Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

I started adding chia seeds to my smoothies about a year ago, and when I started making pudding with almond milk and the kids complained it wasn’t ‘pudding-y enough’, I started crushing the chia seeds and blending them into the pudding because they have a weird ‘pudding-y’ quality about them and since then the kids happily eat the almond milk-based pudding. I honestly thought their usefulness ended there. I know, I know. They’re an ancient superfood May!, you say. I hear you, I know it. I’m not a fan of little seed sin my salad or on my oatmeal or where ever else you’re going to tell me to put them.

(I walked right into that, didn’t I?)

However, when I saw this recipe I had a huge DUH moment. Of course they’d work in cookies! For suspicious kids (and husbands and friends), they look pretty normal alongside chocolate chips! You know the chocolate dust at the bottom of the bag of chocolate chips? When they’re baked, they look just like that. There’s no rule that says I have to openly advertise all the ingredients in my kitchen, right? Right.

The original recipe yields a dozen big cookies. I made mine more like regular size cookies and got about two dozen. It was hard to tell with how fast the wee ones (and then later my girlfriends) ate them! They hardly hit the plate, it was pretty amazing. When I finally made some coffee and had one I was glad there were not many left because I easily could have polished off the tray myself. Easily.

Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies via Yummy Mummy Kitchen

1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tablespoons chia seeds
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chocolate chips

In a medium bowl, mix the oats, baking powder, flour, chia seeds. Then with your electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together.
Now add to the butter mixture, the peanut butter, eggs and vanilla. Bit by bit add the oat mixture and mix till combined.
Fold in the chocolate chips, and bake at 350F for about 12 minutes.

Today, I’m linking up with Dandelion House, Sippy Cup Chronicles, Happy Go Lucky, Life with Twins & a Drama Queen and Chubby Cheeks Thinks!

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

I am a little in love ok, I’m a little totally obsessed with Zuzana Bodyrock in general. My friend Gill got me into the site and between the two of them (Gill & the site) I’m in much better shape than I maybe ever have been. These workouts and this site in general are not for the faint of heart – I mean that both literally and figuratively. The workouts are intense and they’re HARD, most importantly there are different workouts up all the time, so your body never gets a chance to get used to what you’re doing. And the videos? They’re so hot they’re borderline porn. I mean that in the best possible way. Go ahead, go watch one. I’ll wait for you here.

Intense, right?

Anyhoo, so along with the videos, there are a lot of fun and healthy recipes on the site and I had to try this one because of this line – Once you let someone taste your balls, you will never be forgotten. I promise.

Each ball comes in somewhere around 100 calories, depending of course on how big you make them and what kind of nuts you use.

Zuzana’s Power Balls (aka Bodyrock Balls) via Bodyrock

1 cup oats, ground to oat flour
2 cups almond meal
3 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons honey
4 tablespoons coconut oil
1 cup carrot puree
1/2 cup chopped nuts (recipe calls for either almonds or pecans, I used hazelnuts)

So first I ground up my oats, and then added the almond meal and baking powder.
Next I added the honey and coconut oil. I keep pureed veggies in the freezer to sneak into random food so I had the carrot puree on hand, it doesn’t take long to make it though. Just steam and then smash 1 cup of carrots. Now you can roll out the balls, I think I made 30 smallish ones, Zuzana got 28 when she made them. Then CHOP YOUR NUTS AND ROLL YOUR BALLS IN THEM. Oh, I’m sorry. Was I shouting? Ahem.
Bake these babies for about 25 minutes at 350F.

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

This is the 8th recipe from Peas and Thank You and again, so far so good. This recipe, like seven others before it, came together easily! The directions are simple, the ingredients rad (as usual) and the taste was great. There are short stories about life in the Pea household before each recipe and this one totally resembled my feelings on french toast before this recipe. Maybe yours too? You know how there is almost always a piece of cooked egg hanging off the side of your french toast? Ugh. Not possible in this vegan version! Ha!

I ate my piece, 2/3 of the children ate theirs and my husband passed, but to be fair, he very rarely east breakfast and always passes on french toast. Maybe this will make him a convert the next time I do ‘breakfast for dinner’.

I will remind you again, no recipe for you this time around but I will be making a few recipeas (har har) that are available for free so I’ll post those here! I honestly think this is a cookbook worth buying.

If you use anything at all, let it be actual maple syrup!

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

When we bought our house last summer, imagine my overwhelming glee, yes, glee when I discovered we moved next door to a professional chef. I mean, what are the odds that a food blogger is going to move in next door to a pro chef? It’s a major bummer for me to report that he ended up moving a couple of months ago BUT we’re still friends so it’s all good in the hood. In the months that we lived next door to each other, though? So fun! He’d eat (and generally approve of) everything kitchen creation I brought over! His kids loved to tear it up in the kitchen with us (we have 3 kid each) and they were all really good sports about eating whatever I made. So sweet!

Anyhooooo, that little story brings us to these decadently fried chicken strips how, exactly? Well, as a professional chef, he has a heap ton of cook books from culinary school. Picture me standing there hearing about this for the first time. Cook books, yes, but cook books that are essentially text books for the kitchen?!?! OMG This book, The Cook’s Book, is huge. It has chapters on everything from sauces to Latin American cooking, from pasta & dumplings to Middle Eastern cooking and each chapter is written by a different well versed pro chef. This recipe is from the poultry & game birds chapter, written by Shaun Hill.

Fried Chicken with Bacon via Cooks Book

2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
2/3 cup buttermilk
4 thick-cut slices lean bacon
3 cups fresh white bread crumbs
sunflower oil for frying

First, slice your chicken into strips and then pound out between pieces of plastic wrap. Then mix the mustard with the salt, pepper and cayenne.
Brush the spicy mustard on each strip and place them in a bowl. Pour the buttermilk over them. Take care that all the pieces are coated.
Pour about 1/2″ of oil into a heavy frying pan and fry the bacon in it till crispy. Dry off the bacon with paper towels.
Crumble the bacon and toss it with the bread crumbs.
Coat each piece of buttermilk-soaked chicken in the bacon and bread crumb mixture and fry in more sunflower oil. If you need to, keep adding oil to have about 1/2″ in the pan all the time. They should take about 10 minutes per batch and depending on the size of your pan you’ll need a few batches.
It looks so amazing with the bits of bacon poking out from the breading! Serve as a main to a meal or with a dip and a salad as lunch!

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

These muffins are a lunch box staple around here, (they are also a middle of the night snack and a running out the door breakfast). So I make these a lot. So much that it seems like the fam should be sick of them by now, but somehow they’re not. Somehow, I still hear requests for them almost daily. Truthfully, I can make them without looking at the recipe and even Wee One #2 gets in on the action now, being able to make these mostly herself!

They clock in at about 230 calories, so I encourage my children to have at them because they are built like supermodels. No lie. I, however, try not to eat quite as many as they do…

Chocolate Chip Muffins via The All New Good Housekeeping Cook Book

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In a smaller bowl, with a fork, beat the milk, melted butter, egg and vanilla until totally blended.

I was inspired recently by (what else) Pinterest to make Snickers Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. I tried a version with Snickers bits mixed in with the cookie batter, but they turned out all leaky and weird when I baked them. The children happily ate my mistake, naturally. Stuffing the cookies with a hunk of Snickers was the only way to do it right. The only reason I put them in the batter along with the chocolate chips in the first place was because the Snickers and Peanut Butter Muffins I make from my Nigella Lawson Domestic Goddess cookbook are uber good. Note to self (and to you, obvy): That shit does not translate to cookies.

Moving along.

I picked my Granny’s standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. It’ll be two years this July since she passed and some days it’s still hard to believe she’s gone. She is very, very much alive in my kitchen though. I try to bake as much of her staples as possible and these cookies are defo one of her staples. I do ‘bastardize’ her recipes (as my mother would say) on the regular, but my Granny was always cool with that. They are very simple chocolate chip cookies, I’ve been making them since I was about 5 or 6 and could push my stool over to the counter to reach the bowls!

Snickers Cookies
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

You know the drill, sift the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside. Then in the mixer bowl, cream the butter and both sugars together.
Add the egg and vanilla, then slowly add the flour mixture.
Stir in the chocolate chips with a wooden spoon. Voila!
Chop up your Snickers bars and pop one in the middle of a ball of dough. Probably about 2 tablespoons worth. Make sure you mold the dough all the way around the Snickers piece.
Then bake at 375F for about 15 minutes.
These are especially fun if you don’t tell anyone there’s a surprise inside!

I absolutely love taking photos and when I dump my camera, I love to sort through them and edit them. I send a handful to the people in the photos, I upload some to Facebook (duh), and I put the rest on our private family photo site. But there are so so so soooo many photos I adore that I want to share with other people, outside of an email, you know? I’m working on putting together printed photobooks of every year we’ve been a family (12 years now), they can run about $100+ if they have a heap of pages, so some years will be far more expensive than others to make a book out of, but I’m really excited about it. In the meantime, since I’m not a scrapbooker, I do what I can to turn photos into gifts that wont just sit on a shelf and collect dust. These little photos gifts will defo not be left laying around. They’ll be used and seen everyday and the friends and family that use an image of me hugging them to hold up bills on their fridge will hopefully think of us when they reach for juice in the morning. <3

You’ll need…
-smallish polaroid-framed photos
-magnet sheets
-cardstock/something the same weight (I used the cover of a Care Bears coloring book)
-glue stick
-clear tape

Gather all your supplies, mount each photo to a piece of cardstock, and then mount that on a piece of magnetic sheet cut to the same size. Then smooth a piece of wide, clear packing tape over the front of the photo to protect it. Trim up all the edges and you’re done! Crazy simple. Honestly, the bulk of the work with these is editing the photos to have a polaroid frame around them and then cutting the magnet sheets. Either (or both) of those jobs can be done ahead of time so when it’s time to sit down and make these, you’re finished in no time. They’re fun to display on your fridge and have your friends randomly notice themselves holding up notes, and everyone we have given a set to has looooved them! So sweet!
Man, we have a lot of good looking friends and family, don’t you think?!

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

Aside from the obvious deliciousness I’ve been posting on the blog, I have also added a few treats to the site without a blog post. Yummy things I really wanted to add to the site, but didn’t warrant a post.

	The whole house smells like ginger and cinnamon! (read).
	When I am feeling irritated about living in the woods, you know like when I want a Starbucks or feel like grabbing sushi with my girlfriends or maybe even just want to be able to WALK ANYWHERE, I can quickly remind myself how much I love living out here when I have to make something for the kids’ school. Wee One #2 requested I make treats for her class on her birthday. In their old school in Toronto, that would have meant baking and decorating at least 30 cupcakes. I did make treats for the school in Toronto, but they were not as detailed because there were just too many to make. This year she has 11 kids in her class. Yup, 11. Making a dozen cupcakes means there’s one left for the baker. (read).
	I was inspired by a recipe found on Oh She Glows, but I just HAD TO add peanut butter and switch it up a bit. Instead of making coconut butter, I used peanut butter and rolled the freshly coated banana pieces in coconut. So so so good on the back deck in the summer!!(read).

Nutella Marsacapone Cups

9-12 sheets phyllo
1 cup Homemade Nutella
1/4 cup homemade marsacapone cheese (1 liter cream, 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice)

The only slightly complicated thing about this treat is making your own marsacapone cheese and if you can’t be bothered, just pick up a tun from the grocery store and you’re already ahead of the game! It is pretty easy though. Heat the cream over a double boiler to 190F, add lemon juice. It’ll curdle, that’s ok. Stir till it starts to thicken (till it coats the back of a spoon like the pictures below) then let it cool down a bit on the counter.
Now transfer it to a bowl lined with cheesecloth and wrap it up. Leave it alone, in the fridge, till it stops dripping. It took almost two days here. What you’re left with is a very smooth, marsacapone-like cheese. Mix about 1/4 cup of it with 1 cup of softened homemade nutella.
Lay out 3 sheets of phyllo and cut it into 12 squares. Squish these little squares into a muffin tin or mini cupcake tin and bake at 350F for about 5 minutes (till golden). Then scoop in about a tablespoon or so of the creamy nutella and add a smaller dollop of marsacapone on top of that! I don’t think it’s physically possible to eat just one. They look super fancy but they’re way simple and while people will be impressed you made your own marsacapone, it’s totally not a big deal – you can do it!

Another hit from Sarah Matheny’s Peas and Thank You.

I made these three dips to go with the tofu nuggets when four of my girlfriends came up to visit. Of the three of us that are down with tofu, we polished off the plate and sought out more things to dip! We also each had a different favorite. I loved the homemade barbecue sauce the most, I swear it tastes like the stuff in the bottle we used to buy but it’s honestly better. Talea liked the lime thaini best and Gill favored the Cinnamon Vinaigrette. That worked out well since we each wanted to hoard our own dip anyway!

The sauces, like all the recipes in this book so far, came together really simply. The nuggets are a bit of a time investment because you need to press the tofu and leave it to marinate, but really, it’s a hands off time investment so it’s not an issue.

The BBQ sauce came together in a saucepan.
All the vinaigrette needed was a whisk and a bowl.
The lime thaini made good use of my food processor and was literally done in under a minute.
As for the nuggets, after you’ve pressed the tofu and cut the brick into little nuggets, make the marinade and leave it overnight in the fridge. Then you make the coating and the egg-free egg step. Curious? Buy the book! It’s totally worth it, I love it and will always use this instead of eggs when I coat things. Then of course you coat each nugget in both bowls (after shaking off the marinade) and bake them! So so so crunchy and good. If you have stayed away from tofu because you don’t like the texture this is a great recipe to try because they’re nothing tofu-y about this!

I am still crazy distracted by this adventure we’re plotting. We are planning to be away for six months and I don’t want to drone on about it too much before we go because I have no doubt that it’ll be all I’ll be able to blog about the whole time we’re away. During the road trip, it’ll be what we are eating and where and hopefully some car and hotel knitting, but once we are settled in our temporary home away from home, it’ll be back to cooking and baking and crafting – just somewhere else! And yes, I do have plans to finally get the new oven and dining room set when we get home! Is it crazy to bring Christmas cross stitching with us? These stockings are not going to sew themselves! Ha! It’s especially funny because I’m not kidding at all.

In the meantime, it’s like Ontario doesn’t want us to leave, giving us some seriously southern weather this week. I’m typing this outside and contemplating firing up the BBQ tonight!

Mango Marinated Peach BBQ Chicken with Hassleback Potatoes via The Naptime Chef

2 medium mangos, peeled and cubed
2 medium peaches, peeled and cubed <- this was my addition 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 1 teaspoon chili powder 1/2 cup spicy ketchup (add a pinch crushed red pepper flakes you don't have any spicy ketchup) 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Pour all of the ingredients in a bowl to mix it up and then pour into a large zippy bag. Add the raw chicken breasts to the bag, let all the air out and seal it. Then rub the marinade into the chicken through the bag. I left it in the fridge overnight, and just sort of massaged it through the bag whenever I went in there for something. That sounds so wrong! The next day, when I fired up the grill, I made sure the chicken breasts were covered in the marinade and I used the BBQ brush to smooth it out. They cooked up great! The back deck smelled sooooo good! The potatoes are not really much of a recipe. You just make several thin slices in a washed, unpeeled, uncooked poatato and stuff it with herbs of your choice. I just used very thinly sliced garlic. I wrapped each potato in tin foil and set them on the top rack of the barbecue while I was grilling the chicken and the corn. Corn in the husk cooks so so fast and simple on the grill. My girlfriends called these Hasslehoff Potatoes all afternoon! This is a great little menu for when you have friends over and you’d rather spend your visit hanging out with them than prepping food. All of this can be done ahead, so you can be outside with your guests and manning the barbecue!