Category: Recipes

This is a family favorite to pack in their lunches.  I was quite surprised with the rave reviews this got the first time I put it in their lunches.  I would have never guessed that they would have liked the salami as much as they did.   Salami is not the type of food they would usually go for.  I guess sometimes you just never know.

This is a pretty simple recipe with only 4 ingredients and only one technique that is a little different.  You will need cream cheese, sour cream, salami slices and a bell pepper (color of your choice).  Also get out some plastic wrap and have a cutting board handy.  There is actually one more ingredient, that is time.  We will need to leave these in the frig for a few hours.  I usually make these the night before and let them set overnight.

Soften the cream cheese in the microwave.  While that softens, prep your pepper by cutting in into thin strips.  Once the cream cheese is softened add the sour cream and mix until is smooth.

Lay the plastic wrap out.  Arrange the salami slices out on the plastic wrap.  They should be slightly overlapping.  Now carefully spread the cream cheese mixture evenly on the salami.  Place the pepper strips down the middle of the salami.

This is where the magic happens.  Take one side of plastic wrap that is closed to you and fold half of the salami over itself.  Now take the edge away from you and fold the other direction.  Taking the same edge and pull it towards yourself.  Place the edge of ta cutting board on top of the plastic wrap right at the edge of the salami roll.  While putting slight pressure downwards on the cutting board while pulling the plastic wrap towards you.  This will tighten up the salami wrap.

Finish up by wrapping the plastic wrap tightly around the roll and stash in the frig for a couple hours or overnight.  After it is chilled fetch it from your frig and cut into 1-inch rounds.  I will serve them will rice crackers.

The main things that Joleen is supposed to avoid are peanut butter and sugar.  So we started to look around for things that we could all use.  We had already been using Sunbutter in the girls’ school lunches because we thought we needed to keep the lunches nut free.  Sunbutter is a butter made from sunflower seeds.  The second ingredient is sugar. It was out.

The next option was to look at kinds of butter made from tree nuts.  The one that came to mind right away was almond butter.  We looked at the almond butter available at our local grocery store.  There were two jars there, one on the cheaper side from a national brand and an organic one that wasn’t so cheap.  The cheaper option, of course, contained sugar.  The organic tipped the scales at around a $1/oz.

I figured that could always make it by grinding up the whole nuts, but almonds aren’t the cheapest things in the world.  That is when I stumbled on a recipe for using almond flour or meal.  It is super simple and pretty quick.

It is 3 cups of almond flour, 4 Tbls of oil and a couple good pinches of salt.  Combine that all in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth about 7 minutes.  The oil that I was used was a liquid, favor neutral coconut oil. That is it.  I couldn’t be more pleased with the way it turned out.

Do you have any peanut butter substitutes that you like?  We would love to hear about them.  Please leave us a comment.

Before you go I read a good book a couple years ago.  Actually, it was an audiobook for Audible. Who has time to actually sit and read? So this book deals with the history of how our food has gotten to the state it is now.  The how and why the big food companies vary the amounts of sugar, fats and salt in our food is explained in this book.  I highly recommend it.