I always feel like I’m getting away with something when I make a dish that tastes like it should have a bazillion calories, but there’s no butter, cream, cheese, or bacon to be found in the ingredient list. I spotted this creamy garlic pasta recipe in the June issue of Eating Well, and it’s both tasty and quick to make (less quick if you’re deveining the shrimp yourself), a great combination for a weeknight dinner. The yogurt adds a nice tang to the creamy, garlicky sauce, and loads of veggies make it a fresh-tasting, nutritious dish. I’d describe it as a cross between fettuccine alfredo and pasta primavera, with shrimp (always a welcome addition, in my book) thrown in for good measure.

Sunbutter — the name alone just sounds friendly, doesn’t it? Actually, Sunbutter is a registered trademark, so I think that I have to call my version sunflower seed butter or something that isn’t Sunbutter.

I initially thought that I might be able to find the unsweetened version at Trader Joe’s, where lots of people on the interwebs said that the regular, sweetened type could be found, but my local Trader Joe’s only had the sugar-filled version, and I just couldn’t bring myself to pay $10+ (with shipping) per jar from the Sunbutter website. So, I picked up some roasted sunflower seeds — at around $2.99 for a pound, I think it was — and set out to make my own.

I am now a total sunflower seed butter convert. Not only was it easy to make, and much more economical to make myself, but it tastes totally yummy. If you haven’t tried sunflower seeds or sunflower seed butter before, then it’s difficult to describe the flavor. It’s kind of like peanut butter, but not really. As B said when I had him taste test my first batch, “it’s really a different kind of flavor, isn’t it?” Yes, it is, and it’s delicious with some of that sugar free jam, slathered on a banana, or just eaten with a spoon.

In addition, sunflower seed butter is rich in Vitamin E and Thiamine (B1) and is a great source of protein. It’s a great alternative to peanut butter, too!

We return to that magical June 2009 issue of Bon Appetit for this recipe for a “15 minute” spicy orange chicken. Now, I don’t know about 15 minutes — unless they weren’t including prep time — but this is still a very quick recipe compared to my regular go to orange chicken recipe. No messy breading, no deep frying, just a simple orange chicken with a nice flavor payoff for something that takes so little time. I think that it would be even better if you added some garlic and a little fresh ginger.

I guess I dropped the ball until a few months ago with regard to reading the label on my soy sauce, because the Kikkoman (at least) is definitely not gluten free. However, Bragg has a product called Liquid Aminos, which is a gluten free, soy based product and tastes very close to soy sauce. I can find it in the health food aisle at my grocery store, but if you can’t find it at yours then you can probably find it at Whole Foods or GNC, or you can order it online.

B asked for chocolate bark for Christmas, but he specifically said that he wanted cashews and not almonds or peppermint. Unfortunately, or fortunately if they happen to be your favorites, almond bark and peppermint bark have edged out all other barks for shelf space in the chocolate bark section of the store. In other words, I couldn’t find cashew bark in any of my regular haunts.

This worked out for the best, though, because I had the chance to make my own custom chocolate bark, with a much higher nut to chocolate ratio than the store bought varieties. I used all milk chocolate, but the great thing about a “recipe” like this is that you can use whatever type or types of chocolate that you want. So easy to make, and very scalable.

I broke the cooled bark into pieces, wrapped it in wax paper, and put it into a regular brown paper lunch bag. After a snip with some decorative scissors, I added a custom label (download the PDF below) and ta-da, a pretty nice looking gift. Lunch bags are what I had on hand, so that’s what I went with, but you could use cellophane bags tied with ribbon or small boxes for a more high end look.

The toughest part about making candied pecans is stirring them every 15 minutes as they bake. I used this recipe, which turned out great, and packaged the finished nuts in small cellophane bags with custom labels (download the PDF below). These would make great little stocking stuffers or party favors, and you can easily mix up the spices for your own custom flavor.

Both the chocolate bark and the pecans were finished and ready for packaging in a couple of hours, so these really can be done last minute if needed. Above are the labels that I designed for the gifts/favors. You can download the PDFs below and print the labels onto sticker paper (cardstock would work, too) for your own gifts. The bark tags say “Chocolate Bark”, so you can use them for almond, peppermint, peanut, whatever type of chocolate bark you make.

You’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to download the PDFs. Get it here for free if you don’t already have it on your system. The printable food gift labels:

Chocolate Bark (137 Kb PDF)
Candied Pecans (307 Kb PDF)

I never thought that I’d see the day when I actually craved granola, but I crave this granola. This is one of those recipes that, at first, makes you think, “Yah, it’s granola. What’s the big deal?” But then all of the different flavors — toasted nuts, caramelized fruit, a slight saltiness, and a hint of maple and cinnamon — hit your taste buds and you just keep eating and eating. Well, that’s what I do, anyway. B actually requests this granola for breakfast on a regular basis, and he’s not really a granola kind of guy.

What I love about this recipe is that it’s incredibly versatile, and it doesn’t call for any oil aside from what you use to spray the cookie sheet. You can use different types of nuts (I try to mix in at least one type of salted nut to get a better play between sweet and salty), mix in whatever dried fruit that you have on hand (my favorite combo is dried pineapple and dried cranberries), and add your choice of spices to customize it to your tastes. Pepitas, pumpkin seasoning, and dried cranberries and candied ginger would make a great autumn mix. Mmm…I might have to try that myself, though I need to get some gluten free oats in order to be able to eat more than a handful.

I’ve been wanting to make a non-peanut nut butter for a while now. Cashew butter is still on my list of to-dos, but this time around I went with almond butter. It was so easy to make that I could kick myself for not having tried it sooner. All you need is a food processor, a few ingredients, a little bit of time, and you’ve got a yummy, healthy butter to spread on everything from toast to chicken.

Almonds are actually one of the most nutritious nuts around. They can help lower LDL cholesterol, reduce your risk of heart disease, and they contain healthy nutrients like manganese, magnesium, vitamin e, tryptophan, and more. So, while I still love peanut butter, I think that almond butter will be making more regular appearances in my diet.