Helyn's Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal

I had never heard of Baked Oatmeal until I saw this recipe on Helyn's Healthy Kitchen. As much as I love steel cut oats I'm getting a little tired of them and this looked like a nice change. It is very quick to throw together. I like to let it cool, slice into portions, wrap and freeze. Every night I take one out and let it thaw in the refrigerator for the next morning's breakfast. I pretty much follow Helyn's recipe except for using 2 tablespoons of ground flax, 1 tsp of cinnamon and maple syrup for the sweetener. I also like to cook it the full 40 minutes. Please go to this link to see some nice photos and the full recipe.

I know, I know. Kind of looks like dessert, doesn't it?

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, Wheat Free, Oil Free

 

Oh, my. I've been working on the recipe for Barley and Oat Mini-Chocolate Chip Cookies, Fat Free. I tried subbing out the banana with applesauce and used maple syrup. It made a fairly soft, fragile  and sweeter cookie. It was not an improvement. Today I used some blanched almond flour and stuck with the brown rice syrup. Hot diggity dog was it good! Still soft but nice and chewy. I am so inspired by this new recipe I am going to start making my own almond milk and saving the pulp. Then I will dehydrate it and use it for baking.

Ingredients
1/4 cup barley flour
1/4 cup oat flour
1/2 cup blanched almond flour
1/4 tsp aluminum-free baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
-----
3 TB mashed banana
1/3 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
----
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare baking sheet. I like to use a Silpat or parchment paper instead of greasing sheet. Mix dry ingredients in medium sized bowl. Mix wet ingredients in small bowl. Add wet to dry and mix well, add chips. Scoop 1 tablespoon size drollops onto sheet, flatten a bit and bake for about 12 minutes until barely browned on edges. Let cool for a couple minutes and then carefully transfer to wire rack.

Substitutions and Tips and Tricks
If you don't have any barley or oat flour, buzz whole barley or oatmeal up in your blender or coffee grinder. Or you could always buy a small bag of Bob's Red Mill. Most natural foods stores have these flours in the bulk bins too. Bob's also carries almond flour but you could also make your own!

Barley and Oat Mini-Chocolate Chip Cookies, Fat Free

These are tasty little wheat-free nuggets when you must have a cookie (or two). They're not very sweet so there's no sugar rush. The recipe makes about 16-18 tablespoon sized cookies; you can fit them all on one cookie sheet. See below for substitution suggestions.

Ingredients
1/2 cup barley flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1/4 tsp aluminum-free baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
-----
3 TB mashed banana
1/3 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
----
1/4 - 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare baking sheet. I like to use a Silpat or parchment paper instead of greasing sheet. Mix dry ingredients in medium sized bowl. Mix wet ingredients in small bowl. Add wet to dry and mix well, add chips. Scoop 1 tablespoon size drollops onto sheet, flatten a bit and bake for about 12 minutes until barely browned on edges. Cool on wire rack.

Substitutions and Tips and Tricks
If you don't have any barley or oat flour, buzz whole barley or oatmeal up in your blender or coffee grinder. Or you could always buy a small bag of Bob's Red Mill. Most natural foods stores have these flours in the bulk bins too.

If you don't have brown rice syrup, you can use maple syrup. Or agave. But then I can't say you won't get a sugar rush. They will definitely be sweeter if you sub out the brown rice syrup.

The original recipe used 3 tablespoons of oil. I substituted that with the mashed banana. There's such a small amount of banana you really can't taste it. I plan on trying pureed prunes instead of bananas the next time I make these.

If you don't have mini chocolate chips, freeze some regular chips and just chop them up. Or not. If you have the big chips or chunks, just press one into the top of each cookie.

How to Publish a YouTube Video using a Canon PowerShot and iMovie

I am no expert but I've been wanting to posts videos to YouTube for some time now. I am posting this in the hopes of saving someone else the grief of banging their heads against the wall. Once you figure it out, it's easy.

I absolutely did not want to have to buy or download any extra programs. I didn't want to buy a camcorder. I wanted to use what I had. I downloaded the video from my camera to an Apple PowerBook using OSX 10.7.5.

The Camera

I have an inexpensive Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS Digital ELPH. I bought it a year or so ago for less than $200. It takes decent pictures and I've found I can make movies with it! I did have to buy another larger memory card. I picked up an 8 GB card at Fred Meyers for less than $10. My movies are less than 15 minutes so that's plenty of memory. I do have a little tripod.

Video Editing Software

I bought iWork several years ago so I have iMovie 11. It's kind of clunky, funky, but gets the job done. I did suffer through a few videos on how to use it. At this point I am just a hack able to delete bits and pieces and export the video. But later on, I can add fancy stuff.

There is more than one way to get your video to YouTube. The most successful way for me was to go to the iMovie menu:
Share
Export using QuickTime.

Here are the QuickTime settings recommended by YouTube:

Video Settings:
Compression: H.264
Frame Rate: 30
Data Rate: automatic
Key Frames: automatic
Frame Reordering: unchecked

Audio/Sound:
Format: AAC
Show advanced settings & choose constant bit rate as encoding strategy

Choose original size of the video. For my Canon 1300 it is 640x480 VGA
Prepare for internet: fast stream

These settings will export in .mov format which is acceptable to YouTube. It took my 9:37 minute video about 30 minutes to convert. It was a big file.

YouTube

Go to your YouTube account and choose upload and follow the prompts. My .mov file was over 248 MB; I don't know if that is normal or not. But it did upload in less than 30 minutes – successfully! Don't be discouraged if you have problems. Just go to the help section, Google the error message, work through it. Good luck and have fun!

Still shot of the video shot from my Canon Powershot.
I'll be posting the video with my review of VeganCuts August 2013 Beauty Box.