Food

The Slow Movement in a Quickening World

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spring field

Here we go again. The world is opening up and I for one can feel the frenzy building. I’ve heard and read that many people are as anxious about returning to the modern lifestyle of the ‘before times’ as they were about the unexpected mandatory pause. I feel like this is prime time to truly evaluate what works for us, each of us, and take steps to create the life that feels right to us. The pace, the connections, the responsibilities…if we don’t decide for ourselves how many plates we can spin, then others will decide for us.

For those experiencing anxiety related to the state of the world and all of its turbulence and unknowns (who isn’t??) then I hope you add some herbal additions to your daily life might help. Adaptogens and nervines specifically are the herbal categories to consider. Adaptogens help the body to adapt to stress of all sorts and nervines work on balancing our nervous systems. I’ve linked to places where I’ve written about both, but if you use the search bar you’ll find more articles addressing these two categories of herbs and also other natural anxiety relieving options such as GABA, CBD, and L-theanine.

But I think we need to remember to think holistically about where extra stress and anxiety build and flourish in our lives. We can take all the herbs and spray all the essential oils, but if our life is out of whack on a daily basis, it’s like putting a band aide on a gushing wound. Those natural aides might help you adapt to a pace of life that is uncomfortable, but it’s still an uncomfortable pace of life. It’s worth thinking about how to adapt your life to you. We can’t all spend every moment doing exactly what feels right to us in that moment, but we can make it a priority to move our lives in that direction so we can feel in charge of our lives instead of stuck in reaction mode.

This brings me to the Slow Movement which came out of Slow Foods. If you are not aware of Slow Foods, it is an international organization that promotes good, clean, and fair food for all people and the planet. It was named as a reaction to fast food and has grown into a multidimensional organization with themes including slow wine, slow meat, slow cheese, and promotes food fairness awareness from seed to plate. One of my favorite projects of theirs involves school gardens and they just are an organization I greatly admire. Just check out the website and join a local chapter if you feel moved to do so. The Slow Movement takes these concepts of good, clean, and fair, and extends them beyond food to encompass all areas of life. This is not an organization to join, it’s more of a philosophy to employ, which is why I linked to the Wikipedia page instead of an official page. This concept really resonates with me. I love the idea of quality over quantity and doing things better instead of faster. Our world keeps speeding up, and since the invention of the printing press, there’s been collective unease about technological advances outpacing human ability to adapt. Below is an interesting less than 10 minute Ted Talk that gives more insight into this.

If this resonates for you, I hope you act on it.

Einkorn Bread

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My blogging friend, The Healthy Epicurean, inspired this post when she asked if I had the yeast einkorn bread recipe I’ve been using here or not. I have shared the sourdough version here, but up until today, I hadn’t shared the yeast version. This is a really easy recipe (easy is even in the title) and I throw it together two or three times a week. I use Jovial’s recipe, just as I used Jovial’s sourdough recipes as well, and I highly recommend perusing their site for more recipes and to shop their delicious goods. Jovial Foods is the one einkorn brand I can find so I am very lucky that Whole Foods and PCC both carry it now. I actually couldn’t find it for a while which is why I let my sourdough go (whaa!), and now that it’s back on the shelves I’m too worried it’ll disappear again to put in the effort of remaking a starter again. I know I can always order the flour, but being able to pick a bag up at the store just makes it seem so much simpler and I’m not willing to add more items to my “must be ordered online’ list at the moment. I think einkorn is easier to find in Europe, (is that right Fiona?) And speaking of Fiona, if you don’t already read her blog, The Healthy Epicurean, it’s full of tasty, healthy recipes and enough humor to get you through at least one dark pandemic winter day. Check it out when you need a new recipe along with a side of chuckles.

Why use einkorn? Einkorn is the oldest iteration of wheat that we still use, and it fell out of favor because of its weak gluten content. This of course means that for some who are sensitive to gluten this form is digestible and does not cause the usual wheat-induced symptoms. This is not for celiacs though and there is no guarantee that you can handle einkorn if you can’t handle other wheats (like spelt) so please be mindful if you try it out. My son and I can handle it but only after we took measures to heal our digestive systems and I am SO happy we can because it’s so good. If you are just someone looking for a healthier wheat, this is it! It has more protein and less gluten and tastes like real food which, let’s face it, gluten-free bread has a hard time doing. Gluten-free baked goods (besides bread) are awesome, but for some reason bread is just a hard one to replace.

Mix ingredients right on a kitchen scale for best results

Here’s the recipe copied straight from Jovial’s website with some of my own tips below:

Easy Einkorn Sandwich Bread Recipe from Jovial Foods
INGREDIENTS

  • 1¼ (295 g) cups warm water
  • 1½ teaspoons dry active yeast
  • 2 tablespoons oil or butter, melted and cooled
  • 1 tablespoon sugar or honey
  • 3¾ cups (450 g) jovial All-Purpose Einkorn Flour
  • 1¼ teaspoons sea salt

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. In a large bowl, combine water, yeast, oil or butter, sugar or honey. Stir until creamy.
  2. Measure the flour with a baking scale or spoon into a measuring cup, then add it on top of yeast mixture. Sprinkle the salt on top.
  3. Mix with a spatula or jovial’s einkorn knead tool until the flour is absorbed and you have a wet, sticky dough.
  4. Cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise for 45 minutes.
  5. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter an 8½ x 4½-inch loaf pan.
  6. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface. The dough will feel very sticky and wet, but try not to add more additional flour than what you have dusted the work surface with or you may find dry flour baked in the bread. Shape the dough into a loaf. A bowl scraper is a great tool to help with shaping the sticky dough.
  7. Place in the loaf pan, cover with oiled or buttered plastic wrap to inhibit the plastic from sticking the dough. Let rise for 30 minutes. Remove the plastic wrap.
  8. Bake for 40 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing.

Click the link for more tips from Jovial about this recipe, but I’ll give you a couple of mine here. For one thing, make sure the water is lukewarm and not edging towards ‘hot’. The bread will rise much more fully if the water is the right temperature. The next tip is that when I leave the bread to rise longer than the two times given above, the bread is much better and fuller. I usually like to give the first rise a good hour or more, and the second one even longer, so close to two hours if I have the time. You don’t have to elongate the times, but that’s what works best for me. For the work surface, I put down a piece of wax paper and then dust it with flour and also dust my hands with flour. When the dough is in the loaf pan, I throw the left over flour into the compost and save the wax paper for another time or two of bread making. (It just saves some clean-up time.)

Incidentally, I don’t mind baking bread several times a week but cooking on a daily basis is still a thorn in my side. The delivery service I tried ended up being a good thing for my youngest, but my oldest and I really didn’t care for the food. Back to the drawing board on how to make this constant cooking situation more manageable. Any tips would be appreciated!

Enjoy the last couple of weeks of this crazy year. If you are looking for homemade gifts to make, check out this old post or type DIY into the search box on here, and be sure to let me know if you make something.✨

Vegan, GF, Vanilla Pound Cake

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If you’ve visited here for a year or more, you certainly know by now that I’m not a fan of traditional Thanksgiving foods. Although, I must say that as far as those foods go, the desserts aren’t bad, but if you are looking for something else to add to holiday get togethers (wait, are we going to be able to get together at all this season?) scratch that. If you are looking for an easy dessert to have around the house this holiday season, or to gift your gluten-free and/or vegan friends, this is an easy, yummy recipe and it can be customized according to your tastes. Plus, pound cake in an appropriate breakfast food, right? Add some Greek (DF) yogurt and a satsuma, or an apple with peanut butter, and you have a full meal. Really, a pound cake is basically a muffin in a different shape when you think about it.

I looked for a simple recipe online that I could easily change to gluten-free, dairy-free, and egg-free, and this one from Dinner then Dessert worked well. It lured me in with an advertised ten minute prep time and hour bake time, and it didn’t let me down. This was the easiest thing I’ve baked lately and my sons and I have enjoyed every bite.

Here’s the recipe, but keep in mind it’s completely customizable to your own dietary needs and tastes. You can add chocolate chips or cinnamon for example, which I considered, but then decided to keep it purely vanilla. If you don’t do dairy but eggs work for you, I recommend using the eggs instead of the flax if you want that pretty golden color that pound cakes wear so well. Mine turned out more of a dull brown than golden but it still shined in taste. Here’s the recipe:

GF, Vegan Pound Cake (Modified from Dinner then Dessert by Sabrina Snyder)

Ingredients:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep a 8×4 inch loaf pan with a coating of vegan butter or spray with coconut oil. Sprinkle a small bit of flour on top of the oil/butter. Also, my loaf pans are 9×5 so the pound cake came out a bit shorter and wider, but it works.
  2. Mix the flax seed meal with the warm water and set aside. I always do this in a mig for easing pouring.
  3. Mix the vegan butter and sugar with a handheld mixer, or in a standing mixer. on high speed and beat until light and fluffy. It takes a couple of minutes for the mixture to get fluffy and really this is the most labor intensive part of the recipe. Trust me, it’s worth the three minutes.
  4. Turn down the speed of the mixer and add the vanilla and the flax mixture (these can be in the same mug), mix a bit and then add the milk alternative.
  5. Add in the flour, baking powder, salt, and anything else you want in your cake and mix until just combined. It’s ready to pour into the loaf pan and bake for an hour. Cool on a wire rack before digging in.

Have a great Thanksgiving if you are in the U.S. and I hope everyone, everywhere, has a lovely start to the holiday season.

Peace and Gratitude to all ☮🙏✨

Vegan Foods and Supps to Try

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These are the latest samples I recieved from the New Hope Influencer Co-op and as usual, there are some real gems in here!

First the food. These Umami Snaps are made of chickpeas, are gluten-free, nut-free, and vegan. Their taste reminds me of roasted chickpeas with a lot of garlic powder, but the texture is more like a thick rice cracker. It’s an addictive combination! These are really tasty and I can imagine eating them with Indian food, although we just snacked on them straight. They also boast more protein than the usual carb-y snack.

We were able to sample vegan Mexican dips again from Zubi’s which was a treat. Just like last time, we loved them all but the Crema de Jalapeno was our favorite. The vegan queso is one of those things that I didn’t realize I missed (since I rarely eat dairy) but once I had it I wanted to create a meal around it. If you are creating a gift basket for a vegan friend anytime soon, include Zubi’s queso and crema for sure, and I promise they will love you for it.

We all have immunity on our minds this time of year, especially this year, and this immune+ from youtheory is a great combination of mushrooms, vitamins C and D, and zinc. If you want to take one immune supporting supplement instead of dealing with three or four different bottles, this is a great one to try.

The SuperGrapes from humann are surprisingly tasty. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I was quite pleased that the instructions said to take 2 and not just one after trying this for the first time. They are gluten-free and vegan and are full of grape seed extract sourced from the Loire Valley in France. If you aren’t drinking your daily glass of red, you can supplement with these delicious squares. According to the packaging they promote energy, normal blood pressure, and and antioxidant support which all sounds great to me!

There will be more to share when we try more of these goodies. I’m especially excited to try the face serum and collagen coffee so if you are interested those too, stay tuned for an update coming soon!