The Incredible Edible Flaxseed?

I have no problem with eggs, in fact I really like eggs, as long as they are scrambled or in an omelet.  However, I'm always looking to find ways to make recipes healthier.  Munchkie's Daddy says that the world would end if I ever followed a recipe exactly.  I've had a huge overabundance of bananas in our house the last few months.  Not only ones left over from Munchkie's bday, but also we continued to get a few pounds in our weekly produce box.  And what else do you make with bananas besides banana bread?

I had heard that you could use ground flax seed in place of eggs in recipes, but wasn't quite sure how to go about doing this.  Well, thank you Pinterest for yet another helpful tip.  It's actually really easy.

For every egg you need combine 1 tablespoon ground flax seed with 3 tablespoons of water.  Let sit.

How easy is that?  Pretty easy.  The water and ground flax forms a gel of sorts and that works as the egg in recipes.  Obviously you can't make an omelet out of it, but if you're baking banana bread it works great.  A friend had passed along this nutella banana bread that you make in a crock pot.  I kind of decided that the only point of the crock pot was to not heat your house up and because it was a crock pot blog.  So I just turned my oven on and baked it the normal way.  I also made quite a few substitutions.  If you are not interested in low fat or low sugar without chemical replacements, then try out the crockpot nutella banana bread because it looks really good!

Ingredients
2 cups gluten free flour mix (can use all purpose flour)
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup applesauce (I used this free babyfood we got at stories and snacks last week)
1/4 cup coconut palm sugar (or your natural sweetener of choice, honey, raw sugar, etc)
2 tablespoons ground flax in 6 tablespoons water, allowed to sit and gel together
1 1/4 cups healthy banana "ice cream"
1/3 cup almond milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 heaping cup no sugar no salt peanut butter
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a bread pan.
2. Mix together flour salt and baking soda in a bowl
3. Mix together apple sauce and sugar in another bowl
4. Add the flax seed mixture and mix some more
5. Mix in the banana, milk and vanilla and then the flour mixture
6. In a microwave safe bowl microwave the peanut butter until very soft/runny
7. Pull one cup of the batter out and mix together with the peanut butter and cocoa powder, it doesn't have to be completely mixed up.
8. Put the plain batter in the bottom of the bread pan.
9. Cover with the peanut butter mixture.
10. Bake for 45-60minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  It will not look completely done because it is so moist.
11. Allow to cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack in the pan.
12. Remove from pan and allow to completely cool.

Good Start to a Beautiful Day

Breakfast is my favorite meal ever.  In any form.  Yes, I obviously like sweets, so any kind of sweet breakfast is a hit, but I also love savory.  Omelets, sausage,bacon, quiches, and potatoes.  I'm also a firm believer in the importance of breakfast, so I don't usually skip it.  I would much rather have a late and large breakfast and skip lunch.  This morning I was trying to decide what to have on this beautiful day off of work.  I remembered that I had found some unsweetened flaked coconut for really cheap at this random store when looking for something else with my mom.  I decided to throw that into some oatmeal.  Well, and those raisins left over from the Irish pudding that I couldn't eat on Saturday.  Naturally cinnamon always goes into oatmeal.  And it was delicious!

I couldn't eat it all, this is definitely a two person bowl of oatmeal. Maybe I should have kept Munchkie home from the babysitter's to help me eat this.  It was absolutely amazing to sit with every single window in my apartment, yes all four of them, all the way open and quiet surrounding me except for the sounds coming in from the outside.  The birds chirping, kids playing down the street, cars passing by, and people calling friendly greetings to each other.    Oh beautiful day!

Coconut Raisin Oatmeal
1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk plus a little bit more for cooling down the hot oatmeal
1/2 cup oats
handful unsweetened flaked coconut
handful raisins
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 packets stevia

• Mix almond milk and oats together in a microwave safe bowl
• Microwave for 2 1/2 minutes, watching to make sure it doesn't explode
• Add in coconut, raisins, cinnamon and stevia, stirring until fully mixed
• Microwave for another 30-60 seconds to plump the raisins, and meld the flavors
• Add cold almond milk until the right temperature and consistency.

Mmmmmmm!

Cha-Cha-Cha-Chia

Lent has begun and with that comes the sacrifices that we make for the 40 days until Easter.  I know what my weaknesses are and try to make these sacrifices something that I know I will struggle with.  If it was easy it wouldn't be a sacrifice now would it?  This year I gave up sugar and TV (a sacrifice as a family).  Included in the sugar category I am including all artificial sweeteners (Splenda, nutrasweet etc) and natural sweeteners that contain calories (honey, agave, etc) so the only option I am allowing myself is pure stevia (hey, I'm not giving up coffee and I'm not cool enough to drink it black, so I need something).  I think that I am going to be very surprised by the amount of things I consume that contain something in this sugar category.  I know that I have a very strong addiction to all things sweet and am anticipating a withdrawal of sorts in the next week.  Should be interesting.

A while back I saw this deal online for coconut oil, which I use frequently both in baking and toiletries.  The price was pretty amazing and it came with a bag of chia seeds.  I did not know anything about chia seeds except for the Smiling Obama Chia Pet that we got my brother-in-law for Christmas.  I kind of asked around, and then tried a recipe with chia seeds.  It was my first absolutely inedible disaster while baking with somewhat expensive gluten free products.  I think that I was so upset that I tossed them in the back of the pantry and didn't want to attempt anything else. 

The other day one of the blogs that I follow had a Chia-Raspberry Pudding recipe and so I thought I would give them another go around.  Oh my goodness I am in love!  To me it is just like tapioca pudding, something that I enjoy.  If you don't like the texture of tapioca pudding, you probably won't like this.  Just as Maureen from Homemade Mothering made adjustments to her recipe, I made adjustments to my recipe to cut out the sweetener.  I also used unsweetened vanilla almond milk, so it does have a vanilla taste to it.  I think that if it was the regular unsweetened almond milk it would definitely need the fruit in it, I left it out for my batch.

 3 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1/2 cup chia seeds
1 teaspoon stevia (this equals 8 teaspoons sugar)
fruit if desired

Combine all in a container and shake well.  Refrigerate for several hours or overnight.  Shake it a few more times if you think about it.

The chia seeds absorb up to 9 times their weight in liquid, so they form a gel, creating the pudding.

I can't get enough of this.  However, Munchkie saw the bag of frozen blueberries and couldn't get enough of those.  She was a blue mess until bathtime!  This picture doesn't do justice to how blue she really was.