Sourdough sweet potato brownie

I'm really pleased with this recipe, and so are my family.
I'm ecstatic to make a treat that's actually good for them, and it tastes great. Woo hoo!
It is low in grains, high in fruit and vege's, and no added sugar (apart from the sugar in the dark chocolate used in the icing).

Ingredients

300g sweet potato, peeled, diced and steamed.

1/2 cup buckwheat flour

1/3 cup dessicated coconut

1/3 cup spelt flour

1/3 cup sourdough starter

3 Tablespoons carob powder

1 Tablespoon cocoa powder

3 Tablespoons butter, melted

1 egg, beaten

1 banana, mashed

1/2 cup blackcurrants (mine are frozen)

1 teaspoon baking soda

Icing

50g 70% dark chocolate

3 Tablespoons cream

1. Mash the steamed sweet potato well, and let cool.

2. Add the next 8 ingredients, mix well and cover. Leave for 2 - 24 hours.

3. Heat your oven to 180 degrees.

    Line a 20x20cm cake tin with baking paper.

    Add the last 3 ingredients, and mix through the batter.

    Pour into your prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes.

4. Check that your brownie is cooked in the middle, and a sharp knife comes out clean.

    When cooked remove from pan, and let cool.

5. Melt the dark chocolate in a small bowl over hot water.

    When melted add the 3 Tablespoons of cream and mix well.
    Spoon the icing over the brownie and spread with a knife.

If you are local, I get my blackcurrants frozen from Putiputi ra in Whangarei.

Yogurt and Mint Coleslaw

This recipe is a favourite side dish in our household. My children often ask for more.
Luckily it makes large portions.
It's perfect at this time of year while cabbages are abundant.

Yogurt and Mint Coleslaw

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 ½ cups grated cabbage

2 carrots, peeled and roughly grated

½ yellow capsicum pepper, finely sliced

½ red capsicum pepper, finely sliced

2 Tablespoons finely diced onion

2 Tablespoons finely diced mint

2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar

½ cup yoghurt

Salt and pepper

Combine cabbage, carrots, capsicum peppers, and onion in a large bowl.

In a small bowl combine mint, vinegar, and yoghurt. Mix well, and then pour over coleslaw mix and gently stir.

Serve and enjoy.

Sourdough mini bagels

These are kid sized mini bagels.
I used to always regret making bagels when I was mid way through making them, the extra step of boiling them before baking always felt like like a hassle when you had a big batch to do.
So this recipe only makes a small batch of 4 small bagels, which means you fit them all in a pot at once.
Just perfect for a healthy, nutritious lunch or snack for mums and bubs, and kids.

Sourdough Mini Bagels

Ingredients

1/2 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup whole spelt flour, sifted
3/4 cup white spelt flour
2 Tablespoons avocado or olive oil

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Knead until just combined. If mixture is to dry add 1 -2 Tablespoons water.
Cover bowl and leave for 5 hours or more.

Divide into 4 equal pieces and shape dough into a ball. Flatten slightly and poke a finger through the middle to form the bagel shape.
Let rise for a few hours.

When ready heat oven to 180 degrees, and boil about 5cm water at the bottom of a large pot.
When water is boiling, turn the heat down a little and boil your bagels for a minute each side.
Remove with a slotted spoon.
Sprinkle with toppings of your choice, the picture above has grated parmesan cheese.
Bake for 15 minutes.

Once baked and cooled slightly, split and fill.
Ours had cream cheese, salmon, lettuce, and cucumber.
Yum!

Variation

For a fruit and nut bagel, add a few tablespoons of slithered almonds, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 2 - 3 Tablespoons raisins (I soaked mine for about 15 minutes in water before using).

A tasty family snack

This is a handy little mixture, to help you create a quick and healthy snack, breakfast, or lunch.
Store it in the fridge in an airtight container, and it will keep for a few days....if it lasts that long, it doesn't around here.

Egg Sandwich Mix

Ingredients

2 hard boiled eggs (boil with 1 teaspoon baking soda to make peeling easier)

1 or 2 carrots, grated

1 tomato, finely diced

1 cup grated chedder cheese

2 Tablespoons parsley, finely diced

2 Tablespoons natural, unsweetened yogurt

1 teaspoon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

Optional Extras

2 Tablespoons finely chopped onion, or spring onion

2 Tablespoons finely chopped celery

1/2 capsicum pepper, finely diced

Mash the hard boiled eggs with the back of a fork, and add to a mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Mix well.

To serve either add to buttered sourdough toast (as above), or use in a sandwich, or add to your favourite cracker, or add to bread with a little extra grated cheese and place under the grill for a tasty toastie (below).

Spinach and Feta Fritters

We have been loving these fritters for breakfast.
We love them so much that we have had mashed potatoes 3 nights in a row, just so we can use leftovers to whip them up quickly the next morning.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups mashed potatoes
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups finely diced spinach
100g cubed feta
pepper
coconut oil for frying
Greek yogurt and parsley to season

1. Combine the mashed potatoes, eggs, feta, and pepper. Mix well.

2. Heat 1 or 2 Tablespoons of  coconut oil in the fry pan. When hot add 1 Tablespoon of the mixture to the frypan. Let the first side cook well before flipping.
If you want to keep the fritters in a round shape, then place the mixture into an egg ring on the hot frypan. Let cook for about 10 seconds before removing the ring for the next fritter.

3. Serve immediately with a spoon of yoghurt and parsley as garnish if desired.

Have you heard of a brown rice starter?

I love brown rice, with it's nutty flavour and firm texture.
Brown rice feels more filling than white rice, and it's glycemic index is lower than white rice which means it doesn't impact our blood sugar levels quite as much as white rice.
But it does take ages to cook and it also contains a substance called phytic acid.

Phytic acid is an  anti-nutrient that blocks absorption of many important minerals such as phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc.
To get the most nutrients from our food, it makes sense to reduce our phytic acid levels before consuming it.

To break down phytic acid an enzyme called phytase is needed.
Unfortunately brown rice is very low in phytase so requires a starter to reduce phytic acid levels.
Luckily a brown rice starter is very easy to make, and will reduce phytic acid levels by 96%.
It just takes a bit of preparation ahead of time, and as a bonus it shortens the cooking time.


How to make a brown rice starter

1. Combine 2 Tablespoons of brown rice with 2 Tablespoons of dechlorinated water.
Let soak for 24 hours.
Strain the rice, saving the liquid the rice was soaked in, discard the rice.

2. Add 1/4 cup brown rice, 1/3 cup dechlorinated water , and the reserved water from the previous soak. Soak for 24 hours.
Strain the rice, reserving the liquid the rice was soaked in.

3. Combine 1/2 cup brown rice, 1 cup dechlorinated water, and the reserved water from the previous soak. Leave for 24 hours.
Strain and reserve the liquid. This is your brown rice starter.
You can store this liquid in a jar in your fridge.

When you are planning to prepare some brown rice, add at least 10% of your starter to water, and soak your rice in it for 24hours.
Strain your rice once it has been soaked, rinse and then cook as usual.
This should decrease phytic acid content by 96% in your rice, and your rice will be quicker to cook.
Remember to save some of your soak water every so often to keep your starter going.

Baby rice isn't nice

There must have been some very impressive marketing back in the 1960's to convince mums to start feeding their babies packaged baby food, and I'm amazed that baby rice is still popular today.
Surely something that can sit on a shelf for months, and requires very little cooking can't be good for anyone.

I can see that baby rice would be very unlikely to cause an allergic reaction, as it is really just a blob of nothing. No nutrition, no flavour, no texture.  It's not surprising babies generally take some convincing to eat the stuff, you can't really blame them.

But their are more nutritious options for low allergenic first foods.
What about apple, pear, cauliflower, squash, sweet potato, carrot...the list could go on and on with fresh, seasonal, natural food that have fuelled generations of humans.
These naturally occurring whole foods are full of flavour, and texture that these little oral sensory seeking creatures are desperate for.
Let them have this opportunity for learning.
Let them play, feel it with their fingers, practice their fine motor skills, smell it, taste it, because before you know it this phase will have passed and be replaced by a much more cautious phase.

As respected pediatrician and author Alan Greene states 'Babies’ long-term food preferences and metabolisms are influenced by early food exposures. At this critical window of development, ripe with opportunity, we are giving babies a concentrated, unhealthy carb. Metabolically, it’s not that different from giving babies a spoonful of sugar'. 


I really enjoy it, as while my mess maker model 3 plays with his food, I get to sit down for a record length of time for a mum of a 6 month old and eat myself.
Although I must admit the clean up afterwards is a bit of a drag.

So what is so unhealthy about baby rice. It's rice isn't it?
Baby rice is created from white rice which is manufactured into a  highly processed starch in the form of a simple carbohydrate.
Once consumed it will convert to a sugar and cause a large spike in blood sugar levels.
Baby rice has a Glycemic Index of 95. The Glycemic index (GI) is a measurement that shows how much a food will impact our blood sugar level. Glucose has a GI of 100, apple GI is 38, banana is 52, pear is 38, carrot is 47, sweet potato 44. Very few foods have a glycemic index as high as baby rice, although Lucozade has a GI of 95 also.

This is a concern as diets with high GI foods are linked with many health problems such as diabetes, some cancers, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
It's also very bland, it does nothing to stimulate their taste buds, or prepare them for the food we want them to enjoy.
Baby food doesn't have to be bland.

But what about iron?

So many mums say they give their babies baby rice for the iron content.

Baby rice does contain plenty of artificially added, difficult to absorb, iron, Breast milk on the other hand contains small amounts of easily absorbable iron.

Breast milks iron is bound to specialized proteins that ensure only the baby can use the available iron.

The iron in baby rice doesn't have these specialized proteins and the excessive iron feeds harmful bacteria in the babies intestinal tract.

A study in 1995 found that babies who had not received iron fortified food in their first 7 months of life had significantly higher hemoglobin levels, than babies who received iron fortified solid food before 7 months of age.

If you are concerned about your babies iron levels then feed them foods naturally high in iron such as breast milk, sweet potato, squash, meat & poultry, and spinach.

In conclusion stick to whole foods as close to their natural state as possible.
Let your baby have fun and explore food and flavours, and skip the baby rice.
You won't regret it.


References

Alan Greene. Whiteout FAQ. 

http://www.drgreene.com/whiteout-faq/

Kelly Bonyata. Is Iron-Supplementation Necessary?
http://kellymom.com/nutrition/vitamins/iron/

Pisacane A, et al. Iron status in breast-fed infants. J Pediatr 1995 Sep;127(3):429-31.

Sears W. What are the best sources or iron. http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/feeding-eating/family-nutrition/iron/what-are-the-best-food-sources-of-iron.