Hey friends, sorry we’ve been a bit MIA over here! We’ve been filling our days with walks, visits with friends and lots of snuggles. I’m excited to post Adeline’s 3 month update in a few weeks- and I’m also excited to share my 3 month post-partum update as well.

This morning, Adeline took a GREAT nap, and it gave me the chance to get back in the kitchen. I find myself making a good portion of our dinner in the morning when the baby is napping. It seems a little bit silly to have such savory flavors filling our kitchen early in the day, but it guarantees that we won’t be stuck scrounging up whatever we can when dinnertime hits. (My kitchen helper, after her nap)

I wanted something full of veggies (to counteract all of the chocolate that I’ve been munching), and I knew I wanted the dish to bake in the oven (makes for easy reheating).

Vegetarian Kale and Tofu Bake

This is a gluten-free (and noodle-free) layered bake (dare I say, this could be made as a sort of lasagna?) The green kale and red tomatoes give the dish a festive holiday look, and you could adjust the seasonings inside to suit your tastes!

Ingredients

• 3 Russet Potatoes, washed and thinly sliced (I used the mandolin on the thinnest setting)
• 1 block of firm tofu, crumbled
• 4 cups (one bunch) of Kale, washed and chopped
• 1 can diced tomatoes (drain off most of the juice)
• 1 Shallot, diced (or 1/2 of an onion, diced)
• 2 cloves Garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp. Black Pepper
• 1/4 tsp. dried Basil
• 1/4 tsp. fresh Rosemary, chopped
• 1/2 tsp. Smoked Paprika
• 1 TBSP Low Sodium Soy Sauce
• Juice of 1/2 a Lemon
• Olive Oil
• Salt, to taste
• Shredded Cheese (like parmesan), optional

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9 inch glass pie-plate with cooking spray (you could also use a loaf pan, I had a bunch of filling leftover when I used the pie plate so a loaf pan may actually be a better choice).
2. Heat Olive Oil in a skillet over medium-high heat, add Shallot and Garlic and cook for 3-5 minutes, or until fragrant and soft (do not burn)
3. Add Kale, cook until you have enough room in the pan to add crumbled Tofu, Diced Tomatoes and spices (Black Pepper, Basil, Rosemary, Smoked Paprika).
4. Cook until there is barely any liquid (from the tomatoes) left in the skillet, add in Soy Sauce and Lemon Juice. Remove from heat.
5. Arrange potato slices on the bottom of the pie plate, overlapping slightly. Add a thick layer of your kale and tofu filling, and top with another layer of potato slices. (If using a loaf pan, you should have enough space to add another layer of filling and another layer of potatoes!)
6. I kept the potato layer on the top so it had a sort of “crust”.
7. Spray the top layer of potatoes with cooking spray (to get it nice and brown), and add shredded cheese to cover the top (as much as you want!)
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until potatoes on top are golden-brown.

Enjoy!

A non-baby related post? How can this be?

I haven’t spent much time in the kitchen lately. I think it’s probably because my stomach capacity is decreasing by the day, and it’s probably because Daniel doesn’t live here. Meals have been pretty simple- I was “proud” of myself when I cooked brown rice last night. I ate it alongside some sautéed onions and spinach and some tofu straight out of the fridge. (Silas LOVES cooked spinach, his eyes got all crazy today when I pulled out the container for lunch!)

So yeah, not a whole lot of cooking beyond scrambling some eggs or putting some veggies in the microwave has occurred.

But today, I just needed a break from my online classwork. A few weeks ago, I bought 3lbs of plums for $2 and some change. However, I haven’t really been eating the plums on a regular basis, and I didn’t want to just throw away the fruits whenever they finally started rotting. I poked around online for some recipes to use up my excess of plums and I decided to make a Plum Jam inspired by Martha Stewart’s recipe.

Plum Jam

A quick and easy homemade “jam” recipe. Use other sweeteners to your taste. See original recipe for spice additions. Yields one Mason jar of jam (~2 cups)

Ingredients

• 10-12 plums
• sugar (to taste, I used 1/3 cup)
• 1 cup water

Directions

1. Wash plums, cut in half, remove pit, cut halves into quarters. Do not peel.
2. Add plums, water and sugar to a non-reactive pot (NOT aluminum or copper)
3. Bring to a boil, reduce and simmer about 20 minutes (or until there is barely any liquid left)
4. Transfer (CAREFULLY) hot plum mixture to a food processor or blender and whirl away (you might want to let it cool first, exploding food processors are no fun!)
5. Store in an airtight container, the jam will thicken as it cools.

Plums have lovely floral notes when they’re really ripe, and you can definitely taste some of those flavors in the final product!

The jam also has a bit of tartness to it, reminiscent of a cranberry. And check out that color!

On most weekends, I like to cook and bake a few things that will take us into the workweek. For the past few weeks, I’ve been making Peas and Thank You’s Chocolate Chip Zee bars. They’ve been a great snack to take along to work and to the gym. However, I ran out of gluten free oats this week, so I decided to come up with my own “protein bar” recipe!

Whole Grain Brown Rice and Buckwheat Protein Bars

These whole grain bars are gluten free! Made with buckwheat and brown rice flour, these bars have a dense, cake-like texture that compliments mix-ins nicely. Nuts and raisins were added to this batch, along with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice for a protein-packed, trail-mix inspired snack!

Ingredients

1/2 c. buckwheat flour*
1/2 c. brown rice flour*
1/2 c. vanilla protein powder (I used Promasil Vanilla Soft-Serve flavor)
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum (optional)
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
pinch allspice
pinch nutmeg
1/3 c. chopped mixed nuts (or any nut of choice)**
1/4 c. raisins**
1/2 c. applesauce (no added sugar)
1/2 c. soy milk (unsweetened)
1 T. vanilla

*Using a coffee grinder, grind 1/3 c. plus 2 TB buckwheat groats to make 1/2 c. buckwheat flour. Grind 1/3c. plus 2 TB brown rice to make 1/2 c. brown rice flour. Sift well.

**If you want to make chocolate chip bars, omit the nuts and raisins and add in 1/4c. to 1/3c. chopped chocolate or chocolate chips.

Directions

1. Sift together buckwheat flour, brown rice flour, vanilla protein powder, baking powder, xanthan gum, salt and spices. Mix well.
2. Add in chopped nuts and raisins, mix with flour to coat.
3. Mix applesauce, soymilk and vanilla in separate bowl; pour into wet ingredients.
4. Mix batter well, spread into a greased 7×11 inch pan. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until edges are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool, cut into 10 bars.

Nutritional Info for 1 Bar (even though it says “0 bars”)

For an extra special snack, microwave a bar for 10-15 seconds, and then add a layer of peanut butter on top! Lip-smacking good!

Yes, Salted Caramel Apple Pie. The husband baked this pie, and it turned out DELICIOUS (although I could only sneak a tiny bite of the filling, I’m going to force him to make it gluten-free next year!)

Daniel used the “Rich Tart Crust” recipe from the Essentials of Baking cookbook.

Chillin' in the fridge

The caramel sauce in action:

Completed Salted Caramel Sauce

Silas always keeps a watchful eye when we’re in the kitchen…

YUM

After drooling over the pie pictures, it’s time for a quick Thanksgiving recap: Thanksgiving was a blast! It was quite busy, but I’m VERY thankful that both of our families still live in Louisville (although my dad and sister live out in Cali, and my other sister is in NC…) Louisville is a good meeting place for everyone!

We ran the annual Northeast YMCA Turkey Trot, I think this was my 5th year participating! I love getting out for a run on Thanksgiving morning, and having family and friends who also participate is always a blast! ALL of Daniel’s siblings and their spouses came out to run!

My right leg has been bothering me for a little while, if you follow me on “DailyMile“, I found out that I tweaked my right hamstring somehow. During the race on Thursday, I was aiming to go sub 7:45/mile, which is what I did. However, I did have to stop twice during the race to stretch out the “weird” feeling in my right hamstring. Anyways- I finished in 45 minutes (my watch time) and ended up placing 4th in my age group! Good way to start off a Thanksgiving celebration!

Anyways- as I posted in Trial Thanksgiving- I did make some changes to the sweet potato casserole and it turned out quite delicious- although I was told that it was a little too “sweet and spiced” for a sweet potato casserole. Oh well, it still tasted good to me!

OK, now go make this Salted Caramel Apple Pie.

Remember when we had too many tomatoes? Sadly, it looks like our tomato stash is dying down. Our basil plants are still going strong, and when I saw this recipe for Roasted Tomato Basil Pesto from OhSheGlows, I knew that I had to make it. I went out and gathered a bunch of tomatoes and whipped up Angela’s recipe.

I followed all of her directions, except I omitted the almonds since we didn’t have any on hand. I also roasted the garlic during the last 15 minutes of cooking time. I also didn’t use roma tomatoes, I just used this gigantic bowl of tomatoes that I had just harvested from our garden.

Three simple ingredients that pack TONS of flavor!

The finished product: Roasted Tomato Basil Pesto

We used a *few* more tomatoes than in the original recipe, hence the rusty color! I was a little bit underwhelmed by the flavor- perhaps I didn’t roast my tomatoes long enough? I started searching for ways to incorporate the pesto into our weekly meals.

On Sunday night we topped some tilapia fillets with the pesto, but the winning combination happened when I whipped some of the pesto into our weekly frittata.

Check it out! This frittata was made with 3 eggs, 3 egg whites, 3 TBSP tomato basil pesto, about 1/3c. of cooked spinach, some chives, salt and pepper. I sprinkled mozzarella on top for a final garnish and voila!

This was by far one of my favorite frittata combinations EVER (and we’ve tried a lot of different combos: Squash Blossom Frittata, Bacon and Broccoli Frittata, Hash-Brown Qui-ttata and Frittatas for all)

Don’t waste any time, click on over to OhSheGlows (and try not to drool on your keyboard) and make this pesto!

My dear, NEWLYWED cousin Elizabeth and her charming husband, Pedro joined us for dinner last night. My Friday was pretty full, check it out:

• Clean House (no picture, no one wants to see a vacuum full of hair)
• Run (see the typo?)

• Take Silas to the Vet
• 
• Meet mom to pick up the little bro who is spending the weekend with us!
• Cook dinner.

Sounds easy enough, right? Not so much. I was meeting my mom (40 minutes from my house) at 5 to pick up Matthew, and Elizabeth and Pedro were coming over at 6:30. Daniel didn’t get off of work until 6, so I needed a dinner that could cook itself.

Southwestern Crockpot Chicken

A little bit spicy, super easy and super delicious with lots of veggies to bulk up the meal! Served along homemade tortilla chips or brown rice, this crockpot meal is sure to please!

Prep Time: 15 minutes    |    Cook Time: 7 hours (crockpot)   |   Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 3 Chicken Breasts
• 2 cans Beans (we used 1 can black and 1 can pinto)
• 1 can Chicken Broth (or use bullion)
• 2 cups Diced Tomatoes (from our plethora of garden-fresh tomatoes)
• 1 Green Bell Pepper, diced
• 1/2 Red Onion, minced
• 1 tsp. Cumin
• 1 tsp. Garlic Powder
• 1 tsp. Chili Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Cayenne Powder
• 1/4 c. chopped cilantro (optional)
• 3 TBSP tomato paste (optional)
• Salt and Pepper to Taste
• Cheese to Garnish

Directions

1. Prep all veggies, put in crockpot.
2. Add chicken broth and spices.
3. Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper, lay chicken breasts on top of veggies.
4. Cook on High for 6 hours.
5. Shred chicken (with a fork), add tomato paste, cook for another hour on high.

We served ours with some homemade tortilla chips (click here for an ancient recipe) or just take a peek below:

Homemade Tortilla Chips

Serves 8

Prep Time: 2 minutes

Cook Time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients

• 16 Corn Tortillas
• Oil (or cooking spray)
• Salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400*
2. Cut tortillas into wedges (I cut them into 6 triangles per tortilla)
3. Spritz cooking sheet with oil, lay out your chips in an even layer. Spritz chips with oil, sprinkle on some salt
4. Bake 10-15 minutes, or until chips are lightly browned. Chips will crisp up as they cool!

(Optional: Add lemon/lime juice to chips before baking OR sprinkle with shredded cheese half-way through the cook time OR sprinkle with garlic salt and cayenne for a little kick!)

Take a look at our spread!

We even ended the evening together by toasting some marshmallows over our grill, a pretty nice way to spend a lovely fall night!

Chocolate chips and Chickpeas- strange combination, right? WRONG! When these two get together, magic happens. I love chocolate! What girl doesn’t? (my sister Maggie disliked chocolate for the longest time… sometimes I don’t think we’re related)

So back to me loving chocolate… as much as I like chocolate straight-up (no chaser, pun intended)- our grocery budget (that reminds me, maybe I should do an updated budget post?) doesn’t leave us much room to buy expensive chocolate bars made with the finest ingredients. Enter: store-brand chocolate chips. Now as delicious as these little morsels are, they just don’t cut it on their own.

(source)

And chickpeas never really satisfied my “I NEED SOMETHING SWEET” craving… until now. This recipe is brought to you by Katie over at Chocolate Covered Katie. The girl is genius in making healthier, yet still delicious (and VEGAN!) desserts! Katie calls this dessert “Deep Dish Cookie Pie”- I call it delicious! I made a few changes to her recipe- and here’s the Cooper-fied version.

Chocolate Chip & Chickpea Squares

These delicious little bites will satisfy a chocolate craving while providing an extra dose of protein, fiber and deliciousness! This is NOT your mama’s chocolate chip cookie- but it IS a rather delicious alternative! And- because there are no raw eggs in the recipe, you can eat as much batter as you wish!

Yield: 24 squares (see nutritional information at bottom)

Ingredients

• 2 cans Chickpeas (drained and rinsed)
• 1 c. Rolled Oats (I used gluten-free oats)
• 1/2 c. Sugar (this amount works for us, you may use more or less!)
• 1/2 Banana (I thawed half of a frozen banana)
• 3 TBSP Canola Oil
• 1 tsp. Vanilla
• 1 tsp. Cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp. Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Maple Flavoring
• 2/3 c. Chocolate Chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Put everything except your chocolate chips in a food processor (or a blender).
3. Blend until a smooth batter forms.
4. Scrape down the sides and add in a little bit of water as necessary to create a smooth paste. In the end, your “batter” will be about as thick as mashed potatoes.
5. Add your chocolate chips (stir in by hand if you’re using a blender)*.
6. Pour batter into a greased 9×11 pan, use your spatula to spread your batter evenly in the pan.
7. Bake for 30 minutes, (edges will be slightly browned and they will be pulling away from the edge of your pan).
8. Let cool for about 10 minutes before cutting into 24 squares.

*I just dumped in my chocolate chips after the batter was smooth and let the food processor go for a few more seconds to get everything distributed

Check out these awesome stats on these tasty squares!

Hi friends! The temporary drop in temperature reignited my fire for a slow-cooked meal. Enter: Vegetarian Chipotle White Chili. We cooked this chili using our crock pot, but the recipe can easily be made on the stovetop! I had a can of Fire Roasted Tomatoes with Chipotle that we won in Clean Eating Chelsey’s giveaway, so I decided to use them in this recipe to give it a little kick!

Vegetarian Chipotle White Chili

Ingredients

• 2 c. Great Northern Beans
• 6 c. Water (or Vegetable Broth*)
• 1/2 Green Bell Pepper, diced
• 1 Onion, diced
• 4 Cloves Garlic, minced
• 2 t. Cumin
• 2 t. dried Oregano
• 2 t. Chili Powder
• 1 can Chipotle Tomatoes (I used Muir Glen’s Fire Roasted Petite Diced Tomatoes with Chipotle)
• Salt & Pepper (to taste)

Directions

1. Soak beans overnight in at least 6 cups of water (or use the quick-soak method).
2. Sautee your chopped onions in 2 tsp. oil, or until onions are soft and have a bit of color.
3. Turn on your crock pot (low- set for 8 hours; high- set for 6 hours). Add your Beans, Water (or vegetable broth), Bell Pepper, Sautéed Onions, Garlic and Spices. Let simmer for 6-8 hours, or until beans are tender.
4. Add in your Tomatoes, Salt and Pepper, simmer for another hour.

*We cooked our beans in water and we added enough vegetable bullion AFTER the beans were tender (at Step 4, after 6 hours of cooking). The salt in the bullion interferes with the softening of the beans, so we just added it in at the end!

You might think we’re insane after you read this recipe, but just trust us here, you should try this recipe.

Unbelievable Blondies

These “blondies” contain chickpeas. Remember in our last post, Millet + Chickpea Summer Salad, when I mentioned that I had a weird craving for chickpeas? Well… let’s just say that I dove off the deep end. And the results are absolutely delicious. These “blondie” recipe is lightly adapted from Katie’s Snickerdoodle Blondie recipe over at Chocolate Covered Katie.

Ingredients

• 1 can Chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. ground flax seed
• 3 TBSP Peanut Butter (or other nut butter)
• 1 TBSP Pumpkin Puree (or applesauce)
• 2 tsp. Molasses
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder
• 2.5 tsp. Cinnamon
• 1/4 c. Water (optional- use to thin out batter)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350, grease a 8×8 pan (or a 7×11 worked in our case!)
2. Put all ingredients into a food processor, blend until smooth, adding water as needed until you get a thick batter.
3. Gently stir in any mix-ins such as chocolate chips, mashmallows, other candies (peanut butter cup pieces would be DELICIOUS in this!)
4. Bake for 30 minutes, until “blondies” are almost finished- they’ll firm up as they cool!

If you clicked on over to Katie’s recipe, which we highly suggest you do, you’ll see that we only made a few changes from her original recipe. We didn’t have vanilla, baking soda or applesauce. We also reduced the sugar in the original recipe!

If you don’t think we’re crazy enough already, this tasted absolutely delicious straight out of the food processor. I’m pretty sure it would be a great dip for apples, pretzels or for any other dippable food.

Today is the beginning of the best 6 months of my year. For the next 32 weeks of this year, Daniel and I will be the same age. I don’t like being the older spouse. In fact, I found my FIRST WHITE HAIR a couple of weeks ago. Yes, you read correctly, white. Anyways- today marks Daniel’s 23rd birthday. I wish I could say we’ve had an awesome day solely dedicated to celebrating his birth, but instead, we went through our mundane daily tasks and we’ll wrap up our evening with a special meal (cough*wehaveacoupon*cough) at Qdoba. Even though we’re not really doing anything special today, we celebrated plenty over the weekend!

I tried to throw Daniel a surprise party, but the whole “surprise” aspect was a complete flop after I left my e-mail open on Daniel’s computer. You see, my computer is suffering from the virus of death, so I’ve been using Daniel’s laptop for all of my odds and ends. Despite not being a surprise party, it was still a great treat to have our friends and family over to celebrate his birthday.

Even though the surprise didn’t work out- I managed to bake a cake, WITH substitutions/adjustments AND without burning anything, AND it even received compliments!

Here’s how the no-added oil cake went down:

Dummy-Proof Cake

Ingredients

• Boxed “white cake” mix
• Boxed “devil’s food cake” mix
• Eggs
• Water

Directions

White Cake

• Dump the cake mix into a bowl.
• Lightly beat 3 egg whites, dump into bowl
• Add in 1 1/3 c. water to eggs and mix
• Mix everything together and pour into 2 9” pans. Bake 25-30 minutes at 350 (or follow baking instructions on box)

Devil’s Food Cake

• Dump the cake mix into another bowl
• Lightly beat 2 eggs, dump into bowl
• Add 1 1/3 c. water to eggs and cake mix
• Mix everything together and pour into two 9” round pans. Bake 30-35 minutes (or follow baking instructions on box)

Now, things get interesting. Let the cakes cool in their pans, and transfer to plates. Put the cakes in the fridge for 20-30 minutes. You’re going to be cutting out circles of the cake, and refrigerating the cake helps it to stay together.

Find two circular objects of 2 different sizes (both smaller than the cake). Use your “medium” sized object to cut a ring out of all of the cakes. Use your “small” sized object to cut out the center of each cake. Basically, you’re cutting concentric circles into the cakes.

Why? Well we’re making a checkerboard cake!

You’re going to start building your cake, starting with the bottom layer: use a large ring of chocolate cake, a medium ring of white cake, and a small circle of chocolate cake. For the next layer, use a large ring of white cake, a medium ring of chocolate cake, and a small circle of white cake. Alternate your layers until your cake is as big as you want!

IMPORTANT: Don’t be a dummy like me- smear a little bit of frosting between the layers, you’ll see why later…

Now onto the frosting recipe:

Dummy Proof “Light” Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

• 1 block Neufchâtel cheese (or reduced fat cream cheese)
• 1/4 c. butter, softened (1/2 stick)
• 4 c. powdered sugar (1 lb)
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Directions

• Dump everything into a stand mixer, start your mixer on a low speed, and whip until everything is combined. Make sure to taste test as you go along, quality control matters.
• Refrigerate until you’re ready to use!

Give your cake a ‘crumb coat’ of the frosting (just slather it on), and then put on a “nicer” layer. Again, BE SURE TO PUT FROSTING BETWEEN THE LAYERS!

When you’re done frosting your cake, store it in the fridge until you’re ready to have the birthday boy blow out his candles, all 23 of them!

I also whipped up some gluten free cupcakes, and while they were tasty, I’d like to play around with the recipe before giving it out to anyone!

The night was filled with family and friends, the men played a little bit of Frisbee while the ladies chatted away. Mrs. Coop and Woody shared their stories of their Italian adventure with our friends, and we all enjoyed each other’s company!

I wouldn’t leave you without a final picture of the CHECKERBOARD CAKE!

We had a great time celebrating with everyone!

Happy 23rd Birthday Husband!