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In my rabid searching of the Internet for fun DIY projects and inspiring projects I came across Bethany Actually’s tutorial on homemade vanilla which looked super easy and completely worth the effort.

I looked into the suggested link from Bethany’s blog about where to buy the bottles and decided to ask friends on facebook if anyone might be interested in ordering with me. Shipping was quite expensive for only 12 bottles so I figured if we could order a few more and disburse the cost we might be ahead before we even begin.

Thankfully I got 3 other friends, Donielle, Jill and Katie to combine efforts and order bottles together.

Then I found the vanilla beans on amazon and Katie and I ordered them to split since we only needed 20 beans for the vanilla recipe. We ended up getting 60 which left us each with 10 extra beans to use however we wanted … I added some into a cookie recipe, used them in my Raspberry Charlotte and still have some left over to use in baking. Yum!

SO … now that we have everything we need … let’s make some vanilla!

Gather your beans, vodka, and bottles.

And have a funnel and glass measuring cup near by.

I started by cutting all 20 of my beans into 3 parts each, then made 12 piles with the vanilla bean pieces for each bottle.

Put the beans into the bottles until all the bottles have their beans!

Measure 1/2 Cup Vodka into the glass meassuring cup and pour through funnel into each bottle, repeat until all bottles are full. Close with caps.

Place in a sunny sill to distill for up to 4 months.

Enjoy!

**A few notes: Mine have been sitting in the sunniest sill of our apartment for about 2 1/2 weeks and are very amber in color already. They also have a small amount of film at the top and I’m really hoping that it’s just because of the denseness of the distilling vanilla in the sun and not because something green and unfriendly is growing. Right now, I’m going with it’s part of the process. I’ll let you know.**

Wonderful things have been happening. I’ve been crafting and hosting and planning and scheduling.

More details coming this week.

In the mean time, please discuss amongst yourselves in the comments about the best month for the “Healthy Cooking Demo” and there will be a slight cost to this one to cover the food. September or October?

I’ll be doing a Holiday Cooking Demo early December as well. Dates and details will be discussed and released via the facebook page in November. If you have specific requests please share them!!

Hey there! If you’re just starting this How To with us – check out Day 1 for the beginning. It’s nice to have you, by the way.

Your coffee should have spent the night in the fridge. Maybe it spent 2 or 3. Which is fine. Mine spent 2 nights in the fridge the first time I did this.

Which means you should be starting with: A mason jar (or your French Press) full of dark, murky water and coffee beans … and your French Press if you went the mason jar route.

Here’s what my coffee looked like after 2 days in the fridge.

And the coffee grounds went from the top (from Day 1) to the bottom (now Day 2).

Pour the whole shebang into the French Press.

I tried to knock as many of the grounds into the French Press that I could.

I wanted all the available flavors and caffeine. ::wicked smile::

Your French Press is almost ready for the working magic of SQUEEZING the life out of the grounds for your coffee.

Grab the thinger. I don’t know the technical names. The top … with the mesh and the filter thing. Yeah, that one.

And push down, squeezing all the grounds to the bottom, leaving you with the filtered cold press coffee. It’s a beautiful thing.

Now grab a glass or mug. I chose something I could see through because I wanted to check out the color and I was taking photos so I thought it was appropriate to show you as well.

And then pour.

And ENJOY!

I hope I did this right, but the idea came from my former brother in law and he explained it to me something like this: It’s sweeter, less acidic.

He had my interest at sweeter.

This How To is the process for DAY ONE. Lets get started shall we?

You’ll need a mason jar with lid, grinder, coffee beans. (And water.)

If you don’t have a grinder – you need coarse ground beans. Maybe along the lines of something for a French Press.

Start by grabbing a handful of coffee beans to throw in the grinder.

Assess the situation and add more beans if needed. I’m pretty sure you need to end up with about a third of your mason jar as ground beans. Pretty sure because when I was getting the recipe we were at the closing of our former home and my mind was kinda of freaking out. But I was REALLY interested in the sweet coffee, so I focused. Kind of. (Rich, please feel free to correct this process!)

Now add the second handful.

And you’re ready for the grind!

I have a push grinder so all I need to do is apply pressure to the little white thing with my finger. Like this …

^^ Not applying pressure

^^ Applying pressure … See the difference? Yea, it’s slight. There are a couple different home grinders available, this is on the cheaper end of the ones out there. Right around ten bucks.

So any way – I counted to three and then checked my grind.

It was a little to coarse I thought so I put the lid back on, applied pressure for only a second more.

And then I was happy with the coarseness. There were less, if any, whole beans left.

Now for the mason jar.

Add the ground beans to the jar.

You’re going to need more coffee.

So grab another batch of the beans, grinder, pressure, DONE!

That looks better!

Now fill with water.

Get ready to shake it!

Place it in the fridge over night.

And DAY ONE is done. It looks like a ton of steps but the whole process will take less than 3 minutes if you have everything out and ready to go.

Tomorrow we’ll drink it together!

Skip ahead to see DAY 2

** Originally posted March 27, 2009

Healthy brownies. Really? That don’t taste like cardboard? Um, yes. These are rich and not entirely sweet (over the top), there’s also no flour so the light airy taste just isn’t there. That’s not a bad thing! They’re good, really. They’re not like fudge although in the photo they look very dense – I don’t know how to explain this, you’ll just have to try them. My kids loved them and they have no idea they’re healthy. All they saw was chocolate and heard me say brownies – done deal.

You’ll need: Eggs, garbanzo beans, mint (optional), agava nectar (or maple syrup, honey – some natural sweetener AND SPLENDA IS NOT THAT SWEETENER!), baking powder, chocolate chips.
I have a problem with splenda. Please forgive me.

Staty by melting your chocolate – you can do this however you normally would – I use a double boiler but I used this makeshift one because most people either don’t have a real one or don’t know what they are. All you need is a heavy sauce pan 1/2 full of water and a heat resistant bowl to set on top of that pot. The steam will do the work without burning the chocolate.

While those are working on melting – throw your beans, eggs and mint into a blender to mix up.

Check the chocolate – it should be well on it’s way to melting.

Then add your baking powder and agave nectar to the mix, blend it up.

Chocolate melted? Awesome, add that to the mix too!

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Put it in a greased 9X9 or 8X8 pan.

Bake and then let cool in fridge …

Cut and serve!

Then please ask a little taste tester to try them out.

ENJOY!
Recipe:
Prep Time: 10 minutes            Cooking Time: 45 minutes
Yields: 8-12 brownies
 
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups dark chocolate chips or carob semisweet chips (I use Ghiradelli’s 60% cocoa)
2 cups garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
4 eggs
2/3 cup agave nectar or ¾ cup brown rice syrup
½ teaspoon baking powder
Optional, blend in some mint leaves
 
Directions:
1. Melt chips slightly.  You can place them in a heat resistant bowl on top of a boiling pot of water until melted.
2. In blender or food processor, combine beans and eggs. (and mint!)
3. Add sweetener, baking powder, and chips. Process until smooth.
4. Pour batter into 8×8 or 9×9 inch pan.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
6. Allow to cool in fridge, cut and serve.

I have days where I need to create something. Anything. Most of the time that means writing, and right here. The other times it generally means in the kitchen.

I used this recipe and went from the hip as follows:

1 and 1/4 cups Amaranth
1 cup uncooked quick-cooking oats
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed (flaxseed meal)
1/4 cup finely chopped dried apples
1/4 cup finely chopped pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
1/3 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup almond butter (which I made on my own!!!)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Once everything was blended well I transfered to a pan, any size you pick, that was oiled and used wax paper to smoosh it evenly.

Then stuck the pan in the freezer for about 30 min to harden everything together so I could cut it up, photograph it and then eat them! YUM!

The pan I used, for the shape of a “granola bar”, yielded 6 bars.

I tried making my own fruit roll ups last week after reading about it here and here. There were some REALLY good deals on strawberries last week so I went out and bought 8 pounds.

Oh yes.

I found out that my oven turns itself off after being on for 12 consecutive hours. I had a batch of just strawberry and a batch of strawberry/kiwi. I had 3 pans in the oven over night and the strawberry batch was ready in about 10 maybe 11 hours. The strawberry/kiwi batch (2 pans) took more like 15.

Then I still had some left over so yesterday I made another batch of the strawberry/kiwi and it was ready in about 5 hours, on it’s own in the oven.

Here’s what I think:

After you’ve done your reducing of the puree – stick it in the fridge overnight. The next morning, preheat your oven to 170 or 200 – something low near there and dehydrate your cooled puree. It goes faster, or it did for me. About half the time.

Enjoy!

** I modified the linked recipe – I only used berries, applesauce and agave nectar. Use what you have, what works for you. Have fun!

The cookie monster was in our house recently.

These peanut butter cookies are gluten free. And there are only 3 ingredients. Oh, oh yes you can.

1 egg
1 C. Peanut Butter
1 C. Sugar

Mix well, plop by spoonfuls on baking sheet and bake in oven at 350 for 8 min, cool on wire rack.

Here’s the play by play on twitter, I only annoyed a few people with my rapid tweets … I think.

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5, 6
Step 7
Step 8

I used this recipe from Gluten Free Goddess, if you haven’t already been to her site in search of answers about becoming gluten free or how to bake some cookies – you totally should. She is my mecca right now.

Also? Let’s be honest, here. This, first try, loaf didn’t look as pretty as I was envisioning.

But it tasted just fine. I think my issue was the size of pan I used. Her recipe calls for a 1.5 pound loaf pan, and really? I have no idea what that means. I just grabbed one of the 3 (two of which are Ikea pans … and probably weird 8 oz pan sizes or something) loaf pans I own and went for it.

I have a Fearless Kitchen. It’s liberating. I encourage you to forget the rules and add some cinnamon. You’re SO allowed.

Now. Baking gluten free is scary if you’re new to it. There isn’t one flour you can frivolously throw into the mix and get something to rise or not taste like stone. So get to know your GF flour mixes first.

I’ve used Pamela’s Baking Mix with wonderful results. We make our pancakes and waffles with this religiously and LOVE it. Pretty sure you can use it to make breads, scones, cupcakes, birthday cakes, muffins etc etc as well.

I just bought some Red Mill All Purpose GF flour to try out – a trusty GF friend said she felt this mix held up better to an egg replacer.

That’s as technical as I’m getting. If you have questions as to what the heck I’m talking about, leave them in the comments, I will respond to them all.

So – let’s make some bread. For this Tutorial I followed the recipe to a T, I do not have a bread machine so I used her instructions farther down on the page to tell me how to prepare the dough manually. But because those instructions were farther down on the page then the actual recipe, I compromised and came up with this so I wouldn’t get lost:

These are the “wet ingredients” you’ll need:

And the “dry”:

I started by proofing my yeast like so:

Add 2 TBSP Honey to 1 1/4 C warm water …

I missed, oops! But once it’s in the water you’ll have this.

Now stir to dissolve the honey:

Add 1 TBSP Yeast to Honey/Water mixture and stir it up, then forget about it …

Now in a clean bowl we’re going to mix the dry ingredients together – we’ll start with the Sorghum Flour:

You need 1 Cup of this bad boy.

Now we’ll add the Potato Starch, not to be confused with Potato flour.

1 Cup of him, too.

Check your yeast at some point, it’s starting to get happy.

Next, to your dry ingredients, you’ll add the Xanthan Gum. Weird.

2 tsp of it.

Then the Millet Flour:

1/2 cup of his badself

Aaaand the sea salt. Her recipe says “fine sea salt” but I had coarse – throw caution to the wind people! DARE YOURSELF TO UNFOLLOW RULES. Sorry, something came over me.

About this much is fine. The recipe calls for 1 1/4 tsp.

Stir up the Dry Guys

How’s the yeast?

Vondervil!!! Now add the proofed yeast to the dry ingredients

Add 3 to 4 TBSP EVOO

Then the 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar.

In another clean, small bowl quick whip up your egg replacer – 1 TBSP Egg replacer with 4 TBSP warm water until frothy.

Add your “eggs” to the rest of the dough batter

And mix it up, stir stir stir

Until it looks like this

Find yourself a 1.5 pound loaf pan then oil it, WELL. I must have skimmed on the oil part because that’s half the reason my loaf fell apart – I couldn’t get it out of the pan. So … Liberal use of oil.

Plop the batter into your loaf pan

Use a wet finger to smooth out the top of the dough before you set it in a warm place to rise for one hour.

Ready to rise!

I put my loaf to rise underneath a towel on the preheated stove since my kitchen is uber drafty. No chances here folks. I need a warm nest for that bread.

An hour later – here’s the difference:

Bake at 350 for 45 min to an hour. Just knock on the bread, if it’s hollow, it’s done. Cool on a wire rack.

We had BLTs for dinner that night. YUM!

Along with having to be super careful about what I eat because of the whole “you’re probably diabetic” thing – I can’t really have alcohol either. Except for red wine … once in a while.

For a while, after I read that Red Wine helped slow down the digestion of insulin in ones body that it was actually beneficial to a diabetic to drink a glass, I was having one with dinner most nights.

Then I read about diabetics and blood types – and how my blood type has low stomach acid and should avoid caffeine and alcohol … well, I haven’t had hardly any … alcohol … coffee in the morning is a harder one to let go of. But I’m a tea drinker too. I’m transitioning.

And tonight I had a glass of wine because today was crazy. Because it sounded good. Because I have a box of it in the fridge. Oh, yes, I do.

Then I proceeded to silly-email friends on facebook and giggle to myself about it, out loud. But after the past few days, which were total emotional wringers for me, a night like this. A light night. A happy night. A night with a little buzz. (Sorry, Grandma!) It just fits.

In other fun news – the results to our little poll on the next Cooking Demo topic are in!

So … it’s a tie for Healthy cooking and Cooking over the fire (which is a total surprise to me!) but I “test voted” once to make sure it was all set up and working and I voted for Cooking over the fire – so technically Healthy cooking wins this round.

There you have it! Details coming soon about Healthy Cooking – Cooking Demo.

Insert tiny print here: And Oh My Word, you should not read this and think I’m condoning alcohol use in any way, because please … I do not have that much power, but I know I’ll get emails about it … so just stop right there.