Harvest Time- A week of Produce Abundance and Cooking Galore. Plus Pumpkin Pie Steel Cut Oatmeal (Instant Pot Recipe)

On Saturday we picked up a huge haul from Tantre Farm, a local farm located in Chelsea, MI.

I had no idea what was in store for us.

We got these

Celery Soup and Beef Liver

Celery Soup! This is an instant pot recipe. It’s whole30 compliant, paleo friendly, gluten free and can be made vegetarian, vegan, and/or dairy free. Start with slicing one bunch of celery, dice half an onion, mince

Bok Choy with Mushrooms: A Recipe

The other night I had some chicken legs and some delicata squash that I decided to roast up. I also had some beautiful bok choy to use, so I cooked it up with some button mushrooms and it came out …

Spinach Ice Cream and Garbanzo Brownies -Finding Yum in the Unusual

Ok, so I’ve already gushed about one of my all time favorite blogs, Chocolate Covered Katie. I recently did a post about my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe that comes from her site.

But recently I made some goodies that have the most unusual ingredients from her site and they were amazing. Too good to not share.  I’ve only made a few recipes from the site, but I’ve pretty much loved everything that I’ve made.

And here’s the kicker. They’re healthy recipes. Seriously Healthy Delicious Dessert recipes! What can be better than that? This girl comes up with the BEST desserts using things that I would never dream of putting together. Spinach in Ice Cream? And it’s good? It’s too good to be true.

And yet…

SPINACH ICE CREAM

I found this recipe here.

• 2 frozen bananas, as ripe as possible
• 2-3 drops pure peppermint extract
• scant 1/16th tsp salt
• 1/4 cup or more frozen spinach (I used 40g) (If you don’t like spinach, you can sub food coloring or omit completely.)
• scant 2T non-dairy milk (I used almond milk)
• chocolate chips or cacao nibs

Blend everything together in the Vita-Mix. (If you don’t have a high-powered blender, just add more liquid; it won’t be as ice-cream-like, but it’ll still taste good!)

 

My changes: So when I reached for my frozen spinach I realized that it was actually turnip greens in my freezer and not spinach at all. So I used that. Also, I used more peppermint extract (it came out fast) and as always, I used regular skim milk. And I added 1 Tbs of sugar ( because I was afraid it was going to be awful!) Plus, I don’t have a Vita-Mix and just used my regular ‘ol blender. I did end up adding more liquid and it did come out liquid-y. I could have put it into the freezer for a while after I blended it to solidify it a bit more, but we all wanted to try it now.

I wont lie. I had my doubts about this. But…

…yes, that last picture is Anya crying because it’s gone. It was that good. And Mike loved it too! YAY!

The other fun recipe that I tried recently from Katie’s site recently involved beans. Again, BEANS? in a dessert? Get out.

CHOCOLATE CHIP BLONDIES

I found this recipe here.

• 1 1/2 cups chickpeas (1 can, drained and rinsed) (250g)
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• heaping 1/8 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup brown sugar*
• 1-2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup ground flax (20g) (see nutrition-info link below, for substitution ideas)
• 1/4 cup peanut butter (or other fat source) (see nutrition-info link below, for lower-cal options)
• optional: 1/3 cup chocolate chips (Not “optional” if you’re CCK!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Blend all ingredients (except chips) until very smooth. Mix in chips, and scoop into a greased (or tinfoil-lined) 8×8 pan. Bake for 38-40 minutes. You want the blondies to look a little undercooked when you take them out, because they’ll firm up as they cool, and you don’t want them to get hard. (Note: you can probably sub any white bean for the chickpeas)

My changes: I used half peanut butter and half almond butter, just for fun. Other than that, I followed this recipe exactly.

But sadly, I do not have a picture for this. I was in a rush and if I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t sure if they came out! I thought for sure they wouldn’t taste that great. Not picture-worthy and not share-worthy. Boy was I wrong!

I took them eto a morning play date at a friends house. They were amazing. loved by the kids and the moms. success! (Mike and Anya loved them too)

I will be making these again for sure, I’m even considering trying to replace dates for all or some of the sugar. What do you think?

These recipes were so fun to make. Who would have thought you could make brownies with no butter or even flour -with beans?? or to add spinach to ice cream and have it be delicious?

Love it.

What unusual recipes have you tried lately? I’d love to hear about them!