Recipe courtesy of Rossana from our No Sugar Cooking Lesson and Breakfast in Honor of Diabetic Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor. This infusion is made from blueberry leaves and cinnamon. Add a touch of blueberries, and you have blood-sugar-balancing beverage that will send you to tastebud heaven.
Recipe for 1 quart of infusion
1/3 cup fresh blueberry leaves
1 cinnamon stick
Add ingredients to a quart-size glass jar. (Reused pasta sauce or pickle
jars work beautifully. Make sure they don’t smell like it though.) Add
boiling water to the very top, and cover. The leaves and the cinnamon
bark will soak up that water as it’s fibers open, so you’ll need to “top
off” the jar with water in about 15 minutes. Wait until the mixture
cools – overnight is best – so that the cinnamon and blueberry leaves
impart their full medicinal value to the water. Reheat (but don’t boil!
it changes the flavor) or enjoy with chilled blueberries. Yummy
sugar-balancing goodness! It’s the best tasting medicine you’ll ever drink.
In honor of our new diabetic Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, we gave a cooking lesson on how to create breakfasts that are low in sugar, but high in deliciousness. This is recipe 1 of 3 that was devoured (with lots of moaning) on Sunday morning.
Green Sausage Wraps
Wraps: Romaine lettuce or any broad dark green leaves
The filling:
1 or natural sausages
1 sweet red pepper
1/2 sweet green pepper
2 tomatoes
1 zucchini
1/2 red onion
1/2 cup parsley
olive oil
1 or 2 cloves of garlic (to taste)
Sauce:
1 tsp lavender
2-3 tablespoons mustard
1/2 cup olive or sesame oil
1 pinch ground cardamom
1 lemon
Cut peppers, onion, tomatoes and zucchini thinly and add to a skillet. Add water, and cook on high heat. Pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil on top, garlic and sausage on top of the veggies to the skillet. Stir occasionally until the mixture is the consistency that you like. Should be about 5-10 minutes.
Let the mixture cool a little bit and stuff the romaine leaves with it. Add parsley on top. Eat. Enjoy. Prosper.
If you are lucky to discover patty-pan squash in your local farmer’s market, supermarket or your own garden, scream “Eureka” A much flavorful and delicate flavor that the other summer squashes, it tastes amazing with artichokes, spinach, tomatoes, eggplants or any other vegetable you want to combine it with.
Ingredients:
1 patty pan squash
frozen artichoke hearts
eggplant or vegetable paste
avocado
Sautee patty pan squash with artichoke hearts until tender in water. Add a tiny amount of olive oil on top when nearly done. Fold cooked vegetables into the eggplant paste, and add chunks of avocado to give the dish more substance. Enjoy.
or you can eat this with your favorite protein – beans, sardines or breakfast sausages.
Obama and Putin sitting down to breakfast in Moscow:
“The two leaders, however, appeared to hit it off over a breakfast of eggs, smoked beluga, black caviar, olady [pancakes] with cranberry jam, quail-stuffed pelmeni [dumplings], tea brewed in a samovar, cherry kisel and homemade ice cream for dessert. The meal, which was scheduled to last 90 minutes, stretched on for more than two hours.” via The Moscow Times
Epic breakfast. You will have to use your imagination to recreate the quail-stuffed pelmeni and get an actual samovar for the tea, but here’s a recipe for Cherry Kisel, since cherries are now in season here!
The traditional recipe uses sugar and potato starch. This recipe uses honey and kuzu root, but I imagine one can use a low-glycemic sweetener, like stevia as well.
2-3 cups cherries or other berries
6 cups of water
4 tbsp kuzu
1 tbsp raw honey
Boil cherries in water until water turns red and the cherry taste is unmistakable in the water. In a separate bowl, combine 1/2 cup of cold water with 4 tablespoons kuzu root. When it becomes a mixture, combine with the juice. Heat for 3 minutes and then turn off heat. Cool, strain and refrigerate for a cold drink.
For a different texture, you can try mashing berries inside, creating a cherry smoothie.
Kuzu drinks soothe the stomach and other inflamed membranes and are known as remedies for digestive upset. If your body is hot, and inflamed in the summer, this might be a great cooling drink. When taken regularly, kuzu drinks strengthen a weak digestive system and reduce symptoms such as frequent indigestion and intestinal gas.
How do you satisfy a craving for a sweet, flavorful cracker with cheese when you can’t have gluten (wheat) or dairy?
Cracker ingredients:
1/2 cup shredded coconut, 1/2 cup flax powder, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds, 1 tablespoon tahini, 1 teaspoon spirulina, 1 tablespoon of raisins, 2 small carrots, 1/2 sweet pepper, 1 tbsp cold pressed coconut oil
Cracker recipe:
Process everything in the food processor. Spread onto dehydrator sheets in thin crackers(or oven at the lowest setting) and dehydrate until solid and crackery like consistency.
American cheeze ingredients:
raw macademia nuts, 1 small raw carrot, 2 cloves or more – a lot of garlic for the funkiness, sea salt and a pinch of turmeric
American cheeze recipe:
Process everything in the food processor until it’s spreadable.
Top with sprouts or your favorite vegetable.
Imagine breakfast by robots – ingredients perfectly measured, no emotions, mechanical efficiency of a toaster magnified 100 times… getting your pancake cooked to a perfect crisp, just how you like it.
If you see me cook, with the ingredients spilling everywhere, and songs, and lots of arm waving, you’d think it would be dull watching a robot make okonomiyaki.
But I don’t think so. Robots are cool.
(Sample okonomiyaki recipe here)
Say!
I like green eggs and ham!
I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!
And I would eat them in a boat.
And I would eat them with a goat…
And I will eat them in the rain.
And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And in a tree.
They are so good, so good, you see!
-Dr.Seuss
Sadly I have no pig or ham,
no bacon or tofurky spam
But i do love green eggs, (no ham)
I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!
Ingredients
swiss chard
salt or dulse
eggs
Pulverize chard through a food processor until it is finely chopped, or chop it fine, until the pieces are smaller than the size of a 1/4 of a penny.
Crack open the eggs in a bowl, add the greens, and use a fork to incorporate them into the eggs, until it’s a fine green mess. Add dulse.
Pour into a hot pan, cover and cook on low to medium heat.
Garnish with salsa if you like.
It’s getting close to the end of Passover. Tired of matza? How about creating a bread substitute that doesn’t taste like matzah but doesn’t have any leavening?
Raw cracker sandwich with kale and avocado
Crackers
1 cup Flax seeds
1/2 cup Almonds
1/2 cup Sunflower seeds
1/4 Walnuts
2 tbsp coconut butter
1 carrot
1/4 red pepper
1 tablespoon curry powder
Combine all ingredients in a food processor. Spread on a dehydrator tray and dehydrate overnight or 8-10 hours.
Sandwich filling:
Avocado
Tomato
Kale
Cucumber
Add the filling in between 2 flax cracker breads to your taste and pleasure. Munch. Enjoy!
It’s day 5 or day 6 of Passover. Alas, even you lost count on this early rainy morning. You’ve stumbled into the kitchen in a morning daze looking for anything healthy and quick to grab — and all you find are matzo crumbs and some wilted dill. The situation is dire. Thoughts of bagels and lox dance in your head as your rummage in the fridge.
No worries. Breakfast Lab is here to help. Grab a tomato, that wilted dill, a can of sardines or another kosher fish, and prepare to create a masterpiece. It’s not exactly bagels or lox, but it’s still very very good.
Stuffed tomato
Satisfying tomato wholesomeness holding a good protein source to give you energy and brain fuel for the entire morning. Great thing about stuffing things is that you can create your own unique stuffing and each time it will taste a little different.
What you need:
5 minutes
a spoon, a fork and a knife
1-2 tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped dill
1 can sardines or another fish
a few leaves of basil
Chop dill and basil. Mash fish into the chopped greens.
Cut the top off the tomato and cut out the insides. Stuff the fish mixture inside. Bite in and savor the deliciousness.
