Three Recipes in One! Two Vegan Cheesecakes and Glazed Mixed Nuts

I've gotta say, this whole dairy-free thing has led me to all kinds of wonderful discoveries!  These vegans, they sure know how to make some fabulous desserts!  Cheesecake in particular.  Justin and I both love that stuff.  It's so bad for you though... and now it's definitely off-limits for me since Elliot can't handle it when I eat any dairy products.  But that doesn't stop me!  Heck, that's what led me to the Paleo lifestyle over two years ago - I refused to give up indulging in guilty pleasures, so I found ways to replace them with healthier versions.  Same goes for this - I can't have dairy?  I'll find replacements!

In this case, cream cheese is replaced with cashews.  Oh my goodness, do they come to the rescue... I'm not even a big fan of cashews, but you really can't tell that's what this is made of!

Lucky you, I'm sharing three recipes with you in this post!  Two "cheese"cake recipes and an amazingly delicious (and equally amazingly simple) glazed mixed nuts recipe.

I'll start with the original recipe I discovered and tried for the first time.  We were having a couple friends over for dinner, Gordon and Sandy, whom we normally go out to Tequila's with, but now with two little ones it's just easier to have people over rather than hope the odds are in our favor that both babies are on their best behavior at a restaurant (not entirely likely, which makes going out to eat more stressful than it is enjoyable).  So I made this cornish hen recipe, with a salad and roasted potatoes on the side (okay so potatoes aren't Paleo but they're at least tolerable for Elliot!), but I wanted something for dessert too.  Gordon is a major chocoholic, so I knew chocolate had to be involved.  And cheesecake sounded really good... so off to Pinterest I went in search of a vegan cheesecake recipe, and voila, I found this one from Lexi's Clean Kitchen.  It did not disappoint!

So here's the recipe, with my tweaks:

Cookie Dough Cheesecake

For the crust:

2 cups almond flour
2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
4 tbsp pure maple syrup
Dash sea salt

Mix all ingredients until combined.

Line a 7x11 (or 8x8, which is what I used) glass baking dish with parchment paper

Spoon in crust mixture and flatten evenly

For the filling:

2 cups raw cashews, soaked in water overnight
2-3 tbsp coconut oil, melted
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp pure maple syrup
Dash sea salt
1/3 cup Enjoy Life's mini chocolate chips
Extra chocolate chips for sprinkling on top

Discard the water the cashews had been soaking in.

Combine soaked cashews, coconut oil, vanilla, maple syrup, and salt in the food processor.

Blend until creamy and smooth.

Once blended, add in chocolate chips and spread mixture evenly over crust.  (My mixture was a bit warm from the coconut oil having been freshly melted so the chocolate ships melted a bit, which turned out fantastic)

Sprinkle chocolate chips on top.
Place in freezer for 4-6 hours.

Remove, slice into bars, and store in refrigerator.

Lexi was kind enough to provide nutrition facts: (someday I need to go back through my recipes and include this info...)

1. Serving: 15 bars
2. Amount per serving: 1 bar
3. Calories: 253
4. Fat: 20g
5. Carbs: 16
6. Protein: 6g

This "cheese"cake successfully won the approval of Gordon the Chocoholic (well, all of us, really), and they couldn't guess what the main ingredient was that replaced the traditional cream cheese.  I knew I would definitely be making this again!

And today, I did!  Once again we found ourselves with an opportunity to go out to dinner with a couple friends, Clay and Barbi, but we didn't have anyone available to watch the boys.  So, instead, we ordered from Tequila's (which is where we usually go) and ate at our house instead.  Clay likes to order a cheesecake dessert they have on the menu, and I didn't want him to miss out on dessert!  But since it's pumpkin season, I decided to tweak the above recipe to make it a pumpkin cheesecake instead.  I also decided to top it with a fantastic, yet ridiculously simple recipe I had made for a friend's daughter's birthday party a couple months ago - maple glazed mixed nuts.  They're so good it's crazy.  And I still can't get over how easy they are to make.

Here's what I came up with for the Pumpkin Cheesecake:

Make the crust as explained above.

To make the filling: 

2 cups raw cashews, soaked in water overnight
2-3 tbsp coconut oil, melted
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp pure maple syrup
Dash sea salt
1 cup canned or fresh pumpkin puree

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Discard the water the cashews had been soaking in.

Combine soaked cashews, coconut oil, vanilla, maple syrup, and salt in the food processor.

Blend until creamy and smooth.

Once blended, add in the pumpkin and spices, and stir to combine.

Spread mixture on top of the crust.

 To make the topping:

Follow the recipe below, but instead of two cups of whole nuts use 3/4 cup of pecans, chopped, and 2-3 tbsp pure maple syrup.

Spread the glazed pecans over the cheesecake, place in freezer for 4-6 hours, then transfer to the refrigerator before serving.  Slice into bars, and enjoy!

Everyone loved the "cheese"cake!  Again, you can't even tell that cashews are the main ingredient!  The texture and flavor are amazing, and I love how I didn't feel weighted down and almost exhausted after eating it like I would normally feel after eating a real cheesecake.

And now, I leave you with the last recipe, which I got from Bit of the Good Stuff:

Glazed Mixed Nuts:

 

 2 cups of nuts (I used walnuts, pecans, and almonds)
4 tbsp pure maple syrup

Preheat a dry frying pan (skillet) on medium-high heat.
Add the nuts and dry fry for 2 minutes, stirring continuously.  Add the maple syrup and continue stirring for about 3 minutes, until the nuts are fully coated and the syrup has caramelized and become very sticky.
Spread the nuts on a piece of parchment paper.  As they cool, the nuts will dry and become shiny, and no longer sticky.  Store in an airtight container.

Vegan Mozzarella Cheese

Harlee helping spread the sauce

Elliot is definitely dairy intolerant.  It makes things tricky for me when cheese is involved, but otherwise I've been totally fine with it.  Unfortunately, I had been craving pizza for a week or so and pizza is just not the same without cheese.  So I just kept trying to remind myself that one day I would no longer be breastfeeding and then look out, Dicarlo's, because I'd be going on a major pizza binge!

Then I found a recipe for vegan mozzarella cheese on OneGreenPlanet.org.  I thought, what do I have to lose?  I'm going to give it a try!  I'm still pretty strict about eating Paleo (at home... I'll admit I'm not as strict as I should be when we go out) so I made my dairy-free cauliflower pizza crust recipe and tried my hand at this vegan cheese.

Harlee is quite the little chef!

It was so weird... once it thickened up it totally took on the consistency of cheese... Crazy!  Fortunately it's really easy to make, tastes awesome, and keeps well in the fridge.  So all you dairy-intolerant people, fear not, for now you can enjoy pizza again!

Here's the recipe from the website:

• 1/4 cup raw cashews soaked in water for several hours or overnight
• 1 cup hot water
• 2  tbsp + 1 tsp tapioca or arrowroot powder (I used arrowroot)
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 small garlic clove, minced
• 3/4  tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. Blend all ingredients together in a high speed blender until completely smooth, or with an immersion blender, for about 1 minute.
2. Pour into a small saucepan and cook, stirring constantly over medium high heat.  Once the mixture starts clumping up, reduce heat to medium and keep stirring.
3. Keep stirring for another 2-3 minutes until you have a big melty blob of "cheese" that's goopy and stretchy.
4. Remove from heat and let cool a bit while you assemble the pizzas
5. For pizza, once it's cooled just pick apart pieces of the "cheese" and stretch it out over your pizza crust.  It's weird stuff, but you can work it to make it cover the pizza.  Then just bake it according to the crust instructions posted in the link above!
    

 Enjoy!

Mine is the bottom left pizza and the rest are made with regular mozzarella.  Could you tell?

looks totally legit!

A Day In the Life of Jami: A New Series!

I enjoyed writing my Diary of a Pregnant Crossfitter series.  I kinda miss having a series - a way to check back in on a certain topic and continue writing about it, and also a way to make this blog more, well, bloggy.  Personal.  Interact with my readers, that sort of thing.

So, new series!  I was back and forth on titles... "A Day in the Life of"-something was a given, as I decided to write this to capture snippets of my lifestyle and hopefully show that being healthy isn't hard, and to also show that I'm human and make mistakes as I'm trying to be healthy.  But "A Day in the Life of a Paleo Mom" was too restrictive to diet/food topics.  "A Day in the Life of a Crossfit Mom" was too restrictive to fitness.  Plus those things don't exactly define me - Paleo is a guideline for my diet, and Crossfit is only some of my exercise routine.  "Holistic Mom" - too geared toward medicine.  The "Mom" thing in general - there's more to me than just Mom!  Finally I just settled on "Jami".  Because I'm me, and this is what I do.

This idea started recently, after a friend of mine suggested I write a post about how I get Justin on board with my lifestyle choices, as that's a problem for a lot of couples - usually the woman wants to be healthy and the husband/partner isn't on board (but sometimes I've seen it the other way around too).  I don't know, he just goes along with it...  I suppose I got lucky!  How should I write about that?  I realized it'd be hard to write about it without just talking about our lifestyle in general.  And that's what made me think, I should just give you little glimpses into our lives - healthy food choices, making time for exercising, natural medicine, husband-wife partnership, child-rearing, general thoughts, and, of course, mistakes!

And that's all who I am!  So welcome to A Day in the Life of Jami!

Today (Friday) is my day off.  I have a lovely advantage of being able to create my own schedule, of which I am grateful for every. single. day.  It finally worked out to have a couple of friends over this morning to work out in my patio gym, and their kids came along too.  Harlee is definitely getting some lessons in sharing!

I was super sore from yesterday - I had personal training at Flex (so glad to be back there!) and I got to max out on dead lifts - see just how much weight I can pick up.  Before I got pregnant I could lift 205lbs.  Which I was pretty stoked about!  The most I picked up while pregnant was 175lbs, and I may have been able to do more but obviously didn't want to risk overdoing it.  And that's how I was the entire pregnancy - I did what I knew I could handle, and not an ounce more.  So without pushing myself to my limits and beyond, I figured I probably lost some strength.  Added to the fact that I haven't been working out near as much after Elliot's birth, I was certain I did.  I went to Flex telling myself if I could lift 160lbs, I'd be happy.  Well, we kept adding on the weight and adding on the weight, and I kept picking it up and picking it up, until finally the bar loaded with 220lbs was just not coming up off the ground.  215lbs was my max - a whole 10lbs more than I left off before my pregnancy!  How did THAT happen?  Oh my goodness I was so giddy with excitement, it was a great feeling!

And this is why I work out.  I love that feeling, I love the endorphins, I love feeling good about myself.

After personal training I met up with my friend Rachael and we attempted to go for a run but we wound up at the park goofing off instead.  I found out I can still do a back bend, starting from a standing position, and then get back up again.  I can also do (a very uncoordinated) front flip.  Hadn't done that since before I got pregnant, so again I was pretty excited!  My back, however, was not.

So today, I'm feeling it.

For the warmup we did tabata step-ups and squats.  Then for the WOD we did four rounds of 65lb back squats, 20lb overhead lunges, 40lb hang cleans, and sit-ups (Teresa, who's pregnant, did push-ups instead).  It was easy enough for my soreness, but challenging enough that I didn't feel like it was pointless.  And I had fun, as usual!  Elliot decided to stay awake through the whole thing, though, so a couple of times I did the squats and lunges with him in my arms.  My back was totally okay with subbing out the 65lbs for 13.5lbs!

At one point Brittany's little guy played a little too rough with Elliot and left a little scratch on his head.  She felt terrible, but he didn't know any better so I wasn't upset.  It's a good thing to mention in this post, though, because when most parents would probably run for the Neosporin (he did break the skin a bit), I ran for the lavender oil.  I put a little bit on my fingertip and rubbed it across the scratch, then I did it again a couple hours later, and it's clearing up just fine.  Lavender is fantastic for healing wounds - scratches and scrapes, bug bits, burns, you name it.  It's soothing as well, which is definitely helpful with wounds of any sort!  I like to avoid drugs, chemicals, and strange ingredients any chance I get, so I use essential oils instead.  They're pretty awesome!  (Message me if you want to know more!  I'll hook you up!)

Justin was out doing whatever he needed to do for deer hunting preparation, so this afternoon I took the boys with me to run some errands.  We reeeaaallllyyyy need to go grocery shopping.  But, I'm pleased to say we haven't need to go to a grocery store for a whole month!  We usually do our shopping at Aldi's - can't beat the prices, plus they've really been making leaps and bounds in offering a wider selection of organic and gluten-free/dairy-free products, which is right up our alley!  In the meantime I sign up for the local co-op every other week, which gets us a huge bag of fruits and veggies for $23.  Since going Paleo, grocery shopping has been waaaay cheaper and easier, and is why it's been possible for us to only need to go shopping once a month.  We were out of any kind of meat, though, so I took the boys to our local grocery store and stocked up on meats from the Pick 5 for $20 selection.  I came home with a bunch of pork chops, chicken breasts, and bratwurst.  I'll freeze them in packs of 5 pieces and then cook about 5 of them at a time.  Like yesterday I made our last batch of pork chops and we'll eat them for lunch (or breakfast, nothing wrong with that!) until they're gone.

That's all for now, I'm going to go pop some homeopathic Arnica for my sore muscles and get on with the rest of the evening!

Artificial Sweeteners: Don't. Just don't.

I just realized I haven't written a post about this very important topic, so it's high time I get on that.  I wrote a little about it when I was first discovering Paleo and I posted a grain/sugar-free cinnamon roll muffin recipe.  But that was not enough.  This topic deserves a whole post all its own, because it's very important.  Maybe even more important to me than it ever has been before, because I feel it hits closer to home now than it ever has before.

We are approaching the 1-year anniversary of my Granny's passing.  It's still so strange that she's gone... that she's never met Elliot (well, physically anyway, I know she's with him and all of us in spirit, but it's not the same when you're still a selfish mortal, ya know?), that I haven't gotten to see her watch Harlee become a big brother, to be so proud of what a big boy he's become and what a great brother he is.  They were SO close.  Sometimes I think he loved her more than me!  But I totally get that because, well, it's Granny!  I wrote about my thoughts on the whole experience of her passing in my post about the Cure for Cancer, which I encourage you to read because I feel it's also full of very important information and food for thought.  It's important because I share with you how to prevent cancer.  Pretty big deal, especially if you've ever lost a loved one to cancer and don't want to see it happen to you or anyone else you love.  I lightly touch on the subject of artificial sweeteners in that post, and I shared a few links, but I've decided to go a little bit more in depth here.  Granny died of pancreatic cancer.  She was diabetic, and, as I'm sure most diabetics are guilty of, she turned to artificial sweeteners instead of sugar, since her body couldn't handle sugar when consumed.  But, to put it simply, artificial sweeteners are carcinogens - they cause cancer.  Her pancreas was in a weakened state due to the diabetes, so where is a good place for cancer to strike?  The weakened pancreas.  Why did cancer strike?  In my opinion, I believe her over-consumption of the carcinogenic artificial sweeteners are a major culprit.  Sweet & Lo in her tea, diet sodas on lunch outings, etc.

*Just want to add that Granny didn't start drinking the "Pink Poison" because of diabetes, she actually had been drinking it long before she knew she was diabetic - it was a diet method for her.  She was always overweight in her older age, so obviously that diet method didn't work out too well for her...

I recently learned a friend of mine, whose name I won't mention, has told people that diet soda is okay if you're on a weight-loss or body-fat-loss mission.  I refrained from totally flipping out on him :).  But with information like that going around, I feel more eager to share the REAL facts and get people to understand that, no, diet soda is NOT okay in ANY circumstance, and it WILL NOT help you if you're trying to lose weight or body fat!!  (In fact it can have the opposite affect and make you fat, but I'll be getting to that in a moment.)

What's wrong with diet soda?  It's considered "diet" because it's sugar-free.  Instead of sweetened with sugar, it's sweetened with a chemical additive known as aspartame.

Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious, including seizures and death.

One of the scariest things about aspartame, to me, is the fact that when aspartame is heated, the chemical bonds break down and methyl alcohol is released, and when exposed to temperatures above 96 degrees, methyl alcohol converts to formaldehyde.  What is your body temperature?  98.6?  So you're drinking formaldehyde.  Awesome.

Too much formaldehyde exposure can lead to some pretty serious diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer's Disease.  A research study has also been done on aspartame, linking it to blood cancer:

...the most comprehensive and longest human study — spanning 22 years — that has ever looked at aspartame toxicity. The study evaluates the effect between aspartame intake and cancer, and they found a clear association between aspartame consumption and non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and leukemia.

Interestingly enough, the longest study prior to the 22-year study was only four and a half months.  Many studies have been done on aspartame, yes, but none lasted long enough to see long-term effects.  As many of you diet-soda drinkers know, there aren't really any short-term, immediately noticeable health repercussions related to drinking diet soda (or using artificial sweeteners, etc.).  So therefore, it must be safe!

Sure, it's safe, if you don't mind setting yourself up for cancer or Alzheimer's or other terrible illnesses in your old age.  I'm sure your 80-something-year-old self will be thanking you.

But what about weight-loss?  Sugar makes you fat, right?  All those calories?  So artificial, zero-calorie sweeteners seem like a great go-to if you're on a weight- or fat-loss mission, of course!

Not so fast.  Studies have shown that eating artificial sweeteners might hinder your body's ability to estimate calorie intake, causing you to overindulge on food.  In addition, a study from 1986, which included nearly 80,000 women, found that those who used artificial sweeteners were significantly more likely than non-users to gain weight over time, regardless of initial weight.  Another study shows:

The San Antonio Heart Study examined 3,682 adults over a seven- to eight-year period in the 1980s.

When matched for initial body mass index (BMI), gender, ethnicity, and diet, drinkers of artificially sweetened beverages consistently had higher BMIs at the follow-up, with dose dependence on the amount of consumption... Saccharin use was also associated with eight-year weight gain in 31,940 women from the Nurses' Health Study conducted in the 1970s.

Similar observations have been reported in children.

Need I really say more?  Like it can cause migraines, destroy tooth enamel, lead to depression, increase your risk for osteoporosis, heart attacks or stroke, etc.?

Of course I've read articles that say aspartame and artificial sweeteners are safe.  About how studies done on animals in labs have proven that it doesn't cause cancer.  Probably because humans are the only animals that don't have the proper mechanisms in their cells to process aspartame and simply pee it out - other animals do.  Which is why the lab rats were just fine in the studies.  And of course the FDA wants us to believe it's safe, too - it sure would be a HUGE liability on them if it turns out aspartame DOES cause cancer, and they wouldn't want that, now, would they?

But maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist.

All in all, though, I think it's safe to say we should all avoid this poison food additive and spare our health in our years to come.  I really don't want to lose any more loved ones to cancer.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/11/aspartame-dangers.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/07/aspartame-causes-blood-cancer.aspx
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20739512_11,00.html