I’m sort of a hot mess this morning and its only 8:30:

– works been super busy so I decided to go in early. To help save time in the morning, I decided to do this no heat curl hair style. Except I put too much product at the roots last night before setting it so now my hair sort of has the Conan O’Brien side part, super poofy thing going. When I move my head, I can feel it swaying back and forth. Not the look I was going for. Conan’s hair on 60 minutes

– Despite my best laid plans, I was in fact not early to work but was late courtesy of a faulty alarm clock. Er…ok. It may have worked for the 800 times I hit snooze. But it totally failed on the 801 time!

– To help go along with the time-saving thing in the morning, I laid out my outfit last night. At least, I thought I did. I woke this morning to find I had laid out a complete outfit…minus the pants. And for the life of me, I could not find my black dress pants anywhere! Seriously, they must have walked out of my room. So I’m rocking black skinny jeans to work…on a Wednesday…which is against dressed code. Sshh- Don’t tell.

– I apparently decided today was the day to channel my inner Bag lady. I sauntered into work with not one, not two, but three large bags- my purse (yes, its large), my gym bag, and a reusable grocery bag filled with my lunch, as well as grocery staples I keep forgetting to bring in- coffee, milk for my coffee, sugar for my coffee…more coffee…And by ‘sauntered into work’ I mean, I staggered in under the weight of my three ginormous and heavy bags.

– When removing one of my gargantuan bags from the car, I proceed to accidentally spill a bag of dirty hand towels and single socks all over the floor. So as my lovely co-workers were driving into the garage, I was hastily shoving one eeyore sock or one spider sock into a plastic target bag. I don’t even know where that bag came from…or why I have eeyore socks.

Thank god that I had the foresight to get my crap together on Sunday and have all my meals planned out for the week. Included in those plans was homemade almond butter with honey and homemade apple butter, which I’m currently enjoying for breakfast with my cinnamon honey bread, all of which were in my ridiculously large grocery bag. SO good!

For the almond butter, I have yet to find one that is as smooth as peanut butter. If you are going to make almond butter (which is approximately a trazillion times cheaper to make then buy), you can make it as smooth as you can but you should expect some grittiness.

Almond Butter with honey:

1 cup of almonds

3 TBS of olive oil

drizzle of honey ( I used about 2 Tsp)

Roast almonds for about 20 minutes in a 300 degree oven stirring half way through. Allow the almonds to cool. When they have cooled down completely, add to a food process and pulse until the almonds are a fine dust. Slowly add your olive oil in (the recipes vary on how much olive oil to put in. I started with 2 TBS but found that wasn’t enough to give it a smooth consistency. You can adjust to your taste). Slowly add honey (like the olive oil, this can be adjusted to your taste preference also. It wouldn’t change the consistency of the butter that much).

I’ve been meaning to make apple butter forever! So I’ve been looking at a ton of recipes. None particularly stood out for me. I had two people say they had really good recipes so I had them send them over. I liked aspects of each and was influenced by them but in the end, I just sort of winged it.

Apple Butter
inspired by Lu and Melinda

8 sweet apples (I used honeycrisps, because I’m obsessed)

1 cup of water

3 TBS of brown sugar*

1-2 TBS of cinnamon*

*Like the almond butter, this can be adjusted to suit your taste. For instance, many of the recipes call for a lot of sugar. I didn’t want to start my day with a sugar rush so I scaled back on the sugar quite a bit.

Core and peel the apples. Cut them into chunks. In a large pot, combine apples and water and bring to a boil. Stir, reduce heat to a simmer. When the apples are soft, about 20 minutes, use an Immersion Blender and blend until there is no, or almost no, chunks. Return to the heat and continue simmering until there is no liquid, stirring occasionally. This took me about 2 and a half hours. I was doing other things in the kitchen so I just had it going on in the background and would stir it every 10 to 20 minutes. Stir in cinnamon and brown sugar. Leave it on the heat for another 10 minutes or so until the sugar and cinnamon have really cooked in.

Cinnamon and honey bread with almond butter and apple butter. I assure you, it's tastier then it looks...

Read Full Post »

So, I sort of have this problem where I live off my To-Do list/Schedule and I don’t always realize what day of the month it is…or even what day of the week it is. For instance, I was talking to my friend Rachel at work about the crafts she had planned for our works Holiday Bazaar (check out her blog at http://rachelrobinsnest.com/).  She was concerned about time and when I asked when it was, she said, The 17th. ‘Oh, you have plenty of time!’ I said reassuringly. She looked at me like I was crazy and politely pointed out that the 17th was three days away. And Thanksgiving? Yeah, that’s next week.

Holy Crap. Where did the time go? We still have Halloween decorations up! And this week, I sort of pretended it was October. For instance, on Saturday, I came home from work and proceeded to carve a pumpkin while listening to my halloween playlist. My roommate, Chris, walked in and was like, Um…Did we go back in time?? 

But it’s not my fault!! October was not fun at all. I worked, a lot. And when I went apple picking it was too hot to wear a cute fall coat. And when I had my halloween party, it frickin’ snowed!! 

But November? November has been beautiful. The leaves are changing and falling and its been nice and sunny and cool. It feels like fall finally! Hence, the pumpkin carving and why I’m presenting you with a post for roasted pumpkin seeds  even though you’ve been so over the pumpkin carving thing for a  month now.

 On the plus side, these would serve as an excellent alternative to a nut bowl at your Thanksgiving party! And they are chock full of healthy things like unsaturated fats, most of the B vitamins, vitamins C, D, E and K and they help with prostrate and bladder problems. Winning!

So carve a Turkey in a pumpkin this week to put on your front steps to welcome your thanksgiving guests (I’m currently rocking a carved owl) and use those seeds as an appetizer!

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

• 1 c. pumpkin seeds (do not wash them after you remove them from the pumpkin. The gooiness adds flavor!)
• 1 1/2 tsp canola oil
• a pinch of salt, or salt to taste (I used Herbamare, which is an organic seasoning salt you can get at Whole Foods)

Preheat oven to 300. Toss your seeds with the oil and salt. Spread your seeds on a cookie sheet and pop in the oven for 40-45 minutes, until golden in color. Stir once, about half way through.

OR, remember that BBQ sauce that you used to make those yummy Kale chips? I know you, of course, went and made a batch right after I posted that recipe because you are smart and trust me. So you, of course, have extra BBQ sauce left over. You can use that on the Pumpkin Seeds! Replace the oil and salt above and toss the seeds with just enough BBQ sauce so that they are all heavily coated. But not too much. You don’t want your seeds swimming in BBQ sauce, even though that sounds delicious. Cook the same as above. Taste them after you remove them from the oven and add salt if you want. I didn’t because I thought the coating was delicious but some people like their seeds super salty. To each their own!

Another great vegan addition to your Thanksgiving meal is hummus. I feel like hummus has reached a level of popularity that if you serve this with some veggies or chips that people won’t think you are too weird or that you are trying to sneak them healthy food.  True- You probably will still hear some griping from the Uncle that lives exclusively off meat and diet coke and harasses you every year for the lack of turkey on your plate BUT I think the majority of the people won’t give hummus a second thought. Plus, you can secretly gloat while you are eating your protein rich hummus and crunchy veggies that he’s probably going to walk away 10 pounds heavier from this day and your going to be feeling pretty damn good about your healthy cruelty-free choices. *smirk*

Garlic Hummus
adapted from Peas and Thank You‘s Cilantro Jalapeno Hummus

• One 14 oz. can of chickpeas, drained, rinsed and peeled
• 1/4 c. reserved liquid from chickpeas
• 2 T. fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 c. tahini
• 2 t. garlic, minced  (sssh, I made this way too late at night so I used the garlic from a jar)
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• Paprika, optional

So, according to Sarah Matheny, aka Mama Pea on peasandthankyou.com, the secret to a super creamy and yummy hummus is to skin the chickpeas. Its pretty easy to do this and only took me about 10 minutes to skin 1 can of chickpeas. You just sort of put the chickpeas between your thumb and forefinger and pop them out. I’m sure this would actually be really amusing and fun if one batch of hummus wasn’t standing between me and my warm, comfy bed. Anways…

The chickpea skin...eew

– Set aside 1/4 c of the liquid from the canned chickpeas. Dump the rest of the can into a colander and rinse. Deskin the chickpeas and place in food processor. Add the rest of the ingredients to the food processor and blend until smooth. Garnish with paprika if you want.

This recipe turned out  pretty salty. The chickpeas I bought, the Goya brand, ended up being preserved in salt. So when I set aside the 1/4 c. of liquid, there was already salt going into the hummus. Whoops! I definitely didn’t notice that until after.  I would recommend processing this without the salt and then add it, if need be. Otherwise, it’s pretty tasty! I think next time I’m going to throw a 1/4 or a 1/2 of a chipotle in adobe sauce in. I bet it’d be delicious!

Before the weeks over, I’ll give you guys a few more recipes to help you through the Thanksgiving feast. For now, I’m going to go listen to my halloween playlist…again.

Read Full Post »