Holiday Giving, Receiving, Hosting & Healing

My friend Katie has her own catering business, Hot Love Soup. And she was willing to share a few of her favorite holiday and winter recipes with my readers!

Here they are. If you love a good cooking project, you will have fun. If you prefer to eat the fruits of other people’s labor and you live in Austin, you can order these directly from her and have them delivered!

Holiday Spiced Energy Balls with Maca

Spiced with everything nice, plus marvelous Maca. Recipe yields 24 balls.

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ cups oat flour
• ¼ cup coconut flour
• 2 Tbsp coconut palm sugar
• 1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice
• ½ cup pumpkin puree
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ cup cashew butter
• ¼ cup local honey
• 1 Tbsp almond or flax milk
• 1 Tbsp maca powder

Directions:

1. Mix everything together in a food processor.
2. Scrape with silicone spatula into a bowl.
3. Roll into balls with your hands. That’s it!
4. Store in fridge.

Katie makes a whole line of more than 20 flavors of energy balls—great to give as gifts! She only sells direct to customers so you won’t find them in stores.

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Health-giving Paleo Chicken “No Noodle” Soup

Katie says: This soup is hands-down my top selling soup. When the weather turns colder, everyone asks for it! It’s so rich and hearty, and the magic is in the broth. That’s right: if you make your own broth the soup will be extra delicious and nourishing. Elder flowers, a naturally immune-boosting herb, are stewed in the broth to make this a perfect meal to strengthen your immune system—you’ll ward off winter colds in the most enjoyable  way possible. Recipe yields 6 quarts, or 10-12 hearty servings.

Ingredients for the soup:

• 1 whole chicken, approx. 4 pounds
• 1 medium butternut squash
• 4 Tbsp. olive oil
• ¾ pounds carrots
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 head of garlic, minced
• 1 rutabaga, medium dice
• 1 pound parsnips, medium dice
• sea salt
• black pepper

Ingredients for the broth:

• 1 chicken carcass
• 4 stalks celery
• 4 bay leaves
• 4 parsley stems with leaves
• 4 sprigs of thyme
• 3 quarts water, approximately
• 12 whole allspice berries
• 2 Tbsp dried elder flowers (an immune-boosting herb)

Directions:

1. Invite friends for dinner.
2. Season chicken with salt, pepper and olive oil. Roast at 425 until done (about 45 minutes to 1 hour). Let chicken cool, remove skin, cut chicken meat into bite size pieces, reserve bones (and skin). Save all the juices in the roasting pan. Scrape all the fond (aka the chicken stuff left in the baking dish) from the pan and keep it with the juices. Try using the chicken to scrape all the brown bits from the pan.
3. Separately, chop butternut squash into bite size pieces, toss with olive oil and roast at 425 for about 35 minutes until al dente (not too soft!) Stir/toss half way through roasting. Can do this at same time you are roasting chicken.
4. Put chicken carcasses/bones/skin in stock pot with bay leaves, parsley, thyme, allspice, elder flowers, and water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2-6 hours. The longer you stew the more nutritious the broth will be. If you stew on the longer end, you will probably want to add a little more water to the pot as it stews.
5. Strain stock, discarding bones and herbs.
6. In a separate pot, add olive oil and sauté onions, garlic, parsnips, rutabaga, and carrots over medium high heat. Add salt. Once vegetables are softened, add stock and cook vegetables until tender (about 15 minutes). Add chicken and reserved chicken juices and fond. Taste and season with more salt and pepper.
7. Enjoy the heartiest, healing meal with people you love.

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Heavenly Holiday Carrot Muffins

These muffins are fun for holiday gatherings when you want something sweet-ish but still healthy. Or for weekend and vacation mornings when you want to stay in your PJs all day—just the trick for a light breakfast. No refined sugar, and very low total sugar. Pair with coffee or homemade almond golden turmeric milk. Recipe yields 10 muffins.

Ingredients:

• 1¼ cup almond flour
• ½ cup coconut flour
• ½ cup (choose one): mesquite flour, hazelnut meal, banana flour, sweet potato flour, oat flour, buckwheat flour
• ½ cup shredded coconut
• 2 Tablespoons flaxseed meal
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp nutmeg
• ½ tsp salt
• 4 Tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 1 tsp ground vanilla beans
• ¼ cup coconut oil (melted)
• 1 ⁄3 cup unsweetened organic applesauce
• ½ ripe banana (mashed)
• 1 cup shredded carrot
• ½ apple (grated)
• 3 dates (diced)
• ¼ cup chopped walnuts

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Prep your ingredients and line your muffin tin with wax paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together all the flour, shredded coconut, flaxseed meal, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the maple syrup, vanilla, coconut oil, applesauce, mashed banana, shredded carrot, shredded apple, and dates and whisk until well combined.
4. Add the dry mixture to the wet, stirring until combined. Then mix in the walnuts.
5. The batter will be thick so you can scoop out about a ½ cup of batter and fill each muffin cup to the top.
6. Bake for approximately 25 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Cool the muffin pan on a wire rack for five minutes and pop out your carrot muffins from the tin. These store well in the freezer for a week.

Don’t want to make it yourself? Prefer to hang out at home watching movies and have food arrive at your door? Working over the holidays and don’t have time to cook? Katie to the rescue! Email Katie@hotlovesoup.com to order some scrumptious soup, muffins, or energy balls to be delivered to home/work (Austin customers only). See more at www.hotlovesoup.com.

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Barbara’s Bountiful Bean Stew

A perfect party pleaser! It’s easy to make but tastes like you slaved away in the kitchen all day. People try to break down the door to get into Barbara’s kitchen when she’s making this.

Ingredients:

• 1 20 oz package HamBeens 15-bean soup (or equivalent)
• 1 turkey sausage, chopped into bite sized pieces
• 2 cans organic chopped tomatoes, drained
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 green onion,  chopped
• ½ red onion, chopped
• 1 each red, yellow, and orange pepper, chopped
• 1 package mushrooms, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 handful frozen organic corn
• 1 or 2 handfuls barley

The package comes with its own seasoning. It has crap in it, so toss and use instead a combination of:

• salt
• chilli powder
• cumin
• powdered garlic
• If you like it hot, use spicy canned tomatoes or fresh/pickled jalapenos.

Instructions:

1. Cook beans according to instructions on packet.
2. At same time, sauté sausage, onions, peppers, mushrooms and garlic in olive oil and toss in.
3. Add corn and barley when beans are almost cooked according to package.

Whenever our families go cabin camping together or have any kind of potluck I cajole her into making a pot. We descend on it like a pack of hogs, snortling and slurping it till every last bean is gone.

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Pumpkin Spice Non-Ice Cream

Here’s another amazing dessert, Pumpkin Spice Non-Ice Cream by True Wellness:

You won’t believe it’s Sugar-and-Dairy-free!

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Holiday Charitable Giving

Things you may want for Christmas or in the New Year:

• for the produce on your grocery shelves to be free of dangerous pesticides
• for the water you drink to be free of chlorine, fluoride and residue from birth control pills
• for the fish you eat to be free of plastic and mercury
• for your skincare and cleaning detergents to be free of harmful chemicals like Triclosan
• for your bread to be free of cancer-causing glyphosate
• for our polluted oceans, rivers and streams to be cleaned up and for polluters to be fined and toxic-trash-dumping industries to be regulated
• for your meat to be free of growth hormones, antibiotics and Pharmaceutical feed
• for genetically modified food and ingredients to be labeled so you don’t buy them by mistake.

If you would like to see these things happen, please make a donation to the organizations who are fighting every day to raise consumer awareness, to clean up our food supply and environment, and to regulate companies that manufacture and distribute products and by-products that are making us sick. Know anyone who has cancer? These non-profit organizations are fighting the real fight against cancer by trying to reduce and eliminate our exposure to cancer causing chemicals. So go ahead, give the gift of life in honor of someone you know or knew with cancer.

Who is Fighting the Good Fight (besides me)?

1. Environmental Working Group
2. Food Democracy Now
3. Center for Food Safety
4. Food Policy Action
5. Food and Water Watch
6. Natural Resources Defense Council
7. Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance

Have a safe, sweet, sumptuous, swell holiday!