Like most little girls, my daughters went through a phase were everything had to be pink! In my house, this phase coincided with the I-don't-like-that phase of food consumption. And so, the pink, princess burger was born. And suddenly, "I don't like that" became, "Can I please have some more!" It's not easy to see from the picture above, but those burgers are as pink as cotton candy on the inside! B'tayavon!

Ingredients:*
1 lb ground white-meat turkey breast
1 medium or 2 small beets
1 tbsp garlic
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tbsp pure maple syrup
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

*In our home, we follow Kosher laws and therefore only purchase kosher meat. Kosher meat is salted and therefore I never add additional salt. If you are using non-Kosher meat, you may want to add some salt.

Directions:
Preheat your broiler or grill.

Peel and rough chop the beets. Steam them until tender and puree in a food processor. Mix 1/3 cup of the beet puree in a large bowl with all of the other ingredients. If you have additional beet puree, don't worry. It freezes very well and also works great in many chocolate desserts! Form into patties and broil or grill for 5-7 minutes on each side. This will make 4-6 burgers, depending on how big you make them!

Each weekend in the Spring and Summer months, a beautiful Farmer's Market emerges a short, two-mile scenic walk from our home.  I love to wake up with the sun, lace up my sneakers, and head out -- leaving my four sleeping beauties at home -- well,  five beauties, if you count the pup. I usually arrive before the Market even opens. I love to watch them painstakingly and deliberately place their labors of love out for people to see, smell, touch, and taste.

The other week I was delighted to find one of the farmers peddling fresh apple butter. So often, the apple butter found on the grocery store shelves is destroyed by adding artificial sugars and syrups. This was nothing but apples and apple cider. Yum! I knew I had to create something with this delicious find. And so, my gluten-free, nut-free, sugar-free, dairy-free apple bread was born. B'tayavon!

Ingredients:
3/4 cup apple butter
3 large, free-range eggs
1/4 cup garbanzo bean flour
1/4 cup Arrowroot starch
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350-degrees F. Line a loaf pan with parchment and spray the parchment with grapeseed oil.
Mix the apple butter and eggs until smooth.
In a medium bowl mix the garbanzo bean flour, arrowroot, salt, and baking soda. Add to the apple butter mixture.
Add in the vanilla and cinnamon.
Pour the batter into the loaf pan.
Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the loaf comes out clean. Let cool and then remove from the pan.

My favorite way to enjoy this is toasted with some cream cheese!

I love this time of year. Yes, it can be scorching hot and painfully humid. Nonetheless, local, organic produce is abundant and unbelievably fresh!

We are so fortunate to have a share in Stoney Lonesome Farm's Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) program. That means, each Wednesday, from late May until early October, we receive the amazing fruits (and vegetables!) of their pesticide-free labor.

Adding to our beautiful organic bounty, is our delivery from Washington's Green Grocer. While we certainly have an abundance of local grocery stores, it can be a challenge to find local, organic produce as beautiful and fresh as what WGG delivers. And, truth be told, participating in both entities pushes me out of my comfort zone a bit. Without their influence, I likely would stick to my routine of buying broccoli and apples each week!

This week, this duo of food suppliers pushed me even harder: both delivered a big, beautiful bouquet of organic beets. Truth be told: I don't love beets. In fact, despite their beautiful colors, I don't really even like beets. But, I know how wonderful they are for you, so I usually try and disguise them. (Stay tuned for a future entry about my "pink princess turkey burgers" -- one of my girls' favorite recipes.) But this week, I was determined to make them delicious -- even for me! And, who doesn't love a good chip? Alas, my simple beet chips were born.

Ingredients:
Beets (as much as you have on hand -- they will shrink quite a bit. Also, save the tops for fresh salad or pesto)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Kosher salt

Directions:
Turn the oven to warm (if your oven doesn't have a warm setting, set it as low as it allows)
Use a Misto to spray a cookie sheet with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Slice the beets extremely thin (if you have a mandolin, that would work great. I did mine the old-fashioned way!) and place them on the cookie sheet.
Spray the tops of the beets with Olive Oil and sprinkle with Kosher salt.
Place in the oven and leave them alone for 4-6 hours. Remove from the oven, let cool, and enjoy.

These lasted about 45 seconds in my house before they disappeared!

Even though I left New Jersey almost 20 years ago, I still crave that crispy, chewy paper-thin crust pie -- and by pie, I mean pizza, not apple -- that you can't get anywhere outside of New Jersey. Okay, and New York.  After years of living in the DC area, I had come to accept the bread, sauce, and cheese combination that people dubbed "Pizza."

Nonetheless, my daughters' first request was for me to create a "good Gluten-Free Pizza." I think I've done them one better -- I've created a Jersey Gluten-Free Pizza!

Ingredients:
1 tbsp Dry Yeast
1/3 cup + 2 1/2 tbsp Garbanzo Bean Flour
2 1/2 tbsp Blanched Almond Flour
1/2 cup Arrowroot Starch
2 tbsp Powdered Milk (or dairy-free alternative)
1 very scant tsp Xanthan Gum (I use as little of this as possible -- just enough for the dough to hold together)
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Dried Herbs (I use a mixture of rosemary, basil, and oregano)
2/3 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
1 tsp Grapeseed Oil
1/2 tsp Palm Sugar
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
Quinoa Flour for dusting
Pizza toppings of your choice!

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F with a pizza stone on the middle shelf.

This will work without a pizza stone, but you'll get a crispier crust with it.

Place all the ingredients in a medium bowl and beat on medium speed until thoroughly combined. 
Dust a piece of parchment paper with Quinoa Flour. (It's the Quinoa flour that gives the crust that Jersey-style cornmeal texture)
Scrape the dough -- which will be very, very sticky -- with a spatula, onto the parchment.
Sprinkle a little more Quinoa flour on top of the dough and gently press the dough out with your fingers, leaving the edges slightly higher to create a crust.
Using a Pizza Peel (so you don't burn yourself on the extremely hot pizza stone!), gently place the pizza (still on the parchment) in the oven, on top of the stone.
Bake for 6-7 minutes, until golden brown and crisp.
Remove the crust from the oven and decrease the temperature to 375 degrees.
Top the crust with your favorite toppings. Some of my favorites include caramelized onions, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella.  Of course, my girls are fans of the traditional sauce and cheese.
Place the pizza back in the oven and bake for 5-10 minutes, until your toppings are warm and bubbling.

And, for all my dairy-free fans: I highly recommend Daiya brand Vegan cheese. It is vegan, O-U kosher, and truly melts like traditional dairy cheese!

This recipe was also posted on Slightly Indulgent Tuesday.

I didn't go through the typical grieving stages when learning that I needed to drastically change my family's diet and eliminate gluten and processed sugar. I had experimented with gluten-free cooking over the past many years when I cooked for my Mom, who has been gluten-free for nearly two decades. I knew I could draw on my culinary background and create tasty alternatives.

But when the first Friday morning after our diet change arrived, a slow tear fell down my face. Baking Challah with my daughters was a weekly tradition with roots much stronger than I imagined. The four of us bonded over those braided loaves in ways I couldn't have ever predicted. Our weekly baking sessions taught my girls about our strong Jewish faith, our love of tradition, and the importance of family. The sweet smell of delicious bread baking in a warm oven didn't hurt either.

I had spent more than a year honing my Challah recipe and my heart fluttered each time someone complimented one of my tender, braided loaves. Now, everything was going to change. Would the smell be as sweet? Would the girls still enjoy our Friday baking ritual? Would Shabbat have as much sweetness? I had experimented with gluten-free Challah in the past, so my Mom could enjoy Challah when she joined us for Shabbat. But, it was never love. It was acceptable, at best. I scoured the Internet for recipes, but I found nothing that would cut it. I knew I needed to create a Challah with as much passion and love as my beloved gluten recipe.

After many failures, near-misses, and almost-there experiments,  I found that love. Below is our new weekly tradition, now free of refined and processed sugar and gluten. While this recipe has a much higher almond-to-garbanzo ratio than most of my recipes, it was important to me that my Challah be rich and special. And what better time to indulge than Shabbat?

Stay tuned for a future entry that is nut- and coconut-free, created for my very special friends who can't eat nuts or coconut.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp palm sugar
1/2 cup warm water (110-degrees)

2 large, free-range eggs
1 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
1 tsp baking soda
t tsp water

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1/4 cup raw, organic honey*

2 cups blanched almond flour
1 cup garbanzo bean flour
1/2 cup Arrowroot Starch

Directions:
Gluten-free breads can't be braided. To obtain that authentic challah look, I use a braided loaf pan. My favorite pan is one made by Kaiser. Be sure to line the pan with parchment paper. If you forget this step, the sticky dough will stick to the pan and you won't get that beautiful, braided look.

If you don't have a braided loaf pan, you can made this recipe in a springform pan, by dropping balls of dough in a circle until the pan is filled. Be sure to leave room for the loaf to rise. This will look like your typical round, pull-apart challah.

Turn your oven to warm.

Combine yeast, salt, palm sugar, and warm water in a small bowl and let sit until bubbly.

In a large bowl, combine eggs, vinegar, baking soda, and water.
Add applesauce, oil, and honey and wisk until smooth.
Add proofed yeast mixture and gently mix.
Add dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon until thoroughly combined. The dough will have a cake batter consistency.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan, covered with plastic wrap sprayed with oil (I use the Misto sprayer to avoid the propellants found in packaged sprays.) Turn off the oven and place loaf in the warm oven and let rise for 45-minutes to an hour (check occasionally and remove from the oven when the dough reaches the top of the pan).

Bake the Challah at 375-degrees for 20 minutes. Let cool in the pan before removing, otherwise the loaf will crack.

*I use raw honey because traditionally processed honey has the same affect on the body as processed sugar. The raw honey contains many nutrients and a much calmer effect on the body. I purchase my honey at Trader Joe's, but if you don't have a TJs near you, Amazon has many choices.

This post also appeared in Slightly Indulgent Tuesday.