Sweet and Spicy Slaw Recipe

Seet and Spicy Slaw Recipe

Had a request to post this slaw recipe.  It is one of our favorites year round! It goes great with burgers, chicken, pork, or you can even put it into fish tacos!

• 2 pounds green cabbage
• 4 carrots
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 1/2 cup mayo
• 1/4 cup mustard
• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup sugar ( I use spenda instead and use less.. I just do it to taste)
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut cabbage into desired size, I like to shred mine or you can even grate it.  Grate peeled carrots and onion and toss all in a large bowl.

In another medium bowl, make the dressing by whisking together the mayonnaise, mustard, cider vinegar, sugar, black pepper, and cayenne. Toss dressing with the cabbage mixture, and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Cover andchill for at least 2 hours before serving.

What in the world is better than bread?

Warm, crusty, yeasty, chewy, dense, beautiful healthy bread!  I dream about this stuff.  The hubs calls me a carb addict.  Well, yeah.. so?  Who doesn't love the smell of homemade bread baking?   Who doesn't like to slice it while it is still to hot to handle, slather it with butter and stuff it in their mouths?  If I could make a candle that smelled like fresh baked bread, I would.  I know it sounds crazy, but could you imagine? Of course I would probably start some sort of feeding frenzy, not unlike the ones you see during Shark Week...maybe that wouldn't be such a great idea.

So I think I have managed to come up with a diabetic friendly (as long as you don't eat the whole loaf) healthy bread.  That actually is quite tasty.  I have tried several versions of this recipe I found online, and I have tweaked it a bit each time.  I finally got the rise I wanted, and the dense chewy texture I love.

It is a whole wheat base with tons of flax seed and depending on whether you want to make a honey loaf or a garlic loaf, it seems to take to any ingredients you want to add.

I have some in the oven as we speak!  

The recipe is adapted from a bread machine recipe, but I will tell you what has worked for me in the recipe.

Whole Wheat Flax Bread

1 pkt active dry yeast
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 Cups warm water (110- 115 degrees)
2 tbsp honey (or less if your making a savory bread)
2 tbsp oil (what type - olive, canola, sesame - depends on the flavor of bread you want)
3 cups whole wheat bread flour (or regular whole wheat if you cant find the bread flour)
1 tsp half-salt
1/3 cup flax seeds

Options - here is where your options come in...

• For a three seed bread, add 2 tbsp sunflower kernels, and 1 tbsp poppy seeds, or pumpkin seeds, or any other seed you like.
• For a garlic chive bread, add 2-3 tbsp dried chives and 8 cloves of garlic sliced up.
• For a cheddar bread, add a cup of extra sharp grated cheddar and garlic if you like.

But for any of the above, you make the bread like this:

1. Proof the packet of yeast with 1/2 cup warm water and 1/2 tbsp honey for 10 minutes in the bowl of your mixer.  Mix these together and let sit.  It will require a warm place but a hot wet towel wrapped around the bowl works good too.
2. While your yeast is proofing, measure out all dry ingredients and put aside.
3. Once yeast is proofed, add the oil and honey (if using the honey) to the proofed yeast mixture. 
4. Slowly dump about 1/2 of the dry ingredients into the mixer and mix on low to medium (please don't mix on high or you will wear your ingredients....[from note to self on first batch]).
5. Add remaining water and mix until incorporated.
6. Add remaining dry ingredients and mix on medium until dough comes away from sides. 
7. Mix another 5 minutes or so to allow the gluten to form.
8. Transfer dough to an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm spot for at least 1 1/2 hours.
9. Punch down and let rise again in the pan you will bake it in for another hour.
10. Bake in 350-375 degree oven for around 30 minutes.  Oven temps vary so this is where you want to keep an eye on yours.

Cool (if you can wait that long) and enjoy...

Perfect Soup Day

Today is a crappy day.  I love the rain because I feel like it washes the world clean, but right now I hate the rain.  I want to dig in my dirt and plant things so bad that I cannot stand it. I want to make my yard NOT look like the "poltergeist pool" it is. For those of you who remember the horrible swimming pool in the movie Poltergeist... you get my meaning.  For the rest of you...well lets just say, its very muddy and I keep waiting for things to rise to the surface!

So, instead, I am making soup and bread!  What can be better than homemade chicken soup and garlic chive wheat bread?  I love to let a huge pot of love simmer all day and then ladle a huge bowl of yummy comfort.  I always have a hard time waiting until dinner and of course I make sure I "taste" throughout the day...just to be sure nothing has gone sideways! 

For the soup, I start it off just like your normal veggie soup, saute until translucent onions (one whole large chopped), celery (3 or four stalks, diced), carrots (3 or four diced) and lots of garlic in a bit of butter (maybe 2 tbsp) and olive oil (just enough to coat the bottom of whatever pot I'm using).  I'm really not kidding when I say lots of garlic.  I probably used an entire head.  There is nothing better in my humble opinion than garlic.  Well, maybe chocolate.  But truly garlic is one of my favorite things.  Which is why as soon as my yard dries out a bit, I will be planting quite a bit of garlic this year.

Okay, back to the soup.  I toss in some half salt (does the same thing but better for you than regular salt) some sage, some oregano, a few bay leaves, some fresh ground black pepper and some chicken better than bullion. I really have no measurements for these, only that I taste as I go.  I know what I like, and you know what you like.  Just add what feels good to you.  Except if your really not sure about the salt, wait until the last to add it.  You can always add, but if you over salt, you either toss the whole thing and start over, or do what I end up doing and keep adding potatoes until it is tolerable. I add four or five frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts and add hot water to cover the chicken.  Now I only make this much because I freeze it in individual servings.  It makes it super easy to toss a soup in the lunchbox and have a good meal at work.  

I let all of that simmer a way until the chicken is tender and then I remove the chicken, shred, and put it all back into the pot.  I of course taste to make sure all is right and sometimes add a few more veggies like mushrooms and frozen corn an peas at this point.  Then, its a low slow simmer until dinner.

This is my basic recipe for chicken soup, and I do change it up a bit.  Sometimes I add curry and garbanzos (I puree these so my husband doesn't know they are there).  Sometimes I go more southwest adding chili powder, cumin and cayenne.  It all works great and again, its really what you like!

Tortilla Soup Recipe

This is the recipe I found for Tortilla Soup.  It is fantastic!  The only changes I made to it were to not put the lime juice and cilantro in at the end.  Instead I topped it with some Cojita cheese and sour cream and fried some blue corn tortila strips I had made.

By the way, I L O V E her pages.  I use and adapt alot of her recipes!