simone – Page 10 – OwlCat Designs

August 12, 2012December 16, 2017

Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins

I wanted to ~~make~~ eat something sweet, desert, something baked, with that slight crunch when you bite it, so chocolate or ice cream was out… muffins, maybe. But i really needed to make breakfast. So in order to consolidate those two goals, it had to be at least somewhat on the healthy side, like cake was out. After some pondering and some back and forth I decided on blueberries and oatmeal. Oatmeal had to be in there due to its breakfast-y-ness and well, it’s also kinda good for you, or so I am told 😉

My first attempt was a fat-free (besides what was in the egg) version. Well let’s just say they, we don’t talk about those around here anymore… Happy to say that by attempt two I was cured of that idea and came up with these, a low sugar blueberry muffin.

I know many of you folks are looking for low fat versions, and fret not, I am going to figure it out a good one that works soon, I am not giving up that easy. Just be wary of anything at the store that’s labeled fat free or low fat. That claim to fame is usually pretty short lived when you look at the facts. Pretty much all store bought items that are low in fat automatically are high in something else (sugar to name the least offensive option).

Ingredients

1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour*
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar or maple syrup or agave nectar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 to 1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

*use less liquid if you are using all purpose flour

Directions

Preheat oven to 350º F
Prepare a standard muffin tin with cupcake liners, set aside.
Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside.
In a medium bowl, beat butter until soft, add sugar and stir until incorporated, then add the eggs, add the milk and vanilla extract.
Add the wet ingredients you just mixed up to the dry ingredients and stir just until mixed, then add the blueberries and gently fold into the dough.
Divide among the prepared muffin cups and bake until golden and a toothpick tester comes out clean, 20-24 minutes.
Let cool in the muffin pan on a rack for 20 minutes before removing the muffins.

Makes 12

August 8, 2012December 16, 2017

Grilled Rosemary Focaccia

Craving bread is what I remember when I first moved to the United States, the kind of bread I had taken for granted back home. I seems that when you’ve only lived in a very limited part of the world, you automatically assume, everyone in the western world does things the same way, including breakfast. I had been to Asia and knew that in some eastern cultures anything goes for breakfast (Remind me to write about this awesome rice soup I had in Thailand sometime), but I guess I somehow figured that the western cultures, namely central Europe and the US, where very similar and it came as a surprise to find that in my new home, no, there was no bread to be found. 🙁

In Switzerland, a normal breakfast is bread. Slices of crusty bread, with butter, meat, cheese or homemade jams, or delicate buns or croissants. Depending on the day of week, the region, your mood or the time of year there are countless variations on the theme of bread (oh yeah, there are some awesome pastries too). And when I first moved here, I could not handle eggs for breakfast, just couldn’t stomach it in the morning and I was looking for bread. By now, luckily there are bakeries that offer ‘artisan’ breads and it’s possible to get similar items in many grocery stores across the country, but for the first few years (and I did not live in a large metropolis), it was me trying to recreate breads to glimpse a taste of home. Can you tell, I was homesick sometime? 🙂 Well that’s a long time ago and I have successfully recreated and made many breads, using available ingredients to make up for what I was told was not available quite the same way. But I digress, all I really wanted to say here was this, I love bread! Fresh baked, crusty bread; and the smell of it, it just makes me happy.

So summer can be a bit of a trying time, when it stays hot for months here and heating up the house by using the oven to make bread just seems silly. So what is a bread loving girl supposed to do? Take it outside, that’s right! Now, I have played with the thought of building a stone oven out back, but due to space constraints (I want to keep my little raised bed garden, after all) lack of knowledge and mainly proper mason skills, I have had to abandon that thought, along with the flock of backyard chickens… for now.

Next best thing? Use the grill! I have had this pizza stone sitting around. I had used it sometimes to bake bread on, but after some internet research felt I could give this a whirl. After all, if the darn thing breaks, I thought, I just end up with more space in my cabinets. But after three or four tries, it’s still whole. Preheating gently seems to do the trick 🙂

This makes one round, flat loaf of about 10″ diameter. Keeps me happy for three to four days, that’s saying you could make it as a bread to go with a dinner for four.

Ingredients

1/4 up sourdough starter from the fridge
3/4 cup warm water
1 cup bread flour
1 cup spelt flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, cut finely
coarse sea salt for sprinkling on top

Directions

In a large bowl, stir the sourdough with 1/2 cup warm water
Add the flours, salt, rosemary and remainder of the water (If you are using all purpose flour, 1/2 cup total might be enough) mix together and knead until a smooth dough forms. Form into a ball and let rest in warm spot until doubled in size.*
Shape into a flat round, about 1″ thick, place on a corn flour dusted pizza peel and let rest in a warm spot for another 20 minutes to half and hour before proceeding. (You want the dough to raise again after shaping)
Place the pizza stone on the grill and preheat on low, indirect heat for 10 minutes.
Right before baking, dimple the surface of the focaccia with your finger, brush or spray the surface with some olive oil and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and more rosemary if desired.
Slide bread off of the pizza peel onto the hot stone and cover the lid. Turn the burners under the stone on, but at low flame for 10 minutes.
Then turn up the heat to medium, and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes or until the bread is done and sounds hollow when you tap the bottom of it.
Remove the bread and set on a rack to cool completely before serving, (leaving the stone in place as you turn off the grill) and enjoy!

* The time for this depends on the warmth as well as the level of activity level of your sourdough. In the summer this takes about an hour, and I sometimes will place the covered bowl outside.
© 2012 SimpleHealthyHomemade

August 3, 2012December 16, 2017

Edith’s Quinoa Pilaf

Once upon a time, it was during a rather difficult time in my life, my dear friend Edith introduced me to quinoa. At a time when I really needed good friends, she was more supportive than I could ever have wished for a friend to be. We all have times where we have to lean on others to be our strength, depend on others or where we just need to have someone’s support and company. I spent some long evenings over at her place and on one of those occasions, I helped her whip up a simple Pilaf that can be used as a vegetarian main or as a side.

Here a meal made possible by friends 🙂 Quinoa Pilaf and grilled buck tenderloin from my friends Rebecca & Marc

I am not claiming that this is exactly the way she made it, since who knows how well my memory serves me, and I have made various versions over the years, but to this day, anytime I make this dish, I say a little prayer of thanks to her and it warms my heart to know that I am blessed enough to have good friends that are there for me, when I need it most 🙂

Ingredients

1 cup quinoa (uncooked)
2 cups shiitake mushrooms
1/2 lb (1/2 pack) frozen mixed vegetables (peas, corn, baby lima and green beans)
1 pack Tempeh, cut into cubes
3-4 tbsp Shoyu or Tamari (Soy Sauce)
1/2 cup water
coconut oil for cooking

Directions

Carefully rinse the quinoa in several changes of cold water to remove the saponins. (If you have a really fine meshed sieve, you can use that).
Place in a medium sauce pan and cover with water by 3/4″ (You are adding about 2 cups water), bring to a boil on medium, then cover and simmer until done and most of the water is absorbed.
In the meantime, place tempeh in a dish and drizzle with Shoyu or Tamari Soy Sauce, set aside to marinade.
Cut the stems off of the mushrooms, then slice the mushroom caps, set aside.
Heat some coconut oil in a big skillet, and add the tempeh pieces, (don’t pour the soy sauce in, pick the pieces out) reserve the soy sauce.
Cook until browned on one side, then flip each piece and cook on the other side.
Add the mushrooms, soy sauce, 1/2 cup water to the skillet and cook until the mushrooms are tender.
Add the frozen vegetables and cook until heated through. Combine the cooked quinoa with the mushroom and vegetables, and serve.

Here’s to good friends and those unexpected people that are there for you an of course the good food that connects us all!

July 31, 2012December 16, 2017

Sourdough Mini Pitas from the grill

So you’ve been keeping your sourdough starter more or less fed in the back of the fridge, but it’s been so hot and you are not in a mood to bake and heat up the house anymore. The sourdough starter looks a little sad, if you are really honest and you have pushed it behind other things so you don’t have to see it.

No worries, mine has been there too, take it out, refresh it, i.e. give it a good stir, feed it and let it raise, repeat one more time to make it nice and active again and put it back in the fridge. Instead of chucking the part that you remove, after the first feeding, use that to make grilled pita pocket breads instead. YAY! I know no heat in the house and you still get to have bread 🙂

Ingredients

1/4 cup sourdough starter (fed and active and ready to go)
1 cup water
3 cups whole wheat flour (preferably freshly ground)
1/2 tsp salt

Directions

Mix your sourdough with water until dissolved, then add the flour and salt and mix until smooth then knead until you have a smooth elastic dough. Form into a ball and return to the bowl, cover the bowl with clear wrap or a moist kitchen towel and let rest and rise in the fridge for 6-8 hours.
Remove the dough from the fridge and let sit at room temperature for about 1 hour prior to shaping.
Divide dough into 12 portions. Roll each portion into a ball between your hands and flatten out into a disk about 1/4″ thick, using flour so they don;t stick. Set aside and let rest in a warm spot for another 15 minutes, covered with cling wrap.
Preheat your grill to high (I have a gas grill I use for these, if you are using a charcoal grill, make sure you start the fire earlier to get to nice hot embers) The trick to making these work is a temperature around 425 to 450. It’s essential the grill be HOT, in order for the pocket part to happen, the water inside the dough needs to evaporate quickly, puffing up the bread into a little balloon.
Grease the grill grates using a small amount of oil on a crumpled paper towel. Then quickly put the dough rounds on and close the lid.
Grill about 4 minutes or until puffed and starting to brown on one side. Turn over and finish grilling until cooked, about another 2-3 minutes, depending on the heat of your grill.

Eat with dip or dinner, anyway you like!

July 25, 2012December 16, 2017

Super Natural Mango Ice Cream

Soft serve state……or popsicle, fantastic either way!

You may have notice that I am ~~obsessed~~ enamored with mangoes. For more on this delicious fruit, see the Mango Cheesecake and the Mango with Sticky Rice posts and a fun side salsa, geeez, I guess I am kinda crazy about them. Since it is really hard to describe a flavor so exotic and sweet that it transports you to faraway places where the sun rises red through the early morning haze and you hear a peacock’s cry in the distance. The view takes your breath away as daylight slowly uncovers the scenery, like unrolling an exquisite silk tapestry…

Well, beyond dreaming, this is not going to get much words from me, except it’ only 2 ingredients and a must-try! No added sugar since mangoes are sweet as a dream, and if you use coconut milk, the whole thing is vegan.

Remember to start this the day before you want to eat the super natural mango ice

Ingredients

2 champagne mangoes, peeled, cut into 1/2″ chunks
about 3/4 cups coconut milk (or half & half*)

*If using half & half, the mango ice is no longer vegan

Directions

Chop and freeze the mango pieces until rock hard. (best overnight, but minimum of 6 hours seems to work)
Blend the chopped, frozen mango pieces, until they look crumbly, like such…
With the machine running, slowly pour in coconut milk (or half and half, if going the dairy route) until the mango crumbles start to blend into a homogenous mass.
Either serve right away (texture is soft serve) or scoop into a small dish or popsicle molds and freeze until solid. Will keep for several weeks, if you can keep your fingers off of it 🙂

July 23, 2012December 16, 2017

Celery Watermelon Salad

It’s really pretty simple: When it’s hot we want cool foods (Ice cream and fruits anyone?) and when it’s cold out we crave hot. It may not be scientifically proven, but there is truth to needing balance. In everything…but since here we are talking a bit more specific about food and eating, I wanna share a something that I often share with my nutrition and personal training clients. Even if you take the healthiest food on earth, but you eat 17 times more than necessary you will still not loose fat. Balance is the key, and everything in moderation. Same is true for the indulgences in life, for depriving yourself always does not send a healthy message to your brain or body. And as Paracelsus already knew that ‘the dose makes the poison’ But no worries, with this recipe here, you’re pretty safe on the scale of healthfulness. So dig in, have some of this cooling summertime salad!

Since my red currant bushes did not grace me with a whole lotta berries this year, and I won;t have enough to make my grandma’s ‘Trübeli Kueche” I had to find another home for my backyard bounty. And a salad seemed as good a place as any. (I know I could have just eaten them with cream poured over top, like my Mom used to serve berries for desert sometime)

Yup, who wants to cook and heat up the house more when it is blistering outside?

Ingredients

5-6 stalks (the individual pieces, not sure on the official term, even googled it) celery, diced small
2 cups seedless watermelon, diced into 1/2″ peices
1/4 cucumber, cut into small chunks (if using a pickling cucumber, use half)
2 limes, fresh juice only
(optional: 1/2 cup red currants)

Directions

Toss all the ingredients gently in a large bowl and serve.
Yes, it’s that simple 🙂

July 17, 2012December 16, 2017

Baby Lima salad with lemon and herbs

We haven’t had beans in a while, I was told by my other half. And he’s right, they sure have slipped from the menu into oblivion as the cold weather faded from our memory. Usually I like to make all kinds of dips and things but somehow just did not get to it yet. So to remedy that and since a hot dish really wasn’t gong to cut it, I decided ona white bean salad with simple and fresh flavors: lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper and some parsley. Using baby butter beans, or lima beans for a buttery texture you have to be careful cooking them, since they tend to get butter soft when you cook them. Make sure you don’t over do it, which is easy to do, or you’ll end up with mush=not ideal for salad. You might have to go for dip at that point…

Can be served warm, room temp or from the fridge: tested and tastes good either way!

Ingredients

1/2 lb dried baby lima beans, soaked in water overnight (half a pack)
1 cup parsley, chopped
1 lemon, juice only
3-4 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt & 1/2 tsp pepper or to taste (if using canned beans, reduce the salt)

Directions

Drain beans and add fresh water, then bring to a boil and cook until beans are tender (If you have a pressure cooker, it makes this take so much less time!)
Drain and cool the cooked beans
In the meantime make the dressing: juice the lemon and stir in the olive oil, salt and pepper. Note that if you use canned beans or added salt to the cooking water, you may want to reduce the amount, you can always add more…
Chop the parsley fine and add to the dressing, toss with the beans.
Grind some fresh pepper over top and serve garnished with lemon slices.

July 10, 2012December 16, 2017

Whole Wheat Animal Crackers

Yes, I know you saw it coming, I mean after the Berry Ice populated with Lions and Giraffes (Ostrich looking, if you ask my boyfriend, but then again, he’s no biologist 😉 there was no question that the rest of the animal kingdom would soon show up on my blog as well. What can I say, they are just too darn cute!

I had searched for the perfect cutters for this recipe for a while, square was just not an option, but plain old animal crackers from the store didn’t cut it either. Do you get that craving for crunchy as well? And I can;t shut it up with a crunchy apple, no it’s a different crunch I am after. So I set out to revamp and recreate animal crackers, surely there would be a better version one could come up with than the store sold ones. Starting with a lot less sugar than any commercial product would contain, I added ground almond and flax meal to boost the nutrient and flavor and whole wheat to give them some substance.

Animal crackers on Very Merry Black Berry Ice are the best!

Ingredients

2 cups stone ground whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup almond meal/ground almonds
1/2 cup palm sugar (dry) or rapadura
1/4 cup millet or oat flower
1/4 cup half & half (or cream or milk)
1/4 cup flax meal
2 lg eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 tsp salt

Directions

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside.
Gently soften or melt coconut oil, if it is hard. Mix in the vanilla, eggs and 1/4 cup half and half. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until a cohesive dough forms. If it is too crumbly, add a little more half & half.
Form dough into ball, cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until dough isn’t soft anymore.
Preheat oven to 350ºF.
Roll out to 1/4″ thickness, press the cookie cutters into the dough (mine have a plunger to stamp the design onto the cookies after they are cut) and place the cookies onto a lined cookie sheet.
Bake for 10-13 minutes, or until slightly browned on the bottom
Let cool on rack before devouring them all 🙂

July 5, 2012December 16, 2017

Balsamic Roasted Figs with Prosciutto

Few things spell summer like ripe figs on my tree. Undemandingly it lives in its, admittedly pretty big pot, on my deck in the summer and indoors in the winter, due to me not knowing if it would actually make it outdoors in the ground, or not. So rather than taking my chances, I lift weight so I can move the fig tree 😉 There you have it, the true reason for me to stay in shape. Well, thanks to the recent heat waves, we have been able to enjoy a handful of figs a day for the past week or so!

Summer cooking for me means lots of meals outside, fresh and simple ingredients and since I do want to make most of the beautiful weather, I don’t want to spend lots of time in the kitchen. It’s all about fresh, fast and easy for me these days! Of course without sacrificing taste!

fresh from the tree!

Roasting and adding balsamic vinegar intensifies the sweet taste and the bright flavors of the balsamic balance nicely with the caramelized fig juices; add something salty and you’re set!

So here is a quick and easy appetizers that is going to wow everyone at your next gathering but is quick enough to whip up for a surprise visit or even just a week night meal

Ingredients

Fresh Figs, cut in half as shown (I used about two hand full for two people, or about 10 medium size)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
freshly ground pepper and sea salt to taste
1-2 slices Prosciutto (get the real stuff, from Italy (Parma or San Danielle is what I generally use), US domestic Prosciutto is cheaper, but super extremely salty. Since you only need a little, this is not the place to be stingy.

Directions

Slice figs in half.
Drizzle with balsamic vinegar
Grind fresh pepper overtop and sprinkle with a little sea salt
Place on a lined baking sheet and place in the toaster oven. Toast until hot and just starting to brown (it took a little under 5 minutes for me), serve with ripped pieces of Prosciutto.

July 3, 2012December 16, 2017

Very Merry Blackberry Ice

Many of you are wondering what kind of treat to serve for your 4th of July celebration. It has to be tasty, should ideally not be too filling and still feel good after a full meal, good for a hot barbecue day, but at the same time, you don’t want to go overboard on the calories either. I got just the treat for you: ice cold and healthy and you don’t even need an ice cream maker!
To your rescue comes…

Three ingredient blackberry ice!

I have not read up on my ice box deserts lately, but I suspect that this should actually be called ‘gelato’, since I am not only using cream…very very exited about my animal cracker cookie cutters 🙂

You can vary the amount of sugar you add to this, depending on how sweet the berries are. Just remember to start this half a day in advance or use already frozen berries.

Ingredients

12 oz (big carton/box) blackberries
6oz box raspberries or some strawberries
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup to 1 cup half & half, whole milk or cream

Directions

Wash and gently dry the berries by shaking them a little in a colander. Place back into original container and freeze until rock hard, about 6 hours (depends on the freezer)
In the bowl of a good food processor, combine the berries and the sugar, pulse until everything is crushed and starts to resemble a powder.
With the machine running, in a slow stream add milk or half & half through the feed hole on the lid of the blender bowl. You may have to scrape down the sides once or so as you are going through this, but work quickly as the berries will start to thaw rapidly as you are processing them. Keep adding half&half until the berries and the dairy form a creamy mass. The ice cream will be quite soft (almost like soft serve) either eat right away, or place in the freezer for approximately 15 to 20 minutes to firm up a bit before serving.
Enjoy with animal crackers or any other crunchy item you enjoy 🙂