Hallelujah it’s Friday! I call today my half-day of work because I’m through teaching at one o’clock and free to get into trouble from then on out… until tomorrow morning when I work at seven a.m. at the Yoga Centre in SLO! If you’re up early, come practice with me! Or, you can just setup your laptop and stream my class online wherever it is that you are!
I just got back from the gym and gosh am I feeling tired today! The circuit class I take met yesterday followed by the TRX class at The Edge in Pismo Beach that I take every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:15 a.m. with my friend Lori. Both classes are amazing workouts and I always feel leaner and stronger afterwards but tired the next day! It’s a good thing I did some baking yesterday so that today I can read, sip tea and munch on this Plum Loaf recipe that I’ve been working on and fine tuning for the past couple of weeks. I was so happy with how my Chocolate Zucchini Bread came out on Monday, that I thought I’d expand on it and create some thing new with all the produce I have!
Fresh Santa Rosa and Satsuma Plums from Lori!
Lori, my TRX buddy, has a HUGE orchard in her backyard… yep, she’s a lucky duck but I’m even luckier because she shares her produce- and in BULK! No kidding, she actually lets me go over and pick boxes and boxes of whatever I want! Because of her, some of my favorite recipes have come to life thanks to an overabundance of fruit that I’m never sure what to actually do with. Check out this apple butter recipe, this fig spread and this Plum dessert I made over the past year thanks to Lori! Today, I’m featuring her plums- two kinds of them- Santa Rosa’s and Satsuma’s.
She’s Gluten-free and if you are too, you can still make all of my recipes.. all you need to do is buy Gluten-free flour to make most of them happen! Not sure what the equivalent or ratio is for substituting flour? Here you go my friend! There are a ton of other resources online too, so if the flour you want to use isn’t listed here, just Google it, as they say! I’m happy to say this loaf recipe is butter-less, saving you all that extra fat, but preserving the taste!
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Butter-less Plum Loaf
Ingredients:
-3 plums, chopped finely
-2 eggs
-2 tsp vanilla
-1 cup organic coconut sugar
-1/2 cup coconut oil, melted
-1 T honey
-1 lemon, juice and zest of
-2 tsp baking soda
-sprinkle of salt
-3/4 cup whole wheat flour x 3 (total amount of flour is 2.25 cups)
-2 tsp cinnamon
-1 tsp nutmeg
-1/2 tsp apple pie spice
-2 packets Trader Joe’s Oh My! Omega Nuts, crushed (they include walnuts, almonds, cranberries, pumpkin seeds etc)
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs and vanilla.
3. Stir in the chopped plums and melted coconut oil. Zest the lemon and then squirt in the juice.
4. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and stir.
5. Add the flour, 3/4 cup at a time, 3 times. Stir in between, each time.
6. Add in the spices and fold in the nuts.
7. Spray a bread pan or a cast iron pan like I did and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean! Enjoy!
So moist!
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Andy and I had our wine club pick-up party last night at Baileyana Vineyards in Edna Valley. It was the best pick-up yet thanks to cheese pairings from Fromagerie Sophie, this unique new cheese shop in downtown SLO. If you haven’t been yet, I suggest you check it out. They will let you try anything, seriously anything, that you want to and they don’t mind opening stuff! Since it’s Friday, I’m headed to the library now to pick up Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, that they are holding for me. I’ll be saving gas and money by walking the five miles round trip while listening to Fresh Air on NPR. It’s my most favorite show on NPR and thanks to their app, I can listen anytime, anywhere, not just in the car! Oh! And one more book recommendation for you- this is a good one- it’s the first novel by Rufi Thorpe called The Girls of Corona del Mar and it’s the story of two best friends and the ebbs and flows of friendship that expands for over 20 years. Write it down, it’s a good one!
