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!!!