nighttime snackers

Here's a ridiculously good nighttime snack we've been indulging in lately, the waffles are now gone so it has stopped, phew!



I heated up a toasteroven waffle added some ice cream and sunflower seed butter, holy yummyness!  Dave says it reminds him of the malted waffle and ice cream treat he got in Florence.  These were our ingredients, both were on sale at WF so we stocked up on some Tempt.





Dinner last night consisted of a fresh batch of coleslaw, recipe from Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 people, this came together real quick ( I didn't salt and press the cabbage due to time) and is a great simple recipe. 





also we had Creamy Basil Oyster Mushroom Pasta from Extraveganza only I used shiitake mushrooms instead.



and used this delicious fresh local and organic basil, it just smells like summer =)



pretty food



after reading HEAB's ( you should go check out her tea condom) post yesterday about mint I wanted a cup of this



peppermint tea steeped in almond milk, mmmm!

Marley seeking out just the right spot to lay down.  He chose the clean pillowcases on the empty bed ;)  love him!



In the mail this weekend I got such a wonderful surprise. 



One of my Mom's dear friends sent me this Mary Jane's Farm magazine with a gift subscription!  How grateful am I?  totally I love it!!!  I am also very blessed to share friendships with my Mom's friends too, love you girls.
There's an article in this one about fermenting veggies, which is on the agenda here, in fact cabbage is waiting in the fridge.  We were chatting on the phone yesterday about making sauerkraut and she said that it works best when started under the full moon which is the beginning of next week and is why we then had coleslaw last night ;)  My first sauerkraut making adventure to begin next week...woo hoo

miso, pasta, and Thai food

This weekend we tried a new to us Thai place in town, Tuptim Thai Cuisine.  We picked up carryout for our super relaxing Sunday after a night out late, Dave watched the basketball tournament and I caught up on some home things and joined him in the BB watching, how exciting was the end of the Michigan State game?!  ok, back to the food.  I ordered the Panang Curry with tofu and the Som-Tam salad.  The salad was recommended by my SIL and it was so good and fresh.  I did have to specify veggie, there must be fish sauce in it normally.

Here's my curry



and the salad which was tomato, pea pods, peanuts, and shredded green papaya.



The food was good and the place was cute, they have won lots of local favorites awards.  I think I'll have to try the pad thai next.  Most places will let you order it without egg and fish sauce to make it vegan.  I just haven't found food as good as Pin Kaow yet...

More recent eats using up leftovers from Spaghetti with Almond Sauce with added raw spinach leaves. 



and Cashew Cheez Sauce from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook that is so quick to whip up and enjoy over steamed veggies



a Caesar type salad last night with Creamy Horseradish Dressing from The Raw Food Revolution Diet



a salad with raw kraut, avocado, Bubbie's pickles, red peppers, celery, onion and a quick dressing of miso, lemon juice, dijon mustard, and flax oil.



I picked up this raw sauerkraut at WF so I could try it before making our own here at home.  The only thing is I couldn't get it open, so I finally remembered to ask Dave for help when he was home and he opened it somehow in the garage ;)  anyway, it's so good and tangy!  I hope to make ours not so broken down and keep the cabbage it more substantial pieces, but other than that we've been loving it and eating it up on our salads.



scores yesterday at the grocery stores were:

some awesome soy-free chickpea miso from South River for a change of pace.





a case of Tinkyada organic brown rice pasta.  We like this one far better than Trader Joe's (althought TJ is much cheaper) for it's texture and how it holds up after cooking.  TJ's seemed to fall right apart on us, just our experience though.





I went to Arbor Farms in hopes of restocking our vanilla cinammon sunflower butter, but it wasn't stocked.  I decided to try this one which is much the same but with pumpkin seed butter as well (good source of zinc). 



It is yummy, more savory than sweet like the other, but so good and nutritious. 

Here's a couple of quick pics of our purple pantry put back together after my painting session.   





and a project I'm working on that was inspired by this and this.  I've used fabric from old skirts that I made in high school from thrifted items that I just couldn't seem to part with, until now ;)  I think I'm going to love them up on the wall here in the dining room.



We're on our last bag of the date order.  We'll probably be ordering again early summer if anyone is localish and would like to split the order I'd love to do that, email me and we can talk about it.

water conservation and Marley & I take a drive

Happy Monday all! and Happy Spring too!
Does everyone have their future garden plans zooming around in their heads?
I know I do, but first we have to address the issue of keeping the neighborhood cats out of our little garden.  I think we're just going to have to do a fence and then it's on to dreaming about red peppers and basil...kale...

Last week I finally made it into The Energy Outlet in Depot Town during business hours.  They're run by the Clean Energy Coalition and have a cute store front to educate and sell energy conserving tools. 

Their Mission:

'The Clean Energy Coalition is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting clean energy technologies as a way to create healthier, energy independent communitites.'

I went in to see if they sold low flow faucet aerators for our house, they did and I was able to get them for both of our older bathrooms and our kitchen sink.



The ones I replaced in the bathrooms were double the flow rate as these new ones (2.0 gal/min to 1.0 gal/min) and the kitchen was 2.2 gal/min to 1.5 gal/min.  I love the kitchen aerator, it swivels around to reach all of the sink and has two different sprays. 



I was looking for info on buying a new toilet (we're finishing our added half bath right now), Deb was full of good info and they have a line of toilets that they deem to be the best there to order.  It's the Caroma line dual flushers, we're still chatting about our options.  I also picked up tank banks for our two existing toilets to displace and reduce the amount of water used in each flush.



All of these items were easy to install by me and totalled $10.07. 

Another cool find last week were Kleen Kanteens for $10/pretty much half price, at REI.  I couldn't pass this up, so now we have two extra ones for back up ( I had already picked one up a couple months ago, but since they were still there...).  I believe they're on sale because there's a new line of them out with a bunch of new colors, so the sale one here was just this color in the original style.



So Marley and I took a ride to see a veterinarian who practices alternative kitty medicine.  We liked her and her other healer there too.  We will be going back in a few days to have a titer done and hopefully more healing.  The doc thinks that Marley has had a stroke, but should not continue to get any worse.  He has some balance and strength issues with his hind legs.  He is such a trooper and doesn't let it hinder him even though he takes some falls unfortunately.  Here's my handsome Marley cat on the carride  =)



He's such a good traveler, he has MI-NV and NV-MI trips under his belt. 



We stopped at a rest area on the way home for lunch, it was a gorgeous sunny day.  I packed a mandarin and leftover salad and Spaghetti with Almond Sauce and Vegetable Confetti from Delicious Living.  Recipe is here and was in the February 10 magazine.  This pasta was really good and I enjoyed the idea of shredded carrots in it and of course peas, I love them!  We had this for dinner when my SIL stopped to visit after work and stayed for dinner with us, it was great to visit and catch up.  We enjoyed cookies that she brough for dessert, I'll share in a future post.



Marley relaxing and enjoying the adventure



Recently on a cold morning I used leftover cooked brown rice to make a porridge for breakfast.  The rice was leftover from dinner and was only cooked in water.  I warmed it up on the stove in unsweetened almond milk while trying to mush it up some with the spoon.  While it was warming I let some frozen raspberries thaw out on the counter and added them with a scoop of Naturally Nutty sunflower butter and a drizzle of honey.  Delish!





Yes, I do use some raw honey in our diet.  I enjoy it as a sweetener occasionally and choose to purchase from local responsible keepers who raise their bees organically.  We get ours recently from Risks Apiary.



It's also great atop Ezekiel sprouted grain English muffins with homemade raw almond butter. 



Here's the next jar in our stash shared from a kind guy that David works with whose family raises bees close to us and assures me that they are well cared for. 



Hope everyone has a sweet day =)  Thanks for reading!

green. green. green.

Here's my morning green smoothie for this green filled day, spicy and fresh!
St. Patrick's Day smoothie



10oz. water
3 pitted dates
handful of cilantro
2 handfuls of spinach
rest of our fresh pineapple, about 1/2-3/4 cup
small thumbsize knob of fresh ginger

In spring fever fashion here's a couple photos of our last year's garden greens. 
green kale, red leaf, swiss chard, and basil





Don't forget the most nutritious greens today and have fun!

yummy sunflower balls

From the earlier post these balls have been made with our Naturally Nutty sunflower butter.  They're mostly Averie's Peanut Butter Vanilla Balls with a few switches.  I started out with some cashews and walnuts in the Vita-Mix and ground.  Then added a little bit of vanilla powder,  some sunflower seed butter, five dates and mixed again until a dough formed. 



I put the dough in a bowl and stirred in some shredded coconut and chia seeds. 



All rolled up and looking pretty, refrigerate and try not to eat them all in one day, haha, we ate them in two...and I made another batch today ;)



Organic leeks were on sale this week at WF and they reminded me of the farmer's market (which I'm counting down to opening =) so they came home with me.  Aren't they gorgeous? and they smell even better.



When we were in California at Ceago Vinegarden we bought a couple souvenir cookbooks...along with a case of wine...this one from Farmer John I love for helping me with veggies I may not have eaten before.  It's a great reference when you try new things from your farmer's market.  You can look up veggies by name in the back and they give recipes, storage, and prep instructions for them, along with herbs and spices that pair well.  So I looked the the leek section for tips on prep. 





I got them washed up and just sauted in a little evoo to top a baked sweet.  I've been seeing bloggers top sweets with coconut oil, like Heather does here with coco butter.  Oh my is the combo good! 



With the sweet we had apples and walnuts on baby greens with poppy seed dressing from The Raw Food Revolution Diet.  In my opinion this has been our best dinner as of late.  The dressing itself was super delicious itself.  A combo of a juiced orange, flax oil, dijon mustard, orange zest, poppy seeds, and salt.  So pretty in it's color coordinating bowl ;)





Tonight we had Alice Water's Spicy Cauliflower Soup (obviously switched the animal stock for veggie)  click here for the recipe on The Daily Green, over brown rice with leftover sweet potato and leeks.



Other recent greens have been the organic baby greens from Costco with the end of Averie's Tahini slaw dressing.  This dressing takes a minute to stir up (I add extra ginger) it's creamy and tangy.



also we've had some lightly steamed broc and Dreena Burton's Mac oh Geez.  This is my go to comfort food recipe to make for myself, it's out of this world creamy and delicious.  It makes roughly an 8x12 pan, I will admit that Dave had one serving one night, and I have eaten the rest for lunches...that's a lot, but so good!



Was today gorgeous or what?  Mom and I had massages that were fabulous, went for a walk with Mom, and went for another walk with Dave after dinner (housework got done too, no worries).  I love the feel in the air and everyone outside stretching out and playing after the winter, oh and SUNSHINE! 

Saw two pieces of wall art today that read:

Love BIG
live Thankfully