A gift from Grenada

Banana pancakes made with rice flour and nutmeg. Yummy!


Lake Bars Jason and I made out of: dates, raisins, almonds, walnuts, almond butter, sunflower seed butter, vanilla, sea salt and nutmeg everything ground in a food processor then formed into bars and rolled in coconut.

Fresh nutmeg!

Jason came home from our practice a few days ago with two shiny brown seeds. One of his patients had visited Grenada and she was thoughtful enough to bring us fresh nutmeg.

I knew very little about nutmeg and even less about Grenada so I did a little google research. Grenada is known as "The Spice Island of the Caribbean". It is said you can smell the nutmeg wafting in the air.

"There are three layers that surround the nutmeg fruit. The outer layer, known as the pericarp, is used to make nutmeg jelly. The red membrane, which enwraps the shiny dark nutmeg shell, is known as mace, nutmeg's twin spice, which is eventually dried and ground, and used in a variety of dishes. Inside this shell is a seed - the nutmeg. No part of the nutmeg is ever wasted including the shell, which is used as flower bed mulch and for covering garden plants." http://www.nut-med.com/story.htm

Well I was excited to get such an unusual treat and from such a far away land! I broke the thin outer layer off exposing the meat of the seed. I have been grating nutmeg and sprinkling it on almost anything the past few days - love it.

We took a trip up to the mountains to escape the heat and take the baby to the lake. We decided to make a little snack with us. Jason and I set to work making fruit and nut bars. I grabbed the food processor and Jason started pulling stuff out of the cupboard - the result yummy bars. We rolled them in fine coconut tand packaged them up they were perfect to enjoy by the cool lake.

Stevia

Stevia is a plant native to South America and Central America. The leaves are harvested and the extremely sweet extract is packaged and sold here in the US at many health food stores. My favorite grocery store - Trader Joe's - sells the powder in a small bottle and packets of stevia as well. The packets also contain a filler so you use a larger amount of power compared with pure stevia in a bottle. One thing I have found is that you want to make sure you completely incorporate stevia into your food. If you sprinkle it on something it will have a strong after taste. Stevia works great for sweetening smoothies, oatmeal, fruit that is not very sweet, salad dressings and baked goods. The paragraph below has info on baking with stevia:

"The most important thing to remember is not to use too much, which can result in excessive sweetness and an aftertaste. Always start with the exact amount called for in a recipe, or even a little less, then taste before you add any more. Stevia is delicious in almost any recipe using fruit or dairy products, but does present a bit of a challenge when used for baking, since it lacks sugar's abilities to add texture, help soften batter, caramelize, enhance the browning process, and feed the fermentation of yeast. On the other hand, one of the excellent facets of stevia is that high temperatures do not affect its sweetening properties." http://www.stevia.net/

I also want to try growing my own stevia plant and harvest the leaves for next year. The process looks fairly easy and it would be fun to actually grow this plant myself.