If you’ve seen a lot of recipes lately that call for almond flour or almond meal, you may be wondering what it is.  I know I was.  When I looked into low-carb diet recipes, I came across a lot of these types of recipes.  As it turns out, almond flour is typically used as a replacement for wheat flour or cornmeal, both high in carbohydrates.

Almond flour can be used as a coating for fish or chicken instead of flour or cornmeal.  However, almond flour is not a substitute for regular flour when used in bread that forms a real dough because you can’t knead it.  It is suitable, however for quick-breads like muffins and other “mix and pour” type  breads.

You can find almond flour or almond meal in health food stores or many larger grocery stores.  You can also make your own at home pretty simply.  To make almond flour, buy the blanched almonds without the skin and, starting with small amounts in your blender or food processor, pulse until the texture becomes like cornmeal.  If you use whole almonds or blanched almonds with the skins on, you’ll make almond meal.  Either way, the finished flour or meal will resemble cornmeal more than it will resembles regular wheat flour, and they can really be used interchangeably.  If you blend the almonds too long, you’ll end up with almond butter, which is good, too, so just set it aside and try again.

What to make with almond flour or meal?  I guess my favorite is coating fish and chicken.  The results are very different from your typical flour coating.  It has a nutty, of course, taste that you won’t have from wheat flour or cornmeal.  Be careful when you cook your fish or chicken though as the almond flour will tend to burn a bit faster.  I choose a lower oven setting when I’m oven frying with almond flour coatings.

Other than coating fish or chicken, or turning into a muffin recipe, what would you do with almond flour?  It seems pretty versatile, so I would love to hear your opinions about how to use this fun food!

I don’t normally stock up on cashews since they are rather expensive, but my husband loves them so we have a couple cans sitting in the cupboard.  I’d really like to surprise him with a fabulous dish highlighting the cashews, but can’t think of anything new.

One of my favorite ways to use cashews is in a chicken salad that I like to make.  I’ll give you a rough idea of how to make it, but I normally make this without any recipe.  So, here’s my best attempt at describing my “Sweet and Tangy Chicken Salad”.

Sweet and Tangy Chicken Salad

Mix together in a big bowl:
chopped up cooked chicken meat (white or dark is fine)
chopped green onion
chopped red bell pepper
chopped celery
sweet green or purple grapes, cut in half lengthwise
cashews

Make a dressing by whisking together:
some balsamic vinaigrette
a little yellow mustard
a little drizzle of honey
drizzle of olive oil until desired texture
salt and pepper to taste

Pour dressing over chicken mixture until it’s nice and flavorful and moist.  Then scoop little piles on top of whole romaine lettuce leaves.  Great combination of sweet and tangy flavors, and the crunch of the cashews is splendid!

Yes, I could probably be very happy to just keep making that salad, but I sure would like to try something a bit different.  Have you used cashews in any unexpected ways in some of your recipes?

Thanks to some smart coupon shopping, I was able to get packs of roasted sunflower seeds for 15 cents each and stocked up since we occasionally like to snack on them. Now that they are sitting in my pantry, I’ve been wondering what I can do with them other than just snacking on them plain.

Here are my ideas so far:

• Sprinkle the sunflower seeds on salads for some extra crunch.
• Add them to muffin batter. I think it would go really well with some pumpkin or cranberry muffins.
• Make some trail mix out of sunflower seeds, dried fruit and dry cereal.

I’d appreciate any other ideas and any recipes you may have that include sunflower seeds.