Pioneer Woman Chocolate Pie (GF, Low Sugar Version)

Way back in December, after my second NTP-training workshop weekend, I discovered that I needed to stop eating wheat. My initial response was to be seriously annoyed. I spent the better part of ten years perfecting my bread, muffin, and pizza dough recipes – what a huge waste would it be if I stopped eating wheat?! 

After I got over my indignation, I dropped the wheat and started expanding my repertoire of gluten free recipes. Stubborn and frugal girl that I am, I refused to shell out big bucks for coconut or wheat flours to bake with and desserts became a challenge. Until I found an outrageously amazing (and stupid easy) French Silk Pie recipe from the Pioneer Woman.

The first time I tried it, I made it entirely as directed and poured into a store-bought GF pie crust (that shockingly was made with entirely clean fats and everything – God bless Wegmans!!)  It had a lot of sugar, so the next time I started experimenting with swapping that out for honey, maple syrup, and/or stevia. This recipe quickly evolved into my go-to option for pie, mousse, or dessert in general! It requires only a handful of (inexpensive!) ingredients and comes together in half an hour. Dropped into a crust, it becomes a fantastically rich pie. Scooped into pretty glasses it can be served as mousse, or you layer it with berries, whipped cream, or other goodies for an impromptu trifle or parfait. 

Important notes:
(1) The recipe contains raw eggs, so use the best ones you can. Keep in mind that it is important to keep the finished product chilled until you’re ready to serve (both for safety and consistency).  

(2) Watch your chocolate – the recipe is only gluten free if you use GF chocolate so check the label carefully!

(3)  If you’re using a sweetener that can be nicely converted (i.e. some containers of stevia are designed to have a 1 to 1 substitution rate for white sugar), you’re all good. Otherwise, I have found that it works best to add a small amount of your chosen sweetener at the beginning (during the creaming stage) and then start taste testing it when you add your second to last egg to the mixer. Then add in your sugar choice in small amounts, testing as you go until you reach the desired sweetness.

[Modified] Pioneer Woman Chocolate Pie
 

4 ounces Unsweetened Baking Chocolate, gluten and soy free!
1 cup Salted Butter, Softened 

Your choice of sweetener (honey, maple syrup or stevia) equivalent to 1.5 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract 
4 whole Eggs (preferably pastured and organic) 
1 gluten free pie shell (pre-baked or no-bake) [optional]

In a small saucepan, melt baking chocolate completely, then set aside to cool.
In a large KitchenAide bowl, beat 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter and your sweetener of choice 1 to 2 minutes using the whisk attachment. [It will get fluffy if you use white sugar, but not if you use something else. This makes no difference to the end result, though, so don't worry about it.]

Add cooled melted chocolate and vanilla extract to the mixing bowl. Beat until combined.

Set you mixer to medium speed, and add the first egg. Let the mixer run for 5 minutes to incorporate this egg! Repeat with remaining 3 eggs, letting the mixer run 5 minutes after each addition.   [See note 3 above if you're making the recipe with reduced sugar.]

When you've reached the desired sweetness and pie filling is fully whipped and fluffy, pour it into the pre-baked pie shell or spoon into glasses for mousse or parfaits and chill thoroughly.

 

So there you have it – a delicious, flexible, easy, and quick dessert that caters to friends and family working with sugar and gluten restrictions…. That no one will know is GF unless you tell them! Enjoy!

Simple Elegance for Summer

Author Gretchen Rubin has been getting a lot of press over her latest book, Better Than Before. Having never read any of her work, I recently checked the audio version of this new hit out of the library to listen to while working in the kitchen, cleaning, etc.

To be honest, I was unimpressed. The book was shallow and disorganized compared to many of the far more fascinating, better researched, and better explained books on habit formation and the cultivation of new behaviors currently on the market. It didn’t help that every time she mentioned anything related to food or nutrition I winced… SO many wrong ideas, happily touted as fact, without a stitch of backup, evidence, or logic!  

Anywho, the one really great thing I did take away from the book was the idea of a House Drink. Rubin tells an anecdote about an Italian friend of hers who was trying to cut back on her drinking. To help stick to her resolution to cut back, she created a personal concoction of juices, seltzers, and extras to serve in a pretty glass on nights she was dining at home with her family. It recreated the “special” feel of having a tradition and an elegant glass to look at and hold (and wasn’t straight, boring water which “feels healthy”), allowing her to cut back on her wine intake without losing all the other experiential aspects positively associated with it. 

I loved that idea, and promptly filed it away in my list of things to feature on my nutrition blog and with my clients, but thought I’d share it here as well. I’m a big fan of what I call “Peasant Food” – simple but satisfying meals, often made or served in a single dish – so a fancy “House Drink” is a bit over the top for us. But I’ve experimented a few times with making spritzers of juice and mineral water (2 to 3 oz juice to about 6 oz water) in a pretty wine glass, and been very happy with the result. It’s pretty, delicious (without being full of sugar or calories), and feels special – a perfect light indulgence for summer. 

Yes, I know these are strawberries and I'm talking about
raspberries, but it's a good picture!

That idea was still in my head when we had new friends over for dinner last week. They’d volunteered to bring dessert, and arrived with a bowl of raspberries (fresh from a local orchard!) and diced nectarines and fluffy whipped cream to pile on top.  It was incredibly simple but positively divine. (I know we’re going to be really good friends, because we both are all about the food and not how it’s served! I brought salad to the table in the big stainless steel bowl that goes with my KitchenAide, and they brought berries in a big, plain Tupperware bowl.   :)

The berries, like the House-Drink-inspired-spritzer, were incredibly simple but felt decadent. And now I’m thinking that the theme I should have been pondering all along was less about promoting healthy eating/drinking habits than what am I doing that cultivates simplicity, joy, and gratitude in my everyday life? 

None of us are promised tomorrow. If the zombie apocalypse hits next week or next year, I want to look back knowing I savored the beauty I was given… not squandered it.  

What is making you stop and see the beautiful in your life this week?

It’s Official!

Despite having a bit of a meltdown two weeks before the last workshop weekend, I came through my finals with flying colors and am now officially a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner!!!

THANK YOU to everyone who supported me, prayed for me, and put up with me for the last year while I was enrolled and elbow deep in my NTP training. You have been immensely graceful, forgiving, and patient and I am so, so thankful!

As of the beginning of June, I completely transitioned out of grant writing. I am taking the summer to catch up on things long neglected while I was up to my eyeballs in studying, and to work on the behind-the-scenes things that need to happen to get my practice up and running.  The next few weeks in particular should see me getting back to regular posting online, both here and at my shiny new nutrition blog, finishing up some projects, and launching some exciting new ones.

More on those to come soon!   : )

A Colorful, Powerhouse Salad for Summer

Gorgeous photo from ZagLeft blog.

I tend to struggle with cold salads (other than basic green ones) during the summer. I like the idea in theory, but I never seem to be able to actually either pair them successfully with an appropriate protein, or feel comfortable with them standing alone. 

Until now. 

This Apple, Kale and Cabbage Salad from ZagLeft is going to be a summer staple around here - I can already tell!

It's every bit as colorful and crunchy in real life as it is in the picture, and it has such a wonderfully complex taste and texture that it stands alone perfectly. 

Packed with nutritional (and detoxifying) powerhouse ingredients like carrots, apples, kale, and cabbage it gets a sweet zing from almonds, cider vinegar, and dried cranberries. It holds well, and is very satisfying. 

If you're looking for something to spice up your lunch or keep on hand for an easy dinner on summer's hot days, may I recommend this? It's easy to make (and to make in bulk for a crowd!), and so good for you! (I consider it an added bonus that it's pretty inexpensive too.)

What's your favorite go-to salad for summer?

The Best Gluten Free Quina Pizza Crust Ever

Beautiful photo from the Simply Quinoa Blog!

When I discovered in December that I needed to cut wheat our of my diet for a while to allow my gut to do some healing, my biggest challenge became finding a decent gluten free pizza crust. I could do without most wheat-based things, and oatmeal flour proved a cheap and functional substitute for things like pancakes, but pizza crust eluded me. 

After scouring Pinterest, Paleo blogs and cookbooks, and other sources I tried a wide variety of proposed replacements. I refused to get into coconut flour or almond flour, and the commercial GF pizza crusts were lacking in both flavor and consistency - especially for the cost! Oatmeal flour wasn't cutting it. Nor was cauliflower, spinach, or any of the other veggies recommended as potential alternatives. For a while, I just gave up on pizza altogether. (I am blessed to have such a supportive and gracious husband, considering that we had been in the habit of enjoying really good homemade pizza every Friday!)

Initially, I avoided recipes that called for quinoa as a base. Quinoa flour is astronomically expensive, and a pain to make at home (because of the tiny size of the grain to begin with).


Then, I found this: The Ultimate Quinoa Pizza Crust from Simply Quinoa.

Rather than rely on quinoa flour, this recipe starts with whole quinoa. It requires no special ingredients, and is ready in minutes - you just dump everything in the blender and whir! Plus, it uses less quinoa per person than any other recipe in my repertoire, making it extremely affordable.

This is absolutely my new go-to recommendation for anyone looking for a GF pizza crust. 3/4 cup of quinoa makes you an 8" cake pan of pizza - perfect for one or two people, but easily doubled or tripled for enjoying with friends!

The recipe is completely clean, super easy, and doesn't take long to throw together. It bakes up into a proper crust with just the right chewy, crispy mouth feel you're looking for. Plus, quinoa is a nutritional powerhouse!

I'm delighted to have found this, and wanted to share. (Fair warning - I'll be sharing over on Nutritional Mischief at some point as well, so I apologize in advance for the double exposure.)

Enjoy!

A Porch!!

One of the things that has been on our wish list since we bought our house was replacing the front stairs with a proper porch. The entire setup for getting from the driveway into the house was poorly thought out by the prior owners, and decidedly in need of some improvement. 

That project got pushed to the back burner, however, while we dealt with more urgent things like getting a garden in, taking down trees that were fall hazards to the house, etc. This past winter, however, we noted that our concrete front stairs had developed a hole... and it was quickly (and alarmingly) getting progressively larger! So the porch project got bumped to the top of the list. 

While the world was still buried in snow, we had people out to look at it, forked over some money, and secured ourselves a spot at the top of the list for getting a new porch! 

As you can see from this picture (from when we bought the house),  the original setup included a weirdly placed wooden set of stairs from the driveway down into the yard, and a very basic set of concrete steps up into the house. We've since moved the wooden stairs to a more logical place (in line with the house door). We had an interesting time ripping the concrete stairs out. Tip: even completely hollow, those suckers are heavy! Thankfully, my Jeep never says no to a challenge.   :)

Once we had the stairs ripped out, we had to clean up the space underneath. (Apparently the previous owners thought that it would be a great idea to dump broken porcelain and other random junk under there.)  Once it was all shoveled out, we raked it (mostly) level and were good to go!
 
The babies were not the least bit impressed with this development, however, as it prevented them from using their beloved doggie door!


To make sure that no one tried to go out the front door and accidentally killed themselves during the week it took to get footers put in and the deck built, Eric helpfully taped the front door shut. For extra emphasis, he wrote "NO!" on every piece of tape.  :)

I found this quite helpful but, again, the babies were less impressed. Promises of a proper napping porch and sentry station seemed to fall on deaf radar ears as they tried in vain to convince us to restore their doggie door throughout that week.

After interference from uncooperative weather, confusion about the permit situation, and a little arduous digging, the finished product proved to be more than worth the wait!

We wasted no time moving our glider (my awesome birthday gift last year) up onto our new porch. We have thoroughly enjoyed snugging under a quilt on (often still chilly) Saturday mornings for glider coffee, or taking a glass of wine out after dinner for a few minutes of quiet amidst our busy weeks.

I have designs of planting a climbing rose in front of it, but for now it's perfect! 

The dogs have decided it's awesome as well - very official looking to supervise from, and very cool to nap under on hot days.

We're thrilled to have an entire summer and all of the fall to enjoy our new porch!

Not Blogging - But Not Slacking!!

So, it's been forever since I posted. It's almost embarrassing at this point... sorry!

But the lack of blogging hasn't reflected a lack of things to blog about. On the contrary - I've got a backlog of things I wanted to post but never got around to. Hopefully I'll get caught up in then next couple weeks!

In the meantime, here's a couple quick pics of little things we've been up to.

Another scrap quilt completed for the guest bedroom!

A giant, comfy napping ball for the babies. Supervision in style!

Bottling homemade Carrot Wine. (And tomato wine.)

Planting piles of seeds, waiting anxiously for them to sprout, and
then finding garden space for them all!

See? Totally not slacking!  :)

More to come soon!