Irish Colcannon balls

Colcannon is a popular Irish dish typically made with potatoes and cabbage. I'm not certain why but some say it is eaten around Halloween and can be used to predict marriage- this tradition is really beyond me. But I do know that it more resembles mashed potatoes with bits of cabbage, as well as some other herbs and spices folded in. I used a version of a traditional Colcannon recipe to make my own healthy appi-teaser balls.

Before I go any further, I did a bit of research and found some answers to this interesting tradition. People would hide charms or rings or thimbles in the green speckled Colcannon dishes on Halloween. When an unmarried lady found the prize in her dish she would then put the mashed Colcannon with the prize into a sock and hang it on her door handle. The first man to enter her house was the future husband. What a way to live..."kids it all started with the mashed Colcannon on Halloween....and that's how I met your mother ;) 

Oh and there's a Colcannon song I found that musicians have actually posted videos of on youtube...

Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream? 
 With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream. 
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake? 
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?

The chorus:
Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it sure the nearer I'm to cry. Oh, wasn't it the happy days when troubles we had not, And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot.


How fun! Next Halloween I'm totally going to do this. But, in the meantime I'll continue to make this  traditional Irish dish into balls...perhaps I'll call them the nontraditional Irish balls. 

The basic differences between the traditional and the nontraditional (my recipe) are the substitution of white potatoes for sweet potatoes, the addition of extra spinach/kale, and baking the mash into balls for a pop-able snack time treat. I'm sure there are many many recipes using different spices and herbs and varying amounts of butter, cream, and what have yous, but I won't get into all that. I modified a recipe from fatfreevegan.com and have added a link to the original recipe. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2009/03/colcannon-puffs.html

If you decide to open the link and look at this recipe, the only difference is I used sweet potatoes instead of potatoes, used spinach instead of kale, and used way more spinach than recommended to make greener in terms of color and in health. Enjoy! 
(Exit stage right to a sweet melody of the Colcannon song playing in the background)

whole wheat cinnamon graham crackers

Obviously I want to conquer the world like Pinky and The Brain, obviously. But in the meantime while I get all the blueprints of master conquery together I can conquer (or try to) the kitchen. I'll be a spinning in my mouse wheel creating and modifying recipes. 

I aim to eat a lot of whole foods that are unprocessed, natural and fresh. Or at least if they are processed they are done so without adding preservatives or other additives. Adding high fructose corn syrup to jam and applesauce or adding oil and sugar to peanut butter is totally necessary  It makes me so mad because I don't want to put those things in my body and there are sometimes little options to avoid these products. But aside from me, the sad thing is is that a lot of people are unaware or simply don't care about the extras in their foods. Because it can be hard to find pure or natural products in the stores, I have started to make a lot of these products myself. I've made applesauce, pearsauce, yamsauce, jam, canned fruit without sugar, cookies, muffins and breads without butter or oil, yogurt, soft serve frozen yogurt,  biscotti, granola, and so much more like homemade healthier graham crackers.

Graham crackers are a recent obsession of mine. They are delicious with applesauce and/or peanut butter and a banana, which are all staples in my daily diet. I found a recipe a while ago that had homemade graham crackers in order to make your own graham cracker crust. I went ahead and made the crust recipe because I wanted to make a dessert, I didn't have store bought graham crackers and was too penny pinchery to go out and buy a box. I did a search on the internet (and in my cupboard) and had all the ingredients for this graham recipe. I was delighted, as I'm sure you can imagine. 

I have now made the crackers a few times and each batch is pretty different, only because I play around with the ingredients a lot depending on what I have or what I want to try. But I posted a link to the original recipe below. I have had success replacing the oil with a mashed rip banana to make a little healthier. Other things I have tried was adding banana extract instead of vanilla, I've used whole wheat pastry flour and spelt flour rather than regular whole wheat because it's less dense. I almost always triple the amount of cinnamon and sometimes add nutmeg or cloves to create a little Fall cracker explosion. You could even add canned pumpkin instead of the oil (or my banana) for Fallish flavors! It's all your choice. Have fun, have a ball, bake 'em all! 

You can roll out the dough on parchment paper and cook as one large sheet of dough. Then, after they are baked you just crack the sheet into pieces of any size. Or if you have a cookie cutter you can also do it that way like sugar cookies. 

http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/11/04/smores-graham-crackers/ 

Seitan

Some call it say-tan, others say satan (yeah like the devil). But regardless of your thoughts on the pronunciation, this creation is a little bit or bite of heaven. Make no mistake about it; they taste like chewy pockets of Thanksgiving stuffing. The recipe I modified included mushrooms, sage and thyme, so you see how they'd resemble stuffing. 

Seitan is often called "wheat meat" or more descriptively as non-soy, meat substitute. It is made from vital wheat gluten flour, which actually is not a flour at all. It is the protein component of wheat flour,  or in other words the main protein in wheat flour. Vital wheat gluten is 75-80% protein because of the processing method where most of the bran and starch is removed. These proteins are responsible for the rise, texture and crumbs of breads and therefore often used for baked goods, and can be used as a lower carb option "flour" too. However, vital wheat gluten is also the main ingredient in fake meat products like seitan, or in Asian cuisine for mock duck, and even in Tofurky products. The description below from Happy Herbivore explains it again. 

"Although vital wheat gluten looks like a flour, it's not a "flour" like whole-wheat is a flour, rather it's powdered gluten. Gluten is the protein found in wheat. Its what gives bread its shape and pizza dough its elasticity. Vital wheat gluten is just the protein in a powdered form. It is made by washing wheat flour dough with water until all the starches dissolve, leaving just the gluten behind." http://happyherbivore.com/2012/01/what-vital-wheat-gluten/

So, the main ingredient in my mushroom and garlic seitan balls is this vital wheat gluten. Like I starting describing before my seitan balls included ingredients like mushrooms, thyme, sage, garlic, onion and veggie broth, which in combination closely resembles a stuffing recipe. Yummm delicious!

I've been obsessed with the seitan I made all week, so now it's all gone and time to think about making more. I don't think I'll even bother changing the recipe I used because they were so tasty.  

To make the seitan I first put the garlic and mushrooms in the food processors and pulsed until it was chopped in smaller bits. Then added those to a bowl with the rest of the wet ingredients and mixed. I then combined the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and added the wet ones in. I mixed again until it resembled dough and rolled out small ping pong balls. I baked them on  a cookie sheet with aluminum foil at 350 until they started to brown. I overbaked them probably because they were a little harder than I wanted. I really cannot say how long to bake them but I  would guess more than 15 minutes , you'll just have to keep an eye on them. 

wet ingredients
• 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/4 cup vegetable broth
• 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp liquid smoke
dry ingredients
• 1 cup vital wheat gluten flour
• 1/3 cup whole wheat pastryflour
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoons onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper