Hello and welcome back! I hope your week has been enjoyable and you have gleaned much from it. If you are like me, everyday does not consist of rainbows, but each day does come with opportunities and beauty. All we have to do is look through a window or step outside and admire a majestic tree, the intricacy, color, and smell of a flower, or the sound of a beautiful bird singing. It might be just the right thing to help us remember to count our blessings and be grateful in the small things. Each day we are presented with choices and it is up to us to decide what we are going to do with them. We are all a work in progress and it is important to celebrate in our victories, may they be big or small.
Last week my husband and I had the pleasure of spending time with my youngest son Chase, who is an amazing 33 year old man, and his wonderful fiancé Ann. They wanted to spend some time with us and also bring over a few goodies that her sweet mom had brought back for us, from Taiwan. Talk about celebrating in the small things, just to have them over for a few hours for dinner and also seeing how her thoughtful mom made the effort to bring back a taste of Taiwan, was so heartwarming. They are both RN's and on their days off, love to find time to cook and enjoy discovering new yummy dishes to make. Knowing that, I put them on guacamole duty after I asked them if they are any good at making it. They said yes, and jumped on the task. Before long we were all involved in the kitchen. I was following a recipe for a dressing to use on the fajita salad I was making, and my husband Mike was making and serving beverages. He loves finding new drink recipes and trying them out on us. Of course he is the official taste tester :)
After enjoying our delightful Mexican themed dinner, Chase sees that there is one tortilla left. He knows I enjoy making different types of butter's so he says, "Do you have any butters like almond or walnut that I can put on this last tortilla?" I looked and saw we were out, so I said, "I can show you how to make some walnut butter." They both said they wanted to see how I do it, so we cleaned up the kitchen and I got out the ingredients. If you can imagine, all I use to make this yummy treat is two ingredients, walnuts and maple syrup. Simple and lil Sweet.
I got into this several years ago, after I told my sister Chris, that I read walnut butter is really tasty (if you like walnuts) but I was having a hard time finding it. Being a middle school cooking teacher, she looked at me with a matter of fact look on her face and said, "Why don't you just make it?!" A light bulb went on in my brain and I soon found a recipe I thought looked good and I went for it. Some recipes I found called for more ingredients, but I thought the simplicity of this two ingredient recipe, seemed intriguing, so I went for it.
*Helpful Tips: I usually do not include salt when I'm making walnut butter. Only walnuts and maple syrup. Everyone who has tried it, seems to love it that way, but you gotta do, what you gotta do! For approximately 3 cups of unprocessed walnuts, I use less than 2 Tbls of maple syrup. I add it in slowly and keep tasting it, until I get it just right! Make sure you process the walnuts, before adding any Maple Syrup. This is key-largo ;-) Just my silliness coming out!
If you are not adding the syrup, I think adding some salt would be a nice added touch.
So back to making walnut butter with my darlings. I got the food processor out, poured a few cups of walnuts in, and turned it on. Since I have made many batches in the past, I have come to realize that you need to let the walnuts process alone for a while. I tend to only put them in the food processor for a few minutes until it gets to the consistency of beach sand before adding in the maple syrup. I usually like to add in a tablespoon at a time of pure maple syrup to get it to the perfect sweetness. Voila, in less than 5 minutes you have delicious and so nutritious walnut butter.
(Costco is a great buy on these quality ingredients)
After we finished with the walnut butter, we moved on to almond butter. I told them I had only tried making it once before and I wasn't impressed with the outcome because of the weird gummy consistency. I have since come to realize why it was like that and will share with you. I read more about it, and the trick to making almond butter is, you need to roast the almonds about 10 minutes in the oven before putting them in the food processor. So, as I roasted the almonds my hubby found a few popular recipes. (I have included them in my Food For Thought section at the top of the home page)
The one thing I do know, from my love of studying healthy nutrition and how it can make a significant difference in your life, if you are going to eat almonds, Marcona or blanched (skinless) almonds are definitely better for you. I will expand upon this fact at another time. Oh course I didn't have those, but I will add them to my nut butter arsenal down the road :)
So let's get back to the kitchen. We took 3 cups of almonds and divided it in half so we could experiment with both recipes to see which one we liked. Ann proceeded to read carefully the instructions out loud. The first recipe called for almonds, salt, maple syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla extract. As we proceeded, we all agreed we were not satisfied, so we began to troubleshoot. I thought we should try adding a little bit of oil like grapeseed because that oil wouldn't change the flavor. It didn't solve the consistency problem, so my son Chase suggested adding a little warm water after we added the oil. After processing it for a bit, we all agreed that it was just getting worse. The more ingredients we kept adding, the worse it got, so we set the gummy mixture aside and tried again.
(My impatient gummy Almond Butter. Back to the drawing board...)
After cleaning out the processor, we poured in the second cup and a half of walnuts by themselves and turned it on. My curious and tenacious Daughter-in-Law to be discovered by carefully reading the instructions on the recipe, we needed to keep the almonds processing for longer than we were. So, I took her lead and kept them processing for longer than 2 minutes. When I was ready to give up, she said, "keep going, it say's to get it to a luscious creamy consistency." We all laughed about the word luscious being used.
After trying many times to call it a day, on the almond food processing, Ann said it wasn't at luscious yet, and to keep it going. When we all agreed it was at a perfect consistency, we got out a spoon and gave it a try. We all came to the conclusion that it was pretty darn tasty, but a bit time consuming compared to the 5-minute yummy walnut butter. What was still driving us nut's (no pun intended) was the 1st batch of almond butter we botched, so we got a brainy creative idea and put that batch back in the processor and added semi-sweet chocolates to it. My husband named it Juder Butter. How he came up with that one, is a long story! Once again, I have added the recipe for the walnut and almond butter, under the "Food For Thought" Section on the top of the home page.
(Patience makes "luscious" nut butter)
(Add chocolate chips to messed up nut butter, and voila, you have dessert butter)
(Successful nut butter chef's)
If you love walnuts or almonds, and you don't already make your own nut butters, I think you will truly enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that these 2 recipes are not only healthy, but are very tasty. This could serve as your first for the day, and get you started on the Grow My Know Challenge.
* I can tell you one thing, walnuts and almonds are better for you than peanuts. Sorry for being the bearer of tough news, but nuts are not all created equal. Sorry peanut lovers, I was once one too! After doing research on nuts, the consensus seems to be that walnuts are one of the healthiest nuts for you, unless you are allergic to them, obviously!
* I have added a few other good articles on some healthy foods to always have in your kitchen and suggestions on where to buy these ingredients (I think Costco is a great place to purchase them, based on quality and cost) The recipes I used can also be found under the "Food For Thought" section at the top of my home page.
Scripture of the day:
Galatians 6:9
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
I would love to hear how your week has been going in the "Comments" section and how you are doing on your growth journey. Don't forget, practice makes perfect, or at least much "butter" ;-)
Just a reminder:
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Big hugs,
Jen
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