clean: day 10, in which i try my hand at gf baking

purple breakfast smoothie included pear, frozen blueberries, almond milk, nutmeg, dates, almond butter and a little bit of ground flaxseed.

i was thrilled to find these sausages at the co-op last time i was there.  check out the ingredient list:

(in case that’s too small to read, it says, “organic chicken, organic turkey, sodium lactate (from beets) and contains less than 2% of the following:  sea salt, organic spices, organic fennel, organic garlic.”)  now, i have to say that i’m not 100% sure about the “sodium lactate”, but the fact that it says it’s “from beets” makes me think it’s probably “clean enough.”  so i sliced and sauteed the sausages with some white beans and spinach for lunch and served it over black bean spaghetti (that’s right.  spaghetti made from black beans.  it has only two ingredients:  black beans and water.).

the happy toddler looooooooooooved the sausages.  as in, he ate at least 1.5 links by himself.  i snuck in a few of the beans and even one piece of the spinach while he was playing with some cars at the table, but the black bean spaghetti was a no-go.  (it’s pasta!  it’s black beans!  how could he not love it?)  actually, i’d say the adults also ranked the components of this meal in the same order.  the sausage was excellent, buy-it-again, we’d eat it even if we didn’t have to, quality.  the beans and spinach were okay, but needed…. something.  maybe if the spinach had been cooked in a little chicken broth??  the spaghetti, while a lovely texture for a gluten-free option, seemed to have almost no flavor at all.  mr. happy stuff asked if it were possible for something to have “negative salt” since i’d liberally salted the cooking water and yet the pasta still seemed to suck all of the saltiness out of the rest of the meal.  maybe it needs more of a sauce that will stick to the noodles?  either way, it was such a refreshing change to be able to enjoy lunch, sitting down all together as a family, all three of us eating at the same time.  that is one thing that hasn’t seemed to happen consistently while we’ve been on this cleanse and i miss it.  i think the boy does too.  we sang grace twice.  (have i mentioned lately that he’s been singing along to the whole song now? soooo freakin’ adorable.)

this afternoon, i was browsing through some “clean” recipe lists and saw a recipe for “chocolate walnut scones” that was described as melt-in-your-mouth perfection, and since yesterday’s cookie cravings were still ringing around in my head, i thought i’d try my hand at some gluten-free baking.  luckily, i had most of the ingredients on hand (okay, not so much the clean chocolate, but the recipe author said that was optional), so i mixed them up.  i had some serious doubts when the final batter was so sloppy that it couldn’t even hold on to all the coconut oil (it was pooling around the top edge–definitely not a dough i could “cut into wedges”), but it said i could also drop them by spoonfuls onto a baking sheet, so i tried that.  et voila, scones!

riiiiiiight.  more like the most fragile cookie on earth.  as in, you can’t hardly pick them up without them crumbling.  of course they melt in your mouth–they practically melt in your hand!  granted, if you like the flavor of coconut, these are rich and taste amazing, just don’t eat them over your keyboard.  in retrospect, i have a hunch that any recipe that calls for 3/4 c. of coconut oil and only 1 c. of gluten-free flour is unlikely to ever behave like a scone, and i confirmed that hunch when i poked around on the internets and found someone else who’d tried this recipe and recommended using two cups of flour instead, so… maybe i’ll try that next time.  i might also take a note from my non-gf baking skills and try cutting the oil into the flour to make “pea-sized lumps” while the oil is still in its solid form, rather than melting it.  i don’t really see the logic in melting it first.  but maybe i’ll experiment with a tiny half-batch first.  and maybe i’ll invest in some “clean” chocolate.

supper smoothies tonight:

the darker smoothie was for mr. happy stuff and contained unpasteurized cider, frozen peaches and frozen raspberries.  he deemed it a bit tart, but tasty.

the lighter smoothie was for me and started from the same ingredients as his, but i added some almond milk, some hazelnuts and some ground flaxseed to mine.  it tamed the edge of the tartness, made it a bit creamier, and added some protein.  raspberry + peach is a very nice combo.