Cheesy Baked Chicken

I have tried this baked chicken two ways, with mayo and with greek yogurt.  And I will say, I didn't notice a difference.  My husband says the mayo is better, but he probably says that because it sounds less healthy.  This is a quick and easy recipe to make.  My kids both thought it looked too saucy but cleaned their plates.  It is a little saucy but nothing really too much.

As I look at the picture of the chicken, I have to say that I need to start buying organic from the butcher.  Look at how huge those breasts are.  I realize the package says they aren't full of hormones, but those are too big to be natural.

Cheesy Baked Chicken

1 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup Greek yogurt

1 tsp garlic powder

1 1/2 tsp seasoning salt 

1/2 tsp pepper

spread mix over chicken breasts

bake at 375 for 45 mins

Enjoy!

Paleo Chocolate Covered Coconut Cups

I love Paleo Junk Food!  It's important to remember to have these sometimes, to help with a sweet tooth, but I absolutely love to try new recipes for desserts that don't use processed sugar.  This recipe calls for honey and here in Oregon we have some fabulous local honey.  Our favorite honey is Hanna's Honey, and our favorite flavor is Meadow Foam, it tastes like marshmallows and it's to die for!

I found this recipe for here at Art and the Kitchen.  Since it didn't talk about the chocolate much, I went ahead and made a paleo chocolate to cover the top.  My coconut cups are lacking in chocolate, so if you like a lot of chocolate you need to double the chocolate part of the recipe.  These were creamy, chewy and just sweet enough to fill me up after just one.

Chocolate Coconut Cups

Coconut Layer

1 cup coconut oil

2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut

1/4 cup honey

 Chocolate Layer

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/8 cup honey

1/4 tsp vanilla

For coconut layer, melt coconut oil and mix in coconut and honey.  

Place in a 8x8 pan with parchment paper or use a silicon baking tray. 

 Put in freezer for 5 minutes until it becomes solid.

While coconut layer is in the freezer melt coconut oil for chocolate layer.

Add cocoa powder, hone and vanilla and mix in a blender.

Remove coconut layer from the freezer and top with chocolate.

Place back in the freezer until solid.  

Store in freezer or refrigerator.

Enjoy.

Cleaning Le Creuset Pans Safely

I love my Le Creuset pans.  Love love love them.  They are my most favorite things to cook with, but I continue to stain the inside of them.

My children request crepes every day for breakfast.  They get there way at least 4 times a week, so this pan gets used a lot.  I don't always have the time in the morning to clean it before we are out the door.  That is my excuse why it looks this bad.

Going online tells you all kinds of chemicals you can buy to clean your pots, but that really bothers me.  Why would I clean my pots with something harmful that is possibly going to be ingested by my children.  So I researched safe ways.  Someone suggested bleach.  UGH!

Luckily I read that baking soda paste can work.  

So, I just dumped some baking soda into my pan, added enough water to make a paste and then scrubbed with one of the many toothbrushes we have saved from the dentist office (we use electric).

It does take a little elbow grease but in less than 10 minutes, my pan went from a mess to beautiful.  And I'm totally fine with my children ingesting baking soda.

Beet What Ails You Juice

I found this recipe on a number of sites and so I was excited to try it.  It sounds like it's something that will help boost up your immune system.  With all the flu going around, I am more than happy to make sure I have all necessary vitamins on board.  I also liked this recipe because you can use red apples and it seems like every recipe wants you to use green apples.

Beet What Ails You Juice

2 beets

4 carrots

2 apples

6 celery stalks

2 limes

2 in. ginger

Enjoy!

Beets are the prettiest veggie to juice!  I love how beautiful the color is when it comes out of the juicer.  This time I added to stems.  Not all recipes say to add the stems, but I did some research and they do hold a lot of nutrients, but you can't drink the juice of the stem on it's own.  Not a problem for me, beets make look super pretty but they kind of taste like dirt to me.

This recipe tastes pretty good.  Not very sweet but it's "filling" and makes a ton of juice.  I have found that since I'm a chugger, having extra juice is better than just one glass.

Carrot Pineapple Pick Me Up

I have just started juicing and have been working my way through a number of juicing books, blogs and online reviews.

This is one of my favorites so far.  It's a great little pick me up during the day.  With the perfect amount of sweetness and it comes out to be such a pretty color of orange.

Carrot Pineapple Pick Me Up

3 large carrots

1/4 of a pineapple

1/2 lemon

1 small piece of ginger

This picture shows more ginger than you need.  This time it had much more of a bite to it from the ginger.  I don't mind it, but usually it's better with just a hint of ginger to go with the rest of the flavors.

Enjoy!

My Favorite Paleo Junk Food ~ Peanut Butter Cups

I am not true Paleo, but I love the idea and try hard to follow some of the ideas of the movement.  Since I gave up processed sugar a year and a half ago I have really not craved sweets much.  But sometimes I do...and sometimes I need a little fix.  This is the first recipe I ever found that counts as Paleo Junk Food to me, but I love it!  I found this recipe from Practical Paleo.   She calls it fudge but I call it my peanut butter cups.  It's such a great flavor.

Almond Butter Cups

1/2 cup Coconut Oil

1/2 cup Penzeys High Fat Cocoa Powder 

1/2 cup Almond Butter

1/4 cup Maple Syrup (or you can use honey)

1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Melt the coconut oil and then blend all the ingredients in a blender.  

Fill a silicon tray or paper lined mini muffin cups.  

Put in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.

Remove from tray.  

Store in the freezer. 

I found that using a high quality blender works better than a food processor.  The chocolate comes out much smoother.

I also love using my different silicon trays, I have a number of Demarle trays and I find that the shallow, and small ones give you the option to eat 2 or 3 pieces of chocolate without overdoing it.

Keeping them in the freezer until right before you are going to eat them is so important.  You don't want it to melt and lose any of the paleo goodness.

What Made Me Want to Juice

We watched the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and we both decided that maybe juicing is worth taking a look at.  Not really for weight loss, but for the obvious health benefits you can get from just ingesting all your vitamins in one shot.

Looking at different juices at the store, it was obvious that you could spend a small fortune buying bottles of pre-made juice or just spend the money to buy your own juicer.  So we went with a juicer.  We also bought a new heavy duty blender, but more on that at another time.

I searched and searched for the recipe of what the guys were drinking on the movie and I finally found it here at myjuicecleanse.com.  This was the first juice I made and I have to say, it doesn't taste too bad.  I have always substituted kale leaves with cups of kale mix, mainly because I have a hard time finding kale leaves.

Mean Green Juice

3 cups mixed kale greens

1 cucumber

4 stalks of celery

2 green apples

1/2 lemon

1 piece of ginger

Enjoy!

Making a Dirt Cake Mountian

My thoughts for Reed's birthday cake was to make one that represented one of his favorite past times, motocross riding.  I got on Pinterest and found this site with the most perfect dirt hill cake Spoonful Site.  I mean, how much more perfect can you get?  I was super excited to surprise Reed with it.

I made a few adjustments to the decorations, feeling like I might be able to make it look better with more candy.

Dirt Bike Cake Recipe

• 4 (9-inch round) cakes
• 3 (16-ounce) cans chocolate frosting
• 7 straws
• Oreo cookies, remove the filling and crush
• Large Pretzel rods
• Chocolate cereal (we used Cocoa Puffs®)
• Whoppers 
• Reeses Pieces
• Butterfinger Bite Sized Pieces
• Fruit by the Foot®
• Thin pretzels
• Toy dirt bike and rider

1. 
   
2. Trim the cake tops flat. Cut 1 cake in half, and cut one third from another cake.
3. 
   
4. Assemble the cake as shown, frosting between each layer: 
5. 
   
6. Stack the 2 rounds, add the two-thirds section, and insert 3 straws, spacing them about 1-1/2 inches apart. Add 1 cake half (you can save the other for snacking) and insert 2 more straws. Add the cake third and the last 2 straws. Frost the entire cake.
7. 
   
8. 
   
9. Sprinkle on a cookie dirt trail, then add pretzel rods, cereal, candy, and licorice for log trail borders, rocks, boulders, and plants.  Add the rider on top.
10. 
    

I started following the recipe.  I decided that  and was so excited to start stacking my cake...and then this happened.

The whole thing just collapsed.  It was awful!  I was depressed.  The middle layer fell into itself.  How do you fix that?  I walked away.  I took Reed to the park where Scott and the guys were training.  Reed and I watched them for awhile and then we went back home.

I decided to not give up.  I went ahead and melted half a can of frosting in the microwave.  Doing that allowed me to pour the frosting over the demolished, crumbly cake. Then I added a messy layer of frosting.  Thank goodness this was a dirt hill, because the little pieces of cake that came through didn't ruin the overall cake concept.  

Once I had all the frosting down, I just went for it and started adding the rocks, the path and the plants.   I just kept adding more and more and the more I added the better it looked, at least to me.  It was a mess and it was "dirty" but it seemed to work.  I cut up the green pieces of the fruit leather and it made the best contrast of little grass coming through.  So, after running out of "rocks", I stepped back.

He loved it so much.  It definitely looks much messier but I have to say that it looks way more realistic than the original.  He loved it.

Valentine's Day Cards

Making Valentine's Day Cards

One year I decided we'd make homemade Valentine's day cards.  

So much more special and then it makes it less about a commercial holiday, and more about time I spend with my children, the thought put into a gift given to their friends and my ability to get to cut and paste something fun!

Sawyer made all the girls bracelets, and I told her I would make the boys.  She only has 17 children in her class, 6 girls and 11 boys, and I wanted her to enjoy the process so I agreed to take on the boys (plus I could finish 2 in the time it took her to do one).  

On Pinterest I found a cute cards I could print off and use, here for the Friendship Braceletes and here for the Stick 'em Up cards.

Reed's ended up being a lot of cutting and pasting, and the little pasting I let him help with, he was a pro.  Reed took guns to school with a piece of gum that said, "This is a stick up!"  Afterwards I am not sure if guns were the right thing to make, but it was cute and Reed's teacher liked them!

Decorating for Christmas

Needing to try something new for Christmas Decorations, I went with rustic.  I have always been a little partial to rustic anyway, and this just seemed to fit.  The best part, it didn't cost me a dime.

Reed and I went out searching for pine cones.  In Oregon, in the middle of winter, there is no way we were going to find dry pine cones.  But we looked anyway.  We found a bunch of closed pine cones, and they were soaking wet, but we picked them up anyway.

We came home and turned the oven on to 200 degrees and left them in there for an hour.  The house smelled woodsy and the pine cones dried out and opened it.  It was fabulous.

I found gold ribbon in my gift tag box .  With a hot glue gun in hand I started making the jars.

Christmas Jars

Large canning jars

sugar

tea lights

gold ribbon

twine

branch off the Christmas tree

pine cones

Really, they couldn't be cuter and they look like and smell like Christmas.  I used twine, more pieces off the tree and a cinnamon stick to wrap the napkins.  (Next time I will buy cloth napkins for this, but I was so happy to not spend anything on this project, I couldn't bring myself to drive to the store to do that.)

Meeting Some Goals

I'm glad to finally be able to say that I've broken the 6 minute per mile mark.  I ran this on a Monday and by Wednesday I ran 5:46.  I am pretty sure that I have a 5:30 mile in me...just have to mentally prepare for it.  The seconds seem to be just falling off of my times.  

I ran 4 miles outside at a 6:30 minute pace.  I have an app on my iPhone that updates me on my time and pace every mile.  So one day when I went to run outside on my own, I was so shocked when my phone said I was running that fast.  Never one to back down from a challenge, I had to keep the pace up for 4 miles.  My run was suppose to be 6, but I wasn't sure if I would ruin my time by pushing it too much at first.

 I am giving my new dedication to Centergy and Yoga all the credit for my marked improvement in my times.  I have been happy with the new found flexibility and the fact that we do so many planks that I can do push ups like crazy now.  The most beneficial part has definitely been the flexibility in my hips.  I am running with a lot less issues and although my IT bands reacts when I run hard ( faster than an 8 minute pace) for anything over 6 miles, it's been getting better and I'm confident that with continue commitment to Centergy it will help alleviate my issues.

My next goal is to run a half marathon at a 7:30 minute pace.  Interested to see how long my new goal will take me. 

Cherry Limeade Cupcake

Pinterest has made me a cupcake fanatic.  I have always loved cupcakes, but now I just can't get enough of them.  There are so many flavor, so many cakes, so many frosting flavors.  I have no idea how I'm going to maintain my weight if I don't continue working out EVERY DAY!

These yummy things I found at Annie's Eats and it may be one of my favorite cupcakes ever.  It is just the right amount of sweet and tart combined.  And anything topped with a maraschino cherry has to be fabulous.

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

Yield: 24 cupcakes

For the cupcakes:

3 cups cake flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 cup butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp. limeade concentrate

3 eggs

3/4 cup milk (I used 1%)

For the lime syrup:

3/4 cup limeade concentrate

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

For the frosting:

3 3/4 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1/2 cup butter, softened

4 tbsp. (or more) maraschino cherry juice

red food coloring

For decorating:

maraschino cherries

Directions:

To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two muffin pans with paper liners.  In a medium bowl combine the cake flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda.  Stir together and set aside.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter until smooth.  Add the sugar and beat on medium-high speed until creamed.  Add in the limeade concentrate and mix to incorporate.  Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions.  Add in the flour mixture in thirds, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.  Mix ingredients just long enough to incorporate but no longer.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cupcake liners.  Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Allow to cool in the pans for 5-10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack over wax paper to cool completely.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, whisk together the limeade concentrate and confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl to make the lime syrup.  Poke several holes (at least 6) in the top of each cupcake with a skewer and pour the syrup over the cupcakes, allowing it to soak in. (The more you use the moister the cake).

To make the frosting, combine the confectioners’ sugar, butter and maraschino cherry juice in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Mix on low speed until sugar is incorporated, then increase to medium-high speed and beat until smooth.  Add more maraschino cherry juice as needed to achieve desired texture.  Add red food coloring if desired.

Frost cooled cupcakes.  Garnish with lime slices and maraschino cherries, if desired.

Yummy Pesto Sauce

This is just a one day pick from my garden.  I have had the best luck this year with everything but my tomatoes.  In fact I have more basil than I know what to do with, so I've been making pesto.  I absolutely love pesto and I was so happy to find out that you can make it with other nuts, not just pine nuts.  I have pecans and walnuts on hand all of the time, but not pine nuts.  This pesto recipe worked great and I loved the flavor.

• 
  
• Fresh Pesto Sauce
• 
  
• 3 cups packed fresh basil leaves
• 4 cloves garlic
• 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 
  
• Combine in a food processor.
• Blend until smooth.
• Enjoy.

Stuck in the Intro

I had tried to read The Pillars of the Earth twice, and both times I was so bogged down by the introduction that I just moved on to a different book.  I had no idea why people were so interested in this book.

On my 3rd attempt at reading it, because I had just finished

Half Broke Horses, which is a fantastic read too, and did not want to research which book to read next, just picked one on the Kindle.  So I skipped the introduction and was hooked by the very first page.  What an amazing book this was about dreams and goals and facing down your demons...even when they continued to resurface.  I was so enthralled with it, that I was not ready to have it end.  In the 1100's life was so much different than it is today, and yet you can see that people struggle with life no matter what the year is.  Life always comes full circle, and I really enjoyed reading a book that fulfilled that promise, even when at times it seemed like things were too bleak to ever come around.
What a great read, and I am excited to start on his second  book about this place!

Disappointing Endings

I have been reading so many good blogs and websites lately, that it sometimes cuts into my novels, but I've managed to go through 5 novels this last month.  Happiness is having time to read in the sun as your children and their friends play in the sandbox, swim, run through the sprinklers or whatever else seems to keep them entertained.   

Ever finish a great book, only to be disappointed that it ended?  That happens to me a lot, especially when I feel like there may be more to the story that the author should have got out.  Books need more sequels like movies seem to overuse but always want to do if the first one was great.

Reading The Lantern was suppose to be similar to reading The Thirteenth Tale and I always love to read a good ghost story. I am not much of a scary movie girl, but love to read them.  

The book is about a couple that move out to the country and purchase a run down cottage and farm.  The isolation that ends up occurring is strange but predictable in such a remote location.  The main character is less likable since she seems so willing to just give up everything to be with her fiance.  She seems obnoxiously able to go about living a life that she doesn't really enjoy, because of her fiance.  Yuck.  The flashbacks to the ghost are much more entertaining and interesting.  Here is a woman who is strong, is willing to stand up for herself and even thought she is not always willing to accept the truth right away, comes around to figuring out what is right and what isn't.   It wasn't nearly as scary or as suspenseful as The Thirteenth Tale, but it was worth reading...until the end...and then the author seemed to just run out of steam.  I needed a much more exciting ending...but that's just me.

Before I Go To Sleep was so good.  It's the story of a woman who loses her memory.  I was so enthralled and could not wait to see what new things she discovered each day she woke up and read her journal.  This book was hard to put down, because you knew she was on the verge of figuring something out...but the ending, again was disappointing.  Very anticlimactic, even though the actual story line was good.  I'm not sure how an author can keep you so engaged only to make it seem like the end just wasn't exciting enough.

Enjoy reading...but sometimes I feel like I should be an editor!

Zucchini Zucchini and more Zucchini (Cakes and Brownies)

So excited that my garden is doing so well this summer.  Had no idea that I would end up with so much zucchini so fast.  So I have been making zucchini recipes like there is no tomorrow.

Zucchini Brownies

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups  sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups shredded zucchini
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 
  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees 

Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan

Mix oil, sugar and vanilla.

 Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture. 

Fold in the zucchini and walnuts. 

Spread evenly into the prepared pan.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes

I topped them with frosting.

Zucchini Cakes

• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• salt to taste
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• Combine the zucchini, eggs, onion, flour, mozzarella cheese, and salt. 
• Stir well.
• Heat a small amount of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. 
• Drop zucchini mixture by heaping tablespoonfuls.  
• Cook for a few minutes on each side until golden.
• Serve with marinara sauce.