Fun with Food

I'm loving summer because it means no school and more time to play! Reid and I have been doing some experimenting with food.  Here are some of our projects:

 Reid has dressed the part! Actually we've both ruined a few shirts with oil stains from all the cooking with coconut oil and bacon grease.  Whoever is manning the skillet wears the apron now.

 My new (to me) toy! An Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator.  I found this for an AMAZING price on Craigslist.  I'm looking forward to making SO many yummy things like dehydrated fruit chips, all sorts of dehydrated veggies for flavorings and soups, fruit leathers, jerky, and even yogurt can be made in this.

I soaked some nuts over night (soaking makes the nutrition in the nut more available) and dried them in the dehydrator.  The product is called crispy nuts and they make a great snack! And when you pulverize them in the blender you can use them as ingredients in yummy and healthy desserts like:

 These are called No BS Cookies and contain coconut flakes, peanut butter, cocoa, cinnamon, and honey for some sweetness. No need to cook them, I just chilled them in the fridge!

 Last night Reid helped me use some of our soaked nuts to make homemade almond milk.  We blended the nuts with filtered water then strained out the pulp.  The left over liquid we blended with some raisins to add some sweetness.  We used it as coffee creamer this morning. I used the dehydrator to dry the almond meal today, and now we've got a jar of almond flour for some yummy (and gluten/grain-free) treats!

 Reid likes to drink the almond milk plain.  I like it as a mix in.

We've been buying up strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries at their lowest prices since they are in season.  I've frozen a lot of them to use in smoothies or for oatmeal in the mornings.  I also blended some blueberries up with some honey and lemon juice to make a yummy fruit leather.  I just dehydrated the mixture for several hours, and the leather tasted even better than a fruit roll-up and it's healthy too.

Right now I'm trying to dehydrate some left over blueberries.  I'm not sure it's going to work.  But as with all experiments, sometimes they just fail.  The berries are not finished yet in this picture, but we'll see what happens.

Next up, I'm going to use some coconut flakes to make homemade coconut milk and I'll use the pulp to make coconut flour.  The milk should be a good substitute for dairy, and the flour is great for baking! Gotta do all the experimenting I can before school starts again!