HEALTHY UP YOUR HOLIDAY FOOD:

I decided to healthy up Rosh Hashanah dinner yesterday. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and if you know anything about Jewish in general, every holiday is about food.  Food, food and more food. Delicious, artery clogging, fattening, bloat inducing food. Oh, and guilt if you don't eat the food.

Traditionally on the new year you are supposed to eat sweet things, so you'll have a sweet year. Makes sense, very practical. Unless like me, sugar is your nemesis. I love it, it hates me. Once the holiday season starts to roll around it's a real challenge to stay away from the white poison, as I call it. Even at Thanksgiving my husbands amazing, (made from scratch), creamed corn has a secret crunchy topping on it that everyone loves. Here's the secret, (sorry handsome), it's ground up Captain Crunch cereal. Captain Crunch!!!! We can't blame him, he's from the Midwest.

My memories of Jewish Holidays often revolve around some of my favorites, Matzo Ball soup, Matzo Bri, Matzo Pudding and Matzo Kugel. You get the picture. Matzo is made out of flour and water. That's it. Kind of like paste running through your veins. Matzo, I love it, it hates me. Also, the famous meat of all Jewish Holidays ~ the Brisket. A big slab of meat smothered with sweet gravy.  

Since I no longer eat red meat, and being the rebel that I am, I decided to make a turkey. I went to three markets and no one had any turkeys. The first meat dept. manager looked at me like I was crazy and felt the need to tell me that Thanksgiving is in November.  The second offered me a pre-cooked pre-wrapped turkey breast that looked like a big bald bunch of jellied meat substitute and the third meat dept. manager showed me to the packages of turkey legs and wings and said that's all they had. I asked him what they did with the rest of the turkey???

So I bought a chicken. Since we have chicken a lot I took to my trusty Pinterest food board to try and find a fabulous recipe for a chicken. And I did. Chicken rosemary (from our garden) stuffed with apple with new potatoes, sweet potatoes and garlic cloves that caramelized just thrown in the pan and were so delicious. The apple was the sweet part, for the new year. I used a little chicken broth in the pan instead of the wine it called for. The house smelled heavenly, and the chicken was amazing. Find the recipe here.

As a side dish I made Tzimmes. I had never made this traditional Jewish dish before. It called for brown sugar, that's a no, so I used honey. I couldn't really find one good recipe I liked so I read a few and then made up my own. I do that. I cut up carrots and dried fruit, cranberries, apricots, even a prune, and used the juice on an orange that mixed with the honey to form a glaze that was really delicious. And I put in a cinnamon stick too. Dried fruit naturally has a lot of sugar so I did not add any other except the honey.

The Moist Apple Cake was a random recipe I saw on line from Egglands Best, I couldn't pin it so here it is, very easy.

• 4 cups of diced apple
• 2 cups of flour (I used gluten free)
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar (I used a little honey, you could also use stevia)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 2 large beaten eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl combine eggs, sweetener, applesauce and diced apples. Mix in egg and nuts. In another bowl sift flour, baking soda, salt cinnamon and nutmeg (I must confess I never sift). Add to apple/egg mixture and stir until mixed well. Pour into a greased 13 x 9 inch baking dish. I used two small bunt pans instead. Bake for 1 hour.

Whatever your traditional foods are, remember there is always a way to make them healthier. You can still have your cake and eat it too :)

Here are some common and healthy ingredient swaps;

• One banana = two eggs
• 1/2 cup of applesauce = 1/2 cup of butter
• One cup of Greek yogurt = one cup of sour cream 
• One cup of crushed nuts = one cup of bread crumbs
• One cup mashed avocado = one cup of mayo
• Substitute dates for sugar 
• Substitute nut flour for 1/2 all purpose flour

FROM DRAB TO FAB ~ FOOD

Unless it's packaged with the word 'Wonder' on it, it's hard for me to really call any bread drabulous, but the flat bread I'm going to share with you is so fabulous, I just had to make this a drab to fab post. Drab to me is bread full of bad ingredients like white flour, sugar and preservatives, and fab is this sugar free, gluten free, flour free and delicious flat bread!

I tend to have my way with recipes. The first time I make one I follow it closely, especially with bread, because, as my husband will attest to, it could turn out badly and I could end up like this.  

After I follow a recipe once it's pretty much a crap shoot. Don't get me wrong, I love to cook and I'm good at it, I just like to do it my way, which would be the faster and easier way.  I mention this because I have definitely tweaked this recipe from its original instructions.  I'm on a clean eating plan, which means no gluten (OK little gluten, I try), no sugar, (again trying), and no white anything. It's a lot more common to eat this way now that we know so much about GMO's and other crap that goes into our food. And with healthy eating instagramers and pinners posting photos of great healthy food ideas and recipes it's not even hard.  Granted I'm in Los Angeles so there are always healthy options. The street I shop on has a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe's and a Sprouts all within four blocks of each other!  Health oriented restaurant choices abound and gluten free sections are showing up on more and more menus.

So now lets talk about being a bread addict and going gluten free. Oh did I mention that I'm a bread addict? That I could live on crusty French, Italian, or any country's bread for that matter, warm comforting freshly baked doughy perfection?  No? Well, it's true, so being someone who does not like feeling deprived I set out into the world of gluten free substitutions. And there are many, some  yummy, some horrible. But this, this recipe for flat bread is so good and amazing I am insisting, yes insisting you make it!!!!   Mixing it up takes less than 5 min and baking it about 8.  So no excuses. It's sugar free, gluten free, flour free and delicious!

The original recipe calls for the use of a mixer, hmmm, extra time, extra things to wash.  Besides, those colored Vita Mixes look to pretty on the counter to dirty up.  The first time I made this flat bread, I followed the recipe, the second time I tried mixing it by hand, I didn't taste any difference so buh bye mixer.  I smothered my first flat loaf of heaven with crushed garlic and rosemary from my garden. The next batch was plain, and hot right out of the oven with melted butter on top and didn't last but half a day in my house, so I now make a lot, and freeze some too, I'm addicted to this flat (non) bread.

The main ingredient is Almond Meal Flour. Odd that they call it flour, maybe just to confuse me, because it's made of almonds so you're eating nuts, no flour, no sugar and no wheat that's been sitting in some silo breeding fungus for years. Sorry if you are allergic to nuts like one of my friends whose father once forgot and bought her a pecan pie, we joked that he was trying to kill her. If you are allergic try experimenting with other specialty flours, there are a lot of choices.

If you can't find ingredients like almond meal flour or tapioca where you live (no Sprouts, no Whole Foods?) you can get them on line at Bob's Red Mill.

Wish I could add a sniff and smell to my pictures :) It's that good!

Recipe

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup of almond meal flour

3/4 cup tapioca flour

1/3 cup ground flax seeds,or  I use 2 Tablespoons of whole flax seeds, you can also use chia seeds

7 drops of liquid Stevia, I use a sprinkling of powdered Stevia

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

3 organic eggs

1/4 cup of Almond milk , I use unsweetened Vanilla Almond milk

Prep

Preheat oven to 350

In a large bowl combine almond, tapioca, flax, baking soda and salt

In a small bowl blend eggs with electric mixer for 30 seconds, I beat by hand

Add egg mixture to dry ingredients and mix or stir to combine until it forms a sticky, wet dough

Pour batter onto a 12" x 16" flat cookie sheet and spread it with a spatula over the entire cookie sheet so it is thin and even

Sprinkle with seasonings, herbs, garlic or leave plain

Bake at 350 of about 8 minutes until it's golden around the edges

Cut into desired size squares and enjoy!