Experiments in Clean Cooking

Cooking clean.  My latest interest.  Simply stated it means cooking with ingredients that are natural, not processed.  Fruits, veggies, whole grains, natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup. 

The biggest hurdle for me has been not using white (or brown) sugar and white flour.  These have been staples in our house for so long!  I love to bake and would use up copious amounts of both.  So to find and create and enjoy recipes that use neither has been a fun challenge.  

Here are a few of my latest experiments:

Coconut Balls

These little balls are so yummy!  And so simple.  I changed the recipe a bit, using some oat flour (ground up oats) to replace some of the ground almonds.  No baking, just toss the ingredients together and form into little balls.  Easy!


Date Squares

After doing some searching online I didn't quite find a recipe I wanted to try, so I made up my own.  These squares are not baked.  The date filling is cooked but the crumbly mixture is raw.
I loved the crumb part but the date filling was very bland.  I need to experiment a little more to give it some tang to balance out the sweet crumb part.  I remember my mom's date squares being quite tasty and these just didn't quite measure up.  I think she cooked her dates in orange juice....
The crumb mixture was oat flour, oats, a little unsweetened coconut, maple syrup and coconut oil.  And a pinch of salt.

my snack corner

I just invested in these cute glass containers (thanks for the idea, Kim!) and filled them with healthy snacks.  The kids love the pistachios and trail mix!  

Today's project was Clean Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp.  No pictures because it is all gone already!  The filling recipe came from here, and I made up the crisp part.    The filling smelled fantastic as it cooked but was super-duper tart!  So I added a little maple syrup which sweetened it nicely without changing the flavor.
The crisp was similar to the crumbly mixture in the date squares.  But I wasn't completely wild about it.  So I will have to fiddle with it a little more.  I did bake it and it was a tasty, warm treat!! 

I want to try out some recipes with quinoa and wheat berries soon, I'll let you know how that goes.