On rare occasions, I surprise even myself and develop my own recipes that actually TASTE GOOD. For my first good act of 2010, I bring you:

Wheat Oat Flax Pancakes With Blueberries & Almonds

That's one pancake on a very large dinner plate. It was yummy AND filling!

A healthy and hearty pancake topped with blueberries and almonds. Low in fat, high in fiber and vitamins and a good amount of protein, too. One pancake is enough! Pair with an orange or apple on the side and a glass of milk or a cup of coffee to finish it off. Even my kids loved this!

Ingredients

Pancakes:
1/2 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup organic ground flax seeds (8 Tbsp)
4 tsp brown sugar, packed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 medium eggs
1/4 cup vanilla yogurt (2 oz.)
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup whole milk

Toppings:
2 cups frozen whole blueberries, thawed
1/2 cup slivered almonds (8Tbsp)
1 cup maple syrup
4 pats butter, salted

Directions

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk eggs and liquids together, stir into dry ingredients. Prepares approximately 4 cups of batter.
Scoop approximately half a cup onto a medium hot griddle or cast iron skillet. Batter is very thick and will need to be patted down and spread out with a spoon.
Cook til the sides turn loose easily and bubbles just start to form and flip. (Bubbles do not form as easily and profusely as they do in thinner batters because of the thickness and the solid ingredients, etc. If you wait for too long for too many bubbles you may overcook the pancake.)

Makes 8 pancakes. Top each pancake with 1/2 pat of butter, 1/8 cup maple syrup, 1/4 cup blueberries and 1 Tbsp slivered almonds. Serve hot and enjoy!

Number of Servings: 8

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 8
• Amount Per Serving:
  • Calories: 324.6
  • Total Fat: 10.2 g
  • Cholesterol: 54.2 mg
  • Sodium: 478.0 mg
  • Total Carbs: 57.2 g
  • Dietary Fiber: 6.2 g
  • Protein: 7.7 g

SO GOOD.

Now, I KNOW what you are thinking. Every time someone says the word “healthy” people start scrutinizing the ingredients to see if it matches up with their standards of healthy eating. Unfortunately, “healthy” means a lot of things to a lot of people.

Here’s my version:

1. I want to include as many whole foods as possible. That means, whole milk (because right now it’s the most whole available to me, I can’t afford fresh milk and I don’t have a milk cow), real butter, fresh or frozen and unsweetened blueberries, etc.
2. I also want to increase the dietary fiber because among other things it promotes healthy digestion and aids in the digestion of fats, etc.
3. I want to limit the amount of sugar, so I used only a small amount of brown sugar and a very small amount of maple syrup. I also did use vanilla yogurt because it’s what I had – I usually buy plain but they were out of plain, otherwise I’d have used that.
4. I want it to be lower in fat. I know you’re thinking “that’s not low fat!” If it were one side serving I’d agree with you, but since the pancake is the bulk of the meal and since the fats come from the butter, milk and yogurt and not something like shortening or red meat the fats are, in my opinion, healthier fats.
5. Lastly, it’s about proportions. I believe that butter is okay, in moderation. I think sugar is okay, in moderation. So nothing in this recipe is over the top, it’s all very well balanced.

I do wish that my kitchen was stocked with freshly ground whole grains, farm fresh eggs and milk, homemade butter and organic everything. But it’s not where we are at right now. In the meantime I’m trying to improve things as much as I can and I’m trying to eat a bit healthier and exercise a lot more to develop a healthier lifestyle. Being able to eat good stuff like this (which honestly was almost as good as the stuffed french toast I made a few weeks ago!) helps me be able to eat healthier and stick to it and love it, too!

Who says that eating healthy can’t taste good, too? Hogwash! =)

P.S. This is the first recipe I’ve ever uploaded to a recipe site! I submitted it to Spark Recipes and it calculated the nutritional info based upon the ingredients I selected. I’m trusting that their numbers are accurate, I did try to compare the info for each ingredient as I went through it. Also, if you want to reduce the calories and sugar a bit more, leaving off the maple syrup will reduce each serving by 107 calories and some of the carbs and sugars, too.

General Mills is running their Dinner Made Easy promotion again. They have a limit and it usually fills up pretty quick. Sign up for their newsletter and you’ll receive samples, recipes and other savings from General Mills – like the recipe for the Giant Peanut Butter Zebra Cookies (pictured above). They fill up quick tho, so hurry!

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*This recipe is adapted from A Year of Crockpotting’s ‘Super Easy Crockpot Lasagna.’ *

Easy Peasy Lasagna in Your Crockpot

Need:

• 1 box Ronzoni whole wheat lasagna noodles
• 2 jars/cans meat spaghetti sauce
• 1/2 lb to 1lb ground beef (optional)
• 1 15oz tub part-skim ricotta cheese
• 2 16oz packages Italian style shredded cheese
• one large crockpot

Directions:

1. Break lasagna noodles in thirds into a large bowl and fill with hot water to soak.
2. Brown and drain the ground beef, add meat flavored spaghetti sauce and heat.
3. Ladle enough meat sauce into the crockpot to cover the bottom. Layer the lasagna noodles on top of the sauce and cover with another layer of sauce. Add a large spoon of ricotta cheese and spread it around. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top and cover with another layer of noodles.
4. Repeat (noodles, sauce, ricotta, cheese) until the crockpot is full. Finish off with a layer of meat sauce and top with plenty of cheese.
5. Cover and bake until the top noodles are done–about 3 hours on Hi. (The original recipe calls for 8 hours on low OR 4 hours on Hi, but I shaved some time off by pre-soaking the noodles and using hot meat sauce.)
6. Serve with your favorite salad and enjoy!

Tips and Tricks:

• When I make spaghetti, I use a can of meat flavored sauce and a pound of ground beef and I freeze almost half of it. Having that on hand, I defrosted it and heated it in the microwave with the new meat flavored sauce. By doing this, I did not need to buy ground beef for this recipe, and I did not actually have to cook anything on top of the stove during preparation.
• This makes quite a large amount, and with proper rationing (a.k.a. proper portions and supplemented with a large salad on the side) could conceivably leave enough leftovers – making for a free lunch the next day!

The results:

My entire (uber-picky!) family loved this. My eldest only ate a little but she deemed it “okay.” My husband had half a plate full!

The noodles were well cooked but not mushy (and NO ONE said anything about them being whole wheat – which I attribute to how well they cooked in the crockpot and also the good quality of the Ronzoni pasta – which I love.)

It was very easy to put together, delicious, and in the end very pleasing. Two thumbs up!

It’s no secret flour is a major staple in any kitchen. And yet for the first many years of our marriage I rarely had it on hand.

But that’s beside the point.

As if you needed any further proof that you ought to keep plenty of flour on hand (or in case you do) here’s a list of some things you can do with plain ole’ all purpose flour.

Thirteen Things You Can Make With Flour

Edibles:

1. Flour tortillas
2. Pie crust
   
3. Graham Crackers
4. Crackers
   
5. Pancake and waffle mix
6. Soft breadsticks
7. Pita bread
8. Sopapillas

Non-edibles

1. Play Dough
2. Glue & paste
3. Air dry or bake clay
4. Finger Paint
5. Paper Mache

Did I mention these are SUPER cheap and frugal? Yeah, they are. =)

Speaking of things to make and do:

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The hot pan of buttermilk biscuits is pulled from the oven, the biscuits steaming and perfect: slightly hard and crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy and wonderful on the inside– no, it’s not a dream! This is your kitchen! And these are biscuits even the most inexperienced and novice chef can make with success.

Wanna Know How?

5 Easy Steps to Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

1. Set your oven at 400 degrees to pre-heat.

Does this really count as a step? I mean, really. All you have to do is turn the knob. Yet, it’s important to do this first so your oven is ready later. So yes, it’s a “real” step. Is this any indication of how easy this is going to be?? After that, gather your supplies:

2. Mix your ingredients.

With a butter knife – yes it matters – mix your dry ingredients (see down below) and buttermilk in a large bowl, cutting the buttermilk into the dough as you mix. The butter knife prevents the dough from getting mashed up and mixed too well and helps it form little “lumps.” The lumps are good, they’ll keep the biscuits nice and fluffy. If you mix it too well, the dough and the biscuits will be more dense later.

3. Knead your dough until it just comes together.

Keeping in mind that you still don’t want to overmix, turn your “dough” (though at this point it will resemble a bowl of gravel sized  lumps) onto a.) a floured surface or b.) a floured baking sheet or pizza pan. I just dump it straight onto my pizza pan that I’m going to be baking on because it’s less clean up. Gently knead it and press it together until it just comes together. The dough should not be overly sticky or wet. You may need to add small amounts of flour as you knead to keep the dough from sticking to your hands or the baking sheet. As soon as it stops falling apart into little lumps and stays together in in one big main lump, stop kneading.

4. Roll out the dough and slice it.

Now you need to prep your dough for baking. You may need to pick up your dough and shake some of the excess flour off of your baking sheet. Center your ball of dough and slightly flatten it with your hand. Add a sprinkle of flour and roll it with your rolling pin, about an inch to an inch and a half thick. Don’t worry, it will rise a lot! You can either roll it round, or you can try to roll it out in a squareish shape. I like to pick up my disc of dough and flip it over to ensure that the biscuits don’t stick to my baking sheet. Using my pizza cutter, (it slides through the dough without sticking!) I slice the dough into pieces. And that’s it. I don’t separate the pieces before baking – they’ll bake up nicely and pull apart easily later.

I bake my biscuits on a pizza pan like this:

5. Bake and enjoy.

Again, does this really count as a step? Well.. you gotta bake them so I suppose it does. =) Bake the biscuits at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes (or just until the tops start to brown a little bit.) They don’t need to brown much. Go ahead, crack one open! See how steamy and fluffy they are? You can just slide your little metal spatula under one of the pre-cut biscuits and lift it up out of there. How much easier could it be? Serve them up with a side of bacon and top them off with some good pepper or sausage gravy and enjoy. Or, if you prefer, slather with some butter and your favorite jam. Either way, you won’t be disappointed.

A few more tips to help you through it…

• You can either use this recipe for Copycat KFC Buttermilk Biscuits or you can use Pioneer Brand Baking Mix and follow the recipe on the box (subbing milk with buttermilk and adding a pinch of salt.) I have tried and tested both of these too many times to count. In my opinion the Pioneer brand baking mix has the best performance results and is one of the few things I splurge on rather than buying store brand.
• It’s important to use good baking powder. If your baking powder is old, your biscuits won’t rise well or at all.
• I substitute butter for lard! Wouldn’t you??
• Yes, buttermilk is a must. Believe me, I won’t go near the stuff outside of baking, but for baking purposes it’s “the bomb.” For some reason I don’t have a scienctific explanation for, buttermilk makes things fluffier.
• If you’d prefer, you can mix the dough and lightly press into a round, disposable, aluminum cake pan. Slice and bake as normal. This would be a great way to include some homemeade biscuits with a meal for a sick friend!

Homemade buttermilk biscuits work for me and now they can work for you too! Works for Me Wednesday is hosted by Kristen @ We Are THAT Family!

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If I haven’t mentioned it before, I have a deep love for breakfast foods: panckes, waffles, crepes, bacon, hash browns, biscuits, fresh fruits, fresh squeezed OJ… Oh, I’ve mentioned it before? Huh. So it should come as no surprise that I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the homemade blueberry pancakes I made last Saturday!

I’ve been having something of a craving for blueberries lately – and not the faux blueberries you get in an box mix, either. But I can’t really justify the cost of the fresh blueberries, so I met somewhere in the middle and bought frozen blueberries. Frozen berries are a great thing to keep around, it makes it easy to bake yummy treats with real fruit in them no matter what time of year it is.

I considered making them completely from scratch (and probably will next time- here’s the recipe I use for buttermilk pancakes) but I was in a bit of a hurry so I just pulled out the trusty Pioneer baking mix. Pioneer Brand baking mix is by far the best thing to use if you’re not doing it yourself, as far as I’m concerned. Using half milk/half buttermilk instead of all the milk the recipe called for, I made one “batch” as is listed in the directions and added in about a cup and a half of rinsed blueberries. Believe me, this was PLENTY of berries for the one batch.

They were very berry!

Rinsing is key, by the way. It helps prevent the entire bowl of batter from turning purple. But hey, if you like purple pancakes, by all means, go ahead. I also just gave it one quick stir and then didn’t mess with the batter much after that so as not to mash up the blueberries.

I also want to take a minute to sing the praises of buttermilk. I cannot abide the smell of buttermilk nor am I willing to drink it plain but I love to make biscuits and pancakes with it. I don’t understand all the chemistry behind it, but I know that using buttermilk in pancakes makes them fluffier. A lot fluffier. It just does. I don’t know why.

Also, I did realize early on that I needed the heat on the skillet to be just a smidge lower than normal. But after I got the temperature just right, the kids and I enjoyed a whole slew of hot blueberry pancakes, served with a side of bacon of course! THEY WERE JUST DROP DEAD DELICIOUS. They were fluffy and moist and chock full of sweet and tangy blueberries in all the right places.

IHOP eat your heart out.

Works for me Wednesday is hosted by Kristen @ We are THAT Family, hop on over!

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