I don’t post too many desserts on the blog, not least because I’m always trying to think of strategies for decreasing, and not increasing, the amount of sugar in what we eat. But it’s a special occasion! And the almond flour and coconut have the benefit of decreasing the rate of absorption of the sugar in this recipe. But enough of that. I have always loved Passover. One of these days, after you make your own macaroons for the first time, you will NEVER — and I mean NEVER — again buy a can of those tasteless cardboard macaroons.

• 3/4 cup almond flour
• 1 1/2 cup dried, shredded unsweetened coconut
• 1/4 cup plus 1-2 tablespoons honey
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, gently melted
• 35 drops organic, food-grade lemon essential oil
• Pinch of sea salt

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and set oven to 200 F.

Combine almond flour, coconut, salt, honey, coconut oil, and lemon oil, and mix well. Form the macaroons by gently pressing the dough into a tablespoon, and then tapping the raw macaroon dough out of the upside-down spoon into your hand. Place each macaroon on the baking sheet.

Bake 45-50 min, and then allow to sit for 15-20 min. The outsides will be slightly dry and the insides will be soft and chewy. Makes about 18.

Thank you to www.mommypotamus.com for this recipe.

Arugula is quite possibly my favorite food.  For sure it’s my favorite green food.  I can’t get enough, and I can’t wait for it to start to grow in the garden.  Also, I love beets, so this salad was a natural for me. Nutrition-wise, this dish truly has everything. The dressing is absolutely scrumptious.  Here’s the recipe for you to think about tonight while it’s snowing outside (again) in Cleveland on the first day of spring.

• 3 large beets
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup walnuts, divided
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 cup cooked chickpeas
• 1 /2 lb. arugula

Peel scrubbed beets, cut into 1-inch chunks, and roast at 400F in 1 t. olive oil for approx. 30 min.  You can do this the day before if you want.

Process the balsamic vinegar, water, 1/4 cup walnuts, raisins, mustard, garlic and thyme in a high-powered blender until smooth.

In a large bowl, combine roasted beets, chickpeas, arugula and about 3/4 cup of dressing, or more. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup walnuts.

I’m always looking for new and interesting ways to eat hummus, also known as garbanzo beans or chickpeas. Here’s a great onion version. Really good. You can serve it as an appetizer at a party in a big, scooped out, sweet Vidalia onion sitting in a bed of greens. You can try making Red Pepper Hummus, too. Same idea, just with red peppers. This is a wonderful version for people who are allergic to sesame seeds, which (as tahini, or sesame paste) are in virtually all the commercial brands.

1 large onion, sliced thickly

1/4 teaspoon olive oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups cooked chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

4 tablespoons lemon juice

1 clove garlic

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons parsley

2 tablespoons water

1. Mix onion slices into olive oil until well coated, sprinkle with salt. 

2. Grill 7-10 min; flip to other side for approx 5 min more, until onions begin to soften and caramelize.

3. Combine chickpeas, sunflower seeds, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, parsley, salt, pepper, and 1 tbsp water in food processor or high-speed blender and puree until smooth. 

4. Add grilled onions and process again until smooth. Add a bit more water if necessary to get the right texture.

Happily adapted from Let Them Eat Vegan by Dreena Burton.

When my kids were little they went through a phase where they wouldn’t eat chicken with bones in it.  It used to drive me crazy, mostly because I thought (and still do) that skinless, boneless chicken tends toward the dry and tasteless side.  So I fooled around with a few ingredients and, over time, came up with this, which turned into one of my children’s favorite dinners.  I ended up making it many times while they were growing up.  It’s moist, flavorful, delicious, and anything but dry or tasteless.

To move things along, if you chop up the vegetables over the weekend and bag them in the refrigerator, or maybe buy them already chopped if you can find, it takes five minutes to throw together, and about half an hour to cook, which is just enough time to throw together a salad, sign a permission slip, review a couple of pages of arithmetic homework, and set the table.

If you’ve never visited “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart protecting the health and well-being of the ones you love!! Then check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” and “The Most Popular Blog Posts of All” for more great ideas and recipes! Wondering why I capitalize the “f” in Food? See Food with a Capital F.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, diced very small

3 celery stalks, rinsed, chopped finely

2 carrots, peeled, chopped finely

1 /2 teaspoon salt

1 /2 teaspoon pepper

3 cups chicken broth

6 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

Fry the onion, celery and carrots in olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until the onions and celery are translucent and difficult to tell apart.  Lay the chicken pieces on top, sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover with chicken broth, and cover the skillet.  Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to low.  

Allow to cook approximately 30 minutes, until chicken is well done, broth is partially evaporated, and the vegetables have formed a thick chunky mixture, the mirepoix (MI-reh-pwah). Remove the chicken breasts to a serving plate, and pour the mirepoix over the chicken breasts as a sauce.

Bon appétit!

Okay, here’s the deal.  I’ve been up and out of the house every day this week by 6:30, and I haven’t arrived home even once before 10 p.m.  But, lucky for me, the refrigerator has a few goodies, including almond milk, berries and spinach, and so here is what I’m going to make for breakfast tomorrow morning.  The freezer in my house usually has a few overripe bananas — that’s where I put them when they turn too dark to eat.  Remember to peel them before you freeze them; it makes it easier when you feel like a smoothie.

If you’ve never visited “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart protecting the health and well-being of the ones you love!! Then check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” and “The Most Popular Blog Posts of All” for more great ideas and recipes! Wondering why I capitalize the “f” in Food? See Food with a Capital F.

2 cups almond milk (or make your own beforehand with 1 cup almonds in 3 cups water)

1 very ripe banana, preferably frozen

1 orange, peeled

1/2 cup blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries

6 strawberries

3 generous handfuls of baby spinach

2 cups ice 

Add the ingredients to your Vitamix or other high-speed blender in the order listed above.  Spin for 30 seconds or until well blended, and then drink up.  Can’t wait til morning!

I was stunned to learn, the other night, that when my friend Beth wants popcorn she drops a couple of handfuls into a brown paper sandwich bag, adds about half a teaspoon of olive oil, and puts it into the microwave for a minute. Voila! Microwave popcorn! She is so smart.

Take a moment and visualize what’s in your refrigerator.  If you’re like me, nobody had time to go grocery shopping this week, and the box of vegetables that arrived Monday is just about gone.  But it’s too late now.  It’s late Friday afternoon, and dinner should have been in the oven a few minutes ago.  There are a bunch of green peppers on the bottom shelf in the back.  And the counters have a few jars of grains, dried peas, beans, and even some raisins that I made by popping some tired-looking grapes into the dehydrator earlier in the week.  

If you’ve never visited “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart protecting the health and well-being of the ones you love!! Then check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” and “The Most Popular Blog Posts of All” for more great ideas and recipes! Wondering why I capitalize the “f” in Food? See Food with a Capital F.

This raisin experiment, by the way, was quite successful; the raisins are sweet, chewy, and complex, with hints of tannic acid.  Some, the bigger ones, are even a bit juicy.  Yes, they are all different, and why shouldn’t they be?  That’s how grapes are in nature.  I never thought about that until this week.

Okay, back to dinner.  I pull out the green peppers and spin a knife around the tops to remove the cores.  Rinsed, they sit on the counter while I figure out how to proceed.  I turn to the jars and pull out red lentils and millet.  These will cook fast, I muse.

I dice two medium onions and fry them at the bottom of a saucepot with a teaspoon of olive oil for just a minute.  Then I pour in 2 cups of lentils, 3/4 cup millet, and 4 cups of water, and turn the heat to high.  Once the water boils I turn it to low, and the lentils and millet cook for 15 minutes until they have softened and turned the same yellow color.  Most, but not all, of the water has been absorbed.  I stir in a handful of the aforementioned raisins, plus 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/2 teaspoon curry, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.  I spoon most of the mixture into the green peppers, now in a baking pan, and pour over them a jar of extra-chunky tomato sauce.  Covered with tin foil, they cook for 45 min at 350F. 

Now I turn to the other side of the kitchen, and I measure 2 1/3 cups of yellow split peas into the crockpot with 3 quarts of water, 5 carrots (peeled and sliced),1 medium potato (diced small), and 1 large onion (thinly sliced), plus 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1 /2 – 2 teaspoons black pepper, and 1 teaspoon sweet paprika.  Note: the potato is essential to the texture of the soup, so don’t skip it!  Without it the soup will turn out thin and watery.

The table is set, and we gather for dinner.  The green peppers are gorgeous when they exit the oven.  Served with pecan bread and leftover slices of turkey breast, roasted sweet potatoes, and Swiss chard, they are flavorful and filling.  When you eat like this you forget that it’s 24 degrees outside and it’s still February.

The crockpot cooks on low for eighteen hours.  Once everything is very soft, I push a potato masher into the soup a few times to thicken it and smooth the texture.  It comes out amazing — Chief Cook-and-bottle-washer eats two big bowls.

Finally, I just need to tell you that I put the remaining cup of cooked lentils and millet into the refrigerator, unsure what to do with them.  It turned out that, warmed and drizzled with maple syrup, they made a terrific breakfast.  I can’t wait to make that again!  Wanna see a photo of the green peppers?  Check out my facebook page.

Follow Dr Sukol’s posts on Twitter @RoxanneSukolMD and on Facebook at Roxanne Breines Sukol or Your Health is on Your Plate.

I met my husband-to-be on a snowy, romantic February 18th many, many years ago. So when I heard that Doug Katz was making a “meatless monday vegan dinner” this past Monday, February 18th, husband cleared his schedule and I made us a reservation right away!

If you’ve never visited “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart protecting the health and well-being of the ones you love!! Then check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” and “The Most Popular Blog Posts of All” for more great ideas and recipes! Wondering why I capitalize the “f” in Food? See Food with a Capital F.

Now you may or may not know that I’m not a vegan. I’m not even a vegetarian. But I LOVE real food, and that’s why I wanted to spend an evening at fire food & drink.  

Once we had all been seated and the restaurant was full, Doug came out from the kitchen and told us a story about how times have changed: Maybe 8 years ago he decided to make a vegetarian dinner, but 3 weeks later he had just 18 reservations. It took a long time to get up the nerve to try something like that again, but this time the dinner — no longer vegetarian, but now vegan — sold out in only a few days! And we were ready to eat!

It was a great celebration. Drinks were passed first; I chose a champagne-gin concoction with a sugar cube and a thick slice of orange peel. Plates of fritters filled with mung beans, scallions and parsnips were placed before each diner, and we spooned over them the tamarind, coriander, and mint chutneys already set out on the tables and whose fragrances I appreciated the moment I stepped into the restaurant.

A salad of roasted chioga beets (these may have been the best beets I’ve ever eaten), leeks, pomegranate seeds, walnuts, and baby greens, all tossed with a spicy walnut vinaigrette, was my favorite of the evening.

Chickpeas, roasted tomatoes, dry cured olives and almond couscous came in warm bowls and were a perfect choice for a very cold, windy, snow-blowsy February night.  

The fourth course was a sweet potato-black bean cake decorated with a smoked chili adobo sauce and, alongside, a watercress salad dressed with cilantro and lime vinaigrette. Sweet, sour, spicy and earthy, all at the same time. By now I was waaaaay full.  

Dessert was called “dark rum baba, cherry compote, almond nougatine granite, candied orange.” I didn’t see any left over anywhere.

So…thank you to the entire staff at fire for making the magic happen once again. And happy anniversary to my very wonderful husband.

Follow Dr Sukol’s posts on Twitter @RoxanneSukolMD and on Facebook at Roxanne Breines Sukol or Your Health is on Your Plate.

I make applesauce every year in the fall, but I’ve never made it this way ’til now.  We have a lot of apples on the counter, and I love the idea of turning apples into applesauce without having to cook down the apples.  

If you’ve never visited “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart protecting the health and well-being of the ones you love!! Then check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” and “The Most Popular Blog Posts of All” for more great ideas and recipes! Wondering why I capitalize the “f” in Food? See Food with a Capital F.

4 apples (peeled, cored, and chopped)
2-4 T fresh lemon juice, depending on the type of apples
1 T maple syrup
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg

Blend together the apples and lemon juice in a blender until the mixture becomes chunky but not too smooth. Add a teaspoon or two of water if necessary to get things moving.

Empty the apple mixture into a bowl, and then stir in the maple syrup and spices. This tastes even better the next morning.  Serve it in a wine glass for a fancy dessert, or spoon it on pancakes, or stir it into yogurt.  Also, you can take some to work for an afternoon snack.

Follow Dr Sukol’s posts on Twitter @RoxanneSukolMD and on Facebook at Roxanne Breines Sukol or Your Health is on Your Plate.