First, a note on the Kefir… I originally bought So Delicious Strawberry Coconut Milk Kefir to give it a shot since, although I love kefir, sometimes the flavor can overwhelm other ingredients in my smoothies.  Also, kefir (milk and coconut milk) has probiotics which are great for your digestive health – and although many people that are lactose intolerant can eat yogurt and kefir with no problem- I figured it’s better to be safe than sorry for my husband – who has that intolerancy we think.  The flavor of this coconut kefir is far more mild with a fantastic hint of coconut.  I love this stuff!

Then there’s the coconut.  There seems to be, over the past several years, a huge new wave of coconut lovers and followers, plenty of coconut oil diets and loads of websites dedicated to the health benefits of coconut.  In Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon talks about the health benefits saying, “It provides calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, iodine and many trace minierals.”  She discusses the fact that 60% of the coconut is fat and of that fat, 92% is saturated – but not to avoid coconut products.  The main fatty acid in the coconut is lauric acid, a “medium-chain 12-carbon saturated fatty acid that has potent antiviral, antifungal and antimicrobial properties.”  The medium-chain fatty acids in coconut also strengthen the immune system.  For a few more sources to read on coconut (treating AIDs and candida!), check these out: Coconut Research Center, Weston A Price, Organic Facts and make sure to check out the articles in those sites about Thailand!  In Thailand, coconut is part of the staple diet and Sally Fallon says that according to the National Cancer Institute, of the 50 countries tested, Thailand has the lowest cancer rate.  Coincidence?

I’ve been craving pancakes lately – in a pinch, I love the Stonewall Kitchen pancake mix.  Everyone loves it and it works out consistently every time.  But I can’t keep eating white flour pancakes!  Yikes!  I’m pregnant and it give no nutrition to the baby and just perpetuates uh….other pregnancy related problems.  Long story short, some nourishing, higher fiber pancakes should be much better for me!  I’ve already made a yummy gluten free pancake and my brother took the best picture ever of it!

My Oat and Almond Flour Pancakes were delicious and I made them over and over for awhile there.  I took a little hiatus, made them again from my same recipe, and they were dry!  I think I didn’t used to pack the almond flour and now I do; but I promise to get back to those soon and make a note of what to do so they are not dry.  If you choose to make those in the meantime, please make sure the batter doesn’t seem dry before you put them on the griddle if it is, just add more coconut water and then go for it!  This time around, I really wanted to make something with coconut flour and buckwheat flour and was surprised at how great they turned out.  Moist and super-fluffy!

What's this? Look below!

Pumpkin Muffins With Maple Glaze

Have you ever had the delicious Pumpkin Loaf from Starbucks?  It has such a strong pumpkin flavor without being overwhelming, a soft, melt in your mouth texture contrasting with a topping of crunchy pumpkin seeds.  My son snarfed that up in two seconds.  I felt so inspired by witnessing the boy gobble up the bread that I wanted to make something comparable yet gluten free.  I can tell you that these pumpkin muffins don’t taste like the pumpkin loaf, but I veered off that track while developing this recipe and personally craved  pumpkin maple muffins with a maple glaze topping instead.  Also, you would never know these muffins are gluten-free!   I used enough liquids in this recipe that the muffins are plenty moist, and day two  they remind me a little of Mimi’s honey bran muffins.  The glaze has the additional maple flavor that I wouldn’t want to do without.  My taste-testers said they liked the muffins solo- but some raved about the glaze (myself included, hate to admit it but I was loving the full of sugar maple glaze!)   You never really know when people are being honest or just nice – but everyone loved them!  My son kept coming back for more and eventually I had to put a stop to it or he’d be up all night on a sugar high!  He’s always honest and never spares my feelings while taste testing anything:)  However, sometimes he just makes a face by the looks of things so I don’t think he’s the most qualified…

Today my son took me on a walk through the neighborhood- it’s one of very few nice day’s that we’ve had in weeks!  I decided to gather up some leaves for this picture.  Thank you neighbors, for letting me walk into your lawns and pick up leaves!  I did feel a little weird walking around their lawns but there were some pretty leaves that complimented the muffins nicely.   

Ingredients:

• Muffins
• 3/4 cup almond flour
• 1/2 cup brown rice flour
• 1/4 cup buckwheat flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup coconut oil, warmed up
• 2 eggs + 3 egg whites
• 1/2 cup maple sugar (ground as fine as you can get it) – if you have 3/4 cup maple sugar, you can use this and omit the 1/4 cup maple syrup entirely…I ran out 
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla or maple flavoring/extract
• 1 cup pumpkin
• Maple Glaze
• 9 TB powdered sugar
• 3 TB grade B maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp maple extract or flavoring

Method:

• Pre-heat oven to 350
• Mix dry ingredients in a bowl
• In a separate bowl, beat coconut oil with sugars and maple syrup, add eggs, then pumpkin, then vanilla
• Slowly beat in dry ingredients
• Grease muffin pan or use liners – for mini-muffins, I used a small cookie scoop and for the regular muffins I used a medium-sized cookie scoop.  Fill 3/4 way full.
• Mini-muffins will bake about 15 minutes and regular sized muffins will bake around 25-28 minutes.   Toothpick in center will come out clean.  Do not under-cook (the cupcakes are moist enough that the raw pumpkin flavor will debut which is not good)
• Remove from oven and let sit a few minutes - transfer and cool on wire rack
• With a fork, mix glaze ingredients – I used a spoon for drizzle and also a silicone brush

Not only do these muffins get more moist on day two, but the glaze sinks in a bit (I think the muffins absorb the glaze, hence the honey topped Mimi’s style muffin).  So, for the photo above I made even more glaze for the benefit of the camera.  Oh darn, more glaze on my muffin:)

Hazelnut Quinoa Granola Bars

I love nutty snacks that I can pick at all day long with a bite here and there and still feel good about it even if maybe I over-indulged a bit too much.  Which is sure to happen with me!  I bought some quinoa flakes awhile back but still hadn’t done anything with them.  They’ve been at the back of my mind for quite some time and then the other day I stumbled on Oh She Glow’s blog again (it’s a great one!  Good for a kick in the butt if you’re feeling like you need to eat healthier or work out but can’t get motivated).  Speaking of which, I have worked out once in the last couple of weeks and intend to work out later.  I feel much better when I do but it’s just so hard with a cute little toddler that I have to leave to workout.  Plus, he’s a work out just to be around!  Anyway, I saw one of her recipes for Raw Granola Bars and figured out exactly what I wanted to make with the quinoa flakes!  The granola bars look fantastic – and I’ve made similar bars in the past – this time, I felt like changing it up and using quinoa flakes for some added protein!  My 2 year old son is basically a vegetarian – and it’s hard to get him to eat meat, so any protein source that he’ll eat is a huge bonus for me! 

This recipe is based off of those granola bars but also completely changed.  I used brown rice syrup because trying different syrup sources (agave nectar and fruit syrup) for me tends to lead to crumbly bars.  You can find my flax peanut butter crispy bars using brown rice syrup here.  I then added two different types of sugar to break-up the brown rice syrup flavor a little – 1/8 cup sucanat and 1/8 cup ZSweet (erythritol).  I think the next time I’ll just use 1/8 cup of organic white or brown sugar – as the sucanat lends a molasses flavor to it and the bars could be a tad less sweet, though they’re great as-is.  Maybe adding 3/4 cup of brown rice syrup rather than 1 would work as well…  you need to make sure it sticks together but of course to be more healthy it would be best to use less sugar!  Using peanut butter rather than almond butter and hazelnuts would cover the taste of the brown rice syrup, but I wanted hazelnut and chocolate today:)  The almond butter just adds some nuttiness and more of a binding agent without overwhelming the flavor of the hazelnuts.  I like the addition of coconut with hazelnut and chocolate, and you can see that here with my Nutella Crispy Bars:)  

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown rice syrup
• 1/8 cup erythritol
• 1/8 cup sucanat (or any type of sugar/sweetener)
• 2 1/2 TB coconut oil (2 TB would work as well, but the almond butter I used was pretty dry, so it needed a little more more moisture)
• 1/4 cup almond butter
• 3/4 cups roasted hazelnuts, ground in food processor to a meal with some chunks
• 2 cups quinoa flakes
• 1/4 cup ground flax
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds (I ground them up to small chunks so my 2 year old can it these without choking)
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cups chocolate chips – I used 58% here, but use what you feel most comfortable with.

Method:

• Roast the hazelnuts in a pre-heated 350 oven for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned.  No need to remove skins – grind in a food processor until some small chunks are left but it’s mostly a meal/flour consistency
• Heat the brown rice syrup, coconut oil, almond butter and sugars over medium-high heat until bubbles start to form, stirring constantly for a few minutes and then remove from heat.  You could probably skip this step, but I think it’s just much much easier to get everything mixed well this way.   Add the hazelnuts
• In a separate bowl, add dry ingredients except for chocolate chips, pour the wet into the dry and mix well.  Allow to cool a little more and then add chocolate chips.  I got a little excited and added those chips a little early so they melted a bit:)  No big deal. 
• Grease a 12×8″ pan – or whatever size you want, with coconut oil – I found some great coconut oil spray and used it because I’m lazy.  It would be cheaper and almost as easy just to grease it with coconut oil!  Add the quinoa mixture and flatten with a spatula.
• Refrigerate until bars set.  Yum yum yum!!!!  

Blackberry Muffins

Really, these muffins should just be called Gluten-Free Coconut Flour and Almond Flour Muffins.  I mixed the flours in an experiment to see if it would work and about fell off the chair that it did, indeed!  I’ve been itching to mix these two flours for awhile now and of course, it’s nice to have a good muffin base.  I already like the muffin base with the almond and oat flour (Cherry Garcia) muffins as well, but the challenge is too fun!  Personally, I don’t have an issue with gluten, but my husband has an allergy to wheat.  Last night, my friend Kristin and I were chatting about this and she said she wanted to try some of my stuff out and needed to go shopping to buy the flours.  Of course I felt the need to warn her that the consistency is not the same but I get it as close possible to make whatever it is tasty.  She said she wanted to try it anyway because of the health benefits that these alternative flours offer that regular white/enriched wheat do not…this could lead me into pages and pages of reasons why different flours are better for you offering more fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, are more easily digested, etc…   Here is a great article on white flour that goes into more detail on why it’s not good for you.

My dad had given me some great blackberries that came from somewhere in his back yard.  What kills me is I grew up there and the only edible thing I remember is mulberries- which he won’t let me have because he says they don’t get past his mouth to get into the bowl.  Now, I love mulberries too, but he’s got a freaking farm in his yard nowadays.  These blackberries are smaller and sweeter than the ones you buy at the store, absolutely delicious.  I thought they may be nice in a muffin.  Well, they made the muffins darn tasty…and pretty but you could easily replace any fruit you have in this muffin.  The muffins are moist and dense, typical of coconut flour things, but a little closer to normal flour (typical of almond flour), yet not as mealy as just almond flour alone.  Really, a nice mixture of the two flours.  You can see the final texture result in the picture above.  If you’re in the mood for experimenting with coconut flour, remember that a little goes a loooong way and to add eggs and liquid.  Just a quick rule of thumb, 3 eggs per quarter cup of coconut flour.  You may be successful without adding lots of eggs.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup almond flour
• 4 TB coconut flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2/3 cup concentrated fruit juice blend (or 1 cup sweetener, you could try 1/2 cup agave nectar with 1/2 cup sugar)
• 2 TB grapeseed oil
• 1/2 TB vanilla
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup blackberries – or fruit of your choice
• sugar for sprinkling on top of muffins to make for pretty and delicious muffin tops

Method:

• Pre-heat oven to 350, grease or line muffin pan
• Mix wet ingredients
• Mix dry ingredients (excluding berries) with a fork
• Pour dry ingredients slowly into wet, stirring until well combined
• Add blackberries
• Distribute batter evenly in muffin tins – I use an ice cream scooper, it’s much easier
• Sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top of each muffin (optional)
• Bake for 20-23 minutes

Enjoy!  I like them best with a teensy bit of butter and agave nectar.

Update two days later: I mistakenly covered them when I thought they were cooled and they weren’t so the tops got moist the next day but were still yummy.  Two days later: the fruit went bad because I didn’t keep them in the fridge!  I had to throw out the few I had left.  Oops!  You’d think I’d know not to do this stuff by now but I still do it anyway.

Photo by Roland A. Manarin

Finally!  After countless attempts at different recipes for almond flour pancakes, these are fantastic.  They’re the first non white or wheat flour version my son didn’t spit out.  In this case, he shared a whole big plate of them with me.  I had to add oat flour of course to get it to a more agreeable consistency for him…well, and I like them better too.   In fact, my mom liked them and she’s extremely wary of healthy things.  And my brother, after taking the beautiful picture above, demolished the whole thing.  He’s like my mom in his suspicion of anything new and healthy.  He normally takes a bite of something most people would consider delicious and pushes the plate away because he doesn’t like sweets (except for cheesecake).  He doesn’t like nuts in his food either but he ate these pancakes with almond flour!

Strangely enough, I detect a slight marzipan flavor, but since I love marzipan, this is a nice surprise finish.  I never tasted the almonds when using only almond flour, but when mixing the flours and adding a little coconut water, the marzipan flavor comes out.  It’s just slight so don’t get too excited!  If you are gluten-free, you can buy the gluten-free oats online so you can try these.  I haven’t been able to find these oats locally, but you may have some available near you.  This recipe makes me smile because I’m in a sense eating a nice bowl of oatmeal with almonds for breakfast in the form of a pancake.  I don’t know if I’d add more pure, organic maple syrup to these or oatmeal, but at least these pancakes have some eggs for a bit of added protein!

recipe adapted from here

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup almond flour, blanched -loosly measured (do not pack the flour)
• 1/2 cup oat flour (you can grind oats yourself in the food processor if you don’t want to buy the flour) loosly measured
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 TB agave nectar or sweetener of your choice
• 1/4 cup coconut water, or water if you don’t want to buy coconut water.  If you want your pancakes fluffier, try soda water

Method:

• Pre-heat skillet to 350
• Add eggs to bowl, beat with a fork
• Add coconut water, vanilla and agave nectar and mix well, I use my fork still
• In a separate bowl (or on top of the wet mixture) blend almond flour with oat flour and baking powder with fork until flours are combined
• Mix dry and wet ingredients
• Pour batter by 1/4 cups onto greased skillet
• When top of pancakes start to bubble, it’s time to flip
• Cook for a few more minutes and it’s ready to eat!

***Update 5/2010 – this is still my favorite almond flour pancake, but after a long hiatus of making them, I made them again and packed both the almond and the oat flour and the pancakes turned out  dry.  I just updated the recipe to loosly measure the flours, since if you pack them like brown sugar (which many recipes assume with almond flour) – then the recipe won’t work!  They turned out perfectly again so no need to change the recipe.  I do add a little butter and real maple syrup on top of mine, so if you want to add more of an oil type of moisturizer to the batter, I’d try 1 tsp-1tbsp of melted coconut oil or butter, but I don’t think it’s necessary.  Also, I ran out of coconut water so today I just added 1tsp shredded unsweetened coconut to the batter, not enough for that coconutty flavor I was craving- the marzipan flavor goes away when you don’t use coconut water.  ***Toddler update: my son now prefers these oat flour crepes to this pancake recipe…but I think it’s because I always put Nutella in them:)

The first time I tried the oat flour and almond flour combination was with the Cherry Garcia Mini-Muffins.  It worked so well; I was hoping that the combination would be successful with pancakes and I can happily confirm that they’re great!  Now, if you’ve never tried almond flour before, the consistency is a little different…a little moist and mealy.  Mixed with oat flour, this is reduced substantially.  My toddler liked it.  That’ pretty huge.

Oat Flour Crepes

It’s my hazelnut chocolate thing again… well and coconut.  I guess I wasn’t done after the Nutella bars!!!  These crepes are amazing!   Honestly, delicious… just the right consistency with a hint of coconut.  The crepes are nourishing, but what you choose to put in is is where it ends up really being healthy or not.  I chose to put a thin layer of Nutella (making it less healthy of course) with some strawberries and bananas.  Excellent combination.  However, it would be mighty tasty with almond butter, strawberries and bananas.  Or even a thin layer of cheese.  I think the cheese would work nicely with the coconut – a little sweet and savory. 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup oat flour (gluten-free if you buy gluten-free oat flour or oats and grind them)
• 2/3 cup light coconut milk
• 1 egg + 1 egg white
• 1 1/2 Tb melted coconut oil
• 1 Tb agave nectar

Method:

• Whisk coconut oil with coconut milk, add eggs and whisk together, add agave and mix
• Add oat flour and mix with blender on high.  Without using a blender, the oat flour is too lumpy – there isn’t much gluten in oat flour so you shouldn’t need to worry about over-mixing and making it tough – but if you substitute another flour, take that into consideration (another flour may not be as lumpy as oat flour anyway)
• Pre-heat a large pan on medium-high and add some grease (butter, spray, coconut oil, whatnot)
• Add scant 1/4 cup to 1/4 cup of batter, move pan around a little to spread batter (OR, use a crepe maker if you’re cool enough to have one, I am not) – flip when edges start to brown slightly – leave on pan for about 30 seconds and crepe should be done!

Add your favorite crepe toppings and delight your taste-buds.

Did you notice the plate?  It says CHOW!  I found it at Super Target and although it’s normally something I wouldn’t buy, I just couldn’t resist.  Perfect!

ALSO…today’s the day I’m announcing the winner of the Stonyfield Farm YoBaby contest!  Random.org picked #5, and excluding my comments, Gina wins!  Congratulations Gina!  And thanks for commenting.

Cherry Garcia Muffins

Back in the day, I used to be addicted to Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.  Back when they still owned the company.  When they started offering frozen yogurt, of course I only bought that version; tastes the same, much better for you!  Well, I’ve moved on from that flavor, but when my Dad dropped off a huge bucket of super-tart mini cherries off of his tree, I had no idea what to make with them.  Well…I had some delicious Scharffen Berger chocolate chunks in my pantry, so I decided to make these mini-muffins with almond flour and oat flour!  The tartness of the cherries, the semi-sweetness of the chocolate chunks, the sweetness of the batter and the creaminess of yogurt all go so nicely together.  Let me tell you, they’re yummy!  I love it when experiments work!  I’ve made so many flops with almond flour it’s not even funny.   Almond flour, not being mixed with any other flours, does not lend my favorite consistency to baked goods.  It really does seem mealy to me, but oat flour does not, so if you’re gluten-intolerant and can tolerate gluten-free oats, then I suggest mixing!  This is a coincidence, but I happened to make these with the organic Greek yogurt (Oikos) – which the giveaway is still going on until Father’s Day so if you haven’t commented and would like the free yogurt, please comment on the Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies recipe for a chance to win!

My husband will be mad at me for making these.  Every time I make something with fruit and chocolate, he lectures me that chocolate is good, and fruit is good, but not together!  Sorry babe.  I like them.  And I think chocolate and fruit together is a beautiful thing.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup oat flour
• 1/2 cup almond flour (blanched)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4-1/3 cup sugar or your favorite sweetener
• 1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt (I used Oikos:)
• 1 Tb coconut oil (or butter)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup cherries, pitted – mine were tart so up the sugar a tad if you’re are tart
• 1/2 cup chunk semi-sweet chocolate chips

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375, grease pan
2. Mix flours, baking powder and salt with whisk
3. Mix melted coconut oil with the yogurt, whisk, add egg and beat together, add sugar/sweetener
4. A little at a time, mix the wet in with the dry, then add cherries and chocolate chips, mix well
5. Distribute batter evenly into all mini-muffin tins (24)
6. Bake 13-15 minutes

Enjoy!

Hazelnut Meal/Flour Cookie

So many people stumble upon my blog looking for hazelnut meal/flour recipes and since I’m equally curious about making something with hazelnut flour, I decided to go ahead and try something new…again!  I’m so glad I did.  These are truly amazing.  The toasted hazelnut is the star flavor in this cookie with some sweet to enhance and of course some chocolate to enhance even more.  I found this recipe from a girl from Spain, which includes almond flour and white sugar which I omitted both in place of all hazelnut flour and agave nectar and less sugar and chocolate.  I love the flavor of almonds, but I didn’t want anything getting in the way of the delicious toatsed hazelnut taste!  The recipe originally comes from a gluten-free cookbook entitled, “Cookies For Breakfast” by Michael Perlman.  Unfortunately, these cookies are so delicious that I had a few for breakfast, as the book title states.  Oops.  Well, they are much healthier than sugary cereal I guess.  They are so darn good I couldn’t think of eating anything else this morning!

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 c agave nectar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 c oat flour (if you’re going gluten-free, just make sure your oat flour is certified gf)
• 1 heaping cup toated hazelnuts
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions:

• Pre-heat oven to 350
• Toast hazelnuts until lightly browned, about 8 minutes
• Remove from oven and with paper towel, remove as many skins as you can, the ones that stay on are just fine.
• Put hazelnuts in food processor or blender, grind until a fine powder or a little chunky, I kept some tiny chunks so the cookies would have a nice crunch.  Allow to cool before adding to cookies or the hot hazelnuts will melt the butter and flatten the cookies
• Cream agave, brown sugar, and softened butter, add egg and vanilla and blend
• Mix oat and hazelnut flour with baking powder and salt, add to wet mixture and stir, add chocolate chips and stir
• Bake for 7-10 minutes, I made smaller cookies so they were done in 7-8 minutes (my hot oven is finally fixed so it’s normal!)

These cookies are sensitive to the type of cookie sheet you put them on.  The picture above is the prettiest cookie, baked and pictured with the Paula Deen pan with the silicone (Silpat like) sheet on top.  I also made these with a dark sheet and they were nice and fluffy but the bottoms browned faster, and I also made them with a lighter cookie sheet with a Silpat.  Those turned out flat.  However, they are ALL equally delicious no matter what type of cookie sheet you bake them on and how browned the bottoms may get.  The flat ones are chewy and a little more candy-reminiscent, so my husband likes them better.  Maybe I do too?  None are burnt, just the hazelnut is even more toasted.  Wonderful!  I think the next time I make these, and I definitely will soon, I’ll either buy a bigger Paula Deen cookie sheet, or I will use my nice dark sheet but turn the temperature of the oven down to about 335.   Pretty cookies are nice to share.  Speaking of…here’s a really cool blog post  about how cookies should be refrigerated before baking and shows pictures of various refrigerator times and how the cookies turn out showing the optimal pretty cookies.  I love that post.

Egg Crepes With Creamed Spinach

• Beat 1 egg and 1 egg white well in bowl.
• Pre-heat stove-top on medium with the biggest non-stick pan you’ve got or a crepe maker (wish I had one), my pan is about 11 1/2 inches in diameter, if yours is a little smaller, don’t add the egg white, if it’s even smaller, you could try two egg whites but that doesn’t work in the larger size pan
• Spray pan with cooking spray, add the eggs and spread evenly by moving pan around.  Allow to sit and cook until top looks done.  If you’re a little nervous that the top doesn’t seem cooked, just stick the pan in your oven on broil for about a minute or until it looks done.
• Remove egg crepe and set on plate (if you add ingredients now, it’s difficult to remove without it all falling apart)
• Add your favorite ingredients and roll!

Ingredients for “Creamed Spinach”

• 1 box frozen spinach
• 3/4-1 cup cottage cheese
• 2 TB chicken broth
• red pepper flakes
• basil (I used dried, but fresh is always better if you’ve got it!)
• parsley …ditto to the above
• garlic salt

Directions:

• Let spinach defrost and then drain well
• Mash cottage cheese with potato masher, or to get the lumps out completely, you can use your food processor but then you get to do more dishes, you may also buy whipped cottage cheese but I found it still has little lumps anyway and it’s a little more expensive
• Put spinach and cottage cheese on stovetop on medium, add chicken broth, a few dashes of red pepper, a couple of dashes of garlic salt, basil, parsley and pepper
• Stir constantly and cook until liquid starts to dissipate.  Add more salt to flavor to your tastes

I sliced some grape tomatoes and added it to my crepe/omelet and it was the perfect touch!  Unfortunately, I don’t think Nutella would taste very good with this version of a crepe. 

Oh, by the way, my toddler, who for whatever reason has recently decided that he doesn’t like eggs anymore, really liked the crepe thin version of the egg!  I guess not only is it fun for me, but he thought it was pretty cool too.  He ate more egg than spinach, but he ate some of that as well!