No-Sugar Cheesecake

For New Year's, Jennifer made a great cheese cake without sugar or any added sweetener. We topped it with blueberries or apples sauteed in butter and cinnamon, so of course that added the fruits' sugar. The texture of the cake was fantastic.

We used a low-carb cheesecake recipe, except we didn't put in the "artificial sweetener" (because, yuck). While I like it fine without any sweetener, we discussed putting somewhere between a quarter cup and a half cup of sugar in future attempts if we want a sweeter dessert.

One thing we got out of this recipe that will be useful for other things is the almond meal crust. We'll probably make this for quiche and mousse pies.

To make the crust, mix a cup of almond meal and two tablespoons of melted butter (Jennifer just used a fork for the mixing). We thought we'd increase the quantities by half next time. Press the mixture into the bottom of a pie plate, then bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until slightly browned.



To make the filling, mix in the following ingredients, one at a time in order, with a hand mixer, scraping the bowl with a spatula between each ingredient:

* 3 packages (1.5 pounds) cream cheese (room temperature)
* 4 eggs (preferably room temperature)
* 1.5 teaspoons vanilla
* 1.5 teaspoons lemon juice
* sweetener (if desired)
* 0.25 cup sour cream

After you add the last ingredient, beat the mixture for an additional minute.

We used a water bath to bake the cake. Ours worked great for an hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It puffed up a bit and then settled back down as it cooled.

Here's the finished cake in the water bath:



Cooled, sliced, and topped:

Paleo Pumpkin Pie

Over Christmas Jennifer made two pumpkin pies, one regular and one paleo. Here's a photo of the paleo pie, which is the regular pie minus the sugar and the crust:



The key to a good pumpkin pie is to start with real pie pumpkins. Cut the pumpkin in half, scrape out the seeds, and bake it, cut-side down in a bit of water, for around 45 minutes.

Jennifer bakes a great crust from a recipe in Baking With Julia.

Then, follow this recipe that we got from Jennifer's mom:

Mix:
* 1.5 cups pumpkin
* 3 eggs
* 0.5 cup sugar
* 1.25 teaspoon cinnamon
* 0.5 teaspoon salt
* 0.5 teaspoon ginger
* 0.5 teaspoon nutmeg
* 0.25 teaspoon ground cloves
* 1.66 cups heavy cream

(Note: The original recipe calls for a full cup of sugar, but the pie is plenty sweet with only half of a cup. Obviously for the paleo pie skip the sugar entirely.)

Pour into a 9 inch, unbaked pie shell, or, for the paleo pie, into a pie dish.

Bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for ten minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 30 to 35 minutes, until a poker (toothpick or cake tester) comes out clean. (Note: The pie usually puffs up during baking and then settles back down during cooling.)

Cool. Top with whipped cream. (We use pure cream whipped with vanilla, no sugar.) The original recipe calls for pecan topping, but we've never eaten it that way.

We really like both versions of this pie. We thought that, in the future, we'll try increasing the spice load for the paleo pie, but that's not necessary for a tasty pie.

Baked Pancakes, Cauliflower Puree

Recently I talked about making almond meal and using it in primal pancakes.

I've since tried the almond meal in baked pancakes (a misnomer, I know, but I don't know what else to call them), and it's fantastic.

The recipe is very simple. Put two tablespoons of butter in a pie pan. Melt the butter in the oven at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. In a bowl, mix three eggs, half a cup of flour, and half a cup of milk. I've tried wheat flour, oat flour, and almond meal, and all work great. I haven't tried replacing the cow milk with coconut milk. Pour the batter into the pie plate, and bake for 20 minutes. (Shave off a couple of minutes if you use straight almond meal.)

One nice thing about these is you can put two or three cakes in the oven while you get the rest of breakfast ready; they aren't as labor intensive as regular pancakes.



Next (and unrelated), recently I purchased five nice heads of cauliflower from Target for a buck each. I steamed, pureed, and froze them. I used my new Tovolo silicone ice cube trays, which I really like.

The plain puree was also a great side-dish with butter and a little salt and pepper. I plan to add the dethawed puree to scrambled eggs and such, a la Jessica Seinfeld.

Twelve Bovine Livers

My grandfather farmed peaches in Palisade. I spent many an hour shoveling cow manure, planting and watering trees, and so on. I guess I still have a bit of farmer in me.

Jennifer and I figure we've dried nearly 100 pounds of fruit so far this summer. We got 67 cent per pound apricots, $1.34 per pound cherries, mangos at Costco, and strawberries for 88 cents to a dollar per pound. Now we have outstanding dried fruit to eat through the winter. We're still looking forward to peaches and tomatoes.

This evening we ate the first tomato from our garden. It was small, but very sweet.

And I cooked twelve grass-fed cow livers, chopped them up, and froze them in portions to add to dishes. I thought it would make a fun song:

In the middle of summer,
my true love made for me
Twelve bovine livers
Eleven pounds of berries
Ten trays of mangos...
Five red cherries...
And a tomato from the back yard.

With the liver, I was inspired by Jessica Seinfeld's book on pureeing vegetables and adding them to various dishes. I've taken to pureeing broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, and so on, then freezing portions in baggies. Then I just dump a bag or two of puree into any random dish. I decided to try this with liver as well, as It turns out that Jennifer is no fan of liver and onions.

I bought this liver based on two dietary theories. The first is that grass-fed cows offer more nutrients than junk-fed cows. The second is that organ meats contain higher amounts of certain vitamins such as K2. (Besides, grass-fed cow liver is pretty cheap, so at worst I'm getting a modest-cost dish add-in. By the way, NutritionData.com shows that cow liver has low Vitamin K but high amounts of other vitamins like A and B12. I'd get grass-fed cow milk if it weren't so danged expensive.)

It seems funny to me now that I used to stock my freezer with junk frozen dinners and burritos. Now it's stocked with grass-fed beef, assorted frozen fruits, sale meats, and shredded cheese -- the joys of abundance.

Mango

If you're looking for a delicious and healthy snack, dried fruit is hard to beat. But it has to be good dried fruit, starting with good fresh fruit, and without a bunch of added junk. Fruits that dry well without additives include strawberries, peaches, apricots, and cherries. (I did bananas once, but you have to soak them in something -- I used orange juice -- and they're a complete mess. Good, though.)

And mangos.



Shown here is one sliced mango on a dehydrator tray, with two jars of dried mango in the background.

All you need is a good dehydrator, some good, ripe (but not mushy!) mangos (Costco is currently selling them for around $7.50 for nine), and a good knife (my tool of choice is a Wusthof classic paring knife). And some time.

(I can't think of mangos now without thinking about the Flight of the Conchords mutha uckin fruit song.)

Dried Strawberries

King Soopers is selling strawberries for a buck a pound, not a bad deal, so we've dried sixteen pounds, with another eight to go.

Pictured here are eight pounds of strawberries loaded into a large Excalibur Dehydrator. As you can see, this yielded nine cups of dried strawberries, perfect out of the jar, on salads, etc.

(We have so much work to do on the house, yard, and garden over the summer that I'll probably blog more about that and less about cultural and political issues for a while. We also planted 48 tomato plants yesterday, and I'm a bit sore from digging holes.)