Little Speck on Big Planet

Chocolate Mousse

If you read my Guacamole post, you knew I had some avocados lying around that I needed to do something with. I was flipping through a recent addition of my Vegetarian Times magazine and they has an article on raw foods. One of their recipes was for a Live Chocolate Mousse that called for avocados.

That piqued my interest.

It sounded interesting and worthy of something to try. My version, below would not be considered raw, for those of you out there that like to do raw foods. First and foremost because I did not use raw agave nectar nor did I use raw cocoa powder. Secondly, since I have a tree nut allergy, I cannot use almond butter like they listed. I used peanut butter instead which changed the taste of this mousse to something that is close to a melted chocolate peanut butter cup.

(Side note – A raw food diet consists of consuming foods that are uncooked, and unprocessed, and have never been heated to a temperature above 115 degrees Fahrenheit.)

My version turned out yummy. I served it with with some graham crackers and a little sprinkle of a shredded, sweetened coconut.

Chocolate Mousse

2 avocados (If you don’t know how to tell if they are ripe or how to cut them see this post here.)

1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons agave nectar Chocolate Mousse

1/4 cup cocoa powder

Water as necessary for blending

2 Tablespoons natural creamy peanut butter

Place the avocados, agave nectar, and cocoa powder in a blender and process until smooth. Add water as necessary, 1 Tablespoon at a time, until you have a nice blended, and smooth mousse. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the peanut butter.

1 Comment

Kristen, March 3rd 2010 | Tags: avocado, chocolate
Posted in Dessert

Chef Kristen’s Guacamole!

Last weekend I took a trip to Trader Joe’s to replenish some of my pantry staples. But while I was there, I found myself browsing around the aisles as I have a habit of doing. I think Trader Joe’s sells the best avocados and I was excited when I saw they had the bags of them for sale. I don’t think I have ever purchased a bad avocado from them. Two of them I planned to use in a Chocolate Mousse (click here for recipe) so the other two I turned into guacamole! All the below ingredients can be adjusted to suit your tastes. When I make guacamole, I base it off this formula, though none of guac’s are ever exactly the same. If I want to spice it up more, sometimes I will throw in a chopped chipotle chile.

Avocados are high in good fats, mono-unsaturated, which makes them creamy. Use this recipe as an appetizer or dip, side dish, or as a substitute for mayonnaise on a sandwich.

If you aren’t sure if your avocados are ripe, use this test. Hold the avocado in your hand, gently press with your thumb at the stem end of the avocado (this is the smaller end). It is ripe if your thumb makes the avocado indent slightly. If you can’t indent it, the avocado is too hard and not ripe. Conversely, if you press and the avocado is very soft, it is over ripe and will probably have brown spots on the inside you will need to cut out.

To cut an avocado, place it in one hand. With your other hand, insert a knife vertically into the fruit until you reach the seed. Rotate the avocado around the knife blade until you have gone all the way around. Separate the avocado into two halves, the seed will remain on one side. Remove the seed by whacking it with the blade of the knife and twisting out. Use a spoon to scoop the flesh from both sides of the skin.

Guacamole

2 Hass avocados, peeled and seeded Guacamole

1/2 pint of grape tomatoes, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1/4 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon salt (I use a Himalayan Pink Salt so if you don’t have that, use Kosher Salt)

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Juice from 1 lime

Mash the avocados in a bowl with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir together. Serve immediately or press plastic wrap down on top of the guacamole and press out the air to prevent browning.

2 Comments

Kristen, February 25th 2010 | Tags: avocado
Posted in Appetizer, Sides, Snacks

Stuck in Fitness-less Rut

Newton’s first law of motion – A body in motion tends to stay in motion.

Unless that body lives in the DC suburbs and has had somewhere around 40 inches of snow dumped on it over the past 5 days. I now live in a world of “has been cancelled“.

My swim team practices have all been cancelled this week, along with all my yoga classes. Plus, being the outside runner that I am, there is no place to run with the snow all over the roads, and forget about trying to find a sidewalk.

So what is fitness junkie to do?

Now before you say shovel, trust me, there has been plenty of that. But shoveling has not been providing the elevated heart rate aerobic exercise I am looking for. I need something else.

Enter this great show I found on TV, Total Body Sculpt with Gilad. These videos are great! Gilad is upbeat, knowledgeable and very good at encouraging you to keep going. Plus, all the ones I’ve seen have been filmed in Hawaii, which is a nice change from the 5 foot piles of snow that now surround my house. I added some 2 pound hand-weights to increase the intensity of the workout and it has worked like a charm. Hip, hip, hooray for elevated heart rate!

These videos are for any fitness level as it allows you to work at whatever pace and intensity feels good to you. The only bad thing about doing these videos on TV are the breaks in the action for commercials. I tried to be disciplined and keep moving during the breaks, though without Gilad there, it was easy to wuss out.

So in my snow bound state I went looking to see if I could find these videos for sale anywhere. Eureka, he has several on Amazon! I will be getting a few of these as I now see the benefit of having access to fitness tools in the home.

No Comments

Kristen, February 11th 2010 | Posted in Fitness

Potato Beer Soup

With all the cold and snowy weather we have been having this year, it’s so nice to have soup for dinner. Two weeks ago I made this soup for one of my personal chef clients. As I was tasting it to adjust the seasonings, I remembered just how great this soup is. So I came home and made it for us.

Hubby had posted on Facebook how much he liked this soup, which started a thread of people asking for the recipe. So here it is, and since they are calling for MORE snow here in Virginia, you can use it to warm yourself up.

Potato and Beer Soup

Potato Beer Soup

1 large Vidalia onion, chopped

1 12 ounce room temperature beer (I use an IPA)

2.5 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

4 cups of liquid (I used 3 cups of veggie broth and 1 cup of water as I had some leftover broth to use)

1 cup heavy cream

4-5 ounces sharp cheddar cheese (Use one that has been aged for 2 years)

In a soup pot heat 1 Tablespoon of a neutral tasting oil (like canola or grape seed). Add onion and saute until the onion starts to brown and caramelize. Pour the beer in and let it boil for about 5 minutes or so. You want the volume of beer to be reduced by half, though it does not have to be exact.

Add the potatoes and your liquid and simmer until the potatoes are cooked. Puree the soup with an immersion blender until smooth. While stirring with a wooden spoon, slowly pour in the heavy cream. Add the shredded cheese and stir until it melts.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. You will definitely need to add some salt.

3 Comments

Kristen, February 2nd 2010 | Tags: potato
Posted in Soup

Winter French Lentil and Root Vegetable Salad

This is one of my favorite winter meals. It is very grounding and filling with all the root vegetables and lentils. Plus it uses beets which I love because they are like getting two vegetables for the price of one. You can use both the roots and leaves in this recipe!

I apologize for the delay in getting this picture up. I know promised some of you that it would be there yesterday. I had some internet issues that were beyond my control, but now we are good to go.

Winter French Lentil and Root Vegetable Salad

1 large red onion, sliced

1.5-2 lb root vegetables, diced (turnip, beet, parsnip, celeriac, carrot, etc…)

1-2 Tablespoons olive oil

Salt and Pepper

¾ cup French lentils, rinsed

1 bay leaf

1 small shallot, minced

1 tsp Dijon mustard

¼ cup fresh parsley, minced

3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 Tablespoons olive oil

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves garlic

beet greens, removed from stems and coarsely chopped

Preheat your oven to 425. Toss the onions and root vegetables with the olive oil, salt and pepper in a large roasting pan. Roast for about 35 minutes, or until the vegetables are lightly brown. Give the pan a good shake once or twice while roasting so they brown evenly. Remove from the roasting pan and place in a large bowl.

Place the lentils and the bay leaf in a medium saucepan. Make sure the lentils are covered by at least 2 inches of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let the lentils simmer for 15-20 minutes. If the water level in the pot gets to low, just add more water so the lentils are covered. Once lentils have reached the right consistency, drain them and place in the bowl with the roasted vegetables.

If the salad is to be enjoyed immediately, dress the lentils and vegetables while they are hot. If you are making this to enjoy later, let the lentils and vegetables cool to room temperature and then dress them.

To make the dressing, combine the shallot, mustard, parsley and balsamic vinegar in a bowl and whisk together. Once combined, slowly whisk in the olive oil. Pour the dressing over the lentils and vegetables and toss to combine.

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan. Add the garlic and saute 30 seconds. Add the beet greens and saute until it wilts and the garlic is evenly distributed among the leaves. Add the beet greens to the rest of the salad and toss together.

No Comments

Kristen, January 25th 2010 | Tags: beet, French lentils
Posted in Entree, Salads

Yoga at Any Age

For the past couple of weeks I have had the immense pleasure of teaching yoga at a local retirement home. This arrangement came about when the facility was looking for a substitute for their regular fitness instructor. They were hesitant at first when I suggested yoga, and I don’t blame them for being that way. The majority of yoga pictures we see in our society are of young, svelte people who have twisted their bodies into postures that the average person, including myself, will probably never be able to accomplish.

But then there is Chair Yoga.

Chair Yoga you say????

That’s right, I teach a style of yoga in which we use a chair as our base and as a prop to make yoga accessible for everyone. In addition to the retirement home, I also teach this style of yoga at a physical therapy center for patients recovering from knee and back surgery, and starting next month I will be teaching to individuals who are coping with MS.

If you looked in the exercise room at this retirement home you would not see anyone doing a downward facing dog. What you would see is a group of happy people who are working on posture, sitting up straight, opening their chests, joint mobility, coordination and breathing, just to name a few things. And you know what… they love it. When I come to teach, half of them are already ready and waiting for me.

So, if these 70 and 80 year young individuals can do yoga, anybody can!

1 Comment

Kristen, January 17th 2010 | Posted in Fitness, Yoga

Red Lentil Pancakes

I had some leftover cooked red lentils in my fridge and was looking for something to do with them. I came across this recipe in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian Cookbook. I followed the recipe for the most part except that his called for just soaked lentils that you puree while I had pre-cooked ones which I just mashed up. Here is what I did.

Red Lentil Pancakes

1 cup cooked red lentils, smashed up Red Lentil Pancakes

1/2 cup sliced green onion

1 carrot sliced into thin matchsticks

1 Tablespoon minced garlic

1 Tablespoon minced ginger

2 Tablespoons garam masala

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs whisked

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and stir until a batter forms. In a large nonstick pan, heat a high heat oil (I used grapeseed) over high heat. Add 3 separate spoonfuls of batter to the pan and flatten them out so there is a large surface area. Cook about 4 minutes, flip and cook for another 2-3 minutes. (I needed to use two spatulas to sucessfully flip the pancakes without them breaking.) Repeat until you run out of batter. (I got 6 pancakes though a couple of mine were a little large.)

I served this with some brown rice, unsweetened applesauce from a local orchard, and a big green salad.

No Comments

Kristen, January 13th 2010 | Tags: red lentil
Posted in Entree

Newton’s first law of motion – A body in motion tends to stay in motion.

So what is fitness junkie to do?

Potato Beer Soup

1 large Vidalia onion, chopped

1 12 ounce room temperature beer (I use an IPA)

2.5 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

4 cups of liquid (I used 3 cups of veggie broth and 1 cup of water as I had some leftover broth to use)

1 cup heavy cream

4-5 ounces sharp cheddar cheese (Use one that has been aged for 2 years)

Add the potatoes and your liquid and simmer until the potatoes are cooked. Puree the soup with an immersion blender until smooth. While stirring with a wooden spoon, slowly pour in the heavy cream. Add the shredded cheese and stir until it melts.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. You will definitely need to add some salt.

This is one of my favorite winter meals. It is very grounding and filling with all the root vegetables and lentils. Plus it uses beets which I love because they are like getting two vegetables for the price of one. You can use both the roots and leaves in this recipe!

I apologize for the delay in getting this picture up. I know promised some of you that it would be there yesterday. I had some internet issues that were beyond my control, but now we are good to go.

Winter French Lentil and Root Vegetable Salad

1 large red onion, sliced

1.5-2 lb root vegetables, diced (turnip, beet, parsnip, celeriac, carrot, etc…)

1-2 Tablespoons olive oil

Salt and Pepper

¾ cup French lentils, rinsed

1 bay leaf

1 small shallot, minced

1 tsp Dijon mustard

¼ cup fresh parsley, minced

3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 Tablespoons olive oil

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves garlic

beet greens, removed from stems and coarsely chopped

If the salad is to be enjoyed immediately, dress the lentils and vegetables while they are hot. If you are making this to enjoy later, let the lentils and vegetables cool to room temperature and then dress them.

To make the dressing, combine the shallot, mustard, parsley and balsamic vinegar in a bowl and whisk together. Once combined, slowly whisk in the olive oil. Pour the dressing over the lentils and vegetables and toss to combine.

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan. Add the garlic and saute 30 seconds. Add the beet greens and saute until it wilts and the garlic is evenly distributed among the leaves. Add the beet greens to the rest of the salad and toss together.

But then there is Chair Yoga.

Chair Yoga you say????

So, if these 70 and 80 year young individuals can do yoga, anybody can!

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