I just got back from a 15 minute walk around the block, and am now attempting to eat a super health egg salad before my next meeting. Who hates Monday? Not me!

What do you do to make your Monday awesome?

Easy Egg Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients

4 hard boiled farm fresh eggs
1/2 C mayo
Salt and pepper to taste
dash cayenne (optional)

Directions

1. Peel eggs and smash with a fork
2. Stir in mayo, salt and pepper. Add cayenne to taste.
3. To serve, scoop on top of a bed of spring greens.

I have a bit of a sweet tooth when it comes to rich, creamy foods like cheesecake, rice pudding and… well, all puddings in general. Which is a challenge for someone who tries to eat healthy most of the time. So when I heard about someone making pudding from chia seeds, it was Game On.

Chia seeds are an old food; evidence shows that humans began using chia seeds around 3500 BC. They have nutritional benefits including fiber, omega fatty acids, calcium, antioxidants and more – even protein.

The texture is slightly chewy (unless a handblender is used) and can be a satisfying, bitter chocolatey taste or sweet chocolate, depending on how much honey you add.

Chocolate Chia Pudding

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 C Raw Milk (or coconut milk)
• 1/4 C Chia Seeds
• 3 Tb Cocao Powder
• 4 Tb Honey

Directions

1. In a jar with a lid, measure the milk and chia seeds. Let soak for 15-30 minutes, stirring or shaking the jar every 3-5 minutes to avoid clumping.
2. Then, in a medium size bowl, stir cocao powder with the thick liquid until well mixed.
3. Add raw honey to taste.
4. Option: use a hand blender to make the pudding smooth.

This is an amazingly simple coconut flour bread. Whenever I’ve made nut flour breads, they usually end up dry and flaky. Not this one! This is moist and perfect for sandwich bread.

Coconut Flour Bread

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups coconut flour
• 1 cup ghee
• 2 tbsp honey
• 12 eggs
• 1 tsp unrefined sea salt

Directions

1. Preheat 350° F
2. Soften ghee while oven is preheating.
3. Mix dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl.
4. Mix wet ingredients together and then, using a hand blender, mix thoroughly with the dry ingredients.
5. Butter a loaf pan and pour batter into pan.
6. Bake 40 mins.

When I first started using squash in my kitchen, I was a bit nervous. What if I did it wrong? Do you cut it and then bake it? Do you bake it whole? How long do you bake it? Are you supposed to poke a fork all over it? Or are you supposed to steam it instead?

So let me just

You can buy pumpkin seeds at gas stations, grocery stores or nearly anywhere food is sold. But making your own is satisfying, cheaper and healthier too!

Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients

Squash
Pan
Spoon
Bowl

Directions

1. Bake.
   Preheat the oven to 350° F. Place your squash in an oven-safe pan or dish and place in the oven for 2-4 hours or until a fork pierces skin. Take out and let cool for 10-15 minutes.
2. Cut & Scoop.
   Cut squash in half. Scoop out the seeds and place seeds in bowl. Scoop out the squash meat and use for soups, stews, mash it up or simply put a few pats of butter on top and enjoy.
3. Seeds.
   Wash off as much squash leftovers from the seeds (from the above photo, you can see this step isn’t exactly necessary…just makes for a bit more work when snacking.). Then follow these directions: 

• Dehydrator: lay seeds in a single layer, sprinkle with sea salt (optional) and dehydrate for a few hours, or until crunchy.
• Oven: preheat oven to 175° F or lowest temperature. Lay seeds in a single layer on parchment paper, sprinkle with sea salt (optional) and place in oven for a few hours, or until crunchy.

Delicious, cinnamony muffins are a perfect fall treat. With fresh apple chunks mixed in, it stays moist and fresh.

Cinnamon Apple Muffins

Serves: 24 Muffins

Ingredients

4 Cups Almond Flour
1 tsp Sea Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 C Arrowroot Powder
5 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 C Ghee
1 C Honey
2 Egg
2 TBSP Vanilla
4 Medium Apples, cored and diced into 1/4-inch cubes

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pan with paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, sea salt, baking soda, arrowroot powder, and cinnamon.
3. In a smaller bowl, whip bacon fat, honey, eggs and vanilla together.
4. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold in apples.
5. Spoon batter into the paper liners.
6. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until muffin tops are golden brown.
7. Let sit for 20 minutes, then serve with a pat of butter.

Recipe altered from Elana Amsterdam’s book: The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook

I’ve been ordering from iHerb.com a bit more the last few weeks, and each time I opened my box I found a little 1 oz container of kumquat fruit spread. Well, I had no use for that so they just kept collecting in a corner of my shelf next to the toothpicks and garlic salt.

After a few weeks, they started taking up a bit too much room, these little 1 oz jars were just about as wide as they were tall, so I decided to experiment with them in my loaf of almond bread.

The loaf turned out moist with a hint of fruit and is especially tasty at room temperature with butter lathered on top.

Kumquat Paleo Bread

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

4 farm fresh, organic Eggs (no soy)
1/2 C local Honey
1/3 C leftover Bacon fat from the pan
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp real Salt
4 oz Kumquat Jelly
2 tsp Vanilla
2 3/4 C Almond Flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325° F. Using a little piece of paper towel, spread a very thin layer of butter around a loaf pan to grease.
2. Mix all ingredients together until incorporated.
3. Pour batter into the loaf pan.
4. Bake 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I scoured the grocery store Wednesday after teaching my 4 p.m. yoga class desperately looking, but unwilling to ask, for peanut sauce. I couldn’t even find a Jiffy and sugar version of peanut sauce! Not that I would have stooped so low…

So I trudged home, hungry and still dreaming of grilled chicken with steamed greens dipped in peanut sauce. They say hunger is the root of all tasty recipes… and so it was the case on Wednesday. I measured and mixed and taste tested until I came up with this recipe, a recipe Elav said triggered a childhood memory. I think that’s a good sign.

I invite you to test this recipe and leave comments! But first, a confession: at the Savvy Recipe Development talk (just one of the wonderful events at the Nourished Food Blogger Conference) it was recommended to test a recipe three times before publishing it. And I only tested my recipe, um, once. My only excuse is that I haven’t had time to get through 10 servings of really, really good Peanut Sauce since Wednesday. But I’ve made a huge dent.

Enjoy!

Peanut Sauce

Makes 10 servings

Ingredients

3/4 C Peanut butter (or other nut butter)
1/4 C Coconut Milk
1 1/2 Tb Lemon Juice
1 1/2 Tb Liquid Aminos
1 1/2 Tb Water
1 Tb Honey
1 Tb Apple Cider Vinegar
1 Tb Garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp Fish Sauce
1 1/2 tsp Ginger powder
1 tsp Yellow Curry powder
1/2 tsp White Wine Vinegar
1/4 tsp Real Salt

Directions

1. Using a food processor, like this Cuisinart Food Processor, mix all ingredients.
2. Taste test and adjust as necessary.
3. Use on top of free range, organic broiled or grilled chicken or as the marinade for free range, organic pork chops.
4. Enjoy and…
5. Leave your comments below!

Linked to: Real Food Wednesday

One of my younger sisters spent a few months in Australia a few years ago. The summer Elav and I moved in with my parents for our in-between-school-and-job section of life, she introduced us all to these Australian burgers. They are delicious!

Aussie Burgers

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 grass-fed beef patties
4 slices pineapple
4 fried free-range eggs
2 large beetroot or 4 small beetroot
mayonnaise

Directions

1. Roast beetroot in the oven: slice thinly and bake at 350° F for approximately 30-40 minutes.
2. Grill or fry the beef patties and pineapple.
3. Fry the eggs.
4. Layer the burger: beef patty, mayonnaise, pineapple, egg and beetroot

*Sigh* It’s been a very long time (well, 9 days) since I’ve really taken time to plan a meal and then carry my plan out. If you’ve been following Wellness Hammock’s blog and reading my recent(ish) posts, you’ll already know that I have been slipping a bit in my responsibilities as Blog Writer & Owner.

No more! My studio is open (you can visit The Yoga Place here) and I am still busy, yes, but it’s manageable.  The studio looks really good–there are still a few things to take care of but those are relatively small items. Yesterday I started 5 loads of laundry, ran the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen and took the trash out. So I feel like I can be a good housewife again, starting with this meal!

Who doesn’t love a good stack of free range and grass-fed beef ribs?

Tender Oven Baked Short Ribs

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 Free-Range Beef Short Ribs
Filtered Water
Sea Salt
Pepper
Garlic

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300°F.
2. Place ribs bone side down in a dish large enough for the meat to be in one layer (don’t stack on top of each other). Add about 1/4 inch water to the pan.
3. Season to your liking (may I suggest garlic, salt, pepper?) and then cover with lid or tee-pee a strip of aluminum foil over the pan.
4. Bake 4 hours.
5. Remove pan from oven, un-foil the make-shift lid or remove the actual lid, then place back into oven at 350°F for 15-20 minutes.
6. Enjoy!

Linked to: Real Food Wednesday, Taking a Timeout Thursday

Beet Juice

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 apples
6 carrots
4 medium beets
1 tbls whey per 1 cup juice (optional)

Directions

1. Wash and cut apples, carrots, and beets.
2. Using a juicer, like this Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juice Extractor, put the items through the juicer in segments: i.e. apple half, carrot pieces, beet chunks and then apple, carrot, beet, etc.
3. Enjoy! Or, if you will be saving for later, add 1 TBLS whey per 1 cup juice to preserve and increase nutrients.