Showing posts with label stage one. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stage one. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Perfect carrot pancakes

OK, now, I know that if you are on the SCD diet, you have probably made carrot pancakes.

But nobody told you how to make PERFECT carrot pancakes, now did they?

I thought not.

So! Here is how you do it.

PERFECT CARROT PANCAKES

6-8 eggs
1/2-3/4 cup carrot puree, squished
cinnamon or allspice
honey
salt


This recipe is super forgiving. Find the ratio that works best for you.

What I do for the carrot puree is very simple. I take cooled, steamed carrots, fold up some paper towels, and squish them. Yep, I take big handfuls of carrots and moosh them up in the paper towels. The paper towels absorb some of the water and that works just fine.

I plop the puree in a bowl and break the eggs on top of it. Then I add honey, spices and salt to taste (do less; you can always add more later!), and I beat the whole mess with an electric mixer.

How long do I beat them for? Until they start to look kind of opaque from the egg whites getting all whipped up nicely.

Now, once they're all whipped up nice, remember that the bits of carrot will tend to fall to the bottom of the bowl. So when you're dipping out ladlefuls of your batter, make sure you get down to the bottom so that you keep getting that perfect egg/carrot ratio. OK? Good!

Here's what your not so cooked pancake will look like. I hope you have a nice high quality nonstick pan, or you're going to need a lot of oil. The pancakes tend to absorb a LOT of oil, so be aware.



See how nice and opaque-ish it looks? That's what you want!

You will want to carefully turn the pancake when you are pretty sure it's done. It will have dry-ish bubbles in the middle as it cooks, much like real pancakes.

Now it is time to turn your pancake!

By the way, it is VERY hard to make several of these pancakes in one pan. I recommend using an 8" pan and making one pancake at a time, with approximately 1/3 to 1/2 cup batter. You will know when you have used too much. It will not be pretty.

However, if you DID use the right amount, and you DID succeed in perfectly flipping your perfect pancake...

Here is what it should look like:



Now pat yourself on the back for a job well done, and then make a dozen more.

Because your child is going to eat them all. At once. :)

Friday, October 23, 2009

silicone and egg bread

I am sure at least a few of you out there are a little confused about silicone. I know I was!

First of all, you may already be familiar with silicone if you have parchment paper. Parchment paper is paper that has been dipped in silicone. This is in stark contrast to waxed paper, which has been dipped in -- duh! -- wax.

Silicone has some advantages over waxed paper, though. For one, you can make egg bread on it! Let me repost the recipe here. I am trying to get organized, I swear I am, but I just haven't had a chance to go back and make a cleaner recipe archive yet.

EGG "BREAD" (STAGE ONE)

Five eggs, whites and yolks separated
1/2 cup well cooked vegetables

Separate the whites into a large bowl and put the yolks into a smaller bowl. Beat whites with a pinch of salt until glossy and fluffy.

Squeeze the water out of the vegetables with some paper towels. They don't have to be dry, but using two to three paper towels folded over will allow you to get a substantial amount of water out. Plop them into the bowl with the egg yolks. Beat the yolks with the vegetables until the vegetables are nearly pureed. You can use a stick blender for this if you like.

Fold the yolk mixture into the egg whites, mixing well. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and dump the mixture in, spreading around with a spatula.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes. The bread will puff up a little and settle as it cools. You can carefully flip the whole bread over and bake the other side for an additional 10 minutes if you like, but it doesn't seem to make all that much difference so I don't.

I cut it into 12 square pieces and sprinkle with sea salt. You can use them for sandwiches or snacks.

Here's a tip: DO NOT USE ANYTHING OTHER THAN PARCHMENT PAPER. I tried. I used foil with olive oil, foil with lots of olive oil, and wax paper (which melted and stuck to the pan) before I gave up and just bought the damned stuff. It's like magic. Food does not stick to it AT ALL. Comes right off. Parchment paper is full of win.


So! As you can see, parchment paper is necessary for this recipe.

One small problem -- I moved.

And none of the stores near me had parchment paper!

I finally gave up and purchased silicone pan liners at Target... these ones.



If you click on the link, it will take you to Amazon where you can read more about them. I got two of these, and now I don't have to buy parchment paper anymore.

Anyway, another way I was using the parchment was to cook pineapple. Before this, I was just cooking it by lining a pan with foil, then lining the pan with parchment, and covering the whole thing with more foil. The reason for my crazy double layering? Well, you don't want the pineapple acids to leach aluminum into your food.

So, silicone pan liners to the rescue! I do have the size listed above, and it fits in a 9 x 13 Pyrex pan pretty well.



You will notice that my Pyrex pan looks dirty. That is because it is. See, I have rheumatoid arthritis, which makes it not so easy to scrub stuff off pans like this. I am also just a teeny bit lazy.

I never plop anything directly into a Pyrex pan for this reason -- it's always lined with foil, sometimes double lined, so I never ever have to scrub the inside out. :D Unfortunately, stuff does still get on the outside sometimes, and that is where the lazy part comes in. :)

Also, be warned that the silicone liners do stain over time. It's not dangerous or anything -- just be sure to wash them as thoroughly as possible between uses.

Oh, and I also bought these to make almond butter brownies for my son:



I totally LOVE these. Fair warning -- the first few times I've used these types of molds, I've noticed a distinct plasticky flavor, despite washing them. My son doesn't seem to mind. But after the first few uses, they're completely fine. I have several different ones and I usually buy a new set or two yearly.

Happy baking!

Saturday, February 16, 2008

I know, I know...

So I haven't posted in a while. I'm sorry, I really am. I've been incredibly busy, and I've been working overtime pretty often. I'm also hoping really hard for a new job (!!!) and I tried some cooking experiments that went awry.

I just finished another Pendant Audio script for season 2 of the Kingery, and I'm way behind on recording my lines. Basically, we've been working most nights until about an hour before bed time. And then a situation at work has me kind of angry, so when Clark decided to get up at 2 a.m., I kept myself awake thinking about stuff. I got up at 3 a.m. and played Super Mario Galaxy for an hour. And then I watched half of a really bad sci-fi movie before calming down enough to go back to sleep at 5 a.m. for another hour or so.

But I can post a couple things for you all. :)

First of all, this here is the BEST reason to make egg free brownies:



Licking the bowl, yay! Isn't it strange how the smallest things can make us feel a little more 'normal'?

I also made almond milk. I roughly followed a recipe I found online.

ALMOND MILK (STAGE TWO)

1 cup almonds
water

Put the almonds in the blender. Add water to the four cup mark. Blend for 10 minutes.

I strained the almond pulp through a clean bandana. It worked very well. Do not try coffee filters. They will rip.


Clark LOVED the almond milk. I was really heartened by how easy it was, so I tried to make almond milk yogurt. This did not work. It separated, which is normal, but it also turned a weird shade of brown, which was not normal. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Marilyn on the Pecanbread list has some good suggestions, so I saved those for when I'm ready to try again.

I also purchased a five pound roll of ground turkey at Smart and Final. It didn't have any additives listed, so I thought I'd give it a try. I left it in the fridge for three days to thaw, and on the third day it leaked through everything in the world. -_-

So I cleaned it all up with help from my hubby and I decided to make a modified version of the chicken sausage recipe from the SCD Recipe site. I improvised with spices I had on hand.



SIMPLE TURKEY SAUSAGE (STAGE TWO)

5 pounds turkey
1 1/2 tbsp salt
1/2 tbsp ground celery seed
1/2 tbsp turmeric

I mixed it all by hand and then took four pieces of foil and plopped some of the turkey mixture onto each one. I then rolled each piece of foil into a sausage shaped log, and put them all on a cookie sheet. I cooked it at about 325 degrees for two hours. I didn't let them rest for 24 hours and I forgot to poke holes in the foil, but it turned out fine, and Clark loved it.


I didn't even really thoroughly mix the spices, so I didn't take a photo of the finished sausage 'cause I was embarrassed. :)

I liked it with ketchup. Mmm.

Also last weekend I made roast chicken, which turned out beautifully. I then discovered I really don't like roast chicken. I prefer my chicken dry, or fried, not moist. I know, I'm really not a foodie by any stretch. I then made a soup with a whole chicken, and that was no fun either. I am NEVER doing that again. No picking four bajillion tiny bones out of soup! I nearly screamed when I pulled the liver out of one of the chickens, and then later after the soup was done, I saw a vertebrae. A VERTEBRAE. I am so not in touch with my inner cave girl. *shudders*

So, it's back to parts for me, and I think I'm going to keep getting turkey parts, because I really love the flavor of turkey soup. Maybe I'm just sick of chicken. It's entirely possible. Understandable, even.

I've cut out eggs entirely for myself, and I think it's helping with my arthritis.

Oh, and Valentine's Day! I know how this makes me sound but...look, back when I got valentines, kids did not hand out candy with every freaking valentine! Clark was so disappointed he couldn't eat any of his candy, so I whipped up some SCD frosting for him right quick and put it on his brownies today. He was so happy.

SCD frosting (STAGE ONE)

2 tbsp honey
3-4 tbsp spectrum shortening
dash salt

Beat until well combined. Frost and eat. This will firm up HARD in the fridge, so be aware.


OK, that's all for now. I don't even know what stage to put these recipes. Give me some guidance, and I'll stick them where they need to go.

Thanks to the people who are checking up on me. I can only type so much in a day, because my right hand starts to really bother me, so I have to pick and choose sometimes, especially with the writing. I've been kind of all over the place emotionally and I am now having major cravings for non-SCD foods when I get my period. It's incredibly distracting. -_-

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Cooking marathon, cheesecake, and yogurt

Hey.

So I never posted about making yogurt. I decided to use the heating pad method. The page you should actually be referring to for temperatures is on the Pecanbread Yogurt page. So be aware that there are some discrepancies between the pages.

I had acquired a thermometer. It was not the best choice, because it was a meat thermometer, and it didn't go any lower than 100 degrees. Oh well, I thought I would just work with what I had.

I held the thermometer in the goat milk as I heated it on the stove. I intended to turn it off once I hit 185 degrees, like the Pecanbread site says, but the temperature climbed really quickly and the goat milk did end up boiling for a few seconds. We're supposed to try to avoid this, but I was going to go ahead anyway.

I took the pan off the heat and put it in my large saucepan which had two trays of ice cubes and some cold water in there.

I then realized another thermometer problem, because you need to cool the milk to at least room temperature. So I kind of had to guess. I splashed a bit of it when my arm and when it felt cool, I added the Progurt as specified -- mixing it with about a cup of the milk and then mixing it throughout the whole pot of milk.

Then it was time for the heating pad. I'd picked a spot on my counter that was pretty cozy, and I made sure to purchase a heating pad that would not shut itself off.



After that, I had to figure out a way to get the thermometer to stay in the yogurt without it touching the bottom of the pan. I tried just wrapping the top of it in foil and sort of balancing it against the side of the pan, but that didn't work.

Then I saw the handle of my colander and I got an idea.



After that, I covered it up and set it on the heating pad. I added some dish towels around the sides of it to keep the heat in, too.

Well, it was hard to tell if it was getting up to temperature because the thermometer was kind of crappy. I got up at 2 a.m. since Clark was up at 2 a.m., and I saw that the yogurt wasn't even up to 100 degrees. So I propped up more of the heating pad against the pan by using a Yankee candle that somebody bought me at my office. I didn't take a photo of it but you get the idea. :)

By morning, it was up to temperature, so I wasn't really sure when to start the 24 hours. I decided to just do 24 hours since 6 a.m. or so and so I ended up fermenting it overnight again.

It came out OK. I was surprised at how thin it was. I dripped some of it with a coffee filter placed in a plastic funnel balanced over a drinking glass. That worked pretty well, as long as I didn't put too much yogurt in there at one time.

And then Clark had his weird reaction, and you're now up to speed.

So. I realized later that my thermometer was in fact off, by quite a lot. I measured boiling water with it, and it registered as 195 degrees. Not good. So all sorts of things could have gone wrong with the probiotics.

I bought a new thermometer, a digital one with a probe. I really like it. It comes with a timer that you can set for 24 hours. That one worked much better and registered the temperature of the goat milk correctly. Hooray!

I was also able to see with my new thermometer when the goat milk yogurt got down to the appropriate temperature to add the probiotics (about 65-70 degrees is a good range to shoot for).

I also started the yogurt much earlier (around 3 p.m.), so I was sure it was up to temperature when I went to bed. The probe balanced in the milk a little easier, and I didn't need my colander this time. I just wrapped some foil around the top of the probe and secured it to the handle of the pot.

And yes, I used the Yankee candle again. :)

I tried dripping the whole batch in bulk but that didn't work so well because there was still too much for it to all go through the colander well. I'll try the handkerchief in the colander method at some point and I'll let you know how it goes.

When I had enough that was dripped, I decided to make a half recipe of the SCD cheesecake in the BTVC book, except I wanted to use all yogurt instead of the dry curd cottage cheese, since we're not eating cow dairy. Here's what I did.

HALF AN SCD CHEESECAKE (STAGE ONE, whenever yogurt is tolerated)

2 eggs
1/4 cup honey
1 1/4 cup dripped SCD yogurt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp grated lemon rind (I didn't use it)

Bake in a pie pan at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until it browns on the edges. It will be only about 1/2 inch thick, since it's a half recipe. :)


So I baked that, and I gave Clark about a full teaspoon of it about an hour before bedtime. I wanted to be sure I got a clear reaction. He seemed fine. In the morning, though, he wasn't fine. He was stimming, stimming, stimming.

So he's not ready for it. That's OK. Good to know. We'll try again in a month or so.

For me, though, at first I didn't think I liked the cheesecake. I even added extra honey to it. Clark said he liked "cheese pie" so he was clearly fine with the taste.

But then later I went back and ate some plain. And then later I went back to even out the edges. And then I ate some more.

So, I changed my mind, and I really liked it! Yum. I can see how the lemon would really complement the flavor of it, so maybe I will look for that lemon stuff. I guess I've gotten past the initial taste of it, finally. It's kind of like when you first go gluten free and you eat a piece of GF bread. It's not much like regular bread at all, so your brain can't get past that at first. And then you learn to like it for what it is, not for what it isn't.

After that, however, I ate my usual amount of the yogurt that I'd worked up to, and I had a bathroom emergency soon after. So I think that the probiotics were much more active in this batch, because I think the temperature in my first batch got too high, and killed off some of the bacteria before the yogurt was done. Or I ate too much cheese pie. Oops.

As for this weekend's cooking marathon, I'm behind again. My script for Pendant Audio finally got out to the cast, and my darling hubby and I went on a date!

We went to see Cloverfield at the Mann's Chinese Theater in downtown Hollywood. It was fun, but parking was a mess. We didn't realize that there was an awards ceremony at Hollywood and Highland that evening for the ASC Awards, so parking was a little tricky but we managed.

After the movie, we went to the Pig n' Whistle, also in Hollywood. I was surprised to see that their only steak was $25 so I kind of freaked at that. Instead, I ordered a plain hamburger for $15, and Jeffrey ate my fries. Even though the Pig n' Whistle is only about a block from Hollywood and Highland (which is where the mega huge parking garage is), it was raining like crazy so we bought a very large and surprisingly nice umbrella from a street vendor for $5.

We had a great time. We don't get to go out often. Since Clark is autistic and is quirky and manipulative in so many unique ways, we have only had our very good friend babysit for us after Clark is in bed. We got home around midnight and got into bed by 12:45 a.m.

At 1:45 a.m. Clark got up, as he had soaked through everything on his bed. I stripped his bed and changed his pajamas, sheets, and blankets, and went back to bed.

So I'm kinda tired today. But I had so much fun, so I am happy anyway.

I just finished cooking the pineapple, soup's on, ketchup's on, and carrots are cooking. I had enough ketchup to last this week -- until the jar slipped out of my hands about 12 inches above our tile floor. Smash. SIGH. What was worse was I had half a bag of onions on the floor next to the fridge, and considering the glass, I pitched them. Oh well, at least onions are cheap.

I bought some mushrooms to play with this week. I think I'm going to cook some spinach with the ground sirloin patties and add the mushrooms...mmm. Sounds like a good way to test food to me!

Monday, January 7, 2008

And another marathon...

Sunday was my cooking marathon day, since we had just returned from our trip to Idaho.

I did something new, my dear readers. I set off the carbon monoxide detector!

Now, it wasn't anything serious. I live in an apartment with a broken oven. Only two burners work, and the oven part is missing half the seal, so there's a lot of heat (and presumably gas) leakage. And since the apartment is small, the CO detector is like four feet away from the oven, which you probably should not do.

I had been running the oven for somewhere in the neighborhood of...oh, six hours I guess? I boiled two big pans of veggies, one of carrots and one of beans while I baked a double batch of almond butter brownies in the oven. I then made two pans of egg bread. After that, I made two meatloaves. Oh all right, I'll post the recipe, but it really wasn't anything special. Note to everybody: Don't use cheap ground beef. Just don't. You will be much happier if you use something better than that. Don't be like me.

STAGE ONE MEATLOAF

2 cups green beans, water squeezed out (after measuring)
2 cups carrots, water squeezed out (after measuring)
1 to 1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1 egg
1 tsp salt
Garlic cloves and onion

Mix with hands. Yes, it will be wet. Pat into a loaf shape and place into a pan that can catch the grease and/or water. I used a Pyrex dish and a LOT of liquid came out of these puppies, but I also used cheap meat so that may have something to do with it. So be warned.

Peel the garlic cloves and then stick little pieces of them all over the meatloaf, deep enough so they stay, but not so deep you can't pick them out later, because you can't eat garlic on stage one. Your meatloaf will look like a multicolored porcupine, and your family members will likely mock you. That is OK.

Quarter the onion and liberally cover the entire meatloaf in onion pieces.

Bake at 400 degrees for an hour or until it looks done. Pull out the garlic and strip off the onion pieces before you eat it!! On stage one you can't eat that stuff. No, not even the crispy pieces. No. NO!

Mine took longer but I was sharing oven space with another meatloaf and a lasagna for hubby, so it was more like 90 minutes.

It will still need more salt, in my opinion. And you can serve it with SCD ketchup, which also has salt. So yay.


After the meatloaves were done, I started a pan of cooked pineapple. And that was when the CO detector went bleepity bleep, with a reading of 51. That is not that dangerous of a reading, but we dutifully shut off the oven and opened the door, and soon enough it dropped back down to 30 parts of death or whatever.

So. A shorter marathon cooking session, but a marathon nonetheless.

And! I have a surprise for you! I do I do I do. I am taking the plunge and making YOGURT RIGHT NOW! OMG I KNOW RIGHT? :)

So I will definitely post about that experience when it's done...which should be somewhere around midnight tomorrow. I had poor timing, but where I am suffering, you will not! For you will learn from the error of my ways, because I shall tell you about the error of mine!

Isn't this fun? It is, isn't it?

Seriously. I love it!

Saturday, January 5, 2008

STAGE ONE: Recipes

I will edit this as I go, and link to it in the sidebar. OK? OK.

The Pecanbread Food Stages Chart! if you're interested.

NOTE: HOW TO COOK VEGGIES

Veggies should be very soft. Yes, some people do cook carrots for four hours. In my experience, that hasn't been necessary. I boil large quantities of baby carrots usually for an hour, 90 minutes tops. I check them with a butter knife. If I can easily slice one with a butter knife while it's floating in the boiling water, they're done.

*********

CHICKEN SOUP (mostly from BTVC, EGG FREE)

Chicken legs and thighs, about 4 pounds or so
Ten peeled carrots or 1-2 pounds of baby carrots
1-2 onions
5-6 garlic cloves
4-5 stalks of celery

Get a big pot and fill it halfway with the chicken parts. Add peeled or baby carrots, chopped onion, garlic cloves, and celery. Fill pot with water until it almost covers the contents of the pot, but not quite as more water will cook out at the start.

Put a lid on it and simmer for 4 hours. You'll need to check it and add more water as it cooks. Take the meat off the bones, and throw away the onions, garlic, and celery on stage one because you can't eat it. On stage two you can leave the garlic in but you still have to throw away the other stuff.

After making the soup in this way, I added a teaspoon of sea salt and a teaspoon of sage. Next time I'll try adding the sage ahead of time, but spices sort of vanish when you cook something for four hours, so I'm not sure if it will make a difference. I ended up with a lot more chicken than necessary, so I separated out some of it to use for chicken salad later in the week.

************

SAFE MAYONNAISE WITH PASTEURIZED EGG WHITES

1/4 cup egg white (egg white ONLY in the carton)
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp vinegar
3/4 cup oil (approximate)
ear plugs (you can thank me later)

Dump the egg white, ground mustard, salt, and vinegar into your blender. Put your ear plugs on. Turn the blender on to HIGH and start adding the oil slowly. How slowly? Add it at a speed where you think you will possibly never ever be done with the mayo.

Keep adding it slowly, until the mixture starts to emulsify. If you look inside, at the beginning you will be able to see right to the bottom of the blender. Staring at the blade is kind of scary, so look away now and then.

You'll notice a difference in the sound as the mayo starts to glop together. Keep adding the oil slowly until it has glopped together to the point where you can't see the blade anymore - or if you can, it's intermittent.

Then stop the blender and you will have mayo! Safe mayo! Germ free mayo!

I have successfully doubled this recipe in the blender, and now that's the only way I'll make it.

Keeps for a week in the fridge, as long as you always dip into it with clean utensils. Safety first!
**************

CARROT PANCAKES

1 1/2 cups well cooked baby carrots (water squeezed out, seriously)
4 eggs
1 tsp SCD legal vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon (you should test this as a food)
4 tsp honey (optional)
1/4 tsp sea salt

Mash up the carrots with the other ingredients until it's as smooth as you'd like, or you can puree it. Fry in a skillet with a small amount of oil.

Makes about 9 pancakes.

****************

VEGGIE MUFFINS

2 cups pureed fruit or veggies (water squeezed out, seriously)
4 eggs
4 tsp oil (coconut was recommended; I used olive)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
4 tsp honey (optional)
1/4 tsp sea salt

Mix together. Put in muffin tins with liners.

Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes. Makes 12.

******************

BANANA PANCAKES (multiple sources)

1 very ripe banana
1 egg

Mix, fry, eat.

******************

SALMON PATTIES

2 cans wild salmon, drained
5 eggs
1 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar

Mix, fry. It's not the best recipe, but it's OK when you have nothing else on hand. :)

************

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Thanksgiving

We're going over to visit with some very good friends this Thanksgiving. I told them not to worry about us, so this morning I have spent a lot of time cooking.

I promise some kind of photos. I promise.

We started off with some banana pancakes (one SCD ripe banana, one egg, mash it together with a fork, fry). Clark was really pleased with those and so far no diarrhea emergencies. Yay!

After that, I made a new batch of cooked mayo. I intended to get safflower oil, but that didn't work out, because it had added vitamin E and I wasn't sure if that was SCD legal. I'll have to look into that. I ended up getting some extremely light tasting olive oil, and that did the trick. It was very good!

Mixed that up, took a photo (I will post it later and then update this), and started in on some hamburger patties. I figured that if chicken salad was good, hamburger salad would be good too.

HAMBURGER SALAD (STAGE ONE)

1 pound beef patties or ground beef
1 whole red onion, cut into large pieces
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup SCD mayo
1 tsp olive oil

In my skillet, I tossed in a whole red onion, cut into quarters. At this stage onion is only for flavoring, so you don't eat it. If you're further along, chop it up finer. I also added some fresh peeled garlic. I sauted that in about a teaspoon of olive oil and then put three 1/3 pound ground sirloin patties into the microwave to thaw.

After they thawed, I put them in a sauce pan and started browning them. But wait, that's pan frying, which is a no-no, right? Well, not exactly. I do it kind of half and half.

I pan fry them until they're almost done (or at least halfway to done), but then I add about half a cup of water to the pan and put a lid on it. Now you're doing more of a steaming, boiling kind of thing. Turn the patties about every five minutes. Every time you turn them, check the water level and add enough so there's about 1/4 inch of water on the bottom at all times.

You'll end up cooking them in the water for probably 20-30 minutes that way. The liquid will reduce and will taste really yummy.

So that's that. Chop up the hamburgers and mix with the mayo (add more or less to taste). Yum.

Once that was prepared, I moved on to making some little veggie puree muffins.

This one I got off the Pecanbread Yahoo! group. Diane on the group posted the recipe, but she doesn't remember who came up with it. You can also use the batter like a pancake batter. I first tried the recipe as posted, but then I made a bunch of modifications, which are reflected below.

VEGGIE MUFFINS (STAGE ONE without vanilla; stage two with it. I think.)

2 cups pureed fruit or veggies (water squeezed out, seriously)
4 eggs
4 tsp oil (coconut was recommended; I used olive)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
4 tsp honey (optional)
1/4 tsp sea salt

Mix together. Put in muffin tins with liners.

Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes. Makes 12.

I made the first batch with a mix of leftover green beans pureed in the blender and some leftover cooked carrots, and they were really too wet, so I edited the above to reflect that you really need to squeeze the water out of the cooked veggies really really well. I also decreased the eggs. The original had four eggs and one cup of veggie puree. I made them that way at first, but I thought four eggs was just too much. Besides, we need to eat more veggies anyway, not more eggs.

My second batch is with carrots, and I made a half batch of the above recipe to test that. Hopefully they'll be better (I'll edit this again if they are). Clark loved the too-wet ones, though, so another winner. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!