Homemade Pasta Sauce

My advise for the pasta lovers is to make your own pasta sauce at home, especially if you do it for kids. Try not to buy a ready-to-use one from grocery shop. And if you are in a hurry and just don;t have time enough ot prepare one, then buy an ecological one.

Advantages for the homemade sauce: better taste, much healthier, and a lot cheaper.

You don't need so much time or some chief skills to make it right, so don't panic.

Ingredients (for 3 persons - 1 adult and 2 children):

2 medium tomatoes
1 big carrot
1 medium onion
1 medium red sweet pepper
olive oil - 2-3 tablespoons
iodine free salt
Provensal Herbs - 1 tablespoon

Chop the vegetables into small pieces, with a knife. In this case, I advise you to grate the carrot. Or use the food processor to chop them all together, easy peasy :)

In a pan add the oil and the vegetables, stir with a spoon and let them cook with a lid over, 20-30 minutes. Add 2-3 tablespoons of water, if the mixture starts to be too dry, to avoid burning Add the salt and Provencal Herbs at the end.

When the mixture is done (that means the pieces of onion and carrot are soft), use a blender to obtain a creamy texture of the sauce.

If you have toddlers, you can add in this sauce (after blending the sauce in the blender) small pieces of chicken breast meat, just boiled before. If you have bigger kids, you can add a good quality ham (soy free), chopped.

Top this sauce over your favorite gluten free pasta. My kids love the fusilli shape.

If you are not dairy free, top it with some fresh grated parmesan.

Rice Paper Vegetable Spring Rolls

Tortilla Wrap

Ok, this is not quite a recipe for little picky eaters. It is obviously that my kids are growing up and they start to eat much more diversified. Which is a good thing, but they still have a lot of issues to improve about their diet. So, why did I invent this homemade recipe? For 2 reasons:

1. to use the always remaining leftovers of all kind of steak, roasted meat and so on.

2. and to camouflage some kind of meat that is very healthy but the kids don't want to eat (venison, hunting meat like rabbit).

My mother helps me and she usually cooks the venison for us, by keeping it for days in marinade in order to change the taste, baking it in oven for hours to tenderize it. But my kids still don't want to eat it. So, i came with this amazing idea, to add some sauces over to change the taste and the smell, and to wrap it with salad in tortilla.

First, to trick them, I added also some baked potatoes in the wrap, and then replace them with baked sweet potatoes. But now I don't add sweet potatoes all the time, and that makes the wrap more light and healthy.

So, this is the way to make it: cut the meat into small pieces and cook it for a few minutes in a pan with some olive oil.

I add over 2 sauces: a little of Thai Sweet and Hot Chilli Sauce and Rich Hoisin Sauce.  In the third jar there is homemade hot peppers jam, which I sometimes use instead of the Sweet and Hot Chilli Sauce.

 

For this recipe I use a gluten free tortilla.

Steps:
1. I warm the tortilla for a minute in a hot pan. 

2. Then add some sweet mustard. 

3 - 4. Add some grated carrot, the meat and the salad, and wrap it!

For my eldest son, I add a little of Sweet and Hot Chilli Sauce over, because he likes spicy food.

You can use corn tortilla (picture below) instead of the gluten free one, or any kind of tortilla you prefer, even a gluten version one, if you don't have gluten intolerance.

Chocolate Chip Cookies - changing the recipe!

Hi, everybody!

Today I want to tell you something which could be very useful to you and can make your work in the kitchen much easier: don't be afraid to change my recipes. Or any recipes. 

If you don't have an ingredient or you don't have it in the amount that it is prescribed in the recipe, fell free and use your imagination to replace it with another suitable one, or to reduce the amount of one ingredient and increase the amount of another. Play with the ingredients and try to be creative. Preparing food could be a funny activity, especially if you avoid boring and repeating recipes.  

For example, today I wanted to prepare Chocolate Chip Cookies, one of my old recipes and very loved by my kids. But I realized that I don't have enough walnuts, my recipe requires 500 grams (17.6 oz). So, I used only what i had, like half of the amount (250 grams = 8.8 oz).

Now, the question is how to fill the missing quantity. So, I added 100 grams more gluten free flour, and 30 grams Raw Almonds Flakes. And I reduces the butter quantity a little bit (from 200 to 170 grams), because I dont need the same moisture. 

Now the recipe looks like this:

- walnuts - grinded (soaked before; see here how) 250 grams (8.8 oz)
- all purpose gluten free flour 350 grams (12.3 oz)
- cane sugar 200 grams (7 oz)
- raw almonds flakes 30 grams (1 oz)
- ghee butter 170 grams - melted (6 oz)
- 2 free range eggs
- dark chocolate chips 100 grams (3.5 oz)

The way you prepare the recipe and cook the cookies is the same as for Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is the recipe that I have done the most times in my life. Sometimes even every week, for months :). My kids just adore this cookies with chocolate chips. Plus, these kind of cookies are very suitable like school snack. 

Ingredients:

- walnuts - grinded (soaked before; see here how) 500 grams (17.6 oz)
- all purpose gluten free flour 250 grams (8.8 oz)
- cane sugar 200 grams (7 oz)
- ghee butter 200 grams - melted (7 oz)
- 4 organic pasture eggs
- dark chocolate chips 100 grams (3.5 oz)

Mix all the ingredients together in a blender. Keep for at least one hour in the fridge. Shape by hand flat biscuits (any size you wish) and cook them in a preheated oven at 170 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Let them cool before eating.

Lemon Muffins

Muffins:
1 cup coconut milk
3/4 cup coconut oil (or butter) at room temperature
2 eggs if there are big; otherwise 3 small
1 cup cane sugar
finally grated zest from one lemon
2 cups all purpose gluten free flour
1 teaspoon aluminium free baking powder

Syrup:
finally grated zest from one lemon
juice of 2 lemons
honey (same quantity as the lemon juice)

If you are not on a dairy free diet, you can replace the coconut milk with: goat milk/ sheep yogurt/ Mascarpone Cheese/ whipped cream. 

I made these cupcakes with coconut milk, but also with sheep yogurt. When I don't have coconut milk and I have to use dairy products, I usually choose goat or sheep products. I avoid as much as possible the cow ones. And the same you can do with the coconut oil, just use butter, or ghee butter, if you don't have coconut oil. 

Baking: 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius in the preheated over.

After cooling, stab the folk couple of times in the middle of the muffin and pour 3 teaspoons of syrup, in each muffin.

For a few muffins, I tried to add some black chocolate chips on top of it. There were good, but not as good as the ones with honey and lemon syrup.

Keep the muffins in the refrigerator. The taste is better!

Doughnuts

Not any doughnuts, but gluten and dairy free ones. What about that? If you have gluten and dairy intolerance, try my recipe. If you don't, try the same recipe and replace what is written with purple in parenthesis. 

- 1 cup almond milk (1 cup whole caw milk)

- 2 eggs

- 2 and 1/2 cups all purpose gluten free flour (3 cups wheat flour)

- 1/2 teaspoon yeast

- 1 teaspoon cane sugar

- 1 teaspoon of olive oil

- finally grated zest from half of lemon

- 300 grams (10 oz) xylitol

Warm the milk at 35-40 degrees Celsius (or let's say at the temperature of your skin). Dissolve the yeast in one tablespoon of milk and add the sugar. Then pour after the rest of the milk. Beat with a folk the eggs, pout over the milk. Add the olive oil and the grated zest. Add the whole gluten free flour and stir. 

Keep this dough in a warm place for 30 minutes. 

Take with your hand or with a tablespoon small pieces of dough, and fry them in hot oil in an enameled cast iron pan.

Powder with your favorite sweetener.  I used xylitol. 

Gluten Free Cookies From Mix

This is for the moments when you decide to be a lazy mommy and cook something which doesn't bother you too much. Get a gluten free mix and follow the instructions. In may case, 2 eggs and 160 grams melted butter over the mix, 20 minutes in preheated oven at 170 degrees Celsius and the cookies are ready to eat!  

Chicken Schnitzel

Gluten free and oil free! What can be more amazing and more healthful for your kids? Gluten free - because we used corn flakes. And oil free, because we baked the schnitzels in oven, we didn't fry them in oil. 

And do you know what is really amazing for me? Last evening when I cooked this meal, my son said: "Mmmm!... It's the most wonderful thing I've even eaten!"

How can you prepare this amazing healthy schnitzel? Smash by hand the corn flakes into a kitchen towel, until you get the desired size of the crumbs. If you do it by a mixer, you will get too tinny pieces of crumbs, almost like a dust. And you don't want that.

Beat one free range egg and mix it with Provensal Seasoning and Himalayan pink salt iodine free. I used only one egg for the entirely amount of chicken breast you can see in the oven in the end. It was a large egg.

Press the pieces of chicken breast in beaten eggs on both sides and lay them down in the tray on parchment paper. And baked them in the preheated oven at 170 degrees Celsius for 20 - 30 minutes. After 15 minutes I suggest you to open the oven and turn the schnitzels on the over side. 

Lemon Pie

Base (pie crust):

- 2 cups gluten free flour
- 1 cup cane sugar
- 200 grams melted butter
- 1 egg
- 1/4 tsp Himalaya pink salt

Mix all together and keep the dough in refrigerator for at least 3 hours (better for 12 hours).

Filling (lemon curd):

- 1 cup cane sugar
- 1/2 cup melted butter
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup raw goat milk
- finally grated zest from one lemon
- freshly squeezed lemon juice form one lemon (about 4-5 tbsp)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup gluten free four

Here in the first picture is the dough pressed in the tray in the shape of a tart crust. In the second picture, you can see that we pour the filing over the crust.

1 hour in preheated oven, at 180 degrees Celsius.

Serve it cold.

Homemade Biscuits

Do you like that kind of crunchy, crispy, butter flavored biscuits for tea? That taste delicious, crack very easy and smell like roasted nuts?

Well, here you have the original recipe and more! A gluten free version, with walnuts. The recipe is very healthy and very easy to make it. 

Ingredients:

- walnuts - grinded (soaked before; see here how) 300 grams (10.6 oz)
- unsalted butter 200 grams - melted(7 oz)
- all purpose gluten free flour 150 grams (5.3 oz)
- cane sugar 100 grams (3.5 oz)

Mix all the ingredients. Keep for at least 15 minutes in the fridge. Shape by hand small flat biscuits and cook them in a preheated oven at 170 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. Try to eat them cold :)

Quinoa Breakfast

Cereals, even the gluten free ones, like quinoa, even soaked and boiled before, should not occur in the baby's meals, before age of two ears. If you are not so conservative, i suggest you to introduce cereals, with gluten or not, after the age of one year. The amylase enzyme needed for starch digestion is produced by the digestive system after this age.

My little sweetie girl has now almost 3 years, so she can eat safely this kind of food. A way of serving her quinoa breakfast is with a top of row organic honey and pieces of well ripe banana. I ususaly have quinoa in refrigerator, soaked and boiled before as I've told you here.      

Coconut Cookies Recipe

I should call this recipe "Easy Cookies Recipe", because this is definitely the most easy recipe in the world. And I should make another blog category called "Easy recipes", starting with it. But I just don't want to have a "bushy" blog, so I will try to keep things simple. 

Ingredients:

- coconut flakes dehydrated 200 grams (7 oz)
- unrefined cane sugar Demerara Bullington's 150 grams (5.3 oz)
- gluten free flour 2 tablespoons all purpose
- 4 organic free range eggs
- butter 70 grams (2.5 oz) (next time I want to try with coconut oil; then it will be also a dairy free recipe)

All you have to do is to mix all the ingredients in a bowl, even with a folk, you don't need a blender. Fewer thinks to wash, much better! If you have time, keep the dough in refrigerator for 15 minutes, and then shape by hands the cookies and lay them down on a parchment baking paper in a tray.

Cook the coconut cookies in the preheated oven, at maximum 160 degrees Celsius, for no more that 20 minutes. The eggs there are the only ingredient that should be done. Pay attention not to burn this coconut cookies, because the coconut flakes get roasted very easy. By the way, this is a gluten free recipe.

Quinoa Cookies

My kids say that this quinoa cookies are the best cookies in the world! So, believe my little picky eaters and try this recipe for your kids too!

This cookies are gluten free. I use quinoa, which is a pseudocereal, a gluten free grain. 

Ingredients in the picture below:

- quinoa bio 200 grams (7 oz) (soaked and boiled before, as I will explain later)

- dates 15 pieces (soaked before for at least 2 hours and half)

- 2 organic free range eggs 

- butter 100 grams (3.5 oz) (melted before)

- coconut flakes dehydrated 2 tablespoons 

- dark chocolate chips 70 grams (2.5 oz)

- vanilla extract 1 tablespoon 

First step, you have to soak quinoa for 2 hours and half. Read about why and how I soak nuts, seeds or grains, in my article here. As you can see below, you take 1 cup of bio quinoa and soak it in water with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, for 2:30 hours. The amount of water is 2 cups. 

Then boil it wth another 2 more cups of water, for 15 minutes. You will get in the end, 3 cups of quinoa soaked and boiled. You keep just 1 cup for our cookies, and place the rest of it in a glass container in refrigerator, for using it later for other dishes (it's very good for adding over salads, or like breakfast with fruits and honey).

Mix in a big bowl all the ingredients: quinoa, soaked dates (take off the cores), eggs, melted butter and vanilla extract. 

Mix the ingredients with a blender and add 2 spoons of dehydrated coconut flakes, to thick the mixture. Add in the end the dark chocolate chips and stir with a folk. Put one by one a teaspoon with dough on a parchment cooking paper. 

Cook the quinoa cookies in the preheated oven, at 160 degrees Celsius, for 20 minutes. There is no need for more time of cooking, because the quinoa is already boiled. The eggs are the only ones which need to be cook, and 20 minutes are enough. Be carefully, not to burn them!

Healthy Cupcakes

My cupcakes are ideal for a school snack. Try to find another idea to pack them, because the way I did it in a plastic bag, it's not a very good one, because it can be cracked very easy. If you put it just like this in the school bag, and the kids throw it up into the ear and catch it, like my kid usually do with the school bag, the cupcakes will become only crumbs. And your kid will eat someone else 's snack, or worst, he will eat some junk food from the school buffet. 

The ingredients for the recipe:

- one cup and half of all purpose gluten free flour
- half cup of xylitol (or another healthy sweetener)
- one cup of melted butter
- 3 eggs
- one teaspoon aluminium free baking powder
- one teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder unsweetened

Just mix all the ingredients (except cocoa powder) in a blender. Take 1/3 of the mixture and add the cocoa powder.

Pour the white mixture in each empty cupcake paper cup. Immediately pour over the first mixture, a bit of the brown mixture.

Place the cupcakes in the preheated oven, at no more that 150 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.

Cherry Cake

This is another idea for school lunch box.

The ingredients:

- 5 eggs free range pastured

- butter, melted 200 grams (7 oz)

- gluten free four 300 grams (10.5 oz)

- xylitol (or organic cane sugar) 100 grams (3.5 oz)

- cherries 400 grams (14 oz) fresh or frozen

As you can imagine, you have to beat the white eggs separately and then add the xylitol/sugar in it. Separately also mix the melted butter with yolks. And then pour over the white eggs. At the end, add the flour.

Pour in the tray, and garnish with the cherries. Keep it in the oven at maximum 170 degrees Celsius, for 30 minutes.

How to Cook Corn on The Cob

First of all, you have to get an organic corn, NON GMO. You can boil it or cook it on grill. We prefer boiled, because it's much more simpler to make it. Here you have the steps:  

Chocolate Chip Cake

This recipe is sugar free and gluten free.

Ingredients:

Coconut cream 250 grams (8.8 oz)

3-4 very well ripe bananas

Sesame flour 2 tablespoons

Gluten free flour 4 tablespoons

5 organic pasture eggs

Mascarpone cheese 250 grams (8.8 oz)

Unsweetened cocoa powder 1 tablespoon

Baking powder 1 teaspoon

Dark Chocolate Chips 250 grams (8.8 oz)

This chocolate chip cake can be also a suitable snack for school small break, in a nice plastic casserole.