kitchen domination

I had my first kitchen domination in our new abode.  This was the first time I have put this oven to use and I almost burned the house down in doing so.  Apparently, the drawer below the oven heats up at the same rate as the oven (I have never had an oven do this before) and a paper instruction manual resided in this very drawer.  We are down an instruction manual and the house smelled lovely for a good 2-3 hours, but other than that all went swimmingly.

After bathing the fruits and veggies, I began the domination:

I have been craving granola lately, but I did not want to pay $8 for a bag of it and the gluten-free oats were on sale for $4.50, so homemade granola became my first domination task.

Easy, peasy gluten-free granola:

The Goods:

• 3c gluten-free granola
• 1/3c raw honey (melted)
• 1/3c coconut oil (melted)
• 3/4c raw walnuts
• 3/4c raw cashews
• 1/2c raw pecans
• 2T ground flaxseeds
• 20-25 liquid stevia
• 1/4t sea salt
• 1t cinnamon
• 1/2t nutmeg
• dash of ground cloves
• 2T pumpkin puree (you can leave this out)

How to:

1. pre-heat oven to 300 (don’t burn your house down)
2. combine all ingredients in medium size bowl
3. put mixed medley on a parchment lined baking sheet
4. bake for 15-20 min stirring every 5 min

After the granola was completed I moved on to baking some brown bread

I have made a version of this bread before and posted it in skinspot’s newsletter and I also made it in muffin form.  However, this fella was a little different than both of those.

I bring you grain-free, spice bread.  This bread does not look the prettiest, but I assure you he is delish. I adapted the recipe from this recipe at Eat the Cookie.

The Goods:

• 2c (packed) almond flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 spiced hemp protein powder (you could also use any vanilla or regular flavored protein powder)
• 1c pumpkin puree
• 1/4c molasses
• 1/4 c maple syrup
• approx 20 drops of liquid stevia
• 1/2t baking soda
• 1t cinnamon
• 1/2t nutmeg
• 1/4t ground cloves
• 1/2t sea salt

How To:

1. pre-heat oven to 350
2. line 9×5 loaf pan w/ parchment paper or grease w/ coco oil
3. combine all ingredients in medium size bowl
4. pour medley into loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes

I enjoyed a slice of this delight this morning for  breakfast alongside a little coconut yogurt and berries.

This bread is awesome.  It is like good-for-you cake.

After the bread was done, I tried my hand at making raw date balls.

Sadly, these were a fail.  They taste pretty good, but they are hideous and really sticky.  I will modify and post a recipe for them someday.

I decided that I was donezo with the sweets and moved on to steaming all of the veggies, so we could have veggies on hand for a few days;

And that concludes this week’s kitchen domination.

On a different note, every Tuesday for the past three Tuesdays, I have had the pleasure of having Abby White kick my fanny. Abby is the personal trainer, yoga instructor and holistic health coach over at Bliss Holistic Health.  I cannot express what a great inspiration Abby is.  First of all, she looks amazing, so she definitely walks her talk, but more importantly her breadth of knowledge on fitness and nutrition is unreal.  If you live in Portland, I highly recommend working with Abby.  She is shaking up my fitness routine and I couldn’t be more tickled about it.

In other thrilling news, we got a patio set.  Woot! However, we are back to traditional Portland weather, so it may be a few days before we get to enjoy ‘er.

I am off to walk the pug.

Happy Monday!