Join Megan in the kitchen for a cooking class focused on a charcuterie board that will make all your tastebuds happy and nourish your body at the same time!
Welcome to class Happy Valentine’s Day I was I’m Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite times to do a cooking class because there’s just so much you can do around heart shapes and pink and red foods and sweet Foods um so I always actually have a really hard time picking
What we’re actually going to be cooking for Valentine’s Day because there’s just such an array of fun things that you can do um but what I went for this time around for us was doing a sweet and salty shuder board so what we’re actually going to do is we’re going to
Make a couple of different recipes that are going to contribute to the shaku board and then we’ll talk about how to place a shaku board in a healthful yet uh very aware of sensory and tastes and flavors and textures and those and all the different ways that you can put
Together a really beautiful board but first we are going to homemake some of the ingredients so take what you will from this know that you never have to homemake all of your ingredients for a shuder board Rec cies are the whole point of it is they should be pretty
Easy to throw together um but I think it’s really fun to know that you can make some of the items that go on there and then obviously use them throughout your life um in other ways so we’re going to do a couple of things that um aren’t you know super related to each
Other necessarily but they’re going to go on to our board so let’s go ahead and get started um we’re going to start with homemade crackers and if you’ve never made homemade crackers before they’re so easy the the time it’s just the time invest of having them actually bake that
Takes you know longer than opening up a box of crackers um but they make quite a bit especially if you’re someone who’s buying like simple Mills or some of these more higher end like almond kind of crackers you don’t get a whole lot in that box and so if you think of that
Quantity and spending six bucks a box seven bucks a box you’re going to spend a whole lot less and make about one and a half times as much as you would get in that one box depending on how thin you make your crackers so let’s go ahead and
Make them we’re going to start with all flour so these are almond flour crackers you can use any sort of seed flour so if you have you know an intolerance to almonds or you can’t find almond flour at the right price point it could be it could be like garbanzo bean flour which
Is actually legum based flour um it can be any sort of nut flour that you can find but regular flour won’t work as well in this particular dish because we’re looking for a flat flat cracker regular flour has uh the gluten in it and so it will ride as it bakes and
That’s not what we want from a cracker so you want to make sure that it is more of a seed cracker or a bean sorry not a seed cracker a seed flour or a bean flour um that’s not going to rise we want to make sure it’s something that
Like doesn’t have any of that gluten or the the flour properties so we’re going to do one full cup of almond flour it I happen to have super fine uh just because that’s what I had available in my house the super fine almond flour it doesn’t have to be we’re not Tech
Technically like baking like a cake or a cupcake where you want that super fine it could be the real kind of dark fibrous looking almond flour it doesn’t matter it’s just going to give you a slightly different texture in your cracker so one cup of that almond flour
Is a good source of fiber other than that it’s kind of a good source of not a whole lot sort of like a nothing food almonds you have to eat a whole lot of almonds to get all the properties you get a little bit of be be vitamins a
Little bit of magnesium but healthwise I actually kind of like that it’s a bit of a nothing food um same with almond milk is unless you’re eating the actual almond and eating like a good full portion of it the flowers and the milks themselves don’t give you a whole heck
Of a lot so you have a lot of wiggle room with what you’re serving with that Cracker um it makes them fairly low glycemic which is also nice your blood sugar is not going to spike a whole lot from that we’re going to put some sesame
Seeds in here and we’re going to do quite a bit because these are going to be seedy crackers we want like the the taste of seeds so it’s about 3 tablespoons which I always just kind kind of eyeball and then you can flavor this up as much as you like salt pepper garlic
Powder I’m just going to do some simple simple sea salt and that’s it because I know what I’m going to be serving with this on our shakuri I want the the dips and things that we’re making to be the flavor profile um but you could really
Go nuts you can even make these kind of sweet if you want to do like a cinnamon nutmeg salt sea salt flavor profile you could do that too um we’re going to do some B baking soda a very little amount just to kind of make sure there’s a
Consistency in the cracker so it is a quar teaspoon of baking soda and an egg to mix it all together and as always I’m using a pasture raised egg it’s just every little place you can insert some extra nutrition the better so your pasture raised not pasteurized
Pasture raised in the pasture egg is going to be higher in vitamin D higher in vitamin a um a little bit higher in omegas actually and lower in saturated fat than your typical standard egg um it’s just overall better for you so you’re going to mix this up and
It’s going to get all stuck in your whisk you could if you don’t deal want to deal with this you could whisk up your egg first and then dump that in um doesn’t really matter it just takes an extra couple of seconds to kind of clean
Off your whisk and then use your spatula for the rest just make sure it’s all well stirred I know it doesn’t look like much but we’re going to flatten these into crackers so it it actually will make more than you think and by making our own crackers one
We have total say in whatever the flavor profile is so we could go the the sweet route we could add thyme um and rosemary instead like you can do so much with it nutritional yeast to make it kind of cheesy but we’re also getting rid of all
Of those industrialized oils that are in a regular cracker good luck finding a cracker without canola oil or soybean oil or cotton seed oil and these are all industrialized and oxidized oils that create inflammation so the crackers I shouldn’t say good luck because they do exist out there they’re just they tend
To be more expensive so this is a way that you can get good quality ingredients in your cracker without having that high price point all right move all of your stuff out of the way we’re going to do some rolling this is the fun part you get to
Pretend like you’re a super chef and get out your rolling pin how often do you actually get to do that anymore these days right my uh my four-year-old loves using a rolling pin and I’m like scrambling with what the heck am I going to give her um to roll with okay so
You’re going to spray I use avocado oil spray you can also use olive oil spray but same thing as your oils what is your spray coming from if you’re using standard Pam that’s like a canola industrialized oil so get a good cold pressed oil spray as well as your
Regular oils you’re going to spray both sides of a piece of parchment paper so that it doesn’t stick as we roll now the parchment papers are sticking together stay put this all down here now you have two choices if you like a really thin cracker like almost wafer you could
Actually divvy this into two segments and roll each segment at a time and that’s going to give you a really really thin cracker just simply because there’s not a whole bunch of quantity of the dough here um I kind of like my crackers a little bit thicker so I just do the
Whole thing all at once take your sprayed side stick it over the top so it’s oil on oil so it’s not going to stick because trust me I forgot one time I didn’t spray it and it just it just stuck everywhere all over the parchment it was ridiculous it was like
Silly and then you get to do your fun rolling and if you have kids at home you can have them do this part and you just roll to that desired consistency and you got to make these a couple of times to kind of know what you like what consistency you like you’ll
Get the hang of it and it’s okay if they’re not all exactly the same if there’s some thicker crackers in the middle and some thinner crackers off to the side and this is where those of you with OCD your OCD is going to shine through I don’t care if my crackers are
The exact same size or if if some of them have Jagged edges I don’t care at all if you do care and you want them to be perfectly Square you’re going to have to like do that a lot more gently and mindfully and kind of make a nice square
Shape you’ll see here mine is a big old blob because it doesn’t matter to me and then because we’re going to use some parchment later on and we’re going to be good stewards of our environment I’m going to fold this with the oil sides in sticking to each
Other and set this to the side for later which we’ll get to an exciting one now you’re going to take your pizza cutter another tool that you don’t get to use all that often and you just create whatever darn cracker shapes you want um if you wanted to make heart-shaped
Crackers and you have a tiny little heart cookie cutter you could do that um but basically we’re not separating them yet because we do have to bake this but we’re just we’re kind of creating that line where we could break them once they’re nice and hard so just kind of
It’s totally an eyeball of however big and whatever size you want to make your crackers and just creating that perforation line all the way across and I’m I’m sure you can kind of see this but the they are not equal shapes they are not equal sizes I don’t care my family doesn’t
Care okay so can you kind of see that more or less you can see those lines so now once I bake them and they get really really crispy all I’m going to do is kind of lift this up and pop them all out and I have all
Those crackers and this is here again you could add toppings if you like some additional sea salt on top in fact I will do that if you want to do extra sesame seeds on top you know how do you like your crackers parmesan cheese would be really good here
Okay now my oven is already set to 350 I’m going to bake these for 15 to 20 minutes depending on your oven just kind of again the first time you make this watch it maybe even set your oven for more like 12 minutes the first time and
Just see are they burning um how’s it looking are they golden brown do you like yours really crunchy 15 tends to be pretty good for mine but it always depends too on how thick or thin the center is sometimes my outer edges are so thin that they get a little burn that
I have to kind of get rid of those to make the rest of them so it you know it’ll be different every single time so let’s set the oven to 15 minutes and those will be ready for us by the end of class okay so we will get rid of our rolling
Pin and move on to this one is one of my favorites this is such a fun one that I really only make this time of year at Valentine’s Day we’re going to make chocolate hummus and you may have had it already it kind of got trendy and
Popular in the last year or two with like the processed hummuses here’s the deal with hummus though if industrialized hummus three packaged hummus often uses those industrialized oils it’s actually really hard to find a hummus that uses an olive or or an avocado oil and this is not to say don’t
Use those I’ve got a package of hummus already in my fridge they’re easy to use but we also don’t eat a lot of other industrialized oils in our household cold so know that small amounts are okay please don’t worry about like oh now I have to homem make all my own hummus all
The time um but it’s just something to be aware of because I think a lot of foods get sort of a health Halo of oh this is really good for me and I therefore don’t need to worry about what else is in it like hummus is a very
Healthful food it’s full of legumes and fiber but often has oils that can create some inflammation so if your if your diet is a lot of processed foods lots of fast foods that could be also Al a contributor another thing just to note while we’re talking about the health
Effects of hummus is hummus is because it comes from a legum it’s a carb it’s has some protein it definitely has healthy fats or unhealthy fats um but it also can increase your blood sugar so if you’re someone who’s wearing a continuous glucose monitor or you’re having or you have diabetes and you’re
And you’re watching your blood sugars hummus is a good healthful food but it can often spike your blood sugar more than you would think so definitely pairing that with really high fiber things like vegetables rather than always crackers and hummus because now you’re having carb with carb so just a
Little thing to be aware of so let’s make our hummus I’ve got my rinsed chickpeas I’m going to just because I because I know myself and I love chickpeas so much I’m gonna use most of the can but I’m Gonna Save a little bit for my lunch so it’s going to be fine
That was one can of drained rinsed chickpeas okay you can use any Bean you want in here just be be aware of the flavor profile um because we’re going to make this dessert like and chocolaty so we don’t want a bean that has a lot a
Lot of potent flavor like I don’t know that I would use a kidney bean because kidney beans have a very specific flavor and taste to them black beans might work and they would contribute to the chocy effect um not kidney beans can calini beans would also work they’re very very creamy
But chickpeas are great high in fiber very high in magnesium um beans also have a great source of protein but they are carbohydrate also so just kind of you know to be aware of that so I have my can of beans I’m going to do a/ thir cup of any Nut Butter you
Like it can be peanut butter it can be almond butter I happen to have sun butter because I have kids who aren’t allowed to have nuts at school um so we’re going to go ahead and use sun butter um about a third cup which I just
Always kind of eyeball as like two big spoonfuls is is about A3 cup now depending on the nut butter you choose is going to give different types of nutrition but for the most part nuts and seeds give a lot of good magnesium which is good for calming um healthy fat
To keep us full protein to keep us full um and also some other phytonutrients um like your minerals are going to be in in your nut Butters okay we’re going to do A3 cup of cocoa powder or cacao powder so I’m going to show you I’m actually using cacao powder
And I know this is backwards on your screen but CA CAO cacao Cacao is the Pod before they turn it into cocoa so it’s just a little bit less refined which means it’s a little bit higher in all those polyphenols and antioxidants that chocolate is known for we all talk about
Oh the benefits of chocolate you got all this magnesium it helps you calm down it helps stimulate your mood um you get more of that from the cacao than the cocoa um Cacao is a bit more bitter though so keep that in mind the flavor profile is more bitter than regular
Cocoa so you may or may not love that um you may want to do the half and half like part cocoa part cacao stuck in here goodness gracious um you may need to also add a little bit more sweetener but I like it in recipes like this where it’s already really BL
It’s going to be blended with sweetener it’s going to be blended with a bunch of other things versus something like a pudding let’s say like maybe you’re using you’re making avocado pudding which is posted on our website on our recipe page um that one doesn’t use as
Much sweetener so you might pick up on the bitterness of the cacao a lot more than you would in this dish that has we’re going to have some sweetener in here already has the nut butter like other flavor profiles are kind of covering up the bitter
Taste but know that cocoa powder is also very healthful you don’t have to switch to cacao these are just kind of ideas and ways of showing you ways of using other types of ingredients all right so we have our cacao we’re also going to do about a3d cup of any sweetener you like
And of course I’m going to be using a low glycemic sweetener I’m using date syrup um you could also use raw honey you could use maple syrup maple syrup is a little bit higher glycemic coconut nectar would work here you can also use something like a liquid monk fruit or a
Liquid allulose which is very very low like almost minimal blood sugar Spike um yeah those are those are your sweeteners okay and now a/4 cup of any milk you like you could use regular milk it doesn’t matter whatever milk is healthful for you I will show you what I’m using in a second
I’m using macadamia nut milk I’m very into macadamia nut milk lately because it is a really great source of fat and it’s much more environmentally sustainable and environmentally friendly than almonds almond milk takes a whole lot of water whole lot of of land production and it doesn’t really contribute a whole lot to
Our nutrition necessarily it’s kind of like a nothing food like I was saying so macad IAS are just a lot more beneficial for the planet and you get good healthy fat from it and it’s a little bit creamier than almond milk so I kind of
Like it like in my coffee as a latte so I’m using milkadamia unsweetened macadamia nut milk it’s a higher price point than some of your other nut milks um but I like that one we’re also going to use a little bit of vanilla and then a little sprinkle of
Sea salt and again feel free to mess with I need a little bit more vanilla than that to mess with flavorings you could do cayenne pepper in here and make it like a spicy sweet um I’m going to add a little bit of sea salt you could
Do some cinnamon you could do nutmeg cam mom and we’re going to blend this up in our food processor hang tight with me it’s going to be loud for a minute and this is it’s going to have a consistency more like a moose um than than a hummus per se is how I
Would describe that would be the time where stops all right so now as opposed to ah some of our other kind of chocolate dips or chocolate mouses or chocolate SS that we might use that are just really high in sugar now we have a dip that tastes incredibly sweet very kind
Of luxurious tasting cuz it has that moussey texture to it but we know we’ve got fiber we’ve got healthy fat we’ve got low glycemic this is benefiting our health and our nutrition but we just kind of have to be aware of what we’re going to use to dip
In it right as opposed to a Savory hummus I’m not going to be dipping my bell peppers in here this is going to be great for a fruit dip strawberries delicious um grapes even melon would be really good in here um oranges apple slices excellent so you’re pairing these
Healthy high fiber carb fruits with now a healthy high fiber High Protein healthy fat dip um I’m going to put it in a cute little bowl for our Sherie board because remember that’s our goal here we’re making crackers and de and everything for a Sherie and make it adorable in a little heart
Dish so hopefully you can see like that texture here it’s perfect for dip for fruit you could even uhoh making it making a mess you could add this now like let’s say you put it on your shuder board you and you only use half of it and you still have half left
Obviously you could take it to work with you as a snack with some apple slices tomorrow but maybe you add it to oats and chia seeds and have an overnight chocolate oat oatmeal tomorrow morning topped with some strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream or Greek yogurt and you have this decadent ch
Chocolate dessert breakfast with beans with beans in it you’re having beans for breakfast be in a dip it could be in another format as well so that’s about I’ve still got maybe another half serving for this so I’ll put this on our trudie I still have leftover that I
Could refill if everyone’s just licking this up tonight or I could add this to like I said uh an oatmeal I can mix it with some Greek yogurt boom have a chocolate yogurt to eat as well so I’m going to add this to our board and I’ll bring the board out toward the
End this to the side I always like to really think of all these different ways that you can use the exact same recipe because then if you love it you can keep making it keep becoming really familiar with it and don’t you don’t have to feel kind of
Stifled into just one way of using it so that’s really oh gram crackers and pretzels also good things to dip in there again then having a carb kind of with a carb but if if we’re thinking sweet and salty um those could be good pairings as well all right another one
Of my favorite we’re gonna actually make our own chocolate um our own chocolate bark and you’ll be amazed at how easy this is to be totally honest um this is kind of one of those things that tastes really amazing and people are always really impressed by it but it takes zero
Effort whatsoever so we’re just going to melt some chocolate I have some cacao chips so remember the cacao is like the original pod that has not been sweetened whatsoever very high in fiber and phytonutrients and antioxidants that are good for our heart and good for our brain and good for our circulation but
It does taste bitter so it’s better for our digestion because of that um but I kind of like to mix and match so I’ll do part cacao and part chocolate chips just because otherwise it’s a little too bitter and I need to add sweet sweetener whereas I don’t have to
Add any sweetener if I’m using some like milk chocolate chips so I have some caca some mini chocolate chips um I like this brand enjoy life because it’s allergen free so if you have kids with allergies or you’re serving this still group of people and you don’t really know if they have
Allergies it’s kind of nice that way um the original recipe by the way is 12 ounces of chocolate chips heated up and mixed together I’m just eyeballing this because I’m making it for my family we’re having like a Valentine’s shuder with artichokes tonight that’s what we’re having for dinner because I’m
Already making this for class um so I figure why not this is what we’re having um so I’m not making a whole big batch but you’ll see like how easy it is just to literally eyeball this so all I have are cacao chips and chocolate chips and you could just have chocolate chips
Or you could have a chocolate bar that you love maybe that’s a low glycemic fair trade chocolate bar chop it up into pieces and put that in a bowl it doesn’t have to be chips it could just literally be pieces of chocolate um and we’re going to put this in the microwave for
30 seconds some people will add coconut oil to their chocolate chip mix as they’re melting it um like a teaspoon to two teaspoons and you’ll see that a lot in recipes that call for melted chocolate what that does is it just creates a kind of a more consistent thicker and smoother
Chocolate taste I will do that a lot if I am using it like has a dip if I’m dipping chocolate strawberries or if I’m going to be drizzling it on top of whatever it is that I made if I want something a lot smoother we’re going to
Turn this into bark it’s going to be break breaking up into pieces I don’t really care if it’s a smooth really consistent texture so I why bother the with the extra step so I’m going to stir this and it usually takes two to three rounds of 30 second increments
You gotta those chocolate chips will stick but it’s just going to melt okay so another 30 seconds and I’ll tell you something that I did before before class is I just took a big mix of pumpkin seeds or pitas and mixed nuts so there’s some cashews some
Almonds and papitas and what I did was I tossed them with a little bit of cinnamon and I lightly sprayed them on a baking sheet with my avocado oil and I put them in the oven for like 3 to 5 minutes um at what what
Did I cook that at at 350 and I just kind of watched and stirred and they’re toasted so they just have even more aromatic flavor um oh and I salted them as well so they’re salty cinnamon roasted nuts and seeds it took five minutes and if just as a side note
Anytime you can toast your nuts and seeds like for a salad for a side dish even just for snacking it creates so much more smell aromatic flavor um gets your your mouth watering even more so they’re they’re a lot more satiating and satisfying might need one more 30 second
Bout I still see some chocolate chip chuncks in here oh no it’s melting see I mean now I just have melted chocolate what so you don’t you all want to just dive into this right now right we have some strawberries let’s dunk it in that’s that’s all you
Need to do to do melted chocolate it’s not this crazy secret process um you just microwave your chocolate that’s it and you literally could dip some strawberries in here if you’re just like I’m having such a sweet craving right now I really need something especially
Late at night get a strawberry dip it in your melted chocolate boom done you have you have reached that satisfaction let me pull our crackers out so I’m touching them in the middle I’ll show you what they look like right now see that there’re really golden along
The outside but the middle is just it’s still a little bit bounced back when I’m feeling it it feels a little soft and that’s not how we want our crackers so I’m going to just put it in for another probably I’m going to go for three minutes more and see if it’s done
Okay back to our our chocolate bark so I’m going to take some of my roasted nuts and seeds and just stir them in to my chocolate bark and so obviously you can make a huge batch of this right like you you can make a big old amount if you’re
Wanting to make a whole bunch of chocolate bar work and bring it to work you know for your co-workers back to that parchment paper that we saved bum and I’m just going to pour it onto here don’t let any CH don’t leave any chocolate behind no chocolate left
Behind and chocolate I mean the rumors are true by the way chocolate really is so high in magnesium which helps with relaxation can help boost mood especially for ladies um in our Cycles when we have hormone shifts the there are suit and phytonutrients in cacao that literally do Boost our hormones so
It’s not it’s not an old wife’s tail chocolate really does make us feel better um especially if we have some hormone imbalances so now this is where you get to be creative and have fun with how you like your chocolate Mark do you like it thick do you like it thin um
Just kind of move it around there’s no Rhyme or Reason it doesn’t have to have any particular shape just do what you want with it and maybe you make it thin simply because you want to have more volumes of chocolate to eat you do what you need to
Do get that soaking so the chocolate doesn’t sink in and then you’re going to sprinkle a little bit more nuts and seeds over the top to make it beautiful so there’s nuts and seeds mixed in so we have b vitamins we have fiber we have fats we have proteins all
Mixed into our dessert okay we’re going to balance our blood sugar that way from the sugar that’s already in the chocolate because we did use sweetened milk chocolate chips in addition to our cacao it’s just pretty even if it’s crumbs okay and finally because we’re doing sweet and salty because that combination
Of flavors is so powerful it’s also really powerful for avoiding Cravings um if you look at how foods are like processed foods are often put together there’s a lot more sweet than there is Savory because that keeps us wanting more there’s this this hormone stimulation of a ah this dopamine
Response to just sweet so when you balance sweet with salty with Savory with Umami you feel more satisfied and you don’t have to eat quite as much which is really cool all right think our crackers might be done yep yep yep so we’ll let these cool
Off for a minute but see it’s nice and oop sorry golden when I hit their no bounce back so I’m going to let these cool and then we can break them up into crackers back to our bark so I’m just going to also the nuts were slightly
Salted so I don’t need to add a lot but a few just big crunchy flakes of salt also make that powerful salty chocolate explosion all I need to do is put this in the refrigerator for 30 to 45 minutes and it can be ready to go I kind of my
Preference is to put it in the freezer overnight because then it’s just really hard and breakable and it doesn’t have any kind of maleness um if you wanted to store it then you would after you break it up you would store it in your freezer so you could make it today and serve
This you know over the weekend and just keep the pieces in your freezer um so you get a freezer friendly plate and buy the magic of Television I already made some because I wanted to show you how it works so I just made this really really
Quick before class I just took like a little handful of chocolate with some of my nuts and spice nuts and seeds and salt and I put it in the refrigerator okay so now I have my bark and I just get to have fun with and there’s no Rhyme or Reason just break it
Up right so now I have these cool little pieces of bark to also serve on my Shak cuder board that look pretty that give people that chocolate bite even though I’m not adding a whole lot of desserts and like heavily sweet foods to my board but they’re fun and these are a great
Little gift for people too um you just have to you know know that it will melt if it’s setting out so you can keep it in your freezer keep it in your fridge this was refrigerated I made these at 11:45 literally right before glass so it’s already done so I’m just going to
Take these off because we’re going to put it on our board I’m going to transfer this on here and I’m going to put it back in my fridge and this will be ready for me to keep on adding to my Sherie board this evening how cool is that AR isn’t bark fun I
Love chocolate bark so I’m gon to set this aside for us for our board okay so we only have one recipe left Excuse me while I scratch my eye um and then we’re going to put our board together we’re g to make a drink because we have to drink while we’re putting
Shaku boards together and no you don’t have to drink alcohol you just have to have a fun drink so we’re going to make a Valentine’s kind of ready red pink drink with Goji berries going to make a goji berry sparkler so I have already made a bunch of Goji tea if you’re not
Familiar with Goji berries and I I threw away my package but um they’re they look like little pinkish red B they look like big pinkish red raisins that’s what they look like they’re a dried Berry they’re pretty tart um I personally don’t love eating them plain I I enjoy the tart
Flavor but they’re very very hard and chewy as opposed to a raisin that’s pretty soft so how I like to eat them is in a drink form because they’re a super super super source of vitamin C um which is so good for our immune system and vitamin C helps us to absorb certain
Minerals like iron and guess what Goji berries are a good source of iron too so now you’re getting this really well-absorbed iron it’s a great recipe for PE for those of you who might have anemia or just kind of low blood iron um if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding if
You’ve had surgery before um also a good drink to have let’s say if you’re having meat if you’re going to have a a steak dinner tonight have a Goji sparkler along the side and now we’re getting vitamin C along with the iron from our steak and we’re actually absorbing all
That iron really well so the all you have to do to actually make a Goji tea is you just soak the Goji berries in water that’s it so I I prefer using some hot boiling water you could also simmer them in boiling water it kind of depends
On how much time you have I have this like half a package of old ones that kind of all had to get used pretty soon so I made a huge container usually I’ll make like two or three cups at a time um but I happen to have a whole lot so I
Had probably a 3/4 cups amount of GOI berries and I used my entire kettle of boiling water over it and therefore I had all of this so usually I don’t make quite this much but again it is pretty tart so we’re not going to add much
Maybe about a third of our glass of Goji tea we’re going to add a splash of citrus to kind of help take care of some of that tartness even though yes Citrus is tart um but the sour and the tart kind of balance each other out so I have
Lemon juice already made but you could use lime I actually really enjoy lime juice in here I just didn’t have any limes and then sparkling water you can use a flavored like a lime sparkling water I have this little Arc make your own sparkling water device so I that way
I can just use plain sparkling water whenever I do my recipes and you just fill it up so now yes you have a little little sugar from the gois but it’s not very much this is a really really low glycemic mocktail um as opposed to a lot of the mocktails out
There I love that alcohol and is becoming kind of like P A not that I don’t drink alcohol or you can’t either I like wine um but it’s nice that mocktails are becoming popular that that having non-alcoholic drinks is becoming popular the downside is a lot of them
Are very high in sugar so if we can find a way to have a low sugar mocktail even better and even better than that is using bitters bitters help us to digest our food better if you have bitters before you eat a meal you’re going to
Digest that meal a whole lot better it helps with bloating if you’re someone who has IBS or kind of like that stress gut feeling um bitters can really help with that but a lot of bitters like a lot of processed foods are made with not so great ingredients um so this is a
Brand I really really like J it’s actually a friend of mine who makes it juj they’re a new brand but there are other brands out there too um but she has one called cran biscus and it just adds a little bit of that co*cktail bartender Vibe and you’re helping with your digestive
System now we have something fun to drink while we make our chutter board cheers oh so good mint would be really good in there the store just didn’t have any mint that’s what that’s missing okay let’s make our board let’s get to the finale here okay oh
Yeah I wanted to show you this we’re not going to use it on this board but um fruit dips are amazing for Valentine’s Day board for they’re amazing for sweet and salty boards we made our fruit dip out of chocolate but I wanted to show you this because it’s a really nice easy
Alternative if you don’t have time to make your own dip this brand Chobani makes a zero sugar Greek yogurt and their sugar is their zero sugar is not from artificial flavoring it’s from stevia and monk fruit so it’s a good source of zero sugar they I think
There’s four flavors and they taste like dessert this one is strawberry cheesecake they have a key lime pie they have a chocolate one or a milk and cookies something like that tastes like Oreos um but these are so nice when you are having that sweetness craving cuz oh
My gosh this literally tastes like strawberry cheesecake and if you put some nuts in here some walnuts even like take one gram cracker and crush it up or some granola or maybe your chocolate bar this could be a great dessert for you a great sweet breakfast um but could also
Be a dip on your shakuri board if you’re like ah I just I want to serve something kind of fun as an appetizer put one of these on here with some bananas and strawberries and a little bit of chocolate bark done you have the most beautiful super yummy shuie board that’s
Also nourishing yourself and your guests so I just wanted to show you that as an as an option for products so our Sherie board is going to be a little bit of a mix and match of savory and salt and sweet again I’m serving this as part of our dinner
Tonight so everyone’s going to I wanted to make sure that we had some sort of vegetable that we had some sort of fiber along with the sweetness I didn’t want it to just be a dessert flatter um so our source of vegetable which is sometimes hard to do on a sweet board is
We’re going to do goat cheese stuffed bell peppers um roasted carrots um also can be a good contribution to a kind of a vegetable on a sweeter board if you roast them with some cinnamon and Nutmeg and cumin that brings out the sweetness that’s another great vegetable for these
But we’re just gonna do I got these little miniature bell peppers that are so cute and I know I’m cutting behind the board so you can’t see a whole lot right now but I just wanted to cut a couple off the board and these you can make ahead of of
Time in fact I probably should have made several ahead of time just so you could see them um but they’ll they’ll sit for a couple of days with the cheese in them they’ll be fine so I have some garlic and herb goat cheese if you can find pasture raised anything Dairy it’s
Better for you it’s better for the animal it’s better for the environment um so pasture raised goat cheese ideally but they’re so easy you just like stuff the goat cheese in there and it doesn’t have to go all the way down CU most most people are going to eat this in one
Bite but they look kind of expensive and special because there’s the goat cheese and they’re little bite sizes um so I’ll only do a couple just to show you here I won’t waste your time having you watch me stuff bell peppers although maybe that could be meditative for you maybe
We could all do some breath work while I stuff bell peppers together really work on our mindfulness uh no I’m not going to do that um I’m only going to stuff a couple here so you can get the gist but interestingly enough my kiddos who you know they’re kids they’re they’re two
And four they’re pretty good eaters but they’ve got their picky their pickiness and bell peppers for whatever reason were their noo food for the longest time like nope neither one of them would touch a bell pepper and I made these one time and I just put them on the middle
Of the plate while in the middle of the table while we were having dinner this was the Gateway food for them there was something about oh it has cheese oh we’re gonna eat that then um and then all of a sudden bell peppers were fine and now I’ll you know have my
Washed bell peppers on the counter when I bring them home from the grocery store before I cut them or do whatever they’re not safe that all of a sudden I’ll turn around and the bell peppers will be half eaten because my kids came up and reached for them and grabbed them
They’re like a favorite food so maybe this could be your gateway to bell peppers is goat cheese stuffed bell peppers and another thing you can do is roast the bell peppers ahead of time if you want them to be just that much sweeter and softer it’s just an extra
Step but they do taste good that way okay look how sweet and cute those little guys are I’ll probably end up making more of those for tonight but just in the name of time we’re also going to do some Savory salty grind olives so these olives are from Trader
Joe’s They’re their grilled olives oh my goodness these guys are so good if you love olives you will love these grilled olives the only thing I don’t love is the oil is Sunflower Oil which is typically industrialized um so you know not my favorite but if we’re talking the grand
Scheme of themes again we’re balancing out good and bad and healthful and not helpful healthful this is all a very healthful dish I’m not too worried about a little bit of sunflower oil with my very very healthy olive oil based Olive um and now we have some fats going on
That are going to again keep us full so we’re not always reaching in for crackers and whatnot okay need our crackers look at that boom boom boom boom boom it’s very cathartic it can feel really nice to just breathe and meditate while you break up your
Crackers also a fun activity for kids if you have them at home break up all the crackers see how easy I mean that’s only a third of the crackers I can go and break up more of them um so easy so fun now we’ve got that now we’re going to add our
Fruit I wash some grapes I have some strawberries put them next to our chocolate hummus and we’ve got our bark get a few more crackers and then again you can get creative maybe you have some Bree cheese some a little bit more of a splurge and
You can add that here I have some mozzarella balls I might add maybe I will do that um I’m also going to add a whole lot more bell peppers right there on my Sherie board so that’ll be a little bit more full as I make the
Platter but you can see how this can start to fill up into this beautiful platter that has a little bit of everything as far as representation so we’ve got our fruit we’ve got our antioxidants we’ve got protein fat fiber and cacao and magnesium in our dip we
Have healthy fats from our olives we have some Fiber and antioxidants and phytonutrients in our vegetable representation in homemade crackers that don’t have inflammatory oils all on a board that eventually will be full and beautiful once I totally finish it off that was done in about 40 minutes um
While homem making half of those ingredients and we have a drink on the side so really that I mean that that’s so possible for you and you can get so creative and you can add coconut flakes and do all these kinds of fun things here to make it really really special so
Hopefully you enjoyed that and you make some of these recipes um I will be posting this video on our website and I’m going to look at some questions okay here we go
