daily photos

A sock bun and purple jeans?!

2nd day of my treadmill time.  We'll see if I even still have the treadmill here after all the moving I'm doing today.  But if the weather keeps up, I can just take it outside!

I love it when the snow melts.

I've made a lot of green smoothies, but this is my first one that actually turned out green.

The icy lake of death between my door and my mailbox.

supper time!

bath time!

Daily Photos (or better said...watch me eat a lot)

Malachi winning big with a super bowl bet made back in July

Dad and I eating super good ice cream (cake batter ice cream with fudge and extra cookie dough) via Jeremy's birthday coupon.  Thanks bro!

I am going to take a picture of Tia acting like she's dead every Tuesday probably.

Lemon Orzo recipe via Pinterest

The Good Earth is my new best friend.  This was Malachi's food.  I had an AMAZING Thai Chicken Pizza with peanut sauce and fresh veggies and taste explosion awesomeness.

I took V to Cupcake and we indulged.  (Smore and a mini I Love Lucy, I also got a Lemon Raspberry)

At Church, snapping pics while Malachi set up for music.

No-Sugar Raspberry Limeade Slushy

We made this awhile ago.  Probably one of the more boring recipes I've posted.  But it was about time for something in the liquids category, eh?

No-Sugar Raspberry Limeade Slushies

1 cup freshly squeezed lime juice

1 cup raspberries

1 cup water

4 cups ice

2/3 cup Agave nectar

1 cup soda water

In a blender, blend the lime juice, raspberries, water, ice and agave nectar.

Pour into glasses. 

Top off with about 1/4 cup soda water and garnish with a lime wedge.

Spaghetti Sauce

Trial of some sauce.  Changed up the recipe a little and it ended up a bit too watery.  So this one will have to be modified fo sho.

(adapted from here)

• Ingredients:
• 
  
• a few tablespoons of olive oil
• 2-3 tsp white truffle oil
• 2 medium yellow onions, chopped
• 2 small shallots, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup of water
• 4 lbs of tomatoes
• handful of fresh basil
• handful of fresh oregano
• 2 T red pepper flakes
• salt / pepper to taste

Directions

In a large stock pot, heat the olive oil and truffle oil on medium-high.  Add in the onions and garlic sauteing for 3-4 minutes.   Add water and reduce heat to medium, cooking about 5 or 6 more minutes.  Keep stirring.

Stir in the tomatoes.  Cook uncovered, stirring often, for 5-8 minutes, or until the skins begin to separate.

Toss in the chopped herbs and the red pepper flakes, and stir together really well

Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.  Stir occasionally, crushing the larger tomato chunks as you do.

When the tomatoes have partially liquefied, poor into a blender or food processor and smooth it all out.

---------------------------------------

Pretty spicy, a little watery, I'll make some changes one of these days.  It makes a lot so it would be good to have some freezer containers ready.

Triple Berry Crisp - With No (processed) Sugar!

You want meatless?  No problem.  You want dairy-free?  You got-it.  You want no-sugar?  You must be insane, but I aim to please.  And then you want it to taste good?  Hmm...well, I'm up to the challenge!

Triple Berry Crisp

Ingredients:
For the filling:

1 1/2 cups sliced strawberries

1 1/2 cups blueberries

1 1/2 cups raspberries

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp cornstarch

1/4 cup agave nectar

For the topping:

1 cup Quaker quick oats

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup date sugar

approximately 2 Tbsp agave nectar

1/2 cup (full stick) butter, melted

3/4 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

Heat oven to 375 degrees. 

Combine strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, agave nectar, 1/4 tsp cinnamon and lemon juice in large bowl. 

Add cornstarch. 

Toss until fruit is coated. 

Place fruit in an ungreased pie dish.  (I used too small of a pie dish the first time and my wonderful husband spent quite a while scraping charred berries off the bottom of the oven, whoops!)

Mix remaining ingredients.  

Sprinkle over fruit.

Bake 40 minutes or until topping is crisp and fruit is not so crisp.

(adapted from this Triple Berry Crisp recipe)

Malachi loves it, and I gotta say, I think it's pretty good as well!  This will be a great recipe once our berries pick up speed (I'm thinking next summer).  With all the berries free from the garden, this will be tasty and very affordable!

Malachi's Birthday

Malachi's birthday was months ago.  But I made him a new cake and I wanted to show you all.

It was a "chocolate" torte.  And it was sugar free AND vegan.  Meaning no eggs?!

Malachi does eat eggs, but the website that I got this recipe from is a vegan website, and she used avocados instead of eggs.  And honestly, I just don't know the conversion of avocados to eggs, so vegan it is!  And it wasn't too bad.  The texture was great, and Malachi said it was tasty, so I deem it a birthday torte success!

Our Superbowl

For a blog post with that title, I will tell you right off the bat, their is nothing about football in my post today.  Instead, it is all about food and dogs!  (two things that I love)

For the superbowl, my parents had an amazing amount and selection of food.  And I decided to contribute in a small way, so I made some guacamole.  I haven't used my Pioneer Woman cookbook yet, so I decided to try out her recipe.  However, I didnt have any cilantro and I didn't have a fresh onion, so it is a little different.  But in all honesty...who needs a recipe for guacamole?  And this coming from someone who can't make anything without a recipe.  But really, I basically just opened the book to that page, but went on my merry way chopping and dicing and mixing it all together the way I wanted.  However, I do thank the recipe for the idea for jalepenos.  I'd never added those to my guac before.

I was able to put my brand new avocado slicer to work!

voial!

Toby was super excited to see Dylan and Daisy again.  You can't tell that from this picture though.  And that's because I had to wait until he was completely exhausted (or maybe bored) before he was still enough to capture in a photograph.  Otherwise, he's so hyper he's just a blur.

This is Dylan, annoyed that Toby is near him.  Toby loves him, but I can't say Dylan has the same feelings towards Toby.

And this is where Daisy hung out.

Practicing our Down Dog yoga moves.

We had a great time this year, probably one of my favorite superbowls in years!

The only bummer is that I have to wait until august before I get to watch more of my favorite sport.

Hope you all had great weeks!  Mine wasn't too bad, but I work this weekend, so I'm only just starting day 5 of 12, which means I may not be quite so chipper this time next week!

Have a happy weekend!

Pancakes!

On Sunday morning we decided to make us some pancakes!  We usually go the pannakoeken route when we want some sort of sweet and doughy goodness for breakfast, because they are so easy AND delicious.  But this morning, only pancakes would do.  I used my mix for the first time that I bought from Hawaii (and the syrup too).  And it was very yummy!!

And Malachi made 'regular' pancakes (with substitutions as you can imagine)

Mine:

Malachi's:

So delicious that Malachi made pancakes again for supper yesterday!

Mushrooms and Granola?

Don't worry, I am not eating mushrooms and granola together.  I do try to make granola every weekend for my breakfasts the following week.  Though I haven't figured it out, it must be cheaper than actually buying cereal.  And it is certainly healthier, as we don't use any sugar.

I don't have a picture of the finished product, just imagine granola. :)

But here it is before mixing it all together.  We think it looks like some kind of amazing ice cream concoction.

On a completely different cooking note...

Garlic Butter Roasted Mushrooms!

The finished product:

Not horrible, but definitely not something I care to eat again.  It's kind of awkward to eat just mushrooms.  We added it to noodles, but still somewhat awkward.  And waaaay alot of garlic.  I pity my patients!  I'm sure I smelled like I was trying to keep ghosts and werewolves or maybe it's zombies?  away.

Anyways, that has been my most recent cooking adventures.  Hopefully there will be more soon!

Chocolate Goodies

Last weekend I made some treats for a co-worker's birthday.  I decided to make Oreo Truffles and my go-to chocolate chip cookies (just in case the truffles were a disaster).

This was the first time I ever actually baked for people other than family or close friends, and I was a wee bit nervous. (I dreamed about their reactions the night before I brought them to work...)

Well, my day was made because they were a hit!  They loved both of them!  They were actually mad at me at how good the truffles were, because they couldn't stop eating them! 

Here are the truffles, the recipe I used said to sprinkle some crumbled oreo on top, which I gladly did.  It worked nicely to cover up my chocolate coating.  I had never coated anything in chocolate before.  And I don't care to ever again, haha.

And here is a picture of my yummy cinnamon chocolate chip cookies.  I've posted these on my old blog before.

And here is Toby.  He supported me in my cooking by watching me.

Let's get cookin!

As I mentioned previously, we were given this beauty for Christmas!

And so I decided the first thing I made with it would be bread.

The mixer really made it very easy.  However, next time I use this recipe, I will definitely cut the recipe in half.  We don't need this much bread at one time.

This is a dipping oil we bought on our Stillwater Date this past summer, and decided to open it up for our fresh bread.

Here are a few of my favorite cooking books.  The one I used for the next recipe was out of the taller blue one, French Women Don't Get Fat.

I decided to try the Yellow Pepper Soup.

Which requires several yellow peppers!

While it's cooking...

And our yummy meal!

The soup was better as a leftover, once all the flavors combined.  But it's a little too sweet of a soup for me to ever crave.  I think I would add more potatoes next time for a little more substance.

-----

We also received an electric wok for Christmas!  So Malachi can finally make all that stir fry he craves so often.

And he did!

Mmm, it was really good.

And last but not least, we made some smoothies.  We bought several frozen fruit packages at Aldi's a while back because we were so excited to see so much fruit that hadn't had sugar added to it!

Okay, well now I'm hungry.  So I'm gonna go eat, I just have to decide between left over stirfry or soup...they both sound so good...