Instant, Healthy, and Delicious Lunch

I threw this lunch together at midnight last night because I needed to have SOMETHING to eat the next day at work. It looked so pretty I took a picture of it (above).  I wasn’t so sure I’d like it, but it turned out to be DELICIOUS. The only thing I would do differently next time is include two – not just one – frozen frozen mango ‘cube’.

I really loved the mixture of quinoa, wheat berries, and mango — which I just mixed together with my fork after the meal had been heated. This contrasted nicely with the smoky-salty bean soup.  And then the kale mixed with the cilantro sauce, was another delicious and interesting flavor.

So if you are looking for a light and healthy – and easy to throw together lunch – try this one yourself!

Ingredients

1 pre-frozen portion of Whole Foods Black Bean Soup

1 pre-frozen flavor Cilantro Sauce flavor cube

1 pre-frozen cube of pureed champagne mango ( Just puree peeled and seeded mango in blender, freeze puree in  silicone mini muffin pan, and once frozen store in a plastic freezer bag in the freezer – just like you may already do for all your ‘flavor cubes.’)

1 portion of cooked quinoa

1 portion of cooked wheat berries

For details on how to cook wheat berries without soaking them overnight, see Eating Well.

1 portion of lightly steamed kale leaves (stems removed)

Note: Kale is a member of the cruciferous family so it has all the benefits that cabbage has!

Directions

To make this lunch, I just assembled these items. That’s it! It’s that easy!

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni

MONAMIFOOD BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

Made with whole wheat flour, bananas, blueberries, almond meal (ground almonds), ground flaxseeds, and lots of cinnamon, these muffins are chock-full of anti-cancer healthy foods. But how do they taste? Just slightly sweet (very little sugar), but awesome!

Makes 24 regular size muffins and 24 mini-size muffins

Ingredients

Olive or canola oil for greasing the muffin pans

4 medium-size ripe or very ripe bananas

2 cups skim milk

1/2 cup canola or extra virgin olive oil

½ cup dark brown sugar, very tightly packed

2 eggs (preferably eggs with omega 3’s), lightly beaten

2 tablespoons agave nectar

•Why agave nectar? How does agave nectar help your body to prevent cancer?

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

• Vanilla brings out the sweet taste of food, so you can use less sugar in the recipe. According to the food experts, the best vanilla is produced under the brand, Nielsen-Massey. It’s quite expensive, but I think it’s worth splurging on.

3 ¾ cup white whole wheat flour

3/4 cup almond meal (finely ground raw almonds)

• I like the almond meal at Trader Joe’s. It’s not expensive and it includes the almond skin (dark brown part) which is high in fiber.

½ cup flaxseeds, ground

• Why flaxseeds? How do flaxseeds help your body to prevent cancer?

• For freshness, buy whole flaxseeds and grind them yourself — in either a coffee grinder or a mini food processor fitted with a metal blade. To keep flaxseeds fresh, store them in the freezer. I particularly like the golden flaxseeds.

1 tablespoon non-aluminum baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons ground Ceylon cinnamon

• Why cinnamon? How does cinnamon help your body to prevent cancer?

1 pound (16 ounces) frozen blueberries, almost defrosted (you don’t want blueberries and blue water)

• I use Trader Joe’s Wild Boreal Blueberries. These are very small blueberries that, according to the packaging, are “grown naturally with no pesticides.” Not all wild Boreal blueberries are grown without pesticides; many are grown from wild bushes but are treated with pesticides just like regular blueberries. Unfortunately, I think organic frozen blueberries are just too expensive to use most of the time.

•Why blueberries? How do blueberries help your body to prevent cancer?

Directions

Arrange the oven racks so that you have two racks in the middle of the oven, equidistant from the top and bottom of the oven. Preheat oven to 350 degree F.

Using a pastry brush, brush the inside of each muffin cup with a little canola or olive oil. (I used two regular size metal muffin pans and two silicone mini muffin pans. Use whatever you have available.)

In a large bowl, mash the bananas very well. (A simple old-fashioned potato masher will do the job.) Add the skim milk, canola or olive oil, brown sugar, lightly beaten eggs, agave nectar, and vanilla extract. Set aside.

Into a medium-size bowl, add the white whole wheat flour, almond meal, ground flaxseeds, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  Mix these dry ingredients very well.

Take the large bowl with the wet ingredients (that you set aside earlier) and mix the wet ingredients well. Then dump the dry ingredients on top of the wet ingredients. (I know this is unorthodox, but I think it works better than the orthodox way of adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.) Mix the dry and wet ingredients until they are almost mixed. (It’s best if a few small patches of dry ingredients remain as there is more mixing coming in the next step and you do not want to over mix.)

Now dump the defrosted blueberries onto the batter and gently stir the blueberries into the batter. (You will end up with a batter that’s slightly blue and that’s OK.)

Using a medium size ice cream scoop (or whatever you have on hand), fill the regular muffin cups about 7/8 of the way to the top with the batter; fill the mini muffin cups to the top with batter.

Place the 2 filled regular size muffin pans on the upper shelf and the 2 filled mini muffin pans on the lower shelf of the preheated oven.

Bake for 40 minutes or until a thin skewer inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean.

Remove the muffin pans from the oven and set them aside to cool for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the muffins to a wire rack to cool completely. When completely cool, store covered in the refrigerator or freeze to use later.

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni

NOTE TO READERS: Safety of Silicone Muffin Pans

Note to Readers: Is silicone bake ware safe to use?

I use silicon muffin pans a LOT. But how safe is it to use silicone muffin pans (bake ware)?

As far as I can see, heating or freezing foods in silicone bake ware that’s made of 100% FDA-approved food grade silicone is perfectly safe. Health Canada approves of silicone for cooking. And…even Dr. Andrew Weil, MD, is OK with using silicone.  In addition, I spoke with the chemist from Minnesota Rubber and Plastics, the company that manufactures the Silicone Solutions muffin pans that I have, and feel even more confident now that these products when used as directed (up to the maximum temperature for baking) are completely safe.

But I recommend that you buy a product that’s made with 100% FDA-approved food grade silicone. Unless the label states that the product is 100% food-grade silicone it may or may not be. But you can tell if the product is 100% silicone – just by doing the “twist test,” as recommended by Marion Burros of the New York Times.

When I tested of my silicone muffin pans, I was dismayed to learn that several of them (yes, I have quite a collection) failed the test (that is, they turned white at the crease where they were bent), which means they have some fillers in them (probably plastic fillers).

So do I plan to continue to use my non-100% silicone pans? Yes, but only for freezing foods that are not acidic (no orange or lemon juice) and not for heating foods. So I won’t be using these non-100% silicone pans for making a batch of Zesty Citrus Flavor Cubes or whipping up a batch of my Homemade Designer Chocolates. For those recipes, I plan to use only my 100% silicone pans.

While there are other 100% FDA-approved food-grade silicone muffin pans on the market, here are the links to the ones I found (and use) by Silicone Solutions, available online at Target (but not in my local Target store):

• Silicone Solutions 6-cup muffin pan (regular size muffins)

• Silicone Solutions mini-muffin pan

Notes re Silicone Solutions muffin pans:

• They  are made in the USA and they’re a lot less expensive than the imported ones that you can find at cooking specialty stores, like Sur La Table.

• They are thicker and less flexible than the muffin pans I have that aren’t 100% silicone, so I just let the frozen cubes sit for a minute or two to defrost before trying to pop them out of the muffin pan. It works just fine!

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni