Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Yet another...

Love this app! I just got my first book in the mail!

Here's what you do:
Download the app on your iPhone. Pay $2.99/month for shipping and handling. Choose up to 100 photos from your iPhone a month to make a small book. The photos are not super high quality but its nice to have a little book of your iPhone photos that you don't usually ever print/see again. Each picture is perforated so you can share photos easily.

Check it out!


Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Another One of My Favorite Things

I love this yogurt!! It fattening but has no fake sugars in it which I dig! The coconut is my absolute favorite, but lemon comes in second. I found them at Safeway and Fred Meyer. They also have Greek yogurt that is delish too!



Monday, March 18, 2013

A Few of My Favorite Things

And by a few of my favorite things, I mean one. I wanted to share that I have the Party Bullet, one of the types of Magic Bullet Blender series. I got it as a gift for Christmas and I LOVE IT!!! I make smoothies for breakfasts most mornings, so I need a good blender.

Last year, I bought the Ninja blender from Costco for about $150. It has a removable center blade system that has several very sharp blades and a square blender pitcher. I liked it a lot but didn't like that I still had to scrape down the sides/corners a little, then rinse it all out and let it dry. It felt time consuming.

After having Ninja about 6 months, I had to replace it because the motor stopped working. I'm hard on blenders, but 6 months is unreasonable. I used it again for another 5-6 months, and it stopped again!!! Grr. So I returned it and looked into different options. I thought about the ever-popular VitaMix because its awesome, but really didn't want to spend that much hard-earned cash. All of this happened right before Christmas so I thought I'd just wait. I looked into the NutriBullet (about$100) but couldn't pull the trigger (bullet, trigger, ha). It turns out my mom had bought, on clearance for about $30, the Party Bullet. This is their blender system that has a larger pitcher and several personal margarita glasses-shown below.

I seriously could not be happier with this product! I can blend and drink in the same container and all you have to do is rinse one tiny little blade. Also, the blades are blunt, so no risk of cutting yourself! And it does a much better job than any of my other blenders. It's also compact!

Who knew a tiny little blender could make one so happy?

My current fave recipe is:

Huge handful of spinach
Tablespoon of coconut oil
1/2 Tsp of chia seeds
1tsp flaxseed
2 tablespoons peanut or almond butter
3 small pieces of frozen banana
About 1/2-3/4 cup vanilla unsweetened almond or coconut milk






Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Roasted Red Peppers and Cashews

I made some amazing pasta tonight!! Matt said it was probably the best he's ever had! I had 6 leftover red peppers that I needed to do something with, so I roasted all of them on my gas stovetop (I LOVE fresh roasted red peppers). Second, I've really been wanting to try using cashew milk instead of cream in a recipe. Sounds like the perfect combo to me!

Here's what I did:

*Place 6 red peppers atop gas stove (or you can broil them in the oven), turning after skin is totally black. It usually takes about 20 mins or so. Once the pepper is completely black, wrap each pepper in foil and let sit for 20-30 minutes to steam itself and cool a little.
*cut one onion into small pieces and sauté until soft and translucent. Add some garlic and sauté another minute or so. Add about 1/2 cup white wine or chicken broth and cook down a little.
*add 1-2 cups of raw cashews to a food processor and add about 1 cup of water. Mine ended up kinda chunky and thick but I liked it that way. The way I saw it made before was more the consistency of cream, so just add more water to your liking. Set aside.
*go back to the peppers and use the foil to push the black off of the peppers. It slides off really easily if blackened. Then take the seeds and stem off. This gets very messy, but is well worth the effort.
*add the peppers and onion/garlic mix to the food processor and blend until smooth.
*to the sauté pan, add the blended mix and the cashew milk to the pan and heat on low
*I added homemade garlic salt (YUM! I'll add the recipe soon) and pepper and some fresh chopped basil. I also added one packet of Splenda for a little sweetness, some turmeric because its really good for you, and also cayenne for a little kick.


This was DELICIOUS!! Please try it! I served it with some Giada DeLaurentis Pasta I found at Target, al dente of course! The pasta isn't anything healthy at all, I just loved the shape of it though!!