Refreshing Apple-Veggie Salad

This refreshing sweet and savory apple-veggie salad is a tasty side dish year-round, and gives you options as to which vegetables you wish to add. Here's how I adapted a classic Broccoli Apple Salad to my liking.

Ingredients

1/4 cup Red Onion

1 large crisp Red Apple

1/2 cup fresh Pineapple Chunks

1/2 cup Craisins

4 stalks Celery, chopped

1/2 cup Walnuts (or Pecans), chopped

Other suggested options or additions: Broccoli, Carrots (sliced or slivered), Spinach, 

Pickled Beets, Strawberries, Mandarin Oranges or Orange segments (chopped),

Garbanzo Beans, Jicama... experiment with whatever you have on hand

Dressing Ingredients

1/2 cup Mayonaise 1/2 cup

1/2 cup Yogurt, plain or honey flavored for extra sweetness

2 Tablespoons, fresh squeezed Lemon

1 Tablespoon Sugar, more or less

1/4 teaspoon Salt

1 pinch Cayenne (or 1/8 teaspoon Black Pepper)

Directions

1. Prepare, slice or chop first set of ingredients into a medium bowl.
2. In a smaller bowl, mix the salad dressing ingredients together.
3. Pour the salad dressing over the salad ingredients, mix and chill.
4. Serve in small bowls or on a plate on a bed of lettuce or spinach.

Sweet & Savory Rice

This sweet and savory rice dish is perfect for serving as a side dish at Thanksgiving, even if you are serving stuffing. It's a delicious gluten free, vegetarian alternative. Serves 8-10

 Ingredients

2 Cups Brown Rice, long grain
3 Tablespoons, Vegetarian "Better Than Bouillon"
4-1/2 cups Water to cook rice
1 cup Onion, chopped
1/2 cup Green Onion, chopped
1 cup Butter, or substitute
1/2-1 cup White Wine
1 cup Dark Raisins
1 cup Golden Raisins
6 tablespoons, Slivered Almonds or Pine Nuts, toasted
1 teaspoon Salt
1/8-1/4 teaspoon  Cayenne Pepper

Directions

Let the raisins soak in the wine, while you are preparing the rice and other ingredients for cooking.

Steam the brown rice in the vegetable bouillon until done. I use a rice steamer, but stove-top method is fine too.

 

In a deep skillet, saute both onions in the butter until soft. Stir in the wine-soaked raisins with all the liquid, toasted almonds, salt, cayenne pepper and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat. Add the parsley.

 When the rice and raisin mixture is ready, combine and serve warm, or cool to room temperature, refrigerate and reheat to serve as desired. This is a moist rice, so if you want it dryer, use less water to cook the rice of add less wine to the mixture.

Enjoy! And Happy Thanksgiving!

Zucchini-Feta Flapjacks

When I asked a friend of mine what she was doing today, she replied that she was making flapjacks for a bonfire tomorrow night.  Her comment reminded me that I had not posted my recent gluten-free recipe for making a savory pancake (aka flapjack) as a brunch, lunch or dinner side dish or entree. 

So here it is!

Ingredients:

1-1/2 pounds of Zucchini, grated (about 3 cups)

1/4 cup Feta Cheese, finely crumbled

2 eggs + 1 egg white, beaten

3/4 cup All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour

3/4 teaspoon Baking Powder

1/2 Sea Salt

1/8 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper (or 1/4 teaspoon Black Pepper) 

1/2 teaspoon dried Oregano

Olive Oil (spray) for coating fry pan

Directions:

1. Once the zucchini is grated, squeeze out excess liquid using just your hands pressing down the zucchini in a fine strainer, through cheesed cloth, or like in my case since I had neither at hand, pressing the moisture out into layers of paper towels (worked great).
2. In a large mixing bowl, blend well the zucchini, feta, eggs, flour, baking powder and seasonings.
3. Heat over medium-high heat, a wide frying pan that is coated with the olive oil.
4. You should be able to cook 3 to 4 flapjacks that are 2-3 tablespoons of mixture each, spreading them out to make 4-inch rounds.
5. Cook the flapjacks for about three (3) minutes per side, or until golden. 
6. Serve warm as is, with butter, sour cream, greek yogurt, savory cream sauce or condiment to taste.

These were a BIG hit at my dinner table!

Crab Babies

DZ is harvesting crabs daily, with a limit of five per harvest - Washington State limit per person, per day. It was dark by the time I got home, and DZ was still in the garage removing the crab meat from the  five he brought home and steamed late afternoon. The day before, he bought a small freezer to keep in the garage to store the vacuum-sealed seafood we will enjoy after their perspective season has ended.

We were both tired and hungry, with two portions of fresh crab in the refrigerator... so while DZ was dealing with the crabs outside, I need to quickly get creative and productive in the kitchen, if we wanted to eat anytime soon.

Having served my friend, Kris, sweet Dutch Babies filled with fresh fruit and Greek yogurt drizzled with agave nectar, for breakfast a few days earlier, I thought it would be tasty to serve us savory "Crab Babies" for dinner... simple, quick, and with little taxing of what brain cells I had left, a creative solution that proved to be excellent, despite how I had to take a number of little offerings from the refrigerator to generate enough content to feed two people. Our Crab Babies ended up just right - flavor-wise and portion-wise, especially for two, who whatever reasons, forgot to eat lunch.

Dutch Babies are easy-cheesy to make and take few ingredients... even with alternative ingredients in the batter, they hardly ever fail to impress, look and taste great.

Here's the ingredients and directions for making my version of a gluten-free Dutch Babies, using what I had on hand:

Ingredients for Dutch Babies Batter:

1/4 cup, same as a half a stick of Butter or butter substitute (four pats - two for each baking dish)

3 Eggs

1/2 cup Rice Milk

1/4 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Flour

Pinch of Salt

Note: Dutch Baby batter recipes may vary slightly as to the ratio of number of eggs, milk, flour and butter per serving.

Directions and Other Ingredients for making Crab Babies:

1. Pre-heat oven to 425-degrees with two glass pie plates on a rack in the middle of the oven. Do not have a rack above, as the Dutch Babies have the potential of rising on the sides, sometime quite high.
2. Liquid first, put all the ingredients, sans the butter, in a blender and blend until... well, blended.
3. When oven reaches temperature,  put two pats of butter in each glass pie plate and melt, without browning - happens very fast, so watch carefully. It's easy to forget and set off the smoke detector.
4. As soon as the butter is melted, pour half of the batter into each of the two glass pie plates.
5. Before or while they bake at 425-degrees for 18-20 minutes, prepare the contents to fill the "Crab Babies" after they are transferred to dinner plates, as shown above.
6. In a saute pan, lightly saute together in olive oil savory ingredients of choice. Here's what I had on hand: chopped Green Onion, diced White Onion, diced Red Bell Pepper, sliced Mushrooms, teaspoon or less of Capers (rinsed), a quarter + teaspoon of Fennel Seed and a pinch of Salt and Cayenne Pepper. Keep warm, but don't over cook.
7. In a small mixing bowl, whip together - best at room temperature (a quick microwave works to take the chill off) -  whatever portions seems right to you of creamy ingredients. I found a little of each of the following in our refrigerator and combined them to make a wonderful, creamy base to my concoction: Tofutti (soy cream cheese substitute), Greek Yogurt, Mayonnaise, shredded Parmesan Cheese, a squeeze of fresh Lemon Juice and Lemon Zest... and a pinch of Salt.
8. As soon as the Dutch Babies come out of the oven - oven mitts compulsory - very, very hot and easy to burn yourself - transfer them to dinner plates. They should have lovely, toasty brown edges, perhaps bubbly in the center slathered in melted butter... then immediately start to "settle" on the dinner plates.
9. Best using a rubber spatula, divide and spread the creamy mixture across each, hot serving, then divide both the savory filling and warmed, cooked crab meat, and cover the creamy mixture with color and texture of the sauteed mixture and bite-size pieces of crab.
10. Garnish with a light sprinkling of Paprika and serve while hot. 

Generously serves 2

Recipe dedicated to Crab harvesters DZ and Phil.