My mind is all over the place lately. I’m a daydreamer, it’s my superpower, I could do it all day and be quite content. I especially love people watching and daydreaming in conjunction, imagining what the lives of others are made of. Today I nearly walked into a pole, which may have something to do with the smell of pulled pork wafting out of Nelsons bbq joint. By some space cadet miracle I was able to pull it together this morning and bring everything we needed to town as well as making these delicious thai lime and chili cashews. These are a great snack and super easy to make, I know I’m a sure sucker for all those fancy nut mixes at the health food store. They’re usually pretty expensive and you don’t really get much, so I’ve opted to just make my own for a fraction of the price. Because I am nuts about nuts! I like to add additional little goodies like coconut flakes and sesame seeds but you can totally leave those out if you want.
Trader Joe’s makes a thai chili lime cashew mix that people love. Although theirs tastes artificial and overtly fake, this one is the real deal and tastes way better! If you shop at TJ’s I’d say stick to the whole foods, their pre packaged stuff tends to have a lot of added garbage.
In a medium sized bowl combine sesame oil, hot sauce,honey, lime, tamari and mix well.
Add sesame seeds, coconut and cashews and toss to coat evenly in the sauce.
Spread a thin layer on a parchment lined baking sheet.
Bake for 7 minutes, take out and stir, bake for another 7-10 minutes depending on the strength of your oven, check often to make sure they turn perfectly golden but don't burn.
I have breaking news, regular nutella isn’t nearly as healthy as they claim it to be! Shocker right? What should be a wholesome organic spread with emphasis on 2 amazing natural ingredients somehow got lost along the way. No fear, my feller cohorts and I have resurrected what nutella should be, no weird hydrogenated oils or refined sugar, just real food. It is 10:30 at night and I’m eating this stuff out the jar. I know you’re meant to spread it on stuff but I just can’t help myself. But why am I indulging in a bowl of this nutella at such a late hour? My inner night owl has not been tamed by motherhood. Though it is always just as difficult waking up at the crack of dawn to a hair pulling little ball of energy, I still can’t help but stay up late, creating, writing, laughing. What is this extraneous creature that dwells within me only to enliven after nine. She has always been there, when I was a young lass I would wait until everyone went to bed and have meetings with all my teddy bears arranged in a circle. We’d talk for hours. Or those slumber parties with all your best girlfriends, prank calling sexy phone lines in the wee hours of the night. I can see myself as an old woman, still staying up late to read, write, create, laugh, cry. Do you any have night owl tendencies? It’s interesting that my partner is what some would call a ‘morning person’ though to me he’s more of an ‘afternoon person’. How important is it to have similar sleep schedules in a relationship? Is it a little more difficult to find balance when one person eats nutella at night from a bowl and one spreads it on toast in the morning? Perhaps it matters more that both people love nutella, there’s a special bond there. Which reminds me of a quote…
Too true isn’t it? You certainly can’t please everyone. I know I’m guilty of trying to make everyone happy, but hey, it never works. There are even people out there who don’t like nutella (I’ve met them).
In a high powered blender or food processor, add hazelnuts and process until they start to form a smooth nut butter, you can add a bit of water here to get things moving.
Use a double boiler method to melt the coconut oil and cacao paste, stir in the honey and add this liquid to the hazelnuts.
Add salt,blend everything together until super smooth, adding water as you go to achieve desired consistency.
Stuffing your face with coconut chips is 100% happifying. Happifying; to make yourself happy, aint nobody else gonna do it. Snacks are a common frustration in our house, J goes on cracker binges, I pretend the big bag of dried mango is for baby Mav, covertly popping slice after chewy slice into my mouth. Fact is, middle of the afternoon hits and we all want just a little something. Well, these sweet and salty coconut chips hit the spot, how else do 2 people destroy 4 cups of coconut in one afternoon…yeah…that good.
Shredded coconut is wicked high in fibre and very satiating, after our chow sesh we didn’t eat all day, not even mango slices. If you’ve seen those blue monkey coconut chips that are way overpriced, these are their easy to make super cheap equivalent. Also, I know this is a touch weird, but I think if one were really fond of that junky cereal corn flakes, that these coconut flakes with some almond milk would be stellar.
Combine maple syrup or honey, oil and salt and mix in thoroughly with the coconut.
Spread the coconut thinly on 2 baking trays and pop in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove and stir, turn the oven off and return the trays for another 30 minutes.
I really wasn’t sure what to name this deliciously multi faceted concotion of mine. Originally I wanted to follow in my ma’s footsteps and make traditional sloppy joes for Halloween (she used to make little pepper faces on the buns for us-so cute). The dilemma was that I didn’t want the whole bun deal. So of course the yams come in, caramelized yam slices soak up sloppy sweet spicy beef pretty well. But it was still incomplete, the messy appeal of a sloppy joe was lacking, so I created these crispy thin flatbreads that work wonders as makeshift utensils. Top that with fresh roasted salsa verde, avocado and colourful rainbow chard and you’ve got yourself a pretty classy dish, a sloppy jane indeed with a south of the border flare.
Happy Halloween! I dressed up as the cat in the hat, J wore a creepy mask and baby Mav was a little skeleton, we had our own dance party to Whitney Houston, the monster mash and Fresh Prince of Bel Air. J threatened to tape my singing ‘I will always love you’ so that our future kin can laugh at my desperate quaking voice. I so wish I could sing like Whitney. I wrapped a bunch of mini homemade oh henry bars for the trick or treaters but alas, no little princesses and vampires came a knockin’. I guess our place is a little out of the way, but it’s our first Halloween here so I wanted to have treats just in case. Oh well, they certainly won’t go to waste.
Preheat oven to 400F, Line a baking tray and place the sweet potatoes and tomatiollos on the tray. Bake for 40 minutes.
In a large skillet melt fat or oil and add onion and garlic, cook until the onion starts to turn golden.
Add chile, chipotle and beef. As the beef starts to cook, raise the heat and add the molasses, stir on high for 2 minutes and turn heat to low.
Add in worcester sauce,oregano,cumin,chili powder and salt. Cover and let simmer on low.
To make the salsa verde, take the roasted tomatillos and add them to a blender or food processor, in addition to one clove garlic, lime, and cilantro. Blend on high and set aside.
Combine Tapioca flour, coconut flour, water, cumin and salt until smooth, it should be quite thin.
Heat a frying pan with a bit of your favourite cooking fat or oil, dropping about ⅛th C mixture into the pan and swirling the batter around the pan each time for small little flatbreads. They take about 2 min. per side to get nice and crispy. Repeat until finished.
Remove yams from the oven and sprinkle with a tsp cane sugar, turn oven to broil and brown the tops for a few minutes.
To assemble, arrange yams around the edge, sloppy in the middle, and all the fix ins around the edges of your bowl.
Oh my, Oh Henry, Oh yeah! These little duddies are way better than the original, it’s so hard to eat just one, they’re just so perfectly gooey and crunchy and covered with chocolate, oh my. Bribe your babes to trade you their crummy candy for these wholesome yet indulgent little treats. Instead of roasted peanuts I used roasted cashews, which taste better and offer a few more health benefits. They say one serving of cashews is equivalent in mood boosting therapeutic properties to a dose of prozac, which you might need after seeing all the heinous halloween costumes. Has anyone seen the sexy ebola nurse costume going around…for real.
It’s almost Hallow’s Eve, and that means treats and low lying creepy fog lurking around every dark corner with only the tips of the barren trees poking out. Goblins and ghouls are almost as scary as the copious amounts of GMOs being fed to the littles. Remember when candy bars were made with just regular old sugar. A part of me is so upset that halloween has been hijacked by monsanto, but another part of my heart just wants to work harder to provide alternatives. This year I’m going to make little bliss balls and attach my contact details, we live in a small town so hopefully if any parents are freaked out they will contact me. Luckily I don’t have to worry just yet about my little guy getting into all that crazy candy, just his constant magnetic draw to the dogs water bowl.
In a food processor or high powered blender combine date paste, almond butter and coconut oil and blend until it starts to come together, add water until it is smooth but still quite thick.
In a square baking dish 8x8 spread an even layer of date paste caramel mix, top with roasted cashews and push the in to the caramel slightly just so they stick. Freeze this for at least an hour.
To make the chocolate coating, melt cacao butter or coconut oil over a double boiler, whisk in cacao powder, honey and salt.
When the caramel is sufficiently frozen, cut it into mini bars, the recipe makes about 18 little bars. Use a metal spatula to remove the bars from the dish and roll them around in the chocolate sauce until thoroughly coated.
Set aside and allow bars to set in the freezer or fridge.
An attempt was made to ascend one of the remaining remnants of the old growth forests of British Columbia. Up into the endangered Jumbo valley, whose ski resort future is looming within her glory. Though we underestimated the mighty whipping winds which brought a taste of winter and a swelling fondness for the unpredictable. At first our persevering spirits motored forth, with my 7 month old baby strapped to my chest, every step was placed with meaning and my clumsy nature replaced with grace. Meandering up this narrow slippery path, the moment being the only possibility, I squelched the idea that this sort of reckless snowy mountain hike makes me a negligent mother. It’s that kind of domesticated human brainwash babble that I catch myself in sometimes. Our feminine ancestors were certainly out perusing the land daily foraging food with their babies. We did end up turning back, it was a white out and the epic views were smothered in clouds and snow. For now the foraging will happen close to home, until Jumbo welcomes us back next summer. It was an absolute pleasure to reconnect with my sister and our friend, we came home from our hike to a slow cooked boeuf bourgignon which I’m just going to have to recreate and share with you all.
For now I have a spiffy way to roast up brussels sprouts that every the pickiest little turkeys will gobble right up. These caramelized maple almond brussels sprouts and pumpkin will convert any hater, they sure did the trick for me, former loather of all things brussels and J too. The sweet gooey maple crunchy roasted almond bits and slightly bitter minister cabbages speckled with slices of creamy pumpkin- oh it’s just perfection. Honestly I ate these as a meal by themselves today, even baby Mav chowed down. Paired alongside roast chicken or turkey, you’ve got yourselves a colourful healthy side dish and maybe even a new fall staple.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
