10 Minute Superfood Pancake

I told you awhile back about a job interview…Well, I was eventually offered the job, yay me! So this past month has been a whirlwind of looking for apartments, moving in, and unpacking all my stuff (how did I get so much stuff by the way?).

To keep my energy levels up through all of this I needed some fast but tasty eats. I loosely based this Superfood Pancake off of a Minimalist recipe and loaded it with chickpea flour, black beans, and veggies!

Superfood Pancake

1/2 cup chickpea flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of sea salt and ground pepper

1/2 Tbsp olive oil

1 cup water

1/2 small onion, diced

1 clove garlic, diced

1/2 cup roasted cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup black beans

generous handful fresh parsley, minced

Start by mixing together the chickpea and whole wheat flour, salt, pepper, and baking powder.

Slowly add water and olive oil while whisking.  Batter will be thin, almost like a crepe batter. Don’t worry your pretty head if there are a couple of lumps.

Now this is where you can get creative…I decided to just use up some random things from my pantry and fridge: roasted cherry tomatoes, garlic, onion, black beans, parsley.  But this recipe is pretty flexible and you could use almost whatever veggies, beans, and fresh herbs you have on hand.

Heat up a good sized glug of olive oil in a medium-high pan. I used about one tablespoon.

Throw your ingredients into your chickpea/flour batter and mix everything together.

When the pan is hot, pour the whole mess evenly into the bottom of the pan, and spread it out to the edges with your spatula.

Let it cook away for 5ish minutes, more or less depending on how hot your burner gets, and flip.  Cook both sides to a golden brown.

Go ahead and eat the pancake with your fingers or if you want to be more civilized (weirdo) the pancake would be great sliced up and served over some fresh salad greens.

Sometimes good can come out of nothing.

Good news!  A couple weeks ago I had a phone interview for an incredible job.  Like I would probably die on the spot if I got this job.  Anyways, I had just about given up hope for ever hearing back from them but I just got a call to come in for a second interview next week!

Do you ever look in your fridge and see six or seven random containers of veggies/beans/and grains?  And then think to yourself ugh I don’t wanna just eat these up plain cause that’s super boring? But I Hate (capital ‘H’ for emphasis) throwing food away. That brown dog wouldn’t eat it either unless I poured a whole jar of peanut butter on top of it.

Speaking of brown dogs, I tried giving her a blueberry this morning and she played with it for a good five minutes, tossing it in the air and what not until she just dropped it uneaten on our carpet. Blueberry crushed into beige carpet=not good.  So she’s never going to get another blueberry again.

Inspiration came at the hands of the Dog Hill Kitchen and her assortment of pies based off of a recipe for pocket pies by the know it all Alton Brown. There’s no real recipe for the filling…I just had some mushrooms, onions, spinach, broccoli, and white beans that needed to be used up.  MAKE SURE that your filling tastes good just by its lonesome because it will not be magically transformed to yum just by putting it in this pie-type thing. Use good judgement with your spices and take a sample of the filling to make sure it tastes yummy.  I used salt, fresh ground pepper, and some vegetable bullion.

Make the dough (I cut the recipe in half) according to the Alton Brown recipe subbing non-dairy milk and omitting the egg wash.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to an 1/8th of an inch and place your filling on the center.

Cut diagonal slices into the dough down each side making them about 1 1/2 inches wide. Start folding the slices over top your filling, alternating left and right sides.

Pinch off the ends and optionally brush the top with a cornstarch slurry (gives it a bit of a sheen, kind of like an egg wash would).

Do you have a little extra dough left over? Or did you make sure to have some leftover? You’re crazy! Fill with chocolate chips and maybe a dollop of peanut butter. Eat a couple of chocolate chips now while no one is looking! Life is short.

Bake at 375ºF for about 30-40 minutes. Serve with your favorite tomato sauce or depending on what you put in it a nice mushroom gravy would be great too.

You have successfully used up all those containers of random leftovers in your fridge and the end result is mighty pretty I must say. Eat up!

Super Green Hummus

I got a lot of email interest wanting to learn more about the foam roller I pictured in the last post. For those of you interested in getting a foam roller for yourself I got mine through Amazon.com.  I ordered it on a Sunday and it arrived at my house two days later.  If you are new to foam rolling I would probably recommend getting the softer kind for gentle souls instead of the harder one that I bought which is best for crazy foam rolling lunatics.

Need a place to start for some rolling exercises? Here’s a pdf document that has a few demos of the major muscle groups you can start try to un-knottify (plus the guy pictured is a toal hottie. Bonus.)

Anyways onto the hummus! I really don’t think I’ve ever made the same hummus twice…it is kinda fun trying out different flavor combinations. Plus this latest version allowed me to use up some leftovers in my fridge. Tweak the recipe to your tastes…more salt/less oil (for you fat-free-freaks)/or maybe some different spices. Basically just do whatever makes you and your wild taste buds happy and feel free to throw this recipe out the window!

Super Green Hummus

1/2 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/2 can white beans, drained and rinsed

3 Tbsp tahini

2 Tbsp olive oil

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 clove garlic

1/2 cup cooked red chard

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp salt

pinch cayenne

about 1/4 cup water

Throw all the ingredients with wild abandon into your food processor or blender.

Now pulse for a couple minutes and get hypnotized by the swirly designs the hummus is making in the food processor…

OK wake up! And get your crackers/veggies ready for dippage. Adjust seasonings as  needed to make your taste buds deliriously happy.

Verdict? A+! And this hummus is a fabulous way to sneak more greens into my diet! Whoohoo!

Water Cooler Morsel of the Day:

Are you totally sick of taking pictures of what you eat? Or have you become so totally fabulously popular because of your blog that you long for the simpler times? Read more about the blogging phenomenon in this article by the NYTimes.