Below are three nourishing and immune building soup options: one chicken, one vegetarian, and one beef. Be sure to add lots of bone broth or vegetable stock to each pot for additional benefits.
Category Archives: Recipes
Easy Salad Meals at Home
Cooking from scratch is the healthiest way to eat, but I like to plan ahead so that I have enough food left over from one home-cooked meal to make a quicker meal the next night. If you preplan your meals, you don’t have to cook as often.
In my family, we enjoy a large salad as a meal at least a few times a week. What makes it filling is adding the meat and other left overs from the night before.
The best part is that you can easily customize your salad based on what you have in the house. It is an easy meal and a healthy one too! You can’t go wrong.
The cooler Fall weather is bringing in fresh lettuces and other greens, so now is a great time for salads. This week we enjoyed a salad with curly leaf lettuce and arugula from our local farmer’s market.
Salad Fixings for an Easy Salad Meal
Select options from each of the categories below and make your own creation. (All ingredients are dairy and gluten free.) Get creative and try different combinations of ingredients until you find your favorites. Two of ours are pictured above. Continue reading
Cilantro Garlic Dressing
If you like garlic and cilantro, you will love this dressing. Not only does it taste wonderful, but both garlic and cilantro have many healing properties.
Garlic is great for your immune system and acts as a natural anti-microbial. (You can learn more about garlic’s benefits here.)
Cilantro’s green leaves and stems are full of nutrients and are known to provide Continue reading
Best Icing Ever – Seven Minute Icing
When you eat GMO-free and gluten-free it is fairly easy to find a good cake mix when you do not have the time to make a special cake from scratch. However, finding an icing that is not loaded with sugar is more of a challenge. This seven minute icing is quick to make and lets you control how much sweetener to add. Instead of butter and sugar, egg whites becomes the base. It works great on single and multiple layer cakes!
Healthy Seven Minute Icing
Gluten-Free Biscuits
When you “go gluten-free,” most people miss bread more than anything else. It is hard to make good fluffy bread without the gluten that is found so abundantly in wheat (and without xanthan gum which is usually corn derived and a stomach irritant for many).
When I went gluten-free, I also missed biscuits – something I learned to love after moving to the South many years ago.
I recently did some experimenting. The biscuits pictured are not as full and fluffy as those typically made with Bisquick, but the biscuit texture and flavor are there. This is a good starter recipe which you can use to modify the types of flours used and the type of milk substitute until you get the flavor you are looking for.
Gluten-free Biscuits
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Preparing Sprouted Lentils
Lentils and legumes are a great source of protein and fiber. They also provide antioxidants, folate, and various minerals. According to Dr. Sharon Moalem, in his book The DNA Restart, legumes additionally provide a rich source of isoflavonoids and phytosterols, which nourish your genes. Other studies have shown that legumes help to lower cholesterol, reduce cardiovascular and heart disease, possibly reduce your risk for diabetes, help with weight loss, and even reduce pro-inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein.
That is a lot of good stuff. However, to gain these benefits lentils and legumes must be prepared the right way. Similar to nuts and seeds, lentils and legumes contain “anti-nutrients” or phytochemicals like phytic acid and lectins, which inhibit the absorption of certain minerals, and enzyme inhibitors, which can prevent proper digestion. Soaking and sprouting them before cooking (as shown below) helps to reduce these anti-nutrients. It also helps to enhance the vitamins, minerals, and fiber naturally found in the lentils and legumes. Continue reading
Refreshing Frozen Fruit
Okay, so this may not exactly be a recipe, but frozen fruit is very refreshing in the hot summer months. It is also more difficult to find organic all-fruit popsicles in the store. So, instead, we like to freeze the real thing: organic grapes and organic watermelon. Continue reading
Popped Sorghum – A Great Popcorn Alternative
I finally found a substitute for popcorn! Popped sorghum!!!
In my family, we have been corn-free for several years now. Although corn is inherently gluten-free, we feel better without it. I believe it is due, in part, to the fact that much of the corn in the United States is genetically modified (GM). Even what is deemed “organic” is often tainted, since corn can easily be cross pollinated across different farms and fields. (A GMO corn crop can taint a non-GMO crop up to 15 miles away.)
The proteins in corn are also hard to digest. That is why you tend to see pieces of your corn on the cob come out the other end the next day. 🙂
The one time we splurge is when it is corn season in Tennessee. When I can get freshly picked sweet corn on the cob from a local organic farmer that I trust, we eat it a few times during the season.
Otherwise, we do not miss it much. We have found substitutes like bean chips instead of corn chips and ground millet instead of corn meal. However, the popcorn was hard to reproduce, until now.
Surprisingly, popped sorghum grains tastes a lot like popcorn. It is prepared a little differently than popcorn and the kernels are smaller, but it is worth making it when you need a popped treat. (Do not use an air popper.)
Here is how I did it: Continue reading
Tips for Baking Healthy, Gluten-Free, and Dairy-Free With Links to Substitute Ingredients
I finally figured out what I have been doing wrong all these years. I love to take classic dessert recipes and convert them into healthy gluten-free and dairy-free options. (That means GMO-free too.) But, it was not until more recently that I figured out a few secrets that took my creations to a new level.
Growing up, I was the baker in the family. Being the only girl in a family of seven, I did not have much competition, so it was often me who made the deserts and birthday cakes. Back then, to make a recipe healthier meant using whole wheat flour instead of white flour and replacing sugar with honey. I loved it.
My Experiments
Since going gluten-free and dairy-free about seven years ago, my baking wonders have not always been so wonderful. Replacing dairy ingredients with coconut versions was not that difficult, especially with all the new options that have come out the last few years. However, replacing the flour has been a little more challenging, especially when using natural sweeteners.
I have experimented will all sorts of flours. In the past, I strictly used rice flour (which is inherently gluten-free) and replaced all the required flour in a recipe with rice flour. However, the resulting treat was always too crumbly. I also tried other gluten-free flours like garbanzo bean flour and quinoa flakes without much difference.
The newest trend in gluten-free baking is to add Continue reading
Finding Good Salmon – Not All Salmon Are Created Equal!
Last night I cooked salmon for dinner. We try to have it at least once or twice a week. However, when I pulled the salmon from the freezer, I realized I bought the wrong one. The package I held in my hand did say “wild-caught salmon,” but the salmon inside the package was not the usual naturally bright orange color.
Upon further inspection, I realized that I bought the “Silver Brite Salmon Fillets” by mistake. The label went on to state that this salmon has “the lowest fat content among the salmon species.” Definitely something I would not normally purchase since it defeats part of the reason to eat salmon — there are good nutrients in the fat.
There are lots of substandard salmon on the market today. This includes both farmed salmon and, more recently, genetically modified (or GMO) salmon. In my opinion, the only salmon worth eating is wild-caught. I believe that farm-raised salmon and GMO salmon can actually cause harm to the body and should not be eaten at all.
This is why finding a good salmon source, one that you can trust is important. You may not be able to visually see the difference, so you need to do your homework. Below you will learn Continue reading
German Chocolate Cake (Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free)
For my husband’s birthday last month, I made his favorite birthday cake for the first time: German chocolate cake. His mom always made it in the past, but I was curious to see if I could make a gluten and dairy free version.
So, I offered to make the cake this year – gluten-free (GF), dairy-free and GMO-free. (I include butter as a option for those who are dairy-free but can tolerate butter.)
To be honest, I was not sure if the rest of the extended family would like it. However, it got rave reviews, which means a lot when the recipe is being compared to a classic.
I started with my mother-in-law’s classic Baker’s Chocolate recipe from Kraft and made it my own, changing out ingredients to meet my family’s needs.
Both the cake and the frosting recipes are shown below with links to the ingredient brands that I used. I was even surprised to find a coconut milk version of condensed milk. (Check out my Pantry for other wholesome and healthy brands.)
Hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Continue reading
Cauliflower Shepherd’s Pie (with Meat and Optional Organ Meat)
The dinners in our family have been needing a little more variety, so I recently tried something new: Shepherd’s Pie. However, instead of the typical potato topping, I used mashed cauliflower. It was delicious and it will definitely be a repeat in our family.
It is a good recipe to include (or hide) a variety of vegetables. I typically add shredded carrot any time I use ground beef. In this recipe I also included Broccolette (or broccolini), a natural hybrid of broccoli and Kai-lan (a Chinese kale). You can substitute with broccoli and/or kale instead.
If you are a meat eater, this is also a good recipe to include organ meat, since the look and flavor will be hidden by the flavor of the overall dish. Continue reading
My Favorite Herbal Teas
I was a fairly typical kid in the 1970’s. Soda was not allowed in our house except for special occasions. Instead, I got my daily dose of Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid and Nestle ice tea were our main source of liquids when we needed something to drink. We even made popsicles with Kool-Aid!
That all changed when my family “went natural” when I was 16 years old. (See more of My Story here.) Out went the Kool-Aid, the ice tea, and even the milk. In came the reverse osmosis water and herbal tea. It took a little while to get adjusted, but it was not too bad once we learned there were a wide variety of tea options.
Current Favorites
Here are a few of my current favorite herbal teas: Continue reading
Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookie
These are the cookies we will be leaving out for Santa this Christmas Eve. I think I finally created a chocolate chip cookie recipe that is gluten-free and good tasting – no small feat since we have tried many recipes over the years. They are liked by friends and family alike. . . and hopefully Santa too. Try them and see if you agree!
This recipe uses rapadura sugar, which is less processed than other other sugars. It is made from unrefined cane sugar so it is full of vitamins and minerals, including iron. Because the color is similar to brown sugar, the cookies tend to bake darker overall. That is why I use white rice flour instead brown rice flour. (I also sometimes add some white cane sugar for the same reason.)
The chocolate chips I use are made by Equal Exchange. (Be sure to check the link below). These chips have only three ingredients, are all organic, contain no GMOs (like soy lecithin), and taste great. (They are available semi-sweet and bittersweet.) Continue reading
Quick Healthy Spaghetti (with Meat)
When I cook dinner for my family, I like to pack in plenty of vegetables. I also like to spend less than an hour cooking our nightly meal. This recipe meets both requirements, using fresh veggies along with some prepackaged ingredients to make it a quick fix. I recently made the entire meal in 40 minutes. It may not be your grandmother’s spaghetti that took all day to make, but it gets rave reviews from my family as well as our friends (adult and children). And, the added veggies are a bonus. Serve with a side salad and enjoy! Continue reading