Sweet Potato Roti

I've been meaning to share this simple, delicious, versatile recipe with you all for a while. If you are looking for a wheat free or gluten free alternative to bread, tortillas, naan, or what have you, look no further!

What is roti, you ask? Roti is an Indian flat bread, usually made with a wheat flour.

Due to a wheat allergy, I have welcomed any and all bread alternatives and this one is my favorite!

I first heard of using sweet potatoes from my wonderful friend, Melissa. This is a super simple recipe, literally two ingredients.

What you will need:

1. Baked or boiled sweet potatoes, peeled. (I boiled mine and then the peel slips right off. You can always bake if you prefer.) If I bake, I bake at 400 for about 30 minutes. If you boil, just rinse them and boil for about 20 minutes and check to see if they are soft enough by piercing them with a fork. 

2. Equal parts flour to sweet potato.
(I prefer a wheat free blend I found at Costco by Namaste.).

Let your sweet potatoes cool.

Once cooled, mash your potatoes in a large mixing bowl.

Slowly add your flour and mix together, I ended up using my hands.

Form mixed dough into a log and cut into inch wide slices (or bigger if you prefer).

Scatter your surface with flour to avoid sticking and roll out your round slices.

Simply heat a few minutes on each side in a pan. I use a flat cast iron pan. You have roti!!

My favorite part is that it is freezable! I had took my round slices and froze them on a cookie sheet and then sealed them in a freezer baggie. Months later I thawed them in my refrigerator and had roti dough ready to go for a week! You may need dust with flour when you roll the thawed dough.

Heat and eat!

I have enjoyed them with savory meals, like crack slaw or chicken. I have used them as a sandwich wrap for tuna as well as peanut butter and jam. It's also a nice dessert when dusted with cinnamon and butter. My favorite so far, inspired by an apple and brie toast I had at a coffee shop, was sweet potato roti with apples, brie cheese, sliced almonds, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing. There is so much you can do with this roti!

Let me know what you think if you give it a try or if you add anything special and make it even better!

All the love,

Caffeine and Freckles

Weekly salad and juicing prep in less than an hour, plus some other tips!

This post is a mix of things, but it is all things food prep related. We have some lunches, some dinners, some sauces, and some stashes of veggie scraps for later use.

This morning I was able to prepare 4 days of salads for lunch, along with 4 days of juicing while the kids were getting dressed and ready for school. I'm gonna say it took about 35 minutes. I only did 4 days due to it being Wednesday already. I can start over on Sunday with something new.

Meal prep really saves me in more than one way. When I don't do it, I always wish that I had. I typically prep lunches like salads, quinoa and sauteed veggies, or a spicy veggie soup. The obvious reason is that it saves time. You don't have to make those particular meals that day, it is already done for you. You either pull it out of the fridge and enjoy, or heat and eat! The other benefit for me is that it makes it easier to eat better. If I already have a healthy meal or juice ready to enjoy, I'm not going to pull out a frozen burrito and eat it while I wade around in the waters of food guilt. Plus, you feel organized, which for me brings a little spark into my day.

Let's start with this week's lunch. It all started when I was preparing make ahead freezer meals yesterday.

I spent a few hours cooking a few meals to freeze. Keep in mind, I am a veggie loving fool, but the rest of my family won't eat them! My oldest son will eat most veggies, but when I make wonderfully healthy and delicious meals, they are usually just for me. So dinners are usually pretty plain. Any recipe I share you can easily add veggies too, if you're lucky enough to live with veggie lovers. I made 2 nights of Ground Turkey Chili, 2 nights of Indian Butter Chicken, and a night of Enchilada Casserole with homemade Enchilada Sauce. When the time comes, all I will have to do it pull it out in the morning to defrost and heat later. I can make cornbread waffles for the chili and make rice to accompany the butter chicken. The Enchilada Casserole is great with beans which are easy in the crock pot. Here's a little peek at how the freezer stash is coming along.

This is 3 nights worth of butter chicken (which I will share in another post). You simply thaw on the counter and dump the bag into your crockpot. Serve over rice and add some naan bread and you have a delicious Indian cuisine. This time I added large pieces of sweet potato to the bag, it should be a healthy, taste of sweet added to the recipe.

I have 2 bags of chili where I used half ground turkey and half organice grass fed beef. I have a bag of white chicken chili and a bag of enchilada casserole.

Here I have some things I regularly freeze so that I can either salvage them before they go bad or I've made extra of something.

I like to grate zucchini and freeze it. Remember I told you that my family won't eat veggies? Grated zucchini is perfect for hiding in meals. I use a peeler first to get rid of the dark green color, I swear to you that they will see it and it will blow my cover. I grate it like cheese and freeze it flat in a baggie. These baby bella mushrooms I got at Costco are delicious but I could not use them all in time when it's mostly just me eating them. So I cut up what I had left and tossed them in the freezer. These can be hidden well too if you dice them up small enough, they can blend in with meat and sauce. Then we have the hummus, also bought at Costco, too much for just me, so I took half of the container and froze it for later. The enchilada sauce I had made with a dinner one night and had doubled the batch. Now I have sauce ready to rock if I want to make enchiladas. Little by little the freezer will fill up.

In the midst of the cooking the freezer meals, I decided to put on a pot of lentils. I figured I could add some of them to the chili I was making and save the rest for other meals during the week (like lunch).
Lentils are easy, they just simmer. I added some chili powder and cumin, salt and pepper and the tiniest bit of ground ginger. They are a healthy and versatile addition to any meal. If you don't use all of them in the week, you can always freeze those too!

On to lunch!
I cut up some romaine, topped it with left over ground turkey (yes, we use a lot of that) that I had seasoned with lemon, garlic, and pepper, and topped it with green onions and the lentils. I stuck a wedge of lemon in the container so that I can squeeze it on the salad when it's time to eat. I kept the lentils on top of the ground turkey to avoid the greens from getting soggy. There you have it, 4 days of healthy lunches and it took about 10 minutes or less to throw together due to cooking the lentils a day before and utilitzing the left over turkey from last night's taco dinner.

Juicing! 

I love juicing and I can feel the difference when I fall off the wagon. It can get expensive when you start buying all the extra produce for juicing on top of the produce you already buy for eating. Just keep it simple. People often ask me to share juicing recipes. I'm not sure I have ever followed a juice recipe. I've always enjoyed just throwing together a few veggies and a fruit or two. I always add lemon, and I love to throw in some ginger root and turmeric root when I have it. I don't typically mix root veggies besides those too. For example, If I juice beets, I don't use carrots. It's one or the other, but this is not a rule, this is my taste buds. If you haven't tried juicing I would highly reccomend it. Contrary to what some poeple think, it is nothing like making a smoothie. For me it feels like drinking liquid vitamins. It's almost an instant high, but a healthy one.

So this morning I cut up these bad boys.

Beets, celery, green apple, and lemon. Don't toss your beet stems and leaves! You can juice those too! I kept the leaves separate, because my baggies were getting full, but I cut up the stems and they are included in the prep bag. When it's time to juice, I can throw in a leave or two along with some spinach or kale to green it up. Be careful with the beets, they will stain anything they come in contact with, including your hands, so rinse everything right away. Celery will add a little spice to your juice, so the apple is nice to put some sweetness back in. Don't be scared, cut some shit up and juice it! You will probably like it. I suggest using an apple or orange along with whatever veggies you juice to add a little sweet sauce.

I have one more tip to share. Whenever I am cutting veggies, I always save the scrap pieces. The ends of zucchini, tops of bell peppers, ends of green onion, lemon peel, the butt of a romaine heart, etc. I keep them all in a gallon freezer baggie. I just add scraps to the freezer as I cut them. Once the bag is full, it is this wonderful bag of veggie pieces wating for you to make broth out of it. Perfect and custom veggie broth, or add it to a pot of chicken broth you might be making.

It may take you months to fill up the bag, but they are frozen so they will patiently wait for you.

Meal prep doesn't have to entail a month's worth of meals and hundreds of dollars in supplies. I would love to take a stab at prepping a whole month's worth of meals and when I do I will definately share it here. A week's worth makes a huge difference though. With dinners I like to cook a double batch of whatever I'm making when I can so that I can freeze one. Or when you find something on sale you grab it and throw together a recipe to freeze. There are lots of ways to squeeze freezer meals into your week little by litte and end up with a nice stock pile of ready to go meals.

Thanks for reading about this week's meal prep!

I'll be over here staying caffeinated and freckled!

Recipe Share - Black Bean Hummus

This tasty hummus was easy to whip up, healthy, and can be used in many ways.

I used my Magic Bullet, which works great but is starting to sound like it's scraming at me. I may need to look into something new. I've made hummus a million times in it with chickpeas, it's the perfect size. I'll have to share one of those recipes soon, they are smooth and fresh without tihini or oil.

Anyway, the black bean hummus. I could spruce it up a bit but I used what I had on hand. I used it as a dip and used broken tostadas :-) I'm thinking it would be great on the side of a salad, a spread on a veggie burger (or beef), or used on a sandwhich instead of mayo. Lots of options!

So here it is!

1 15oz can black beans (I use organic)

1-2 Tablespoons olive oil

2 Tablespoons minced garlic

Cumin

ceyanne pepper

black pepper

sea salt

water as needed
squeeze of lemon

I put everything in together (easy on the water at first) and blend! Add a little more water if it is too thick to blend fully. You're done! That's it! There is a lot more you can add to fancy it up but this is a nice basic recipe to throw together.

It was Shandee-tasted and approved! Thanks friend!

Enjoy!

Rotten Red

Recipe Share - Vegetarian - Mushroom Spinach Quinoa Bowl

Are you ready for a delicious, healthy, and simplistic plant-based lunch or dinner idea? I'm going to start sharing more. I've been coming up with the tastiest treats for myself and figure I should share the love. I've never been a huge fan of meat, sticking to mostly chicken and fish. Over the past 10 years or more I would suddenly be grossed out by meat of any kind and omit it from my diet for a while. Lately, I have had little desire for meat, so I'm focused on creating more tasty, nutrient-filled, plant-based dishes.

Quinoa! What is not to love about quinoa?! It has become a staple in my pantry, unfortunately just for me, not the rest of my family. They still dig rice, but I'd choose quinoa over rice any day. It substitutes rice perfectly all while being a super food with all kinds of super powers.

Today's lunch I tossed together based on what I had. I boiled the quinoa in vegetable broth rather than water for some extra flavor and I added turmeric for extra health benefits. Be sure to add some black pepper to help your body absorb the turmeric. I pretty much try to add turmeric to anything I can (especially soups!). It gives it a beautiful golden color and offers too much to get into.You can read about the Benefits of Turmeric here.

So! Quinoa amped up with turmeric and pepper. While those little rascals are simmering away, it's time to chop and saute your veggies. What I had today was mushrooms, red onion, garlic, and spinach. I used avocado oil, my current favorite oil for cooking. I use a lot of coconut oil for all kinds of things, but I absolutely love the avocado oil. It is great for high heat and has no flavor, but who wouldn't want some avocado flavor in your food?

I chopped the mushrooms and onions and added them with minced garlic to my heated cast iron skillet. 

After a few minutes I tossed in a few handfuls of spinach. Don't be shy! They wilt up to be small so throw those handfuls in liberally!

I topped my bowl of quinoa and veggies off with some Himalayan sea salt and added a teaspoon of pesto. Some pesto has dairy in it, so be sure to check labels if you are vegan or you stay away from dairy.

I just made the one bowl for lunch. I have enough left for another meal, plus quite a bit more of the quinoa by itself. I can pop it in the fridge and use it in a soup, salad, or another veggie dish.

Add in whatever veggies you have on hand. Let me know if you try it and what you think!

Quinoa

2 cups Vegetable Broth

1 cup Quinoa

1-2 tsp Turmeric

several cracks from the pepper grinder

Vegetable Saute

1 Tbsp Avocado Oil (or oil of your choice)

3-4 handfuls Mushrooms, chopped

1/4 Red Onion, chopped

1 Tbsp Garlic, minced

3-4 handfuls Spinach

1 tsp Pesto

dash of sea salt

Bring Vegetable Broth to a boil. Add rinsed Quinoa. Return to boil and simmer on low for 15 minutes, covered.

While Quinoa is simmering, heat a skillet with oil to medium to medium-high. Saute Mushrooms, Onion, and Garlic until onions are almost transparent. Add spinach and saute until spinach is cooked but not completely wilted.

Add quinoa to your dish and top with veggies. If you like, add your pesto and mix together along with your sea salt.

Eat it. Enjoy it. Love it.

No Bake Peanut Butter Oat Bites

Trying something new today. I see many Pinterest recipes floating around for no bake energy bites and wanted to give them a whirl.

I didn't use any protein powders as I am personally not a fan of anything that is severely processed (besides the occasional sausage Mc Muffin 😳), but if you are a powder lover, toss them in this recipe!

I threw in whatever I had on hand. I didn't measure, so bare with me.

In a large missing bowl I combined approximately:

2-3 cups of oats

1/4 cup of honey

2 handfuls of chocolate chips (Trader Joe's has some wonderful dairy free vegan chips!)

1/4 cup of chia seeds

2 cups of peanut butter

2 cups of shredded coconut

I was going to add flax seed but learned that a few super rude little moths had infiltrated my container of flax seed.

Again, I'm guessing at the measurements, trust your gut (and your eyes).

I used clean hands to mush and mix together. It appeared crumbly but stick together well when pressed and rolled into balls. I ended up with 19 balls about 1-11/2 inches.

That was it! Into the fridge they went, on top of a parchment paper-covered cookie tray to chill. I snuck a taste and they are great. A little bland, some cinnamon may be included on the next batch, or maybe more coconut.

Let me know if you try them, and please share any no bake healthy treat recipes in the comments below!

Back on the Path

Just over two years ago I was making footprints on a new but familiar path. I had visited the path before but didn't stay long. This time I was determined. I was eating healthy, learning about super foods and listening to my body about what it needed. My walks around my neighborhood turned into jogs with my dog, Dolly. She was losing weight, I was losing weight and it was exciting. I could see and feel the progress. I felt productive and in control. I was doing things for me! I was fitting into clothes that hadn't been worn in a few years. 

It all came to a halt when a decade old hip fracture became worse after all the jogging and no treatment. It was time to stop ignoring it and do something about it. After a nasty hip repair surgery that did more harm than good, a second surgery to remove the hardware to swap it it for smaller hardware and bone cement, I am now, almost two years later, able to handle walks and even the tiniest bit of jogging on soft surfaces. 

It's like a part of my life is starting all over again. As an Aries, (a newborn in a sense) the feeling of rebirth or newness brings much joy. My healing journey isn't done, but it is at its last stages. The tiniest bit of my fracture remains. I am no longer held captive by crutches. Lots of physical therapy is helping to get this violated thigh muscle back in the shape it deserves to be in. 

During these surgeries, I gained weight, my muscles felt lazy, and I was feeling let down most of the time. Limping around at age 35 and working through recovery was not what I wanted, but it became my journey. It is better to embrace it and take all I can from what the universe threw my way. 

So here I am now, ready to lose weight, ready to get this leg where it needs to be, slow and steady. It starts with little triumps. I can walk around the mall now, I can attend activities that require lots of walking or sitting. I can exercise!

Too much pizza and fast food has crept in the last two weeks, something I typically try to stay away from. My stomach is a mess! Today is a fresh start! No dairy (just doesn't sit well with me) and I plan on minimizing what meat I eat. Anytime I have ditched meat from my diet I feel better inside and out, plus I seem to lose weight faster without meat.

The plan is mornings beginning with lemon water and yoga. My reward is my cup of coffee. For now in walking on my treadmill as it is a softer surface. I should be free to run on cement after I see the surgeon in the Summer.  I'm planning some Just Dance as well, fun!

I bought some Saucony running shoes, most comfortable and supportive shoe I have owned as of yet!

It's time to focus on me and this leg in a positive light for once. I've been so limited for so long that it doesn't always feel real yet that all this improvement has taken place, but I am ready to bask in it. 

I opened up my new yoga mat this morning to find a quote printed on the center.

It caught me by surprise as I didn't know there were words on the mat. It was a nice reminder, to hold on. Hold onto improvement, hold on to doing things for myself, and hold onto my personal goals and plans, if I don't let go of them they are always with me.

I'd love to hear some of your healthy recipes, routines, and forms of exercise. Comment below to share!

Cheets to a new year of personal improvement for us all. Do for you! Use your determination as a shield against negativity. Get rid of feelings of obligation to anyone, feel obligated to yourself.

Namaste.