Homemade Cashew Butter...

I am the queen of junk food. My weakness is salty food. Put a bag of chips in front of me and its gone in 30 minutes; but recently I have been realizing the harm of over processed food. I bought a cook book called the Eat-Clean Diet for Family and Kids. A lot of this book talks about the harm of over processed foods and encourages you with substitutions you can make in your home and diet.

My friend Courtney recently got me on a kick of toast with peanut butter honey and some sort of fruit on top. It sounds relatively healthy until I started reading this book. Have you ever read the ingredients on the back of a peanut butter jar!? There is a lot more than peanuts on that label. The author of the Eat-Clean Diet says if you can't pronounce the words or there is a long list of ingredients, stay away! She suggested substituting a nut butter for peanut butter and that is where I got the idea to try and make it myself. There are two ingredients in my nut butter vs. the long list of who knows what on the peanut butter label at your local grocery mart.

I chose to use cashews but you can use whatever you have around your house, or whatever kind of nut you prefer.

Since this was somewhat of an experiment I only used 1/3 of a cup of cashews but feel free to make a larger quantity if you wish.

Step 1: Roast your nuts for about 5 minutes at 350 degrees to bring out the natural oils. Then place into your food processor and blend for about 15 minutes.



Step 2: Stop every so often to scrape of the sides with a rubber spatula. Be patient. It does take awhile to get to the right consistency.



Step 3: My cashew butter eventually formed into a ball and that is when I added a small drop of olive oil and blended for another few seconds until it was a creamy consistency. If you are making a larger amount of nut butter use more olive oil. I would just put in a small amount at a time until you have a consistency you are happy with.





Step 4: ENJOY!



I can't wait to try other variations of this. I would love to do something with cinnamon and vanilla next time. Share what kinds of creations you came up with!

Portabella Cap Pizza

The first thing I want to say is YUM! I love everything mushroom and I love pizza so lets just put the two together?! This is another Pinterest recipe and you can find the original here.

If you love pizza but you want to cut out some of the carbs this recipe is perfect for you.

Ingredients :
-Portabella Mushroom Caps (I bought six but between my husband and I we only ate 4)
- Marinara Sauce. I did not measure out how much I used, I just eyeballed it.
- Mozzarella cheese
- Dried or fresh basil
- Red pepper flakes
- Toppings of choice (I used spinach and olives)

Step 1:

Scrape out the inside of the mushroom along with as much of the stem as can get and bake on a baking sheet for around 5 to 7 minutes at 400 degrees.





Step 2:

Spoon your Marinara sauce and top with red pepper flakes and basil. I used dried basil because that is all I had on hand but I would love to use fresh basil leaves next time. Next, add your toppings of choice. I used mozzarella cheese, spinach and black olives.




Step 3:

Turn your oven onto broil and bake until cheese is melted! It should only take a few minutes so make sure to keep a check on them.




**Let me know what toppings and spices you used on your pizzas!

Breakfast is Served!

It's no secret that I'm obsessed with Pinterest. Every meal I plan on cooking this week came off of Pinterest. Here is a super easy and yummy breakfast that can be prepared ahead of time, then just popped into the microwave to warm when you are ready to eat!

Egg Muffins

Step 1:

Crack open your eggs, whisk them and pour them into a greased muffin pan. Fill them about halfway.



**Depending on how many "muffins" you want to make will be the amount of eggs you choose to use. I used 7 eggs and it made 9 muffins

Step 2:

Chop up all the ingredients you like in your eggs. I used onion, mushroom, spinach and cheese. YUM! Put a small amount of your choice ingredients in each egg muffin, bake at 350 degrees for about 25 min. Once they have completely cooled you can put them in baggies and store them in your fridge for tomorrow's breakfast!



Get creative and let me know what ingredients you chose to put in your muffins!

DIY frenzy. Post #1.

I have been in a DIY sort of frenzy since I recently discovered and became obsessed with Pinterest. This first little project I am going to share with you I did not get off of Pinterest but my super creative husband came up with! It is perfect wall art for a kid's bedroom or if you are just a couple of big kids like us you will probably enjoy it as well!

Step #1: We bought a box of 96 crayola crayons and set them up in the order we wanted them to go. Then you just hot glue them to a piece of canvas!


Step #2. This is the fun part! We used a hairdryer to melt the crayons which was kind of messy so make sure you have a towel under the canvas. If we were to do this again I think we would use a heat gun to avoid splattering wax everywhere.


Step 3: FIND THE PERFECT PLACE FOR YOUR NEW CREATION!

whimsical, lovely and FREE dress!

Who doesn't love an amazing, jaw dropping dress? Who doesn't love an amazing, jaw dropping FREE dress!? Head on over to The Drifter and the Gypsy to win this amazingly whimsical dress by Shabby Apple.

Tip of the Day...

Lets be honest. We are going to have to change this to tip of the week because clearly I am not yet an experienced enough homemaker to be posting tips for every day of the week. Baby steps right?

Let me start out by introducing you to yet another one of my obsession. CANDLES! I love, love, love candles. And I love for my house to smell like yummy baked goods all the time without actually having to bake. The problem with wanting my house to smell yummy all the time is I have a piggy for a pet. While the rumors of pigs being... well pigs if false (they are actually rather clean animals) he does have a bladder that allows him to go pee pee for a solid three minutes at a time which fills his potty cage up rather quickly. So if you don't change his cage EVERY day it can start to smell a little funky in here. So I pretty much burn my candles every moment that I am at home.

Much to my dismay this morning I realized that I had just about burned every last candle in my house to the point of no return. So for someone like me who is obsessed with yummy smelling things this was quite a crisis in my life. So I had to get a little creative and this is where the tip of the day week comes in.

There is no real name for it just a few home remedies that everyone has in their cabinets. Cinnamon, sugar and water. Yes that's all there is too it. Those three common things boiled on the lowest temperature on your stove top and your home slowly starts to smell even better my yummiest smelling candles.




The only problem with this is ... you will be craving cinnamon buns ALL day.

And best hubby award goes to...

It never fails. It doesn't matter how grumpy, or out of sorts I get my husband wins best hubby award every time. Yesterday I was being a complete meany pants and what does he do? Comes home with these ...



See, isn't he the cutest!? ;)