"Healthier" is so subjective....so you'll have to define that for yourself. Yep, you can use coconut oil. I use it all the time in baked goods. Without a peek at the entire recipe you could probably start with reducing the amount by 25%. When I first started using coconut oil (in the 90's) the label suggested you could generally reduce the amount of vegetable oil in a recipe by 25% if you substituted it with coconut oil, and get the same results. If a quick bread recipe calls for 1 cup of fat/oil I'll generally reduce it by 50%, but more reduction than that and I may need to add something like flaxmeal, chia seeds or chia seed gel, unsweetened applesauce, agave nectar, or kefir/yogurt/buttermilk, to help maintain moistness. Low-fat or fat-free baked goods tend to dry more rapidly. Your other option is to choose low-fat recipes. ZUCCHINI LEMON BREAD (Note: I have also used this recipe for muffins and reduce the baking time.) 1 c. all-purpose flour (I substitute freshly-milled spelt) 1-1/3 c. whole wheat flour 2 t. baking powder 1/2 t. baking soda 1/4 t. salt 1/4 t. ground ginger 1/4 t. ground nutmeg 2 large eggs 3 T. vegetable oil 1 c. sugar (I use 3/4 c. palm sugar or 1/3 c. agave nectar) 2 T. lemon juice 1 c. packed shredded zucchini (1 med. zucchini) 1 T. grated lemon peel 1. Heat the oven to 350-degrees F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan. 2. In a large bowl, mix both flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, and nutmeg. 3. In a medium-size bowl, beat the eggs, oil, sugar, and lemon juice until well blended. Stir in the zucchini and lemon peel. 4. Add the zucchini mixture to the flour mixture, stirring just until moist. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. 5. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Set the pan on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes. Turn the bread out onto the rack and cool completely. Makes 16 slices. Per slice: 148 cal, 3g pro, 26g carb, 4g fat, 27mg chol, 143mg sodium. I make this recipe a lot in the summer when zucchini are plentiful. MICROWAVE ZUCCHINI BREAD RING (source: Pillsbury \- Summer\-Sational Side Dishes) 2 T. dry bread crumbs (I use almond flour.) 3/4 c. Pillsbury's BEST All Purpose or Unbleached Flour (I use spelt) 3/4 c. Pillsbury's BEST Whole Wheat Flour 3/4 c. sugar (I use palm sugar or 1/4 c. agave nectar) 1 t. baking soda 1 t. cinnamon 1 t. salt 1/4 t. nutmeg 1/8 t. cloves 1/2 c. milk 1/2 c. margarine or butter, softened (I use 1/4 c. coconut oil) 1\-1/2 c. (1 medium) shredded zucchini\* 2 eggs Grease 6\-cup microwave\-safe ring mold.\*\* Sprinkle evenly with bread crumbs. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. In medium bowl, combine flour and all remaining ingredients. Blend at low speed until moistened. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Pour into greased and crumb\-coated ring mold. Place in microwave oven on inverted microwave\-safe plate. Microwave on MEDIUM for 10 minutes, rotating 1/2 turn halfway through cooking. Rotate pan 1/4 turn. Microwave on HIGH for 2 to 5 minutes or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean and bread begins to pull away from sides of ring mold. Set stand directly on counter top 5 minutes; unmold onto serving plate. 16\-servings TIPS: \*If zucchini is very moist, drain on paper towels before using. \*\*A 2\-quart microwave\-safe casserole can be substituted for ring mold. Place heavy\-bottom drinking glass, 2 to 2\-1/2 inches in diameter, in center of casserole. Nutrition: 150 calories, protein\-3g, carbohydrates\-19g, fat\-7g, cholesterol\-27mg, sodium\-190mg, potassium\-80mg Hope that helps you out... :\-) \-Grainlady

Grainlady, Thanks much! I don't drink much milk anymore & it's getting expensive to buy milk every week or two to keep my cultures going. 4 or 5 oz is all I need. I have Crohn's and try to eat a spoonful with my 1 meal of the day. The rest I use for fermentation starters. Great stuff! jt

Boy, what a challenge... I'd take the Polenta Pizza Crust mixture and make small rounds (about the size of an English Muffin), and see if you get better results making individual-sized pizza crusts. You might try baking them in a slow oven to dry them out, THEN in a higher oven to crisp them up and brown them. Have you tried converting a baked corn tortilla into a pizza crust (if that's a corn-based food you can have), or even converting a pancake? I remember making low-carb pancakes and using them for a wrap for sandwiches and a "crust" (base) for pizzas. How about a blender batter made with cornmeal, dairy, oil, salt and making a crepe-type shell. Here's a recipe from "An Introduction to Whole Grain Baking" - by Sue Gregg (www.suegregg.com). Blender Crepes Stage 1 1. Place in blender, cover and blend at highest speed 3-5 minutes: 1-1/2 c. warm filtered water 2 T. whey or cultured milk, (optional) (you can drain whey from plain yogurt) 2/3 c. whole grain - choice (soft white wheat, Kamut, spelt, barley, brown rice, millet, oats (whole oat groats), etc. (Grainlady note: you could probably use coarse corn meal.) 2. (DO NOT BLEND YET) Cover and let stand at room temperature several hours, or overnight. Stage 2 3. Add remaining ingredients except eggs and blend briefly until evenly blended; add eggs; cover and continue blending on highest speed for 1-3 minutes: 1 T. melted butter, extra-virgin olive oil, or melted coconut oil 1 t. honey (for fruit-filled or snack crepes) 1/2 t. cinnamon (for fruit-filled or snack crepes) 2 T. unbleached all-purpose flour, optional* see note below 1/4 t. salt 2 eggs 4. Preheat seasoned crepe pan over moderately high heat until drops of water sizzle gently in pan. 5. Grease pan as needed. 6. Pour about 3 T. batter into hot pan, quickly tilting pan to swirl the batter evenly across the bottom of the pan to the edges. Stir the batter before making each crepe. 7. Bake until browned at edges, about 1-2 minutes. Loosen along edge with shish kabob or party stick. Lift gently with fingers, loosening from pan carefully as you turn it over to bake on the second side. * (Grainlady note) If you have a grain mill, you can substitute milled bean flour for the all-purpose flour or use flaxmeal. I suggest using small white beans because they have the mildest flavor when added to baked goods. I've done a lot of food experiments using bean and chana dal flour (I mill them into flour myself). ----------------------------- Cookies from these ingredients... I have a recipe for corn meal cookies (NO flour), but they take a lot of sugar. What are you using for a sweetener? Can you use Stevia or low-glycemic agave nectar? I bet you could work out an oatmeal cookie. It's probably possible if you use powdered shredded wheat as the flour substitute - since that's essentially what it is. Can you have eggs? If not, substitute tofu for the eggs. Good luck - necessity is the mother of invention! -Grainlady

1. Homemade is something made or prepared at home. It's just about that simple. It doesn't necessarily have to come from 100% whole foods or foods you produce or grow yourself. For instance, homemade chicken noodle soup... You COULD raise the chicken and make your own noodles, but the ingredients could also be purchased, or a combination of those choices - much like your lasagna. They are still MADE at home. I used to make homemade clothes. Clothes purchased from a store are called ready-made. I didn't produce the fabric or the notions to make homemade clothes, but it IS possible to do so. I knit homemade sweaters, but I don't raise sheep or cotton, and don't spin yarn, but it's possible to do so. 2. Prepared - ready-to-eat or ready-to-use. These can be foods YOU make, or commercially prepared. Your homemade lasagne can be frozen and used later, so it's a homemade prepared food. When you pull it out of the freezer, thaw, and reheat, it's a prepared food. Purchase lasagna in the freezer case - that's a prepared food. 3. Scratch - Scratch is actually a reference to something you haphazardly toss together, kinda like making vegetable soup when you really don't follow a recipe. Let's scratch together some breakfast... Others would say scratch is when you measure all the ingredients used in the recipe, but you didn't necessarily produce all the ingredients. 4. Convenience - Some of the preparation is already measured or mixed. I believe Bisquick was the original commercial "convenience" food (the dry ingredients and fat were all mix together and all you had to add was the wet ingredients). I make a wholegrain version of Bisquick, which includes freshly milled spelt, cornmeal and wheat; oatmeal (I flake my own grains), etc... and I consider this a "convenience" food, although I make it from scratch (measured and mixed all the ingredients). You can also make it from scratch using commercial ingredients (shortening, flour, baking powder, etc... Once I've got the mixture together, stored in the freezer, I can quickly make it into any number of things from biscuits to casseroles or desserts, just by using Bisquick Recipes. 5. I like simple preparation, simple food (we use whole and raw foods a lot - produced at home AND purchased. We're not self-sufficient by any means. The least amount of processing is my preference, but that doesn't mean I make everything. It's about choices, not about what's right or wrong. I choose one method or food, you choose another - for whatever reasons. Cooking isn't all or nothing - all scratch, all convenience, but combinations of those... I purchase anything I want, I just stay within my $50/week budget. I buy grain instead of bread. You purchase whole wheat bread, I took it to the next step to control the ingredients even more and make bread at home. I mill my own flour because that's the only way I'm assured the freshest flour possible and all the nutrients FROM wholegrain flour. It's about nutrition first for me. It's also cheaper to mill your own flour at home - especially if you're like me and make ALL your baked goods at home. I use a wide variety of grains/seeds/beans as the basis of our diet. I started milling my own flour and baking everything to eliminate trans-fats, chemical ingredients and artifical colors. Living in the middle of wheat country, I occasionally get free wheat from cousins or friends, and that's really cost effective. Why not just purchase whole wheat flour...? Much of the commercial whole wheat flour is nothing more than white flour with some of the bran raked back into it to make it "brown" AND you pay more for it. By law, in some cases, the wheat germ must be removed in order to give the whole wheat flour longer shelf life. Once the bran on wheat is cracked, the bran oil quickly oxidizes from exposure to oxygen. Even if you were to be able to purchase whole wheat flour milled from 100% of the grain, the nutrients quickly degrade and the germ oil goes rancid (rancid oils do not have to SMELL rancid to BE rancid - if they smell rancid, they've been rancid a l-o-n-g time). What you get with all commercial whole wheat flour is "old" flour, degraded oil and nutrients because you have no idea when it was milled or what conditions it was stored and warehoused under. 6. I try to stick to whole foods and raw foods as much as possible, but I'm not a complete throw-back to a by-gone era. I'm not that ambitious (LOL). You couldn't pay me to gut and pick a chicken, nor would I like to to raise them, but I did all that when I was growing up. Whole foods are easy to prepare, usually cheaper (because they are less processed), more filling and have more fiber than processed foods. 7. I've made lots of peanut butter in a food processor from purchased roasted peanuts. It's one of those easy things people just don't realize they can do at home, but unless you grow your own peanuts, peanut butter is probably less expensive than buying peanuts. 8. We don't use mayo, but I make a "sorta mayo" from drained kefir curd when I need to hold tuna salad or something together. You can do the same thing with yogurt. I also make salad dressing because I try to avoid soy products of any kind, as well as high-fructose corn syrup, which are in almost everything. I make 6-8 cups of kefir each week, but I don't make cheese. I've made cheese (just for the experience of the process), and for the small amount of cheese we use, it's more cost effective to purchase it. I've never used or needed ricotta cheese, but I'd probably drain kefir and use it. I buy mustard, catsup, don't use canned veggies, purchase frozen fruit/veggies when necessary, make freezer jam, but use very little of foods that have empty calories or lots of sugar. I have a flaker mill, so I flake my own grains. I occasionally purchase old-fashioned oats, but make my own cracked grains, so I make my own Scotch (steel-cut) oats. I also mill my own cereals - cream-of-wheat, cream-of-rice... 9. If I don't - or can't - grow an herb/spice, I purchase it, but I grow the majority of what I use. I buy vanilla. I grow many herbs indoors - they are an easy-to-use, high-in-nutrition, fresh vegetable source in the winter. It's also a nice hobby. Garlic is easy to grow, as are onions. 10. The fats I use I purchase - butter, coconut oil, and a small amount of olive oil. I'd make butter if I had a good source for raw dairy products, but I don't. Gas to go get raw milk/cream is more expensive than buying butter at the store. Kansas law - you have to purchase it at the point of origin - the farm it's produced from. 11. We don't use a lot of pasta, but I make most of the pasta we consume and use freshly-milled durum flour. Pasta is cheap and easy to make. I have a pasta machine which makes the work quick, consistant, and accurate. For instance, I only need to make egg noodles once or twice a year because I make so many at once. I make a large batch, dehydrate them, and vacuum-seal them with a FoodSaver and the jar attachment in canning jars. Fresh spaghetti only takes a few minutes to make. Freeze the extra. Cleaning the pasta machine is what takes all the time (LOL). 12. We also consume a rather spartan amount of food compared to most people. We follow the old Basic-4, and I'm a stickler for serving sizes. Because we use whole foods, I'm sure we feel fuller consuming less food because it's less processed and higher in nutrition. "Hunger" is often a sign of malnutrition (need for nutrients), not lack of food. We also enjoy going out to eat. We just don't do it as often as many people do. We also like "junk" food, we just don't waste food dollars on it. If we want hamburgers and French fries, they can be easily made at home. I make the multi-grain burger buns. I bake the fries, rather than deep frying. Here's the old Basic-4 we follow: Bread/Cereal Group: 4 servings Fruits & Vegetables: 4 or more servings Meat/Meat Alternative: 2 servings Dairy or Dairy Alternative: 2 servings 13. Snacks are fresh, frozen, and dehydrated fruits; dehydrated zucchini replaces potato chips. We like nuts, air-popped popcorn, homemade granola... 14. Home canning is an example of something I DON'T do (although I have canned and have taught canning classes). It's more expensive to do home canning than it is to purchase those 3 jars of pickled beets and one jar of dill pickles I use a year. Most of the food from our garden gets eaten quickly, while fresh, or preserved in the freezer or dehydrated. Dried tomato powder quickly replaces tomato sauce or tomato paste. 15. Over the years I've invested in "tools". I won $500 in a low-glycemic recipe contest and bought some of them with the winnings. Just like having good tools for ANY job - building tools or for gardening - good tools makes work easier, more consistant, or more efficient. I've chosen kitchen tools for that same reason. Most have quickly paid for themselves because I use them all the time. I mill flour 1-3 times a week. I have "tools" you probably don't have, but you may also have "tools" I DON'T have. I don't have a jumbo stand mixer. I've never needed one. I use a mandoline, but it's a quick way to make slices for dehydrating very thin and all the same thickness, you may not have one. I have several mills because one mill doesn't do everything. BTW - We have a Neuton battery-powered mower, but also designed our small yard to be very low-maintanance with less than 25% in grass. We water with rain water from our 1000-gallons in the rain barrels around the house. I don't like the emotionally charged, guilt-ridden "green". It's such a catch word these days so that companies can charge you more, or make you feel guilty for making a different choice. I've always prefered a simpler way to get the same results. Usually those ways are also going to save money, even though you may have to invest money up front before you see the savings. Rain water is free, but the containers, hoses and diverters cost money. We saved more than they cost after 2 summers. I cook in solar ovens. Yes, they cost, but so does cooking with electricity or gas. After enough time, the solar ovens have paid for themselves over and over again. It's all about choices. Not about what's right or wrong. -Grainlady