Last post showed how to make fully flavorful (non-dairy) banana ice cream using only 3 ingredients: frozen bananas, vanilla extract and ground cinnamon. (Please also see Bananas Are Good Food! if you haven’t seen that post before or have been informed incorrectly by other sources that bananas are not good for you.)
This post show how you can easily use some of the commonly found ingredients in your kitchen to take that simple banana ice cream to full-on exciting. Here’s an example of what I used recently to help kick your imagination in gear.
When you download the recipe, you’ll see I point out that I added a fresh peach not shown in the above ingredients. That’s exactly what I mean about improvising on the fly to suit your taste and/or dietary needs.
Please click this link or any picture on this page for complete step-by-step picture book Banana Ice Cream Full-On! directions.
Last post focused on the health benefits of bananas, which, as one of the world’s most consumed foods, are often given a bad rap, as shown in the popup ad below, for no good reason at all.
As a lifelong avid cyclist, I always have bananas on hand, either at room temperature or frozen, as shown in the shot below of the top of my fridge and inside my freezer today. Those two more darkly patched bananas are actually plantains, part of the banana family, that I use to make sweet & savory dishes.
Of course, there are many ways to enjoy bananas, and here’s one of my favorites: banana ice cream. To start as easily as possible, I’m showing just the base recipe here that requires only 3 ingredients: ripe bananas, vanilla extract and ground cinnamon – no cream or sugar at all. And though those ingredients, when blended together, taste killer good, I’ll show you in future posts how to take that base recipe from “simple to exciting” with added easy-to-find, fully flavorful ingredients.
The only kicker: you’ll need a sturdy food processor, like the one shown below, to make this recipe. If you don’t have one, either click this link for mash and freeze banana ice cream, which doesn’t require a food processor, or borrow a food processor from a friend or relative and make enough banana ice cream to share with them.
Click this link or any picture on this page for easy-to-follow 3 ingredient banana ice cream picture book directions.
As you can see in the graph below, Ranch Dressing was the number 2 most sold condiment in the US between 2019 and 2021. I can’t imagine that position has changed in the meantime.
The Quick & Zesty Ranch Dressing you see here is what I call a “base recipe” from which you can improvise however you like – flavor rules! – and I’ll provide guides about how to do that soon. The ingredients, shown below, needed to make this Ranch Dressing are all commonly found, require no cutting or chopping and are a lot more wholesome…
…than the ingredients you typically see printed on labels of store-bought Ranch Dressings, like those shown below. (By the way, the mayonnaise I’m using, far left in the picture above, is homemade, which you can see how to make by clicking this link. The yellow comes from added turmeric powder.)
Once you have the ingredients good to go, all you have to do is put them together,…
…mix them well and then let the dressing rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to bring out the full flavors of herbs and spices you use.
Click this link or any picture on this page for picture book Quick and Zesty Ranch Dressing directions, and enjoy!
About a month ago, I posted this extremely easy-to-make Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing that’s so versatile, it goes great, of course, on salads, but also on pasta, rice, sandwiches, cooked vegetables – imagination is your only limit.
This post is about how to make that dressing fresh-er just by substituting garlic powder with fresh garlic.
I’m a big fan of fresh garlic for its rich, bold flavor – and its broad spectrum health benefits that include: improved immune system, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, cancer prevention, improved athletic performance – and more (for more details in short, easy-to-read form, click this Spice World link).
Two quick practical tips about fresh garlic. First, choose fresh garlic bulbs, like the one shown below, that are firm to a hand squeeze, heavier in weight (more water content) and show no signs of dark grey mold under the skin or green shoots growing out of the bulb.
Second, to make peeling the garlic skin easy, which is the least fun part about dealing with fresh garlic, first crunch the individual garlic cloves with a forceful press and satisfying garlic skin pop using the side of a wide-bladed chef’s knife, as shown here.
Once you chop the fresh garlic, as shown briefly below, the rest is all down hill. Just add mustard, ground black pepper, vinegar and yogurt.
You can see all the above – and more – by clicking this link for the complete Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing picture book recipe.
Last post showed how to make a fully flavorful, exceptionally easy to make, highly versatile Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing. I made that dressing most recently to start a “Gotta’ Eat Smartly” series of food demos with AARP at Eastway Recreation Center in Charlotte earlier this month. That series is designed to give senior citizens the hands-on kitchen skills and knowledge they need to empower themselves to make life-promoting/quality of life improving meals.
If you’re a regular to this site – or know me personally, you know flavor rules – always! Here’s an example. Sure, we could’ve used that Instant 5-Ingredient Salad dressing on a traditional lettuce and tomato salad, but where’s the flavor fun in that? So instead, I showed the group of a dozen very engaged women how to make a Pear and Avocado Salad – and then how to improvise on that very easy base recipe. First, here’s what you need to make the base recipe – and you’ll see that we replaced a store-bought salad dressing in the top picture with our Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing.
I mentioned “improvising” above, and by improvising I mean adding or substituting ingredients based on either/both your taste and/or ingredients you have on hand – and remember, recipes are just guides. So, for example, I asked the women if they thought it would be ok to substitute or even supplement the pears with apples. Sure! And then I suggested adding adding flavors as they liked based on personal taste.
That last sentence fired up a lively discussion. “Can I add chicken or any other meat?” Yes! “What about fresh herbs?” Sure!
“What about adding potato salad?” Absolutely! And that potato salad question led to a talk about mayonnaise in potato salad and which mayonnaise brand I like. My comment: I don’t like using processed foods, like store-bought mayonnaise, with long paragraphs of ingredients, some of which are NOT found in nature. So, I improvise and substitute mayonnaise with Greek yogurt, mustard and spices.
“If you do that, then what about making homemade mayonnaise?” one of the women asked. “A friend of mine makes it all the time and says it’s easy.” Great idea! I’ve never made it before, but I’ll learn and we’ll make it together next time we’re together.
Next time is coming up fast: Thursday, February 8th – and I’ve already started practicing.
I first picked a top-rated homemade mayonnaise recipe from Inspired Taste. I then improvised a bit, as they suggested, and will need to do more of that. You know the flavor deal. I’m not rolling out my version until that flavor kicks it full-on.
In the meantime, back to the Pear and Avocado Salad featured here. Please click this link and pass it on for the easy to follow picture book recipe shown below. And remember: that recipe is just a guide. Play with it. Improvise. And, most of all, have fun!
Last post mentioned work I’ve just started with AARP (American Association of Retired People) and Eastway Rec. Center in Charlotte, NC, to help senior citizens empower themselves in the kitchen to make life-promoting foods.
The first recipe we made together was the Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing shown below, which is just as incredibly versatile as it is easy to make.
First, a quick back story. The first time I ever made this recipe was with a group of fellow veterans who were turning their lives around through Veterans Incorporated (Vets Inc.) in Shrewsbury, MA. One of the guys in the group, a fellow Navy veteran – and terrific character, chimed in when I listed the seven ingredients I intended to use: garlic powder, salt, ground black pepper, mustard, honey, vinegar and oil.
“Why do we need the added salt and sugar? A lot of guys here have diabetes and/or high blood pressure. We don’t need that _____(4-letter word for “stuff”)!”
I get blunt beautifully and had to agree about the added salt and sugar. But this was the first recipe I was rolling out with these guys and first time I’d ever met them. My inner thought: “Fine, I’ll cut the salt and honey – but, boy, this dressing’s gonna’ taste like crap.”
I quickly made the dressing and asked the guys to taste a spoon of it full-on before I tasted it myself. The stunner? They loved it – and so did I.
Not only does this dressing taste great (most important), but it’s also incredibly versatile. As shown in the few sample pictures below, it goes great on any kind of warm or cold salad, over cooked vegetables, meat, chicken, fish, pasta, rice – imagination is your only limit.
Here are the ingredients needed to make this salad dressing. You’ll actually see six ingredients below because I often use two different types of vinegars for added flavor, which you certainly don’t have to do.
Click this link or any picture on this page for a complete step-by-step picture recipe that includes information about the sourness of different vinegars and why this recipe is considered low in both salt and sugar.
Fruit, yogurt and more? Sure, always more! With full-on flavor – that’s half the fun of it. What you see above is what I put together to rocket-fuel up or an excellent hop on the bike with good buds this morning (below) – and with no need to refuel on the way.
You can get the base recipe I used, Summer Multi-Fruit Salad, by clicking either this link or any picture on this page.
To mix it up a bit, here’s what I used for ingredients and…
…how I put it all together – fruit first; then nut butter, cookie butter spread, jam; Greek yogurt & ground flaxseed with nutritional yeast…
Rockets, power, motion! Please tell me you find that “let’s go!” motivating! When it comes to fuel to power endurance exercise/any physical activity to keep your body in motion, the key is making sure to take in fats, protein, some carbohydrates and fluids – and having them all with full-on flavor.
Here’s what I had recently for the hop on the bike shown above with terrific good friends.
The fats, from whole milk Greek yogurt, whole milk kefir, almond-peanut butter and freshly made whipped cream, combined with protein from egg and whole grain flour in the fruit pancake, Greek yogurt and kefir gave me slow-burning sustained energy. The carbohydrates: a little sugar in my iced coffee/chocolate/coconut water drink, cookie spread on my pancake slice and fruit, dried fruit and jam in my fruit and yogurt mix, gave me instant energy to start my ride. And front-loading fluids with 30-40 ounces of iced coffee/chocolate/coconut water got me going well hydrated so that I just needed to top off with water while I rode, and the potassium in coconut water helped both prevent cramps and improve energy metabolism.
Of course, everybody’s body and fuel requirements are different, and only YOU know YOU. That means it’s most important to pay attention to what YOU eat and drink and how that affects YOUR physical performance, no matter what kind of physical activity YOU do. Still, though the fine details differ person to person, the base components are the same: carbohydrates for quick burning energy, a good shot of fat and protein for long-burning, sustained energy and plenty of fluids to start off well hydrated.
The next few posts, starting with iced coffee/chocolate/coconut water (killer good!), will show how to make each of the 3 pieces shown above that I have regularly – and always with a little improvised variety for flavor fun, before hopping out on the bike.
I’m just back from a coast-to-coast cross country car/bike trip (advocating safe streets for all – more later) and love being on the road for the terrific sights, “big smile” interesting people I meet and the fun of improvising meals on the fly.
Along the way, I picked up some fresh, homemade jalapeño cheddar sausage at a small meat market in a tiny Kansas town. Before buying the sausages, I checked the ingredients.
At the time, all looked fine, though seeing maltodextrin pricked up my ears. Still, I ended up having a blast putting together a very flavorful sausage, fresh vegetable and cheese dinner bowl. As you can see in the top left picture below, I used fresh salad dressing I’d made earlier on my trip to substitute for oil that wasn’t available in my Airbnb for the night before cooking the sausages in the pan.
Later, I looked up maltodextrin. To cut to the chase, maltodextrin is a highly processed food additive made from vegetable starch and used in lots of processed foods to preserve and improve the texture/mouth feel of those processed foods. I stressed “processed foods” in that last sentence because, as noted in Medical News Today, “if a person eats too many products that contain maltodextrin, their diet is likely to be high in sugar, low in fiber, and full of highly processed foods.” (Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322426#which-foods-contain-maltodextrin). For what that means to you, please see the last paragraph below.
For a deeper dive, here are some bullets and links about what Maltodextrin is, foods that contain it and some potential health risks:
Maltodextrin is a highly processed food product made from corn, rice, potato starch, or wheat (again, the key words are “highly processed”, which should always give you pause) and is considered safe for human consumption as noted by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration): “the ingredient is used in food with no limitation other than current good manufacturing practice” : (https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=184.1444)
Here is a partial list of foods, also from Medical News Today and other sources, that can contain maltodextrin, all of which are processed foods:
pasta, cooked cereals, and rice
meat substitutes
baked goods
salad dressings
frozen meals
soups
sugars and sweets
energy and sports drinks
There is also unconfirmed speculation that maltodextrin, as a highly processed sugar, might play a part in decreasing good, healthy gut bacteria and encouraging the growth of harmful bacteria that can lead to intestinal inflammation and problems like IBD (Irritable Bowel Disorder). Regular table sugar can have that seem effect. (Personally, I had painful intestinal inflammation years ago, mostly due to mismanaged stress, that has been much improved by managing stress better and being vigilant about what I eat and drink.)
Bottom line, I ate and enjoyed the meals I made with the jalapeño cheddar sausages shown above. At the same time, after knowing what I know now, I’ll sure keep an eye out for maltodextrin and try to avoid it when I can – without making myself crazy (ha!).
But what about you? As I advocate regularly here, the key to eating life-promoting well is eating fresh unprocessed/minimally processed foods and always with full-on flavor – flavor ALWAYS rules – and I’m glad to help you with that right here!
If you’ve seen the new, fantastically fun Top Gun Maverick movie, you know the “Mav” is all about improvising on the fly and living to fight another day.
If you’re a regular here, you also know I consider improvisation the spice of life, and that spice of life is all about fun.
Here’s an example. Last post showed how to make this very simple but fully flavorful fresh spinach and berries salad – great summertime stuff!
Now, here are some ingredients you can use to take that same salad from simple to exciting (S2E) all very easily.
Sure, these ingredients look like a lot. But don’t let that bother you. They just represent a range of choices you can pick from or substitute with anything you like to make your salad all your own regarding flavor and dietary needs.
Click this link or the picture below for picture book directions and,…
…back to Top Gun – and fun. The “Mav” might have the bad guys – and the Navy – but he’s got nothing on us roadies. Ha!
June 23rd, 2024 
