Chocolate Coconut Squares

These chocolate coconut squares are super simple to make.  They require just a few simple pantry ingredients and five minutes in the kitchen. I have daily chocolate cravings, do you? These squares could be your answer to those cravings. What cocoa/cacao powder would you use? Is there one safe enough? I like Nutiva's raw cacao, for myself despite the fact that they process tree nuts (cashews); however, I would not use for Baby Brother. Would Trader Joe's cocoa powder be a good option? The lines for TJ's cocoa powder are cleaned and sanitized between runs.  And then there is Vermont Nut Free Chocolates cocoa powder.  I will be  inquiring further about cross-contamination with our other allergies. Is there an ideal, allergy-friendly cocoa or cacao powder out there? If you have one, please share with us. Click here for original recipe.

All set to go in fridge to firm up

What you need:
1 1/2 cups of coconut butter
1 cup of raw cacao powder, or cocoa powder
1/2 cup raw, local honey
pinch of real salt
*can add a touch of vanilla and/or cinnamon.  I even sometimes toss in sprouted ground flax seed, hemp and chia

What to do:
Combine ingredients in TM bowl and blend
Pour into brownie pan lined with baking paper
Put in fridge 
When hardened, cut into squares

I keep a few pieces in the fridge and freeze the rest. 

Our Two TM Bowls at work
Baby Brother's coconut butter set aside
the rest went into the chocolate fudge squares

No mess, no waste by using up what's leftover in TM bowl in the following recipe.  Let's see if I can explain how I do this coherently. Please note the back-and-forth use of my 2 TM bowls: I have 2 TM bowls as of last year. This way I totally avoid cross-contamination.  In other words, Baby Brother's TM has his own bowl which only processes ingredients that he can eat. 

First I make coconut butter in Baby Brother's TM Bowl

Then I make coconut butter candy using safe ingredients for Baby Brother in his TM Bowl.  

coconut butter, pinch real salt, raw honey, hemp seeds,
sprouted flax powder and vanilla nutritional supplement.
I cut into chunks--my experiments!

Then I make a batch of hemp milk or coconut milk and incorporate what was left behind from steps 1 and 2  into the milk. No waste!

Then I switch to the other TM bowl and make the chocolate coconut squares

After making the chocolate coconut squares I don't wash the bowl.  I simply proceed by making a pumpkin smoothie for myself and take advantage of the goodness left behind :)

Fresh hemp milk combined with what's left behind of the
fudge squares.  This is the base of my pumpkin smoothie

Batch with hemp and chia seeds

    

Saturday Evening Kitchen Counter

After dinner and before bathing my little guys on Saturday evenings, I take 20 minutes to prepare overnight waffle batter for Sunday breakfast, Farinata batter for Sunday lunch and to soak lentils and brown rice as the first step in weekly Idli batter. It simply takes a little extra planning, commitment and organization to eat well.  It's a routine that I have come to do efficiently and happily.  Eating healthy and from scratch takes a little extra work.  This extra work is worth it.  It's especially worth it since we eat all of our meals at home, and most of what we eat has to be homemade due to food allergies. I'd rather eat as well as we can with all the limitations imposed on us.  Would I be cooking with the same seriousness regardless of food allergies?  I think I would. I had just been reading this post on reframing the concept of "work" in relationship to food. Eating well requires "work", and this work is necessary for healthy eating.  Eating well isn't effortless. I was also reading this post from another favorite blog.  Isn't it true that starting your morning in a conscious and enthusiastic way really sets the tone for the rest of the day?  Leaving different cereals and batters to soak overnight has become a meaningful kitchen ritual.  When I turn off the lights to go to bed, I feel like the extra work is worth the while.  I choose to put in the effort so that I can eat the way I want to and feed my family the best way I know how.  I just wish I could use the ingredients that we are forced to avoid.  That part is the hardest for me.  

Sandwich Bread

Our house has been virtually wheat and gluten free for over a year now. I haven't had a bite of gluten since I learned of Baby Brother's wheat allergy via skin testing; that's what happens when you are nursing an allergic baby.  Meals, snacks and and ingredients containing gluten made their departure from our kitchen rather quickly. Would anything containing gluten be able to stay? Crossing out family favorites and upcoming kitchen projects, such as the sourdough starter I had been looking forward to tackling, were more than agonizing for me.  While I felt nostolgic and angry, I had to move on and make changes.  I soon began baking the best gluten free, Thermomix foccacia every Sunday and almost suddenly stopped missing previous favorite breads.  We all loved it, and Big Brother requested it for school lunch sandwiches. So no more worries, right? 

Several months later Baby Brother and I learned that we both needed to avoid grains and potato in the same meal, specifically with a 4-6 hour window space between the two.  So, gluten free foccacia on the back burner until I figure out how to swap the potato flour.  In the meantime,  I am back to preordering a loaf of sprouted whole wheat sourdough from our local Whole Foods as I used to prior to wheat allergy.  But this time around, the bread would require strict allergy standards; crumbs would have to be carefully contained. I figured that  as long as Big Brother were to eat the bread at school and out of the house, then the crumbs would remain elsewhere and not be a threat to Baby Brother's safety. 

Can you picture all the careful attention that goes into being allergic?  Should I dare throw another allergic whammy we experience at you?  Remember, Big Brother is allergic to sesame, and like all allergies, there are safety issues at play.  Basically, there is a whole process in order to get a safe loaf of bread for a sesame allergic child.  

This is how I order it: I preorder the loaf from Whole Foods.  I call them when I need a loaf and the bakery records on an order form that the bread is for a boy with a sesame allergy.  This means that the bakery is to handle and store the bread properly and to not slice on the bread slicer . The goal is to reduce the risk of cross-contamination as much as possible.  Does it make sense to you that it's better for me to slice the bread at home in order to avoid sesame seeds on the slicer even though wheat crumbs are a hazard as well?  

This is how I slice and store it:  After bringing the bread home, it sits until Baby Brother is tucked in at night.  I need full concentration and elbow room to begin slicing and storing.  Step one is making sure that I have a lot of counter space so that there is no risk of crumbs getting into places and things that affect Baby Brother. Once I have the proper space cleared, I place down on the counter a specific board used to cut this bread. I can now slice and freeze.  After all of this, the counter is thoroughly washed.  Then out comes the dust buster and I hope to not wake anyone with the noise.

I wrote this at 10:15 pm after going through this whole bread cutting process.  Big Brother's lunch is in the fridge.  He has a sandwich containing three of the foods his brother cannot touch: wheat bread, cheese and avocado.  Sigh...

Happy New Year 2015

Big Brother planned out our New Year's dinner menu with me yesterday: short ribs (he likes braised meat dishes for festive meals), broccoli and brown rice.  Grapes would be for dessert like we have every year in line with the Spanish tradition of las doce uvas de la suerte. While playing this afternoon he reminded me that he was going to help me cook and that we were going to need appetizers to help us along. Before starting the short ribs, we put out dates, raisins, roasted chickpeas, green olives and some jamón serrano. 

The first step in preparing dinner tonight was getting Baby Brother's seperate pot of short ribs on the stove.  His were made with homemade turkey stock, rosemary, carrots, celery and kale.  We haven't introduced red wine, tomatoes or bay leaves yet.  Oh, nor onion.  We will be doing a skin test to onion at our next allergist visit. Onion is on the top of my scary list. No garlic was used this time, as we no longer keep it in the house or cook with it.  

While we didn't make it to midnight to eat our grapes, Big Brother insisted that he'd be old enough next year.  I loved that he helped me with each step of the short ribs as well as stringing the grapes on the popsicle sticks.  

Tomorrow we will have leftovers for lunch with sweet potatoes and sautéed spinach. Whatever sauce is leftover will be combined with some crimini mushrooms and sautéed kale to be thrown on top of a bowl of polenta.  Are we ready to introduce corn to Baby Brother?

Baby Brother Turns 2

waffle Birthday cake with Baby Brother's favorite toppings

Today we celebrated Baby Brother's second Birthday.  Big Brother was overly excited about building the waffle "cake" we had planned together for this morning's celebratory breakfast.  We decided to top the waffle tower with Baby Brother's favorites: wild blueberries, coconut flakes, hemp seeds and maple syrup.  Baby Brother loved his special and yummy family Birthday breakfast.  He shouted "hooray" when we sang to him and kept asking for "more" singing and "more" blueberries. These waffles are the same ones we make every Sunday morning.  Since Baby Brother and I are now avoiding eggs, we keep them out and instead add a giant scoop of apple sauce. After breakfast, we opened up gifts and then took a ride in the cardboard box boat which Big Brother had been working on the past few days in preparation for his little Brother's special day.  

here is the boat being finished up for Baby Brother's Birthday ride

and then later on for dinner, we had one of Baby Brother's favorite meals.  It happens to be Big Brother's most requested meal as well: grass-fed steak, sweat potato fries and broccoli.  We are loving the new placemat that Grams and Pops sent. Check out the squishy persimmon and seasonal citrus.  

Saturday Lunch

I look forward to Saturday mornings. There is no place I'd rather be at 9 am than the farmer's market. When I get home, I feel energized and hungry for a giant salad made up of what I found that very morning.  On the side, we always have rice, lentil and spinach pancakes fried up in coconut oil.  Right now,  I am loving salad greens with seasonal citrus and crunchy radishes and cucumbers. And a handful of sprouted pumpkin seeds and roasted chickpeas take these simple salads to the next level. The highlight of this week's Saturday lunch was Baby Brother crunching on cucumber slices along with the rest of us.   We had a rocky start with introducing cucumber this past summer.  The two times we gave him a piece of cumber, he got several hives on his belly and a red rash around his mouth.  So we stopped giving him cucumber until this past week. We were bummed that we couldn't share a family favorite.   Can you believe that he stole one from my plate the other day and that I had to fish it out of his mouth half-chewed? Papi, who named me "allergenista" because of how seasoned I am with allergy safety, was shocked. I had made a huge mistake in leaving my abundance bowl at the edge of the table with allergic Baby Brother so close by. I was terrified one moment and totally relieved 30 minutes later when my little guy showed zero reaction.  So something good came out of this major allergy error.  Thank goodness I didn't make the same mistake with cheese or Big Brother's glass of cow milk! As a result of the non reaction to the stolen cucumber slice, we decided to give him cucumber with dinner the following day.  He has since tolerated cucumber every day this week.  

Baby Brother's lunch without cucumber

Both Brothers eating cucumbers.  Big Brother loves cucumber
towers drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice

A plate of spinach, lentil, rice pancakes in the middle of the table
for us all to grab

Baby Brother's cutting board can now include
cucumber.  No need to slice on a separate
cutting board to avoid cross-contamination

Our Thanksgiving Meal

carving our local, heritage turkey from Tejas Heritage Farm:
olive oil, rosemary, satsuma and real salt

"Abundance", "feast"and "enough" are words that have been swirling around in my head lately. They are particularly loaded with meaning for me during Thanksgiving.  Is it still abundance when there are so many restrictions?  Do our allergic restrictions make me feel like I don't have enough comfort food and in turn not enough joy?

This year, there was enough food at our table.  It was a feast: A turkey, and a mighty fine one in fact.  There were salads and cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and even pumpkin-lucuma ice cream.  The food was local, simple and homemade. We had a bowl of squishy persimmons and freshly picked satsumas. We even had a pot of turkey stock going the following day to help nourish us during the flu.  

I told a dear friend that I would refocus and live in the present: this meal would be delicious despite all of the ingredients left out.  

Perhaps I should start to feel proud instead of sad and nostalgic.  We eat pretty well despite so many food allergies.  

In order of appearance: 1) homemade cranberry sauce 2) Baby Brother eating
along with the rest of the family 3) Big Brother eating on his second helping,
4)turkey soup with veggies and rice pasta 5) allergy friendly waffles with 
chicken sausage and homemade cranberry sauce 6) bowl of persimmons
and assortment of oranges 7) Boys making me turkey soup