This week, I’m participating in a few blog hops! Party #1 at Jillify It, Tasty Thursdays at The How To Mommy, Thursday Blog Hop at Bassgiraffe and What’s Cooking Thursday at Feeding Four.

Oh hummus. Oh flatbread. Two mostly healthy things I wont stuff my face with – separately. If they are served together, I cannot be held responsible for how much of this stuff I put away. Om nom nom. I mean, I’ll dip a few carrot sticks in a bowl of hummus, sure. And yeah, I’ll wrap up some kind of tofu and veg and fake cheese situation in a warm flatbread and munch away. But I will not return to the buffet for either of those treats. So, as you’ll note from my creative background choice in one recipe and then, well, not in the other – I made these on separate occasions. Also, I’ll level with you, as healthy as this flatbread is, it’s not so great after it’s cooled off. I As I already mentioned when I talked about the Crack Wrap from Peas and Thank You, you’re going to want to buy the book and make Mama Pea’s flatbread – aka La Hacienda de Peas Tortillas.

Moving along.

Before I discovered Crap Wraps I used these recipes for Hummus and Flatbread.

The hummus comes together as expected, you just mash everything together in the food processor (or two batches in the Magic Bullet)
Mix all the dry ingredients and make a well in the middle, add the oil and the water and knead away! When the dough holds together, break off small amounts and roll into balls.
Flour your counter (or whatever) and roll out each ball to about 6″, once they’re all done you just toss them one by one on a grill or a hot pan and watch them puff up a little and become tortillas!
I found that when these were warm, I could stuff them with whatever I wanted to and they rolled up or wrapped up beautifully, but once they cooled off they were brittle and hard to pretty much impossible to form. They were great as chunks in cheesy dip at 2am after we emptied all the wine!

I’m participating in Menu Monday at Organizing Junkie and Life as a Lofthouse

I didn’t blog last week because honestly I have been extremely distracted. It’s all been pretty fun distractions though!! Since Christmas we thought we were going to be planning a long distance short-term work-related move. We were extremely excited because it was to a place we’ve always wanted to go. Then last weekend we thought that it wasn’t going to happen after all, only to find out a few days later that it’s going to happen, just not as soon as we thought. For a planner this was at first, extremely painful. However, after a while I have come to appreciate that it can be fun to just live my life as I live it (playing in the kitchen while making sock puppets and cocktails) and let surprises unfold on their own – and in their own time. I asked my husband not to keep me in the loop about this work move. Only to tell me when it’s a sure thing and it’s time to start packing. Which honestly takes a load off. So now I’m focusing on Wee One #3’s teeny weeny Hello Kitty birthday party next weekend. It’s teeny weeny because she only really has one friend, I mean she is just turning three after all!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my oven died, thankfully my stove stop still works perfectly so I’ve been cooking quite a bit, and working through my ‘no bake’ recipes but I haven’t been doing any baking at all. Le sigh. I love baking. At first we looked into having it fixed, but it’s not much of a savings compared to getting a new one and then we have a new warranty. Anyhoo, it’s Menu Monday so while we pick a new stove here’s yet another stove top menu!

This Week’s Menu (Feb 27 – March 5)
*I mentioned last week, I make two separate dinners most nights because I’ve made some dietary changes and I’m not pushing it on my family. They tend to join in with a healthy May-style breakfast and lunch and I make their faves for dinner. Wee One #2 has started eating ‘dinner like mommy’ though, so that’s something!

Sunday – Hamburgers and French Fries for the fam, Chick Pea Burgers and Sweet Potato Fries for me

This week, I will photograph these meals as I make them so I can blog about them and link back to those posts when I mention them in a future Menu Monday, which you know I probably will!

Today though, since I have no oven and you probably do, I will hit you with this recipe for Tater Tot Casserole so you can make it for me! It’s the ultimate in trashy food (I have a weakness for such things, remember?) I’m not even going to lie to you (though it would save face if I said something like ‘I don’t remember where I came across this recipe‘), this is totally a Duggar Family recipe. Don’t look at me like that! Don’t act like you don’t love that show too! Johanna is my fave little one and I think Jessa is fierce. <3

First, make mashed potatoes however you usually do that. I toss mine in the pressure cooker and then mash them up with some garlic and butter.
Now add the egg, milk and flour or else they will just be mush in the oil. MUSH. The original tater tot recipe coats them in breadcrumbs and I didn’t. I totally will next time though! This is when you heat a pot of oil and toss these babies in. They only need to be in the oil for like 30 seconds. I had my first few in for about 2 minutes and look what happened!!
They were perfect on the inside, burnt to a blackened crisp on the outside. Whoops!
I had the next batch in for about 45 seconds and that’s all they needed!
Now for the actual casserole part. I just browned the ground turkey (you could use chicken or pork or beef or fake tofu-ish stuff) with a little parsley, garlic and onion though none of those three are technically called for in the recipe, and spread it over the bottom of a casserole dish. Then I put the tater tots on top!
Then in another bowl, I mixed the evaporated milk with the cream soups and poured it over meat and tater tots in the casserole dish.
Bake at 350F for about an hour and OH MY shit this is amazingly good.

If my new oven isn’t chosen and delivered by Friday, I’m going to have to bake a Hello Kitty cake at my neighbor’s house. Oh small town living, you come in handy sometimes.

Over the last year or so I have discovered that I absolutely love dates. Maybe three years ago my dear friend Gill brought over a snack of dates stuffed with almonds and I was all ‘um, oooookay, whatever Gill’. Not only was chocolate not involved at all but this was nature stuffed with nature. It reeked of health, and at the time that soooo wasn’t my bag. Now though, I am all over that shit. Loving dates or at least liking the general taste and texture of dates is a serious plus when experimenting with vegan desserts, especially raw vegan desserts. My favorite kind of raw vegan desserts (and man there are a lot of them) are the kind that are sweetened mostly with dates and made by smashing all the ingredients together in the food processor. They’re always so so dense and gaaaah, just so good.

These little treats are so extremely dense you can’t just throw everything in the food processor and make balls from the batter. Hehe. It’ll seize up the food processor! This recipe originally has the mixture in a brownie pan and then sliced into squares. I scooped them into balls instead!

They’re so good. They’re sweet without being obnoxious and chocolaty with out having any chocolate in them at all! They curb the sweey snacky cravings with a single dose! True story! Believe it or not, they’re very similar to Eat More chocolate bars.

These treats are from Kat Eats Real Food, via a guest post by Angela from Oh She Glows.

1/2 cup chopped dates
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup carob powder
2/3 cup raw walnuts
1/3 cup raw almonds
3 Tbsp Agave Nectar

Since it all had to be done separately, first I chopped the dates, then the almonds and walnuts.
In a small bowl I mixed the coconut, carob powder and agave nectar.
Theeeen, I added the dates and the nuts and mashed it all together with a spoon.
Then instead of putting this mixture into a brownie pan, I rolled them into balls. They’re about 120 calories each which isn’t bad, especially considering how dense they are.

Yet another winner from Sarah Matheny’s Peas and Thank You cookbook! And no, I am NOT giving you the recipe for this amazingness, but I will break it down for you a bit. First of all, it’s called a Crack Wrap because after you have one, no – after you have a bite of one, it’s all you’ll ever want to eat. I’ve got it bad, man. The main difference of course is that as addicting as it is, it’s actually good for you, as opposed to crack, which I’m sure you’re aware is not at all good for you. Ahem.

So this recipe could be made using store bought ingredients, but I swear on a stack of Seventeen magazines that the from scratch deliciousness cannot possibly be replicated with bar codes. I repeat, not possible.

There are two recipes from the book that are actually part of this recipe, Crazy Good Hummus (totally lives up to it’s name) and La Hacienda de Peas Tortillas.

I started on the tortillas first. I have tried way. too. many tortilla recipes and they have all more or less sucked. However now that I have this one? I will likely not ever buy tortillas again. True story. They’re pretty quick really, and you probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen already.
Then I made the hummus, and again, I will likely always make hummus this way (though Mama Pea really is a bit of a slave driver with this one), because the difference really is crazy good. Then I did some other stuff that would be giving away the recipe if I posted all the pictures I took and just a few minutes later, I was chowing down on the yummiest treat in this book – SO FAR. I’m only like 11 recipes in and I already have what I think is the crown jewel. I only sound dramatic till you taste it, then you’ll be all ‘ooooooh, I get it now‘! In the book, recommended partners for this wrap are two Peas and Thank You soups. Good idea! When I get to those soups later this year, I will make this again. Because duh, I’m making it all the time anyway!

Just like with a lot of kids, peanut butter and jam is a real weakness with mine. A weakness I try my best to exploit – to their own advantage, of course! As with all the recipes in Jessica Seinfield’s book, there is a hidden vegetable snuck into these muffins. Some of the recipes in this book seem like an easy sell (like these brownies with spinach and carrots) but turn out to have a telltale veggie taste that totally turns off anyone with a vegetable radar – aka anyone under the age of 10. However, this recipe disguises a healthy dose of carrots with peanut butter and jam. Genius! If you use sugar free, low sugar, or otherwise healthier jam than a run of the mill glucose fructose garbage, it’s even healthier!

So what’s so amazing about carrots? We know veggies are good for us but the why is helpful to know. We think of carrots and we think two things usually, they’re good for our eyesight and they’re full of beta carotene. Both of those things are true but there’s so much more to it than that! There’s a 10 year study out of the Netherlands that was recently released that explains that carrots are actually amazing at reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Like, really significantly reducing the risk and all you need is about 3/4 of a cup of carrots a day. Also, in addition to the beta carotene we are always talking about carrots also have polyacetylenes, which are power houses against colon cancer. Protect your butts, people! Vitamin A is in serious abundance in just 1 cup of carrots (over 407%).

I served these with homemade hot chocolate and milk to the kids after school one day with no mention at all of any added veggies and they gobbled them up while going over their homework to-dos – and asked for seconds!

Peanut Butter and Jam Muffins – from Deceptively Delicious (p. 63)

1/2 natural peanut butter
1/2 cup carrot puree
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter/margarine
1/2 cup non fat plain yogurt
1 large egg white
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup low sugar strawberry, blueberry or grape jam

Essentially, you just beat the peanut butter with the carrot puree and then with the brown sugar and the butter. Then stir in the yogurt and the egg white and you’re ready for the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Line your muffin tin with paper cups and divide the batter between 12. Now drop a spoonful of jam over each one. Bake at 350F for about 20-25 minutes. So good with a nice boost of beta carotene!

More love for Mama Pea today. One day I may make something from her cookbook and hate it, but so far everything is amazing. I have made more of her recipes than I’ve blogged about because duh, there’s a heap ton of deliciousness happening around here. Eventually, you’ll see it all and read my words of ass kissing wisdom.

Anyhoo.

You love chocolate, yes? Of course you do. Almonds? Natch. Cherries? Well, unless you’re my sister then you are probably also down with cherries (I swear sometimes her weird I love this I hate that makes it tricky to be an amazing kitchen goddess/sister but I try to work around it). I will not give you the recipe, because as I mentioned before, I am encouraging you to buy the book (and no, no one is asking me to push this book I just think it’s worth pushing). The very title of the recipe gives away the gist of the recipe, but there is more to it than you’d assume. Also, the commentary before each recipe is worth the book alone.

This is my new go-to for a post-workout chocolate craving. Well for any time of the day chocolate craving. Does anyone else work out really excessively and then want to wreck all their hard work with chocolate?! No. You’re a liar. A dirty liar. This smoothie is great for those times because it calms the chocolate beast enough to get on with your day aaaaand they’re mega healthy for you!

So so so good! I like to make it a little thicker than a smoothie and eat it like ice cream.

I figured since my last post involved cheesecake, I’d sway to the healthy side this afternoon. There are people, like my dear friend Gill, who will eat something she isn’t super fond of in the name of health. She’s totally my hero. Then there are other dear friends, like my sister Nikki, who wont eat something unless it’s yummy. She’s my hero for the other side of my brain. The side that wants to eat Oreos for breakfast and then move on to Nutella pancakes for brunch. Mmmmmm. Anyhoo, I fall somewhere in between. Don’t get me wrong, I have been known to fall off the wagon and be found in my pantry mid-sugar coma covered in cinnamon hearts and candy corn. Mmmmm. I’m striving to strike a balance now where I eat as healthy as I can for most of the week and allow myself a balls-out weekend. Yes, I’m calling that balance!

This recipe should defo be classified as a weekday recipe. It’s not bad but I choose to eat it because of the grapefruit and the wheat germ – not because it’s an amazing breakfast treat. Also, instead of just telling you ‘grapefruit and wheat germ are healthy enough for me to force them on myself’, I’ll tell you why and also why I made these vegan. No, I’m not vegan – just to clarify. I wanted to get all specific and call them ‘Low Cal Wheat Germ Grapefruit Vegan Pancakes’, but I think ‘Wheat Germ Grapefruit Pancakes’ will do.

Aside from the obvious serious dose of vitamin C (you probably already know that C is amazing for your immune system and that it can help with inflammatory issues like asthma, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis – and of course that it helps you to fight and prevent colds). Grapefruits also contain lycopene (that’s where the pink or red color comes from), and to get all brainy on you, lycopene is a carotenoid phytonutrient which essentially means it helps fight free radicals – and those little bastards are totally evil. Super random facts about grapefruits; ranked among the highest fruits in antioxidant activity, lowers cholesterol, prevents kidney stones, protects against colon cancer, and helps repair DNA.

I didn’t think I had much to say about wheat germ till I got going. Ha! It’s full of thiamin, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and zinc. So what? Well, thiamin helps your body convert carbs to energy and it’s way important for your heart, muscles, and nervous system. Do you love how scientific I am? It’s like, way important, man. Folate helps your body make new cells which is important for everyone but uber important for pregnant women. I had no idea what magnesium was good for until I looked it up for this post. Yeah, I’m a real authority on health people! Kidding! I just read a lot. Anyhoo, so magnesium is actually responsible for the contraction and relaxation of muscles! Interesting! It also controls certain enzymes in the body (that sounds mysterious, doesn’t it?) and the production of protein. Phosphorus I already knew is in every cell of your body! Isn’t that neat?! It’s mostly for your bones and teeth though. Iron as we all pretty well know is important, our bodies need it to make hemoglobin and myoglobin (found in red blood cells and muscles, respectively). They help carry and store oxygen in your body. And zinc well, over time I’ve read dirty things about zinc and your man, but taking my head out of the gutter, zinc actually helps your immune system fight off bacteria and viruses. Not just help your man feel like a porn star. Who said that?!

So why did I made it vegan? The original recipe called for both almond milk and skim milk, but dairy isn’t kind to my tummy and maybe not to yours either so I just went with a little more almond milk instead of both. Also, I replaced the eggs with ground flax seeds and water because even though one or two eggs in a single recipe isn’t going to mess with my cholesterol levels, I try to replace them when I’m not going to notice they’re gone so I can enjoy them with total abandon when the recipe I’m using needs them. So in pancakes I can leave them out, but I’m still going to make a tray of popovers on Sunday morning that call for 3 extra large eggs and happily munch away!

Moving on to the actual recipe. It’s been heavily modified from it’s original source so I’m calling it my own!

2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons wheat germ
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 cups almond milk
1/4 cup vegan butter (ie Earth Balance)
2 medium grapefruits
2 tablespoons flax meal
6 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

First mix the water and flax meal in a bowl and let it sit to thicken up a bit.	Whisk together the whole wheat flour, wheat germ and baking powder in a big bowl.
Add the almond milk, vanilla extract and flax meal with water. Mix that up till combined.	Now attack your grapefruits. Squeeze about 1/4 cup of juice into the mixing bowl.
Chop up the grapefruits into wee pieces and add them, along with a bit more of the juice, to the mixing bowl.	Whisk! Whisk! Whisk!
Grapefruit aftermath.
First one!!
This recipe made 13 pancakes that were made from 1/4 cup of the batter.
123 calories each!

So I know this will sound like gushing, and we have only ‘bumped into each other online’ a couple of times, but I’m a little in love with Mama Pea of Peas and Thank You. If you read her blog with any regularity at all I have no doubt you are a little in love with her too. Last week, for example, ‘Tonight we all needed a little comic relief (or a horse tranquilizer)…‘, I read that and thought, HOLY CRAP!! THAT’S MY HOUSE! Also? One of her blog tags is ‘pissing and moaning’. Love!!

I know, I’m such a creeper but really I love her extra for these bars, she concocted a recipe for gluten-free vegan chocolate chip granola bars that Wee Ones #1 & #3 love. They’re called Zee Bars because she was lamenting in her post on these little babies about the food marketed specifically to kids and how it’s exactly the same as the food marketed to adults, except they’ve slapped a little chocolate on it and spelled kids with a z. Right?! Dammit, my kids can spell! Anyhoo, I am still cooking and baking my way through her cookbook (I made the Fabulous French Toast today for brunch actually….), and I’m still not going to post any recipes from her book. However, this recipe was posted on her website so it’s fair game.

They’re way easy to make and even easier to eat! All you need is:

1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup oat flour (just run 1/2 cup of oats through your food processor)
1/2 cup vanilla protein powder (or another 1/2 cup oat flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp non-dairy milk (I used almond)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp cinnamon
stevia to taste (or be a cheater like me and use 1/4 cup brown sugar) I have stevia, but no one likes it!
1/4 cup chocolate chips (I also cheat with this and use 1/2 cup)

If you throw on a little drizzle after the bars are cool you’ll also need:

3 tbsp chocolate chips
1 tsp coconut oil

So first, preheat your oven to 350F and spray your 8×8-ish pan. Theeeeeen, mix the oats, oat flour, protein powder, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and your brown sugar if you’re using it.
Mix up the applesauce, vanilla and almond (or whatever) milk.	Now mix your wet into your dry.
Fold in the chocolate chips.
Bake for 20-25 minutes.	Mama Pea describes it as ‘pulling away from the pan’, when you know it’s done.
So so so good. I could knock back a tray of these in an evening – no problem!

So I mentioned last week that this year, I’m cooking and baking my way though Peas and Thank You‘s cookbook (you can grab the Kindle edition for 7 and change here). Usually I don’t start with the very first recipe but after my workout this morning I needed a smoothie and I had been wanting to try this one as soon as I read it.

I love this book so much, I’m not going to post any recipes from it. Yeah that’s right, I want you to buy it. I will however, give you the gist and tease you with photos of all the yummy creations I make from it. ‘Mama Pea’ as she refers to herself, is a fun and witty writer, her cookbook has about as many funny stories as recipes and I love it even more for that. The story behind this smoothie involves a whole lotta good natured teasing of her husband’s love for Tommy Bahama. Hi-larious.

This smoothie combines three things I love but have never put together; blackberries, ginger and basil. When I mentioned this to my dear friend Gill she thought it sounded like a winner, when I mentioned it to another dear friend who shall remain nameless I got ‘who knew??’ <- that's 2 question marks, people. So it's a flavor combo that might not sound amazing - but believe me, it totally is. I ment to have one small cup - I had two and then I insisted Wee One #3 finish off the rest of the batch to keep me from drinking it all. She liked it too! It's exactly the right kind of refreshing feeling I need post workout when I'm all flushed and pink and staggering off to the shower.

This is a winner and will definitely be used in full rotation in my kitchen!

Christmas vacation is officially over, so I have to officially go to bed at a decent hour. Ugh. All this ‘in bed before midnight’ stuff really cramps my style. Ha. The school bus carts off the wee ones just before 8:30, and the bus stop itself is about a 10 minute walk from our house. Anyhoo, I have been busy with the site this week and am now settling into actually adding useful content.

The site sidebar is a little different now, I love me some lists (as if that isn’t fairly obvious by now) so naturally I figured what better to fill the one thing that seen on every single page on the site! There are about a zillion links to fun and useful (and frequently updated) blogs and websites on my links page but my actual favourite blogs are over there in the sidebar —> I listed them alphabetically! No favourites among the favourites!

Freshly Pieced is written by Lee, a very talented (and adorable) quilter. She hosts a weekly ‘Work in Progress’ link up day for all kinds of handmade treasures! I post my in progress knits to this link up.

The LaMay Bakery is my friend Sammie’s blog, chronically life as an army wife with her wee one and her husband. She. Is. So. Sweet.

Mutant Supermodel and I live strangely parallel and often opposite lives! We are about the same age, have the same number of kids all in very close age ranges to each other and we both have a love for fiber (I’m a knitter, she’s a crocheter) – and while I’m coming into my 12th year of marriage, she is freshly (and happily) divorced. Her blog has a wonderful collection of resources for single mothers – and great posts in general from getting over a breakup to managing money.

Peas and Thank You is a veggie mom who made the transition from a pretty standard diet of meat and Diet Cokes. What I love most about her blog is that she is just so normal. She’s even a lover of bad television! I’m smitten. She’s the author of the cookbook I’m working through this year!

The Purl Bee is an endless source of inspiration for sewing, knitting, and crochet. Plus her blog is just so pretty!

Romi is a dear friend whose writing never fails to crack me up! This year has been very exciting for her because she has published two books and written a screenplay. The Book of Awful came first and then The Year of the Chick!

Snarkable is written (or I guess I should say will be written) by one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world. I have little doubt that it’ll be deliciously snarky and witty and will likely make your eyes water.

I can’t get enough of What I Wore. Jessica has been taking photos of what she wears pretty close to every day since 2007. She’s a designer and a pro blogger and is very sweet about answering questions from helping with an outfit to advice on working in the fashion industry. I droll over her daily photos. Love!

I also added a set of smaller goals to the sidebar as well that I’ll go on and on about tomorrow! How do you go about resolutions? I made 7 big ones and have 10 smaller ones. Thoughts?