Experimenting glögi

I miss Finland!
So I made glögi myself...Well, not so sugary and goodelicious than from the shop, but worth a try and definitely more healthy!

I had only:
Concentrated cranberry juice
Cinnamon
Cheap red wine and
Some nuts and raisins

So I prepared 3 portions for my friends and me by adding 1,5 classes of water, 0,5 class of concentrated cranberry juice, 1 table spoon of cinnamon and finally some red wine to spice it. Use as you please ;)

Boil it, pour to mugs and add some nuts and raisins!

Then some X-mas cookies...Hmmmm!!!

X-mas cookies and apple jam! (updated)

Hmm... I can eat these all year around!
Easy, healthy and delicious! What else can you wish for a guy.. mean cookies?
Full of fibers with cinnamon and apple taste, on top some honey to sweeten it more if you wish!

About 15 cookies to go with self made glögi or green tea.
All you need is:

2dl of oat flakes
1,5dl of flours ( for example rice flours or quinoa flours)
About 3 table spoon of cinnamon
(1 tea spoon of baking soda)
1 1/3 tea spoons of stevia sweetener (be careful or your cookies will have a bitter taste)
almost 2dl of water
about 5 table spoons of butter

Optional, but so goooooood topping to finish the cookies:
Home made apple-cinnamon jam!
Almonds and coconut flakes to decorate the topping
After baking some honey to make it sweeter

All you need to do is mix the dry ingredients, add melted butter and the water with stevia drops in, mix it and take about one table spoon of the dough to make a cookie!
Then bake about 15min in 200 Celsius.

Now if you want to add the topping, do it before putting the cookies in the oven. Except for the honey, which you shouldn't cook.

Apple jam:
4 apples (you can also try mixing blooms with apples or making only bloom jam)
Cinnamon

Peal, chop and put in the oven until they are soft enough to be smashed. (About 30min in 225 Celsius) I would smash them only a little to have some texture in it. Add 1 spoon of cinnamon and if you want it sweeter add about 5 drops of stevia. (Remember that without sugar the jam doesn’t last that long, so if you want to preserve it, put it in the freeze.)

Add some apple jam on top of the cookies, decorate with almonds and coconut flakes.
Same deal; put in the oven and when they're ready, add some honey!

It really isn't as hard as reading the recipe!
And you will have enough apple jam for the next batch of cookies as well...or to bake traditional joulutorttu's ;)

Merry X-mas! Hyvää joulua! Feliz Navidad!

Miso soup a'la vegetables

I got this recipe from my homeopath and dried to make it a full dish.
First some info: Miso soup has many healthy ingredients to your body. In Japan they know it, eat it, love it.
Now I quote, because it's more reasonable than writing it twice: " The good: This food is very low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin K and Copper, and a very good source of Manganese.
The bad: This food is very high in Sodium."
"The nutritional benefits of miso are incomplete on their own... with ingredients such as tofu, dashi, scallops, katsuobushi and other vegetables, miso soup can provide a very complete meal."

So I thought to expand my love for spices and Asia into a love for not using spices in this Japanese cuisine. And it turned out to be quite tasty!
Although at fist I tried to compose a spicy version to my poor salsa teacher in my little experimental kitchen. Little hint: do not experiment with food while you're trying to make an impression!
So here's my version of a miso soup.

About six full portions:

1 onion
1 celery
1 turnip
1 parsnip
3 carrots
½ cauliflowers
About 2L water
100g of tofu
Fish powder
Some miso paste
Some thymus to decorate the portions

Peel and chop all the vegetables as you please, add them into a big pot of boiling water and boil about an hour.
In the end add about 100 g of tofu and boil a minute.
Add a little spoon of fish powder and the miso paste in the end, but do not boil it, it alters the flavour "There is some belief that cooking the miso "kills" it and reduces the health benefits of biologically active miso paste."

For one full plate add ½ table spoons of miso paste. Decorate with thymus if you please. Enjoy! It's not the heaviest dish in the world, but might be one of the healthiest!

Quotes and more about miso soup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miso_soup
Some more information about Japanese cuisines available for example in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_cuisine

Apple-oat breakfast-dessert

Simple, fast and delicious!
Great mysli for breakfast with rice milk and good relief for your hunger for sweets with some honey!



Just add
1-2 apples
2-6 dl of oat
2-4 table spoons of cinnamon

...Maybe also:
handful of sunflower seeds
some almonds, cashew nuts and coconut flakes

And composing is advisable =)
But remember that nuts, almonds and coconut have fat and you wont be needing that so much during the summer.

Mix them up, put them in the oven for 175 degrees for some minutes and that's it!

Serve warm with some honey as a dessert or cold as a breakfast with rice milk!