Banana 'Nice Cream'

If you spend any amount of time on the internet looking for recipe ideas, you've probably come across more than one way to make this yummy taste treat using frozen bananas.  Push come to shove, I'd probably put this in my top 10 new favorite foods. For breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert, it's healthy enough to eat at any time of day.  And I do.

Here's the long and short of it. Buy a whole bunch of bananas and make sure they ripen before you cut them for freezing.  The more brown spots on your banana peels, the sweeter the fruit.  After you've done this, the hard part is over.  

Check out the recipe and variations below:

Banana ‘Nice Cream’

Serves: 2

Do Ahead Tip: 

3 ripe bananas, broken into chunks and frozen

Directions: Put frozen bananas in a blender or food processor and turn the machine on to blend them. At first they will want to spin around and stay icy, but keep at it, stopping the machine and using spatula or wooden spoon to scrape the sides and push toward the bottom. Then, walk away and do something else for 10-20 minutes – Email, vacuum, wash some dishes, do some yoga poses). At some point, your bananas will suddenly go creamy and custardy, like soft-serve ice cream. Serve immediately and enjoy.  Freeze any leftovers. I usually eat 1/2 for breakfast and leave the other half for a nighttime dessert.

**Variations and Optional additions: Add other frozen fruit and ingredients to custom tailor your nice cream. You might try the follow combinations:

Bananas + 1 cup frozen strawberries, raspberries or frozen cherries

Bananas + 1 cup frozen blueberries, blackberries or frozen mangoes

Bananas + 1 Tablespoon peanut butter or almond butter

Bananas + 2 Tablespoons cocoa powder

Bananas + 1 cup frozen peaches + 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Bananas + 1 teaspoon maple extract + 1 Tablespoon maple syrup + 2 Tablespoons chopped walnuts

Maple Walnut Nice Cream

**I recommend you try the simple One-Ingredient nice cream first.  Then throw a party for your taste buds by adding some of your personal favorites. 

Notes:  The beauty of this recipe is the flexibility and realizing how simple it is to make.  Remember.  The riper the bananas the sweeter the nice cream.

Tomato Soup with Black Beans and Spinach
Time to prepare: 30 minutes from start to finish
Prep Work: Very little
Serves 4
(Thank you, South Tulsa Living magazine for publishing this recipe in your March 2015 issue.)

Ingredients Needed:
1 15-ounce can black beans, no salt added, drained and rinsed
3 cups vegetable broth
1 14.5-ounce can chopped tomatoes, no salt added
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce, no salt added
1 cup salsa
1 tsp. cumin
2-3 tsp. chopped garlic
3-4 cups of fresh baby spinach leaves
½ cup nutritional yeast (you can use a bit of Parmesan cheese if you prefer)
Bragg Liquid Aminos (or reduced sodium soy sauce)

Directions:

Place drained beans, garlic and vegetable broth in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover and cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Add the canned chopped tomatoes, tomato sauce, salsa and cumin and cook, stirring occasionally, until the soup is heated through, another 5-10 minutes.

Serving up:

Place one cup of spinach leaves in the bottom of each soup bowl. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast (or 1 tsp. of Parmesan cheese) and drizzle with 1 Tablespoon of Bragg’s (or soy sauce). Ladle hot soup into bowl over spinach leaves and let sit for one minute, just until spinach is gently wilted. Eat up! YUMMERS!

Notes: This soup is very easy to put together. My husband commented that even 'he can make it' and does.  Jeff cooks up a double batch of this soup in the crock pot when he goes out to our Colorado cabin and eats it throughout the week.

I got the original recipe idea from The McDougall Quick & Easy Cookbook. The book’s recipe called for black-eyed peas and frozen spinach. I started with the original recipe and then tweaked it to suit my personal tastes. I prefer black beans and fresh spinach. You can use whichever you like best.  I've used navy beans and kidney beans, too. They all add a slightly different flavor to this heart healthy soup. If you use the frozen spinach, you’ll want to add it in when you’re simmering the soup until the spinach is heated through.

Corn is another nice addition to this soup. Just add a cup of frozen corn to the simmering soup until the corn is tender. You can add additional vegetables, if you like. Onions, celery and even some leftover baked potatoes work nicely with the other flavors.

This soup is even better after it’s been allowed to sit in the refrigerator for a day or two. I love to make enough to eat once right away and then have plenty for leftovers.

Bean Burgers with 'special sauce'

Ripped from the pages of cleanfooddirtygirl.com, I can't resist posting yet again from this awesome chef's cook book.  After making these burgers exactly as directed and adding the 'paprika garlic burger sauce' made to the letter, Jeff took a bite and said 'this is the best bean burger I've ever had.'  I thought they were pretty tasty too.  

Thanks, Molly, for your delicious and healthy recipes.  I continue to be wowed and amazed.  We bow to your yumminess.

If you are interested in Molly's recipe and quit wit and repartee?  Click HERE (and scroll all the way to the bottom of Molly's page to find the recipe for her burgers and sauce)! Remember, cleanfooddirtygirl.com is not for the faint of heart i.e. strong language may put some people off.  If this is you, please resist the urge to click on the link.  For all others, I strongly recommend Molly's recipe for those who love eating a whole-foods/plant-based diet.

Roasted Veggies

This is me, writing a post that is short, sweet and to the point!  No long, drawn-out recipe for this delicious dish. The cauliflower and sweet potato fries were coated with non-stick spray (olive oil) and tossed in a baggie with some nutritional yeast and lots of Mrs. Dash seasonings.  Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet and pop in a 350-375 oven until tender and browned (anywhere from 20-35 minutes).  The kale chips are one of my new favorite foods and coated with the same yummy stuff as the roasted veggies. Cook these green leafy beauties in an oven no hotter than 350 degrees and check frequently.  (They will turn brown and burn quickly.) I start with 10 minutes, flip the kale and cook another 2-5 minutes, never turning my back on them.  They are ready when they are crispy crunchy. I whipped up a home made ketchup using tomato paste, veggie broth, a splash of tamari, a bit of sweetener and some powdered onion and garlic. 

Faux Tuna Salad with Briny Tahini Mayo

                                         

How is it that I cook, photograph food and do dishes all day long and haven't managed a recent post on this food blog since May of last year?  Whaaat?  May?  Are you kidding me?  AND I just found a draft of a partially written entry about my infamously good BBQ sauce in the pergatory file.  On hold.  Until when, she asks?  Time to get a grip. Time to make a command decision.

Post or get out of the kitchen! And we know the latter ain't happening any time soon.  So, a bit of compromise is needed here.

Photos of food will start magically appearing more frequently on this blog. That shouldn't be too hard to do, considering my last post was in May!  Even without full recipes. That, my friend, is what keeps the posts from happening.  The time to write up a recipe, if it's a dish I have created, takes an entire morning.  I'm just that slow.  Many of the dishes I prepare are found in cookbooks, on the internet, or a combo of outside sources and my tweaking. If there is a link to go with the dish I've prepared then I'll add it here and not worry so much about originality.  It's food, not brain surgery!  And I'll give credit where credit is due.  Always.

Without further ado, here's a keeper.  The recipe is now handy in the pages of this food journal so I can make it again.  And again.  Thanks, Molly, for granting me permission to share. And for providing us foodie types who have healthy proclivities a safe place to review, rant, post and let our hair down. Here's to US!

Grab your official link to Faux Tuna Salad with Briny Tahini Mayo here and be prepared to have your taste buds titillated. Molly's clever prose fills the first part of the page.  Scroll to the very bottom of her link for the recipe. I love Molly's site and am a member of the closed group on FaceBook, too. It's a perfect fit for me. and the best ever support group for my WFPB (Whole Food Plant Based) lifestyle.  The people who stalk there are supportive, helpful and funny as all get out!

Without further ado!  Photos of the prep for Molly's Tuna fish salad.  

mash, mash, mash

chop, chop, chop

dice, dice, dice

dried dill, salt and pepper to taste

For the Briny Tahini Mayo, in a blender,
dulce flakes, garlic, tahini (ume plum vinegar not pictured here),
and a few other ingredients.  Follow Molly's recipe!

A stalk of celery never tasted so good.

 Served up with a side of Kale chips and orange bell pepper strips.

Yummers!

Fresh Broccoli Salad with Orange & Cashew Dressing

I have been eating so much frozen broccoli, quick cooked in the microwave, I have forgotten what a delicious treat it is eaten raw in a salad.  While shopping for kale and nooch at Whole Foods last week, I looked at their salads in the deli case.  They were beautiful and the broccoli salad gave me some ideas I wanted to try out at home.  Here's the recipe I came up with.  You can add and subtract, tweak and twack anyway you like.  The only thing I would add next time around, is a few cutie *tangerines, peeled, sectioned and thrown in the mix.  The extra splash of orange would work nicely on all levels.

Here's what you'll need:

One large head of fresh broccoli (clean and break into small florets - I used the stems, peeling the tough outer skin and then thin slicing the more tender stalks - picture above shows only the cleaning and large pieces, not the finished small florets)

the Dressing:

1/3 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice (one orange)  Note:  I used some zest from this orange and it's easier to zest an orange peel BEFORE you squeeze it for juice.  So get a good teaspoon or more of the zest before you juice it)

1/3 cup white wine vinegar

1/3 cup raw cashews (soak in water for 1-4 hours, drain off water before adding to blender)

Blend dressing ingredients and pour over small broccoli florets.  Add pepper to taste and some orange zest and toss well!

If you have time to refrigerate for an hour or two before serving, this tastes even better after it's marinated in the dressing.

Toppings:

1-2 T. raisins, dried blueberries or cranberries.  Or a bit of all three.

1-2 T. slivered or chopped almonds (the first time I made it I used raw sunflower seeds)

1 t. sesame seeds

*1-2 tangerines, peeled, sectioned and each section cut in half, optional

more pepper to taste (I can never have enough pepper)

Add your toppings right before you are getting ready to serve up.  Give the salad one final toss and you're ready to serve up!

Yummers!

Check out How to Make "An Apple-A-Day Taste Treat" Anytime of Day! by Kimberly Ylitalo on Snapguide.