Doritos Knock-off Popcorn Seasoning

Well, last night's dinner was completely unimaginative.  We had baked potatoes with butter, topped with broccoli and onions grilled in butter, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper.  It's one of my fall-back meals I make when I don't really feel like cooking or following a recipe.  I can check out, flip on auto-pilot, and dinner just happens.

So I won't bore you with that, but I did want to share my newest favorite snack food with you!


I can't think of high school without thinking about the many lunch hours spent in the band room practicing a new piece or messing around with a couple of good friends over a Pepsi, candy bar, and a bag of nacho Doritos (Yes. Pinnacle of health I was, even then!). There's something about Doritos that are just amazing... open a bag and they're gone in 10 minutes flat!  Even the big bags because there's always someone willing to help you with them!

I did manage to swear off Doritos during my "dieting years" and have never really started eating them again, but that doesn't mean it's not painful to refuse them when somebody offers them and I peer down at the atomic, glowing goodness being reflected by the metallic packaging.  All that being said, a friend recently introduced me to this seasoning recipe that she puts on her popcorn (which I'm also a sucker for) that is a super close second to the Nacho Doritos flavor! Plus, it has the added benefit of not being some unnatural neon color and is guilt-free good for you!

I was so enthralled with it that I made it EVERY night for a straight week and munched on that instead of my usual post-children's-bedtime fare and **blushes** finished the whole HUGE bowl by myself almost every night (my husband's not a popcorn fan... lucky me!).  The crazy thing?  At the end of the week, my belt was down a notch even though it was my only diet change!

The good news is it's pretty easy, the only odd things you are going to need that might not be lying around your house already is a used and cleaned spice container (I like the old Costco ones cause they hold a lot), some nutritional yeast (You can find it at health foods stores.  Ours had it in these by-the-pound bins and you can buy as little or as much as you want.  In my experience it's been flakey like fish food (though it does come in powder) and yes, it is absolutely necessary, it's what gives the mix it's cheesy flavor!), and coconut oil (I imagine you could probably use EVOO, but coconut oil is super good for you and is great for so many other things as well!).

Jessi's Nacho Popcorn Seasoning*
Ingredients:
-1 cup nutritional yeast
-4 teaspoons onion powder
-4 teaspoons garlic powder
-4 teaspoons cumin
-4 teaspoons paprika
-4 teaspoons chili powder
-1/2-1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (depending on how spicy you like it, you want regular Doritos, use 1/2 teaspoon, you want the spicier variety, use one teaspoon)
-8 teaspoons sea salt
Instructions:

Miss Pickey-pickerson Approved! 

1. Measure ingredients into a blender and pulse until it's completely mixed.
2. Using a funnel, carefully pour mixture into a used spice container (yields about 1 1/3 cups)
To Prepare Popcorn: 
1. Heat about 4-5 teaspoons coconut oil in a saute pan on high heat. When melted, add 1/4-1/3 cup popcorn kernels and cover.  Shake to coat in the oil then shake every 15-20 seconds to keep kernels and popped corn from burning.
2. Turn out into large bowl when you have 2-3 seconds of space between pops.
3. Wipe out pan and heat 4-5 more teaspoons of oil until it's melted.
4. Drizzle 1/2 the coconut oil on the popcorn, moving a spoon back and forth through the stream. Stir and repeat with the second 1/2 of oil and stir again.
5. Sprinkle a generous coating of the popcorn seasoning over the top and stir, turning the bowl as you stir. Repeat. Enjoy!


So I realize you might have some questions about a few of the ingredients I used in this recipe.  When I share recipes people often have a couple of the same questions about how or why I prepare some of the dishes the way I do, and I wanted to take a minute to answer those in case if you were wondering as well!

What's with the coconut oil?
The first reason is that it has lots of health benefits. It has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties and it's a healthier fat than a lot of other sources to start with.  Here's a Dr. Oz article that talks a little more about it:
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/surprising-health-benefits-coconut-oil
The second reason, in it's simplest form, is that many oils need to be heated too hot to extract the oil and because of how it's made, come to us already rancid on the shelf, covered up by lots of over-processing.  
http://www.draxe.com/are-you-eating-rancid-oils/
Some would call it conspiracy but why would you mess with it if they can't all agree on a conclusive answer? Try oils that come from being pressed and don't need to be heated, like butter, extra virgin olive oil, and coconut oil.

Tell me about the nutritional yeast, I've never even heard of it!
It's yeast that's been deactivated by cooking and is popular among vegans for it's cheesy flavor that's hard to get from other natural sources. It's high in protein and B-vitamins (a happy vitamin) and low in fat and sodium.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/nutrional-yeast-not-just-for-vegans_n_1420734.html

Himalayan Rock Salt

Why sea salt? What's wrong with regular salt??
Refined table salt is striped of it's natural minerals and has toxic additives.  I personally use pink Himalayan rock salt because it's what is available to me at my local Costco.  I've also heard good things about Celtic Sea Salt.
http://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/food/food-for-thought-is-salt-good-or-bad






*I think this is probably the web site my friend originally got the popcorn recipe from:
http://wholenewmom.com/recipes/dorito-flavored-popcorn-dairy-free/

Remy's Ratatouille

Apparently the dish the Remy makes in the Disney movie Ratatouille is not a traditional ratatouille.  But this awesome hack of the dish he does make got rave reviews in my house tonight (well... to be honest, four gave it two enthusiastic thumbs up and the littlest pair of thumbs in our household gave it two teary-eyed thumbs down but that's a whole other blog in and of itself...).  My son took THIRDS and I got a happy groan out of my husband on the first bite and AGAIN on the second bite!  I made extra of this so we could have it again another night, yeah... that's not gonna to happen.  It's pretty much gone!

Plus it's a very pretty and colorful dish, and it has goat cheese.  Who doesn't like goat cheese??

I was able to use three red peppers, two yellow squash, and a small onion from my bountiful basket in this recipe!


Remy's Ratatouille
What you Need:
-2 10" oven-safe baking dishes
-parchment paper
-EVOO cooking spray
-4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
-2 cups brown rice
-1 Tablespoon butter
-1/2 medium onion, diced
-2 garlic cloves, minced
-1 14oz can diced tomatoes
-basil,  parsley, and thyme to taste (again, I go nuts on the basil and easy on the parsley and thyme)
-1 egg plant (or 2 Italian Eggplants)
-2 zucchini
-2 yellow squash
-3 long, skinny-ish red bell peppers
-1/4 cup EVOO
-1 teaspoon thyme
-1 teaspoon dill weed
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/4 teaspoon black pepper
-AT LEAST 6oz soft goat cheese (and I would say "optional" here to make it vegan-friendly, but it's the contrast of the cheese with the other flavors that makes this dish so phenomenal!)
Instructions:
1. Set a piece of parchment paper on top of each baking dish and use a pencil to trace around the lip of the dish and cut the circle just inside the line so it'll fit nicely over the top of your ratatouille and set aside.
2. Combine the stock and rice in a rice cooker and start it (If using a saute pan, melt an additional 2 Tablespoon of butter in pan on a medium/high heat, add rice and stir for a few minutes and then add the stock.  Cover and simmer on medium/low for 30-40 minutes or until most of the water has been absorbed.  I also recommend moving this step to while the ratatouille is in the oven if you decide to prepare it this way)
3. In a small sauce pan, melt butter and saute onion on medium/high heat.  When tender, add garlic and stir.  Add tomatoes, basil. parsley, and thyme and stir.  Reduce heat and allow to stew and reduce while you prepare the olive oil and cut vegetables
4. Combine olive oil, thyme, dill weed, salt, and pepper in a small bowl and set aside
5. Trim the ends off eggplant, yellow squash, zucchini, and red peppers.  Carefully remove the core from the inside of the red peppers, leaving the tube intact.
6. Thinly slice the yellow squash, zucchini, and red peppers (and if you got Italian eggplants, those as well) into thin rounds, about 1/16th of an inch.  If you have a normal eggplant, cut the narrow top into rounds just like the other vegetables. Then quarter the thick part of it length-wise and cut the quarters into 1/16th inch slices.
7. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
8. Coat 10" dishes with cooking spray, pour 1/2 the tomato mixture into the bottom of each dish, and arrange slices of vegetables concentrically from the outer edge to the inside of the dish, overlapping so just a small amount of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables.
9. Using a basting brush, brush half of the olive oil mixture onto the top of the vegetables in each dish. Cover with parchment rounds and bake for 45 minutes
10. Serve over rice with a dab of goat cheese on top!


Hope you enjoy this scrumptious dish!  I know we did! 

A Healthy Change

A couple years ago I had a friend who jumped off the "crunchy" deep end.  It started with just a few small changes here and there as she prepared for the arrival of her first child.  I remember having a conversation with a mutual friend where we agreed that the research, effort, and changes were all wonderful and how cool it was, but that it was so time-consuming and could it possibly last?

Now, two years later, my dear friend is an inspiration in her whole food, low budget cooking, in her aspirations of raising grass-fed rabbits, goats, chickens and all sorts of animalia for nutritional benefit, as well as in how she makes her own home-made shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, and cleaners just to name a few things. 

Every few days or so she excitedly shares the findings of her newest research and how she plans to change how they live to live a healthier life-style.  And every once in a while, she shares something that I think sounds easy enough to copy that I follow gingerly along behind her.

I've come to a place where I realize that conventional medicine and nutrition in the United States is not what it should be and that much of what we've been raised to believe about our health is not beneficial, or worse, it's harmful.

This year, I'm seeking to help my family make changes, especially regarding nutrition.  To eat more whole foods, organic when I can, vinegar baths when I can't, raising the over-all fruit & vegetable ratios of our diet, & possibly looking into vegan & gluten-free options. One of the things that I've already done is signed up for bountiful baskets (a food co-op that allows you to buy lots of produce for a discount, but is a challenge because you don't get to pick what's in your basket).  I've had some requests, now and in the past, that I share some of my recipes or things that I've discovered just experimenting with my own health and so I've decided to do a blog sharing what I've found.  What has inspired me is other people's stories of things they try and I hope I can inspire you to take baby steps towards living healthier as well!

The first recipe (this was before my first bountiful basket) I tried I found searching for vegan AND gluten free dishes (The easiest explanation I can give for this is the anti-cancer properties they talk about in this Huffington Post article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegan-diet-cancer_b_2250052.html, and you don't need a PhD to reason through that stuff that grows in the ground or animals that eat the stuff grown in the ground is WAY better for you than some chemically processed and preserved something or another that comes from a box or bag, though... bear with me, I am taking baby steps and so you will find that many of my recipes at this point do rely on things like canned tomatoes and dried chicken bouillon.). I was VERY impressed with the tastiness of this recipe!


Asparagus Risotto
Ingredients:
-A bundle of asparagus, sliced diagonally into 2-3" pieces (discard bottom portion)
-4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
-2-3 Tablespoons EVOO
-3-4" leak, sliced across the round starting at the roots (discard roots and remaining greens)
-3 mushrooms, sliced thinly
-1 cup raw organic Arborio rice (found it on the top shelf above all the normal rice at the store)
-1 Tablespoon minced garlic
-1/2 cup white wine
-Sea salt, to taste
-2 Tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped 
Instructions:
1. Pour about a 1/2 inch of water into a saute pan and blanch the asparagus until it's bright green, remove from pan and rinse with cold water to keep it from cooking more.  Set aside.
2. In the same pan, heat the olive oil on medium heat and saute the leak and mushrooms for a minute, add the uncooked rice and saute for 3-5 minutes
3. Add the white wine and stir until most of the wine is cooked off.
4. Pour in 1 cup of broth and bring to a simmer.  Reduce heat and simmer uncovered, stirring frequently for 7-8 minutes.
5. When most of the liquid is absorbed, add the remaining cups of broth 1 cup at a time, stirring and simmering until each cup of liquid is absorbed before adding the next (NOTE: you can't cook risotto like standard rice, you have to babysit it like this)
6. Add the asparagus to the top of finished risotto.  Cover and set aside for 5 minutes.
7. Spoon into bowls & garnish with parsley


I was pleasantly surprised with how flavorful this dish was and the family (myself, husband, 4 year-old picky eater daughter, 7 year-old son, and 84 year-old Nana) polished off the whole pan!

Hope you enjoy!


***UPDATE***: I made this dish again with a sweet Riesling and a Tablespoon of lemon juice and it was still tasty!  It was a hit with the kiddos too, the picky one finished her bowl and the not-picky one took seconds!  Oh!  And I got a picture: