Category Archives: Recipes

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Scrumptious Seed Crackers (NF, GF, DF, vegan, grain-free)

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A couple of months ago, my friend Michele shared with me a jar of the ingredients for this recipe. This is just the most recent recipe she’s shared with me — there have been quite a few over the years, and all of them have been fantastic.

Since receiving this most recent gift, I’ve gathered together my own little permanent collection of seeds and I’ve made the recipe probably half a dozen times already. Now that I have everything I need, I can throw together the recipe and get it into the oven in a very short time. As Michele emphasized to me, it is an extremely forgiving recipe. I’ve tried it with the addition of an herb mixture in place of black pepper, without the sesame seeds once (guest’s allergen issue), with flax seeds sometimes and flax meal other times. It always comes out great no matter what. If you decide to share a jar of ingredients with a friend, do what Michele did: Add the flax and chia to a cupcake liner, and lay it on top of the other dry ingredients. Then print out this recipe and tape it to the jar.

These crackers are delicious plain, but I’ve also eaten them along with hummus, cheese, soup, scrambled eggs, a bowl of salad, and any other way you can think of to enjoy crackers. Believe it or not, each batch makes approximately one hundred one-inch-by-one-inch crackers. But that doesn’t mean they will last long. They won’t.

#1
1/4 cup flaxseeds (optional: blended into meal)
1/4 cup chia seeds
1 tsp. Kosher salt
1 Tbsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. black pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup hot water

#2
1/4 cup hemp seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1) Preheat oven to 350F. Cover a cookie sheet in parchment paper and set aside.

2) Blend together the flax meal, chia seeds, and spices with the hot water and olive oil in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Allow to rest 10 minutes.

3) Add hemp, sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds to the mixing bowl. Stir well. The mixture will stick together, slightly more solid than liquid.

4) Pour the mixture onto the prepared cookie sheet, and use a spatula to spread it all the way out toward the edges while keeping the batter continuous (without holes). Sprinkle the tops of the crackers with a little more coarse salt at this point if you like.

5) Bake 25-30 minutes until beginning to turn golden, remove from oven and score into squares. Return to oven, turn off heat, and allow to cool in the oven. They will become crisp as they cool.

The Heat of Summer, with a Recipe for Hot Peppers

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My love of spicy food goes back a long way, to when I was a child. My parents had friends, Ted and Freida Roland, who grew acres and acres of hot peppers on their farm in Muncie, Indiana. We drove out to visit them one summer, and I earned the nickname “Hot Pepper” after completing a careful comparison of all the various types laid out for me on the kitchen counter by Ted. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Apple Pie Muffins for the Fourth!

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If you’d like to make a dessert that captures the feel of July fourth, try these apple muffins from Honest Cooking and Travel. They have a streusel topping reminiscent of some fancy apple pie recipes I’ve seen, but feel free to substitute graham cracker crumbs if you like. Save one for yourself for breakfast tomorrow morning, along with your cup of tea or coffee. Continue reading →

Chemistry Experiments Disguised as Food

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It’s not always easy to figure out what’s food and what’s manufactured calories. Some items have the best names, names that make it seem as if the product is definitely food, and quite nourishing at that. So I didn’t realize that Nutrigrain bars had 52 ingredients until someone pointed it out to me. That’s not food, that’s a chemistry experiment. Continue reading →

Your Healthy Grocery Cart

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The other day, a thought crossed my mind. Maybe we’re focused on the wrong part of the equation: Maybe the time for constructive decision-making about what we eat is not when it’s time to prepare the food, but when it’s time to purchase the food. Waiting until you’re hungry for dinner is like chasing a horse after it’s left the barn. That’s why I want to start this conversation by examining the standard shopping cart. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Lentil Soup with a Splash

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I’ve come across a really good and relatively simple recipe for lentil soup, and thought I’d share it right away before I misplace it! I wish I knew where I got it from, but that information will sadly have to wait until I figure it out and can add it to this post. I made this recipe for the first time on a rainy day in early spring a few weeks back, and was so pleased with the results that I decided to write a post about it. Lentils are a special food, a special type of legume, with all kinds of important benefits for your health. And they taste good. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

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This recipe made its way into my house in a booklet provided by Vitamix with the purchase of our high-speed blender many years ago. It is really delicious whether all by itself, sprinkled over a circle of warm brie, or tossed onto a tomato salad. Pumpkin seeds are a great substitute for nuts when you are feeding people with nut allergies, but they are also extremely nourishing in and of themselves, and worth the time you spend making them. 

Over the years I have collected plenty of recipes for sweet spiced nuts and seeds, but this is the only recipe I have for a savory version.  Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Tsimmes

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Preparing for the holidays with my mom was a major highlight of my childhood. Although my father was the main cook in our family, my mother took over the kitchen on the holidays, and dad’s primary responsibility was to make the brisket.

Like many other special dishes that we ate on dedicated holidays throughout the calendar, my mother made tsimmes twice a year, in the fall for Rosh Hashanah (it is traditional to eat sweet foods on Rosh Hashanah), and in the spring, for Passover. She never used recipes, preferring instead to combine ingredients as her grandmother and mother-in-law did. Truthfully, though, tsimmes is one of those dishes that probably doesn’t really need much of a recipe anyway. Continue reading →

A Simple Salad

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I’ve been eating this salad for breakfast, yes breakfast, for many years. I know Americans consider it somewhat unconventional to eat salad for breakfast (though not Europeans and in the Middle East), but I believe it is such a great way to start the day. The success of this salad is built on simplicity. My strategy remains similar, week in and week out. It is never quite the same, but it is always delicious. On occasion, I make it with a sweet potato instead of a white potato. Thank you to Alice Waters for teaching me to eat simply. This salad makes one single serving, but is infinitely flexible if a friend or an army is coming to share a meal. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Mediterranean Roasted Onions

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Generally speaking, I read a lot about Mediterranean cooking, but lately I’ve been focusing on its emphasis on simplicity. I keep seeing one particular idea, that you need only a short list of ingredients in a small kitchen to make spectacularly flavorful dishes. No need for 40 herbs and spices. Maybe five or ten. Here’s what I mean. Today I have in mind an exceedingly simple recipe: roasted onions. These onions are really, really gooooood, and they add a special something to every meal you can imagine. Continue reading →