Real recipe from foodnetwork.com. My fave comment on it: LocalBoyMakesGoo: “Tried this recipe last night. The bacon was great, but the paper towels tasted awful.”
“2 cups dried, unsweetened coconut, 1/2 c almond flour, 1/4 c coconut butter, 1/4 c maple syrup, 1/8 tsp vanilla and sea salt. Mix, roll into balls, refrigerate.” It wasn’t until I read this recipe for raw, grain-free macaroons on I’m Not Superhuman and ran immediately to my kitchen to make them that I realized how much you food bloggers have warped me: I have every one of those ingredients on hand.
First things first: these macaroons are aMAYzing. Go make them. (I subbed sugar-free maple syrup to keep the glycemic index down. I know, I know, Splenda will kill me but I really didn’t want a sugar crash and remember that research about fake sweeteners making you hungrier? It seems they were wrong. There, now you all know my dirty little unhealthy secret.)
Second: That is a lot of weird ingredients, especially to just have sitting around my kitchen on any given Thursday night. Four years ago I wouldn’t have even known what coconut butter is much less be okay with eating it and keeping it as a staple. (Hint: make your own, way cheaper!)
A quick survey of my kitchen shows that I have a lot of weird food in it. Maca powder. Guar gum. Nutritional yeast (a 2-lb bucket no less). Buckwheat. Teff. Chia seeds. Groats. Quinoa (does this one count as weird anymore?). 5 pounds of coconut oil. Plain, whole yogurt (again, make it yourself. Super easy!). Goji berries. Oat flour. Amaranth. Cardamom pods. Red curry paste. Miso paste. Tahini. A whole beef liver that I still have not got the guts to cook. And we won’t even get into all the crazy spices that I can only find at the Asian food market or my braid of dried chiles.
I blame you.
Real recipe from foodnetwork.com. My fave comment on it: “AnnieFalafel: “BUT HOW DO YOU OPEN THE CANS OF PEAS?!?!?!?!?!”
While I’m not a food blogger and honestly, not a great cook either, I am a very adventurous eater and if you tell me something has great health benefits then it’s pretty much guaranteed I will find a way to buy some. On one hand, you all have introduced me to some foods I love. Nutritional yeast sounds nasty but it’s really delish – I put it on everything from popcorn to granola to veggies to yogurt. And coconut oil? I eat it plain off the spoon. Mmmm.
On the other hand though, I still have a pound of chia seeds just hanging out in my pantry because HOLY TINY BALLS OF GELATINOUS CRAP, how do you guys eat these? The taste is – well, they taste like nothing – but the texture is the worst cross between tapioca, snot and fruit on the bottom yogurt that’s been sitting in your car all day in the summer. I dry heaved the first time I drank a smoothie with those in it. I even tried grinding them first in my Vitamix before I made the chocolate chia “pudding” that is omnipresent on every healthy food blog out there. All the plant-sourced Omega-3’s in the world couldn’t save that one from going down the disposal. Not to mention how you’ll be flossing them out of your teeth for a week afterward. (If you leave them will you grow Chia Pet dentures?)
I suppose, thinking about it, the weird thing is not that my pantry has been taken over by “seven different ancient grains” and a 12 oz jar of Stevia that has caused more than it’s fair share of white-powder-addiction jokes, but rather that I still hang on to any of my processed “normal” junk from before. In addition to my sugar-free maple syrup – yes I have 100% real that I feed to my kids, can’t have their little insides rotting out! – I also harbor a secret love for Smart Balance. For the past 6 months or so I’ve only bought real organic butter because I know it’s better for us and I no longer fear the saturated fats. While the kids love it (True story: my four-year-old ate half a stick like an ice cream cone before I caught him. Worst part was he ate the paper too.), I still prefer the taste of Smart Balance. I grew up on tub butter! To me, butter is supposed to taste like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!
Are you an adventurous eater or do you prefer what you know? What weird ingredients do you have in your kitchen right now? Do you have a food that you prefer the fake version of to the real one? Anyone else see Lady Gaga’s costume for the Grammys tonight and wonder if it was made out of agar agar sheets? (But now I want a really long pony tail I can swing like that!)
Real recipe from foodnetwork.com. My fave comment on it: “adamwa: “This was just ok. Maybe if it could be simplified some because its too much work.”
Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything
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