Poached Pears for My Valentine

 We had plenty of desserts lined up for our fancy Saint Valentine's meal-in, so although these make a great dessert, we actually had them as an appetizer!

Ingredients:

3 cups all natural apple juice

2 cups water

1/2 cup Splenda baking mix
1 cinnamon stick, broken in 1/2
2 tablespoons honey
1 (3/4-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled, and finely chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla

3 small, firm, ripe Bosc pears, peeled (or other pears)

Directions:

In a saucepan large enough to hold all the pears, combine all ingredients except the pears.  Bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until the honey has melted. Add the pears and simmer for 20 minutes more, turning occasionally, until the pears are a little tender but not mush. Remove the pears from the liquid and allow to cool.  Refrigerate in a closed container if you are making this in advance.

Continue to simmer the liquid until it thickens and is reduced by half, about more 20 minutes. Cool to room temperature. Remove the cinnamon stick halves.  Pour into a glass jar and save for drizzling.  You may want to strain the ginger bits out, I did not.

Place each pear on a small serving plate wand drizzle with the syrup. Serve immediately.

Mine were served on a puddle of plain kefir, with the extra reduced juice/syrup drizzled generously on top.  Vanilla bean ice cream would also be a lovely addition.

Idea taken loosely from Giada.

Lobster Mac and Cheese

Because Lobster is for Lovers!

This is a little more bad than my usual dinner entrees, but it was for Valentine's Day and my sweetie had been telling me all about his Mama's homemade mac and cheese growing up.  I told him how once when I was very young my mother asked me "What should we have for dinner?"  My immediate response was "MACARONI AND CHEESE!"  meaning the kind from the box with questionable powdered cheese.  Her response to let me down as gently as possible was, "Well...your dad doesn't like that, so we'll have something else..." I was appalled at my dad's utter lack of taste.  My opinion of him was lessened forever (Not really; love you, Papa!).

In sum, because we had talked a lot about macaroni, I have a few healthy mac and cheese tricks up my sleeve, and because my pumpkin LOVES seafood, I decided that Lobster Macaroni and Cheese would be the perfect wintertime comfort food for a Valentine's dinner in.

WARNING-- true to the holiday for which it was prepared, this dish was really a labor of love...ie pretty time-consuming.  Valentine's was a Snow Day for me (hooray!), otherwise I would never have had time to do this on a week nigh.  Good luck. 

INGREDIENTS:

-1 small  (or ½ of a large) butternut squash, peeled & cubed

-4 cloves garlic, minced
-1 pound veggie or whole wheat elbow macaroni
-1 ½ c skim milk, warmed up but NOT boiled

-2c low sodium chicken stock
-5 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

-1/4 cup organic, unbleached flour
-2c Gruyere cheese, grated
-2c extra-sharp Cheddar, grated 

-1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
-1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

-½ teaspoon cayenne

-Generous dashes of salt & pepper, to taste

-2 lobster tails, steamed, peeled and roughly chopped

-2/3 c Panko breadcrumbs

-Parsley, finely chopped for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

-Add the squash cubes to a large saucepan or small Dutch oven with the chicken stock.

-Heat pot over medium heat and simmer until squash is tender, about 10 or 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

-When squash is soft, use a stick blender and puree until pretty smooth.  (Or allow to cool and then puree in a blender)

-Meanwhile, cook pasta al dente, 6 to 8 minutes. Drain well.

-In a separate saucepan make a rue: melt 3T butter and add the flour. Cook over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring with a whisk. Still whisking, add the hot milk and cook for a minute or two more.  (Yeah, having the squash mixture, the butter mixture, and the warming milk all in separate pans will mean lots of dishes…sorry.)  Whisk until smooth.

-Now, add the rue to the squash/stock in a small saucepan and heat it up, but don't boil it. Add garlic and spices. Cook over low heat for a few minutes, stirring with a whisk until thickened and smooth.

-Turn off the heat and add the cheese.  Add the cooked macaroni and lobster and stir well. Place the mixture in gratin dishes.

-Melt 2 tablespoons of butter, combine them with the Panko & some extra spices, and sprinkle on the top. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbly and the macaroni is browned on the top.

-Garnish with parsley

I combined a few different recipes and techniques for this particular recipe.  As I said earlier, because it was Valentine’s and I didn’t want my sweetie to feel cheated, I made it a little more decadent than my regular baked mac & cheese (recipe here).  But believe me, this recipe is MUCH less artery-clogging than the Ina Garden recipe (here) that I also looked to for inspiration.

Isn't he handsome?  Well worth the effort :)  And that was a lovely sparkling pomegranate drink, yum!

 

Super Cookies!

They're not so much cookies as much as they are energy bar nuggets.  

No flour.  No sugar.  No butter.  No bad stuff at all!

I've seem a lot of "cookie" recipes floating around where you use banana and oats and chocolate chips.  But that just wasn't good enough for me.  I've been focusing on eating more plant-based fat (helps with hair and skin cells and satiety, etc.) and so I pulled out all the stops for these tasty little guys.

And my man LOVES them.  I put a bunch on a plate to take a photo and I kept having to stay, "No!  Don't eat them yet!  Wait for the photo!"  Within about 60 seconds of the photo above, they were demolished :)

--1 cup oats

--1/3 c unsweetened shredded coconut

--¼ t salt

--Generous dashes of (in order of descending quantity) ground cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves

--½ c of Almond Meal/Flour (Bob’s Red Mill)

--1 T roasted sesame seeds

--2 T sunflower seeds

--1T chia seeds

--3 T raw cacao nibs (available at Whole Foods)

Stir together.

In a small bowl microwave these together for about a minute and pour over the dry ingredients:

--¼ c coconut oil

--1 T almond butter

--2 bananas

Have these pre-mashed and immediately add to everything above (before the coconut oil solidifies again...)

This should be enough so everything is just incorporated, it will take some serious stirring.  If you think you need more liquid, even after a diligent effort, don't be ashamed to  add:

--1-2 T milk

Use a teaspoon to make tiny cookies and place on a cookie sheet over parchement paper.

Bake at 350 until golden brown on the bottom and edges, maybe 15 minutes.

I made 28 small cookies, which my math says to be:

70cal, 5 fat, 2 protein, 1 sugar (from the bananas)

You can, of course, use mini chocolate chips instead of cacao nibs, but I love the intense dark chocolate flavor of the nibs and since cacao nibs are a whole food, there is no added sugar or sugar substitutes.