Slow cooker strawberry butter

Slow cooker strawberry butter is sweetened naturally with pure maple syrup and a touch of honey -- enjoy it on toast or stirred into yogurt or oatmeal. 

I scored the very last of the local strawberries from a neighborhood farm market this week. Which threw me into such a panic (No more strawberries until next year? Gaaaaaaah!) that I had to preserve them.

I froze a bunch for smoothies and then thought about strawberry jam. But then I tried to think of something else with less than a bazillion pounds of sugar.

And that reminded me to check Marisa McClellan's latest preserving book entitled Naturally Sweet Food in Jars. This is a whole book of preserves made without refined sugar. Yes! No white sugar -- amazing, flavorful jams and preserves sweetened only natural sweeteners like honey, maple and fruit juices.

Squeeeeeeeee!

I do so love to can but sometimes the amount of sugar required to keep our favorite jams safe for canning makes me feel like I'm defeating the purpose of putting up healthy fresh fruit.

You know what I mean? (It's why my yummy pear honey is used very, very sparingly around Casa de Ninj.)

After making a couple of batches, I've decided this strawberry butter is my new favorite thing. It's like apple butter ... only so much freakin' better. I've been spreading it on toast, natch, but we also love to stir it into plain yogurt for breakfast.

And I haven't even begun to start baking or making overnight oatmeal with it yet!

Maple ginger chicken and apples

Tender and saucy maple ginger chicken and apples: perfect fall comfort food that's healthy and super easy to prepare.

Given that it's finally starting to feel like fall, I seem to be eating a lot of cold-weather comfort foods. Gone are my insatiable cravings for cool summer salads or still-warm sun tea. Now, I'm all about slow roasting and crockpotting.

But still no pumpkin. I'm just not feeling the pumpkin love this year for some reason. No, I know the reason: too much pumpkin-spice this and pumpkin-laden that all over my social media feeds. I just can't do it. Not when there are so many other way more delicious fall fruits and veg out there, just waiting to be featured in a comfort food recipe. Like apples.

Clearly my awesome blogging friend Katie Webster of Healthy Seasonal Recipes agrees with me, as the recipe I'm sharing today for maple ginger chicken and apples comes directly from her new cookbook, Maple: 100 Sweet and Savory Recipes Featuring Maple Syrup. Peeps: I am over-the-moon excited about this book -- and not just because Katie is super-talented and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. Like me, Katie is all about real-food recipes, made with fresh, healthy and seasonal ingredients that everyone in your family will go cray cray for. I have little post-it flags on more recipe pages than I can count in this cookbook. I'm a little bit in love with it and plan to give a copy to everyone I know for the holidays.

But you don't have to wait for the holidays because I'm going to give away a copy of Katie's cookbook to one of you this week! Simply follow the instructions in the widget following the recipe for your chance to win a copy.

Maple date scones

Maple date scones are an easy-to-make, healthier, less-sweet treat for breakfast, dessert or an afternoon snack.

While I like sweet snacks and desserts as much as the next ninja, I generally prefer my baked goods to be a little less on the sweet side.

Which is why I'll choose a scone over a cupcake any day.

(True story: My sister used to love sitting next to me at family birthday celebrations when we were young because I didn't like to eat the frosting. I would eat the cake part of my piece and give the frosting to her -- that's how much I prefer my sweets less sweet!)

And any time I can sweeten a sweet more naturally than simply using refined sugar, I'm all over it.

As their name implies, these maple date scones are sweetened with pure maple syrup, chewy dates and almost no added sugar.

Best maple recipes

Nine delicious recipes: breads, smoothies, cocktails, breakfasts, condiments and desserts, all sweetened naturally with pure maple syrup.

It's that time of year again -- yes, spring. And if you've lived in New England, you know that means it's also the time when the sap starts running and the maple sugaring season kicks into high gear.

One of the ways I try to keep things healthy around here is by using natural sweeteners instead of refined sugar whenever I can. And maple syrup is one of my favorite ways to sweeten my recipes naturally.

So I'm treating you to a springtime roundup of some of my favorite recipes made with 100 percent pure maple syrup to celebrate the new maple season (and please, just back away from that bottle of Aunt Jemima or I'll have to slap it out of your hands!).

Green Mountain Mule

The Green Mountain Mule pairs Kentucky bourbon with Vermont maple syrup in this refreshing riff on a cocktail classic.

Peeps: It's no secret that I like my cocktails.

Which is a good thing, given that I now live in Kentucky, the bourbon capital of the world (I think it's pretty safe to make this broad claim).

However, it's now March and I'm reading reports that the sap is running in Vermont and the sugaring season has begun. Which makes me miss Vermont and its incomparable Grade B maple syrup like crazy.

So, being The Ninj, I decided to blend the specialty of my old home state with that of my new one and turn them into one delicious cocktail: the Green Mountain Mule, a riff on the Moscow Mule that pays homage to both Vermont and Kentucky.

Granola breakfast bread

Banish boring breakfasts by turning granola and cashew milk into a hearty, healthier granola breakfast bread that's super easy to make.

Coming up with different breakfast ideas every morning can get to be drag, am I right? And then qualify that as different breakfast ideas that aren't too rich or too unhealthy (I'm looking at you, cinnamon buns), and it gets harder, especially at holiday time.

I find I often fall back on overnight oatmeal or granola with almond milk,  because both give me a nice shot of protein, are filling and yummy and, best of all, are easy to prepare.

Recently, I got an opportunity to try Silk's new Cashewmilk (Mr. Ninj loves it when food shows up at our front door!), so I immediately used it for breakfast, poured over homemade granola. Good stuff, my peeps, especially since it's creamier than plain skim milk with fewer calories and more calcium to boot (who couldn't use fewer calories and more calcium?). Plus, I loved the mildly nutty flavor and how it complemented the granola.

Which gave me a great idea: why not turn this yummy granola and Cashewmilk combo into a quick bread? Booyah.

Pumpkin maple smoothie {$100 gift card giveaway}

This healthy pumpkin maple smoothie, made with silken tofu, is gluten-free, dairy-free and refined sugar-free. A creamy, delicious, on-the-go fall-flavored breakfast or afternoon treat.

You'd have to be living under a very, very large rock not to have encountered some kind of Pumpkin Spice Whatevs this fall. While this craze may seem -- well -- more than a little cray cray, there's a reason why we all tend to get so worked up about pumpkin in October -- other than Halloween and jack-o-lanterns, of course. One whiff of pumpkin and cinnamon and nutmeg together can conjure up all sorts of memories of cool weather, falling leaves, cozy sweaters and crackling fires.

Which is probably why pumpkin spice is such a coffee house favorite -- you need a comforting beverage to keep you warm as you site by the crackling fire in the cool weather in your cozy sweater, watching the leaves fall.

But since I'm no longer a coffee drinker, I wanted to come up with a way that I, too, could enjoy Pumpkin Spice Whatevs this fall, without falling too far off the healthy food bandwagon.

As luck would have it, I got the opportunity recently to try some Mori-Nu Silken Tofu, which inspired me to focus my pumpkin spice attention on smoothies.

Now, before you freak out that I added tofu to my smoothie, let me explain. Mori-Nu is different because it's silken tofu, which has a very smooth and custard-like texture, so it adds a great creamy texture to smoothies (with no bananas required!). And it never needs to be pressed or drained, so you can use it as-is, straight out of the box -- you know The Ninj is all about speed and simplicity in recipes.

Maple candied pecans

Make these 3-ingredient maple candied pecans in 5 minutes, then enjoy them on salads, with cheese, atop oatmeal or as a sweet-and-salty snack.

Sometimes the simplest things are often the best, don't you find?

Think of how many classics are little more than the combination of two ingredients: PB and J, rum and coke,  milk and cookies, Hall and Oates ...

(In fact, if you want to have your mind blown just a bit, check out BuzzFeed's list of insanely simple 2-ingredient recipes -- but be forewarned, some are just kind of creepy).

Anyhoo. I like to keep things simple. Which is why I often blow off little extra steps in recipe if it seems that they might slow down my dinner-making process -- steps like toasting some nuts to put on top of a salad. Pfffft. Sure, I know the nuts taste better toasted, but that's just going to add to both the prep time and the number of pans that need to be washed after dinner.

Yet in making a Brussels sprout salad last week, I felt that it needed a leeetle somethin-somethin to put it over the top, just a little bit of sweetness (Mr. Ninj said that removing all the Brussels sprouts would have made it perfect; I ignored him).

Sweet made me think of candied nuts. But with just a hint of salt. And, in the name of keeping it simple and fast, these maple candied pecans have only three ingredients: raw pecans, pure maple syrup and a finishing dash of sea salt.

Boozy maple bacon jam

Boozy maple bacon jam. Yes, you heard me right.

This is my second post this week in which I think the title says it all and if I didn't write another word about it but instead simply gave you the recipe, you'd be perfectly happy.

I'm an advocate of homecooking for healthier eating and, more importantly, eating real food rather than prepackaged, only-microwave-cooking-required crap that is full of chemicals (and yes, I'm not perfect and occasionally indulge in Nutella but I also haven't eaten a bite of fast food in five years).

Luckily, bacon is real food, as regular readers know that I have a weakness for it and tend to throw a bit of it into nearly everything (including bacon oatmeal cookies -- yes, I went there). And I refuse to jump on the bacon-is-so-last-year bandwagon (freakin' hipsters, raining on my parade).

Yet you may notice that I haven't been packing on the bacon recipes much in 2014 (there's actually only been one, can you believe it?). Time to rectify that.

Happily, Katie from Healthy Seasonal Recipes invited me to take part in her Pure Maple link party to celebrate maple season -- and we all know that nothing goes better with maple syrup than bacon (well, I hope you know this -- it's a fact). And, even though the sap is running here in Vermont, it's still freakin' cold and snowy, so why not throw in a little bourbon to warm us all up?

(Bacon is never made worse by the addition of bourbon. This is another fact.)

Oooh! I can't believe I haven't yet mentioned the best part: you can make this boozy maple bacon jam in the slow cooker.

Slow cooker bread pudding

Try this overnight slow cooker (crockpot) bread pudding: it makes a delicious and easy breakfast or dessert.

Once again, it's time to ROCK YOUR CROCK!

Regular readers know that one of my criteria for favorite recipes is that they are easy to prepare. Which is why I love slow cooker recipes so much: What could be easier than throwing everything in the crockpot and walking away?

However, if you've browsed through Pinterest much, you know that while many crockpot recipes are easy, they are also just plain gross. Gloppy, beige and full of cream-of-whatevs condensed soup: no thanks. That's not how The Ninj rolls. (Don't forget that you can make homemade cream-of-whatevs soup as a substitute!)

Trust me: this bread pudding is not gross.

A fun thing I discovered about crockpot cooking is that you can make a lot more dishes in it that you would think if you essentially turn it into an overnight waterbath: Put a Pyrex dish full of your ingredients inside the crock, surround it with water and let it cook overnight. That's how I make my crockpot apple pie oatmeal, which we eat a lot of around Casa de Ninj.

That is also how I made this bread pudding. I figured if the waterbath worked for the oatmeal, why not for bread pudding?

Ehrmergahd, peeps, this is such an amazing breakfast treat. Sure, you can serve it as dessert, but it seems so much more decadent to eat it for breakfast.

Sweet and spicy snack mix (aka, snack crack)

One bite of this sweet and spicy snack mix -- made with nuts, pretzels and a spicy maple glaze -- and you'll know why we call it snack crack.

Here's hoping you had a great Thanksgiving and are eating a kick-ass turkey sandwich on Black Friday buns while you're reading this post.

I'm so excited to share this sweet and spicy snack mix with you that I'm practically bouncing up and down in my chair. This stuff is freakin' awesome! So awesome, in fact, that Mr. Ninj told me last week that this snack mix is his “favorite food in the entire world, ever.” Seriously. You will not be able to stop eating it, which is why it has been dubbed "snack crack" at Casa de Ninj.

Today, I'm also sharing the recipe for this ahhhhhhh-mazing snack mix over at A Southern Fairytale, where Rachel is co-hosting the fourth annual Handmade Holidays extravaganza -- 30 full days of baking, crafting and sewing ideas from a fantastic group of bloggers.

Crockpot apple pie oatmeal

Crockpot apple pie oatmeal -- cook a delicious, hearty, no-sugar breakfast while you sleep. 

Yes, it's true: oatmeal that tastes like baked apple pie, made effortlessly in a crockpot while you sleep.

Peeps: I may have come up with the world's most perfect breakfast.

Regular readers know that I am continually on the hunt for quick-and-easy yet healthy-and-delicious breakfast ideas. Coming up with new ones gets more and more challenging, yet who likes to eat the same thing over and over?

Not The Ninj, that's fo sho.

I've made overnight oatmeal in the crockpot before, which is extra easy (with no risk of a scorchy mess) when you use the water-bath method. It's simple: Put all your ingredients into a heat-safe bowl (I find that a one-quart Pyrex measuring cup is the perfect size) and put the bowl inside a large (6-quart) crockpot. Fill the crock with water to just above the ingredient line in your bowl, being careful not to fill too high; you don't want cooking water flowing into your oatmeal! Cover it and cook on low while you sleep and -- VOILA! -- breakfast is ready when you awake.

It's also the best way, in my opinion, to eat steel-cut oats, which can be a little too tough and chewy if not cooked for a really, really long time. 

So while crockpot oatmeal is awesome anytime of the year, this particular recipe is really customized for fall with the inclusion of chopped apple, apple pie spices and apple butter (or, since I made a ton of it last week, bourbon apple pumpkin butter) -- and, of course, sweetened with maple syrup. If you want it to be more pumpkiny, simply substitute pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice: yummy, pumpkiny breakfast nirvana.

Pancake breakfast muffins

I've been working on this recipe for weeks now and am so excited that it is finally ready to share.

Regular readers know of my obsession with breakfast foods -- that is, trying to find breakfast recipes that meet my stringent criteria:

1. Reasonably healthy
2. Easy to make in advance
3. Portable
4. Freezable

You wouldn't think this would be such a tall order, but it is. At least, finding more than one or two recipes that meet the criteria is hard. If you eat the same thing every day and don't care about variety, I guess you'd be go to go -- but that's not how I roll.

Recently, it occurred to me that while I love pancakes, I never seem to bother to make them, especially during the week. It seems like too much of a hassle to drag out the griddle and just stand there, making three pancakes at a time. Not speeedy. I have a friend that whips up a huge batch and then freezes them, so her kids can pull a few out of the freezer and heat them up for a quick breakfast or snack. Perfect workaround, if I ever remembered to make a big batch on the weekends.

Then I realized that I could mess around with the format a little. Because pancakes are not really unique: they are cakes, with the normal roster of cakey ingredients -- flour, egg, baking soda, etc. And cakes are basically muffins, right?

So I took my pancake recipe and made it into a muffin recipe.

Smoky bacon cheddar maple bacon beer bread

Smoky bacon cheddar maple bacon beer bread: booya.

Beer bread ... with maple ... and bacon ... and cheese ... cheese that also has smoky bacon in it.

Really, I thought that I likely wouldn't even need to write a post to go along with the photo and the recipe.

But it's a good story...

On a drive home to Vermont from Boston a few weeks ago, we stopped for dinner at the Seven Barrel Brewery in West Lebanon, NH. Our waiter, Fred, who was a complete hoot, gave us a taste of their new Maple Ale, brewed on site with local New Hampshire maple syrup.

You know how you go to these microbreweries and they're serving their special, seasonal Cherry Prune Tangerine Yeasty Goodness or whatever and it tastes nothing like cherries, prunes or tangerines, only yeast?

This was not one of those. Honestly, I could taste the maple.