This is a combination post on tasty fresh veggie pizzas and my cutie almost 18 month old.

What you need:

-Portabella mushrooms, 3-4. I factor one for me 2 for Tim. Use your best judgement.

-Pesto sauce about 1 cup

-fresh veggies:

-tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, or spinach.

-1-1.5 cups of italian cheeses.

How To Make it:

1. Preheat oven to 400f.

2. Make Pesto from scratch, if you choose. (throw a handful of basil/parsley, about 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil, some parmesan cheese or pine nuts, and salt and pepper in your food processor)

3. If using store bought pesto, obviously skip 2 and move on to gutting your mushroom. Scrape the inside of the mushroom out using a spoon. Remove all of the “gills,” those little lines on the inside.

4. Spread a healthy amount of pesto inside and add your tomatoes. If using other veggies, I like to saute them before adding to the mushroom.

5. Top with cheese, you know what to do here. Adjust cheese amounts according to your tastes, and sprinkle with a little fresh cracked pepper.

6. Bake for about 25 min, unless you are like me and having to cook in a counter top oven, cook for 10 min. Since our oven broke, I have had to make major adjustments to my recipes. So, one really awesome amendment we made to this one and I highly suggest it, is to take the fully loaded and cooked mushroom and let the bottom saute in some butter in a pan. Soooo Yum!

Enjoy it!

Now, on to this cute boy.

You would think that from these photos, I coach him on to pose for photos, but I swear he did this on his own. Son of photographers, much?

Far off, distant glance into the world, look at his feet standing like he came right out of a magazine, and hand in his pocket. This guy…

Also, you can find this custom shirt and pretty much anything else cute for the little’s in your life, through my sewing genius sister-in-law, Bethany at, joshandbethany@yahoo.com.

And here is one where I actually got a mommy smile.

Last one, promise. This was an almost kiss for mommy.

One of the main reasons that I wanted to start posting to my own blog, is so I could have a record somewhere of the pictures from my son growing up. And I know that when I began this little side project, there were promises of home renovation photos and personal pictures too, so here is my start. Without further explanation you may begin to ooh and ahh at his cuteness.

First Birthday (Nov.24th 2010)

Once he had the juice box that is the only place he wanted to be. on the rug, drinking his little juice box, safely scoping everyone out from a distance.

So, it kind of looked like this. We pulled the rug outside for all of the crawling babes and mommies to sit on. Tim and Dad threw together some last minute benches for everyone else. And it was just perfect. We put all of the drinks in Tim’s wheel barrow and snacks were inside with some precious snap shots from his first year.

Cute pictures of Shepherd, yummy crispy pops, and lots of friends, what a party it was!

These were the party favors. Homemade salted caramel popcorn, or the most dangerous thing you will ever eat.

This is what it looked like inside, my mom and sister helped pull all of this together so nicely. Also, our good friend, Josh Taylor painted those adorable little chicks for Shepherd in the bottom left of the frame. They are hanging in his room, and I’ll get a better feature of them when I post a room update.

And for weeks we were saving glass jars to hang from our beautiful live oak in the front yard and it came out lovely. so lovely in fact, they are still up there.

Nina and Papa came all the way from Dallas as a surprise! And it wouldn’t have been the same party without them, of course.

One of your favorite cousins, Liam!

Daddy and Shepherd.

And we brought out the cake, you were so excited! Mostly about all of the singing though.

Mommy and Shepherd.

And of course, all of the cousins had to help you open your presents too!

Nina and Papa with all of the present grandchildren. Note, the photographers child is the one screaming.

Okay, now here’s a decent one. But seriously in almost every cousin photo, my child is the sad one.

And just like that he was one.

I received a batch of Japanese eggplants in our delivery from our CSA (community supported agriculture) last week and held on to them for a while not knowing quite how I wanted to use them. The Village Cafe makes a sandwich that has marinated roasted eggplants and other veggies on it, and it is delicious. I always just order it and have them dump it all onto a bed of spinach, to skip on the bread. So, I set out to make my own! I looked at a few recipes online and landed on this below. As far as recipes go this one has a lot of flexibility. If you don’t love the vinegar taste, you can either omit it all together or reduce it considerably. Tim says this is definitely a “kristen” recipe, meaning, it is tart. I have so far put these on some warm chicken with sauteed tomatoes (see below), poured them over avocado with my lunch, had a spoonful by themselves for a snack,  and mixed with other veggies over a salad.

Ingredients:

either 1 large eggplant or two medium Japanese eggplants

-1/3 C olive oil/or other oil of choice

-3 tbl. of red wine vinegar

-1 tbl. of balsamic vinegar

-1/4 tsp dried fennel

-1/4 tsp dried rosemary

-1 teaspoon of italian seasoning or herbs de provence

-1/4 tsp kosher salt/sea salt

-1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper

How To make it:

1. If using large eggplant, make sure to peel first. Slice eggplant or dice it depending on your preference for size. Think easy bites.

2. Mix all oils, vinegars, and seasonings in the bottom of a Tupperware or another good container.

3. Add the eggplant to the mixture, seal it up, and give it a good shake.

4. Now let it marinate at least an hour in the fridge.

5. Roast in oven at 400, for 7 min. Then rotate veggies and roast another 7 min.

Enjoy!

This is a quick, easy recipe, that I intend to prepare every week, so I can have this stuff on hand in my fridge. A great go to good fat to add to any meal. Enjoy and let me know if you change any of the recipe up!

*Also I am trying this same marinade with zucchini and summer squash. I picked up some on the “reduced for quick sale rack” at the Village Foods in Bryan, and they were obviously a bit past their prime for raw eating, so I’m going to give them a try.

For the last of the chilly days in Texas, this soup hits just the right spot. It’s creamy, warm, and delicious. Plus you can feel good about eating a substantial serving of broccoli, which contains great doses of Vitamin A, C, and Iron too. Oh, and of course, because it is something I make it takes all of about 10 min from chopping to heating, so you can enjoy this last minute. I am always trying to find new ways to enjoy vegetables and pureeing them into warm creamy soup is a great option this time of year.

Ingredients:

2 bunches of fresh broccoli

1- large yellow onion

butter/oil/ some kind of cooking agent

1 can of coconut milk

seasonings

Optional Garnish:

-fresh crumbled bacon

-toasted sliced almonds

-a salty cheese, like Parmesan

1. Wash and chop broccoli. Also, if you don’t have bacon already cooked go ahead and let that start cooking. Think big crunchy bacon bits, so it will taste best if you make crispy bacon, as opposed to chewy.

2. Warm up butter or oil in pan, and while that is warming chop up your onion. Don’t worry about getting them perfect, they’re just going to end up blended anyways, so think a quick rough chop.

3. Saute the onions first, then add broccoli until tender. Season with garlic, garlic powder, salt, pepper, or try a new spice. The broccoli and coconut milk will sort of begin to taste like whatever you season it with, so keep that in mind.

4. Add the coconut milk and cook until it starts to bubble.

5. Add the soup mixture to your blender, food processor, or vitamix, if you have one and blend until it is smooth.

6. Return to the pan until warmed through. Pour into a bowl and top with one or two garnishes of your choice. This soup is very adaptable to your favorites tastes, and I hope it gives you some good ideas of your own. Please let me know if you try any other spices or garnishes! Enjoy.

This is a wonderful recipe that I found over HERE, and i love it. It is a yummy, nutty, and a sometimes chocolatey treat, that is a new favorite in our house. If you are going to make them, you should definitely double the batch and freeze half for later. Why go through all of the trouble of baking something, if it all gets eaten in a day or so…but I live with my husband, who eats like he is still 16. Maybe it’s different in your house. Either way, they are tasty and of course, not too complicated.

Ingredients: (single batch, apx. 24 large muffins)

The Dry Ingredients:

2 cups almond meal/almond flour (I’d use the almond meal and save your flour for the recipes that it matters)

1 cup arrowroot powder

1/3 cup flaxseed meal

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

The wet ingredients:

1/4 cup oil

1/3 cup honey (more if you like)

3 eggs

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp vanilla

4 rotten bananas

1. Mix the dry ingredients together and make sure you break up all of the clumps from the almond flour.

2. Blend the wet ingredients in your stand mixer or really well with a hand mixer.

3. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and blend well.

4. When you have your banana muffin mixture is well blended, pour into the foil muffin cups or well greased muffin tin. The large 12 cup muffin cup will bake for about 24 min. Start checking it then, but it may require a few more minutes. The mini muffin cups were about 18 min.

End result…

Tasty little muffins, perfect for the kiddos, or the adult muffins that I spiked with a little dark chocolate, yum. Hope you all enjoy.

You should just stop what you’re doing now, go acquire the necessary ingredients, and make this delicious recipe because IT IS GOLD. It is so simple and impressive to boot. It began with a recipe that my sister found on the internet. And we thought it was pretty good, but hardly cake, more like a bread. As I was thinking about it I knew that I wanted to make it more moist, so I started to modify the original recipe. Long story short, somewhere in my head I thought, “no, no, it’s not enough to just modify this recipe, this cake is begging to become a sweet little moist cake oozing with a fudgy middle.” And so, the gluten free, no sugar, completely whole natural ingredients chocolate bomb was born, and it was a day we shall not soon forget, friends.

Cake Ingredients:

1 cup almond butter

6 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoons vanilla

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4-1/3 honey (depends on how sweet you like it)

3 eggs

2 tsp. lemon juice

1 tsp. baking soda

Fudgy Center Ingredients:

1.5 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (some kind of dark chocolate)

3 Tablespoons butter

2-3 Tablespoons Heavy Cream or Half and Half

How You Make It:

1. Preheat the oven to 325F. Add the first 5 cake ingredients to a large bowl and mix well.

2. Taste them and adjust your honey, cocoa, and vanilla to your liking. I always add more vanilla, because I think it’s like garlic, the more the better.

3. Once you get it right, add your eggs, lemon juice, and baking soda and mix again.

4. Pour your batter into buttered ramekins, muffin cups or whatever you would like to use. My recipe makes 6 large ramekins or 24 mini muffin sized.

5. Bake the bombs for 18 min, if using ramekins, half the baking times for mini anythings.

6. Meanwhile, mix up your fudgy middle by melting the chocolate and butter in the microwave on high for 1 min. Then stir in the heavy cream.

7. After 18 min, pull them out of the oven and drop a hefty tablespoon into the middle of the cakes and let it sink into them. (you may need to poke a hole in the crust to let the fudge sink into it.)

8. Put them back in the oven for another 6 or so minutes. This will depend on your oven. You don’t want to overcook them, so keep a close eye to figure out exactly how long you need to keep them in. It will be between 6-10 min.

Take them out and let the ramekins or muffin tin cool on a cooling rack and enjoy. They keep really well sealed in a tupperware for about 3 days, I imagine, though ours have never lasted that long!

Hopefully I can update with some better pictures. I have literally delayed this post for a week now, trying to make time to take better pictures. We are in full swing of Shepherd’s first birthday party over here, so time has been scarce. Detail pictures coming soon…promise. Meanwhile go eat this tasty dessert.

I have been scoping out some new veggies and revisiting old veggies from the past at the grocery over the last few weeks and this week I tried my hand at swiss chard. It is a fantastic alternative to sauteed spinach! I decided to experiment with some Italian flavors on both the steak and swiss chard. This is a 20 min dinner from start to finish, so enjoy! Also, if you would like to make this meal for a group or larger family, it would be really yummy to cut up the steak and toss it with the veggies, then spread that over some brown rice.

Ingredients:

-1 large bunch of Swiss Chard

-1.5-2lbs steak

-some butter or oil for cooking

-1 fennel bulb, cut into thin wedges, OR 1 onion.

-1 shallot bulb, sliced

Seasoning for the Meat and Veggies.

How To Make It:

1. Preheat your grill to Med-Hi heat and season your steak.

I used a mix of cracked pepper, sea salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and fennel seed.

2. While the grill is heating up, wash and chop your veggies up.

3. When the grill is very hot put your steak on and cook them up how you like them,

4. While the steak is cooking, warm your butter in the pan until it is sizzling. Once it gets hot enough put the shallots in first. When they start to get brown, add the sliced fennel bulb or onion. Then lastly, your Swiss Chard.

You want the swiss chard to cook for about 3-4 min. It takes longer than spinach, because the leaves are much heartier.

Well, for those of you who don’t know already…I workout with this lady, Jordan Morchat.

It is awesome! And the strongest, healthiest, and best I’ve felt in as long as I can remember. If you live locally, there is no reason you should be wasting your time and money, I might add, at these other gyms in town. I know, I know, it’s a bit harsh, but the truth. And everyone at our gym totally knows we’ve got it going on, because we work out with the best coaches in the area. Okay, I’m done with my promotion of Black Box Training.

But right now there is an awareness challenge happening at our gym. Which basically means, locking it down when it comes to the nutrition. So….normally I would have posted a lot more of my sweet treats made with honey and almond flours, but I am not making those right now, due to our challenge. But in a pinch these definitely feel and taste like dessert to me! These are completely Paleo friendly. AND Gluten free, Dairy free, and Vegan.

Ingredients:

-1.5 cups dates, halved

-2-tablespoons of vanilla

-3-4 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa

-1-tablespoon of coconut oil, would have used coconut butter, but I was out.

-1/2 cup hazelnuts, also called filberts. (if you don’t care for them, you can completely replace them with another nut of choice. These are good substitutes: walnuts, cashews, or pecans.

-

How To Make Them:

1. Halve your dates.

2. Add all ingredients to food processor or blender.

3. Blend well, and adjust amount of dates and cocoa to your liking.

At this point you have the option to press the mixture into a pan, to be cut into bars, or my preferred method, scoop into bowls and warm for about 20 seconds in the microwave. When you warm these they start to taste a whole lot like warm brownies, so yum, and really hit the spot today.

Serve the warm fudgie bars with cold unsweetened vanilla almond milk and this actually tastes like dessert!

During the summer, I was making a routine stop by our grocery and had to pick up almond butter, because we eat um…about a jar a week at our house. While I was looking at the brand I normally get, I notice that almonds are the only thing in there. No oil, no salt, no nothing else but almonds. And I thought, “why can’t I make this? I’m pretty sure I should be able to make this myself.” With a little research, I basically find that anyone with a food processor can, in fact, make any kind of nut butter. With a little time and definitely patience, you will have your own jar of freshly crushed, raw almond butter. And let me just tell you that when you see how easy this is, even with pictures, you will probably not believe me. I didn’t until I tried it.

Ingredients & Tools:

-4 cups of raw almonds

-food processor

-empty jar/container

How To Make It:

Step 1. Pour just 2 of the 4 cups of almonds into your food processor. It works best with half the amount of almonds at a time.

Step 2. Turn on your processor. Let it run for about 3 min, and scrape the sides, repeat. These pictures are to give you an idea of where you are in the processing of your butter. Hang in there, just keep processing until it looks like the final picture.

Warning: DO NOT LICK YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN. This is what it looks like when it is done, so yum.

*Another thing that I should mention, I know of some women who have used their coffee grinders to make small amounts of almond butter, this also works.

For a while now I have had this idea in my head to create a portrait of our little family that is not an exact representation of what we are now. I wanted us to all be represented in the photo, but not just sitting in front of the camera. Mostly because I know that we are still a changing family and will not be the same size forever. At the same time I didn’t want to get tired of looking at a big picture of us on the wall. I love this, in short. It is completely satisfying as an artist to see what was in your head realized, so I wanted to share it. And I also just got to order this on a big canvas for our new house! Will update with a picture when it’s hanging on the wall.