Choc Chip Cookies Made With Coconut Flour

I had a serious urge for some hearty wholegrain cookies the other day, and came up with these babies.

They were completely experimental but turned out alright!

Given my love for all things coconut, I decided it was high time I started playing with coconut flour.  According to one of my favourite health gurus, Dr Mercola, it's a great alternative to the standard wheat variety of flour, and comes with loads of health benefits, consisting of 14% coconut oil, and 58% dietary fiber (wheat bran has only 27%).  The remaining 28% consists of water, protein and carbs.

Coconut flour is also 100% gluten free, which is great news for those intolerant to gluten, however, because it doesn't contain any gluten, this also means that you can end up with a somewhat crumbly cookie (gluten = glue, which binds).  You could add an egg to bind the dough together, however I found that the date syrup I made did a fairly reasonable job.

Speaking of all things coconut, I also sweetened the cookies with coconut sugar. According to Natural News,  coconut sugar is low glycemic, and has many other nutritional qualities; it's high in potassium, magnesium, iron, boron, zinc and copper.

The cookies themselves turned out pretty dense, due to the coconut flour and the almond meal, and soft and cake-ish... but they're really tasty!

I used cacao nibs which didn't really melt very well, but I think they'd be amazing with dark or milk chocolate drops, or even a mashed banana or two!

Yum!

Ingredients

1 cup coconut flour

½ cup almond meal

1 cup oatmeal

1 cup coconut milk (or any milk of your choice)

3 tbs coconut sugar (or any unrefined sugar)

½ cup date syrup* (or honey)

½ cup cacao nibs

1 tsp baking powder

*Soak 12-15 dates in warm water and blend to form a thick syrup

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven at 180C

2. Combine all ingredients

3. Form into small cookie size balls and flatten

4. Bake for approximately 40 mins or until brown

As the day commenced in the morning at the local farmer's market, I thought I'd keep with the bluegrass, country theme, and baked these babies whilst rocking out to Old Crow Medicine Show's 2004 album - O.C.M.S.

(This was also shared on Monday Mania, Traditional Tuesdays, Healthy2day Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday Homemaking Link-Up, Full Plate Thursday and Simple Lives Thursday)

Zen 'Sausage' Rolls

These 'sausage' rolls are reeeally easy to whip up, and once cooked, the colour and texture of the filling can be quite easily mistaken for real sausage rolls (particularly if you substitute the cup of rice for a cup of breadcrumbs)! 

These are so delicious that even the most anti-vegetarian meat eater will have more than one helping!

125g walnuts
1 cup cooked brown rice

1 finely chopped onion

300g silken tofu

1 cup rolled oats

1 teaspoon garlic powder

3 tablespoons Braggs Liquid Aminos (or soy sauce)

Salt and pepper to season

3-4 frozen puff pastry sheets (Borg's is vegan)

water or vegan milk for brushing pastry

sesame or poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 200C, and thaw out your pastry.  Chop or process the walnuts until they're thoroughly chopped, but not all gone to powder, and place them into a large mixing bowl with the rice and chopped onion.  Add the tofu to the mixture and stir until it's all combined. You can then add the rest of the filling ingredients: rolled oats, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and the Braggs.  Stir everything together well. 

So easy! Now all you need to do is spoon the mixture onto the pastry sheets and roll ‘em up!

Lightly grease a baking tray, then take the pastry and slice each sheet in half to make two rectangles.  Spoon the filling down the centre third of each pastry rectangle; lightly brush another third with water or milk and then roll the pastry, starting from the empty third and tucking it into the brushed third, and place them on the baking tray. Make a couple of cuts in the top of the roll, or gently poke the top with a fork.  Brush the top with more water or milk and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds. Repeat with the remaining filling and pastry. Bake the rolls for about 20 to 30 minutes, or until they're golden brown.

* I sometimes throw in half a cup or so of grated carrot or depending on what else is in it, my left over veggie juice pulp (the addition of ginger provides a very subtle zing), which also gives it a nice flavour.  

  

YUM!!. 

For more information on food and recipes, check out Food Renegade - it's literally an awesome wealth of shared knowledge!

Body and Mind Remedies for Eczema and Other Conditions

The past couple of months saw an unprecedented bad case of eczema, which started off as an innocuous patch of dermatitis, contained on one of my fingers, spread angrily all over my chest and stomach and onto my back, and finally, to each of my four limbs. 

It wasn't pretty, and it eventually got me really down, which obviously did not help!

Since becoming an almost organic vegan, my diet has been more or less in first gear over the past few years, and so I knew that the eczema was attributable to the stress I was experiencing in my current living situation. So much so, that the only thing that finally cleared it up, was taking a few weeks away from the environment; no amount of fresh green vegetable juice seemed to help clear this completely, affirming my theory that your mental health can manifest in your physical health.  

Whilst I tried to get my stress levels under control, a good friend told me about bathing in oatmeal in order to sooth inflamed skin. The porridge bath, as I now like call it – cheap as chips and really easy!

There’s just two easy steps:

1.                   Take the leg of an old pair of pantyhose, and fill it with about a cup of oatmeal.  

2.                   Tie it off, and immerse it in a warm bath

Make sure that you keep the bath water warm, as lounging in hot water warms your blood, which if you are prone to eczema or psoriasis, can further inflame the skin.

The water will become milky after a few minutes, and the ball of oatmeal will drip with a thick, gluggy porridge between your fingers when you squeeze it.  

The thick, syrupy-like oat milk feels amazing when massaged into your skin, and even if you don't have eczema, it's an excellent natural moisturiser in its own right, and is cheap enough to regularly bathe in.

It really does soothe any itches you might have, and you all of a sudden realise the value of Cleopatra's famous milk baths! 

The Mind and Body Connection

In addition to your physical self, the bath is also beneficial for your mind.  It's the perfect time to meditate, and let go of any stresses that may have caused unnecessary worry during your day or week.  Visualise and recall what it was that happened to cause you to feel how you do, accept it, and then try to let it go.

I have a few meditations that I have used to facilitate my stress abandonment and ultimately my clear skin, but my favourite technique for letting go is the visualization technique.  Unlike other meditations, the visualization technique requires you to envisage what it is that you want; Not only did I want peace of mind, but I also wanted clear skin. 

I have three meditations which helped me to achieve this, that I would like to share:

The first involves visualizing yourself breathing in grey matter, or the worry, as you inhale through your nose.  As you exhale through your mouth, visualise yourself releasing the worry, in the form of pink or golden sparkles. 

The second is to visualize your body as the colour red, which represents the rash.  Concentrate on watching the angry red slowly change to an alkalising green colour, which starts at your toes, and then slowly extends all over your body, until it finally creeps up to your head, where any red remains are released with each exhale.

You could also visualise the steam coming off the water as representative of your stresses, dissipating into the atmosphere...

The scenarios are limitless!  

I realise to some, it might sound a little bit whack, but it really does work!

This technique was inspired by a colleague with whom I used to work.  She told me that when she had cancer, she would spend days meditating by visualising her body as a real life game of Pac Man.  Her good cells were represented by a hungry 'Pac Man' who would go around her body, slowly conquering all of the cancerous cells, until they had all been swallowed and destroyed.

Eventually, along with a few other fundamental life changes, she was declared cancer free.

Pretty impressive!

Suffice to say, the mind can be as powerful tool as we choose it to be, and just as we exercise our bodies, we need to exercise our minds by way of meditation, in order to create the lives we want:

Healthy, happy and stress-free.