New Food Friday – Almond Milk

In my search to find lactose free foods that are high in calcium, I found almond milk. This particular brand (Silk), has 45% DV calcium with no lactose. I am very pleased to say that it is also delicious and is therefore the pick for this New Food Friday!

I love almonds, who doesn’t? So it’s no surprise that I love almond milk too.

Almond Heart sxc.hu sateda

Almond milk tastes like chocolate milk without the chocolate. But before you lactose intolerant folks run out and buy some, you should know that there are differences in the various brands of this type of milk in the event you want to cook with it. Aye, there’s the rub. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

First, what about freezing it? Since an opened container of almond milk should be used before 7-10 days, I wondered if I could freeze some in the event I couldn’t drink it all in that time span.

According to the Silk website, the product changes in texture when thawed although you may still use it for frozen dessert recipes.

As it turned out, I had no problem drinking one cup daily for breakfast and finishing the container before the 10 days was up. The almond flavor goes great while eating a banana. I’m not a cold cereal eater in the wintertime, but I bet almond milk would be great in a bowl of cereal with sliced bananas!

So, can you heat it? Yes, you can with the Silk brand of almond milk.  I can’t wait to make hot chocolate with it. By the way, the recipes on their website are decadent! See http://silk.com/recipes 

If you can heat it, then you can bake with it so I made a batch of carrot/walnut/raisin muffins with one cup of almond milk.  

Carrot/Walnut/Raisin Muffin made with Almond Milk

They came out great!

Many people make their own almond milk. It’s not that difficult. Here is one example.

Almonds and almond milk are very good sources of Vitamin E. Vitamin E helps with less cognitive decline as you age.  Some say almonds keep you thinking clearly and boost brain power. So, the benefits of almonds and almond milk go further than adding calcium to your diet and helping folks with lactose intolerance.

One cup of Almond milk also contains 25% DV of vitamin D. Vitamin D as you know, is the sunshine vitamin. We don’t get as much sunshine in the winter as we do in the summer when we’re outdoors more. It isn’t easy to get the vitamin D we need everyday so almond milk can help you reach those dietary needs too.

Here is the nutritional information.

Almond Milk Nutrition Facts

 

This is an almond grove.

Almond Trees sxc.hu pv

 

This is an almond branch with almonds.

Closeup of Unhusked Almonds sxc.hu pv

 

This is your brain on almonds and almond milk.

This is Your Brain on Almond Milk   sxc.hu plrang

The milk mustache in the Featured column is by Vengel Crimson - flickr

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Happy Election Day/Happy Birthday/Happy 100 Followers

Today is election day. It is also my birthday. It is also the day I now have 100 followers on my blog.

HURRAY!

Hope you had a great day. I celebrated by o.d.’ ing on chocolate:

Lindt milk chocolate with hazelnuts

S’mores (my first s’more ever)

Keebler Deluxe Fudge Covered Graham Crackers

Chocolate Eclairs with Custard filling

This is what a dedicated health nut eats on her birthday. How old am I? I’m 30 again! I proclaim that it’s OK to go a little crazy on your birthday! (I did work out today.)

YAYAAAAA!

I also ordered a new part for my broken lawnmower. If it is the correct part and my lawnmower starts working again, I will write a post about it.

This is my idea of a happy birthday. To each his own. The icing on the cake would be if Obama won the election! I predict that he will!

YAYAAAAA!

To all my followers, have a great day and a great evening!

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Calcium, Vitamin D and Panne Cotta: All Important to Good Health

Vitamin D the Sunshine Vitamin

Ever since we were young, our moms told us to drink our milk. So we drank it. As we got older, we learned that we needed even more calcium, up to 1200 mg of calcium for those of us over 50. But nature plays a cruel trick on us because as we age, we become more lactose intolerant making it difficult to accomplish the goal of 1200 mg of calcium a day. It isn’t fair!

Fortunately, there are other ways to get that calcium beside drinking milk.

Plus, we also need to be concerned about our body absorbing the calcium. Certain medications and foods make our bodies expel calcium. How do we know what foods help our bodies to absorb calcium? And, what about Vitamin D? How do we get this essential vitamin? I answer these questions and more in this article link.

Did you hear what Marcella said? Why no! Tell me, what did she say?

Panne Cotta – a delicious way to get more calcium

Here is an Italian recipe called Panne Cotta. It means “cooked cream.” I got the recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, “Great Taste – Low Fat Italian Cooking.” Their version is a lowfat version so they don’t use cream. They called their recipe, “Latte Cotta” which means “cooked milk.”  Sprinkled on the top of the dessert is crushed amaretti cookies. I did one better. Why use sweet cookies that contain sugar and are added useless calories? Instead I crushed walnuts as a topping which contains omega-3, an important necessary nutrient and tastes delicious in this dessert.

Then, on top of the nuts I thinly sliced bananas, which are high in potassium – good for your heart. I substituted milk too with powdered milk. Yes, powdered milk. It’s just as good if not better than regular bottled milk. Why is it better? It’s better because you can add an extra tablespoon of the powered milk and not notice the difference. This is one trick to help you get more calcium.

But nutrition aside, this is a dessert to die for! I wasn’t expecting it to taste so good. It’s excellent if I do say so myself and I’m pretty critical of my own cooking. It’s good enough for company. It looks like pudding but has the consistency of a gelatin (Jello) dessert. When you pile the thinly sliced bananas on top, they look like whipped cream topping as you can see from the photo. I highly recommend this dessert.

CHOCOLATE PANNE COTTA

Ingredients

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

2 ¼ cups low-fat (1%) milk (or, use my suggestion: powdered milk. Follow instructions on the box.)

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

¾ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ cup boiling water

½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar (I used light brown)

1/8 teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

chopped walnuts for sprinkling

bananas for slicing

In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over ¼ cup of the milk and let stand until softened, about 3 minutes. In another small bowl, combine the cocoa powder and cinnamon. Gradually add the boiling water to the cocoa mixture, whisking until smooth and no lumps remain. Set aside.

In a medium saucepan, combine the remaining 2 cups milk, the brown sugar, and salt. Whisk in the cocoa mixture until well combined. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer, whisk in the gelatin mixture, and remove from the heat. Stir in the vanilla.

Divide the mixture among four 6-ounce dessert dishes. (I used large wine glasses.) Chill until set, about 2 hours. Sprinkle with chopped walnuts. Slice bananas on top when ready to serve.

Rewards for Doing Everything Right in Your Vegetable Garden

When you’ve done everything right in your vegetable garden, and when the stars and the moon are in the right position, and the weather has cooperated, and you’ve been lucky to boot, you can sometimes end up with too many vegetables! What? Too many? Yes, it’s happened to me. Let me tell you about it.

I had a surplus of tomatoes one summer. Here’s what I did with them and with other notorious over-producers in the vegetable garden. Click here to learn more.

I am not fortunate enough to be growing fruit in my backyard but boy, I am so itching to do so. Here is a recipe I made with store-bought fruit of which I had an over-abundance. This recipe has a terrible name: Raspberry Grunt. The name comes from the New England states as I understand it. They call it a Slump in Rhode Island and a Grunt in Massachusetts. I think it should be called a Plump.

I purchased a small box of raspberries at my local Meijer because they looked so fresh and plump and the price was right. I had no idea what I was going to make with them. I did what I usually do, checked my cookbooks, looked online, etc. I found the Raspberry Grunt on Martha Stewart’s website. Well, I didn’t have enough raspberries and her recipe also called for blackberries. I didn’t have any of those. But I did have some nectarines and some plums on hand so that is what I used.

The reason I was drawn to this particular recipe is because I didn’t have to turn on the oven. It cooks on the stove top. We’re probably going to hit 100 degrees again today and I don’t want to make my air conditioner run anymore than it has to!

First, I tasted one of the raspberries. Wow! Talk about tart! I would have rather bitten into a lemon. So, I made sure I added more sugar than the recipe called for. That is the opposite of what I usually do in a recipe. Here is what the fruit looked like when everything was rinsed, peeled, and cut into slices.

My Recipe

1  1/4 Cup sugar

1/4 teasp. plus pinch cinnamon

3/4 Cup all-purpose flour

3/4 teasp. ground ginger

1/3 Cup milk, room temperature

3 Tablesp. unsalted butter, melted

2 Cups raspberries

2 nectarines, pitted and peeled

2 plums, pitted and peeled

2 Tablesp. lemon juice or orange marmalade

3/4 teasp. baking powder

salt

Directions

Mix 2 Tablsp. sugar and 1/4 teasp. cinnamon and set aside. Wisk flour, 2 Tablesp. of the sugar, baking powder, pinch salt, and ginger in a bowl and set aside.  Stir milk and melted butter in small bowl. Mix the milk/butter into the flour mixture and set aside.

Put the fruit into a skillet and add 2 Tablsp water. Add the remaining pinch of cinnamon. Add the lemon juice or marmalade and the remaining sugar. Cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat stirring occasionally.

Drop 8 large dollops of batter on top of the fruit mixture. Using two spoons to do this helps. Space them evenly apart. Sprinkle the cinnamon/sugar mixture over the top of the batter dumplings. Cover and reduce the heat to medium or lower depending on your stove. Cook until the dumplings are cooked through and the juices are bubbling, about 12-15 minutes. You can serve it warm as is or with cream drizzled on top or ice cream.  I also like it served cold.

Here is a photo of the results.

My take on the taste and texture.

Even though I added 1/4 cup more sugar than the original Martha Stewart recipe, my fruit was still too tart. I didn’t add lemon juice as was required in the original recipe either; I used my homemade orange marmalade instead which was very sweet. Yet I still wanted to pucker because it was tart! True, I didn’t drizzle cream or serve it with ice cream which would have helped a lot. So, if you use berries, especially raspberries in your recipe, you may want to add more sugar, especially if you don’t serve it with cream or ice cream.

The dumplings. Now this is what made it worthwhile. These dumplings were out of this world. They were fluffy, big, tender, and delicious. I ate two but I wanted to eat four. This was my breakfast today. I’m going to have some for dessert after dinner too! It may not taste as tart when it’s cold.

Extra Tip. The other thing I did differently was that I used powdered milk. So, I mixed 1/3 cup water with 3 tablespoons powdered milk. The box directions say use 5 tablespoons powdered milk to an 8 oz glass of water to get 8 oz of milk. I added a lot more than was needed. Why? We need our calcium for good health. I add powdered milk to a lot of recipes. You can’t tell the difference.

I will definitely make this again using different fruits. I might even use frozen fruit to make it easier and quicker.

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