Plant-Based Diet

After our recent birthday celebration, we became aware of how little vegetables we eat during the week. However, it's amazing how much veggie you can ingest by juicing it all. In fact, you can go broke by juicing enough vegetables and fruits to drink over the course of one week.

We bought a Breville juicer, which is down right amazing. It is relatively easy to clean and juices everything from seeds, skin, and core. Whole small apples go right into the juicer with no problems. The dual-disc juicer also has a pureeing disc that allows you to make smoothies from bananas and berries. 

Sam's Club is the perfect location to buy bulk fruits and vegetables. If you can believe it, a family two carts behind us in the checkout line had the same amount of groceries, but ALL meat! 

Spinach and kale are actually great for juicing. So are zucchini and carrots. It is surprisingly delicious to have a mix of vegetable and fruits. Believe it or not, I have an apple allergy, but can drink juice that contains apple juice in it... (can an allergist please explain this to me? thanks!). 

Here's our first batch of veggies and fruits. Amazingly, it took half of our produce to yield 96 oz of juice!  I suppose we're off to a decent start to this period of detoxing. I hope we can really keep up the juicing and incorporate this into our daily diets. 

Have a healthful Wednesday! 

Gadgets: Pasta Maker

There are few things quite as indulgent and therapeutic as making your own pasta. It takes time to knead the dough until the gluten is perfectly bouncy and then time to roll it flat over and over and then finally to cut the dough into perfect sized strips.

We used to make homemade pasta the old fashioned way... by brute force, a rolling pin, and knife. Luckily for us, I bought us an Imperia pasta maker last Valentine's Day, which we used this year.

I thought long and hard about which brand of pasta maker to buy. From my research it seemed like the most common hand-cranked brands were Imperia and Altas with equally favorable reviews from their fans.  I decided to go for the Imperia because it was red and because it was available at our local Williams Sonoma. It's also made in Italy and surely they know what they are doing...

We have been super pleased with it.  It's easy and so much fun to use.

Note: We were told not to buy the ravioli attachment and the motorized cranker, but you can decide for yourself. We've never had any use for those items so far.

Pasta Dough Recipe

Ingredients:
1.5 cups all purpose flour
2 eggs
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt

Directions:
1. Mix all ingredients together until it forms a ball. Remove from bowl and place on well-floured countertop.

2. Use your hands to knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes until the dough bounces back when you push your finger into it. This means that the gluten has been sufficiently activated and will provide that al dente texture.

3. Split dough ball into 4 quarters, flour them and flatten with your hand and begin feeding it through your pasta machine.  (If making without pasta machine, generously flour your counter top and begin rolling out to desired thickness with a rolling pin).

4. Remember to continue to flour everything otherwise the dough will stick while running through the machine.

5. Cut with your pasta machine cutter or fold long strips of dough over on itself and cut thin strips.

6. Cook in salted water very briefly as fresh pasta can cook in about a minute.

Nothing compared to fresh pasta and you can make it too!

Gadgets: Corn Dog Maker

No recent posts. I got sick and then got lazy, but I have renewed my determination to start cooking again. The Sister sent a nice package in the mail the other day containing our early Christmas present. Inside the box, we found this:

Corn dogs are by far the item that I crave every year during the NC/Texas State Fair so this might fix my random cravings during the rest of the year.  On top of that, this product promises crispy corn dog crust without deep frying... crispy and healthy...what more could I ask for.

We used this recipe instead of the recipe included with the machine. Given the reviews regarding the sizing of hot dogs, we chose the long and thin Nathan's hot dogs and they were perfect!!!

Crispy crust, tender and steamy hot dogs. These are fun little appetizers for children and adults! The reviewers also suggest making mozzarella sticks, jalapeno cheese sticks, and breakfast sausage with pancake batter... as far as I am concerned... the possibilities are endless! *For the vegetarian readers, veggie hot dogs would also work for this.

KK definitely approves ;)

Happy corn dog chomping!