Dixie Pie Bites

When I was in high school, I worked at this restaurant and they made pies. One of their pies was called Dixie Pie. It was mighty tasty. It was walnuts, chocolate chips, with a pecan pie filling… I loved that pie.  

I found a recipe for raw "pecan pie" bites and decided to mix it up a little and make "Dixie Pie Bites."

Ingredients

1.5 cups, packed, pitted dates (Make sure there are no pits! Tonight's pitted dates had 3 pits in them! We always cut them to double check.)

3/4 cup pecans

3/4 cup walnuts

1/2 -1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1/4 -1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions

Place all ingredients in a food processor.

Mix until it forms a dough.

Remove and roll into balls.

Store in the fridge.

Make 10-12 balls.

Or, if you're feeling lazy pour all the "dough" on a wax paper sheet and roll it into a thin layer. Cut into small squares. 

I think Dixie Pie has rum in it, so these don't quite mimic the pie, but they are super tasty.  I love them, probably as much as I used to love the pie, so I shall name them Dixie Pie Bites in honor of that (unhealthy) pie.

Lazy way...

Little bites

Now it's really almost the end of the year...

Christmas is over. I got my syllabus done for my class. I still have some work to do for work, but it's okay if it doesn't happen until Thursday--work is officially "closed" right now.* So now, I can blog!

What to blog?!  I think I'll start with a review of the festive chickpea tart.

I made it pretty much like the recipe from that web page (no oil added) except I didn't make the topping. Next time I make the tart, I plan to layer a bunch of cranberries near the top layer. This was so good with cranberry sauce! Oh, and we used fresh kale not spinach in ours.

It is festive! Nick's comment was that it tasted like dressing. It's got all the dressing spices. It definitely could be a gluten-free dressing--and that's a compliment! I love dressing!

I made it in a pie shell, but I'm not a super big pie crust fan. Next time, I won't make it in one unless daughter #1 wants me to make it with a crust. She liked it. I liked it. Nick wasn't crazy about it. Guests liked it. It's a good addition to the repertoire!


Ingredients

• 1/2 - 1 tbsp olive oil - or water for oil-free

• 1 cup onion, diced

• 1/2 cup celery, diced

• 4-5 medium-large garlic cloves, minced

• 1⁄4 tsp sea salt

• Few pinches freshly ground black pepper

• 2 cups chickpeas

• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

• 2 tsp tamari

• 1/2 tsp ground sage

• 1/4 tsp sea salt

• 3/4 cup walnuts, toasted

• 1/3 cup rolled oats (optional, see note)

• 1 - 10 oz package of fresh kale (or as much as you want

Add water, onion, celery, garlic, salt and pepper in a skillet over medium-high heat. After a veggies and onions are softened and turning golden add the kale and cook it down.  In a food processor, add chickpeas (except reserved 1/3 cup), lemon juice, tamari, sage, salt, and sautéed mixture, and partially puree (not fully like hummus, but leaving some chunkier consistency). 

Add toasted walnuts and oats, and briefly pulse to lightly break up nuts. Transfer to a bowl, and stir in spinach, cranberries, parsley, thyme, and reserved chickpeas. Transfer most of the mixture to pie shell (or lightly oiled pie plate), smoothing to evenly distribute. Add a layer of cranberries and then cover with the mixture. (I'm going to do a THICK layer!). 

I don't have picture. Next time I will. I'll add it when I get one.





*I imagine I might think a little bit about it before then, but we'll see. I think so much that sometimes it's hard not to work/think. I get bored. I like my work! I know I need to take breaks, but I didn't work Monday-Friday last week.

Sunday night burgers

I made so much soup last week that I just can't face my soup pot today. (Plus, I froze a lot of soup last week and don't have a lot of room left in the freezer.) Instead, I decided to make these burgers from Dreena Burton's site.

Of course, I had to change a couple of things... Here's what I did:

1 1/2 cups raw almonds

1 cup raw walnuts

1 small clove garlic

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tbsp tomato paste

2 tbsp nutritional yeast (She said to add it and that it wouldn't be strong; I did even though I was worried about it. It was good.)

1 tbsp tamari

1/8 tsp each of dried thyme and ground sage (I didn't have thyme, so I just put in sage)

1 medium carrot

1 cup fresh kale (packed)

~1 cup rolled oats

Process the almonds, walnuts, garlic, and salt; make it a pretty fine consistency. Take most of the mixture out of the food processor to process the kale and carrots. (My food processor isn't big enough to handle nuts and the veggies at the same time.) Get kale and carrots into very small pieces. Add the nuts back and the tomato paste, nutritional yeast, tamari, and oats.  Pulse until mixed well. Now add the oats. My poor food processor couldn't really do it all so I helped by stirring in the oats up by hand.  (I need a new food processor.)

I made 10 patties and baked them at 400 on a silpat for 10 minutes on each side.

These are savory and nice. The whole family ate them. Yay! (I love meals that the whole family will eat.)  I'll try to get a picture of them soon, but take a look at Dreena's site if you want to see a picture sooner than I get to it. 

A blueberrilicious treat! (Edited)

Recently, I found a recipe for "blueberry energy bites" and it sounded like a perfect summer treat (maybe even a breakfast or dessert). Since I've never made anything from the healthy maven's web site (where I found the recipe), I wasn't sure how they would turn out. OH MY GOODNESS--healthy maven said they were wonderful, but they are absolutely divine. My husband doesn't like blueberries and he thought these were tasty*. Blueberrilicious treats!

Of course, I had to modify the recipe a little. (That's my MO, remember?) I added chia seeds for a little extra energy and nutrition goodness. I also made these with walnuts rather than almonds as she suggested. Walnuts have lots of omega-3s and I'm all about omega-3s. Omega-3s help reduce the inflammatory process. Walnuts are the "healthy" nut. (They are still loaded with fat, so that's why healthy is in quotes. Some people don't want to consume very much fat, but my girls are growing.)

Note, walnuts are very "oily," and the picture shows the little treats looking very shiny. As you roll the balls, you will get a lot of oil on your hands.  You may want to put the mixture on paper towels to let it "drain" a little.  I'm going to play around with adding some oats, and using a few less nuts to figure this little problem out, but for now, I wanted to warn you that this could happen. On the positive side of things, if you get a lot of oil out, you can feel good that you won't be eating all the oil.

I think some of the problem with so much oil coming out is that I processed the walnuts for a long time; we like the texture smooth. I will keep you posted on what I do and you can let me know what you do to fix this--thanks if you do! (I need a recipe tester, apparently!)

EDITED 6/24/2013:
I removed some of the nuts from the recipe and added a few oats.  This time, it wasn't "greasy!"  Yay!  It was still was super yummy

1 1/4 cup walnuts
1/4 cup cashews
1/4 cup oats (these made it more "stiff"
1/3 cup Chia Seed
1  cup dates
1 cup dried blueberries
1.5 tsp vanilla extract (or seeds of 1 vanilla bean)
~3-4 tablespoons lemon juice (or juice from 1/2 lemon)
1/4 tsp sea salt

Process the nuts and dates in a food process until your desired texture. (We like things very smooth around here.)

(Be sure to check your dates for pits before you add them. It's awful if one sneaks into your food processor--you'll have to toss the mixture as you could break a tooth on a piece of date pit!)

Add in the  blueberries. Add chia and up to 1/4 cup of oats -- I often only add oats if the walnuts look especially oily.

Add the salt, lemon juice, and vanilla.

When it's all processed take it out of the food processor and make the little bite-sized balls--aim for 20-25.

Below are the nutritional stats for one ball (if you make 22 balls from this recipe).

We plan to make a second batch tomorrow.  At the risk of sounding trite, OMG, they are good! Thanks, healthy maven! You are awesome!

*Both my husband and our wonderful nanny thought the blueberry energy bites tasted chocolatey... I just thought it was the rich walnut flavor.