Things I love: Against All Grain by Danielle Walker

I love healthy cookbooks. I have to restrain myself at the book store because I want them all. It’s important that the recipes in a cookbook are realistic. I won’t buy one if each dish has a long list of ingredients that I have never heard of and multiple complex steps, resulting in a multi-hour process. As much as I love learning about new ingredients and experimenting in the kitchen, I know I will rarely use it, and only collect dust on the shelf. And lonely books are just sad.

One that I use consistently is Against All Grain by Danielle Walker. I keep it on my kitchen window sill because I use it so much. I have endless praise for Danielle and her paleo pioneering. Although I am not  fully paleo I definitely lean in that direction, consuming far less wheat, grains, and processed foods than I used to. She creates easy to make recipes using ingredients I’ve heard of. Some of the recipes are more time consuming than others, but when you want to make your health a priority it’s a given you will spend some time in the kitchen.

A definite keeper from this book is her Banana Bread. I ended up making it into muffins because I coudn’t find a bread pan and I had a muffin tray right there. Even better! Perfect portions!

Dry Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/4 cup almond flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp sea salt

Wet Ingredients:

2 tbsp melted Coconut oil

4 eggs

3 tbsp honey

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 banana mashed

1/2 cup coconut milk (you could also use almond milk if that is what you have)

Diretions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Mix coconut oil, eggs, honey, vanilla and vinegar in a bowl until combined.
• In a separate bowl combine coconut flour, almond flour, baking soda, and sea salt.
• In a third bowl mash the bananas and mix with coconut milk.
• Combine all three bowls, mixing until everything is combined nicely.
• Depending on whether you are cooking it in a bread pan or muffin tin cooking time will differ. If you are using a bread pan the book suggests 40-45 minutes. If you are using a muffin tin 15-20 minutes should do the trick.

Additional Suggestions:

With this recipe feel free to add on some other ingredients, whatever excites you. The book suggests chocolate chips. I used walnuts because to me banana bread has to have walnuts in it.

Also it is helpful to make sure that the eggs and other wet ingredients are close to room temperature. True story: melted coconut oil will solidify with mixed with comething cold (eggs that you just took out of the refrigerator). Learned that the hard way, which made mixing very difficult.

Anyway, they turned out great. I ate four as soon as they came out of the oven.