Category Archives: Recipes

Traveling with Muffins

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Our Midwest Road Trip

Our Midwest Road Trip

When Mathew was turning one year old, we decided to introduce him to all our relatives and friends in the Midwest. During those 3 weeks, we traveled over 5,000 miles from New York to Minnesota down to Oklahoma then on to Virginia and back to New York. We spent Mathew’s 1st birthday, in Chicago at the Shedd Aquarium. Before we left, I wanted to stock up on nutritious unprocessed snacks for the ride. I had never been much of a baker but I thought muffins were a good choice. I could pack them full of nutritious ingredients and they would travel well. After a great deal of searching, I found this amazing woman, Cathe Olson; she wrote cookbooks with delicious recipes using basic ingredients. I actually started to correspond with her via email and she emailed me several recipes to choose from and has since then sent me several more. Most of her recipes were for loafs but they easily converted into muffins. After the trip, I started to make different types of muffins each week and froze half the batch. After a month, I had a freezer full of a variety of muffins. This kept snacks fresh and from getting too boring.

YUM!

YUM!

Here’s one of Mathew’s favorite muffin recipe:

Apricot-Nut Muffins

This moist, delicious bread supplies vitamin A and iron. You can omit the nuts, of course.

1 cup chopped dried apricots

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1/4 cup maple syrup, brown rice syrup, agave nectar, or honey (always used maple syrup)

1/4 cup oil

1 cup apricot soak water

1/4 cup orange juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup wheat germ

1 cup walnuts, chopped

Place apricots in a heatproof bowl. Pour boiling water over apricots and let sit about 15 minutes. Drain apricots, reserving 1 cup of the soak water.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Oil a muffin pan. Beat together sweetener, oil, apricot soak water, orange juice, and vanilla. In separate bowl, sift together flours, baking powder, baking soda, and sea salt. Stir in wheat germ. Stir in liquid ingredients until just mixed. Gently fold in apricots and nuts. Pour into prepared muffin pan. Bake about 20 minutes, or until tester inserted in center comes out dry. Remove from pan and cool completely on wire rack.

If you bake this in an 8 or 9-inch square baking pan or loaf pan, it will be like a cake. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until tester inserted in center comes out dry.

What’s For Dinner?

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Mike shares one of my favorite recipes, “Curry Sweet Potato Soup,” Enjoy!

Two to three times a week my wife Debbie asks me what I think we should have for dinner. It’s usually on my drive home, usually after a long day at work, and usually when I’ve not committed a single brain cell to consider what I think we should have for dinner. Now some might think this is an odd predicament given how much I love to cook. And it’s true: I love to cook. But thinking about dinner is not something I typically do unless I’m really really hungry. Or sick.

The other day I woke up feeling washed out and not 100%. It was probably because I went out to dinner the night before with a friend and sat at a table near the front door where there was a constant flow of cold air from outside that kept me fairly chilled all evening long. Whatever the reason, the day after I didn’t feel 100% and actually did think about dinner since I needed something nourishing that would bring me back around and set me right.

Debbie had been telling me about these sweet potatoes we had that were just begging to be eaten. I was so washed out by the end of the day that I thought baking them and adding a little butter and salt would be just about perfect. But Debbie had been asking for a curried sweet potato soup that’s a real favorite of ours going back many years. In fact, soups in general are a big hit. Not only are they fairly easy to cook up, but they are nourishing and healing too, something I really needed both of at that moment.

So, as I drove home with my chef’s hat on, I was thinking about how I was going to prepare the soup. What follows is nothing short of a sheer culinary stroke of holistic cooking genius (all due to my wife’s incredible tutelage in all things holistic).

INGREDIENTS
Sweet Potatoes              3 — peeled, washed, and cubed
Garlic cloves                   3 — peeled, smashed, and minced
White Onion                   ¼—peeled and diced
Fresh Turmeric Root      1” — peeled and chopped
Fresh Ginger Root          1” — peeled and chopped
Astralagous Root            4-5 slivered (they look like  tongue depressors)
Curry                               1-2 Tbsp (or to taste)
Pink Himalayan salt         just a pinch
Ground Black Pepper      just a pinch
Soup stock                      2 quarts

Place all the ingredients in a pot filled half full of filtered water, half vegetable or chicken stock, and bring to a boil. After about 20 minutes of everything at a full boil, turn off heat and let soup settle down. Strain all the vegetables from the stock carefully (DO NOT allow any astralagous root to escape) and place in a Vita-Mix or Cuisinart food processor. Add a cup or two of the stock to the blend and blend at high speed until all ingredients are super smooth. Pour the blend back in to the pot with the remainder of the stock and replace the astralagous root. Add curry, salt, and pepper and gently mix with a whisk. Cook on medium heat for another 15-20 (to boil off excess water), add a little butter or milk to give it some richness; even a nice “melty” cheese will work.  Cook another 5 minutes and serve with a crusty bread.

If you’re vegan, vegetarian, gluten-sensitive, or dairy-sensitive, the butter, milk, and cheese can all be replaced with appropriate alternatives like cashew cheese or almond milk. And just omit the crusty bread. The great thing about soups (and I didn’t realize it until after I’d made this soup) is that, pretty much any combination of vegetables that you like can be made into a soup—just experiment. I’ve started thinking about my morning kale smoothies and wondering what they’d taste like with a soupy twist to them.

So, what’s for dinner? Why soup, and you’re invited.

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NOTE ABOUT GARLIC: allow to sit about 10 minutes after you’ve peeled and smashed/minced it so that healing properties of allicin can be fully released.

NOTE ABOUT ASTRALAGOUS: Do Not Eat It or blend it into the soup. It’s not toxic or bad for you (otherwise why would I suggest putting it into the soup?), but it will be a bit like eating bark mulch.