Happy New Year!

It's been an interesting few weeks that I just had to write down. I have been trying to cook more naturally (ie-using more natural ingredients), and getting more bang for the buck with healthier foods. So I was going to start all this for a special Christmas meal with treats. Well, it turned out that our oven caught on fire the Sunday night before Christmas, and my hub had to travel for work the following 2 days, so I had no way of using the oven for any meals while he was gone before he could bring a different one home. So I had quite an experience cooking over the woodburning stove!! Hot dogs and mac & cheese over the fire; eggs in an electric skillet; cold tortillas, cheese and fruit. I even tried a frozen pizza over the fire - very interesting indeed!

So I belatedly tried some of those recipes I had been wanting to try. On Christmas Day, I made a typical Haitian treat that is evidently served by street vendors during Carnivale (kind of like Mardi Gras) - Sweet Fritters. These were actually fairly healthy - I used whole wheat flour for the dough, and fried them in coconut oil (canola, vegetable & olive oils all turn to trans-fats at high temps like you use for frying!) I rolled them in a raw sugar. The only problem with them was that I over-frittered. I really liked them, but my stomach didn't like so many of them! It was funny because I asked the kids if they wanted Benye (sweet fritters w/ banana). Their eyes got big and they smiled and said "yes!" So I made a bunch, put them on a plate, set the plate down and said, "benye?" They just looked at them, then looked at me, then looked back and the plate and back at me - almost as if I was joking :( So I took one and took a bite, just to show them they weren't poisonous. They smiled and ate them, although I'm not sure what was different about what I did and what they were expecting!!

Another thing I tried the day after Christmas was using a real coconut. Our oldest had ordered it from our food co-op this month (she was in charge of the food budget and decided we could afford a coconut because it looked like fun!) So I looked at my old orange Betty Crocker cookbook and looked at how they tell you to crack it. I then had to look online to figure what to do with it - I came up with a smoothie. I about blew up my blender though, because coconut "meat" is really hard. The "recipe" just said to put a few things in a blender to make a delicious smoothie - I added coconut, the coconut water, carob powder, maple syrup, raw sugar, and a frozen banana. I asked the kids "eske ou vle cocoye?" (Do you want some coconut?). They got big eyes and wide smile and said "yes!". So I give them this "smoothie" that ended up being basically shredded coconut and some sweetener - you had to chew it coming out of the glass! I handed the glass to them, they looked at it, looked at me, looked at it and looked at me again, as if I was trying to poison them. I had to take a drink first before they would really try it!

A couple days ago, I tried to make chocolate from scratch! I tried substituting real cocoa and upping the sugar to sweeten it. Needless to say, it didn't work - at all. I even re-melted it to add more sugar - still didn't work. In fact, made it taste worse! of course, that was after I tried the carob no-bake fudge the day before that didn't set up and tasted interesting. So then I tried to follow the chocolate recipe as it is in the book, using carob instead of cocoa. It turned out, but has an interesting taste.

Last night, I put rolled oats to soak overnight so that we could make granola today. It didn't turn out too well either :( I found a different recipe that actually uses soaked grains, so I will try that one next time - lower temp and longer time is the key I think. Soaking the grains in an acid base releases the enzyme inhibitors so that a person's body can digest it better. So I just soaked it in apple cider vinegar (doesn't change the taste.)

I'll post some pics of all these things after I get them off the camera! Anyway, it's been kind of fun experimenting, but I just really wish a few more things would've turned out so I didn't feel so much like I had wasted time!