Have Your Cake And Eat It Too!

 

I think I may have stumbled upon something I can really sink my sweet tooth into. Living healthy often consumes me, and while I know that balance is good, I find that too much sugar is not. Living in a house of three rambunctious boys is challenging to say the least and any added sweet treats are hard to come by. It truly is a treat when there is ice cream cake or cookies in the house! It is my daily mission to provide healthy choices for my family so when I was introduced to The Wonder Mill recently and started grinding my own wheat, I discovered a whole new world! Home-made bread was one thing, but realizing one can use any of the varieties of hard red wheat, hard white wheat, or soft white wheat to make just about anything that requires flour, was like opening Pandora’s box.

I poured over blogs and recipe sites in search of a healthy chocolate chip cookie. Seriously, was there such a thing as a “healthy” chocolate chip cookie? I finally settled on this one from a Veggies By Candlelight. The recipe seemed straight forward and simple so I dove in, and literally after I mixed the dough. YUMMMM!  I used their recipe but not the exact instructions since I am “one of those cooks”. You know, the cook that doesn’t typically follow or use a recipe, but adds spices and such to taste. Yep, I’m that kind! Go ahead and roll your eyes now, I know you want to!

Okay back to the cookies…… After a good mixin’ (insert southern drawl) with my new favorite kitchen appliance The Universal Bosch Mixer, I was ready to scoop, drop and bake. HA, that could be a song! After baking 22 min and a nice cool down on my handy-dandy cookie cooling racks that I’ve never used, we had the most glorious round chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever seen. Mind you I’m not a baker, and when I’ve attempted to bake cookies in the past, they usually come out looking like flat flying saucers! SCORE for this chic! Now to taste these little beauties. The moment of truth has arrived.

As nervous as I was, I just knew we had to have struck gold. My first sinking bite was pure bliss! Not only had I achieved baking a perfectly round plump cookie, but the burst of flavor was exquisite! I forgot to mention that instead of using regular sugar, I used Organic Sucanat in place of regular sugar. This gave the cookies a rich bold taste. My moment of quiet cookie bliss lasted all but few seconds as my rambunctious crew of boys came barreling into the kitchen to taste the new cookie creation. Being a mom, I decided they didn’t really need to know what kind of cookie this was, other than the simple chocolate chip kind. Never mind that I used healthier sugar and freshly ground hard red wheat flour to boot! No one had a clue! Mission accomplished.

Yes, you CAN have your cake and eat it too…… or cookies for that matter! The possibilities are endless!

The Wonder of Wonder Mill

Introducing The Wonder Mill. I am about to tell you why everyone should have a Wonder Mill in their kitchen. I realize that not everyone is freaky like I am about all things kitchen, but after this post you just may change your mind. In one of my recent posts “Organic Anyone” I shared how my family and I have made strides to be 95% Organic with our food and cleaning products. With that leap, came major changes. Let’s take a jog off this Wonder Mill path for a moment.

 Have you ever read some of the labels on the food you purchase, like bread, tortillas, corn meal mixes, etc.? I challenge you next time you are grocery shopping, to spend a little extra time doing just that. Let’s start with bread. Most bread, including Honey Whole Wheat  Non High Fructose Corn Syrup, has a mile long list of ingredients in it. MOST of which are “extra” fillers that bread actually doesn’t need but to preserver freshness, those ingredients are added. Here’s what SHOULD be in your bread. Wheat Flour, Oil (olive oil pref) Honey, Water, Egg (opt), Salt, and Yeast. Yep….. that’s IT! If you go to a health food grocery store like Whole Foods, and purchase organic healthy bread, you will be between $6.00 and $8.00 per loaf! And if your like my family, who eats sandwiches every day for lunch, and that’s with teenagers and a husband, it can break the bank! How about corn meal? Have you read what’s in the package of corn meal mix? For starters, the corn is usually a GMO corn, and there is all thing “enriched” added. And in most corn meal packages all you have to do is add liquid ingredients and egg. Why would you want to “enrich” corn meal? Here’s what a basic recipe for corn bread should contain. Corn Meal (plain ground corn) Flour, Salt, Baking Soda, Olive Oil, Egg, Honey, & Milk. Once again that’s it! No other ingredients.

Here’s where the Wonder Mill comes into play. Have you ever seen Coconut Flour, Chickpea Flour, Rice Flour? Those are unusual flours but are becoming quite the rave these days, especially with many Americans realizing that the foods we purchase at grocery stores, are loaded full of CRAP! I have a friend, who mind you has 8 kids, no joke….. Age 14 and under. She invited me to come to her house to learn how to grind wheat berries into flour and make home-made bread. I was intrigued to say the least, after all she has 8 kids and does this!!!!!!

So we took some wheat berries that looked like what’s posted above, with the Hard Red Wheat Berries on the left and the Hard White on the right. Fired up the Wonder Mill, and within 1 minute or less we had 4.5 cups of wheat flour! I was SOLD! Now to convince hot hubs that we needed this work horse in our kitchen. To sell him fully on the product, I of course took home a home-made loaf of delicious bread. One bite and he was hooked! Here’s how we figured out the savings we would have over a years time if we stopped buying store-bought bread and made our own with freshly milled wheat. The initial cost for the Wonder Mill was $239, and we would be using it to grind many grains not just wheat berries. The cost of a healthy loaf of bread on average is $6.00, and to the cost to make it at home is about .50 cents per loaf! I won’t bore everyone with our budget chart, but being my husband is very analytical, he crunched the numbers and said it was well worth it!

As I mentioned before, we grind more than just wheat berries. You can grind your own corn meal by simply grinding “popping corn” via the Wonder Mill and voila!!!!! Freshly ground corn meal ready to go. Chickpeas, Rice, Black Beans, etc. There are three settings on the Wonder Mill that you can choose from. The Pastry Setting for flours used to bake with, The Bread Setting for bread flour, and Course for things like corn meal. We stopped buying store-bought buns, bread, and rolls and let me tell you…. Once you go home-made, you never go back! Below are some hot dog buns we made recently, and boy were they amazing!!!!! Needless to say they didn’t last long in our house!