Cinnamon Honey Apple Fruit Leather

We are up to our ears in apples in the house. I've made apple sauce, spiced apples, apple muffins, apple juice, apple chia cookies, apple smoothies, and apple fruit leathers! I've owned an Excalibur dehydrator for about 4 years and I love it. Its easy to use and clean and I've made some amazing snack foods in it like my Kale Chips and also great wrap alternatives like coconut wraps. Many people invest in a dehydrator and then ask me what to do with it. These fruit leathers are very easy to make and and also a way to get into the swing of dehydrating. I am going to cut some of mine into fun shapes and bring them to our neighborhood Halloween party. I am also going to make a big batch of my Raw Chocolate Truffles which were a big hit last year. I know Halloween is a challenging time for a lot of parents who strive to feed their children healthy food so I thought I would include a list of links to healthier alternatives to candy (brought to you by my TrulyFood business partner Nutritionist Andrea Nakayama)

*Raw Honey Sticks

*Oskri Nut, Seed or Coconut Bars

*Caveman Bars

*Organic Fruit Leathers-Cliff makes one that Isaac loves

*Xylitol Fruity Mints

I ended up ordering the honey sticks as I had just come home from seeing the movie Queen of The Sun. It is such a beautiful film, it actually brought tears to my eyes...and took me on a trip back in time to my organic farming days. Its a film that addresses the global bee crisis from a number of different perspectives. Its important that we are all aware of what is going on with our bees and our ecosystem. Please check to see if this film is playing in your area and go see it!

Boo!

-Andrea

Cinnamon Honey Apple Fruit Leather

ingredients:

8 medium Fuji apples (or any you might have), cored and cubed

1-2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/8-1/4 teaspoon sea salt

optional: 1 vanilla bean seeded or a dash of vanilla extract, 10 drops liquid vanilla cream stevia, or 3-4 tablespoons organic raw honey.

preparation:

Blend all ingredients until very smooth and pour 2 cups per dehydrator sheet (on teflex). Spread until thin and smooth.

Dehydrate 5-6 hours or until dry. Turn off dehydrator and allow to cool completely. Peel off of teflex sheet and cut into desired shapes/pieces.

Easy Caesar Dressing

I taught a class yesterday on dehydrating and one of the recipes was for dehydrated almond croutons. We decided to serve them on top of a caesar salad...only problem was that we didn't have all of the ingredients for the dressing. I knew I had one filed away somewhere and sure enough, I was able to improvise and come up with this. Some people like a very lemony caesar dressing so feel free to add more lemon to this if you would like (my husband informed me that he thinks it could use more lemon and of course I disagree, ha!) I served mine over this amazing heirloom mix of salad greens. It would be great tossed with Romaine lettuce or used as a dip with cut up vegetables for kids. Hope you enjoy!

Easy Caesar Dressing

ingredients:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup olive oil

2 ribs celery chopped

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon lemon juice

3 tablespoons wheat free tamari

2 tablespoons chickpea or mellow white miso

2 teaspoons honey or other sweetener of choice

1 tablespoon dulse flakes

1 garlic clove (minced if you don't have a high speed blender)

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

preparation:

Blend all ingredients until smooth (preferably in a Vitamix or high speed blender) and serve on chopped Romaine or any available salad greens.

Chia Doodles (grain free, egg free, dairy free, and delicious)

Round two of these cookies and I think I have it! The first round was made with ground cashews, which you could still use. I actually liked them with cashews but I was walking through the Portland State University Farmers Market today and I saw this- a little voice inside my head told me to try the cookies with it:

I love the taste of them and I also love the fact that they are grown right near my house! Actually I think any ground nut could replace the hazelnuts. I used ground, roasted hazelnut flour which gives the cookies a nice earthy Autumn taste. Any chopped fruit (dried or fresh) or nuts could be added for extra flavor. The apple taste is subtle so if you want more of it, I would add some chopped to the batter.

Chia Doodles

ingredients:

1 cup chia flour (ground chia seed, in a coffee grinder or Vitamix dry blade)

1 cup roasted hazelnut flour (can also be ground at home)

1 teaspoon ginger powder

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/4-1/2 teaspoon sea salt

3/4 cup coconut palm sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup peeled and chopped apples

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 cup gently melted coconut oil

preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl (mix very well) and set aside. Place apples, melted coconut oil and vanilla in a blender and blend until smooth. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix well. Using a 1 tablespoon measuring spoon, scoop cookie dough onto ungreased baking pan and flatten a bit to form a cookie shape. Bake at 350 for about 13 minutes (depending on your oven). Cookies should be a little brown on the bottom. Remove from baking sheet and let cool completely on a plate (if you can) before serving. Yields 18-20 cookies.

I hope you enjoy the cookies, I know I did...a bit too much I think!

For you local Portlanders, don't forget about my Preserve Your Harvest Dehydrator Class coming up next Sunday, October 10th. It is geared towards people that own a dehydrator but don't quite know what to do with it, or feel stuck with ideas of things to make using it. For more information and to register Click here.

Hope to see you there!

-Andrea

I almost forgot~my friend Ali of Whole Life Nutrition hosted a great blog event titled Ideas for Packing a Healthy School Lunch where she rounded up a number of different blogger recipes (including a couple of mine) and created one post linking to some fabulous recipes and information on feeding children well rounded meals while they are at school. For any parent interested, this is a great resource. Click here to read.