My Kitchen Life got off to a great start this past week with something that I hope will get a lot of my mornings off to a great start over the coming weeks: a Grapefruit Smoothie, inspired by several dozen grapefruits my friend Juli supplied me with after she read my recent post about our backyard lemons and oranges (click here to read about our citrus supply). As we dug into the grapefruits—eating some and juicing some—I decided to look for some recipes that would help me use them more creatively. A Web search yielded a couple of good ideas, which I cobbled together to make a healthy and delicious blended drink. We’ve been enjoying it for breakfast, but it would make a great treat anytime of the day! (Click here to see the recipe.)

This week I also used some of the pecan butter I made last week in a batch of Pecan Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. I used a recipe that I had previously adapted to make dairy-free, egg-free and gluten-free almond butter cookies. They came out darker than usual (probably because the pecan butter is darker than almond butter), but soft and chewy and amazing. (Click here for that recipe.)

A question posed by Wendy in the comments about my Kitchen Life post last week prompted me to include some details here about two of the kitchen items I use and write about regularly but haven’t ever really explained. The first is Rapadura, a brand name for the dehydrated cane-sugar juice supplied by organic food company Rapunzel. As an unrefined sweetener, Rapadura’s mineral content remains intact and lends it a hint of molasses flavor. It can be substituted in equal amounts for white sugar in recipes. Another brand name for it is Sucanat, distributed by Wholesome Sweeteners. I have used both brands with much success—especially in cookies, cakes and muffins. Sometimes, when I don’t want as much molasses flavor (as in the case of say, ice cream), I blend it half and half with a slightly more refined organic sugar. And although it’s not always necessary, I tend to grind the large granules of Rapadura/Sucanat to a finer powder in my Vita-Mix.

Which brings me to the next kitchen item I want to mention. A Vita-Mix is a high-performance blender, food processor and grain grinder. I was first introduced to one about five years ago, when my parents bought one. After seeing what it could do, I begged to borrow it to make baby food and grind gluten-free grains into flour. They graciously agreed, and I’ve been hooked ever since. When my parents hinted that they would like their Vita-Mix back, I purchased my own machine. It’s a pricey piece of kitchen equipment (starting at $450), but it has a seven-year warranty and, along with its top competitor Blendtec, has helped set the industry standard for high-power, multifunctional blenders. The only drawback is that it is SO LOUD when it operates that I have to warn everyone to plug their ears or leave the vicinity. Still, I’m not exaggerating when I say I use it daily—often many times a day—to make everything from soup to nut butters. I puree pizza sauce, make hummus and churn butter in it, too. While I no longer need to make baby food, I’m definitely still at the task of grinding grains. And you can bet that I’ll be using it—while wearing the hearing-protection ear muffs I occasionally borrow from my husband’s wood-working shop in the garage—the next time I whip up a Grapefruit Smoothie.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here. And if you’d like information about the GNOWFGLINS Fundamentals eCourse offered by real-food blogger Wardeh Harmon, click on the affiliate link below.

. . .(or freezing, in one case) in my kitchen this week: sprouted lentils, pecan butter, strawberry ice cream with strawberry sauce, and a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free version of soaked muffins.

I got the idea from my friend Wardeh Harmon at www.gnowfglins.com to sprout some lentils and add them to grass-fed ground beef as a way to make the meat stretch and add some extra nutrition to our usual taco filling. I wasn’t sure whether it would alter the taste too much—or what my family would think of the idea. But the lentils blended right into the meat and spices (cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper) without any noticeable taste or texture differences. And after questioning the appearance of the filling initially, my family had no problem heaping it onto their plates. What I loved best of all was that sprouting 1 1/2 cups of lentils and adding it to 1 pound of ground beef made enough filling to feed our family of six for two whole dinners!

After trying my hand at almond butter a couple of weeks ago, I decided I might want to try the same process with some of the pecans that have been stored in my freezer for awhile. I wasn’t sure what to expect, having never seen pecans made into a butter. What I got (after following the soaking and dehydrating process outlined in Nourishing Traditions) was a rich, dark spread—more earthy than the sweeter-tasting almond butter, but really good. I’ve tried it on pancakes and, as pictured here, packed into a halved and cored apple.

Inspired by Wardeh’s recent posts featuring Best Chocolate Ice Cream and Basic Chocolate Syrup—and by a desire to use the frozen organic strawberries I recently got from Azure Standard—I made dairy-free strawberry ice cream and topped it with strawberry sauce. I used coconut milk as the base for the ice cream, plus about two cups of strawberries and a 1/2-cup mixture of Rapadura and organic sugar (powdered in the Vita-Mix). The sauce was simply more strawberries pureed with a little sugar in the Vita-Mix and drizzled over the top. The ice cream froze to a firmer consistency than my past attempts, thanks to Wardeh’s tip not to overfill the freezing canister. It could have used a bit more sweetening, and my husband felt like the coconut flavor overpowered the strawberry flavor, but as it disappeared pretty quickly, I’d say nobody really minded.

I’d been wanting to try Wardeh’s Basic Soaked Muffins for awhile, and I finally got around to making her version (using soft white wheat) as well as a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free version (using an all-purpose blend of gluten-free flours—buckwheat, millet, sorghum and sweet rice) that Kellen could eat (pictured here). I added raisins to both batches, and was really pleased with the results. We had them for breakfast for several days before they, too, were all gone.

It’s probably pretty evident from this post—as well as many others I’ve written—that Wardeh Harmon is a real inspiration in my real-food endeavors. And she can be for yours, too. If you need basic recipes and techniques—as well as encouragement and ideas—for converting your kitchen to traditional food-preparation methods, I hope you’ll consider enrolling in her GNOWFGLINS Fundamentals eCourse. (I wrote about it in this post.) You can also click on the “Simple Plan, Healthy Food” image below to read more about what the course will include. Enrollment begins Friday, Feb. 5!

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.