Glady's Harcourt's Strawberry Jello Salad

Trust me, this is the best gelatin salad I have ever had! My friends' Mom would made the most creative and beautiful side dishes. She was the first to introduce me to the concept of a "layered salad." This strawberry jello salad can easily serve as a dessert. I hope to try to make it with fat free sour cream or fat free Greek yogurt.

Note: use only canned pineapple as it will not set up with frozen or fresh pineapple

3 packages strawberry jello

2 mashed bananas

1 pkg (10 oz) frozen strawberries

1 can crushed pineapple NOT drained

1 carton of sour cream

Dissolve jello in 2 cups of boiling water. Add bananas, pineapple & strawberries.

Pour half the mixture into a pan. 

Chill until firm.

Spread sour cream over the top.

Add remaining jello mixture.

Photo of the salad coming soon.

Alternative to Sugar

Looking for an alternative to sugar and tired of using applesauce?

Try adding a ripe, sliced banana to your oatmeal. For a pumpkin pie, the banana is processed to a creamy consistency and may be substituted for the sugar in a pumpkin pie (previous post on this blog). The pie will have a bit of a banana flavor and my family loves anything banana.

The oatmeal includes dried cranberries and a teaspoon of real vanilla extract for that added zip we need some mornings. The great thing about oatmeal is it holds you until lunch!

For those of us on diuretics, oats are a source of magnesium and bananas have potassium.  Great for breakfast or a snack anytime, ?Sometimes we add small pieces of fresh apple as a garnish, enjoy!

World's Best Easy Banana Cake

World's Best Easy Banana Cake

This cake was my mother's favorite banana cake recipe. When my niece was small and visited Cleveland from Austin, Texas, she would slice a small piece all evening long, as we all did. One of my Mom's secrets is the finely ground almonds in the batter which is mixed by hand for approximately 300 strokes.

The recipe will be in my upcoming cookbook, but if you want me to print it herein, let me know. Cake is truly handmade, NO mixer needed!

Delicious Easy Hot Oatmeal with an incredible Aroma!

We love Quaker's Old Fashioned Oatmeal. Mine soaking in a pot as I write this. Since I tend to have a lot of dental work, I have been looking at what best to eat? What I eat got my attention per my check-up last year, and breaking the back of a tooth down to the bone about two weeks ago.

I was never crazy about hot oatmeal, but love it now per the way I make it. My husband loves it now too. He used to be a cold cereal eater -- those boxes are standing around, while I buy huge boxes of oatmeal and my blood work has never been better.

I cut a small banana, a fresh apple into thin small slices, dried cranberries, or whatever fruit is in the house and add it to my "Old Fashioned" Quaker Oats in a saucepan. I cover it with about 50/50 water and Blue Diamond Almond Milk as we need the calcium (twice the calcium in cow's milk). You can make it with all water or all milk of any kind too. The dried cranberries will become soft.

I let it sit for awhile together, covered in liquid, and will then cook it slowly. Sometimes I stop as tend to burn meals when I blog. Here is what it looks like so far. You can see the oatmeal underneath and banana, apple, and dried cranberries. Sometimes I only use banana, other times only apple or dried cranberries, but am doing all today and it will be delicious!



Here, I am covering it with 50/50 Almond Milk (the one with 30 calories in a glass) and water, or one can use any combination, just cover it -- does not matter if a little more liquid as it will get cooked into the oatmeal shortly.



Now I will cook it and come back to finish the blog!

It smells heavenly when the banana cooks in the oatmeal, the fresh apple is soft and the cranberries plump-up -- can you see?



Oatmeal finished -- soft enough for me but it could be cooked longer -- the apple is very soft and the the banana gives it the most heavenly aroma. Sometimes I put ground flax seed on top -- as it is very reasonable at COSTCO. The only way my husband will eat ground flax is on top of his oatmeal. I sneak it in lots of things when he is not looking! We lean to vegetarian so have to get plant sources for our Omega-3. Do not buy un-ground flax seed as humans can not digest the tiny seeds. If you come up with a recipe, please post, or you can sign up with your email to get the blog each time I update. If you prefer Kindle format, it is available at http://amzn.to/1zFZ4kr for 99 cents per month (Amazon set the price).



It holds up well in the refrigerator if you can not eat it all and my husband will microwave it when he is in the mood --- "Oatmeal is not just for breakfast anymore, as it is a great snack."

And as my great-niece would sing to the tune of 3 blind mice:
"Hot Oatmeal, hot oatmeal, yummy, yummy, in my tummy, hot oatmeal."

Kale Bouquet from My Garden to Yours

Since some of the snow melted today and it was in the 50's, I decided to walk back to my garden to check out my flowering kale. On a nice day like today, I pick a bouquet and freeze it for later use. I always have kale available in my front garden for those times I do not wish to walk in the deep snow to the garden in my backyard.

Below are some photographs of the kale from garden to packaging for the freezer. One need not cut the kale, as once frozen, I merely squeeze it to break it up in as small pieces as I need for any recipe, or to sprinkle into soups, chili, etc.

I picked a bouquet beautiful enough for my dining room table, but the goal was to wash it, dry it a bit on a clean kitchen towel, and get it into freezer bags and into the freezer. Yes, I do nibble some tasty flowering kale as I process it!

If I have time, I run out and pick fresh kale for what I am cooking, but if I am short on time or it is too dark in the winter evening to venture in the backyard, I pick it from my front flower beds or use my frozen kale -- clean and ready for any recipe that calls for spinach. Our favorite is putting kale in smoothies which we have been doing for 1 1/2 years now! Drink up, it is a very healthy drink and you will not taste the kale in a banana, peach, blueberry, cherry, or strawberry smoothie -- the colors can be unusual, but there is nothing like that gorgeous green color in a banana, almond milk, kale drink!

Fresh Cranberry Relish

A favorite fresh cranberry relish made this time of year includes a bag of washed cranberries, an entire apple cored (not peeled) and a peeled orange. The relish made this way needs much sugar. To make the relish sweet without using sugar, I add a very ripe banana to the mixture and process in my small food processor per the pictures below.

I also process very ripe bananas by themselves and create a smooth, creamy mixture, which I use instead of sugar in recipes including pumpkin pie. Since granulated sugar turns into a liquid on baking,
adding the banana mixture does not add much liquid to a recipe, but I generally count the banana mixture both as a sugar and as a liquid, lowering another liquid in the recipe.

Cranberry relish sweetened only with banana

If the bananas are small, I will use two bananas, as the recipe is not sweet enough for us unless the banana is a very ripe, large banana.

When I have extra ripe bananas, I process a few to form a sweet, creamy liquid which I substitute for granulated sugar in many recipes.

For St. Patrick's Day

A beautiful light green smoothie for everyone on St. Patrick's Day is so easy to make and healthy. 

Ingredients:

A few leaves of Kale (washed and torn into pieces)
Banana (1 medium ripe)
Rice, Soy, or Almond Milk (1 cup)

Place all the ingredients in a blender on the highest setting and blend until smooth!

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving

This will be our first Thanksgiving on a semi-vegetarian diet, I say "semi" as I do not plan on buying meat, but plan to start using up what I have in the freezer, but only serve meat once a week. We had Cheerios for breakfast along with a tablespoon of ground flax seed, which we purchased at Costco after listening to Dr. Esselstyn's lecture last Saturday and being inspired to eat healthier by his wife, Ann Crile Esselstyn.

Dr. Esselstyn mentioned that we need to avoid sucrose. I just bought ten pounds of sugar for holiday baking and hope sugar lasts for a very long time. Dr Esselstyn does not suggest using Stevia or sugar substitutes and I seem to have more than a few varieties in my kitchen! Dr. Esselstyn does not promote maple syrup or honey either, sugar is a "no, no."

I know I will have to modify recipes as sugar is a liquid in baking, but for cooking I can easily come up with some quick fixes.

I purchased fresh cranberries and wondered how to sweeten them for my cranberry relish. After thinking about, since my family loves bananas, I decided to add the usual apple and orange to the cranberries and chop them up in the blender or food chopper. I started in the blender and decided to use the sweetest fruit I have in the house, other than dates. I added a sweet Yellow Delicious apple and an orange to the cranberries as I usually do. I did not add the usual 1/4-1/2 cup of sugar as I usually do.

I saw two ripe bananas on my counter and dates from California. I decided to put the two bananas in my Ninja chopper and puree them into a soft, creamy consistency. I poured the pure banana "syrup" over the cranberry/apple/orange relish and gently folded the banana, which turned to a liquid, into the mixture.

The relish is just sweet enough, perfectly sweet, and we do not mind the banana flavor in our cranberry relish and have the benefit of not having to use sugar!