Happy New Year and What to do with Carrot Pulp

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Wishing you good health and happiness in 2011.

It was a busy weekend spending time with friends and family now I'm getting back into gear for the changes being made for the new year. Like many others, I fell off the healthy eating wagon a bit. Mostly, too many carbs even with 'healthful' meals I made, and cocktails don't do real well with my body. No drunkenness here but I feel the effect in my gut the next day. So I'm getting back on track, loaded up my grocery cart with lots of produce, nuts and seeds, and came home for some juicing and healthy baking.

photo courtesy of grouprecipes.com

I combined a myriad of frozen fruits with some spinach and raw egg to make two vintage refrigerator bottles full, then I juiced 5 lbs. of carrots and mixed it with 3 squeezed lemons to fill another refrigerator bottle. I did juice carrots last week so I had a plethora of pulp. Although I have a compost pile, I like to eat it if I can and I add it to the dogs' meals a bit.

Because I use the internet so much, I did a quick search because with all the raw food and vegetarian recipe books I have, I don't have anything on using the leftover pulp from juicing. I found two recipes that I like, they happen to be vegan. I made a couple changes to them and they turned out well.

The first is a Carrot Cake recipe. I put in only one cup of sugar, the batter still tasted too sweet but the cake really doesn't, I will try even less next time. What the recipe should tell you is that it doesn't come together like regular cake batter, it's much stiffer, like a cookie dough. I put mine into a 7"x11" glass baking dish. It did rise but remains a little dense but not banana bread dense. I probably should have cooked it a bit longer even though my knife pulled out clean. Very moist. I picked this recipe because it used so much of the carrot pulp, I will make it again, but will change the sugar to a more body friendly sweetener and also change the flour to a gluten free product. I used what I had on hand. I omitted the raisins since I'm not a fan of raisins in my food but I did add the walnuts.

The second recipe is Golden Macaroons. I doubled the recipe, I wanted to have a bunch on hand for little snacks and figure I'll be able to freeze some. The doubled recipe made 60 tablespoon size macaroons. What I changed: I used Agave Nectar 1/3 cup plus about half of a 1/3 cup for the sweetener. 2 cups of coconut because it's what was available and not the sweetened kind. The batter got stuck in my stainless tablespoon so I tapped the edge of it on the cookie sheet until they came out, which took several taps. It was annoying me so my mind went into "how can I make this better?" gear. hmmmm, aha! hot water! I filled a glass with hot water, dipped the tablespoon into it before packing the batter ...tap tap....like magic it came out. I cooked it for the suggested 30 minutes and, of course, tried a couple. The insides were still too moist for me so I just put them back in. They were cooled already so we'll see if it changes them but I figure there's no baking soda or powder in them so they'll just dehydrate a little more.

The third thing I did with the pulp is put some in the chicken soup I made, which, I'm going to eat now.

Happy New Year and Happy Healthy Cooking!!

Pizelles

Last night R.'s two teenage girls and I made Pizelles. Being that they are half-Italian with an emphasis on the Italian part, I thought they made Pizelles before. Um, no, they've EATEN Pizelles before. So we each had our first experience of making them.

I found a recipe that said it had been handed down for generations, Italian generations, on the 'net. I thought this would be the best place to start, I believe it was a doubled recipe, but it was really like so many others. At the end of the recipe it says that it will be a slightly stiff dough and to add a little water for it to become a ribbon consistency when poured. Well, about 1.5 cups of water later we finally got it fluid enough to make a good Pizelle. Plus, we had to add 3 more tablespoons of Anise to capture a good flavor.

Don't these look yummy? like Chocolate? well, it's not....it's a 16 year old not paying attention because she's too busy talking to me (well, we were talking about boys) and let the the time slip by...they are actually burnt Pizelles, but they do look pretty. We think they look like leather. So I get an idea! I rush down to the basement studio and bring up a ripped soft leather jacket. The girls already think I'm crazy and they are wondering what the heck I am doing. I explain to them that if I take a piece of leather and put it in the Pizelle maker it might 'brand' it with the design. They didn't think it was a good idea. Well, in case you want to try this at home, do it outside... or, better yet, don't do it at all. It was not only a failure it STUNK! it was awful. It did dry the leather and make it much stiffer though so the wheels are turning there.

Things to know about Pizelle making:

1. They take forever because you are making a gazillion of them.
2. Make sure the maker is HOT. Mine is vintage and just has a red light indicating hot, but wait, so it gets hotter.
3. Test cooking time. My recipe said 45 seconds, it was really only 20-25.
4. You'll eat quite a few.
5. Teenagers beg for them even though I told them repeatedly that they were for their Grammie. Grammie loves them, and never gets them, and she needs nothing. They beg again a few minutes later as they are stuffing their mouths.
6. Your S.O. says that he needs 30 of them for the work party on Wednesday. Apparently he did not understand that they are for his mother. He said he'd make his own then. HA! see #1. How he will fit it into working his very physical day job then working physically at night, eating dinner and promptly falling asleep I don't know... I'm not making them for him.
7. They don't all get crisp right away, but it's faster when you pay attention to #2.
8. Because of this, and inexperience, you will worry whether or not they will dry overnight, you spread them on the table just in case, then you take them off the table because you have a new foster dog that can surf the table if he wanted to but you don't know if he's a surfer so you don't take any chances because now it's 11pm and you've been worrying about the damn things for 2 hours and you've been left alone because the other participants went home to bed and you turn the stove on low thinking that you'll put in a few at a time to dehydrate them but tell yourself it will take forever and not to jump the gun, leaving them overnight will probably work so you rearrange them on the counter 3 times to make sure they don't bend but there's not much counter space so then you slightly fan them on one another and now it's midnight and finally decide to let go of it all and see what happens.
8. Wake up in the morning and find them crisp.

You might want to go to your favorite Italian bakery and buy them. They taste the same after all.

Really, though, it was great doing it with the girls. Gave us time to talk, and I had each one at a different making/baking time. So I was able to have some one on one with them and chat about what's going on in their lives. They even tore themselves away from Facebook to do this.

They'll be surprised to find that they'll each be getting a tin of these, too, on Christmas.

Baking an Easy Bread

Before I was flutting (yes, flutting, not fluttering) around cleaning, I did a little blog perusal, I like to check out blogs that other bloggers I watch have on their lists. Well, somehow I got to this one: Past Life -- vintage living in a modern world. On it, she had a bread recipe found from an old recipe book.

It looked pretty easy, pretty healthy (well, except for the shortening, but it was only 2 Tbls., I suppose I could have changed it to Olive Oil like I usually do) so I made it. I forgot to include the nuts in the mix, so I threw them on top.

Now, I'm eating it. You didn't really think I was going to wait until it cooled all the way before I dove into it! I could eat bread as it is, or toasted, all day long. I slapped some butter on the chunk, it looked dense and moist. It is dense, but it is a little drier in the mouth. I only had 2/3 the amount of whole wheat flour it called for so I imagine maybe it would be a little drier if I had the whole bit. What's a girl to do with slightly dry feeling bread? Add some homemade (not by me) jam.

Better, but a sip of tea would help. I bet it will be good toasted. I'll try that next, which will probably be in about an hour!

When taking the picture I realized how old this jam is. I know it's not been opened since 2006, was just made then, goes to show how long it can keep. It's very good.

Try it yourself, maybe it will come out differently.