Gluten-Free Blueberry Almond Muffins (aka light blue clouds)

I think I have a problem.

I can't stop baking muffins.

Today's recipe was also from Hip Hostess (thank you for aiding my muffin-baking-binge!).  It's called Gluten-Free Blueberry Almond Muffins, but it tastes like Light Blue Almond Cake on a Cloud.

Here are the ingredients! 

1 cup almond flour
1 cup brown rice flour or 1 cup gluten-free flour blend (we used King Arthur All-Purpose Gluten-Free flour)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup pitted dates, which you then puree in a food processor with 1/2 to 3/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup plain yogurt (we used full-fat greek yogurt)
1/2 cup olive oil (you can use canola oil instead, but olive oil has more nutrients such antioxidants and omega 3 fatty acids, and we promise your muffins will NOT taste like olives if you use it)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. almond extract (the recommended 1 tsp. produced exceedingly almond-y muffins)
1 1/2 cup frozen wild blueberries (keep frozen until ready to add)
Enough turbinado / raw cane sugar and slivered or sliced almonds to sprinkle over the top of each muffin

Instructions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners. You may want to spray the liners with PAM or a more natural coconut spray oil (Here's what I used) so that the muffins don't stick. 
2.  Whisk together almond flour through salt in a large bowl.  
3.  In a small food processor, prepare the date puree using 1/2-3/4 cup of warm tap water.
4.  In a separate bowl, whisk together date puree through almond extract.
5. Combine mixtures by adding wet mixture into dry mixture. Then, fold in blueberries.
5.  Divide batter between muffin tins.  Top with a sprinkling of sugar and slivered almonds.  
6.  Bake for 18-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of muffin comes out clean.  

Makes 12 muffins

Click here to view the original recipe from Hip Hostess



What were we snacking on? Slivered almonds and green tea!

Tune of the moment: Wide Eyes by the Local Natives

Gluten-free Banana, Carrot, and Date Muffins (also known as the lovechild of carrot cake and banana bread)

Hello again!

If you're reading this, you must be hungry for more foodz, or witty jokes, or kitchen fails...continue on, faithful reader!

Together Thyme is back in business (sort of).  For starters, here is an incredible gluten-free baking recipe from the blog Hip Hostess.  We love it because it is unusually fluffy for a gluten-free muffin (in other words, it doesn't taste brick-like, omelette-like, or petrified-peanut-butter-like).  We adjusted the recipe a bit, but you can see the original version by clicking the link at the bottom of the post.  Without further ado, Hip Hostess' spectacular Gluten-free Banana, Carrot, and Date Muffins. REJOICE!  

I just had to eat some before I took the picture

Ingredients:

• 2 cup almond meal/flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (Hip Hostess calls for 1 tsp., but we promise 1/2 tsp. is enough)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 cup dates, pitted 
• 3 medium ripe bananas (or more; we like to use 4 small bananas or 3.5 regular size ones)
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• ¼ cup coconut oil, melted
• 1 ½ cups shredded carrots (shredding these yourself is way boring, but will improve the freshness and flavor of your muffins...so no pressure....but get shreddin')
• Optional: a sprinkling of chia seeds and/or ground flax seed for some additional health benefits including Omega 3 fatty acids (yay brains!)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Shred large carrots roughly. Combine almond flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Combine wet ingredients (dates, bananas, eggs, vinegar, oil, and carrots) in a food processor and blend until smooth. Transfer wet ingredients to the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir until well combined.  (Your batter might smell like a delicious, albeit carrot-y, smoothie. Do not panic.)
2. Spoon batter into muffin tins lined with paper liners. If you're feeling adventurous, sprinkle walnut pieces on the tops of the muffins before putting them in the oven. Bake about 25 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack and store in air-tight container for up to 4 days.

Makes approximately 12 superb muffins

Click here to read the recipe off of the original blog

Goodbye for now!

Hi beloved fans (...aka friends we've pressured into reading this...) !!!

Thank you for sharing this adventure with us.

Here are a few things we've learned in the past three weeks:

1) If you leave sugar in a pot on the stove and return after watching an episode of That 70s Show, it will have magically turned into caramel
2) Pasta must be taken out of the pot of hot water in order to be enjoyable........(edible)
3) Cooking is a team sport
4) You should cook bulgur before trying to eat it
5) Gazpacho only gets more delicious the longer you leave it in the fridge
6) Grills are hot (and, as Jamie discovered, should not be touched)
7) There is nothing better on the planet than sugar and butter on top of puff pastry
8) There is nothing more addictive than sugar and butter on top of puff pastry
9) There is nothing (anymore) that I want to eat other than sugar and butter on top of puff pastry
10) Putting a piece of bread in your mouth while you're dicing onions doesn't stop the tears, especially when people start mercilessly making fun of you for having a piece of bread in your mouth
11) Garbanzo beans and chickpeas are the same thing. So you don't need to wander helplessly around the grocery store wondering why there are no chickpeas in America
12) Chocolate cake  -  flour  =  chocolate pudding. It's not too hard to go gluten free for a single day

Lessons from working at Martha's Table, our local food pantry:

1) There is such a thing as too much matzo
2) Even if 8 people agree that the van is broken down, it may just be sleeping. It's inevitable that you will look like a fool when somebody rescues you by fixing the "broken down" van by turning the key in the ignition
3) Make friends with the chef --> get free food
4) It's harder than you think to eat your way out of a food pantry when you're locked in
5) **Disclaimer: earth-shattering realization*** It is possible to get sick of pie

We loved our experience working at Martha's Table because it showed us that it is possible - and necessary - to build relationships through food not only with friends and family, but also co-workers, volunteers, and clients.  Only through these person to person relationships can we create the awareness, empathy, and knowledge necessary to alleviate hunger.  During this project, we, Jamie and Caroline, grappled with the fact that we could simply waltz into Whole Foods and buy the groceries we needed with the swipe of a credit card, but 1 in 6 Americans struggles with hunger on a daily basis.  We realized how precious food is - it keeps us alive, helps us show our friends and family that we care about them, and ties us to our heritage - but also how incredibly divisive it is: unequal distribution of food affects everybody in the United States in some way.  Thankfully, organizations including Martha's Table make it their mission to redistribute food so that more Americans can be healthy, well-fed, and happy.  We'd like to thank the staff at Martha's Table, all of the volunteers we met, the clients who opened our eyes to our own insane privilege.  We no longer take good food for granted and we owe that to this experience and the people who made it so valuable!

Thanks for reading!

Love from the kitchen,

           Caroline and Jamie

Nathalie's Banana Bread

Banana bread is almost the same as banana pancakes, only better.  Some people think it's weird to eat pancakes at times other than breakfast.  So make banana bread!  This recipe, given to us by a good friend Nathalie, is ridiculously easy and delicious - so enjoy your banana bread whenever and with whomever you want!
Thank you Nathalie!

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 stick butter - melted
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup plain yogurt or sour cream - we used greek yogurt
1 pinch salt
2 tsp baking soda
3 ripe bananas

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Beat eggs and sugar in an electric mixer until fluffy. Add salt, baking soda, vanilla, melted butter, and bananas.  First add 1/2 flour, then 1/2 yogurt, then remainder of each while continuing to beat. Bake in two greased loaf pans for 1 hour, checking after 45 minutes to see if the bread needs less time.

What were we snacking on? green tea and yogurt with raspberries

Tune of the Moment: Only If For a Night by Florence + The Machine

Food with Friends

We made a feast.

We invited 5 good friends over to Jamie's house and treated them to an entirely homemade dinner.  While the dishes were not particularly adventurous, the dinner reminded us that food brings people together.  No matter where the dishes come from, they can make people feel special (thanks Dr. Prinkey!) as long as they are healthy, flavorful, and fun to make.  So. Find people to cook for, invite them over, and remind them to wear their eating pants.  Without further ado, here is the colorful and summer-y collection of foodz we prepared.

 MENU:

Guacamole and blue corn chips

Gazpacho

Mixed salad with tomatoes, avocado, pecans, and raspberry vinagrette 

Grilled bell peppers

Grilled chicken

Penne with parmesan

Fruit salad

Korvapuusti

Frosty horchata (thanks Tara!)

Guacamole: Avocados, onion, tomato, lemon juice, salt, pepper

Gazpacho: (see "Dinner with Caroline's Family")

Grilled bell peppers: Cut three bell peppers (we used one yellow, orange, and red) into triangular (and mostly flat) pieces.  We made triangles because they're exciting - so don't judge.  Douse the triangles with olive oil and place them in a wire grilling basket on the grill.  Once the skin begins to blacken and peel, take the peppers off the heat and sprinkle with salt to taste.

Grilled chicken: (see "Dinner with Caroline's Family")

Penne with parmesan: I'm hoping you know how to boil water and cook pasta...but to be honest, I didn't until a week ago so I won't judge you.

Fruit salad: Clementine wedges, rasberries, blueberries, kiwi, strawberries, and a sprinkling of orange juice.


Korvapuusti: (see "Korvapuusti in the Kitchen")

What were we snacking on? tortilla chips and mango salsa

Tune of the Moment: New Shoes by Paolo Nutini

Dinner with Caroline's family

Last night, we cooked and ate dinner at Caroline's house with her family.  We wanted the meal to include family tricks and recipes as well as new, more exotic ones.  While not all dishes we made can be considered ethnic cuisine, each has its own meaning - whether it be a family standby, a friend of a friend's recommendation, or a traditional recipe.  This eclectic evening of noms began when we realized at 5:00 PM that Dominican ropa vieja (a delicious and authentic meat recipe we have yet to atempt) would take us 5 hours to make.  Bummer.  So we got creative.  What else is traditionally Dominican?  Fried plaintains!!! So we chopped up some bananas and nobody had to know the difference. ;)
Jamie has an Algerian neighbor who has a Spanish friend who has a fantastic gazpacho recipe, which of course isn't written down, so we trusted Ina Garten (a culinary genius) because her recipe is apparently very similar.  We decided to treat the fam to korvapuusti (see "Korvapuusti in the Kitchen," an earlier blog post) because it's mind-blowingly addictive.

Almost oven time!

For all those who want to re-create this around-the-world extravaganza, here's the menu...happy eating!

EPIC MENU:

Gazpacho (Italian but from Jamie's Algerian neighbor)
Salad with strawberries and pine nuts (Tasty...isn't that enough?)
Cornbread (from a family cookbook made by Caroline's cousins)
Fried bananas (...almost Dominican)
Grilled chicken with Italian marinade (a go-to recipe for Jamie's family)
Korvapuusti (Finnish)

Gazpacho ingredients:

23 oz Tomato Juice

Two red peppers

Four tomatoes

One red onion

One cucumber

3 cloves of garlic

Kosher sea salt - about 1/2 tablespoon

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 Cup White wine vinegar

1/4 Cup Olive Oil

Optional: Jalapeno or red pepper flakes for that spicy flavaaah

Gazpacho instructions:

We doubled this recipe to feed the whole fam, but here's the instructions for the normal recipe which should feed 4-6 people

Chop each vegetable into 1 inch sections-make sure to keep each vegetable separate from each other.  It is important for the flavors not to combine yet!!

I kept each vegetable in a separate bowl for my own sanity, I recommend you do this too :P

Separately food process each vegetable for a very small amount of time..I used what Caroline's amily calls the NINJA so, needless to say, processed the food for about 5 seconds before it turned into juice.  Keep all the processed foods in different bowls still!

Mince the garlic and measure out the olive oil and white wine vinegar.

Here's the big moment...MIX THOSE VEGGIES!!!

I know it's scary...but you are ready! NEVER SURRENDER! This is what Caroline and I have been preparing you for.

Add the garlic/salt/pepper/olive oil/vinegar (and maybe that jalapeno/flakes if you want to live a leetle)!

Gently mix with a wooden spoon (ok any spoon will do that's just what I did)

Put it in the fridge!!! The longer the gazpacho chills, the more the flavors will come together and taste even fresher/delicious-er.

Enjoy!

Salad:

mixed greens, sliced strawberries, toasted pine nutes, and balsamic vinaigrette. Or anything you have in your kitchen, can steal from your neighbor, or can dig up outside.

Cornbread ingredients:

Cornbread instructions:  Basically, we thought this cornbread tasted real boring.  We recommend that you spice it up with honey, maple syrup, or jalapeno peppers.




Fried bananas:

I won't lie to you...we completely free-styled this recipe.  The concept of frying plaintains is traditionally Dominican, but we adapted the recipe to suit our kitchen.  I sliced ripe bananas diagonally (so that each slice was about 2 inches long), turned on the stove to medium heat, and covered the bottom of the pan with vegetable oil (1/2 centimeter).  While the oil was heating up, I mixed flour and vegetable oil in a bowl and covered the bananas in the mixture.  Once the oil was hot, I slid the banana slices into the oil to fry until they were light brown and crispy-looking.



Grilled chicken:

Marinate 6 chicken breasts in a large plastic bag with almost a full bottle of Italian dressing for at least 45 minutes in the refrigerator.  I know you're probably hungry, but try to let them marinate for longer because delicious flavor is where it's at.  Grill the chicken outside and serve with black pepper and salt.

What were we snacking on? Tortilla chips and cherries
Tune of the Moment: Time Above the Earth by the Kooks

Paella Valencia with Dr. Prinkey

Chicken and chorizo paella Valencia

Story:

Paella is a dish cooked for special (aka social) occasions such as anniversaries, dinner parties, and birthdays in the region of Valencia in eastern Spain.  The paellera is the special pan used only for cooking this dish.  The first step in cooking paella is seasoning the paellera with olive oil.  The most traditional variety uses chorizo and rabbit.  The last time Dr. Prinkey made paella was for a dinner party with friends from Oklahoma City.  Because one woman was a vegetarian, he used paprika, extra olive oil, and seafood instead of the chorizo.  Jamie and I don't eat seafood, so we're making paella with chicken and chorizo.  Dr. Prinkey says he loves to cook for people because it makes them feel special, which makes everyone happy :).

Ingredients:

Autentico chorizo picante from Spain that's seasoned with paprika (we used imported chorizo by Palacios that Dr. Prinkey bought from Chain Bridge Sellers) - 225 grams / 7.9 oz / one full link
one whole yellow onion, diced (we used one half of a red onion instead, but the recipe calls for yellow)
One red pepper
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2/3 cup short-grain Calasparra rice that Dr. Prinkey ordered online.  It comes from a coastal region between Andalucia and Valencia in Spain. (In a pinch, you can use arborio rice)
Verdejo white wine from Galicia, Spain
1 Quart Chicken Stock
Saffron
Small bowl for water
2 lemons
Chicken
Frozen peas
Parsley (to garnish)



Instructions:

Season the paellera.  Cut the chorizo into thick rings and quarter each ring.  Dice the onion and red pepper separately and place them in two bowls.  Add the chorizo to the paellera with some olive oil and use a wooden spoon to toss.  Add the pepper, onion, and garlic once the chorizo has begun to get crispy.  Take the paellera off the heat and transfer the meat and veggies to a bowl, leaving the fat from the chorizo in the paellera.  Add the rice to the paellera and mix with a wooden spoon on low heat.  Next add white wine to the rice-we used Verdejo from Galicia.  When you put it on it will sizzle--don't be afraid!!  Continue mixing.
Add chicken stock to the rice/white wine mixture in the paellera.  Heat water (tap is ok) in a small dish, add a pinch of the saffron which should turn the water into a nice yellow color (that color that paella is so famous for).  Continue stirring that rice in the paellera!  Add saffron-water mixture to the rice.

Rice, stock, wine, and saffron

Begin cutting chicken up--you can cut it while you cut the chorizo if you want, we are doing it now :P
Saute (saltear in Spanish) the chicken in a small pan on medium to high heat after seasoning it with pepper and salt (key to a happy life says Dr Prinkey). Don't even worry about oiling the chicken pan-the fat will work just fine.
Stop stirring the rice--the more you stir the more it will want to stick together.  If you let it be, the water will work for you and keep the rice separated.  Valencian tradition says that the bottom of the rice should be a little burnt; it's said to be good luck!  Add chorizo mixture into the rice in the paellera, this is when it begins to smell DELICIOUS.

Rice, aromatics, chorizo. The color comes from saffron!

Cut two lemons (you will use these to drizzle over the paella for a tasty surprise)
Add chicken into the paellera!  Everything is beginning to come together now.
Those peas are next!!! Put the frozen peas directly into the paellera.
Add a little more chicken stock.
Smell for the soccarrat (that rice at the bottom!) that should be bubbling.
Chop up some parsley to garnish the dish with.  Turn the burner(s) off, move the paellera off the heat, and cover with a hand towel.  This technique seems REALLY bizarre but it'll keep the moisture and flavor in the rice. Serve with a nice, crusty bread.


Tune of the Moment: anything by Andres Segovia because he's brilliant and makes you feel like you're in eastern Spain.  Our favorite song is Recuerdos de la Alhambra

What were we snacking on? Spanish lomo serrano (dry cured Serrano pork loin) and paleta serrana (dry cured Serrano pork shoulder) as well as olives.  And sparkling grape juice!  We classy (...and underage).