Chocolate Covered Coconut Balls

Whenever I have leftover 'cream' from a can of coconut milk, I will use it to make these delicious and nourishing candies.

Messy, but tasty! Any leftover chocolate on the
parchment paper goes directly into my stomach!

Healthful Chocolate Covered Coconut Balls

I am going to guess at the measurements. This recipe is very forgiving if you don't know what the measurements are.

3/4 cup shredded coconut

1/3 cup coconut cream*

2 TBS. vanilla protein powder**

1 dollop almond butter

a few drops liquid stevia (optional)

3/4 cup (high percentage cocoa) chocolate chips

Combine coconut and coconut cream with clean hands. Mixture will probably be somewhat moist. Add in protein powder, liquid stevia, and almond butter and form into balls. Place balls on parchment paper and refrigerate.

Melt chocolate chips over very low heat (and I mean very low). If the chocolate is on the heat too long, or if the heat is too hot, it will ruin the chocolate.

Take the chilled coconut balls and, one at a time, dip them in the melted chocolate. Place them back on the parchment paper and return to refrigerator. Chill and remove from parchment paper and place on plate or serving dish. Refrigerate whatever doesn't get eaten.

* I took a can of coconut milk and opened it up. The cream is usually separated from the liquid part. Use the cream part of it for this recipe. There are a lot of uses for the liquid part of the coconut milk.

** I use Complete protein powder put out by Juice Plus+. For more information on Complete or Juice Plus+, please go to my web site at http://ss.juiceplus.com/us/en

This recipe is only an estimate as far as the measurements go. If you make this, feel free to adjust the recipe to your liking. I have found that if I make the balls without much moisture, then they seem to end up very dry. They dry out in the refrigerator for some reason. At least that has been my experience. If after using the measurements in this recipe, the balls seem kind of dry, add a little coconut water or plain water for more moisture. If the mixture ends up soupy, add more coconut or protein powder. Please feel free to send comments in if you make this recipe. Let me know what works and what doesn't work. Thanks.

Homemade Mustard Colored Tomato Sauce

OK. Finally. I made homegrown tomato sauce. But it isn't like the normal tomato sauce even though it is made with tomatoes.

  What I did was to gather some tomatoes from the garden, wash them up, then put them in a slow cooker and turned it on high. When I noticed the skins being split open, then I turned the slow cooker off and let the tomatoes cool.

   Once they were cooled down some, I peeled the skins off and put them on a rack and placed them in the food dehydrator. I took the rest of the tomatoes and put them in a blender for a couple of minutes. The color turned out quite interesting.

   The tomatoes I used were lemon tomato, blues Fahrenheit tomato, and green zebra tomato. It doesn't look much like the usual red/orange tomato sauce, but there are so many uses for tomato sauce. I will have to see which one is the best for that color.

   I will use the dried tomato skins to make tomato powder with. A good way to use this powder is to sprinkle it on chicken or fish. It is kind of like a barbecue powder and gives a good color to food when it is sprinkled on it.

A couple of yellow tomatoes, green tomatoes,
and blue tomatoes made up this tomato sauce.
It is like the color of mustard.

Oma's Hot Cocoa

Here is a recipe that is sure to make some happy, especially when it gets cold outside. This recipe comes from a simple hot cocoa recipe with some additions.

Oma's Hot Cocoa

1 cup milk, preferably raw and grass-fed
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 tablespoon Stevia or a few drops liquid Stevia
Dash each cinnamon, curry powder*, nutmeg, and pink salt*
1 drop peppermint essential oil (optional)

Place all ingredients except peppermint oil in pot. Stir really well (you could even blend the ingredients before putting them into a pot). Let the mixture heat up, but do not boil. Place drop of peppermint essential oil on bottom of a glass cup. Pour heated mixture into cup. Stir.

*Suggestions for adding curry powder and pink salt came from my friend, Patte.

Oma's Hot Cocoa - Don't forget the straw!

Cooking With Essential Oils

Recently, I have joined the essential oil bandwagon, and have been watching webinars and videos on this subject. Essential oils can be very healthful. They work at a cellular level. But not only are they good for our health. They are also very good to use in our cooking.

I was watching a video recently, and they made a couple of different salts by adding essential oils to something called 'Earth Salt'. They also added essential oils to salad dressings made of oil and vinegar.

Here are some of the ways I use essential oils in cooking:
* Put a drop of spearmint oil in a pot of spaghetti sauce
* Put lemon on the bottom of the baking pan when baking fish.
* Use dill oil in sauces that cover the fish in the baking dish.
* Peppermint is good in hot cocoa. Use only 1 drop though. It is extremely potent!
* Oil of cumin is good in Mexican dishes.

If you do use essential oils in your cooking, keep in mind that they are very strong. One drop usually flavors the whole dish very well. But sometimes, a drop is even too strong. What you can do in that case is to use a toothpick, dip it into the essential oil, then put it into the food dish. Also, make sure you use the highest grade of oils available. The least expensive oils are usually not good quality. Plus, they might not be safe to put into food.

Although this is not a recipe that you cook, this recipe uses a couple of drops of three different essential oils. It is a faux recipe that tastes like Fresca, but does not have the bad ingredients in it.

Faux Fresca-Like Soda Drink

3/4 cup grapefruit juice
3/4 cup club soda
crushed ice
Liquid Stevia to taste, or sweetener of your choice
2 drops Zendocrine essential oil blend (helps with detoxing)
4 drops Slim and Sassy (helps support metabolism)
3 drops grapefruit essential oil

Fill a glass halfway with crushed ice (you can omit this part if you like your soda warm!). Place Stevia drops on ice, or whatever sweetener you will be using. Place drops of essential oils on ice. Add grapefruit juice and Club soda. Put a straw in it. Viola. Enjoy. Makes one glass.

Faux Fresca-Like Soda Drink

Interested in the oils? Send me an email and I will give you the info: awestruck@bellsouth.net
If you are interested in the stainless steel straws, here is where I got mine:

Taco Seasoning Flavored Rice

  I'm always experimenting with food and find some of the food combinations fascinating. This week, I decided to make tacos. I wanted everything to be organic as well, so I went to Whole Foods and bought the shells and the seasoning packet. I already had grass-fed ground beef in, as well as homemade sour cream and lettuce from an organic vegetable co-op. We also had a lot of white rice left over from dinner the other night, although I doubt that the rice was organic. You can buy organic rice and that of course, would be preferable. I'm sure you could use brown rice for this recipe as well.

   Here is what I did: First, I browned the ground beef. After the meat was browned I added the water and the taco seasoning mix to the meat. I let it simmer for a little while. The liquid did not thicken, so I took the meat out and put the leftover white rice in (I didn't measure. I just put in enough for three of us if we all wanted to have some). I let the rice reheat and soaked the taco flavored liquid in the pan in. Then I added some butter (I actually cut about 1/4 cup off. Maybe even more than that). Yummmmm.
 
   Note: I am not ordinarily a fan of Spanish rice, but this tasted pretty good. I would imagine if you could make your own taco seasoning mix, and then add water, you could make your own version of it. I, personally, like the packets because of the orange color of the mix. I will try to recreate this recipe and put it into a recipe format so others can make it. If you do make it, let me know how it turns out. I can tweak the recipe where necessary.

   Taco Seasoning Flavored Rice

2 cups leftover white rice
1/2 packet of taco seasoning mix
1/2 cup water
Butter, to taste (optional, only use grass-fed butter if possible)

   Put the taco seasoning mix and water in a frying pan and heat up. Add leftover rice. Let the rice absorb the liquid and add more water if necessary. Turn rice often. Add butter, if using.

Note: I got my seasoning packet from Whole Foods. You can use any seasoning packet for this. Keep in mind that well known companies may have additives or preservatives in the seasoning.

Making Homemade Strawberry Quik

   I have to be honest. I love the strawberry Nestle Quik milk powder. I had it when I was very small and I gave it to my kids when they were small. We called it, 'Pink Milk'. Our daughter would wake up and her first words were 'pink milk'.
  I am now opposed to using sugar, but it is almost inevitable. I don't know what kind of ingredients are in strawberry quik, but I know there is probably a lot of sugar in it.
  This week I am reading a novel like book called, 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'. In reading this book, an autistic boy is the narrator. Because of his condition, he becomes easily angered. He hates the colors yellow and brown. One of his favorite drinks is the strawberry shake. It sounds a little like strawberry Quik to me.
  So, I figured out how to make my own strawberry Quik. I took a cup of raw milk and added a couple of strawberries. Then I blended it in the Vitamix. It looks just like strawberry Quik and tastes good too. Yum!

Homemade strawberry Quik can be made from 8 oz. milk,
a handful of strawberries, and a couple of drops of Stevia
blended in a food processor or blender. 

Homemade strawberry Quik, without sugar and other
additives. 

Making Tomato Powder

  I used to wonder how they made those barbecue potato chips and now I think I have a better idea of how they are flavored. One of the main ingredients is powdered tomato. I always had wondered how tomato powder was made, so I was doing searches for tomato recipes, I found out.

  Here is what you do to make tomato powder; You take the skin off the tomatoes and dry them. Then you put the dried skins through a food processor or blender until ground fine. I take tomatoes and wash them off and place them in a slow cooker for about an hour, or until the skins begin to split open. Then I take the skin off and puree the rest. Instead of throwing the skin into the compost (although the compost bins can use them) I take them and dry them, they grind them into powder once they are dried.

Problem solved!

  You can add them to taco seasoning or sprinkle on a salad. I would love to see what the different colored tomatoes would look like, when the skins are turned into tomato powder!

  Did you know that the black krim tomato is very high in lycopene? Black krim tomato is a very dark tomato, like a deep purple one.

   Tomatoes come in red, yellow, pink, black (purple), green, orange, cream colored, and striped. Many are very pretty and there are a lot of heirloom choices available today.

  Some companies to order heirloom seeds from are; Baker's Creek (www.rareseeds.com) and Pinetree Seeds (www.superseeds.com). A good company I just recently found is Tradewinds Fruit (www.tradwindsfruit.com). They have lots of choices on both fruits and vegetables.

  Go to the tomato sections of these companies and look at the wide variety of tomatoes. You would be surprised of all the variations.