Some New Recipes

I recently (this week) tried these 3 recipes and liked them all.

First a delicious Banana Nutella Bread. Not too sweet, and I made this as muffins. It made 24 with a little batter left over (enough for about 1 more muffin). I baked these for about 25 minutes, I think.
Nutella Swirled Banana Bread
I did not take a photo.

Next, some gluten free chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. This is my first experience with GF baking, and I used Cup 4 Cup gluten free flour (purchased at Whole Foods) and Trader Joe's gluten free oats. Cup 4 Cup does contain Xanthan gum, so no need to add it separately.

These are delicious, gluten free or not! The only change I made was to grind the oatmeal in my food processor, as I do for my conventional oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
Here is a picture of my cookies. Recipe link is below the picture.

Gluten Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Finally, I get a CSA box delivered to my home every Thursday by  Good Life Organics. I also get a weekly email from them with details about the contents of that week's box as well as recipes and storage tips. Lately, a bunch of kale is included in the box almost every week, so I am always looking for interesting ways to use it.

I have made delicious Kale Pesto several times using this recipe.

This week's email included a recipe for a delicious kale salad. I made it last night, and will be adding it to my file of kale recipes-yum! I left out the raisins, but will add them next time. Dried cranberries might be good, too. Here is a photo of my salad, and the recipe is below. Happy cooking and baking!

Melt in Your Mouth Kale Salad with Pine nuts

Once you try this, you will be hooked! If your family members aren't huge kale fans, this salad might convert them, and you can also lighten this up a bit by adding an equal part of chopped butter lettuce to the minced kale.

• 1 bunch of lacinato kale, stems removed, rinsed and patted dry
• ⅓ cup currants (or chopped raisins)
• juice of one lemon 
• 1 tbsp of olive oil
• 1 tsp local honey
• ½ cup pine nuts toasted
• salt and pepper to taste
• 4 tbsp grated raw parmesan cheese

1. In a food processor, process kale into small chopped pieces (or you can do this by hand with a chef's knife!) 
2. To make dressing, stir lemon juice, olive oil, honey, salt and pepper together in a large bowl
3. Add chopped kale, currants, pine nuts and parmesan to bowl with dressing
4. Stir all ingredients together and serve
5. (Optional - Save some pine nuts and/or parmesan cheese for top of salad before serving for presentation purposes)
6. Recipe and photo from foodbabe.com. Thank you Laura for sharing!