Remember my commitment to
go off sugar? It's not going too well.
Oh, I've managed to avoid sugar, refined flour, and other "high glycemic" (i.e. starchy) foods for the past two weeks. The thing is, I don't feel any better. The headaches? They're still with me. Shakiness? Yep. But... "they" say that's to be expected. It takes a few
weeks to start noticing a difference. So I guess I'll stick with it awhile longer.
In the meantime, I'm trying to rethink my menu planning. My family is supportive to a certain extent. They are willing to at least try whole grain alternatives to our normal fare. I just need more recipes. I tried Googling for "low glycemic recipes" and most things called for sugar substitute. That didn't help. I am looking for less-sweet recipes with wholesome ingredients. Anybody know a good website?
I found one recipe last week on the Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats bag for Scottish Buttermilk Oat Scones. I thought it might be a good breakfast recipe so I tried it. The recipe called for raisins or currants. I didn't happen to have any on hand, and besides, raisins are kinda sugary, so I decided to put in slivered almonds instead. I thought that would give it a nice crunch. Turns out, that wasn't a good choice. What I hadn't realized is that the steel cut oats are chewy, so the almonds were too much. It just really needed the raisins. Or maybe blueberries. (I think blueberries might be less sugary than raisins.)
Anyway, here's the recipe. Oh, and I did substitute stevia for the sugar, although it probably didn't make much difference since it only calls for 1 teaspoon of sugar. I "frosted" it with plain cream cheese.
Scottish Buttermilk Oat Scones1 cup steel cut oats
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1/2 cup whole grain oat flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup currants or raisins
butter for greasing baking sheet
4 tbsp. softened butter, cut into small pieces
1 tbsp. milk
cinnamon and sugar for topping
Preheat oven to 350. Place the oats in a pie pan and toast them for 20 minutes, stirring often to toast evenly and prevent burning. When slightly golden, remove from oven. Combine oats with buttermilk in a small bowl and let stand for 20 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine the flours, baking soda, sugar, salt and raisins. Reset the oven to 400 and butter the baking sheet.
Using a pastry blender, cut the 4 tbsp. butter into the flour until the texture is coarsely crumbled, then stir in the buttermilk/oat mixture until combined. Flour your hands and scoop the dough, forming it into a ball. Do not over mix. Press the ball of dough directly onto the pan, then press into a 3/4" thick circle. With a sharp knife, score the surface, almost to the bottom, making eight wedges. Brush the surface with milk and sprinkle a bit of sugar and cinnamon on top. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Cut into wedges. Makes 8 scones.
There are already several Christmas stories on my TBR (to-be-read) stack, so I decided to join in the "Holiday Reading Challenge" hosted by All About {n}.
Of course, I had to make some modifications. (I can't seem ever follow a recipe exactly.) I left out the apple peel and the cloves... and after getting the apple mixture good and hot on the stove top I transferred it to my Crockpot set on High. I have an oval shaped Crockpot so I just put the lid on sideways so that steam could escape as the apples cooked down. Usually you don't want the steam escaping, but in this case I wanted a nice thick apple butter so I wanted a lot of the liquid to cook out of it. It took most of the day to cook down to the consistency I wanted, then I just spooned it into hot jelly jars and tightened lids on them to seal.
I was so pleased that they contain all the major highlights of American History. What I really appreciate about these sets is that they contain study notes for all the cut-and-paste activities, so you're not just putting in a random event, you actually have an article about that event to read and learn from as you go along. We usually glue the articles right into our scrapbook, too. Sometimes we fold them up and sometimes we just trim around them and glue them flat.
We are also using our Sonlight timeline figures, along with various other printables that I have found other places. We list the states (along with a small map) on the years they became a state.
Along the right side of the page we write the president's name. When I have found multiple pictures of a particular president, we just put his picture on other pages during his term of office. If I can't find clip-art for a particular event, we just hand-write it in and draw a border around it.
My walking route is about 8 blocks square (although our neighborhood is not divided into square blocks). On the west side of my walking route is a neighborhood aptly named Sunset Ridge.
It's the only part of my route that has an actual walking path winding behind the houses (instead of just a sidewalk along the street).
Anyway, here's the recipe. Oh, and I did substitute stevia for the sugar, although it probably didn't make much difference since it only calls for 1 teaspoon of sugar. I "frosted" it with plain cream cheese.