Friday, January 27, 2012

Pea soup

Today for breakfast I had a banana.
It is now 2 pm and I am going to have pea soup and a salad.

Pea Soup Recipe

Split Peas
water with organic Better Than Bouillon OR chicken stock(I added leftover bean cooking water)
sauteed onions and carrots
salt and pepper

Put twice as many cups of liquid as you have peas into the crockpot. (1 cup peas / 2 cups liquid)
Add the sauteed onions and carrots.
Simmer on high in the crockpot for about 3 to 4 hours.

Done!

Happy Healthy,
Elisa





Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Garlic Vinaigrette

I love this new vinaigrette. It is so yummy. All I had to do was add 6 ounces apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of Vegesal to the 4 cups of garlic oil that I had ready to go.
 garlic oil recipe
It smells good and is yummy on salad and on steamed veggies.
Happy Healthy,
Elisa

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Filling lunch

Lunch yesterday was steamed potatoes with salt, pepper, and garlic oil. The salad was romaine lettuce, spinach leaves, cucumbers, frozen peas and was topped with garlic vinaigrette. It was yummy and filling.
The liquid in the jars in the picture is the garlic oil and vinaigrette that I made the other day. I keep them on the table and refill them from the large jars I keep in the fridge. Both of the concoctions have been a hit around here!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Busy Day Food

2 cucumbers diced
5 roma tomatoes diced
16 oz.guacamole
8 oz. garlic/artichoke heart hummus
2 large handfuls sunflower sprouts
16 oz. bag mixed vegetable slaw

I mixed all of the ingredients together in a big bowl, then each person put the mixture on a whole wheat tortilla, and enjoyed! It was very yummy and filling.
I like this lots because there is no cooking involved! :) Great for a busy day.
We also had some kettle style chips with lunch per request of my almost-birthday boy.


Breakfast today was bananas and a handful of almonds. We also each had a granola bar later on for a fun snack.

We ate the wraps for lunch and dinner.

We ate pretty good, but I'm not gonna lie: we ate miniature snickers and almond joys on our drive home! I know! A day of great food and we ruined it!!! The good thing that came from it was the increased desire to do better. My 13 year old insisted that we start a cleanse tomorrow, so we stopped at the store on our way home to get apples for juice in the morning. I seriously doubt that a full-on cleanse is going to happen though because it is my soon- to-be 8 year old's birthday tomorrow which means cake....

Happy Healthy,
Elisa

Garlic Oil

I was cleaning out my fridge the other day and found a jar of garlic oil that I had stashed there. I had made it because one of my boys had an earache and I know that a few drops of garlic oil in the ear a couple of times a day for a few days will get rid of an ear infection. Well, by the time the oil was made, the ear ache was gone.... So, the oil has been in my fridge, waiting for me to find it again. :)

I pulled it out and thawed it by placing the jar in a bowl of hot water. (Olive oil turns solid in the fridge.) By the time it was thawed I had the potatoes that I had baked that morning mashed, salted and peppered, and on our plates. We drizzled some of the garlic oil on our potatoes and fell in love. It Was So Good! My 5 year old liked it so much that he had 2 potatoes and was disappointed when I couldn't fill the jar back up with garlic oil after we emptied the whole thing!

I read about using garlic oil on baked potatoes in a book called The Transfiguration Diet, which uses the health principles taught by The School Of Natural Healing founded by Dr. John Christopher. In the book I also learned about a salad dressing that uses the garlic oil.

Well, we ran out of garlic oil in that one lunch, so I looked it up in the Transfiguration book to get the recipe right. Here it is in my words.

Peel 10 cloves of garlic and chop them in half if they are large cloves. Prick them with a fork so they can release their wonderfulness into the oil.
Put the cloves into a large jar and cover with 4 cups of olive oil.
Let the garlic oil sit for 2 to 3 days and then use!
I am going to keep a small cruet of it on my table and keep the rest of it in the fridge to keep it fresh. I have read differing opinions on how safe it is to keep out, so I am going to play it safe.

I will post again on the dressing recipe. I will be making it tomorrow because my garlic oil has been sitting out for 3 days and is waiting for me.

Happy Healthy,
Elisa