Snacks

Raw Flax Flatbread and Sliced Cinnamon Apples

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Finding healthy snack food, and dessert alternatives can be difficult. I think the hardest part of trying to eat healthy is reducing sugar. I’ve been on lots of different types of elimination diets, and nothing has been more difficult to eliminate than sugar. Even cooked food, was easier to get rid of then sugar! Speaking of raw food, this recipe for raw flax flatbread was something I ate regularly. When I was raw, then later vegan, I made this flatbread from cold-milled organic flax from the supplement aisle to get omega 3 fatty acids. Each flatbread is three tablespoons of flax so you can easily make a daily portion.

I used to eat these with raw hummus from the Santa Monica Co-op, which they made in house. Their hummus has completely ruined me for any other kind, everything else just tastes stale. I highly recommend it. You can also eat this with creamed honey which is what I plan on doing for dessert. I have a delicious local creamed wildflower honey by Pacifica that I adore. Before my dieting days, I used to eat toast with creamed honey for breakfast. FYI, creamed honey doesn’t involve dairy or cream, but it is thicker and more opaque then regular honey and can be used as a healthy spread alternative. These also go great with pesto or to use for sandwiches. Liver pate is another nutrient dense food, and would be excellent to spread on this flatbread.

Since the dehydrator was running, I thought I would make myself another healthy snack food. These sliced cinnamon apples are made from fuji apples and sprinkled with saigon cinnamon. I used a mandolin to cut very thin slices and they came out delicious. They are very light and durable, so they make a great snack for hiking, taking to the beach, or thrown in a purse.

Raw Flax Flatbread
 
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Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • 3 tbsp of cold milled ground flax
  • 2 tbsp of water
  • a pinch of sea salt and pepper
  • sesame seeds to sprinkle on top
Instructions
  1. Mix sea salt, flax, and pepper.
  2. Add water to form a paste, increase water as needed.
  3. Spread mixture on washable sheet for dehydrator, or parchment paper.
  4. Sprinkle sesame seeds and sea salt on top. Lightly pat them down.
  5. Dehydrator for a couple hours, then flip.
  6. Dehydrate till desired dryness, about a couple hours minimum.

 
Sliced Cinnamon Apples
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 apple (fuji)
  • 1 tsp of cinnamon (saigon)
Instructions
  1. I didn't have an apple core or I sliced out a ring around the core, a couple inches deep.
  2. Then I sliced the apple on a mandolin, and punched out the circle I made around the apple core.
  3. Place apple slices directly on mesh, then sprinkle with cinnamon. You might want to line underneath with paper towels so the cinnamon doesn't sprinkle on your counter.
  4. Dehydrate for 4-6 hours or until desired dryness.

Sides

Sauteed Red Cabbage and Onions with Apples

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This recipe would be great with bacon mixed in, but I haven’t found a local grass-fed bacon source. It would also be great, with a polish or breakfast style sausage. If you’re vegan, you could toss it with quinoa and then refrigerate it for a cabbage quinoa salad, or just eat as is, which is what I have done. I like to keep it simple, and eat as soon as possible. The chef is hungry!

Sauteed Red Cabbage and Onions with Apples
 
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Ingredients
  • ½ red cabbage
  • 1 medium sized white onion
  • 1 granny smith apple
  • 1 tbsp of beef tallow (coconut oil if vegan)
  • 3 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp of sea salt
Instructions
  1. Thinly slice cabbage, onion, and apple. I used a mandolin to speed up the process.
  2. Add tallow to pan, then add sliced cabbage, onion, and apple.
  3. Once mixture is cooked down a little, add in apple cider vinegar.
  4. Stir until desired tenderness. I like mine with a small amount of crunch, but still mushy.
  5. Salt to taste.

This post is featured on Healing with Food Friday

Snacks

How to Make Raisins in the Dehydrator

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These raisins are made from grapes are called Autumn Royal Seedless, and I picked them up at my farmer’s market. You can buy their sun dried raisins there as well, but I wanted to try to dehydrate them myself. They taste amazing, not like raisins, but like grape candy. This would be a very healthy alternative to candy for Halloween. I found a lot of recipes online that said to boil the grapes first, but I wanted to try to make them raw the first time. I will attempt to boil them in the future, apparently it makes the grape skin crack which reduces the amount of time spent in the dehydrator. I left them in the dehydrator for six days, before I felt that they were dry enough.

How to Make Raisins in the Dehydrator
 
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Ingredients
  • 2 batches of Autumn Royal Seedless Grapes
Instructions
  1. Use a pin to punch a hole through grapes to let liquid leave grape and dehydrate faster.
  2. Arrange on dehydrator sheets and set to 115 degrees.
  3. Let dehydrate for 5 to 6 days, flip grapes on last day (to dry out the underside)
  4. Then remove from dehydrator when you have the desired firmness.

Breakfast

Paleo Breakfast Sausage and Onions Stuffed in Acorn Squash

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This would be great for dinner or breakfast. Normally, I struggle with sweet cravings late at night, but after having this for dinner, I had no problems with late night snacking. I can eat a lot of food, and I found two halves were very filling. The breakfast sausage is locally sourced and handmade from Lindy and Grundy in West Hollywood. I’ve missed using sausage in my cooking, I couldn’t find a local source until recently, so I’m really excited to be eating it again. The sausage was a splurge, but it tasted amazing and it contains liver (I asked) so it makes it super nutritious!

Paleo Breakfast Sausage and Onions Stuffed in Acorn Squash
 
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Ingredients
  • 2 acorn squash
  • 2 breakfast sausages
  • 1 small white onion (half a regular white onion would work)
  • 1 tbsp of homemade grass-fed tallow (coconut oil works too)
  • parsley to garnish
  • salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
  1. Add acorn squash to slow cooker for 3 hours on high.
  2. Melt tallow, and saute onions and sausage.
  3. Salt and pepper if necessary
  4. Take squash out of slow cooker to cool.
  5. Cut acorn squash in half and scoop out seeds.
  6. Cut a small part from bottom, so that they have a flat base.
  7. Then flip them over, and stuff in sausage and onions.
  8. Garnish with flat leaf parsley.

Snacks

Raw Vegan Banana and Date Granola Bars (nut free)

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These were the bars I took hiking at Malibu State Creek Park. When I first started eating healthy I was a raw vegan for about two months, so even though I eat more paleo meals now, I try to include lots of raw whole foods, and raw snacks into my diet. The only sweetener I used for these are bananas and dates, so they are technically a whole food snack. Normally, I leave the seeds whole, but I decided to add them to the Vitamix to see how difficult it would be to grind up. It wasn’t that bad, but there was more clean up involved. In the future, I will attempt to grind the seeds in a spice grinder first. It might eliminate the need for the Vitamix. You get more nutrition from ground seeds, otherwise, they will potentially pass through your body whole, while you don’t get the nutrition you paid for.

Raw Vegan Banana and Date Granola Bars (nut free)
 
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Ingredients
  • ½ cup of sunflower seeds
  • 2 tbsp ground flax seeds
  • 1 tbsp of chia seeds
  • ½ tbsp of sesame seeds
  • ½ tbsp of hemp seeds
  • 1 banana
  • 8 pitted medjool dates
  • ½ cup of water
Instructions
  1. Add seeds to bowl, and mix in water, then add to vitamix and blend.
  2. Add more water if needed, and add in remaining ingredients as you continue to blend.
  3. If having trouble blending, remove vitamix top and use punger while off, then attach vitamix top and retry plunging at low speed.
  4. Cut parchment sheet to fit dehydrator for easy clean up.
  5. Smooth mixture over parchment paper ½ inch thick.
  6. Sprinkle with sesame seeds (optional) for appearance.
  7. Dehydrate for 3-4 hours on 104 degrees, then score mixture with a knife to outline where bars should break.
  8. Dehydrate for 4-6 hours (or longer), gently separate bars and remove from parchment paper for quicker drying and dehydrate more if needed.

Health & Wellness

Healthy Outing At Malibu State Creek Park

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malibu state creek park 
While it was still decently warm, I went on a hike at the Malibu Creek State Park. It was a lot less crowded than Temescal Canyon, which was a plus. It’s also the site where they have used to film the television show M.A.S.H. so it had an added touristy appeal and, of course, the landscape was beautiful. I made some homemade raw vegan granola bars for my friend and I, and we picked up a juice at Whole Foods beforehand. I plan on posting my recipe for those bars soon. I definitely think that this is hike is a repeat. This outing cost around $7 only because of the juice, so it was a cheap outing as well as a healthy one. We parked at an intersection just outside the park, although I did see parking there as well.

 

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