Friendship Soup & Hot Cocoa

Sorry I missed the post yesterday! I'll confess... I thought this little DIY in the kitchen blogging bit was going to be extra fun, but instead it turned stressful! From now on, I'm going to keep blogging about what I do and like best... cooking purposeful food. And I'm also going to start talking a bit more about training and recovery because that's fun too. This week, I was so overwhelmed with things that I didn't even have the time to make my dinner soup... I bought my soup pre-made from Trader Joe's. Gasp! But anyways, I'm always one to finish what I started so here are my last two ideas, along with some links for other ideas I might try. I'll leave the write up to someone else though!

Today's idea is to take your repurposed jar and fill it with dry ingredients that look pretty and your recipient can easily turn into something delicious with the addition of water and/ or a few other simple ingredients. I chose to make jars of Friendship Soup and Gourmet Hot Cocoa.

Also, the chance to win is still available! Head over to Wednesday's post & comment so that you don't miss out. Your chocolate cinnamon sunflower seeds are waiting!

Friendship Soup

3/4c split peas
3/4c barley
2T garlic
1T sage
2T parsley
2T basil
3/4c red lentils
3/4c rice
4 cubes bullion

Layer the ingredients in the jar in the order above, tapping the jar after each addition to make sure that no settling will occur (just like packing a column, organic chemists. ha!). If you're using a smaller jar, scale back amounts accordingly. The spices will form the green middle layer you see above. You can also add some dried onion flakes if you have them. After adding the rice, add the bullion cubes on top and close the jar. Add a note that reads: "Add all contents to 10 to 12 cups water. Bring to a boil for 40 minutes. Add 1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables and additional spices to taste. Enjoy!"

Gourmet Hot Cocoa

1/2c brown sugar
1/2c unsweeted cocoa powder
3 candy canes, fully crushed in a coffee grinder (Peppermint Hot Cocoa)
                 or 1T cinnamon, 1T chili powder (Mexican Hot Cocoa)
mini-marshmallows to fill the jar.

In a bowl, mix cocoa, sugar, and spices of choice (I tested both options and can vouch for their deliciousness!). Add to a clean, repurposed jar. Fill the rest of the jar with mini marshmallows. Attach a note that reads "Add 3T mix to warm milk. Enjoy!"

My DIY gift-making station, still many more to go! Mexican hot cocoa and peppermint hot cocoa are front and center.

Other ideas:
- These brownies would be fun in a jar, if you add ground flax seeds instead of eggs. Just add oil and water!
- I bought some empty oil & vinegar bottles at the dollar store as well as some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I'm going to add fresh sun dried tomato, basil, and garlic to the oil and apples, cinnamon, and garlic to the vinegar. These will be great for dipping bread, marinates, or salad dressing!

And for the kiddies:
-Fizzy Bath Bombs
-Boo-boo bunnies
-Play-dough (this gift can be amped up if you add in small plastic cookie cutters and a small/ pastry rolling pin!)
-Gingerbread house kits (Use graham crackers, make up some icing, and buy some cool candy for decorating)

Enjoy! Back to our normal discussions next week, whew!

Gifts from the Kitchen: Fancy Roast Nuts

Today's a first that I think you'll be excited for... I'm trying out my first give-away! I often hear that you would like me to make my recipes for you and I'd like to give you, my readers, a holiday present this year. So I will be making an extra jar of fancy roast nuts, and giving it away to one lucky reader. To enter, simply comment below. You can comment/ enter as many times as you would like between now and Sunday 12/15 at 5pm EST. I will announce the winner in the post next Monday. Even if you don't like nuts, I'd be happy to make a personalized jar that you can give away as a gift!

Anyways, homemade roast nuts are a great holiday present. Nuts contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and are great for hearth health, so this is really a gift that keeps on giving! If you can figure out a good source for raw nuts and package them in a repurposed jar, this can be a really cost effective gift too. In Cambridge, raw almonds are $2.99/ package at Market Basket and raw sunflower seeds are $1.99/ package at Trader Joe's. Peanuts can also usually be found on the cheap! Below are two of my favorite recipes that I've developed. If you like the idea, but are worried about nut allergies, sunflower seeds work great for any of the coatings!

Maple Cinnamon Pumpkin Nuts (I recommend almonds and cashews!)

1/2c pumpkin puree
1/4c brown sugar
1/4c maple syrup
1T brown sugar
2-3c raw nuts

Preheat oven to 375F. Mix all of the ingredients except the nuts in a bowl until smooth. Add the nuts and stir to coat. Spread the mixture evenly on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. The nuts will still feel soft when you take them out, but they will harden upon cooling!

Chocolate Cinnamon Nuts (This works great with sunflower seeds and hazelnuts!)

1/3c cocoa powder
1/3c brown sugar
1/4c warm tap water (the warmth melts the oil and helps everything combine more smoothly)
1T cinnamon
1T coconut oil
2-3c raw nuts

Follow the directions above, using the chocolate ingredients. Same thing goes, they will be soft even when they are ready, so resist the temptation to over cook!

Gifts from the Kitchen: Popcorn!

Remember those big tins of popcorn that you used to be able to get from department stores around the holidays? Usually, they would contain neat sections of flavors like butter, cheese, caramel,  and cinnamon. Almost always, one flavor would disappear faster than the others, which was much to my dismay! I never had a favorite: I do not discriminate when it comes to popcorn! Although probably if pressed, my favorite would have been microwave popped, since it was the freshest. This year, why not make your own? Recently, I learned that I could make my own flavored popcorns on the stove, without a popcorn popper! My two suggestions are to use a pot with a clear lid (unless you have practice... I nearly started a fire using an opaque lid) and make sure to buy good kernels. I like both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, and both are cheaper than microwave popcorn with enough to fill a tin costing about a quarter. Once you've perfected your popcorn flavor, package it up in a festive holiday tin ($1 at the Dollar Tree). Remember to make it fresh, so your recipient will be impressed that you made the best popcorn they ever tasted!

Cinnamon-Maple Popcorn

1/2c popcorn kernels

1T olive oil

1/2t cinnamon

1/4c maple syrup

a few cracks or a pinch of salt

Add 1T olive oil to a pan with a clear lid and 8c capacity. Spread the olive oil around to make sure you don't have any hot spots where the popcorn can stick. Add 3 kernels and turn the burner on high. Stay by the stove, and shake/ toss the pan every minute or so, to make sure the kernels have an outer covering of oil and are heating homogeneously. Once the kernels pop, your pan is ready. Add the rest of the popcorn, then the cinnamon, salt, and about 1-2T maple syrup. Re-cover the pan and shake/ toss to make sure that the kernels get covered in your tasty flavoring. Continue to heat, shake/ tossing the pan almost constantly (but not quite, make sure it stays hot enough with contact from the burner.) Your popcorn will start to go! The popcorn is ready when you can no longer feel many kernels rolling around the bottom when you are shaking it. Remove from heat. Keep covered for 1 minute (otherwise, undetected kernels may pop out at you!) and let cool one more. Enjoy!

Other Flavor Suggestions (starting from a pan with 1T of olive oil)

Just Salt

Sirracha

Curry, Turmeric, and Red Pepper

Cinnamon & Salt (pictured above)

Gifts from the Kitchen: Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

'Tis the season for gift giving! And what says happy holidays better than homemade cookies? So Day 1 of my Thrifty Gifts From the Kitchen series will feature just that: a delicious, simple chocolate peppermint cookie recipe and a suggestion for a cute, DIY presentation of the gift. The end product? A thoughtful gift for only $1.

This summer, my fiancé started saving any jar that came with a pre-made food. Salsa jars, pasta sauce jars, olive jars-- you name it, he kept them. When his cupboard started overflowing, I asked him to throw them out, but he did not. So instead, I got to thinking of ways I could get rid of them. Soon enough, I realized that with a little TLC I could use these jars to present the same gifts that would normally come in mason jars and more! The best part is, these jars are free. To further add to my cute, thrifty presentation I use the holiday-themed Trader Joe's paper bags, creatively cut to feature holiday designs or plain brown paper. I've been using these bags to wrap my presents for years now, because nothing looks more classic than a package tastefully decorated and wrapped in brown paper. Some of the jars have plain metal or white lids, so those work as it. Others, such as the Travel Cookie Jar above, had some sort of product label. To cover this, I covered the outside of the lid with a small piece of aluminum foil, tucked under. I could have gone one step further and decorated the lid with glitter or something else like that, but I figured Sam would prefer I keep it simple.

The contents of the jar are worth a blog post in and of themselves. These are a new, super simple, super healthy chocolate peppermint cookie recipe. I've obviously been on a bean kick for desserts: they are super easy to work with, very nutritious, and very cheap! It doesn't get better than that. These days, you can buy chickpea flour for a pretty penny and many gluten free recipes call for it, but you usually end up adding wet ingredients anyways. So I figured I'd give chickpeas a shot in cookies! Ok, it's not totally original... I was inspired by this blog post that I found last week. The result is just phenomenal. You don't even need to add leavening or binding agents to this cookie... it's that easy! Chickpeas are a complete protein, and for 24 cookies from the recipe below, each cookie will have 70 calories, less than 1 gram of fat, and 3 grams of protein. The antioxidants from the unsweetened cocoa powder and the peppermint tea make this recipe a hidden gem. I also tried peppermint green tea for a batch and that was  amazing... and then the cookies also pack the added health benefits of green tea. With all of those compounds that promote cell regeneration and an ideal carbohydrate to protein ratio of 4:1, I bet these cookies would do really well as fuel on a long bike ride! These cookies are definitely a gift that will keep on giving.

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

2 cans chickpeas ($1.20)
1c cocoa powder ($1)
3/4c brown sugar ($0.20)
3/4c strong peppermint tea (two tea bags) ($0.25)

1. Boil water and brew an extra strong cup of peppermint tea or peppermint green tea by adding 2 tea bags to 3/4c boiling water. Let steep for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Combine all ingredients in a food processor. Food process for several minutes, until smooth.
4. Use hands to roll dough into 1 inch balls. Flatten onto greased cookie sheet. (Or if your chickpeas were extra moist, drop rounded spoonfuls onto the sheet. They will still come out well!)
5. Bake 15- 20 minutes, until cooked through. Enjoy!

To make the Travel Cookie Jar

1 medium sized wide-mouthed (salsa) jar (free)
4 inch circle of aluminum foil ($0.04)
plain brown scrap and and patterned scrap from Trader Joe's paper bag (free)
Elmer's glue ($0.01)
curling ribbon ($0.02)
candy cane ($0.08)
1/3 of cookies from the recipe above ($0.85)
Total cost of gift: $1!

1. Clean out jar very well. Remove label. If it won't come off, or come off cleanly, don't worry! We can fix that with our repurposed brown paper label.
2. If you want to cover the lid, place lid inside up on a circle of aluminum foil. Fold edges under.
3. Cut a small card out of the TJ's bag that has a festive print on the outside. I used a paper cutter to make sure my edges were straight. Fold in half. Inside, write the recipe on the one side and your message on the other!
4. Cut out a plain brown square to make a label for the jar. If you couldn't get the label off, just measure, and make your new label so it covers the old one! Use Elmer's glue to attach your new label.
4. Load jar with cookies and cap.
5. Punch hole in recipe/ card. Thread curly ribbon through. Add candy cane and tie the curly ribbon off, either in a bowl or just in a knot and curl the ends.

Stay tuned all week for more ideas for thrifty DIY gifts from the kitchen!