Our version of an all-American 4th of July.

While thinking of tradition 4th of July fare people mostly thing of hamburgers and hotdogs. Speaking of hot dog did anybody else watch any of the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating challenge? Watching them dunk the hot dogs and buns into water and shoving the soggy mess down their throats is just beyond gross!! I can't believe that anyone can eat 60+ hot dogs in such a short span. I seriously doubt I have had half that many hot dogs in my entire life and thank goodness for that! Those things are soso bad for you. Even my hot dog loving husband has pretty much quit eating them(except for maybe a couple time a year...everything in moderation!) after he learned how horrible they are for you in Med school.

I digress....

So, last night to celebrate the independence of our great country we made burgers. Salamon burgers that is :) We used Mark Bittman's recipe from the NY Times and it was great. Once I saw it had mustard & capers in the mix I knew it was right up our alley! Yum! We don't have an outdoor grill yet, so I did them inside on our Cuisinart griller thingy.

We thawed out some frozen wild Alaskan salmon for the burgers and it worked great. I just cut the skin off and into the food processor it went. I also added one egg into the mix to insure they stayed together on the grill. They needed to stay on our baby grill longer than the recipe called for, but they turned out great! We served with a combination of two types of Alexia sweet potato fries that we needed to use up from the freezer and Annies's mustard for dipping.

We also enjoyed a bottle of Red Truck Cabernet Sauvignon and it was very fruity and great for an inexpensive bottle of wine. It didn't pack quite as much of a punch as most cabs, but for this meal that was actually perfect as it didn't overwhelm the salmon. It was almost more like a pinot noir, I would certainly buy again.

For dessert there was home chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches that had been made previously and frozen, they held up beautifully in the freezer to pull out for an easy sweet fix. We actually ended up deciding to skip fire works because we didn't feel like fighting the crowds or really even leaving the house. It was Mark's last day before his surgery rotation and he just wanted to relax, enjoy the wine and not drive anywhere. We ended up watching True Grit and taking the dog for a walk, thats all American right?

So maybe our holiday wasn't so traditional, but it was relaxing and I got some studying for the bar in. Speaking of the bar, it is three weeks from today (insert panic) so I won't be posting until after that is over. However, after that its back to fun experiments in the kitchen, more exciting days and more blogging! Wish me luck!!!!!

I saw this quote today and loved it...


“Here’s to the corkscrew – A useful key to unlock
the storehouse of wit, the treasure of laughter,
the front door of fellowship and the gate to a
pleasant wine journey”
(Sir Winston Churchill)

Haiku dedicated to almond butter

Stolen from the web:

Haiku is a poetic form and a type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Haiku combines form, content, and language in a meaningful, yet compact form. Haiku poets, which you will soon be, write about everyday things. Many themes include nature, feelings, or experiences. Usually they use simple words and grammar. The most common form for Haiku is three short lines. The first line usually contains five (5) syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line contains five (5) syllables. Haiku doesn't rhyme. A Haiku must "paint" a mental image in the reader's mind. This is the challenge of Haiku - to put the poem's meaning and imagery in the reader's mind in ONLY 17 syllables over just three (3) lines of poetry!

I remember having to write haikus in elementary school and thinking how dumb they were. Seriously the most boring "poetry" ever! However, I can't claim to be much of a poet myself, so I will happily take the cop-out in order to express my adoration of almond butter. Oh man this stuff is way too good. Too good like eat a jar of it in two days kinda good. I don't think I would have made it through finals without almond butter spread on apple and frozen banana slices! My two favorite kinds are Earth Balance's creamy agave sweetened almond butter and Justin's chocolate almond butter!

This stuff may be the best nut butter I have had in my entire life, and that is not something I would casually throw out there. Its even better than the Peanut Butter & Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter, which I can't believe is possible!

So here's to you almond butter, a small token of my love and appreciation, a haiku.

Almond Butter is so tasty
Spread on toast, apples, or frozen bananas
Or eaten with a spoon

Did you all get the mental image? Oh good.

Allllllll gone :( Justin's Nut Butter Natural Chocolate Almond Butter, 16 Ounce Jars (Pack of 3)


And if you are not in the mood for chocolate, I love love love this almond butter. The Consistency is great and I really like that it has flax in it and that they use agave as the sweetener.
Earth Balance Almond Butter, Creamy, 16-Ounce (Pack of 12)

Don't give up!

Don't give up on me! A new post is coming this weekend. I feel as if time has been in fast forward since Easter weekend! There was the last week of class. Ever. Then there was two weeks of finals. Then there was law school graduation and the celebrating that accompanies it. Then there was a new job started on Monday. Whew!

I am quickly learning how hard it is to fit in work, exercise, cooking, and spending time with family and friends into 24 hours. Oh and studying for the bar? Yep, its a little necessary to find time for that as well. Looks like the blog post are going to be limited to weekends and (very) quick weekday posts. Gotta make time for doing things you enjoy right?! Too much law and I will go crazy! I see lots of baking in my future in order to de-stress. Plus, with Mark studying so hard for boards he deserves some sweet treats!

Whole Grain Lemon Blueberry Bundt Cake

I made the most perfect Spring dessert to take with us to Mark's parent's house for Easter. Lemon Blueberry cake with a lemon cream cheese glaze. This cake was whole grain, no dairy, no butter, no eggs, but you never would have known. Everyone really enjoyed it and even Mark's 80 year old Grandmother who is famous for her desserts headed back for seconds!

Based on the Lemon Bundt Cake recipe from Have your Cake and Vegan too by Kris Holechek of NomNomNomblog fame. This book is wonderful... check it out! 

1&1/2 cup spelt flour

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1&1/4 cup oat flour

1 cup organic granulated sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 almond or other milk

2 large organic lemons (important to get organic because you will be using the zest)

1/3 cup melted coconut oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup fresh or frozen organic blueberries (I used frozen, do not thaw. Take out of freezer right before you are going to use them to prevent them from bleeding into the rest of your batter.) 

-Preheat oven to 350. Grease your bundt pan. 

-In a medium bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl, combine the milk, lemon zest and juice (you should get about 1/3 cup lemon juice) and let them sit a few minutes. 

-Add the oil and vanilla, mix to combine. 

-Add half of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, gently incorporating, and then repeat with the rest of the dry being stirred into the wet. 

 -Gently fold the berries in.  

-Bake for 50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 20 minutes. 

-While cake is cooling make your cream cheese glaze. 

-Run a knife around the outside of the pan and invert the cake. I do this by putting a dinner plate over the top of the bundt pan and flipping it over. 

-Drizzle the glaze over the cake. 

Lemon Cream Cheese Glaze

4 oz. of cream cheese, I used tofutti.

1/2 coconut oil

1 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2-4 tablespoons almond or other milk

Combine cream cheese, vanilla, lemon juice and coconut oil with a hand mixer. Add powdered sugar slowly. Add 2-4 tablespoons of almond milk to thin it out to drizzlezble consistency. Pour into bottom of a pastry bag (or if you are ghetto like me a plastic sandwich bag with one end cut off) and glaze your cake.

I got the cutest metal cake tester at the Le Creuset outlet in Colorado. No more searching for toothpicks or having to use a knife to test whether my baked goods are done in the middle! 

Gotta love the color of this pan, my favorite!! 

Whipping together the cream cheese glaze.

Ready to be flipped!

A delicious cake fit for Easter lunch or any Springtime celebration is ready to be served! 

Happy Easter!!!

The Easter bunny knows me so well!! Look at what that sweet lil' rabbit (a.k.a. my awesome MIL) left in my basket this morning..

Red wine, organic green tea, Reese's peanut butter egg, Jelly Bellys and roasted almond butter!! I love still getting an Easter basket. Mark and I guess that we will probably continue to get them until someday we are the ones making the Easter baskets for our own children. That will be fun too though :) 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter despite all the bad weather we had in this area of the world. I know the rain had been much prayed for however, so thank you Lord! 

I'll leave this short post with a few Easter quotes and a verse that I think is pretty great:

The resurrection gives my life meaning and direction and the opportunity to start over no matter what my circumstances.  ~Robert Flatt

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time.  ~Martin Luthe

Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there.  ~Clarence W. Hall

"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die."
-- John 11:25-26

Healthy Peanut Butter and Jelly Thumbprint Cookies and Lazy Samoas

I am married to a man who loves cookies. While I could usually take it or leave it when it comes to dessert, Mark always needs to have something sweet after a meal. What's a health nut, who happens to LOVE to bake, to do about this situation? Create delicious cookies that will satisfy any sweet tooth without compromising good health!

Last weekend I made a batch of "Lazy Samoas" from the fabulous cookbook Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Samoas are Mark's favorite girl scout cookie and he really liked this version of them. I'm not a huge coconut person but Mark and his family love it so I can see making this again in the future for some sort of holiday gathering. The cookies are called lazy because they skip the step of making a shortbread cookie with coconut topping and just make the cookie itself with shredded coconut mixed in and then you dip the bottom of the cookies in chocolate and drizzle the tops as well.

This cookbook is just too great, there are so many recipes I can't wait to try out, such as :Blueberry Spice Crumb Bars, "Sell Your Soul" Pumpkin Cookies, Cherry Almond Cookies, Peanut Apple Pretzel Drops(!!!), Spiced Sweet Potato Blondies....I could go on and on. I would challenge anyone who is doubtful about how good baked goods can be without dairy or eggs to try one of these recipes. Your mouth and heart will thank you :)

Here is the most important part of this post: Peanut Butter + Blackberry Jam= seriously delicious cookie. Yes, I love peanut butter more than pretty much any food. Its a little embarrassing. I mean, come on, I consider myself to be a foodie. Grocery shopping is one of my favorite activities, I love researching new restaurants to try out, I read cookbooks like they are novels and my ideal job would be to write for Food and Wine Magazine or some sort of travel/food publication. Yet, I adore the same food eaten by picky five year olds across America. Le sigh.

In my defense my enthusiasm for nut butters does not end with the mere peanut, oh no. In my pantry right now sits a gastronomical variety of jars including chocolate hazelnut, maple almond butter, vanilla flax almond butter, smooth almond butter, crunchy almond butter, as well as agave peanut butter, dark chocolate peanut butter, cinnamon raisin peanut butter and natural crunchy peanut butter. This may seem excessive but you never know what mood will strike you and you must be prepared. Granny smith apple with almond butter? Frozen banana slices with chocolate hazelnut? Oatmeal with cinnamon raisin peanut butter? These are everyday eats for me. Sometimes all three of these variations in a day.

I justify this by telling myself that its the healthy kind of fat and since I'm mostly vegetarian, I need the protein. Really though, I don't need to justify it. I love it and I would usually rather eat peanut butter out of the jar than another kind of dessert. Hey, makes my birthday easy! Next year mark can just stick a candle in a jar of Peanut Butter and Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams and I'll be a happy girl!

However, my ambivalence about dessert ends when the dessert includes that magic ingredient. Last night I wanted to make cookies and I wanted them to be peanut butter and I wanted them married to their classic companion, jelly. Thus, PB & J Thumbprints were born. The peanut butter cookie itself is loosely adapted from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar's recipe for agave peanut butter cookies, I just changed up some of the ingredients and changed the cookie from a classic cross-hatched pb cookie to a thumbprint.

I used blackberry jam for the filling but grape, strawberry, anything you would put on a PB&J would be great. Crofter's organic spreads are our favorite brand of jam. Mark has a peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich for a pre-bedtime snack almost every night. Thank goodness I have a helper to plow through that vast pb collection!

Here's my recipe:

1/2 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup brown rice syrup (or more agave, maple syrup or honey)
1/3 cup melted coconut oil
2/3 cup creamy or creamy salted peanut butter
2 tablespoons almond milk
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 and 1/2 cup spelt flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of jam or jelly (or even melted chocolate!) of your choice

Preheat oven to 325. Line two baking sheets with wax paper.
In a large bowl, wisk together agave, brown rice syrup, oil, peanut butter, milk, falx seeds, and both extrats until very smooth. Sift in the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix to form a soft dough.
Use your hands to roll about a tablespoon of  dough at a time into balls and place them on the baking sheet.
Bake the cookies for about 9 minutes or until puffy.
While cookies are baking, put the jam into a small saucepan over low heat to soften.
Take cookies out of the oven. Use either the back of a small spoon, a melon baller, or of course your thumb if you can handle the heat, to make and indention in each cookie. Use a spoon to fill the indentions with the jam.
Put the cookies back in the oven for 6-7 minutes more, check to make sure they aren't getting to brown around the edges.
Take cookies out of oven and let cool on baking sheets for five minutes before moving to wire racks to cool completely.

This recipe made a lot, around two dozen or a little more. So, I took some to school to share with friends and they were very well received! Mark says he thinks they are very good, but he still prefers the samoas. To each their own I suppose! The more peanut butter for me!

Cakes that won't make your bundt look big!

Couldn't resist the cooking joke in the title :) Did you know that Bundt is actually a brand and not just a shape of cake? Its like how people always call facial tissue kleenex...but I don't know what you would call a bundt cake if you did call it that...wikipedia refers to it as "a distinctively ring-shaped pan" but nobody is going to go around saying "Wow! This distinctively ring-shaped pan is really delicious!" Plus, the name bundt is just funny.

So Target has a of this really cute Easter colored bakeware right now and since I can resist nothing in turquoise I bought a bundt pan and a new cookie sheet. I have always loved the way bundt cakes look, so pretty without needing to be entirely frosted. All you need is a sprinkling of powdered sugar or a glaze of icing and you are good to go! As Mark was out of the house this weekend being a camp counselor at camp for sick kiddos, I baked two bundt cakes! They both came out beautifully out of the pan thanks to a good coating of spray olive oil. I have a feeling I am going to be using this pan all the time! I found that thankfully you don't have to follow an actual bundt recipe, it can be any bread of muffin recipe that you want to have fun with and put into the bunt pan! Both of the recipes I loosely followed are pretty darn healthy...bundts guaranteed to not go straight to your butt! That is as long as you don't eat the entire cake, or eat the entire cake with the help of only on other person and a small dog. Mark and I really need to make better friends with out neighbors so I'm not just baking for the two of us!

Both of the cakes I made involved banana due to a bunch of them sitting ripe on the counter but now I'm dying to try other types of bundt: pumpkin, lemon poppy seed, apple and of course peanut putter!!!!

The first cake I made was banana cocoa with a peanut butter glaze:

 Of course I forgot to get a picture until after I cut a big hunk out of it.

The cake recipe comes from here. The icing recipe is from Bethenny Frankel, bless that woman and her yummy healthy cooking ways! Next time I'll have to try the cake recipe that goes with this frosting, it calls for nothing but warm water as liquid in the cake yet people claim it comes out delicious and really moist?! How can this be? I must investigate soon. Anyway, here is the frosting recipe with her chocolate cake recipe, which I'm sure would be great in a bundt pan.

The next cake was banana blueberry:

I followed this recipe but next time would bake at 325 for a longer time instead of 350 because while the outside got browned the insides were still a bit battery, plus I always like to bake things with agave nectar in them at a lower temp because it burns at a lower temp than sugar. Despite this it was still really good and the nutritionals are pretty fab. I would make this again and possibly do some sort of lemon glaze to fancy it up.

Either of these recipes would work great for a brunch to serve in lieu of muffins or a sweet bread, bundts just look so darn pretty on a cake stand. I don't think either of them are probably sweet enough to serve for dessert at a party but they work great for breakfast or dessert around this house. Especially the banana cocoa one warmed up and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

Bright Shiny Life

Ah Spring! Everything is bright, shiny and happy right now. It is a time for new beginnings (re:finding time to blog) and as we move into this beautiful time of year I am doing all I can to celebrate the season. All of us Oklahomans and Texans know that spring is usually a fleeting little dream of a time that lasts all of three weeks before it is just full blown hot. Yet, the past week has been just lovely, perfect for spending every last second that you can outdoors.

Mark, Peanut and I have been taking lots of long walks through the neighborhood. Sometimes Peanut will be lucky enough to go twice a day! Once in the morning with Mark when I am gone at school and again in the evening with both of us. He is quite the social dog, he wants to meet every single person and dog that we pass. This includes lawn men and roofers, he is usually going crazy pulling the leash to go into the yard where they are working. It is times like this when I wish he spoke english so I could explain to him that while he is adorable, not everyone has the time to meet and praise him. Poor lil' Peanut though...if anyone should be dreading the summer it should be him, the pup's got so much fur and even being out in the middle of the day now can get too hot for him to walk very far...there is no way he will be able to walk on those 100+ degree days. Since my bar exam prep classes start at 9:00 am this summer, I am going to try to take him for a quick walk prior to class before it heats up too much.

Emerging from such a frigid winter has really been inspiring me, I forgot how happy sunshine can make you feel!! Last weekend I went full out Martha Stewart and bought new flowers for my pots, refinished an old piece of furniture and bought all of the supplies to start my own organic garden in our backyard!!

I am so excited for this garden, it is something that I have wanted ever since we bought this house. I think that this first go round in planting will be very experimental but hey, you have to start somewhere right? Tomorrow Mark is going to build the raised garden, we bought all of the lumber and hardware cloth for the bottom at home depot, he borrowed a saw from a friend and we are all set to go! From my research on the easier vegetables to plant in Oklahoma that will do well being planted this time of year, we are going to do carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and then maybe okra or swiss chard. I can't wait to have this little plot of earth to work in. As a avid cook I love buying local organic produce and what could be more local than walking out to my backyard! I really do hope that I prove to have a green thumb and that I can be patient enough to keep up a garden. Patience isn't always my strong suit. I think thats one reason why I love cooking so much, its a creative process that comes together very quickly. Even with baking your finished masterpiece comes out of the oven in usually an hour or less. Waiting weeks for results in the garden will take some getting used to, but I also hope it will be a good stress reliever during this crazy summer to just go mindlessly weed & water.

My apologies for this boring no photos post- I will put up pictures of the garden as soon as we finish it! As for my furniture project, I do have pictures of it! This piece was handed down from my parents who had it sitting in their garage forever, before that I believe it was my great-grandfathers! So its quite the study little piece, and it was free, so of course I wanted to make it work in our house! We decided it would work great as a media center for the TV in our bedroom so I went to work painting it to match the bedside tables that I painted last year.

Here is a before photo, sitting out on the back porch ready to be sanded down....

and after a good sanding, a couple coats of metallic champagne colored spray paint, and new crystal knobs!

The angle is weird because I'm taking it kneeling on the bed looking down, I forget to get a good one before we moved it back inside the house. My mom pointed out that the top looks like its a different color in the picture, its not but looks that way because of the way the light was shining on it. Total cost? About $60, sure beats buying a new $400-500 piece of furniture for the same purpose!

Oh and along the saving money line of thought...I'm doing a no clothes buying challenge for six months. This is because I have zero need in the world for them and until I have a spiffy new lawyer job where I need new clothes for work, there is just no reason to spend money on clothes when I want to spend money on so many other fun things like buying gourmet ingredients to cook with, I mean whole foods is being built within walking distance from me, I need to save up!!! Haha all kidding aside I have at least 6 dresses in my closet that have never even been worn...and as much as I love clothes I have to echo the sentiment of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in The City 2 when the girl in the store asks why she hasn't seen her lately and she tells her she has "been cheating on fashion with furniture." Well I'm cheating on fashion with furniture, and food, and travel and when you look at it that way, having more to spend on those things makes it all worth it. So goodbye jcrew, anthro and neimans, I will no longer be checking your websites, at least not until September 28 (the 6 month mark from my decision to do this). Oh and Mom? If you are reading this, gifts of clothing are allowed by all means :)

Mark finished test block today, only one more until he is done with test blocks forever! I am so proud of him, he never ceases to amazing me with how smart he is and I know he is going to make a wonderful doctor someday. In his honor I baked a chocolate banana bundt cake with the ripe bananas I had on the counter, so I'm off to try that out. I'll post the pictures and recipe if it ends up being as yummy as it looks!

Snow days and Birthday parties

It is another snowy day here in the Sooner State and I am loving every second of it. Leisurely breakfasts, mugs of hot green tea, hanging out in my jammies all day, time to peruse the internet in search of the perfect summer vacation spot, all with a lovely white backdrop when I look out the window.

However, they have announced already that school is on for tomorrow! Seriously?! I know that we have already missed a record setting number of days, but really? The streets are covered in snow and there is no way my non-4 wheel drive car is even making it out of our garage. Lets hope that Mark makes it back from his morning classes early enough to make good on his offer to chauffeur me to my 3:00 class. What a gentleman! I suppose I should focus on the very few things I do not like about snow days in order to accept the inevitable of being forced out of my happy little snowed in home.
 1) I am so sick of running on the treadmill, seriously most boring thing ever. I could only make it through 30 minutes of the hour I was supposed to do yesterday and I'm avoiding today's hour and 10 minutes run like the plague. I will be happy when the snow melts so that I can run outside again!
2) The kitchen keeps calling to me. "Alllllisonnnnn why don't you come into the kitchen?....You are relaxing on the couch and should eat some more snacks!! We have all kinds of good things for you to munch on while sitting around all day!" So yes, snow days are an enabler for me to bake and eat too much. This is actually not such a bad thing since it seems like I could eat enough for an army with this half marathon training business, but I do feel bad for poor Mark who may have to eat dinner alone because I've ruined my appetite.
3) The puppy is stir crazy because he can't go on walks and despite my efforts he simply will not walk on the treadmill. This makes for a very riled up little dog.

After sitting here pondering what number 4 could be, I give up. There is just too much good about a snow day and too little bad to make me want to re-enter reality.

Last weekend, it was nice in the short reprieve of the snow to get to celebrate my friend Carissa's birthday!

Here we all are playing dress up from my apron collection so that we can whip up a batch of cupcakes in honor of the birthday girl! I decided that since it was Carissa that gave me the Babycakes cookbook that we needed to make something out of there so she could give it a try. I had everything for carrot cake cupcakes, so after checking in with the birthday girl to confirm that she in fact loved carrot cake, we set out to bake. As our dinner reservations were fast approaching we had to leave it to mark who was home studying to get them out of the oven. This would have been fine besides the fact that the recipe made 24 cupcakes and I decided to make 12 big cupcakes and use the rest of the batter for mini cupcakes.....without warning Mark that the mini-cupcakes would have come come out before the big ones. Alas, we we arrived back at the house to frost the mini cupcakes had been burned to a crisp :(
It was too bad but totally my fault to not think to tell him about the faster baking time! Thankfully the big ones turned out just fine. We all though they were the perfect amount of not too sweet.

Carrie Beth helped me to pick a pretty background for the cupcake's close up. The china doesn't get much daily love so I'm sure it was glad to help out! In the interest of saving time instead of making the frosting from the cookbook I bought a jar of the Cherrybrook Kitchen vanilla frosting. It was pretty runny to spread on the cupcake and didn't have the traditional fluffy frosting look but it tasted really yummy. I though it suited the cupcakes nicely because like them it was gluten and dairy free. I think I would have preferred a cream cheese frosting, which is the only kind of frosting I normally like. Overall this cupcake/frosting combo was very good. Not my most favorite Babycakes recipe to date, but still quite delish and I have high hopes for the red velvet cupcakes. Red velvet cake is something that Mark loves and I'm planning on making the cupcakes for Valentine's Day. I even found the all natural red food coloring at the health food store so I'm all set!

 I wonder if this winter really is a freak year or if it will start becoming normal for us to get this much snow so far south? I read that because of global warming the cold jet stream that is normally over Canada has been pushed down lower and lower into the U.S. leaving them without enough snow on their ski resorts and us with way more than we are used to! Funny how people are so quick to say Ha! Look how cold it is, there is no such thing as global warming! When really it is probably causing the crazy cold weather. As much as I love the snow, it is a little disconcerting. We really need to keep doing all we can to keep our Earth healthy! I hope that everyone who has to venture back out into the world tomorrow stays safe!

Snow day!

A snowy day it is here in OKC! I am loving being snowed in with my wonderful husband and puppy. Having school canceled is always a bonus as well. Actually, its not just the schools that are closed, the whole city is pretty much shut down and the news have deemed it a "white-out" and asked people not to go out because all of the blowing snow can disorient you, causing you to get lost in the blizzard. No need to convince me~ I don't plan on going anywhere today! Except for an adventure into the backyard to introduce Peanut his his first real snow. The results were hilarious.

First, Peanut ventures out to the end of the porch to check out the snow.

Then, he used his own body to sled down the steps and into the deeper snow on the ground.

"I'm not quite sure what to think about this white stuff but its fun to eat!"

Back up the steps to come in and put my coat on!

All ready to go back out!

Snow puppy!!

I do feel bad that Peanut has to be inside with us all day though. Usually he loves to go in the back yard and run around during the day to burn off puppy energy. Today he is stuck inside and wants Mark to play with him, which he can't because he needs to use today as a study day. Guess he will have to settle for me chasing him around the house. It will be good for us because I am known to get pretty antsy sitting around too much myself.  

Plus, the more I move the more muffins I can eat! I made blueberry mini muffins for us this morning to drink with our coffee (Mark) and green tea (me). I based the recipe on the one in the Babycakes cookbook, with a few changes. I added some lemon zest and lemon juice to add a little sunny zing to the frigid day. So good! I like muffins that are not too sweet, usually bakery cupcakes are nothing more than cupcakes without frosting. For breakfast I like something that won't make my blood sugar hit the roof first thing in the morning. These slightly sweet healthy little muffins are a perfect way to start out a snow day or any day for that matter! 

whole wheat mini blueberry muffins

 2 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/4 applesauce

2/3 cup agave nectar

2/3 almond milk (or whatever you have)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon lemon juice

zest of one small lemon

2/3 blueberries

Preheat oven to 325. Spray or grease a 24-cup mini muffin pan.

In medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a small bowl combine the coconut oil, applesauce, agave nectar, milk, vanilla, lemon juice and lemon zest. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until batter is almost smooth. Gently, with a rubber spatula, fold in the blueberries. 

Pour the batter into the muffin cups, filling each to the top so that you end up with the fun little muffin tops after they have risen. Bake the muffins on the center rack. After 10 minutes rotate the pan 180 degrees and then bake for another 5 minutes. The finished muffins will bounce back slightly when pressed. 

Let muffins sit in the pan for about 10 minutes the move to a wire cooling rack. 

Speaking of good recipes, I tried a great one for seitan piccata on Friday night. Growing up, one of my brother and my favorite meals was the veal piccata that my mom made. Obviously, as I don't eat red meat anymore and Mark never ate veal growing up because of ethical reasons, we loved this meatless version of piccata! The recipe is from freakingdelicious.com, here is the link. She shows great step-by-step photos of the process.  http://freakindelicious.com/tangy-seitan-piccata/  I pared the wheat-meat with brown basmati rice and sauteed kale and spinach. Everything was topped with the delicious piccata sauce, I will for sure be making this again! We enjoyed some of the sauvignon blanc that I used in the sauce with dinner, but for the most part we just like red wine better! In fact I think I may just have to open a bottle for red to enjoy this snowy evening if find that we don't have school again tomorrow :) 

I doubled the recipe for the seitan and put it in the freezer for a future meal. This was my first time making seitan. To be honest I thought it would be really hard and there are so many methods to make it that I was a little confused with what the best way was. It turned out to be really easy though! I just simmered it, but next time I think I'll try the method  I have seen on a lot of blogs where you shape it into a sausage, wrap it in foil and steam or bake it. Hope everybody stays warm today and has fun in the kitchen, I know I will! 

Gluten free adventures

During my senior year of college I began having horrible stomach aches after nearly every meal. It was really awful and annoying to not know what was causing the problem. Around this time I began to hear a lot about people having sensitivity to gluten in food and I wondered if this was maybe my problem. So I headed to the internist to be scoped, praying I wouldn't have to give up bread and beer along with a ton of other foods that have gluten in them. I'm blessed to say that I wasn't diagnosed with celiac disease, in fact I'm allergic to poultry, but that's a story for another day!

Even though Gluten did not turn out to be a problem for me, it is a big problem for a lot of people. Their intestines simply cannot process the gluten and it can make them very sick. In fact, even people who don't have celiac can have gluten sensitivity that they are unaware of. Some recent studies say that about 1 in 200 people have celiac and around 1 in 7 people have some sort of gluten sensitivity. Needless to say, all of us could probably to do eat gluten free every once in a while to give our systems a break. You might even notice how much better you feel when eating gluten free even if you didn't know you had a problem with it!

All this brings me to my fabulous new cookbook from Babycakes bakery in NYC!

Awww, look how happy it is to be joining some of its cookbook buddies on my shelf of favorites! My dear friend Carissa gave me this cookbook as a 1 year anniversary present on New Years Eve (thanks Carissa!!) and I've been baking like mad out of it ever since. All of the recipes are vegan, and most all of them are gluten free.

I have heard so much about the Babycakes bakery and I'm dying to go. And this is coming from a girl that could usually take it or leave it when it comes to desserts! The Owner, Erin Mckenna, found out that she had food allergies and set about baking up some delicious but healthy sweets. The bakery has been such a huge hit in NYC that she opened up another location in LA and get this..a new location in Disney World!! It think its great that Disney would want to bring a gluten free vegan bakery to their theme park. Places like babycakes are helping to mainstream healthier food and I'm sure kids and adults alike will be packing in there! How awesome is it for kids that have gluten or dairy allergies to be able to get a cookie or cupcake in Disney world! Yay! The pic below is of their store front in NYC, its adorable.

So far I have made the banana bread with chocolate chips, the pumpkin muffins, the cornbread, the double chocolate chip cookies and the chocolate chip cookies and they have all been soso good. I had never done any gluten free baking before so I was worried about how it would turn out but I should have known Erin McKenna wouldn't lead me astray. Even Mark loved everything I have made, especially the chocolate chip cookies.

We skipped dessert at the restaurant after our date on Friday night and came home to make these. In the cookbook Erin says that you can make sandwich cookies out of them by putting icing in the center of them. Well, I see your move Erin and I'll raise you one...we put ice cream in between and made ice cream sandwiches! I did plain vanilla in mine and Mark did cookie dough ice cream. Chocolate chip cookie dough inside of a chocolate chip cookie!?? Yep, it pretty much blew his mind too.

I can't wait to try out pretty much everything in this cookbook. None of the gluten free ingredients were very hard to find like I though they might be. A lot of the recipes call for Bob's Red Mill gluten free baking mix. It makes everything super easy instead of measuring out small amounts of several different types of flour you just use two cups of the stuff and I found it at Super Target! The next things to make on my list are the cinnamon apple bread and probably the red velvet cupcakes for Mark because he loves those. Seriously the only downside to this cookbook is my thinking that because the baked goods are good for me that the portion sizes should be gigantic. Half a loaf of banana bread in a day anyone? Just me? I dare someone to limit him/herself to one slice or cookie!

Childhood Nutrition

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that good nutrition, especially for children, is something I really care about. I strongly believe that the smartest, most active and well developed children are those filled with healthy and delicious foods. That being said, does anybody else hate the chef boyardee commercials as much as I do? I mean its processed meat in a can. Let's be frank, there is nothing good for you about this food. Yet the commercials focus in on the fact that there is "a full serving of vegetables" in the can and that the Mother's don't want their children to find this out, because if (heaven forbid) the kid knew there was vegetables in there he wouldn't eat it. Is it just me or is there so much wrong with this message?!

First of all, we should be encouraging children to eat and explore all fruits and vegetables from an early age so that they can find which ones they like and develop a palate for more than mac and cheese. Just to brag on my own Mom a little bit, I used to bring asparagus to preschool in a baggie as part of my lunch. My brother as a child loved mushrooms. We were exposed to all kinds of things that people wouldn't think of as kid food and because of this I am so blessed because it lead me down the road to my passion for cooking and healthy eating. So these commercials obviously make me mad because why should we have to hid the fact that something has vegetables in it so a child should like it? We should trying to equate vegetables with yummyness, not trying to make kids think that everything yummy is void of nutrition.

Second, just because a processed can of animal product and enriched flour has a full serving of vegetables in no way does it make the product healthy or "secretly nutritious" as chef boyardee says. A full serving of fruit in this case means 1/2 of tomato sauce, yep 1/2 cup, real nutritious right? Along with that 1/2 of tomato sauce you also get 9 g of fat, 3.5 g saturated fat, 860 mg sodium and 8 g sugar for 1 serving of big beefaroni, and really who only eats half the can? 


Don't get me wrong, I understand that parents are busy and don't always have the time to whip up some big gourmet meal and its attractive to just open up a can and heat it in the microwave. Really though, it only takes 8 minutes to boil a pot of whole wheat penne pasta and simmer some organic store bought marinara sauce to pour over it. Toss in some frozen broccoli or spinach with the sauce and you have a much healthier meal in 10 minutes that I'm sure most kids would happily eat. There are so many quick and easy meals that would only take about an extra 5 minutes and really, when it comes to feeding a child better brain food isn't it worth it? 


Sorry about the major soapbox, but that commercial just came on again and I felt the need to vent! Chef Boyardee is in no way the only company guilty of doing this, trying to convince consumers their product is healthy, lots of other companies like general mills and the dairy association are major repeat offenders too. 


Hope everyone is having a great week and I'll post soon with some recipe reviews from a great new cookbook I got, the Babycakes bakery cookbook!! I promise a more picture filled fun post :) 

Another year. another blogging attempt

2011. Wow can't believe its here already. 2010 was truly a wonderful year in my life. 1st year of marriage, bought our first home, started my final year of law school and best of all had some truly fabulous travel adventures. I hope that 2011 can live up it its predecessor!! My goals for this year are not unreasonable wishes (get in the best shape ever! keep the house sparkling clean!) Instead 2011 is going to be all about chasing my passions and blogging about them. I have been inspired and entertained by other's blogs for the last 4 or so years and this will hopefully be the year I stop lurking and start chronicling my own life to join in on the fun. One failed cooking & fashion blog blog later, I'm back, ready to not limit what I feel like writing, thus Allison Wonderland. When I was younger I thought that the movie Alice in Wonderland was "Allison Wonderland" (they really do sound alike) I think the name is representative of what I want to remember life is, a wonderland of adventures. Not only travel (my favorite thing in the world) but everyday adventures as well.

What I dream of doing in 2011-
Take more pictures
Blog
Find a job
Run
Travel
Live life in the moment

After 2 1/2 years in law school I am really starting to realize how much I miss writing, maybe I should have stuck with my undergrad journalism degree and tried to get a job instead of continuing on to law school. Not that law school hasn't been great, it has! Love being challenged, learning new things, meeting new smarty pants friends, having holiday breaks :) but I really miss the creative aspect of journalism as I am a quite right brained!

Let's end this post with a photo homage to 2010 shall we?

Honeymoon in Maui

Lobster rolls in Boston

Edinburgh, Scotland

A stay in Inverlochy Castle

Beautiful Scotland Highlands

St. Patrick's cathedral, Dublin

Owl Island, North Carolina for a wedding

Our sweet new puppy, Peanut

Cabo, Mexico


I cannot wait to see what adventures 2011 has in store!!!