Peanut Butter & Honey . . . Salad?

One of the most useful things I've learned about food since I cut out grains and cane sugar is that anything that makes a good sandwich can make a better salad!

Yes! It's true! Just think of your favorite sandwich combo, and then replace the bread with a bed of greens. Some of the possibilities here seem obvious . . . BLT, Philly Steak & Cheese, Meatball,  Tuna salad, BBQ chicken, Taco, etc . . . What wasn't so obvious to me was that this truth is not limited to savory sandwiches.

One of my favorites from my childhood was Peanut Butter and Honey. Especially if the peanut butter was crunchy. I liked smooth peanut butter with jam/jelly combos, but for some reason the combo of honey with nut chunks has always been extra yummy to me.

Since I've been married, yet before I discovered my digestive issues with bread, my family would often make peanut butter honey sandwiches for lunch. We discovered adding a layer of regular butter to the bread was key to making it extra good---Not too dry, and it kept the honey from soaking into the bread. (And Elvis: PB and Banana was also a family fave.)

After discovering that I couldn't eat bread anymore I gave up on the idea of enjoying this flavor combo for a few years. it was sad though, and hard. Then last Summer after watching my husband and kids still enjoying their PBHs I suddenly had the inspiration to try it out with my sandwich to salad theory. I had already been eating things like chili, stir-fry, stroganoff, bbq meat, and other such dinner menu items over salad. (It's also true that anything you can eat over pasta or rice is great on salad.)

Anyway, I tried it, and . . .  Surprise!!!!!
It was AMAZING!!! The nostalgic flavor I had missed was there in full force! It was even richer and more satisfying than a sandwich because I didn't have the flavor of bread competing with the PB and honey. Spinach is especially good at disappearing into the background and allowing other flavors to shine.  After enjoying this discovery for a few months I finally managed to take some photos to give some of you some inspiration of all the many possibilities this salad combo offers.

Start with a bed of salad greens . . . in this case organic baby spinach, and organic Spring Mix from Costco.

 Put about a tablespoon each of peanut butter* and butter* into a small dish and place in the oven on warm until the butter is melty.

 Stir until you have a smooth peanut butter dressing.

 Top your salad with the dressing . . .

 Drizzle on some local raw honey* . . .

 Here are some other optional toppings that you might enjoy to bulk things up:

• Nuts (almonds are shown because that is what I had at the time, but I think pecans are best because they are softer.)
• Flaked* or shredded unsweetened coconut*
• Organic dried fruit such as raisins* (or chopped dates*)
• Organic fresh fruit such as bananas* (remember the Elvis Presley?) 
• Or an organic apple*. (Organic is recommend for these fruits because they are on the dirty dozen list.)

If you are adding nuts, especially almonds, be sure to crush them so they are easier to eat over your salad.

 Slice your bananas . . .

 Add sliced apples if desired (I usually don't do the apples, I prefer the bananas by themselves; but you know, you can use what you have.)

 I always put salt and pepper on my salads, even my sweet ones because I like the way it enhances all the different flavors.

 Another possible seasoning that works well with PB and Honey is cinnamon.* (If you can get real, fresh cinnamon, that will of course be a plus.)

 Mix it all together and enjoy!

Mmm, the taste of nostalgia blended with high nutrition and success are so very sweet!



*Julie Surprise is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com

What I Ate: 09-04-12

Pear Pudding

We have been abundantly blessed with lots of fruits and veggies from friends and family lately. Especially pears. I simply adore pears! Lucky for me, my mother-in-law isn't a huge fan, but her mother-in-law who happens to live next door, has a pear tree so the two huge buckets of pears that ended up in my in-law's garage ultimately ended up in my tummy, for the most part. :}

Of the last installment that we acquired from them, a few of them were really, really ripe, so I knew I'd need to use these ones immediately rather then eat them at my leisure, so I started searching around on Pinterest on Tuesday for a nice, doable pear recipe.
My first thought was pear butter, but in the end, I didn't really have everything I needed for that so I kept looking and managed to find this simple Pear Pudding recipe on Foodnetwork.com.  They didn't have a picture so after pinning the recipe I determined that if it turned out at all that I would post a picture here to add to my pin.

First time I ever made a recipe that called for a water bath. Oo la la! Fancy!

I changed the recipe a tad by substituting the sugar for raw honey. Also,1 teaspoon of cinnamon seemed like a lot. I wanted it to taste more like pear than cinnamon so I only added a dash or two. I also didn't have a lemon, but I did have a fresh lime so I substituted lime zest for lemon. I did use organic butter on the pan, though mine was salted instead of unsalted. I honestly never buy unsalted, and I've never had a problem with stuff turning out too salty. The last change I made was that I didn't have any breadcrumbs (sounded kinda gross to me anyway) so I crushed up the last of the health food store graham crackers that I'd purchased for our camping trip last weekend (for healthy-ish s'mores.)

 Anyway, it seems like it turned out okay. It never really set up to be very thick. Perhaps I should have baked it longer than recommended. It was quite golden around the edges though. It would have been nice if the recipe had mentioned whether or not I should test it with a knife or something. It said 'serve cool or chilled' so I chilled it for almost an hour thinking maybe that would help it thicken. Of course, the whole reason it was still a bit runny could have been due to the fact that I used honey instead of sugar. 
At any rate. It was deee-licious!

Sweet and kinda rich but sort of light at the same time. The taste was just so perfectly balanced, it's hard to describe. I loved the pear flavor and I do not regret cutting back on the cinnamon at all. Not that I have anything against cinnamon, and maybe if I do this again I'll try the full amount, but I just wasn't in the mood for a cinnamon dessert. I wanted a fresher, fruitier flavored dessert. And that's exactly what I got. Yay!

What I Ate: Today (09-03-12)

I made it! (with 25 minutes to spare!)
Today I made one of my very favorite snacks. Strawberry Cream Cheese Toast. So yummy! Plus, potentially pretty healthful. Wish I had organic berries. Still, it's almost like having strawberry cheesecake for a snack, except without all the sugar.

This one is pretty self explanatory, but I'll break it down just the same. Organic nine grain bread, a generous blanket of full fat cream cheese. Tiled with fresh strawberry slices. Drizzled with raw honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. (Optionally. I don't always do the cinnamon.) Speaking of cinnamon I discovered that if you get that lovely brown powder on your upper lip it might make you do a double take when you pass your reflection. I thought I had a femmestache!!! That info might be useful for Halloween though. Think Indiana Jones' rugged five o'clock shadow. Paint free! (and you'd smell nice too. :}) 

Julie Surprise: Apple Stuffed Snickerdoodles (Experiment)

This baking endeavor actually took place back on February 13, 2012 . . . I was trying to come with some sort of non-traditional but still Winter appropriate Valentine's Day treat. I believe the thought of using apples came out of  necessity, since we'd bought something like twenty-five pounds of extra apples from Bountiful Baskets that month. So any way to use them, besides just eating them as is, seemed like a good idea.

I first thought of making little pies, but I'm honestly not a huge fan of pie crust. Finally, after looking at all kinds of recipes for inspiration I thought maybe I'd just make some roll out gingerbread cookies and then stuff those with apples. This sounded pretty good to me, but when I went to look in my Mother's recipe book, I couldn't find her recipe for roll out gingerbread in it anywhere! My parents were out of town for my nephew's birthday so I couldn't just call my Mom and have her send it to me. However, in searching for the gingerbread recipe, I kept going past the snicker doodle recipe and wondering if that would work at all.  Snickerdoodles are not roll out cookies, but it seemed to me that maybe, just maybe I could make it work.

They seemed to cut out okay with the help of wax paper and keeping the dough and the marble rolling pin chilled.

I could have made the apple pieces a lot smaller, but I thought larger chucks would be yummy and sort of refreshing in the midst of the richness of  a Snickerdoodle.

 

Of course I tried to get all fancy with the pie-esque vents I cut in the top of each cookie.

 

They really didn't come out as pretty as they went in though.

 

Which wasn't saying much in the first place. . .

So even though I gave up on cutting fancy vents

they still were not the prettiest Valentine treats I've ever seen . . .

The little one's were kind of cute though, and my goodness!

These were really tasty cookies!

I also made some more heart boxes, like the ones I helped my kids make and gave a few of the best looking cookies away to a couple of friends as a thank you for really helping me a lot out in that past little while. 

(Giving me rides when I didn't have a car and/or babysitting my kids on ridiculously short notice.) 

Needless to say, I really felt like I should do something nice for these ladies . . .

I wish I had taken a picture of this one when it was filled. I decorated it to match the thank you card I chose for it. It had a cute drawing of a cat in a field of flowers, many of which looked like the heart shaped ones in the stamp I used. My friend Susan really has a thing for cats so I thought she'd like it. I also filled it with pink gingham print tissue paper, to match the gingham heart and ribbon on the box.

I wish I had also shown the card that inspired this design. My friend Tenaya seems to really like vintage styles and such, so I chose a vintage style card with a drawing of a little girl wearing a blue gingham dress with a white apron and bonnet, carrying a basket of bright peachy-pink roses. Hence, I use the blue and white ribbon and lace, the pink roses and the pink gingham ribbon stripes. It was really fun to make these little thank you gifts and I really hope these ladies know how much their help really was appreciated.

Susan told me that the apples inside the Snickerdoodles really surprised her! So I guess it is fair to say it was a Julie Surprise recipe. She raved about them though and said they were really yummy. 

I rather thought so too, though maybe next time I can find a way to make them prettier as well.