated zucchini
1/2 cup grated carrot
1/2 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a mini muffin pan and set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, and ketchup. Pour the flour mixture into the bowl and stir to combine. Add the zucchini, carrot and raisins and stir until evenly distributed.

Transfer batter to mini muffin pan, filling each cup approximately 3/4 full. Bake on the center rack of the oven for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Yield: 24 mini muffins
Prep-time: 20 minutes
Bake-time: 15 minutes

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