Whole Wheat Walnut Waffles

Woah, that is a lot of Ws in a row! The other day, El told me about some post-run waffles she had, then that made me really want some. So I made some for my breakfast. I actually went for a very early morning run, then brought a waffle in my breakfast to school. So I ended up having my own post-run waffle! They were really good. I had made them before with Shawn, and they were great. We got the recipe from www.preventionrd.com. They are also healthy given the whole wheat waffles, and walnuts. It adds a little extra crunch. I also had extra lentil puree that I added in. So far, I've had them a few different ways, topped with applesauce, yogurt (trust me, this works), and with almond butter and jam.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup hemp hearts
1/4 cup walnuts
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
1/2 cup lentil puree

• Mix together all of the dry ingredients. 
• Whisk together the wet ingredients.
• Add buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together until all of the dry ingredients are just moistened. 
• Make waffles according to directions. 
• You could also make pancakes with this. 

Homemade pizza

I've been studying, and procrastinating studying, so much lately that I haven't posted much. I have been waiting for 2 weeks to post this! Well, while I avoid preparing my essay for Community, here it is!
When Shawn was here a few weekends ago, we had decided to make pizza for dinner. A week before, we were both flipping through the LCBO magazine, and came across pizza toppings, and one of them in particular caught our eye, and we decided to reproduce it! It had a base of tomato sauce, then, mozzarella cheese, Genoa salami (I bought hot, all they had left at the store! this is shocking for anyone who knows about my low tolerance for hot food), wild mushrooms, and parmesan cheese slices. Me being me, I also wanted to make the pizza dough from scratch, and it was delicious! I promise that making yeast dough is not as hard as it may seem. Homemade pizza also seems so much more satisfying to me than ordering pizza, it just tastes better.

Pizza dough (from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry cookbook)

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 tbsp ground flax

2 1/4 tsp quick rising yeast

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup warm water

2 tsp olive oil

2 tsp liquid honey

1 tbsp corn meal

In a medium bowl, combine flour, flax, yeast, and salt. Mix well

In a measuring cup, combine water, olive oil, and honey. Pour mixture over dry ingredients and mix (I used my stand mixer with dough hook, but you can do it by hand). To do it by hand, mix with a wooden spoon to form a ball. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and kneed for 2 minutes. Spray another bowl, and place dough inside, cover with plastic wrap, and let it sit in a warm place until it doubles in size, about 20 minutes. To prepare the pizza pan, spray with oil, then dust with cornmeal. 

When dough has risen, turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and roll into a 12 inch circle. Transfer to the pizza pan. Prick the crust in several places with a fork, and bake in 425F oven for 6 minutes. Remove from the oven, top with your toppings (I highly recommend the combination we had), then bake for another 8 to 10 minutes. 

Lemon blueberry chocolate chip muffins

I love muffins, and the theme of most things I made lately is "I have to use this up - what can I make with it?".
I had lemons to use up, and I was running out of lunch snacks, so muffins were made! I also happened to be browsing on food websites on the internet, and came across the Lentils website, and how to mix lentils into baked goods and make them more healthy. They were surprisingly good! I based it more or less on this recipe, and I really liked how it turned out!

1/4 cup dry red lentils

3/4 cup old-fashioned (large flake) oats

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup plain yogurt 

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

2 eggs

grated zest of 1 lemon

2/3 cup whole wheat flour

2/3 cup all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup  frozen blueberries (not thawed)

1 cup mini chocolate chips

In a small saucepan, cover the lentils with water by an inch or two, bring to a boil and simmer until soft, about 15 minutes. Drain and let cool.

Preheat the oven to 400ºF and line a 12 cup muffin pan with large paper liners. In a medium bowl, soak the oats in the milk and yogurt for 30-60 minutes, until the milk is absorbed into the oats. Stir in the brown sugar, oil, eggs, lemon zest and cooled lentils.

In another medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gently stir the dry ingredients into the oat mixture until nearly combined. Fold in the blueberries and chocolate chips, being careful not to over-mix. Spoon into the muffin papers and bake until golden on top, springy to the touch and a tester comes out clean, about 20–25 minutes. Tip the muffins in the pan to allow steam to escape. Makes 12 muffins.

Delicious green smoothie

So, I have a semi big back up of things to post, so I guess I have to start somewhere. I was kinda bored in class, and went onto the Whole Foods website. They have this thing going on now of 28 day challenge, and it is basically 4 weeks worth of meals, everything is planned for you. I would totally try this at some point, but I also like to be able to make my own things out of what I have every once in a while. However, they do have some delicious looking things on there that I will try.

One of the things they had on there for a breakfast was a Green Smoothie. I have wanted to try a smoothie with spinach in it, and I just so happened to have baby spinach in my fridge that needed to be used up. SO, I put Almond dessert tofu, 1 cup baby spinach, 1 banana, 1/2 cup greek yogurt, and filled the rest with milk.
It ended up being delicious. I had also just finished an interval run, so it was just what I needed!