Black Bean Brownies

I recently tried another delicious dessert recipe from one of my Clean Eating magazines (March/April 2010). It was wonderful!

Here is the recipe:

• 1 oz dark chocolate (melted)
• 1 1/2 cups black beans
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg white
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup walnuts (I omitted these so that my daughter could bring a piece in her lunch at school)

Combine all of the ingredients together into a food processor or a good blender (I used my Vitamix). Pour the mixture into a greased 8x8 baking dish. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

It's definitely an easy recipe!

Once they were ready I cut a piece and covered it with vanilla ice cream and some homemade strawberry jam. It was soooooo good! Even better is that my daughter loved them too.

This dessert proves that it's possible to enjoy treats without any artifical sweeteners, excessive oils, or flour. Compared to traditional brownie recipes that are full of empty calories, there are a lot of nutrients in these brownies from the beans, applesauce, dark chocolate and eggs. In fact, per serving (1/8) there are 4 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein. And, the beans and dark chocolate also offer a lot of antioxidants; black beans have 10 times more antioxidants than oranges and are comparable to grapes and cranberries.

Oooohhhh...Locavore the Movie LOL

Here is a trailer for "Locavore--Local Diet, Healthy Planet". I saw this posted on another great local eating blog here in London (www.eatlocallondon.blogspot.com).

It's on DVD already so I may be making a purchase in the near future. I love watching these types of documentaries.

Anyways,...just thought I'd pass it along in case anyone was interested.

Pancake Tuesday

Historically, Christians would make pancakes to use up the kitchen leftovers before Lent, a time of fasting. Pancake day is also known as Shrove Tuesday and falls once a year in the month of February or March. Many people traditionally eat pancakes on this day but its ancient beginnings were heavily rooted in religion. The Christian festival of Lent begins the day after Pancake Day (known as Ash Wednesday) and ends on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday. Being the last day before Lent, Shrove Tuesday was not only a time of confession and forgiveness, but a time for a celebratory feast. It would be the last chance they would have to indulge in rich foods such as dairy, eggs and fats until Easter, because these were forbidden for the duration of Lent.

(http://seasonalcooking.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_history_of_pancake_day )

I am not very religious myself but I do like to celebrate Pancake Tuesday. Why would I pass up the opportunity to have pancakes for dinner? This year, I decided to fancy-it-up a little bit and made two pancake recipes; a savoury pancake for dinner and a sweet pancake for dessert.

My savoury pancake (or rather, crepe):

• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp taco seasoning
• 1 tsp chives

Mix the ingredients together (I like using my Vitamix for this because it mixes thoroughly and doesn't leave any lumps). Drop about 1/4 cup of batter into a pan on medium-high heat. When the first side is cooked flip to the other side.

I filled my crepes with a chicken/onion/mushroom/tomato mixture in a chicken broth/cream cheese sauce. My sweet pancake dessert:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 1 tbsp carob powder (or cocoa powder)
• handful of white chocolate chips

Mix the ingredients together and cook like you would regular pancakes.

I topped my dessert pancakes with a mixture of cherries and raspberries (from my frozen stock) mixed with cream which was brought to a boil.

The Best Lasagna EVER!

The title says it all. I made the best lasagna EVER for dinner tonight!

When I was at the Covent Garden Market on Saturday I bought some fresh sundried tomato lasagna sheets from Glenda's. I just HAD to make some lasagna over the weekend. Here are the ingredients that I used:

• 9 lasagna sheets (they are sold in packets of 9)
• 2 large chicken breasts-cooked and diced (I baked them in parchment paper in the oven at 400F for 30 minutes)
• tomato sauce (mine contained only strained tomatoes and salt)
• 3/4 bucket of light ricotta cheese
• 1 onion diced, 4 cloves of garlic, 1/2 red pepper diced, 1/2 green pepper diced, 4 large mushrooms (I used two white and two crimini)
• thyme, salt, pepper, Epicure roasted red pepper dip spice mixture
• 4 different types of cheese - medium cheddar, marble, garlic, parmesan

To begin, saute the onion, garlic, mushrooms, and peppers in a pan. Add some salt and pepper. Once softened, add the chicken and the tomato sauce and seasonings. This is the sauce for the lasagna.To layer the lasagna, begin by greasing the 9 x 13 pan. Put some of the sauce mixture at the bottom and top with 3 lasagna sheets. Spread some ricotta cheese on top of this. On this layer I sprinked some medium cheddar cheese. Cover the cheese with some more of the sauce. Repeat with the lasagna sheets, ricotta and cheese - I used marble for this layer. For the final layer, put the 3 remaining lasagna sheets. Cover these sheets with the sauce and then a final layer of cheese (garlic this time) and some freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Note: the decision to use the different types of cheese was because I only had bits and pieces of cheese left in my fridge. Initially I did not think that there would be enough cheese for this dish but after I shred it all with my food processor I was amazed by the amount that came out of those little blocks. It sounds like a lot of cheese went into this but there really wasn't.

Cover the lasagna with foil and bake at 350 for one hour. Then, take off the foil and bake for another 15 minutes. Here is the final product:

Let me tell ya...it was to die for! I also felt good knowing that most of the ingredients in this dish were all local ingredients--the chicken, onion, garlic, peppers (greenhouse), mushrooms and cheese. I think the Ricotta cheese, thyme/seasonings and the tomato sauce were the only things that I would not consider local. Not bad...I'd say that this dish was at least 80% local!

Village Harvest Bakery

Saturday mornings are my market days. Although I used to mainly shop at Trails End I have been rotating my market visits from Trails End to the Covent Garden Market and the Western Fair Market. Today, I went to both the Covent Garden Market and the Western Fair Market and came home with all kinds of goodies--like freshly made lasagna noodles, cod fish, and hydroponic tomatoes and peppers.

Another nice treat that I brought home was a fresh loaf of sundried tomato bread from the Village Harvest Bakery. I really wish I had known of this wonderful place earlier. They are located at 145 Wortley Road in Wortley Village here in London. The bakery has over 30 kinds of breads on hand like Black Olive Oregano, Sour Cream Parmesan, Honey Almond, Twelve Grain and Sourdough bread. The breads are made with fresh ingredients. For instance, the Sundried Tomato Bread that I bought today contained flour, sundried tomatoes, oregano, garlic, canola oil, sugar, salt, and yeast. And, apparently, the flour that they use for their baking is brought in from Hanover, just a couple of hours north of London near Kincardine and Mount Forest.

I give this bakery a thumbs up! I'll definitely be back for some more!

Mmmmm...Creamy Mushroom Goodness...

Wow! I have made the best soup ever this week (well, second best soup--the best is roasted red pepper soup). I made my own version of Campbell's creamy mushroom soup and it was so simple. Creamy Mushroom Soup:

• one large onion sliced
• about 3 handfuls of mushrooms (scooped hands) -- I had a mixture of shitake, crimini and white button mushrooms
• 1/3 cup butter
• 4 or so cups of chicken broth
• 1 cup of cream (18%)
• a few drops of Worcestershire Sauce
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• fresh thyme (tbsp or so), sea salt, pepper

Put the butter into the heated pan and then add the onion and mushrooms and salt/pepper. Cook until softened. Add the chicken broth, cream, Worcestershire Sauce and thyme and bring it to a boil on medium heat. Take half of the mixture and put it through a blender to puree. This makes the soup a little creamier but leaves chunks from the other half at the same time. Mix the corn starch with a bit of water in a cup. Stir to combine. Add the mixture to the soup and stir until the soup thickens.

This was such a yummy soup. The cream and thyme gave it such a good scent. My husband LOVED the soup but my daughter did not want to even try it. She is not a fan of mushrooms, unfortunately. It's too bad because mushrooms are so nutritious. In fact, mushrooms have been used for thousands of years both as food and for medicinal purposes. They are often classified as a vegetable or a herb, but they are actually fungi. While there are over 14,000 mushrooms, only about 3,000 are edible, about 700 have known medicinal properties, and fewer than one percent are recognized as poisonous.

Mushrooms contain about 80 to 90 percent water, and are very low in calories (only 100 cal/oz). They have very little sodium and fat, and 8 to 10 percent of the dry weight is fiber. Mushrooms are also an excellent source of potassium, a mineral that helps lower elevated blood pressure and reduces the risk of stroke. One medium portabella mushroom has even more potassium than a banana or a glass of orange juice.

I was hoping to make a trip out to a mushroom farm over the winter but, alas, I have not had any time to venture out these days. Hopefully I'll be able to get out and visit one soon. I'm sure that a mushroom farm would be very cool to visit, albeit a little (okay a lot) stinky.

I WON! I WON! I WON!

Guess what! I won a cooking challenge today! (big smiles)

Every year my office has a Chili Cook-Off for the upcoming Superbowl weekend. The partipants receive $15 grocery gift cards and the winner gets a trophy to keep at their desk for the year. This year there were 6 people who brought in some yummy chili.

I participated this year for the first time and can't believe I won! Here is my recipe:

• 1lb lean ground beef (from Adelaide Farms, of course)
• 1lb lean ground pork (from grocery store, unfortunately--last minute purchase)
• one big Ontario onion sliced
• 5 small cloves of Ontario garlic
• 1 can diced tomatoes (spicy red pepper flavour)
• roasted red pepper tomato sauce
• Can of white kidney beans (oops! forgot to include this earlier--edited!!)
• chili powder/taco seasoning/cumin/cayenne pepper/salt

To start, brown the ground meats with taco seasoning. With the meat removed, cook up the onions and garlic (in the meat juices). Once those were softened add the diced tomatoes (strained) and the tomato sauce (as much as required). Season with some chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper and salt. Add the meat to the sauce mixture and let it simmer a few minutes. Because my chili was a little bit runny I add some water and corn starch to thicken the sauce a little. It worked! Everything was moved into my slow-cooker and left in low for 3 hours.

Here is a picture of my very cool trophy on my desk at work: