GF Lemon Pancakes or Muffins + Easy Blueberry Sauce

I made my gluten-free (GF) lemon poppy seed pancake recipe a few times before my family and I moved at the end of August 2014. When I posted that first photo on Facebook, people asked for the recipe. My post had said “It’s going to be a wonderful day! And this was breakfast. #wfpb #nogluten #nosugars #berries #hiddenzucchini”

Well, we moved again just a year later (oh goodness, now another year has gone by), but I’m finally getting this posted. Better late than never?

I based my own recipe on this one, which I believe I found by searching for vegan pancakes on Pinterest. I think I made it even better. They are dense, not fluffy, but my family likes them. We actually like them best not as pancakes, but as mini muffins with a few frozen blueberries in each one. (Nearly every morning we keep our meal more simple, usually eating fruit and oats and raw seeds with maybe some vegetables snuck into the oatmeal thanks to the blender. I’ll have a post on that. But these are fun sometimes.)

None of us has celiac disease or anything. I went without gluten for two months and did not feel any different. However, I think a variety of whole grains, not just wheat, are good for most people along with a good amount of nutritious leafy and colorful veggies, fruits, beans, and raw seeds or nuts or avocado daily. (And B12!) I really like the combined brown rice, cornmeal, and sorghum flavors; or oat flour instead of brown rice flour. You can put rolled oats, or steel-cut, in a high-speed blender to make oat flour. You can also make buckwheat into buckwheat flour but I want to warn you that it has a unique flavor that not everyone likes.

Note:

• These are not too lemony.
• I prefer to buy this baking powder.
• I don’t recommend buying a convenient box of gluten-free (or any other) pancake mix. The problem is that these usually contain sugar, salt, eggs, and or cow’s milk. The mix isn’t cheap, either. Some cost about five dollars for only eight servings.
• Whenever I have doubled this recipe, it fed our three young kids and me, with maybe a little left over to be a future snack or side dish.

Dairy-free Creamed Collard Greens

Here’s an idea to get kids to eat dark leafy GREENS. I got it from a member of Disease Proof Your Child: Nutritarian Group, one of my favorite facebook groups. The recipe is similar to Dr. Fuhrman’s California Creamed Kale recipe. Fat from cashews helps the body absorb more nutrients from the greens. There’s a NutritionFacts.org video on that, I think.

Kale seems to get a lot of attention, and there’s a website called Love Chard. I like all the greens although watercress and arugula are strong and I am not a fan on their own, but I really love collard greens so I’ve gotta try this recipe myself. I usually steam them or put some raw into a green smoothie. This recipe uses frozen collard greens (but the photo I found shows fresh ones), and few other ingredients. Simple and easy it you have a good blender.

 

She wrote, “I blended 1/4 cup of cashews, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast, and 1 cup of water. Then, I put a bag of frozen collards in the pot with the sauce and cooked it down until the liquid became more sauce-like. I added a little Mrs Dash garlic and herb to it, but that was just eye balled…so I guess you could add ‘to taste.'”

 

The mom’s 14-month-old ate a good portion of what was on the plate. These were smaller servings: baked sweet potato strips, blueberries, black beans and black eyed peas, and avocado. Yum!

Vegetarianism from an LDS Point of View

This is a short post to say that I love this article by Christopher Foster: Vegetarianism: An LDS Point of View. I hope you will read it. He makes some of the same statements that Jane does in (at least) one of her Meridian Magazine articles.

Well, I might as well add a photo. This is what I ate and shared with our youngest vegan, from the salad bar at Whole Foods.

I am keeping this short, and trying to relax and take good care of myself because . . . what I didn’t say in my last post is that I am pregnant! We are so excited.

One last thing: the kids love a darling app called Fresh that teaches about fruits and vegetables.

Valentine’s Day lunch

I hope you feel and express love this Valentine’s Day, like every day! The worth of souls is great in the sight of God.

Our kids’ lunch was bread with mustard, romaine, tomato and pickles on it. They don’t have pickles often. Our pears are not ripe yet, darn it. One girl loves apples but we used the last one last night. (By the way, breakfast for us today was oatmeal with plenty of thawed fruit, including strawberries that I cut and used to form a heart in each bowl, and walnut pieces.)

For my own lunch I had a chocolate brownie flavored Dr. Fuhrman bar, and then what the photo below shows. I cooked organic carrots and collard greens in water, placed them in a heart shape, and added raw sunflower seeds and frozen blueberries. That’s it (well, I had more after making the picture). It was so delicious!

The meal was frugal — the carrots (under $1 a pound) and blueberries (under $3 a pound) came from Costco. Since blueberries were not on the EWG Dirty Dozen list I was looking at, I did not buy the organic kind. I think I cooked two collard leaves; I could have done more. The raw sunflower seeds were maybe over $3.50 a pound here in Washington, but this was only about a teaspoon of them. I ate more steamed carrots — the least expensive item — than any of the other foods. The bar ($1.44 each is the member price, $1.92 regular price) also provided a little good fat.

 

An article and a talk about moving our bodies

A few days ago I read this article by Dr. Joel Fuhrman (the one who made up the word “nutritarian” and wrote Eat to Live and Disease-Proof Your Child, etc) on About . com. Isn’t it appropriate in January, when New Year’s resolutions are still new, to talk about exercise? Frugal is in the name of the blog, and working out does not have to cost a penny.

Selfie about halfway through a fabulous 12-mile run in early 2011, about three months after transitioning to mostly-WFPB.

Fuhrman’s whole article is definitely worth reading; it has 21 references. I will share parts, though. He starts out:

“Exercise isn’t just important to expend a few calories. Unless you are a professional athlete, the calories burned during exercise make up a very small portion of the total calories burned for the day. In fact, what we eat has a much greater influence on our body weight. So, why should we bother to exercise?

“Evidence in the past few years has emerged to show that, in addition to reducing our risk for chronic disease, moderate to vigorous exercise may also slow the aging process at the DNA level.”

Did you know that what we eat has a much greater influence on our weight than exercise does? You can eat a lot of food if it’s high-nutrient and low-calorie. Later he says, after explaining the effect of exercise on our aging, “there are so many other good reasons to keep us moving.” He writes about the cardiovascular and other systems of the body.

 

Also, Saturday morning, someone on Instagram quoted a talk, and I looked it up. Elder Klebingat said:

“Take responsibility for your own physical well-being. Your soul consists of your body and spirit (see D&C 88:15). Feeding the spirit while neglecting the body, which is a temple, usually leads to spiritual dissonance and lowered self-esteem. If you are out of shape, if you are uncomfortable in your own body and can do something about it, then do it! Elder Russell M. Nelson has taught that we should “regard our body as a temple of our very own” and that we should “control our diet and exercise for physical fitness” (“We Are Children of God,” Ensign, Nov. 1998, 87; Liahona, Jan. 1999, 103).

“President Boyd K. Packer has taught “that our spirit and our body are combined in such a way that our body becomes an instrument of our mind and the foundation of our character” (“The Instrument of Your Mind and the Foundation of Your Character” [Church Educational System fireside, Feb. 2, 2003], 2; speeches.byu.edu). Therefore, please use good judgment in what and especially how much you eat, and regularly give your body the exercise it needs and deserves. If you are physically able, decide today to be the master of your own house and begin a regular, long-term exercise program, suited to your abilities, combined with a healthier diet. Spiritual confidence increases when your spirit, with the help of the Savior, is truly in charge of your natural man or woman.”

I love how he says to “take responsibility,” “regularly give your body the exercise it needs and deserves,” and “combined with a healthier diet.” I remember being out of shape and I didn’t like it. I remember as an adult buying and eating really unhealthy food (junk), or just overeating good stuff and feeling uncomfortable. Both eating wholesome food for fuel and exercising 4-6 days a week have made such a difference. Our spirits can be in charge of our bodies. I know that exercise is like medicine for those with depression, too.

Exercise-wise I’m looking forward to:

1) more hiking and exploring outdoors in this area for the few years that we’ll live here.
2) increasing the amount of strength-training I do (I miss using the machines at the physical therapist’s place in Provo, Utah).
3) running a 5k race or greater distance again.

Can we discuss: What kinds of exercise do you like? What kinds of workouts / sports /physical activities would you be interested in doing more of or trying for the first time?

Return to “Sparingly”

This is a must-see video, especially for those who are Latter-day Saints.

James Faust and his sheep

More often than not I don’t seek out stories of people being kind to animals, I just notice them in things I listen to, or in other ways. I’m using a religious (LDS) homeschool curriculum with our kids. It has a lesson about shepherds that includes this experience that James Faust had as a boy. Anyone could have an experience like this. President Faust wrote:

When I was a very small boy, my father found a lamb all alone out in the desert. The herd of sheep to which its mother belonged had moved on, and somehow the lamb got separated from its mother, and the shepherd must not have known that it was lost. Because it could not survive alone in the desert, my father picked it up and brought it home. To have left the lamb there would have meant certain death, either by falling prey to the coyotes or by starvation because it was so young that it still needed milk. Some sheepmen call these lambs “bummers.” My father gave the lamb to me and I became its shepherd.

For several weeks I warmed cow’s milk in a baby’s bottle and fed the lamb. We became fast friends. I called him Nigh—why I don’t remember. It began to grow. My lamb and I would play on the lawn. Sometimes we would lie together on the grass and I would lay my head on its soft, woolly side and look up at the blue sky and the white billowing clouds. I did not lock my lamb up during the day. It would not run away. It soon learned to eat grass. I could call my lamb from anywhere in the yard by just imitating as best I could the bleating sound of a sheep: Baa. Baa.

One night there came a terrible storm. I forgot to put my lamb in the barn that night as I should have done. I went to bed. My little friend was frightened in the storm, and I could hear it bleating. I knew that I should help my pet, but I wanted to stay safe, warm, and dry in my bed. I didn’t get up as I should have done. The next morning I went out to find my lamb dead. A dog had also heard its bleating cry and killed it. My heart was broken. I had not been a good shepherd or steward of that which my father had entrusted to me. My father said, “Son, couldn’t I trust you to take care of just one lamb?” My father’s remark hurt me more than losing my woolly friend. I resolved that day, as a little boy, that I would try never again to neglect my stewardship as a shepherd if I were ever placed in that position again.

My heart would be broken, too.

The story is about caring for people, mostly (“feed my sheep”). But in addition to picturing this:

(click photo for source)

 

I couldn’t help but think about this:

#friendsnotfood

Costco purchase: dry pinto beans

I started making photos and drafts for this blog a long time ago. I feel it’s time to begin! I feel the need to publish whole foods plant-based (WFPB) recipes, and posts like this one, that hopefully can help people live a nutritarian / vegan lifestyle. I want to have things all in one place instead of sometimes posting a quick photo and ingredients to x, y, or z group on Facebook. The blog may not be as perfect as I would like. I wanted all of my recipes to have a “How frugal is it?” section at the end if possible, but I’m not sure that I have the time to do that for those that have more ingredients. But to paraphrase what my friend Jane Birch said in her book, this is too important to wait any longer.

Costco [search for a location here] is one of my favorite stores for fresh and frozen vegetables and fruits and a few other unprocessed items . . . like these beans! I just wish I would have figured out sooner that they sell dry ones there.

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How frugal is it?

“Eating the way I do brings me joy”

My story was published today on Discovering the Word of Wisdom! You can read it HERE.