Classic Potato Salad

I know what you are thinking.  Potatoes?! Even on a pseudo-healthy blog, this seems unacceptable.  I have stressed the whole "eating to lower blood sugar" thing, so where do potatoes come in? Also, what does potato salad have to do with Rosh Hashanah?  The answer to the second question is--nothing.  The answer to the first question is that cold potatoes have actually been found to lower blood sugar as they are a "resistant starch" which is basically a carb that resists digestion and is passed through to the large intestine where it acts as dietary fiber. Consumption of resistant starch has been proven to assist in blood sugar management.

So here I am thinking that potatoes are evil, which they may be when they are hot and they definitely are when they are fried but when they are cold, they are good news!  And you know what's even better? Vinegar, a crucial ingredient in most cold potato salads has been found to help halt the sudden rise or spike of blood sugar that occurs after eating a meal. Not sure how to defend the mayonaisse part of the salad but I use "light" mayonaisse so it's not that bad.  

I actually can probably count on one hand the number of times I made potato salad over the last seven years but now that I've made my "discovery" maybe I will make it more and maybe I'll even make it for Rosh Hashanah (except that my kids don't like it)

Classic Potato Salad

Ingredients

4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks

8 pickles (preferably in vinegar not brine, but brine works, too)

1 medium white or red onion or 3 green onions or a bunch of chives

3 heaped Tablespoons light mayonaisse

1 Tablespoon vinegar

1/2 teaspoon sugar or to taste

1 teaspoon salt or to taste.

Instructions

Boil potatoes until soft but firm and chop into 1-inch (2 1/2 centimeter) cubes

Chop pickles and onions finely and add to potatoes

Add the rest of the ingredients

Serve as part of a salad buffet or as a side.

Enjoy!

Rosh Hashana Post #1: Apple Cake and Date Honey Cookies

Rosh Hashanah is around the corner and it's a three day holiday.  For the unitiated, Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and it is three days this year because it falls on Thursday and Friday and then Saturday is Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath).  One of my daughters once called it a four day holiday because the Jewish days actually start in the evening so the holiday begins on Wednesday night.  The holiday entails lots of beautiful prayers and seven festive meals! Wednesday supper, Thursday lunch, Thursday supper, Friday lunch, Friday supper, Saturday lunch and Saturday supper (aka Seudah Shlishit--the third Sabbath meal).  This is a lot of food.  We don't really do the Seudah Shlishit so much... but we are already organized.  Two meals with guests, two meals invited out and two meals on our own as a family.

People stress out over all this cooking and eating which includes all sorts of special foods which I will try to cover in my coming posts.  One of the central foods that we eat is apple dipped in honey, symbolizing our wish for a sweet new year. Many people prepare or buy honey cakes and apple cakes.  For years, I searched for the ultimate honey cake recipe and still have not found it or maybe I have just found out that I don't like honey cake so much.  I do however love my apple cake recipe which I will share with you in this post.

About honey cookies, when I first came to Israel and was on Kibbutz Ma'aleh Gilboa I was offered cookies. I turned and I saw these fat round sticky things.  I asked what they were and was told "Duvshaniot" (honey cookies).  I had never heard of them but took one bite and was addicted. I never thought of making these cookies until last year before Pesach (Passover) when I was looking for recipes to bake away all my flour which is forbidden on that holiday. I had too much Rye flour so I opened up my cookbook "The Healthy Kitchen" (in Hebrew "Hamitbach Habari shel Al Hashulchan") and found an amazing recipe for date honey duvshaniot made with rye flour which turned out to be surprisingly delicious.

Now on to the recipes!

Family Apple Cake

This recipe is an adaptation from the (out of print) cookbook, "The Pleasures of your Food Processor" by Norene Giletz.  It does contains margarine.  For the record when it comes to baking I do not usually "follow the rules" of healthy eating.  I do substitute at least half whole-wheat flour in most of my baking recipes, however.

For Illustrative Purposes Only

Ingredients for Filling:

8 or 9 apples, peeled cored and sliced into eighths ( I use my apple corer and slicer)

1/2 c. dark brown sugar, packed

1 T cinnamon

2 T. flour

Ingredients for Batter

1 cup margarine 

4 eggs

1 3/4 c. sugar

1 t. vanilla

1/2 c. apple juice or whiskey

2 3/4 c. flour

4 t. baking powder

Instructions

Mix filling incredients and set aside

Beat margarine eggs, sugar and vanilla with mixer for two minutes. 

Add juice/whiskey and beat for a few seconds. 

Add flour and beat in until flour disappears.

Spread 1/3 of batter in a greased and floured 10 inch tube pan.  

Arrange half of the apple filing over batter.  Do not allow filling to touch sides of pan.  Repeat until all ingredients are used, ending with batter.

Bake at 350 F (180 C) for about 70 to 75 minutes or until cake tests done.  Cool for 20 mins.  You can dust with icing suar when cool.

Date Honey "Duvshaniot" Made with Rye Flour

There are two types of Silan/Date honey-natural, made only from dates and one with water and sugar added.  Try to buy the natural one. In Israel, you can buy the natural one at the regular supermarkets or at health food stores.  I'm assuming that outside of Israel, that you can probably find it at kosher stores, middle eastern food stores and health food stores.  

Ingredients

2 c. whole rye flour

1 heaped t. baking powder

1 t. cinnamon

1 t. ground cloves

1 t. ground ginger

1/2 c. packed dark brown sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

1/3 cup Silan/date honey 

1 egg

Instructions

Heat oven to 175 C (approximately 350 F)

Mix flour, baking powder and spices

Add sugar oil, silan and egg and beat in mixer into a sticky dough

Form balls around 4 cm in diameter and place on cookie sheet lined with baking paper, flatten a bit

Bake 15-20 minutes until the cookies crack a bit but are still slightly soft.  

Cool completely and transfer to a sealed container.  

Cookies can keep up to a week.

 

Blueberry,Spinach and Mango Smoothie

I have been wanting to make a green smoothie for a long, long time.  I just never got around to it.  Today in the middle of my cooking and my Shabbat preparations, I decided that the time had come.  I was hungry and the spinach was starting to look a little sad.  So I put all the ingredients in a blender and voila...nothing!  The blender was broken, again!  It's still on warranty and I can't tell you how many times that we've brought it in. Ironically, I never use it...my kids do.  But never fear, stick blender was here, and I managed to make a delicious smoothie and splatter purple all over my kitchen cupboards, counters, appliances, etc.  My two vegetarians tried it but were not so keen on drinking spinach.  So I finished up two large glasses on my own...yum!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

2 cups baby spinach

1 cup frozen blueberries

1 mango

1 cup water

honey, to taste ( I used two teaspoons)

Instructions

Blend all ingredients together and pour into tall glasses.

Makes two very full glasses

Some of the goodies