Fresh Lemonade...WITHOUT SUGAR!

My little gal can't have sugar...which really used to be a pain in the rear but ultimately has guided our family to much better health. Well, the other day there was a little boy in our neighborhood who was selling lemonade to support his baseball team. My oldest child's heart melted and she bought lemonade for all....forgetting that her sister couldn't drink it. Ohhhhhh, the tears! Well, I had just gotten home from my bestie's house where she and her hubs made fresh lemonade almost every day, and it tasted delicious on a hot day! I texted her for the recipe and my little one was, as you can see, pleased with the results!

Fresh Lemonade...without sugar!
2 lemons
water and ice
liquid stevia

Squeeze lemons into quart jar. Fill the rest of the way with filtered water and ice. Add a dropper or two of liquid stevia (to taste! Don't add too much!) and shake it up.
Enjoy!

4th of July Nom-Noms

Who said you can't eat healthy during the holidays? We sure did! Here in the south, we had quite a bit of heavy rain on the 4th, so it started out as a bit of a downer. At least for me. However, we quickly changed that with some patriotic food that we got the whole family in on, and in the end, the rain took a break long enough for many neighbors to shoot off fireworks. It was a beautiful day/night!  Here is what we did:

I took THIS potato salad recipe, and instead of using regular potatoes, I found some gourmet potatoes at Costco: red white and BLUE potatoes! Have you ever heard of blue potatoes? I hadn't, but they tasted just like regular potatoes and the kids thought it was the "best potato salad ever"! I scrubbed and cut them into smaller pieces, drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and roasted in the oven until I could easily pierce through with a fork. Let cool and follow the rest of the recipe. Delicious!

 For this one, I bought a (better-for-you) ready made pie crust from Whole Foods (you can totally make your own whole wheat pie crust), and line the bottom of a pie pan. Pit cherries and mix with raw honey or raw agave nectar. Let sit for 20 minutes. Mix a couple of cups of blueberries with agave. Take a piece of cardstock and fold so that it points to 12 & 9. Fill that triangle with blueberries and the rest with cherries. Gently pull out cardstock. Cut pie dough in stripes for your "flag" and use small star cookie cutters to make stars for your blueberries. Sprinkle with raw sugar granules. Bake at 425 for 10-15 minutes, or until crust is golden brown

 This is self-explanatory, right? The kids loved this one in particular. Happy 4th!

 P.S. After all the rain we had, my garden exploded!

Summer Fun!!!

Fresh Georgia Peaches. Oh baby! We had a lot of them, so I decided to try dehydrating them. (If you dehydrate at less then 113 degrees, they are considered raw still! You preserve the enzymes and nutrients! Wahoo!) 

I wasn't patient enough, so after a day of dehydrating, I ate one. It was still juicy in the middle and as sweet as candy. Needless to say, the 4 trays didn't make it to complete dehydration. The kids and I at them all! Yum!

 

 Remember this recipe? We celebrated our youngest's half birthday (poor kid was born 3 days before Christmas!), and we did a breakfast celebration: dessert first! I felt no guilt cause it's so good for ya!

 K, this recipe is compliments of Beachbody Ultimate Reset. I decided to give it a go, and have been pleasantly surprised! I can do this kind of cleanse all day every day!

Black Bean Open-Faced Tacos
3 c black beans (2 cans drained well and rinsed, or make your own!)
1 1/2 t extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 t chili powder
1/2 t cumin
1 1/2 t ground coriandor
6 t Braggs liquid aminos
Sea salt to taste
4 1/2 c cooked brown rice
1 1/2 c frozen corn kernels, rinsed in cold water until thawed
1 pkg non-GMO corn tortillas
1 ripe avocado
1 c salsa (fresh is best, but we just did regular)

Combine the first 7 ingredients. Warm over medium heat and fold in brown rice. Remove from heat. Gently stir in corn kernels. Mash avocado and mix with salsa. Put rice mixture in a corn tortilla and spread with some salsa mixture. Serve!

Raw Berry Crisp

This may have been one of the fastest desserts I've ever made, and so delicious and simple!

Raw Berry Crisp
*6 cups mixed berries (whatever you want-see note below)
1-2 T maple syrup, preferrably Grade B
1 c raw almonds
1/2 c raw walnuts
1/2 c-2/3 c chopped dates
1/2 t ground cinnamon
1 t chia seeds
*Note: I used frozen berries from Costco, and just ran some cool water on them for a few minutes. Gently place in baking dish. Or use fresh, and gently chop bigger berries-strawberries-and place in baking dish

In small baking dish (7x11 or the like), place berries. Drizzle with syrup and gently mix. Put remaining ingredients in food processor and process until coarsely ground. Nuts should be the size of 1/2 pea, or if you prefer chunkier, process it for less time. Sprinkle over berries. Serve immediately or chill in fridge until ready to serve.

This would be a great dessert or brunch item.

2 Minute Cherry Ice Cream

My husband was so sweet to go to Whole Foods last Friday to get me organic cherries that were on sale for $2.99/lb! But....um....he got about 18 pounds. I was shocked and a little panicky for a few minutes. We sold about 5 pounds, and then I thought, "Duh! I can seed these and freeze them!" Has anyone ever bought organic cherries before at full price? Yeah, super expensive. $2.99/lb is amazing! So, we got a cherry pitter tool thingee and I pitted the rest of our cherries this morning and threw them in the freezer. 

For our Sunday night treat, we made this nummy ice cream in our BlendTec, and it was so scrumptious:

5-6 oz almond milk

2-3 oz raw agave nectar

1/8 cup powdered milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

2-4 in vanilla bean pod (opt)

10 pitted bing cherries

4 cups ice

Combine ingredients in the order given and press the ice cream button on your BlendTec. Enjoy!

Recipes, Fruit Flies & Garden Update

Ahhh, I felt wealthier today. Do you ever just sit back for a few minutes and count your blessings, only to realize how truly blessed you are? Well, I definitely had a moment like that. We spent the day doing yard work: mowing, weeding, weed-eating, gardening, etc. It was in the 90s, so we were pretty crispy burnt by the time it was over, but looking around at the backyard, seeing how much plenty our garden is producing, and how grateful my family is for this adventure called life...and how rich we truly are in blessings! Here are a few pictures that my husband took after it was all done. I think the trellises will do really nicely for the greenie beanies and cucumbers.

Look in the back of the 1st picture: compost bins ready to go and......rainbarrels! Woo Hoo! Let's use the water from the sky before using the water from the tap! I'm excited for this added feature!
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So, a few tips: if you have a plethora of fruit flies at your house, put a small amount of apple cider vinegar in a cup, along with a drop of soap. Mix it, and then watch the flies DIE! Bahahaha! I hate pesky fruit flies, bleh! We do this once a week just after grocery shopping and our kitchen is pretty much free of the little buggers.
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I have been making some super fun recipes, compliments of Simple Healthy Tasty-see the link to the right, she is FABULOUS!!  First of all, CHEEZY SAUCE! We are really trying to stay away from dairy, so imagine my giddiness when I found this little baby, and it is so YUMMY! We had sloppy joes, healthy style. I have adjusted the recipe a bit because I didn't like the original very much. It's more like a "Taco Joe". :)

First of all, I made homemade whole wheat jumbo rolls instead of buying them at the store.

Then, I made the following:

Mushroom and Rice Cheezy-Q's

6-8 ounces fresh mushrooms, chopped small

1/2 onion chopped

3 cups cooked brown rice

Olive Oil to taste

Large can of tomato sauce

Taco Seasoning to taste

Place some oil and the onion in a large frying pan, chop up the fresh mushrooms add to the pan saute for a minute then add the rice, sauce and seasoing, stir until it is hot remove from heat. Put your roll/bun on your plate and spoon some Mushroom concoction, followed by Cheezy Sauce. Eat open-faced style.

Cheezy Sauce

1 ½ cup raw cashews

3/4 cup chopped red bell pepper

2 garlic cloves

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon chili powder

½ cup water

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Place all ingredients in blender. (Wet ingredients first!) Blend until smooth. Use as a sandwich spread, a dip for crackers or veggies, for nacho cheese, or anything else you want to use it for.

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Sunday Dessert night was chocolate cake, coconut cream sauce and fresh berries.  Here is the recipe:

Super Moist German Chocolate Cake

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

3 T. sifted cocoa powder

1 t. baking soda

1 c. Sucanat

1/2 t. sea salt

5 T. coconut oil

1 T. apple cider vinegar

1 T. vanilla

1 cup cold water

Put your flour into mixing bowl, add cocoa, baking soda, sugar and salt and mix well.Make three deep holes in the dry mixture. Into one, pour the oil, into the next, pour the vinegar, into the next, pour the vanilla.Pour the water into the bowl, over all of this.Mix the wet and dry ingredients together until there aren't any more lumps and pour into a 9x9 inch baking pan.Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, test with fork.Can also be made into cupcakes, bake for 15 minutes.

Top with whipped Creme and fresh berries

Whipped Creme

Take a can of coconut milk (not light kind) and get cold in fridge. Open the can and with a spoon, spoon out only the thick stuff. Put into a small food processor or blender, and add about 3-4 Tablespoons Sucanut and ½ teaspoon vanilla.

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So, a local health food's store is going out of business (sad!), but yay for 50-75% off of their products! I've never bought vanilla bean before, and have never even seen it, but when I saw it was 50% off, I had to snag some. I went home and made these little babies to go with the super hot day we were having.
Here is a picture of vanilla bean, if you've never seen it. They smell sooooo good!!!!

Healthy Vanilla Milkshake

2 cans coconut milk
2 frozen bananas
1 Tablespoon melted coconut oil
2 Tablespoons Agave
1 small handful macadamia nuts (I used raw cashews)
1 teaspoon vanilla
Vanilla bean, just the inside scraped out (optional)
4 cups ice

In blender blend everything but ice until smooth.  Add ice blend again until smooth.  Drink right away or if you like a really thick milkshake, place in freezer for 1-2 hours then stir well and drink! 

Salads & Summer Nummies...and a note on salad dressings

My FAVORITE summer meal is my concoction of Pasta Salad, but since we've started eating better, mine needed some tweaking. First of all, it needed homemade dressing-more on that below, if you want to read-, and secondly, it needed less pasta and more veggies. This was a HIT at my house. My 3 year old asked for 3 platefuls of it. Quick note: I'm not a fan of raw broccoli. I prefer it a little soft, so if you allow the dressing to soak into the broccoli, it softens it up nicely, and is super tasty!

Pasta salad

1 lb whole grain pasta or gluten free pasta
2 cans albacore tuna
1-3 handfuls of spinach, depending on your mood
1 colored pepper, diced
broccoli and cauliflower cut into small pieces
1 cucumber, peeled and diced
some shredded cheese

homemade dressing of your choice. See mine below.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Combine all ingredients and let marinate in fridge.

Homemade Dressing

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2-3 T flax seed oil
1/2 cup raw apple cider vinegar
fresh dill
1 T dijon mustard
3 whole cloves garlic, peeled
1 t sea salt (or to taste)
2 t Italian seasoning
1 T parsley or fresh parsley
fresh dill or other fresh herbs
Combine in BlendTec and press Dressings.

I fell in LOVE with this tasty smoothie! Tell me what you think!

Yummy Summer Treat

Honeydew
Fresh Mint leaves
Cram as much honey dew in blender as you can. Throw in a small handful of mint leaves. Blend and enjoy. If you're thinking ahead, this would be fabulous with half of the honeydew pieces frozen. Your kids will LOVE IT!!

Fruit Bouquet

We had this last Sunday for our dessert, which we only do on Sundays now, if the kids can go to church without eating sugar. Yes, it IS offered to them EVERY SUNDAY! It was super easy and super fun. The pictures aren't great, but here is the link for the details. Enjoy!

***Note on salad dressing:
Bottled salad dressings are a danger to your health. Virtually all of them contain one or more of the following dangerous ingredients:

Monosodium glutamate (MSG). This is also hiding in hydrolyzed vegetable protein and dozens of other food additives, so you may not recognize that it’s in your bottled dressing. MSG makes you crave more of the foods it is in and thus has been linked to the obesity epidemic. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a neurotoxin that has been linked to brain damage, central nervous system damage, and dozens of other major health problems.
High-fructose corn syrup. The very worst of all the refined sugars, it is linked to diabetes, tooth decay, and obesity, among dozens of other health risks. 

Refined oils. These are oils such as soy, safflower, canola, and other vegetable oils which are heated above 400° and made rancid and, therefore, carcinogenic. Everyone knows trans fatty acids (TFAs) are deadly, but even refined oils that are not manufactured and bombarded with hydrogen atoms like TFAs are very harmful to our health, damaging every cell they come into contact with. Despite the claims of soy product manufacturers, who have been very successful at promoting soy in the past two decades, soy oil and other refined soy products are thyroid suppressants.

Chemical additives and preservatives. These include propylene glycol, sodium laureth sulfate (SLS), and other chemicals whose names you cannot pronounce. Although PG and SLS are known by the FDA to cause liver and kidney damage, the FDA approves these chemicals and many others if they are “food grade,” which means that the rodents and droppings are strained out. 
Ew.

This is partially taken from Green Smoothie Girl. I found it very interesting. We are experimenting, and so far we've had 1 keeper (above) and one not-so-good. Note to self-measure lime juice, don't just pour it in. :)