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Nov 5, 2016

How to Keep Tortillas Soft

If your tortillas are not soft there can be several reasons:

  1. You did not use all purpose flour.
  2. You did not use a cast iron pan.
  3. Your pan was not hot enough.
  4. You did not roll them thin enough.
  5. They are not stored properly.

I store mine in a zip top plastic bag (put them in while they are still warm) and then close it up and remove all the air. Mine are always soft and every time I remove one, I close the bag back up, air removed each time. I keep them refrigerated this way for as long as 10 days. If you want to make your own homemade tortillas, click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

Best Way To Keep Tortillas Soft

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Nov 3, 2016

Easy Potato Soup

Homemade Potato SoupEven when it’s not cold outside, I still make my potato soup. Russet potatoes are best for this creamy comfort food and it only takes 1/2 hour to make. Cutting the potatoes into small 1/2-inch pieces helps it cook quickly and I always have my homemade chicken stock in the freezer for soups and stews. You don’t need cream to thicken this soup, only a little flour is all it takes.

Another thing I always have on hand is my (low fat) sour cream. Don’t all Polish people have sour cream at home? It seems like we eat everything with sour cream… cabbage rolls, pierogi, borscht, and potato soup. I always stir sour cream into this soup just before eating and if you want the full Polish experience (zupa ziemniaczana ~ but we called it zupa kartoflana) top it with a little freshly chopped dill. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

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Filed Under: Polish Cooking, Soups/Salads/Side Dishes
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Oct 23, 2016

The Easiest Coconut Cake You’ll Ever Make

Easy One Bowl Coconut CakeYou won’t find a coconut cake anywhere that’s this easy to make. One bowl. Simple ingredients. Quick and easy recipe. It’s a variation of my easy one bowl yellow cake with just a couple of changes and one of them is of course, lots of coconut. This is an easy cake you can make quickly and have a delicious homemade dessert ready any time.

I try to always use ingredients that most people either have on hand or can easily find. And I always try to bake without butter and I have done it again with this cake. Even the cream cheese frosting is made without butter and I promise you will not miss it. What you will miss is the rest of the cake because it will disappear very quickly! Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

Filed Under: Baking Without Butter, Easy Recipes For Beginners, Sweets
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Oct 13, 2016

Cancer Fighting Soup

Cancer Fighting SoupEvery single ingredient in this healthy cancer-fighting soup is there for a reason. These are the vegetables that researchers believe contain powerful anti cancer compounds. So I put them all into one delicious, nutritious, easy to make soup. And when you make it with homemade chicken stock, you increase the health-promoting properties even more. Here’s what’s in it and why:

Broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower – These are cruciferous vegetables, the most widely recommended food group to eat to protect against cancer.

Carrots – Orange colored vegetables are believed to help against many types of cancer.

Kale – Dark greens like kale and spinach are key to cancer and disease protection. If you use spinach, stir it in just at the end when the soup is done.

Tomato – Red tomatoes are a must for anyone concerned about prostate cancer. They are a good source of lycopene, especially prepared and canned tomatoes (even ketchup and tomato sauce or paste) but they need a little fat to be absorbed, so that’s why you must include the olive oil. I use canned tomatoes because canned are a better source of lycopene than fresh.

Garlic & Onion – They both have strong anti-inflammatory properties and it’s believed they can help slow down the growth of cancer cells.

So if you are looking to protect your health in the future or trying to prevent a recurrence of cancer, research tells us that eating these vegetables can help.  Or if you just want to be as healthy as possible, you will love this quick and easy homemade vegetable soup. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

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Filed Under: Nutrition, Soups/Salads/Side Dishes
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Oct 5, 2016

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip CookiesThis may be the easiest cookie recipe ever. No mixer, no flour, no butter, and only five ingredients. Well… make that six. It’s my peanut butter cookie recipe but this time I added chocolate chips. Wow! They were so good I made them twice this week. It’s a winning combination: peanut butter and chocolate, and even healthier by using dark chocolate chips so I just had to share my “new” recipe.

This recipe is so flexible that next time I might add some extra chopped peanuts too. This simple recipe is so easy, even if you don’t bake, you can make these cookies. – plain or with chocolate chips.  Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

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Filed Under: Sweets, What I Cooked Today
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Sep 30, 2016

Easy Zucchini Chocolate Cake

Zucchini Chocolate Cake

Not eating enough vegetables? Here’s one way to eat a little more. Besides adding a bit of nutrition to this easy cake, zucchini also makes it beautifully moist. This yummy cake is made without butter, only using vegetable oil or extra light olive oil instead. Most cakes tend to get overdone around the edges so I recommend using a cake strip. Click here to learn more.

Have some fun and serve this “chocolate cake” to your family and ask them to guess what’s in it. Nobody would guess zucchini. I’m always finding new ways to bake without butter so the only butter here is a little in the frosting if you choose to use it. As for this delicious cake, you can just call it what it is –  a delicious, moist, and a little bit healthier chocolate cake. Click here for the recipe.  – Jenny Jones

Filed Under: Sweets
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Sep 29, 2016

Snapshots from Dinner

How To Roast VegetablesRoasting vegetables is just about the easiest way to cook them. I love this dish so much, probably because roasting brings out the sugar in vegetables so they are sweeter, and in many cases, have more nutrients than they do raw.  Today I used red potatoes, sweet potatoes, red & yellow peppers, green beans, Brussels sprouts, red onions, and carrots. I added some olive oil, salt & pepper and roasted them at 400 along with my pork tenderloin. Here they are after roasting…

Easy Roasted VegetablesThis may look like a lot but between the two of us there was not one piece of vegetable left on this tray. We usually save some of the sweet potato slices for dessert because they are so sweet after roasting. With all these beautiful colors, the antioxidants here are enormous. I have two recipes you might like. One is just the roasted vegetables as a side dish. The other is what I made tonight, my fabulous pork loin dinner. (there’s no pork left either!)

Easy Recipe Pork Tenderloin With VegetablesPork is one of the leanest meats you can find, and so delicious! Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

Filed Under: Main Dishes, What I Cooked Today
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Sep 21, 2016

Soup That Heals

Wound Healing SoupIf you know anyone recovering from an injury or surgery, make them soup using these vegetables: carrot, potato, sweet potato, red pepper, broccoli, spinach and add some lima beans. By researching, I learned that there are certain nutrients that can help heal the body from an injury, a wound, or surgery. The most essential are vitamins A, C, and E along with zinc, calcium, potassium, and protein. So I created this recipe using ingredients highest in these nutrients for a powerful healing soup. It’s also a delicious vegetable soup and any vegetable soup will have health benefits, but using these specific ingredients provide the best concentrate of what is needed by the body to heal.

I make this soup using my own homemade chicken broth. Chicken broth has its own health benefits and it’s the best liquid to use. Vegetable broth is also a good choice but even if you use plain water, all the wound healing benefits will still be there. If someone is not able to eat due to a closed jaw or dental surgery, this soup can be pureed to drink, or pureed and thinned to drink with a straw.

One more food with excellent healing enzymes is fresh pineapple (not canned – only fresh has enzymes). So the most beneficial meal to help recover would be a big bowl of wound healing soup with some fresh pineapple for dessert.

By the way, even if you’re not trying to heal, this is an incredibly healthy vegetable soup full of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. If you want to use my chicken soup as a base, click here for the recipe. You can make the stock the day before and after it’s refrigerated, remove the fat from the top and proceed with this vegetable soup. Once you have the stock, my wound healing vegetable soup takes just 30 minutes to make. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

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Filed Under: Nutrition, Soups/Salads/Side Dishes
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