Cooking Baking Eating

The weather is turning beautiful, FINALLY. I am really looking forward to having some nice and sunny days.

What I am not looking forward to is the HOT weather and the allergies.

Stupid allergies. I’m pretty much allergic to everything, and so far this year has been kicking my butt. It almost makes me miss winter. I’m not allergic to winter.

At a recent trip to our favorite thrift store, I found a little popsicle mold that makes 4 pops. Totally awesome. I’ve been wanting to make some fun popsicles for a while and now that I have a mold I will be making them all the time.

This was my first foray in the popsicle making business. I used frozen peaches, frozen mangoes and orange juice. They turned out rather well. I honestly didn’t measure anything so I have no recipe to offer, except that this combo is quite delicious.

The only things I would do differently next time would be letting the fruit FULLY thaw before blending and straining the mixture before I put it in the molds. The texture was a little funky because of the fruit bits, so I think a good straining will help that. I also think banana would be a very tasty addition to this mix.

I love that I can make my own pops and control the sugar, the ones from the store are so incredibly sweet to me that I can’t eat them. Yay! New and fun stuff!

I’ve been drawn to vegan recipes for a while now. Not that I have any inclination to turn vegan, but they can have some VERY healthy desserts and I don’t feel quite as guilty eating a vegan dessert as I do a regular dessert.

I think that’s just because I sometimes feel guilty eating butter for some reason. Random personal quirk I guess.

I was looking for some vegan breakfast ideas since I’m a bit convinced I’ve got an egg intolerance, and came across oatmeal bars. I’ve done the baked oatmeal muffins before, but wasn’t too impressed by it. I’m very finicky about my oatmeal texture, it has to be just right or I won’t eat it.

But these…they looked delicious.

Now, because it’s me, I used the recipe as more of a guideline instead of actually following it.

If you’re surprised, you just don’t know me very well. Read more »

My dear friend Marcy is a nutritionist, so I figure for the most part she’s a good influence on me when it comes to food. But I think that just comes with the territory of her job and her lovable hippy nature.

Once when we went to visit her and her husband, she mentioned making waffles with this recipe that involved buckwheat groats and steel cut oatmeal. It’s supposed to be for pancakes, but she was on a waffle kick and it still worked fine. She liked it because it’s supposed to be really nutritious and also the added bonus of being gluten free. Not that gluten is really a worry for her, but it still made her happy all the same.

After I heard about several of my friends having to change their diets to exclude gluten I asked her for the recipe, I figured it would be fun for me to try something gluten free, and then I could share it with those I care about! I thought finding buckwheat groats would be difficult, but they had them in the bulk section of my local store, yippee! Read more »

I’ve now started the journey to eating better and trying to eat homemade rather than store bought junk, because even if you make junk at home it’s still usually better for you than mass produced.

At least that’s my opinion.

One of those things is chips. I love crunchy and salty, and while I’ve found other root chips at the store before (sweet potato, carrot, beet, ect), they were still deep fried and greasy. Not to mention that I could polish off a whole bag in one sitting and then feel completely gross afterwards. Highly addicting.

I tried making my own baked chips at home after I got a mandolin. I ended up with soggy chips and a gnarly slice on my hand from the mandolin. Needless to say I decided the mandolin was for the professionals and took it back.

I rather like my hand where it is.

So I found this recipe on how to make your own baked chips out of kale. I was skeptical because I’ve never eaten kale before, plus it sounded like a bitter leafy green. I decided to take the plunge and try it anyways.
Read more »

I’ve been “bad” lately. We haven’t been eating at home as often as I want to, instead we go out to eat or just eat food that isn’t all that good for us. So as you can expect I haven’t been feeling all that awesome. My system feels all out of sorts and like it needs to be “recharged” or at least take it easy on my digestive tract.

One of my biggest downfalls is Mexican food. I love it. I love the spices, the hot and melty cheese, and salsa. I love salsa. Plus a Mexican restaurant is the best place to have a margarita! Those are also a downfall, but I don’t indulge in those too often.

Since my body needs to be given a little break from all the bad for me food, I’ll have to get my Mexican food fix at home. But the only problem is that I hate bagged spices and that’s what I would use for my spices when cooking at home.

No more!

Read more »

I cracked open the apple pie moonshine this weekend, and man it is good!

This stuff is dangerous. I know I made it with Everclear, but I really thought that it would be diluted with all the juice I added to it. So imagine my surprise when I cracked it open after 3 weeks and found it so strong!

But of course it had to come from the loving husband that I forgot to take in to account the fact that the juice would likely ferment as well and increase the percentage of alcohol. I used a hand dandy online calculator when I made it, and it said that at the time of mixing it would be roughly 30 proof (16%-ish alcohol).

However, what I ended up with is more akin to jet fuel than a slightly strong cocktail! Wowza it is strong!

Don’t fill your glass this full. If I drank this whole glass, I would be laying on the floor and drooling. I would maybe fill a shot glass and sip it, than have a full glass.

Then again, I am a huge lightweight when it comes to drinking.

I really like the flavor. It turned out a little strong in the cinnamon, so next time I make it I would not leave the cinnamon sticks in it (I actually removed the sticks after the bottles sat a few days in the pantry, if I would have waited any longer then it would be way too overpowering and undrinkable in my opinion).

I now want to start experimenting with other types of infused alcohols. I’ve done a lot of reading and I think I could make some really awesome concoctions. Mango infused tequila anyone?

Mmm…

I’ve been looking into popcorn makers for a few weeks, and I could never get myself to actually pull the plug and buy one. I couldn’t justify spending the $20+ to buy something for the sole purpose of making popcorn.

Even though I had been having a horrible, almost pregnancy style craving for caramel corn. Which is funny since normally I am NOT a fan.

I go through phases. You get used to it.

Then we were bumming around a thrift store and I found one for $4.99! It seemed to work when I plugged it in at the thrift store to test it, so I figured why not take a chance. So far this has been my favorite thing I’ve gotten from a thrift store.
Read more »

I am not a person that drinks a lot, mostly because I’m rather new to drinking. I can’t hold my alcohol, and it takes maybe half of a drink for me to get that nice relaxed feeling.

Recently my coworker saw one of the Moonshiners shows, and on there they made an apple pie moonshine.

He was instantly obsessed.
Read more »

I would say my husband thinks I’m crazy, but in reality he already knows I’m crazy and to him this is just more proof.

I hadn’t tried a fried egg until earlier this year. I know. I must have lived such a sheltered life of only eating scrambled eggs. It wasn’t really sheltered though, more like stubborn and picky. I thought the yolk thing would be nasty, all oozy and gelatinous coming out of my eggs. But one day I got a wild hair to eat a fried egg like my dad used to make them for my sister and himself every Sunday.

When I finally made it, I was beside myself with glee. I couldn’t believe I had gone so long without trying this ooey gooey deliciousness.

I started eating them every day for breakfast. Usually over a slice of toast that I could use to soak up all of the yolk-y deliciousness. But then I had a craving for rice.

Yep, rice.

Read more »

I trust everyone had a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving this year. Since we celebrated Thanksgiving the weekend before, I really wasn’t in that big of a hurry to make any turkey for ourselves. Our dinner with friends was so delicious and I was almost turkey’ed out, but I did buy my own turkey because leftovers are just delicious and we needed those around for a while.

We did the obligatory calls to family on the holiday, but in the end just sat around and did our own thing. It was quite relaxing. The turkey I bought was still mostly frozen, so we decided to wait until Saturday to make turkey. We are such rebels.

One thing I hate about dealing with the turkey is… well dealing with the stupid turkey. I almost always misjudge the cooking times and have a habit of under cooking the bird. That kind of puts a damper on your holiday plans, and generally put me in a really bad mood for the dinner.

So last year I decided that I didn’t want to make the whole turkey, instead I lopped off the breast meat and legs and just cooked those. It drastically cut down on the cooking time and it turned out delicious!

This year I decided to do the same.
Read more »