Cinnamon Rolls for Easter!

I have a new source of super low fat recipes!  Check it out!

The Goode Life is written by a fellow military mom, and her toddler has VLCAD (Very long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase) deficiency, which sounds rougher than LPLD in some ways (I hope she writes up his diagnosis story some day, but it will be a hard  and emotional thing for her to put into words, I think).  Anyway, judging from the recipes she has on her blog, she has put a lot of effort into cooking beautiful and delicious food, even though her child is only a toddler!  I admit, sometimes I don't put all that much effort into trying new recipes for my girls, since I figure they are so young.  They won't miss cinnamon rolls since they don't remember them, right?  But she inspired me to try her recipe for Easter, and I'm so glad I did!

I followed her recipe posted here but since I like to soak my grains and use my bread maker, I combined the milk, apple sauce, flour, egg whites, and sugar and combined them in the bread machine bowl with 2 Tablespoons of non fat yogurt.  I put 1/4 cup white flour on top, and put the yeast and salt on top of the dry flour.  I let the whole thing sit in the breadmaker overnight, with the maker set to automatically finish the 'dough' cycle by the time I would be up for Easter morning.  That morning, I took the finished bread dough out and ended up having to mix another whole cup of white flour in to make a good doughy texture, and then placed it in a bowl greased with a little coconut oil like she recommends, to rise for an hour in a warm oven, covered with a damp, clean towel.  I used a pastry brush to paint the melted coconut oil onto the bowl, to keep it to a minimum.


I followed the rest of her directions for the inside filling and baking and the frosting, and topped them all with raisins (which were carefully picked off and avoided anyway, oh well.

Both my girls loved them!


Happy Easter!!!

Roasted Bell Peppers of Awesomeness

My latest fat free foot obsession is roasted bell peppers.  You can do other peppers, too, and the roasting process gives them a flavor that is just fantastic.  My LPLD girls just can't quite handle that (or any) level of spice (yet - I hope!).  I've always known they were tastey, but couldn't find an easy enough way to roast them to be able to incorporate them into every day life.  But now I've found one!  We had them on sandwiches last weekend and could have gotten by without lunchmeat, the peppers were so good.  I even but them on the fajitas we had last night, and Monica didn't even notice that she didn't have avocado on hers! (She had a high fat weekend, so we need to take a few days of low low low fattiness).  So, here's what works so well for us:

Stick as many bell peppers as will fit (or just a few, but why not mass produce these delicious things?!?) onto a cookie sheet and stick them in an oven preheated to 375 degrees.  Cook for 20 minutes.

Then rotate each one 180 degrees (flip them over) with some tongs.  Cook for another 20 minutes.

Dump them unceremoniously from the cookie sheet onto your stove top (if you're like me, though a plate would do fine too), herd them together with your tongs, and stick a cake dome on top of them.  Or a bowl.  Or anything that will trap the steam (and save your money instead of wrapping them in foil for that one time use).  Let them sit until they are cool.

We ate all the peppers... but these apples represent how to let the peppers steam and cool in a cake dome.  Or bowl.

Using gloves for hot peppers, use your hands to peel off the roasted skin, the stems, and the seeds out from the insides.

Eat that fleshy goodness!!  On a sandwich, with eggs, in crepes, whatever you would consider using plain old peppers in!