Guilt Free Strawberry Jam

Oh hey there! Long time no see. After weeks of absence I finally decided to write something:) And the first thing I thought I’d share was a delicious recipe for strawberry jam that changed my world. No really, it kind of did.

So I’ve always liked jam but have never eaten it since focusing on health. For years I’ve gone to family parties and avoided the homemade strawberry jam because I knew how much forsugar was in there. Jam was just never an option. If I was going to splurge it would be on chocolate, not jam.

A cute friend in my neighborhood knew we were limiting sugar at our house and brought over some simple, delicious, jam that was an instant game changer. With only 3 clean simple ingredients jam was back on the menu for my occasional Gf waffles, protein pancakes or PB&J.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups washed, cut strawberries (stems removed obvi)
  • 1/4 c raw local honey
  • 2T chia seeds

Directions

1. Blend strawberries together until your preferred consistency (some people like chunky)

2. Mix in honey and chia seeds

3. Pour into a sauce pan and bring to a light boil. Stir for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool, and store in jars in fridge or freezer.

….look at this delicious stuff. So yummy, simple and clean, no refined sugar or preservatives, and extremely easy to make.

Enjoy!

Keto Quiche

I don’t know what your family eats for Easter dinner but ham was abundant at ours…and eggs of course. Both families had lots of ham and lots of left overs. I hate letting leftovers go bad so I wanted to put all that extra ham and eggs to use!

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups cubed ham
  • 1 c shredded Cheddar Cheese
  • 1 c Swiss Cheese
  • 1 c goat milk (or whole milk)
  • 1/2 c low fat cottage cheese
  •  4 small eggs (or 3 large eggs)
  • 1/2 t salt 1/2 t pepper (if your ham is already heavily salted, no need to add extra salt)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cube your ham and lay in the bottom of a pie baking dish. Sprinkle cheddar cheese + swiss cheese on top of the ham.
  2. In a blender (I use my Vitamix) combine milk, eggs, cottage cheese, and seasoning. Blend on med-high until smooth.
  3. Pour the egg/milk mixture over the ham and cheese. The filling should be about 1/2-3/4 inches from the top of the dish. As the Quiche cooks the pan will fill but not overflow. If you feel like your dish is too full you can place the baking dish on a cookie sheet to catch any spills.
  4. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-45 minutes or until the quiche forms up. You may be tempted to keep cooking the quiche until it feels hard in the middle, but overcooking will cause the eggs to be rubbery, The goal is for the quiche to be light and fluffy. So as soon as the center is no longer liquid it can come out. it will firm up as it cools.

Typically I add mushrooms, spinach, and other veggies to my quiche but this is a good ole meat and eggs version that even my husband loved! (he doesn’t  usually care much for quiche). I hope you enjoy it and will share your feedback!

Katie

Homemade Protein Ice Cream

chocolate protein ice cream

If you want to be entertained, watch the video of my girls and me making homemade chocolate protein ice cream here: Part 1   Part 2

Ingredients

  • 2 cups whole milk
  • 1 cup cream
    • I just use 3 cups of goat milk because it’s creamy enough for our liking
  • 1-1/2 scoops of your favorite flavor of protein powder (2 scoops was a bit much for this recipe)
  • 1 t vanilla
  • optional* 1 cup fruit you may want to add to mix things up!

Directions

  1. Add ingredients (except fruit) together and blend until smooth.
  2. Add any fruit you may like and pulse your blender until fruit is chunky but not liquefied (the extra liquid will throw off the proportions of the other ingredients and could make your ice cream watery)
  3. Pour into an instant ice cream maker like mine or use an “old fashioned” homemade ice cream maker.
  4. Enjoy!

I hope you will indulge in a little guilt free ice cream and let me know how you like it! Please share with your friends if  this recipe got a ‘thumps up’ from you. Share what you did differently that you liked more/less.

Love, Katie

Sweet Potato Lava Brownies

My girls asked for a treat tonight and I had a sweet potato in the fridge and thought….well let’s find a recipe for sweet potato brownies! I made sweet potato brownies once before, a few years ago, but lost the recipe. After searching good old google and not finding any recipes that looked good or that I had all the ingredients for, I just made my own recipe…and… it turned out AWESOME! I was too excited to not share it right away.

A few weeks ago I was at Happy Sumo for sushi and decided to try out their “lava” cake for dessert. There wasn’t so much “lava” in it but it was moist and dense and delicious. My sweet potato brownies had the EXACT same consistency + a bit more lava. I have some friends who are always looking for desserts that are healthy but also tasty enough that their non-healthy friends will eat them. This recipe checks both boxes! Throw some vanilla protein goat milk ice cream on top and you’re golden! (I’ll share my goat milk protein ice cream recipe soon).

If you need a chocolate fix this recipe will do the trick! PLUS you can feel good about knowing you’re using wholesome ingredients + free of gluten and refined sugar. Try it out yourself or tweak the recipe like I did and tell me what you think! I plan to use applesauce instead of butter next time to see how it turns out and maybe even add a bit of protein powder too…hmm…

Ingredients

  • 1 cup baked sweet potato (bake 1 large potato at 400 degrees until its super soft)…now that I think of it, you could probably use pumpkin instead of sweet potato too… now my wheels are turning! ha
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 stick butter melted (sub 1/2 cup coconut oil or other “fat” and see how you like it!)
  • 1/3 c cocoa
  • 1/4 c honey (you could sub agave or pure maple syrup)
  • 3/4 c oat flower (I just put whole oats in my Vitamix and blend until flour-like)…try other flour substitutes and tell me what you like best!
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 t vanilla
  • 1 t baking powder
  • 1 c dark-no sugar added chocolate chips

Directions

  1. Pre-cook your sweet potato @ 400 degrees. Then turn oven temp to 350 degrees to prepare to cook brownies. Melt butter in a sauce pan.
  2. Combine wet ingredients and mix on low speed until smooth
  3. Add dry ingredients and mix until incorporated
  4. Add chocolate chips and stir in
  5. Pour into greased 9×9 baking dish. Cook at 350 degrees for about 22-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
  6. Let cool for a few minutes before cutting + Enjoy!

 

Goat Shenanigans

I’ve already admitted that I’m a crazy goat lady in a previous post. But with spring in the air and baby goats coming to our house throughout spring and summer its going to get crazier. I am assuming that most of you reading this are not super interested in receiving every single goat update so I am going to spare you the melodramatics.

However, for those of you who ARE interested about the goings on of my micro farm, I’ve created a separate website where I’ll be sharing plenty of information about my goats, goat milk, goat kidding, goat tips, etc.. The Four Leaves Farm website can be found here.

I’ll be listing information about my current herd and the goats I have for sale as they become available on that website. In ADDITION, thanks to a new bill that was recently passed by my awesome local legislator Mark Roberts, I am legally able to sell my raw goat milk to informed customers in my local area! I am creating a “Milk List” you can get on to try or regularly receive fresh, raw, delicious goat milk from yours truly! (look for the “contact” section on my website) Even if you’ve never tried goat milk before come try it so you can see how yummy it is! My husband doesn’t like any milk but of course I forced him to try mine and he said it is good…despite the fact that its milk. 😉 If you are in Utah County and are interested in tasting or purchasing milk regularly please let me know!

That’s all for now! Even if you don’t want to follow all my goat shenanigans I hope you can still appreciate pictures of adorable baby goats! They are pretty irresistible once you hold them and watch them do parkour all over your yard.

Love, Katie