Fun and Mental Changes

So... it has been a TERRIBLE month!!!  With the passing of our lab and now my husband having a stroke, I gotta say, I'm exhausted.  After all, this IS about ME, right?!?  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  I'm really only making a joke here because I'm on overload with every other emotion.  The reality is, my husband had a real scare and it left me with real feelings of guilt because I've allowed (and in most cases, led the coup) us to fall off our path of healthy living that we worked so hard on over the past two years.  We backslid into unhealthy eating and missing workouts.  Welp, we just had a wake-up call in one of the biggest ways imaginable.  There are only two things more important than our health, God and the health of our spouse.  And it's a funny thing that happens when we put our priorities in check, we actually DO take care of ourselves in the process.  Enter the 17 Day Diet.... and we are now on day 6. Health and diet books were at the ...

So I was watching the Thanksgiving specials on Food Network last week and saw Ms. Rachel Ray make " Stuffin Muffins ". Ok, let me just say, "BRILLIANT!" This isn't your ordinary, run of the mill brilliant either. This is the "I just discovered that you can put anything on a stick, deep fry it, serve it at a fair and make a mint" brilliant. A brief shot appears on my TV screen showing the end result of these "Stuffin Muffins" and I'm glued to the set. It's so simple.... instead of preparing a whole casserole dish of stuffing, or even trying to figure out what to do with the left overs from the stuffed turkey, squash them into balls and press them into a muffin pan. Now she made this apple stuffing that she put into a muffin pan, but this was for Thanksgiving and our house DOES NOT waste a perfectly good eat-till-you-wanna-puke day on anything as healthy as apples. Oh no, for us it's bread crumbs, butter, sausage, butter and butter....

This recipe is WONDERFUL! $8 at a farmer's market, $6 at the local asian food store and 20 minutes gets you the best home made, healthy meal you've ever had. I left the farmer's market the other day with a LOAD of goodies that included cucumbers, green onions, celery, bean sprouts, zucchini, garlic and red peppers. They were beautiful but visibly ripe which meant that I needed to use them THAT DAY (but that also meant that I saved a ton of money and got some pretty good bang for my buck... some of this haul will be going in the freezer! Another excuse to use my favorite kitchen gadget... the food saver). No problem! I swung by my local asian food store and picked up some fresh Pad Tai noodles, some garlic/chili paste and some nama shoyu (raw, unprocessed soy sauce). I would have dinner on the table in 20 minutes! That's the beauty of vegetables... they are the best when eaten raw and can really make a meal in 20 minutes. Here's my pad tai creation ala farmer's m...

Ever wonder why homemade zucchini bread is so moist and yummy? Are you looking for a super moist cake recipe? I was throwing together a box cake mix and realized that I did not have the vegetable oil that the recipe called for. Remembering the snippet I read from the New McDougall's Cookbook regarding oil substitutions, and really not wanting to drive to the store, I quickly grabbed two small apples from the fridge. It took me about a minute to cored them, peel them and throw them into the Vitamix with 3 Tbsp of water to make applesauce. The recipe called for a half a cup of oil. I ended up with about 2/3 cup of organic, unsweetened applesauce... I added the whole 2/3 cup to the recipe. That little substitution was the difference between a good cake and a GREAT cake. I have NEVER had a more moist cake! The same principal applied a few weeks ago when I was preparing a meatloaf. After reading a blog post at PeerTrainer.com about hiding vegetables in everyday recipes to increase veg...

Sometimes I am just not a master of the obvious! Most of the time, pretty simple things elude me, but this time... Here is a VERY small sample of my stash (wow, that almost sounds illegal)! It was during one of my organizational rampages that I discovered this amazing and economical use after having to throw out bottles of polish that had gone unused for years. What a waste!!! And yes, I missed that particular use in the infomercial from way back when! :) NOW I know that when you hit sales on things like nail polish or shampoos, you can stock up and vacuum seal them and they stay just like brand new for when you're ready to use them. This is something that will free many polish lovers who fall in love with a specific color but cannot stock up for fear that the polish will dry up before they are through with the first bottle. Not anymore polish addicts and future polish addicts... here's your fix! I even did that with last years Halloween makeup! You know... the make up that you...

Yesterday I made Coconut Ice Cream from one of my favorite raw recipe books called Raw Food Real World . The recipe itself called for an ice cream maker as well as a Vitamix, but I just used my Vitamix and it turned out AMAZING!!! It tasted great with strawberries too! I did alter the recipe from the book just a little because of the ingredients I had on hand and it still turned out fantastic! I used 1 cup of raw, organic coconut meat that I had frozen in a food saver bag a couple of months ago. I also used (from frozen) 1 1/2 cups of raw, organic coconut water, 1/4 cup agave nectar, 2 stevia packets, 1 teaspoon of organic vanilla extract and 3 tablespoons of coconut butter blended in the Vitamix on high for about 1 1/2 minutes until it was very well blended. I placed the Vitamix pitcher with the mixture into the freezer for about 3 hours and then blended again on low using the tamper until the mixture was smooth and placed back into the freezer for another two hours. It turned out PE...

Yesterday I posted a blog with the recipe for my raw candied yams and mentioned slicing the yams. I forgot to put in the post that the fun little gadget that I used to make all my yam slices uniform was a "mandolin" slicer. So this got me thinking about all the gadgets in my kitchen that I use and LOVE. As I have posted in the past, I am a gadget girl and thought it would be fun to showcase some of my "must have" tools. Here are my top 10. This is my #1: the mandolin slicer. Mine is an OXO V-Slicer. It is, in my opinion, the very best slicer on the market and the one I used to make my candied yams. It is easy to use, easy to clean (everything goes into the dishwasher) and easy to abuse. Basically, "it takes a lickin and keeps on tickin". It will slice four different slice thicknesses as well as julienne and fry cuts. I literally cut an entire bag of yams in about 10 minutes. Seriously quick food prep. And speaking of quick food prep, #2 is a food process...