We have a waffle maker, but we don’t make waffles all that often. The problem is that we’ve never had a great go-to waffle recipe. Our last few attempts have been mediocre at best, with the waffles either sticking to the waffle iron or tasting fairly bland.

We decided to give it another go this morning, and I think we’ve found our new basic waffle recipe. We started with this recipe, and made some changes. The waffles were delicious—especially topped with crushed pecans, blueberries, bananas and maple syrup.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole spelt flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
• 1 1/2 cups soy milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Suggested toppings: crushed pecans, blueberries, banana, maple syrup

Method

1. Mix dry ingredients.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs with a fork, and then mix in other liquid ingredients.
3. Combine dry and liquid ingredients and mix until just combined.
4. Cook on your waffle iron until lightly browned. It took about 5 mins per set on ours.

I was on a roll after making the sweet potato pizzas and I thought it would be nice to have a dessert pizza for our picnic.

I raided the fridge and decided to give this combination of ingredients a shot. It could have been a disaster, but it was actually really good.

Ingredients

• 1 (10 inch) tortilla (I pulled a homemade whole wheat tortilla out of the freezer)
• 1/2 cup (or maybe a bit more) cottage cheese
• 2 tablespoons (heaping) peanut butter
• Dollop of honey
• 1 large banana, sliced
• Handful of dark choc chips, shaved (Our Ikea rotary grater worked perfectly.)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400F / 205C.
2. Mix the cottage cheese, peanut butter and honey until combined.
3. Spread over the tortilla.
4. Cover with banana slices.
5. Shave choc chips over the top.
6. Bake in oven for 10 mins or until chocolate is melted.

Ever since we bought a KitchenAid Stand Mixer in March this year, we have been making pizza almost every week—it is just so much easier when you don’t have to knead the dough yourself! We pretty much make the same pizza every time: 101 Cookbooks’ five-minute tomato sauce as a base, topped with shredded zucchini, olives, some roasted red peppers, shiitake mushrooms and mozzarella. It’s a great pizza, but it was time for a change.

Today I was inspired to make a completely different pizza. I did some googling and decided to make one based around sweet potato and rosemary. It was simple but oh-so-delicious. We made four and took them to the lake for a picnic dinner and there was not much conversation—we were all too busy enjoying the pizza!

O had a great time helping me make these—I cut the sweet potato and she arranged the pieces in concentric circles with alternating colours.

Ingredients (makes four 10-inch pizzas)

• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large red onion, diced
• 4 (10-inch) tortillas (I pulled some homemade whole wheat tortillas out of the freezer)
• 6 small sweet potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (I happened to have both orange and yellow on hand, so we used both)
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
• grated Parmesan cheese

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 475F / 245C.
2. Heat 4 tablespoons of the oil in a cast-iron pan over medium heat.
3. Add the onions and cook until translucent and soft.
4. Layer the tortillas with slightly overlapping concentric circles of sweet potato slices.
5. Top with the onions and rosemary.
6. Drizzle with the remaining olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
7. Bake pizzas for 15 minutes, or until the edges of the pizzas are starting to crisp and brown and the sweet potatoes are soft.
8. Top with Parmesan and pop back in the oven for a couple of minutes, until the cheese melts.

I came across this recipe while I was looking for inspiration and the wildly positive reviews convinced me to give it a try, despite E’s comment that the ingredient list looked like it had been written by Tolstoy.

I used vegetable stock and omitted the sugar, but other than that I followed the recipe, and it was one of the best new dishes we’ve eaten in a while. We’re definitely adding it in to our rotation. It was a little too spicy for O, so next time I would probably skip the cumin and cayenne when cooking the barley. It was nice not to have to fight her for the leftovers though!

Recipe at Epicurious

This is yet another awesome recipe from 101 Cookbooks. We use olive oil instead of butter, shiitake mushrooms instead of chanterelles, and we drizzle the final product with soy sauce. Other than that though, we stick to the recipe. The kids *love* this one.

Recipe: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/shichimi-mushroom-rice-bowl-recipe.html

O *loves* popsicles. She is happy to eat them as soon as she’s rolled out of bed in the morning, even in the dead of winter when it’s puking snow outside. If we ever needed to sneak some medicine into her, popsicles would be my delivery method of choice.

These popsicles are great, and we usually try to have some in the freezer—they can come in quite handy when you have a hungry, cranky child. When I took the photo below, we were out of spinach. They are a better colour with spinach in the mix—a darker, less snotty green!

Ingredients

• 2-3 small avocados
• 2 ripe bananas
• 1 large handful of baby spinach
• juice of one lime (or lemon)
• additional lime juice or water if the mixture is too thick to blend properly

Method

1. Blend all ingredients.
2. Spoon into moulds (mine is usually too thick to pour).
3. Freeze.
4. Eat and enjoy.

For a long time, I was under the impression that pies are somewhat complicated and time-consuming to make. Turns out I was completely wrong on that one! This strawberry and rhubarb pie is very easy to make and it’s delicious, especially when served with some coconut whipped “cream”.

Rhubarb and strawberry pie

Ingredients

Pie Crust (makes enough for the bottom and top)

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 7 tablespoons of very cold coconut oil
• 1/2 cup soy milk

Filling

• 1 cup chopped rhubarb
• 1 cup chopped strawberries
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of kudzu or arrowroot
• 1/4 cup honey

Method

1. Heat oven to 400F / 205C.
2. Mix salt and flour
3. Add in coconut oil and mix until oil chunks are about pea-sized.
4. Mix in soy milk.
5. Add very cold water while mixer is running until dough is the right texture (probably less than a cup).
6. Roll dough into a ball, cover with foil and freeze for thirty minutes.
7. Mix pie filling ingredients together in a bowl.
8. Take dough out of freezer and split in half.
9. Roll out one piece into a circle on a floured surface. When big enough, wrap it loosely around the rolling pin to transfer it into the pie plate. Shape it into the bottom of the pie plate.
10. Add filling.
11. Roll out the other piece of dough the same way as the first one and put it on top of the filling. Squish the edge of the top and bottom pieces together so they are sealed, and put a few slice marks in the top of the dough to let steam out.
12. Bake for 45 minutes or so.

This juicy tomato salsa is great for eating with corn cakes and beans or breakfast burritos, since the liquid seeps right through everything else. Of course, it also tastes great if eaten as a snack with tortilla chips.

We usually use brown rice vinegar for this recipe, but we have also tried it with apple cider vinegar, and it was just as good.

Juicy tomato salsa

Ingredients

• 4 medium tomatoes, diced
• 1 large or 2 small onions, diced
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of cumin
• Pepper, to taste
• Cayenne pepper, to taste
• Chopped fresh cilantro, to taste

Method

1. Mix all ingredients.
2. Store in a jar in the fridge for up to a week.

This recipe for corn cakes and beans is very lightly adapted from this one over at No Meat Athlete. It is pretty quick and easy to make and O loves the fact that she gets to eat pancakes for dinner! As a bonus, any leftovers you have will make a great lunch for the following day.

Corn cakes and beans

Ingredients

Beans:

• 1 1/2 cups cooked beans (we usually use a 10-bean mix)
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder

Corn cakes:

• 2/3 cup corn flour
• 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1 cup soy milk
• 1 teaspoon ume (plum) or apple cider vinegar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• salt and pepper

Toppings:

• juicy tomato salsa
• avocado
• cottage cheese

Method

Beans:

1. Combine the beans, oregano, and 1 teaspoon of chilli powder in a saucepan. Heat until warm.

Corn cakes:

1. Add the vinegar to the soy milk and let sit for a few minutes, to give it a buttermilky flavour.
2. Mix together the corn flour, baking soda, flour, 1 teaspoon of chilli powder, 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and 1/8 teaspoon of pepper.
3. In another bowl, whisk together the soy milk, and egg.
4. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients until combined.
5. Add the corn.
6. Cook the corn cakes as you would cook regular pancakes. We use a large cast iron pan that rarely moves from our stove top.
7. Top the corn cakes with beans, avocado,  juicy tomato salsa, and cottage cheese.

While cruising the New York Times the other day, I was very excited to see a post by Mark Bittman all about pancakes. I love pancakes, and always love to try new variations. I made a very lightly adapted version of the cardamom apricot oatmeal pancakes on Saturday morning, thinking that E and I would probably enjoy them, but that O would likely have little interest. As it turned out, I was way off the mark on that one. She couldn’t have gobbled her pancake any faster! My feelings were mixed—I love that she loved them, but now I have to share the leftovers. Doh!

Cardamom apricot oatmeal pancakes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup oat flour (put 1/2 cup of rolled oats in a food processor or blender)
• 1/4 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup chopped almonds
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup soy milk
• 2 cups cooked oatmeal
• 1/3 cup chopped dried apricots (I find it easiest to cut them with scissors.)

Method

1. Make your oatmeal: add 1 cup of rolled oats and 1 1/2 cups of water to a saucepan. Cook on medium for 10 minutes. The water should have been absorbed, leaving the oatmeal thick and not at all runny.
2. Now mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg with the milk, before stirring in the cooked oatmeal and apricots.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the oatmeal apricot mix and stir until just combined. Add more milk if necessary—the batter should be fairly thick, but not so thick that you can’t easily spoon it into the skillet.
5. Cook your pancakes as you would any other pancakes (we always use coconut oil for pancakes).
6. We usually eat these topped with crushed almonds, bananas and maple syrup.