Will Run For Chocolate Cranberry Ginger Granola

Today I was feeling a little "punchy" for no particular reason.  Alright, maybe it had something to do with the zucchini rash that I had from my fingertips to my elbows (because weeding zucchinis isn't unpleasant enough without a rash) or the terrible grammar that I couldn't help but overhear at the grocery store ("he had to putted out the fire") or the fact that little beast and big beast thought it would be fun to run in circles and jump on top of one another while I was in-between the two of them wrapped in their leashes (while being attacked by mosquitos).

Even though I was feeling a little less punchy by the end of the night I thought that some punchy granola was in order (why not make granola at 11:30 pm?). 

Chocolate Cranberry Ginger Granola

(8 servings)

Ingredients

2 C oats (preferably not quick cooking)

1 C rye flakes (spelt also works) 

1 T coconut oil 

1 T agave nectar (honey also works)

3 T cocoa

1/4 C cocoa nibs

1/4C dried cranberries (dried cherries or dried mango also works)

5-6 slices crystallized ginger

1/2 C unsweetened shredded coconut

In a small saucepan melt coconut oil and add agave nectar.  Stir until well combined.  In the meantime combine oats, rye flakes and cocoa.  Add coconut oil/agave mixture to oats.  Bake in oven at 350 F for approximately 15 minutes stirring once or twice.  While impatiently waiting for your oats to toast combine cocoa nibs, cranberries, shredded coconut and crystallized ginger.  Once your oats are toasted add cocoa nibs, cranberries, shredded coconut and crystallized ginger.  Allow to cool completely before placing in a large mason jar. 

* number of bugs harmed during the writing of this post 5-10!

Will Run For Oatmeal Mango Pancakes with Coconut Citrus Sauce

Today I spent the morning in the kitchen with Mama Pea (her cookbook anyway).  It's amazing how much you can get done when you get up at 5:20 (thanks for nothing Hank). 

 A barbecue at pace bunny's was a great excuse to try out some of the recipes in my new cookbook www.peasandthankyou.com/peas-and-thank-you-the-book  Who needs face and mother when you can have chickpea strawberry mango salad with cinnamon vinaigrette (I might start drinking this stuff for breakfast) or mango cupcakes with coconut cream icing?

Mango cupcakes with coconut cream icing were a great excuse to make oatmeal mango pancakes with coconut citrus sauce.  These are a "stick to your ribs" kind of pancake.  Imagine your bowl of oatmeal in pancake form but with all kinds of yummy extras (I'm not the only person that is excited by the thought of this am I?).

Oatmeal Mango Pancakes with Coconut Citrus Sauce

(serves 2 not so hungry people or one really hungry person)

ingredients

1/2 C light coconut milk (I used 1/4 C soy and 1/4 full fat coconut)

1/3 C oats

1/3 C whole wheat pastry flour

1 Tbsp demerara sugar (regular brown sugar works as well)

1/8 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 flax egg (1 Tbsp of flax ground with 2 Tbsp of water let sit until it thickens)

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp vanilla paste

1/4 C diced mango (I thawed frozen PC mango)

1 recipe Coconut Citrus Sauce

In a small saucepan heat coconut milk until hot and steamy, add oats, bring to a boil and immediately remove from element. Cover and let sit approximately 10 minutes until the oats have softened.

hot and steamy

While you are waiting impatiently in a bowl big enough to accommodate wet and dry ingredients stir together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and ginger.

In a small bowl stir together the flax egg, oil and vanilla.  Add the oat mixture and the flax mixture together then combine with the flour mixture.  Fold in 1/4 cup of diced mango.

Lightly oil your skillet.  Allow your oil to heat thoroughly before adding pancake batter (otherwise the pancake absorbs all of the oil).  Cook for 4 minutes on each side at medium heat or until brown and cooked thoroughly.  Flip pancake when you see bubbles forming.  You may need to add additional oil.

Coconut Citrus Sauce

(1 Cup)

ingredients

1/2 C orange juice
2 Tbsp coconut milk

1 tsp cornstarch

1 C diced mango (again I used PC frozen mango that I thawed)

pinch of cloves

In a small sauce pan stir together orange juice, coconut milk and cornstarch over medium heat.  Continue to stir until mixture is thick and bubbly (about 2 minutes).  Add diced mango.  Lightly mash mango with potato masher (or wait patiently until the mango breaks up).

Will Run For Chocolate Banana Coffee Smoothies

The best part of early long Sunday runs (if you haven't convinced your running partner that you should eat cake or drink lattes instead) is eating breakfast for the second time.  Ideally your second breakfast is something delicious that someone else has prepared like the waffles and strawberry coulis that were being made at pace bunny's house (thanks for the tepid tap water by the way).

The next best thing is a chocolate banana coffee smoothie!   According to the my plate feature at www.livestrong.com this smoothie contains 235 calories, 5g of fibre, 5g of protein and 2g of fat (incase you were interested). 

Chocolate Banana Coffee Smoothie

(serves 1)

ingredients

1 frozen banana 

*1/2 C light soy milk 

1 tsp instant coffee

1 Tbsp cocoa powder

1 scoop vanilla protein powder (optional)

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until desired consistency is reached.   If you don't have a frozen banana you can reduce the amount of soy milk and add ice.

Will Run For Chocolate Cherry Coconut Energy Bars/Balls

It was an innocent enough question, "Have you started planning for school yet?".  Who asks that question in July?!?  Rather than thinking about lesson planning, curriculum and the lovelies that will be in my class next year I started thinking about lunches and school snacks instead.

Sometimes you need a sweet treat to make it through the day (e.g. on days when you have an opera singing ballerina penguin in your classroom full of 9 & 10 year olds during your math lesson on probability).

Chocolate Cherry Coconut Energy Bars/Balls

(makes 15 bars/balls)

ingredients

4 C puffed kamut (puffed wheat, puffed millet, etc. also work well)

*1 C buckwheat honey

1 C unsweetened dried  coconut

1/2 C cocoa nibs

1/2 C dried cherries

1/4 tsp cardamom

1/4 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla paste (vanilla extract works as well)

* I've also used brown rice syrup and agave nectar but I found the bars to be fairly sticky and I had difficulty getting them to keep their shape.

In a large bowl combine kamut, cocoa nibs, dried cherries and dried coconut.

dry ingredients

In a medium saucepan combine honey, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and vanilla paste.  Bring to a boil and then turn down heat and simmer for approximately 5 minutes (this is not the time to check your e-mail, call your grandmother, etc.  If the honey boils over there will be a sticky disastrous mess.  Luckily, this didn't happen to me today but it was close).

resist the temptation to eat this on its own

Stir honey mixture with kamut mixture and press into a oiled 13 x 9 inch baking pan (I like silicone best for this).

turn onto cutting board

Let cool.  Cut into bars or roll into balls.  Oiling your knife and/or hands is helpful.

cut into bars or roll into balls

While I have been trying to avoid thinking about lesson planning, curriculum, etc.  I am very excited to be organizing a running club for my elementary school this year.  I found a very cool website www.runforlife.ca that has tonnes of resources that are definately worth checking out.

Will Run For Local Vegetables & Spicy Sweet Potato Hummus

spicy sweet potato hummus

There isn't anything particularly exciting about hummus.  There is however something very exciting about giant oregon snow peas, garlic and zucchini from Spill The Beans Farm!  My favourite farmer weaselled me  into picking about 30 litres of peas (plus the 3 litres that I ate while in the field) with the promise of being able to eat as many peas as I wanted.  I was also lucky enough to leave the farm with two heads of local garlic and 2 zucchinis.  While all of these vegetables are delicious a little dip never hurt anyone.

hardneck garlic

giant oregon snow peas

farmer & her zucchinis 

Spicy Sweet Potato Hummus

( 2 1/2 C)

ingredients

1 19oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed (nothing is more disgusting than bean slime)

1/4 C fresh lime juice

2 Tbsp fresh cilantro

2 Tbsp olive oil 

1 clove local garlic

1 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp chipoltle chili pepper 

1/3 C mashed sweet potato (optional)

In your blender combine chickpeas, lime juice, cilantro, olive oil, garlic (I put mine through the garlic press first), cumin, chipotle, & salt.

Add mashed sweet potato.  Thin with extra lime juice if necessary.

Serve with seasonal local vegetables.   Garnish with chipotle chili pepper (sparingly) and fresh cilantro.  This hummus also tastes great in a wrap made with an ezekial sprouted grain wrap, sunflower sprouts, avocado, cucumber, and tomato.

If you are in the area check out the Eat Local Co-op stall at Market Square for peas, potatoes, & zucchinis from Spill The Beans Farm

Will Run For Maple Rice Pudding

Today Pace Bunny and I officially started training for the www.torontowaterfrontmarathon.com !

We are only running the 1/2 marathon and have decided to call it the FULL (it doesn't seem like a big deal when you say your are doing half of something) 1/2 Martini Marathon (we're taking training very seriously as you can tell). 

After running a marathon that Pace Bunny is still having flash backs about* and a 10K that made me think I should buy a florescent purple wind suit, a sweatband and take up mall walking we decided to train for the 1/2 with the goal of having a  finish line photo where we don't look like death or sausages stuffed into our running gear (Pace Bunny's shorts were pretty short today and since when is there a gap between my running shirt and shorts).

*(NEVER take copious amounts of Immodium before running 42 kilometres regardless of how many times you have to visit the portapotty before the race begins)

How is all of this related to rice pudding?  On a cool summer day (or what was a cool day) rice pudding makes a pretty good post run snack.  

  

Maple Rice Pudding

ingredients

1/3 C maple syrup 

3 Tbsp cornstarch

2 C soy, dairy or nut milk  (I used Unsweetened So Nice)

1-2 TBSP vanilla bean paste

1/4 C dates or raisins chopped (soaked in just boiled water for 5-10 minutes)

1/4 tsp grated nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2-2 C cooked brown or white rice (depending on how creamy you like your pudding)

In a medium saucepan mix maple syrup & cornstarch.  Gradually stir in milk.  Cook over medium heat until it comes to a boil and then simmer for 1 minute (it's important to stir or you could potentially end up with a burnt mess...yuck!).

Add nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla bean paste.

Add cooked rice.

Pour into serving dishes (or eat it directly from the pot) and refrigerate until ready to serve.  Candied walnuts would make a great addition to this recipe as well.  Yum!

You could switch this recipe up by substituting some coconut milk for soy milk and adding fresh or dried mango and pineapple.  You could add an assortment of spices such as cardamom, allspice, cloves, etc.  Have fun with it.

Will Run For Vanilla Bean Rum Ice Cream

An ice cream maker can be a dangerous thing in the hands of someone like me.  With an ice-cream maker at my disposal there is very little standing between me and copious amounts of cookie dough, vanilla and chocolate chip ice-cream.

Last night I was lucky enough to get together for dinner with four of my favourite people.  Several of us used to get together over the guise of book club (more like buffet club) until we couldn't take anymore Jane Jacobs, Dean Koontz or Lucy Maud Montgomery (what were we thinking?!?) .   It was a great excuse to make vanilla bean rum ice cream.

Vanilla Bean Rum Ice Cream

ingredients

1 cup sugar  (I used camino golden cane sugar)

2 tsp lemon juice

*2 C 35% cream

1 C 2% milk

1 vanilla bean pod

2 Tbsp rum

If you have an ice cream maker place in your freezer at least 24 hours before you begin making ice-cream.  Thoroughly combine all ingredients.  Pour in ice cream maker and freeze until desired consistency is reached.  Pour into storage container and place in freezer for 3-4 hours.  Ice cream will need to thaw slightly before being served.

If you are without an ice cream maker simply place mixture in a shallow container and place in freezer until desired consistency is reached.  Stir several times.

If you were hoping for a dairy free recipe check out  www.theveganscoop.com for ice cream and sorbet recipes.  Maybe it's time for another dinner party.

*Do not try to make this recipe "skinny" by replacing the 35% cream unless of course you were hoping for a block of ice.