We all need sleep, and no one ever gets enough right? Or if we DO get some sleep, it’s never good sleep. There are a lot of things that can affect your sleep, your health, your diet, stress, kids, any combo of these, and many more. There are a few things you can do to help you sleep, and one of them is add a few things to your diet. This will do a couple things, it will help you sleep, and it will help your children sleep. I’ve got your attention now don’t I? Yes, if your children eat well, they will sleep better, and then you will sleep better.
Stephanie has a breakdown of some great things to eat to help you get better sleep.
I’ve prepared a dinner and dessert here that is sure to be delicious, provide an abundance of leftovers, and knock you out. And for those of you who think this place is all lentils, kale and black beans, I’m sorry to disappoint you, I won’t be using any of that here.
With just a little bit of prep work, you can have some versatile things that will give you a couple meals. I have throwing food out, so I try to incorporate foods that i can use in another way later.
Stephanie talked about cherries, and you are just now seeing them pop up in stores for the summer. The tart cherries have more melatonin in them.
Now you can sit around and pit an entire bag of cherries if you want, but I threw them in a pot, over medium-low heat and a little water, you can cook these guys down, and strain them.
I’m lazy like that.
There is still some pulp to wade through, but they are much easier to get out. Go through it a couple times, no one wants that unpleasant surprise.
You now have a cherry mash that you can use on so many things, it freezes well too, so you can have this in the months when cherries are not so easy to come by.
Everything thinks of turkey when you think of foods to help you sleep. I know I do. I wanted to make turkey kabobs, but the only turkey breast I could find had other things in them. Can anyone tell me why a turkey breast would contain milk? Anyway, so I went with plan B and made turkey meatballs. You know I can’t make a meatball without hiding a couple veggies in there.
I start out with two grated carrots,
One head of cauliflower, (florets only) one half an onion diced small, and some salt
Work this into two lbs ground turkey (yes, I realize I just spelled out two and then abbreviated pounds) and form into meatballs.
Bake these on a sheet pan at 350 until they are done. I don’t know how long that will take, I don’t know how big your meatballs are. Mine were bigger than ping pong but smaller than tennis ball sized and they took roughly 20 mins.
You can eat these on their own, you can serve them with a BBQ sauce, and you can put them in a pasta with red sauce. You have about 20 of these kid friendly meatballs that you can eat three nights in a row, and yet never eat the same thing.
Let’s get back to these cherries now, I made a spinach salad with a cherry dressing.
For each salad serving, you will need:
1Tbls cherry juice strained from the mash
1/2tsp tahini (I know you still have it from the hummus we made, right?)
1Tbls olive oil
1/8 tsp salt. Mix this up and dress a cup of spinach -no stems and then sprinkle with feta cheese and or chopped walnuts
This is my take on the Swedish meatballs you get at Ikea with the lingonberry, only I served my meatballs with the cherry mash that I drained the juice for the salad. I’m thrifty like that.
Did you want some cake?
This is gluten free and my take on a tres leches cake, but it’s pretty dense, and instead of three milk, I replaced one of the milks with cherry juice.
Cream together
1 stick of unsealed butter
1 cup powdered sugar
3 eggs
Pinch of salt
1tsp vanilla
Then add 1/2 cup of the drained cherry mash. Save the juice for later
1cup of GF flour -I used the king Arthur brand
Bake this at 375 in a 9×9 pan. Or 8×8 until it starts to pull away from the sides.
Pull this out and let it cool, then poke holes in the cake
Take the reserved. Cherry juice and 3/4 can of sweetened condensed milk, mix them together and pour them over the cake.
This part always makes me worry. It looks like its ruined the cake and it won’t soak it all up. Even if it doesn’t, it’s still delicious, but refrigerate it over night and top with whipped cream.
To those who were looking for lentils, or kale, I sorry. Maybe in a couple weeks.
Now head on over to see what Stephanie says about these recipes and what else you can eat to help you sleep!
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