Coconut Pancakes

I was looking over the blog and couldn't believe how much I have missed this month. My husband has started a new cooking endevour and has taken over my kitchen (he's currently working on a cookbook/website idea). It's been great but I can't really share his recipes since he's doing them for more professional reasons. It's nice not to cook but I am running out of ideas to share. I thought I'd go through some of my recipes to see what I haven't shared (I prefer to actually make the recipe within the week before posting just so I don't overlook anything).
This pancake recipe is gluten free. I found it on Swanson's Vitamins website. I have made it for years so I can't say if this is the actual recipe on their website or if I've altered it. The batter is thinner than normal pancake batter and makes thinner pancakes. It's really tasty with that hint of coconut. It's not overly sweet. I often dig out the solid lump in the canned coconut milk and use that as the coconut oil. It's really a combination of coconut oil and milk but easier to work with and doesn't need to be melted since it's already very soft.

Coconut Pancakes
3 eggs, medium sized
3 tablespoons Coconut oil, melted
3 tablespoons coconut milk
1-1/2 teaspoons Honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons coconut flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
In a large bowl, mix together eggs, coconut oil, coconut milk, honey and salt. In a separate bowl, combine coconut flour, baking powder and cinnamon, and thoroughly mix into batter. Coat frying pan with non-stick spray and heat on medium-high. Spoon batter (approximately 1/8 cup or 2 tablespoons) onto hot pan making pancakes about 3 inches in diameter. Flip when batter begins to bubble. Makes approx 8 pancakes.

Quick and Easy Facial Scrub

I'm starting work on a Home Spa Party book that I will be selling as an e-book. It's an opportunity to share some of the party ideas that I have used in the past when I hosted home spa parties for profit. All items in the book will be homemade, easy and as inexpensive as possible.
I like this facial scrub and will be giving up my store bought scrub for just this recipe. We are hoping to go chemical free as much as possible and this will be one quick and easy step.

Facial Scrub
Almonds, raw
powdered milk
oatmeal

Add all the ingredients in equal parts in a blender and puree into a powder. Add water to about 1 tablespoon and use to wash face.

Sometimes I substitute other raw nuts in place of almonds and sometimes I skip them all together. The almond oil adds another nice level of care to the scrub but is not necessary.

Ham in Not Coke

In March, I shared my Ham in Coke recipe. This was how I have been making ham for most of the time I have been married. It's a great recipe except my family and I have been trying to give up soda and look at giving up all artificial stuff in our food. That created a slight dilemma when it came to cooking the ham I had set aside for a Sunday family dinner. Not one to really faulter in the face of a challenge, I figured it can't be too hard to replicate a soda-like beverage for boiling my ham. What we ended up with was the best ham I have ever made. My husband, who always says he doesn't like ham, said if I made it that way every time he'd be a fan. It was a really recipe and open to a lot of interpretation.

Ham in Not Coke:
1 family sized ham, bone-in
Water to cover ham
1 large onion or two small onions, sliced (I quartered the small onions)
1 cup sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, or combination of
1 TB vanilla
Place ham in large pot and cover with water. If ham is pre-cooked then mix "soda" to taste, if not place ham in water after seasoned. Add sugar and vanilla to water until it tastes similar to soda. Add onions. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for a few hours (this really depends on how much time you have and what your plans our). I let mine simmer for nearly 4 hours.
Remove ham from stock and place on baking sheet. My ham had cooked so long that the fat was seperating from the meat. I scraped the fat off and returned it to the stock water. If your fat is not removed, score it to allow the glaze to penetrate.
Make glaze - 1/2 cup honey, 1 TB ground mustard, 1 teas Chinese Five Spice (or a combination of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, anise and allspice). Spoon glaze on ham. Set under preheated broiler until the glaze has carmelized (about 5 minutes or so).
Slice up and serve. Reserve the stock for beans (currently my husband has black beans boiling in the stock and keeps telling me they taste really good but I am at work while he's making the beans).

Breve Creme

Breve Creme is a new line of coffee creamers from International Delight. I discovered Breve Creme through Vocalpoint and was given a coupon to try the product for free. We picked out the Vanilla Caramel Cream since my husband loves caramel in his coffee.
After Sunday dinner, I brewed a pot of coffee and offered up the cream. We drank the entire pot (strange for a family that doesn't drink coffee on a normal basis). I added enough cream to make the coffee a dark beige (I wanted to start with a small amount and work my way up to my usual creamy white). It was wonderful. I didn't need to add anymore than that. There was a perfect amount of sweetness and flavor. I felt spoiled. I don't often buy coffee creamer because they all taste artificial but not this one. It was smooth. I added a review of the coffee creamer to Vocalpoint's website and many of the reviews remarked that there was no artificial aftertaste (I hadn't noticed any aftertaste, and therefore didn't mention it, which was a really good aspect of the creamer). It's not any more expensive than the other International Delight creamers. Right now there is a 55 cent coupon on their website.

German Pizza

Due to illness last week, I don't have really good plans for this week's posts. I promise to get back into the swing of things next week with the product/information tuesdays and new food thursday (I may actually come up with something fun by Thursday).
This recipe is one I found on Kraft's website last fall. It's a rather fun and interesting recipe. I grew up in a german area so there was always sausages and sauerkraut. For this recipe, make sure everything is fairly dry or you will end up with a soggy crust. We buy handmade german sausages which are fairly smoky in flavor. If you buy raw sausages, add water to the pan you are frying them in - just up to 1/2 the sausage side so they will cook evenly. You can use any pizza crust recipe in place of the tubed crust.

German Oktoberfest Pizza
1 tube (13.8 ounces) refrigerated pizza crust
1 pound smoked kielbasa or Polish sausage, cut into 1/4-in. slices
2 teaspoons butter
2 cups leftover or refrigerated mashed potatoes
1 cup sauerkraut, rinsed and well drained
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese
Unroll dough into a greased 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan; flatten dough and build up edges slightly. Bake at 425° for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden brown.
Meanwhile, in a large skillet, saute kielbasa in butter until browned. Spread mashed potatoes over crust. Layer with sauerkraut, kielbasa and cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Breakfast Bake

This recipe is one my husband came up with after getting a brief description from someone else. He made it at Christmas time and then again last Friday (for dinner this time). It's an easy dish to make but does take time in the oven. He's still tinkering with the time and temperature so you may need to adjust a little.

Breakfast Bake
1 bag frozen hash brown (1 pound or so)
8 eggs
1/2 pound sausage (could substitute bacon)
pancake mix and ingredients to make pancakes
Pancake syrup

Fry sausage in skillet, breaking into bite sized pieces. Layer hash browns in an oiled 9x13 baking dish. Pour over eggs. Crumble over sausage after draining off fat. Mix one batch of pancake mix per instructions on box. Pour over hashbrowns. Smooth even. Pour over a generous amount of pancake syrup. Bake in oven at 450 for 45 minutes.

At 450 for 45 minutes we did end up with a few doughy spots but not overly so and the outside was browned nicely. May want to reduce heat to 425 and bake for 1 hour or until completely cooked through. My husband loves this with a little extra syrup. I am contemplating the best condiment for this - I like ketchup on my hashbrowns but not so much on the pancakes.

Lemon Chicken

I believe this is a Kraft recipe that I found years ago. It's such a quick and easy meal that it's like a treat. I don't care for the vegetables in this dish so I leave them out and serve some sort of vegetable side dish (stir fry is a great side dish - mixed veggies fried in a little oil seasoned with soy sauce).

Lemon Chicken
1 tb oil
1 pd chicken
2 cups trimmed snow peas
1 small red pepper, cut into strips
1 4 serv pkg of lemon jello
1 tb cornstarch
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tb italian dressing
2 cloves garlic, minced
heat oil in skillet on med-high heat. add chicken and cook thoroughly. add snow peas and peppers and cook 2 minutes. mix jello with cornstarch in small bowl. add broth, dressing and garlic, stir until gelatin is dissolved. add to skillet. reduce heat to med. cook 3 minutes or until thick. serve over rice.