Food - Experiments in (healthy) carbs

Throughout the last couple of months I found that eating low-carb works out great for me. The amount of carbs I do eat I try to make "healthy" ones, as in whole grain and substituting wheat for other kinds of grain. Spelt has become rather popular around here so here go (in no particular order) my "experiments":

Whole grain spelt flour pancakes

Pancakes for a weekend's delicious breakfast. I've got this recipe from Celia Brooks Brown's book "International Vegetarisch". I substituted the flour for whole grain spelt flour on a 1:1 basis and it worked like a charm. The whole family loved the pancakes, each of them with their own favorite topping - be it blueberries (mine) or maple syrup or even Nutella *shudder* (out of a various number of reasons).

Whole grain spelt flour pancakes & blueberries

Whole grain wheat & spelt flour burger buns

The recipe for those buns comes from Hannah Frey's "Clean Eating" cookbook.  Again, substitute (parts of) the flour and maybe add some more liquid and you're off fine! For the beef patties I used one of Jamie Oliver's recipes, which turned out great for the adults but sadly were somewhat heavy on the pepper and too spicy for the kids. I sadly did not notice as I had lots of Jalapeños on my burger (I love love love hot/spicy food!) and will try to make better next time.

Whole grain wheat pizza dough

The ultimate family test/recipe? Pizza dough... I love the recipe I found on chefkoch.de a while back. It's pretty simple and straight forward and as my experience taught me only needs minor adjustments to work with whole grain flour. The original recipe asks for 450gr of flour which you can reduce by up to 1/10th and add a little bit more water to get a smooth texture. The rest? Just as noted, 200°C and 20-25mins in the oven. For my personal taste it worked like a charm. If you like your pizza what I call American style - use the indicated amounts and roll out the dough to the size of one big baking pan. If you like it Italiano - divide into two equal parts, roll out thin and make two pizzas (which I will try next time as my kids prefer the latter version).

Healthy breakfast

Last but not least - I found my favorite breakfast in the shape of Overnight Oats. Again inspired by Hannah Frey the perfect mixture for my taste consists of:

• 50gr of Muesli (Ja Natürlich! Basis Müesli)
• 10gr of chia seeds
• 200gr of low-fat plain yoghurt (Ja Natürlich! 1%)
• 60gr of frozen berries

On the evening before mix müesli, seeds and yoghurt together, top with frozen berries, close container and store in the fridge. In the morning - take container, mix it all through and enjoy. Easy as that! <3

Spelt oat porridge

My son in particular loves this recipe for breakfast on the weekends. Again it's one of Celia Brown Brooks' recipes from the "Clean Eating" cookbook which I changed to my taste. Instead of the blueberries she mentions I coarse-grate half of an apple into the porridge and add some cinnamon - instant healthy warm cozy comfort food!

There's more to come, so stay tuned :-)

Side-note - I'm trying not to push those dietary changes/restrictions onto my family as I'm aware that kids do need different nutrients than an adult, particularly an aerobic-nut who tries to melt the last pieces of unhealthy/uncomfortable body fat... What I'm happy about, though, is that my kids ask to try all the things I make/cook for myself and even have declared some of it to be their kind of comfort and/or favorite food, e.g. the spelt porridge for my son <3