Cooking Baking Eating

I’ve now started the journey to eating better and trying to eat homemade rather than store bought junk, because even if you make junk at home it’s still usually better for you than mass produced.

At least that’s my opinion.

One of those things is chips. I love crunchy and salty, and while I’ve found other root chips at the store before (sweet potato, carrot, beet, ect), they were still deep fried and greasy. Not to mention that I could polish off a whole bag in one sitting and then feel completely gross afterwards. Highly addicting.

I tried making my own baked chips at home after I got a mandolin. I ended up with soggy chips and a gnarly slice on my hand from the mandolin. Needless to say I decided the mandolin was for the professionals and took it back.

I rather like my hand where it is.

So I found this recipe on how to make your own baked chips out of kale. I was skeptical because I’ve never eaten kale before, plus it sounded like a bitter leafy green. I decided to take the plunge and try it anyways.
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It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

It’s been a long and tough road this last year or so. Between work and personal stresses I just had to take a break from posting. That’s not to say that I haven’t been in the kitchen, I never stopped cooking and taking pictures, they just never made it into a post.

Then the other day I got a phone call from my husband during my lunch break. Evidently Grandma and her beauty shop friends were discussing my lack of posting on here and they were not to happy about it either. Grandma then took it upon herself to fax my husband several recipes to try and get my creative juices flowing.

That was quite a happy moment to have during the “fun” of my work day.

Thanks Grandma. It’s much appreciated. You guys rock.

Roughly a year ago the husband and I moved. I hate moving. It’s probably the biggest life disruptions ever. What I also hated was moving from a very large kitchen to a smaller one. I ended up losing more than 10 cabinets!

Somehow during all that stress my body just started craving chocolate! I normally don’t have chocolate cravings, so in an effort to try and feed that stress craving and keep my health up during an annoying move I decided to come up with a more nutritional way to feed the need. Plus I needed something simple. Most of my stuff was either still in boxes or completely lost in the void that is moving.

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Over the last few weeks I went on a tomato binge. Strange sounding, but since I don’t drink, I tend to binge on weird things. Or maybe I should just refer to them as a random craving. A craving that lasts for weeks or months.

I first remember the cravings starting with cheese cake. I had to have cheese cake multiple times a week. Then it was anything in a tortilla. There were a few others in there but lately it was tomatoes. Not just any tomatoes, but cherry or grape tomatoes. Small tart yet sweet little tomato treats. Not often do you hear people waxing poetic over tomatoes, huh? Yeah I’m a freak.

But what do you do when you break down and buy the huge container from the warehouse retailer? There are only so many tomatoes that you can eat in a day before you realize that the basis of your snacks at work are tomatoes. You also get some funny looks from coworkers.

You can dry them of course!

I seem to be having this new obsession with my dehydrator. I feel like I’m having a naughty affair behind the backs of my fresh tomato’s… Do they have backs?

I had never tried drying tomatoes before, mostly just making fruit leathers from applesauce or making apple chips. The tomatoes were looking a little on the over ripe side, since there are only so many tomatoes you eat before you get a little burned out. So I decided to try something new. Cut them in half and stuck them cut side up in the dehydrator.

It really isn’t a quick process, but in the end I think it’s better than buying them prepacked in olive oil and other preservatives in the grocery store. I will have to try making some sauces and pastas from these little babies soon. But they are quite tasty, dried and plain out of the bag.

Now if only I could get rid of this random obsession with mustard…

I love my dehydrator. I find it one of the most useful tools for preserving my fruits that are just past peak.

I’ve had some apples living in the bottom drawer of my fridge for a few weeks, but had no urge to eat them at all since they seemed rather squishy. I HATE squishy apples. They have to be almost under-ripe and super crunchy for me to eat them.

So I went to town and sliced up all my apples. There were about 5 large ones, and it made quite a bit of apple chips…

But sadly enough these were all that survived. I made them the same day that my friend helped me to make some ice cream sandwiches, and in between steps we kept munching on them. I have to say I was REALLY full by the time we were done making those sandwiches.

Imagine eating 2.5 apples worth of fiber! That’s a whole lot of fiber!

Most of the time when you find dried apples in the stores, they are thick and chewy and covered in chemicals so they don’t turn brown. My versions are generally thinly sliced and almost over dried, making them slightly crunchy chips. And who cares if they are slightly brown! Yum!

I also like using tart apples for this, it gives it a little more flavor and not too sweet. A friend of my husband mentioned in passing that he always had too many apples due to the trees on his property, hopefully I can get some of those this year and make an arsenal of apple chips!

I just have to remember not to eat them all in one day…