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Gingerbread Men (and tips for healthier holiday baking)

Almost Raw Gingerbread Men
There are certain foods that we don’t consider good for our bodies, which are actually very good for our souls. They are different for everybody, they are the foods that give us warm, nostalgic feelings. They are the foods whose aromas waft out from the kitchen and immediately make us feel safe and loved. Those are the feelings we all need to feel more often and are just as important as healthy food and clean air.

Almost Raw Gingerbread Men

The not-so-great part of this equation is that those same foods that give us all of the deep and delicious soul food are often the same foods that are full of sugar and refined carbs. What’s worse is that the more we learn about which foods we ‘should’ be eating (or when, let’s say your daughter obsessively researches the foods you should be eating based on your recent cancer diagnosis), we begin to feel guilty about these comforting soul food experiences, an emotion that cancels out all of the health benefits of the good stuff that you may have been feeling from those old familiar smells and tastes.

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Savory Asian Pancake with Cucumber Sesame Salad

Gluten free Asian Pancake with Cucumber Sesame Salad

The inspiration for these pancakes comes from those Chinese green onion pancakes. If you’re like me, you might have tried them before and wondered why they tasted so good, Googled them, read their ingredients, and then decided that maybe they should fall onto the once in a while and hopefully not that often list.

Gluten free Asian Pancake with Cucumber Sesame Salad

Although they are inspired by them, these pancakes are not the same. In fact they might only have green onions in common, which is not a bad starting point for a freaking delicious savory pancake.

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Perfectly Cooked (soaked) Quinoa

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(Raw and dry)

I feel like quinoa is new enough (to most of us) that it is still a bit misunderstood. At this point, the majority of us know how to cook pasta and rock a rice cooker, but what about the rest of the grains, especially the whole ones? And do the rules change when we soak them first? I don’t have all of the answers for you today, but I do have one: how to cook soaked quinoa perfectly.

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(Raw and soaked for 12 hours)

I don’t throw this word around recklessly. As much as I find plenty of charm in nature’s imperfections and messy but delicious food, poorly cooked quinoa is not one of them. When prepared properly, quinoa is neutral tasting compared to many whole grains, and has a less fiber-obvious texture. It is so full of protein, and such an easy (ahem, once you learn the rules) and convenient food to make, that it is only fair that you enjoy it at its best, instead of suffering through it because it is ‘good for you’.

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