Happy 2014 friends!! Check out my party animal puppy ringing in the New Year.... Just kidding, she's actually quite the party pooper and looked like this by 9 PM: My hubby and I had a super low key New Year's Eve night, which was totally fine with both of us. We ate and drank, played Scrabble, and enjoyed our Christmas decor and tree for one more night before I took it all down today. Since I had the time, I fooled around in the kitchen last night and came up with some yummy eats and drinks.... Today I'm sharing the recipes for homemade Old Bay potato chips and French onion dip. Both are easyyyy peezy to make, and so scrumptious to pick on while kicking ass in playing Scrabble. They don't necessarily have to be paired together, but they make one delicious appetizer combo. Homemade ... [Read More]
vegetarian recipes
Jazzy Vegetarian Classics Cookbook Recipes & Review
"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." - Luciano Pavarotti As someone who loves to spend time whipping up healthy, delicious food in the kitchen, I own a number of cookbooks that I constantly flip through for recipe ideas and inspiration. And I'm always on the lookout for new ones to check out. Recently, my friends at BenBella Books sent me a copy of Jazzy Vegetarian Classics, a book that came out a few months ago. The cookbook features vegan recipes from Laura Theodore -- a host, writer, and producer on Public Television show Jazzy Vegetarian. Laura states her mission to simply be: making the world a better place, one recipe at a time, and describes her recipes to be, "based on fruits, ... [Read More]
Roasted Sweet Potato & Farro Salad
Hi there! Hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was exactly what I wanted it to be: productive yet also relaxing. Since I'm flying to the East coast this upcoming weekend for the holidays (!!!), I wanted to get some Christmas shopping done and clean my house - check, check. Since it has been SO chilly in the Bay Area and I'm a baby in the cold weather, I didn't have any outdoor workouts besides long walks with Harley, but I did do at-home workouts both yesterday and today. I probably look like such a nut awesome jumping around my living room doing burpees and pushups while watching football... hey, whatever works up a sweat right?! A lot of good food made its way into my belly this weekend, including: A post-workout bowl of goodness: chopped apple & banana sprinkled with cinnamon, ... [Read More]
Real Food Talk + Rosti Potatoes with Goat Cheese & Arugula
Over the past few years, I've really made an effort to add more real food into my diet, and less and less processed stuff. I've always loved my fruits and veggies, but I realized that I was also eating foods with long ingredient lists more than I'd like. Don't get me wrong, I eat things like protein bars all the time, but I've made an adjustment to eating things with more natural ingredient lists like this: (Source: Zing Bars) And look less often like this: An awesome perk to blogging is that people like to send you samples of products to try and blog about. It's always fun to get a package in the mail of a new product. As a personal rule, I only say yes to products that align with my beliefs and that I would consider buying in a store. Recently I received an email to try new meal ... [Read More]
Italian-Style Stuffed Peppers
To a lot of people, including me, food is more than just what you eat to keep your body nourished. It's also an aspect of life that brings people together, brings them joy and creates long-lasting memories. Some eats bring me back to certain times in my life. A meal I created the other night made me think of when my hubby and I first lived together. Our first months of living together, we were temporarily located in Florida while my Marine went to a specialty school there. I remember having fun creating our first dinners as a married couple, and one of my first meals for us in Florida was stuffed peppers. I used to stuff them with soy crumbles, veggies and cheese, so while these stuffed peppers are more inspired by Italian ingredients like bread crumbs, mozzarella, parmesan, fresh basil, ... [Read More]
Mixed Green Salad with Blueberries, Goat Cheese & Honeyed Walnut -n- Hemp Seed Clusters
A few weeks ago, I stopped at the Vitamin Shoppe to pick up a few goodies (and buy my first box of Quest bars!), and they had a store party going on. I walked out with a bag of samples to try, which I was obviously excited about. It's the little things in life people! One of the samples in the bag were hemp seeds, which I've heard a lot about but have never tried (at home at least). Today I used my sample and whipped up one awesome salad for lunch. I adapted this recipe from Vegetarian Times, switching around some ingredients and amounts, and making a single serving portion since it was just little ole me. You can view their original recipe here. To make the clusters, I toasted the hemp seeds with walnut pieces, honey and cinnamon. So easy to make, and such a tasty addition to a ... [Read More]