So, I have a new obsession… kale chips! I just made my first batch ever (using this recipe) with some leftover kale (which I used in chicken soup… caught a cold over Christmas break), and both Julian and I were shocked at how delicious they are. It isn’t often you find something that good for you that also tastes amazing. Of course, most of the health factor is taken out when you coat something in olive oil & salt and bake it at a high temp… but it’s better than potato chips! I think I’m going to have to make these for our New Year’s Eve party.
Also, I haven’t updated since finals or Christmas vacation, but both went great & I will update more soon!
Fresh white corn, carrots, green beans, potatoes, summer squash, red onion, lettuce, nectarines, black plums, peaches, and lavender.
Just an example of what we got in this week’s box from AHO. All organic, all local. All harvested just a couple days ago, and more delicious than anything I’ve ever bought in a grocery store. Sometimes living in an agriculture-friendly state like California is really, really great. And did I mention all this cost a mere $21.80? That’s for a small bin. Large bin is $36.80. Every week the contents change, for example, last week we got the most incredible honeydew. If you live in a place that offers a CSA like this, you are a fool if you don’t take advantage!
Sorry, no pictures of this week’s booty, but trust me, it looks fantastic (with the exception of the cosmetically-challenged peaches – what are ya gonna do?)…
I must be the last person on Earth to have learned about Kickstarter, a community-driven way to fund creative-driven projects. You can pledge to ‘back’ projects with as little as $1, and many of them even offer rewards for doing so. Plus, you get to learn about the projects along with way with stories, videos, updates, and more. Each project must meet their funding goal before any of the money changes hands. It’s pretty neat!
I have only funded one project so far, Heritage Seed Co., but I’m pretty excited about it. One, because I think seed saving is not only fantastic but necessary – as many a documentary has told us, the agriculture industry is becoming dominated by a small number of very large companies who create genetically modified seeds to “commit suicide” after one season, forcing farmers to buy more each season, fining them if they find their patented seeds in their fields (often wind-blown from a neighboring farm), putting them in financial dire straits, not to mention sacrificing the integrity of food and the way it was meant to grow. These seeds are also bland, tasteless, and the crops are usually sprayed within an inch of life with pesticides. As a project backer, I got my choice of reward, and I chose a few packages of heritage seeds. Awesome! Watch the vid to find out more about seed saving & their project:
I love that every couple days I get emailed an update about their progress. It makes me feel like I’m a part of it, at least in some small way. So far they have 81 backers and are at $2,792 pledged. Their goal is $10,000 and they have 33 days to get there.
Learn more about Heritage Seed Co & poke around at the other many worthy projects!
Good news on the health front, folks. I’ve found the perfect way to ingest the miracle food that is unsweetened Greek yogurt without gagging. Put that sucker in a smoothie!
I’ve been experimenting with different ways to eat Greek yogurt for a while - with various fruits, nuts, honey, etc. – but I can’t get over the taste. But I force it down because I know all that my insides are just loooving that good bacteria (it’s true), and for someone who doesn’t eat most meat and loathes milk, my body could sure use the extra protein and calcium.
So yeah, smoothies. Why didn’t I think of this before? I have a blender. I adore fruit. So this week, I decided to take a cue from all you smoothie fanatics and actually attempt to make a delicious and healthy concoction for hubs and I. It was a great success.
Here’s what I put in:
Blueberries
Strawberries (with the green tops!)
Green grapes
Pineapple (quite possibly the world’s most un-fun fruit to chop)
Fiji apple
Banana
About 4oz of Greek yogurt
Lots of ice
Pretty basic, no? But grind it all up, pour it in a glass, add a fancy straw, and you’ve got yourself one fine breakfast if I do say so myself. That’s more fruit than the average person eats in a single day, and you’re slurping it down in less time than it takes you to fry an egg.
Plus, with all that sweetness from a nearly fruit-only smoothie, I could probably afford to sneak in a handful of spinach or kale and not tell the difference. I think I’ll try that next. That and some kind of protein powder, which kind of scares me, but I hear it’s just wonderful. Or perhaps some flaxseeds. The possibilities are just endless.
Do you have a fave smoothie recipe? Gimme the deets! Especially if it involves sneaking in weird-tasting-but-super-healthy foods.
I try not to be that girl who shares EVERY single video/piece of work my husband does, but he’s just so daggum talented that I can’t help it. It’s like he married into a built-in publicity department. This latest video of his might be one of my favorites – ok, is definitely one of my favorites! He’s had the idea for this foreverrrr so it is really cool to see it come to light. And funny story – he was actually planning on publishing a different video but ran into a roadblock, so he put this entire video together in about 4 days – including filming, editing, voiceovers, and even merch (after you watch the video, go get yourself some free Pre-Blessed Food stickers and a Pre-Blessed Food t-shirt!)
This weekend was even more exciting than I had originally planned, because among other things, I got a new camera. For the past several months and years, the only camera I’ve had access to is that of my iPhone, Blackberry or Macbook. When Julian came into the picture, he brought along a very expensive and very fancy camera, but one that I not only didn’t know how to use, but that I would probably drop and/or break. It made for very few opportunities to fully document trips, parties, and life in general.
“life in general”
But that all changed on Saturday when we decided to just bite the bullet and get a camera! After much research, husband settled on one model that seemed to be better than the rest in the point-and-shoot category – the Sony CyberShot DSC-TX5. It’s touchscreen, has a sweet (and wide) lense, is drop proof (awesome) and even WATERPROOF up to 10 ft. We’ll be putting that to the test next time we are on vacation, for sure. It was kind of a splurge, but everyone needs a camera, and this is one that we’ll have for years to come.
Here are some of the shots from my first day with the camera. As I’ve said before, I kind of suck at taking photographs, so if you see something good on here, chances are Julian took it, not me.
On another note, I’ve decided it should be illegal for me to work on Mondays. It is not only hazardous to my own health, but detrimental to the sanity of others. Thank you & goodnight.
The team at Johnny Cupcakes always seems to be up to something cool. Their latest venture, a cupcake cannon, is awesome. Apparently the Phanton HD Gold camera they used to film it goes for about $120,000 – sorry Julian, but you won’t be getting that anytime soon.
Check out the video of the slow-motion cupcake-launching action below. I’d like to catch one of these in my mouth, but maybe not with a 120 psi cannon!
Oh, and just so you know, Johnny Cupcakes is a brand of tee shirts. This just goes to show you how powerful viral advertising can be – you don’t see a single one of his products in the video!
For the last several years, I’ve been fascinated by learning about nutrition, dietary habits and food manufacturing. What’s good, what’s bad, what’s true and of course, what’s false. With so much information already out there and new studies/findings being published every day, it’s impossible to feel like you are educated enough to make good decisions about what to eat, but I sure like to try. For example, I just recently learned that fruit, as wonderful it is, is best eaten alone, since it requires so little digestion compared to most other foods we eat (think about eating a chicken breast and then some fruit, having your body trying to break down the chicken breast while the fruit sits in your tum, rotting before your other digestive organs have a chance to extract the nutrients).
I’m of the belief that we should be eating as close to the Earth as possible, with as little processing and unnatural additives as possible. Michael Pollan’s Food Rules booklet has some great bits of advice along these lines, one of them being “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Think about all the crazy foods we’ve invented in the last 50-100 years, thanks to the wonders of preservatives, additives and high-powered food manufacturing. Back then, everything was organic. You ate what was available to you, and much of the time, that was whatever you could grow, pick or harvest yourself. I believe today we call this “eating locally.” Another one of Pollan’s rules was something along the lines of, “If you can’t picture it growing, don’t eat it.” Haha! Makes perfect sense when you think about it. Here’s a great interview with Pollan about the book, filled with more awesome advice. One of my favorite parts of this article is when he talks about french fries and junk food. Fast food has taken the work out of preparing labor-intensive foods, like french fries, and given us easy round-the-clock access to these unhealthy foods. If you had to make your own junk food, I guarantee you’d be eating a whole lot less of it.
Anyway, I’m rambling, and quite off-topic, because I just want to make a public declaration that after a good bit of research, I’ve decided to give the gluten-free lifestyle a try for the next couple of weeks. I’m not sure if I am one of the 3 million Americans who has celiac disease (wheat or gluten allergy), but my Mother has been allergic to wheat her entire life, and given my own issues with tummy pains, I figure I might as well give it a go and see what changes may happen in my overall health. I’ve read and heard such phenomenal things from people who gave up wheat at the recommendation of their physician or nutritionist or at the simple suggestion from a friend. Might as well see what happens, right?
However healthful eating gluten-free may be, replacing wheat with sugar, heavy fats, salt, etc. isn’t exactly a recipe for success, so I’ll be attempting to keep that low as well (though it may be tough – baby steps). I’m also gonna try to take a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (diluted) a day, which has been said to aid circulation and ward off diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
I’ll be checking in along the way and will ultimately post a ‘wrap-up’ when my two weeks are up on August 8, 2010.
To get inspiration for living gluten-free, I’ve been reading The Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef and Cannelle et Vanille, two awesome blogs. Do you know of any others that I should be reading? Any other tips or information you want to share with me as I embark on this challenging-yet-potentially-beneficial journey?
While the rest of the country was watching USA make a solid, but not-quite-good-enough effort at the World Cup (as if I would know), I was squirreling away in the kitchen trying my hand at baking whole wheat rolls from scratch. The end result, I would say, was magnificent! There are few things quite as gratifying as knowing you can hold your own in the kitchen.
I got a little (a lot) frustrated at one point (“I can’t get this gunk off my HANDS!!!”), but then I quickly remembered that baking is not only supposed to be an outlet for stress relief, but a PROCESS. So I took a few deep breaths and what do you know, with enough flour, my sticky mess actually turned into honest to goodness bread dough.
An Irish tea towel from my grandmother, who is not Irish.
My culinary sidekick and live-in photographer also did a swell job at calming me down, as he usually does, and turned out to be quite good at making clover-shaped rolls.
I wish you could smell this photo.
Before freezing the buns, we made sure to taste test a couple of them fresh from the oven, with butter. Good news – it tasted like bread. Only better!!! The recipe, if you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, is from The Frugal Girl. Bon apetit!
I don’t have cable anymore, so I couldn’t watch the Super Bowl even if I wanted to. I am, however, loving Hulu’s voting system for the commercials, which everyone knows is the best part of the event. Besides the food. And just because we aren’t watching the Saints vs the Colts, doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy NACHOS.
These photos were pre-bake, so now they’re even more gooey and crunchy. Mmm! Adapted recipe from this (no onions, add olives, add black beans, add jalapeno).
Alright, back to Glee. We’re on a weekend-long marathon of the first season. Happy Super Bowl, everyone! I hope your team wins. I’m not sure why, but I’m rooting for the Saints, maybe because New Orleans could use some good luck and everyone knows the Colts are good. And maybe I just want Kim Kardashian to get her engagement ring.
Wonderful, you found my blog! I'm Sarah, a writer, runner, RVT student, believer, lover of pretty things (and cats.) I'm also a newlywed, which I'm finding quite enjoyable. To learn more about me, just click here. I hope my blog brings you a little bit (or a lotta bit) of happiness today.
