Chee-Zee Chili Mac

To make Cheeze Sauce ('cheeze is purposely spelled wrong because it's not real cheese)

2.25 Cups Unsweetened Original Almond Milk
3 Heaping TBSP oat flour (I put G-Free oats in the blender to make the flour)
1 Cup Nutritional Yeast
salt, pepper, garlic powder (to taste)
~Whisk all that together in a sauce pan or BIG skillet. Bring it to a boil, reduce heat, simmer. Then, ADD:

Grate an 8oz package of tempeh
2 cans pinto's with chili seasoning (drain most of the liquid, but DON'T rinse)
1 can petit cut tomatoes (drain & rinse)

simmer ALL that together while you boil your pasta, I added a whole package of g-free elbows (8oz). Drain your pasta & add it directly to the sauce DON'T rinse. :-) mmmmmmmmmmm

Skintelligence

I LOVE these products!

I was recently given the value kit which includes: Skintelligence® Hydra Derm Deep Cleansing Emulsion; Skintelligence® pH Skin Normalizer; Skintelligence® Daily Moisture Enhancer. In other words: cleanser, toner, moisturizer, a complete regiment for skincare. This is great for normal to dry skin, according to their product write up, but I was really having a hard time with sensitivity also and it's working great.

So some background. I'm in my mid 30's and I've been struggling with acne for years it is SO frustrating. I did finally go in and get a prescription lotion from my doctor for Sodium Sulfacetamide. He also gave me an antibiotic which I never took because I just wanted to try that as a LAST resort. I was using the RX lotion for a week or so when I got the Skintelligence products. The picture on the left side was after I started using the RX, and before I started using Skintelligence. My face was so red and inflamed. Yes, I had some acne blemishes on my chin but what stands out to me is all around my eye, so splotchy and red and hurting!...  A couple weeks into my Skintelligence experiment, my face was SO HAPPY! And it still is. the pic on the right was 2 weeks in. It looks like I am wearing makeup but I promise, all I have on is mascara. The color is off (phone cam) too, but I did not do any photoshopping to that pic! Anyway, I can't give Skintelligence 100% of the credit for removing my acne, because I'm using that RX, but the whole line is SO SOOTHING and lovely and makes my face happy, & smooth. It smells dreamy and has ultra calming botanicals like Aloe, Lavender, Chamomile, and Geranium, just to name a few. I'm SO glad I found these products.

Isotonix: Calcium

Recently, I was on a women's retreat at the beach with my AA Gals. I complained that I couldn't sleep the first night because I was itchy and had restless legs. Kathy told me I MUST try her Isotonix Calcium Plus that night and see what a difference it makes!  I'm always "paranoid" to try vitamins it's the most ridiculous  thing ever. But I did it. She prepped it for me JUST before bed time, I drank it on an empty stomach. 30 min later I was absolutely zonked! SO drowsy, but not in a stoned way. Just sleepy like if I took a melatonin. No itching, no restless legs. GREAT nights sleep!!


http://www.shop.com/Isotonix+reg+Calcium+Plus-561800352-p+.xhtml#pop_pcd_tabs0

I'm not sure why it works for these "night itchies" but it WORKED and I'm hooked

Lemony Butternut Squash with Quinoa

 I got two HUGE Butternut Squashes already, super early. I cut, peeled, & diced the smaller one. I'm wearing gloves because when I peel them, there is a weird juice in between the meat and the skin that feels gross to me and I can never get it to wash all the way off. Makes my fingers feel coated for HOURS after. As you can see there weren't many seeds to remove. This squash yeilded over 12 cups of diced squash! WOW. My favorite color :-)

 I roasted about 3 cups of the dice at 400° for 15 min

   

mince 4 cloves of garlic and about 1/4 cup red onion. Saute on low for 5 min. Meanwhile
Rinse 1 Cup Royal Pearl Quinoa WELL. Zest off about 1Tbsp lemon peel. Squeeze 1/2 lemon. Then:
Add 2 cups roasted squash, 2.5 cups savory broth,  rinsed quinoa, lemon juice and zest all to the pan. Simmer on med/low for 20 min, stirring every 5 min or so. enjoy. I added Earth Balance buttery spread to my serving. OH Autumn!!

I saved 1 cup of the roasted squash, added a tad of water and microwaved for 3 min to get it NICE and soft. Then I used my immersion blender to puree and made babyfood :-)

Creamy Tomato Soup

 Rinse and pull stems from 2 lbs tomatoes

Put in a blender:
tomatoes
2 avocados
hand full of thyme (leaves not stems)
1Tbsp salt
1 clove of garlic

Blend till smooth. Warm on the stove. Served with buttered (Earth Balance Buttery Spread) toast or English muffins OR top with fancy croutons

Creamy Butternut Squash Soup

Made with my own home grown butternut squash.

First I roasted 1/2 inch cubes at 400° for 20 min stirring once half way thru

Put in blender:
Roasted Butternut squash
1 can LITE coconut milk
2 avocados
1/2 c cashews (I used trader joes thai spiced for extra spice!)
1 clove garlic
1Tbsp salt
1C water

 



















warm it up on the stove. eaten with buttered toast/english muffins.

Lentil Loaf

THANK YOU to Oh She Glows for another life changing recipe. The first was her 5 ingredient "cheese" sauce...... Just getting that link to her site I got stuck on her site for 30 min. I want to marry this girl!

Preheat Oven to 325°
1C Green Lentils
3C Water
3Tbsp Ground flax seeds
1/2C Water
1C Walnuts
1 Red onion
3 Cloves Garlic
1C Grated carrot
1C Fine chopped celery
1/3C Grated Apple
1/3C Currants
salt, pepper, oregano (or herb of your choice)
1C Oat Flour
3/4C Breadcrumbs


Step 1: Bring 1 Cup of green lentils to a boil in 3 cups of water (or broth). Reduce heat to med low so that its at a mellow boil. Cook for 45 min, stirring often, till the lentils are sort of breaking up. All the water should be absorbed, it should be a mush with some whole lentils along with lentil puree all blobbed together.

Step 2:Whisk together 3 Tbsp of ground flax seeds, and 1/2 Cup of water. Whisk this mixture every few minutes as you prepare all the other ingredients

Step 3: Chop up 1 cup of walnuts finely. Toast these in the oven for 15 min. Set aside. Raise the oven temp to 350°

Step 4: Remember to whisk your flax seeds. Finely chop a red onion, start sweating this in a sautee pan. Finely mince 3 cloves of garlic and add it to the pan. Grate 1 cup of carrot and add that to the pan, turn up the heat slightly so you hear a sizzle, but the veggies are just getting shiny, not browned. Finely chop one cup of celery and add it to the pan. Peel & grate 1/3 Cup of apple. By the time you add the apple, the mixture has cooked enough you can pull it from the heat. Add 1/3 Cup of Zante Currants, salt & pepper, some dried oregano if you like. Whisk flax seeds

Step 5: Toast 2 pieces of bread. I use gluten free. After toasting, allow bread to cool then pulse in a mini food processor until it is crumbs. Alternatively, you can use 3/4 cup of prepared bread crumbs.

Step 6: Measure 1 Cup of Oat Flour. I use Bobs Red Mill rolled oats processed in the blender to make flour. But they make flour, and you can choose a different brand if you like.

Step 7: Mix everything together in a big bowl. Spray or line an 8 X 8 pan (I used a bigger cake pan because I had doubled the recipe to have lots of leftovers), add the loaf mixture to the baking dish.

Bake for 45 min. It should be firm to touch when you poke it in the middle. Allow it to cool for at least 10 minutes. I like to top this with Trader Joes BBQ sauce & serve with Mashed potatoes (prepared with Earth Balance,  almond milk, garlic powder, oregano, salt, pepper) and green beans.


















 


Even better as leftovers!! I made a Loaf Sandwich the next day with pureed avocado as the spread and it was out of this world.

Tomato Sauce

Do you have a million tomatoes from your first try garden this year? I did! I used a tomato or two every day for a month and I still had a kojillion left to make a sauce with. Here's what I did.


Have a pot of water on the stove boiling. place a strainer on a plate nearby. Put about 5 tomatoes at a time into the water for about a minute. Then fish them out with a slotted spoon and place them in the strainer, and move on to the next batch. Blanch all the tomatoes this way. The skin will crack and become loose. Run them under cold water so you can handle them.

Pull off all the skins and place the whole rest of the tomato in an empty pot. I didn't crush or smash them or anything and in about 30 in of simmering, I had this:

I added some dried oregano, salt, and around 5 cloves of (fresh) minced garlic. Let it simmer on a very low boil for a couple hours, stirring occasionally.

These jars hold 5 cups each.mmmmmmmmmmmm The taste is JUST amazing. Sweet, but MEATY, with a high umami factor. Very complex flavor!

Savory Polenta

 Polenta can be used instead of pasta for many dishes, like Spaghetti with red sauce. Its SO tasty with red sauce and this time I made it topped with pizza style ingredients. So here's the basic recipe for Savory Polenta that you can tweek to suit your needs.

preheat oven to 400°
1 Cup medium ground corn grits
4 Cups savory broth
3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 red onion very small dice
3 Tbsp Earth Balance 

Use an oven safe all clad skillet with a lid

Start by wilting the onion on low heat for about 5 till its glossy and translucent. You don't want it browning. Add garlic and let it simmer for a minute or two. Add the broth to the pan, and turn up the heat. Bring it to a mellow boil. While whisking, slowly add the polenta grits to the broth. When its all added and incorporated, cover, and place the entire pan in the oven. Pull it out every ten minutes and whisk to break it up, for a total cooking time of 20. I have ALWAYS done it for 40 min but I just recently made this and it really only needed 20 min. Add 3 Tbsp Earth Balance and stir till totally blended

Topped my "pizza polenta" with sauteed mushrooms, white beans, olives, and of course my homemade sauce

Crockpot Oatmeal

 mmmmmmmmmmm This meal is so soothing I will lovingly recommend it for dinner on a bad day. Seriously. It is Yummy and really makes everything better. The texture is creamy and some of the grains still pop in your teeth.
 Ingredients:

2 C Gluten Free Steel Cut Oats
3 C Milk ( I used Unsweetened vanilla almond milk )
3 C Water
2 Apples peeled, cored, diced
2 Tbsp Cinnamon
8 Tbsp Raw cane sugar
3 Tbsp Earth Balance Buttery Spread (optional)
Put all the ingredients into the pot, give it a stir.






















I've made this a few times now and it takes about 5 hours in my crock. I know they vary though so I would definitely recommend making this during the day so you can find out the correct time on yours. You can stir it every hour or so. The first time I made it, I let it go for a long time so that a huge crust built up on the sides. After it cooled, I stirred it up vigorously so that the crust was broken up into the oatmeal and it was divine!!  I split it up and package it in the fridge for quick grab n go. Add some milk before reheating. Try adding peanut butter and coffee creamer AAAAHHHHHH yum.

Quinoa~ Savory OR Sweet!

I thought quinoa would be a good breakfast mixed with my brown rice breakfast bowl. I typically make my breakfast rice with sweet add-in's like currants, & honey. So I thought of a way to make my quinoa sweet rather than savory. I ALSO learned that if I rinse the dry quinoa before cooking it turns out just SO much better. Tastes better and the texture is JUST like couscous.

Sweet Quinoa
1 Cup Dry Quinoa, rinsed
3/4th Cup Water
1/2 Cup Applesauce
dash cinnamon
splash vanilla extract
~bring all to a boil in a smallish saucepan. Cover & reduce heat to low. Cook for 15 min stirring occasionally


Savory Quinoa
1 Cup Dry Quinoa, rinsed
1 1/2 Cup Savory Vegetable Broth
~Bring to a boil in a smallish Saucepan. Cover & reduce heat to low. Cook for 15 min stirring occasionally

Lipstuff!!

Ok, I know "chapstick" is probably a copyrighted name so.... Lipstuff it is! I. Made. Lipstuff. Every time I make something new DIY, I am SOOO tickled. This lipstuff is very super nice too. Smooth, soothing, rich. mmmmmmmm






3 tsp Beeswax
2 Tbsp coconut oil
2 Tbsp Shea butter

10 drops sweet orange essential oil


I melted the beeswax & coconut oil in the microwave using a toothpick to stir every 20 seconds. Added the shea & honey, stirred. Added the essential oil, stirred. Used a little kid medicine squeezer to fill the tubes. What a treat!!

Big Feelings and Foot Lotion

I'm watching Baraka. Its Beautiful! Have you seen it? There's all these indigenous peoples, and I just imagine: If an alien species came to Earth, they would assume that we all KNOW each other. They wouldn't think that some indigenous people wouldn't know anything about some other indigenous people. I find those other people SO FASCINATING. I don't know anything about them and they have a WHOLE history, and society and way of doing things. They live in their own little world, and it is MY world too and we don't know each other! Its really a beautiful movie if you haven't seen it yet, DO.

I turned 37 yesterday. I guess everyone has a big deal birthday they look forward to all their life and this was mine. I have always believed that I wasn't going to make it to 37. I just feel so alive and glad today and happy that I "made it" so I don't have to worry about it anymore. I'm reborn! I'm vegan! I'm making all these new fun & healthy household & toiletry products! Slowly, I'm gaining confidence in myself, as people ask me "how do you do it?". I have something worth while to offer.

I had a person in mind today when I wanted to make a lotion. This person is very particular about her beauty regimen and I'm pretty sure that if I gave her "body lotion" it wouldn't get used. No offense taken! I'm weird about that stuff too that's why I'm MAKING it now lol. I decided she probably wouldn't mind trying some homemade stuff on her feet, so I made a whole batch of "Nighttime Foot Cream" with eucalyptus, peppermint, and lavender. The lotions I make are SO nice for my nails and are SO thick I know this cream is going to make some tickled tootsies.

Deodorant

TOO easy:
1.5 Tbsp Shea Butter
1.5 Tbsp Baking Soda
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp Cocoa Butter

melt in the micro, 30 seconds at a time till melted. Stir. Add 15 drops of essential oil of your choice-I chose lemon for this. Stir, Chill. It stays firm at room temp. I never get BO because I am a pure angel, so Mike is going to try this for me for a couple days and I'll report back soon. Enjoy!


***UPDATE*** This stuff WORKS. On a man, on a 95 degree day. I'M impressed

Laundry Soap

All this Do It Myself stuff has given me SUCH a boost and a breath of fresh air. I was getting super bummed out about the whole food system in our country, and Agribusiness. I watch so many documentaries about food, what's wrong with the healthcare system, conspiracy theories. I weigh each soundly. I do feel responsible to make the changes I can for my family that I think are best. At the same time, I'm trying to find my place in this world like anyone else and I LIKE being a homemaker. I flail at it, I feel. And I think a big reason for that is, I don't have a solid religious structure in my life. You know, I dabble and explore my spirituality a TON. Nowadays I'm reading a lot of these MommyBlogs and how to make your own anything and it seems like most of these ladies are solid Christians. Which is great for them. But for me, I really don't know if that's my personal answer. While at the same time, I KNOW that many of those principals apply to me: honoring my husband by keeping a happy home, uplifting my family by guiding us in the right food decisions, embrace my role in keeping the home. I'm hoping I can continue to grow along this path even though I don't attend church and I don't have my finger on my personal beliefs/religion.

As a homemaker, I manage our finances, and making my own laundry & dish soap saves a TON of money. I'll ad an update post with cost analysis later if you all need it but TRUST me on this, making my own dish(washer)soap cut my spending to about 20% of what it was IF that. And now I'm making my own laundry soap, and lotions.... Who knows what's next.

Most importantly, I'm working on reducing the chemicals in my home. Laundry detergents contain KNOWN carcinogens such as 1,4-dioxane, Benzene, and Acetaldehyde. For the longest time, this just didn't concern me. I guess I just figured, well we've all been doing this for so long and nothings happened so what's the problem? But something IS happening! People are getting cancer. People I know. See the thing is, we have all these carcinogens in our daily environment so we have to 1)eat right to give our body what it needs to fight off any cancers trying to set up shop in our body, and 2) get as much cancer causing crud we possibly can out of our environment. To me, for years, doing those 2 things seemed futile and impossible. Now all the sudden, for me, it's easy and common sense. This is where I'm at today and it feels good.

OK! Now for the laundry soap. The easiest thing yet:

1 bar shaved soap. I used Kirks Castille for this batch
1 Cup Washing soda
1 Cup Borax




I used it to wash already and I was so shocked. HONESTLY I thought I would have to just "suffer" with scratchy, ikky fabrics. The load came out just fresh and normal and CLEAN. Corbin had a stain on one shirt that was washed and dried in from before and it came OUT I couldn't believe it. How exciting is this???

Let's make it more exciting! First person to correctly guess my next DIY wins a batch (of mystery DIY)

Body Lotion

I MADE body lotion. Very exciting, but I can't TELL you how easy it is and how excited I am that I will be saving millions of dollars now :-)



I got the basic recipe from A Sonoma Garden, my new FAVORITE do it yourself blog, and I ordered the ingredients from Mountain Rose Herbs.








I did make a couple minor tweeks on the recipe because I wanted shea butter in my lotion. So the recipe is this:










Melt together 1/4 C Emulsifying Wax & 1/4 C Sweet Almond Oil. Microwave for 30 seconds, stir, then another 30 if needed




















Add 1/4 C Shea Butter to the warm oil/wax and stir till it's melted. I read somewhere online that if you over heat the shea it can become gritty. This method seemed to work fine.























Add 30 drops of Lavender Essential Oil




















Add 1 C water hottest from the tap. Stir, pour into a jar & let cool overnight....



















I'm not waiting :-)

Best Stir Fry Ever

We all have our own way of making stir fry. But I thought I'd share my method, in case any of you is looking for some new ideas or refreshment.

Lately, I've been using wide rice noodles. Boil them up and put them aside.





















I cut up the baby bok choy, and mushrooms, and saute them separately ahead of time. If I'm using broccoli, I'll cut & trim it and quickly blanch it, then set it aside too.

Meanwhile I cut up all my other veggies: Asparagus, kale, red onion, zucchini. All of THESE veggies can be mixed together in their staging bowl, along with the already started mushroom/bok choy/broccoli. We've also been enjoying this bean curd stuff a LOT. It's yummy and the protien rounds out the dish.























I also mince up a whole bunch of garlic, and stage that separately.


Now, I'm ready to start frying. I use coconut oil. I put in all the veggies, reserving the garlic. Fry for about 2 min, then start adding sauces. For Mike, I use Kung Pao sauce. Easy. For me, I use: 1/4 cup lite coconut milk, a GENEROUS shake of red pepper flakes, couple splashes of tamari, sometimes a nice dollop of Yum Cafe Yummi Sauce. After adding all the sauce, I'll grab a handful of noodles. It is helpful to keep the noodles in the colander near the sink. They stick together and I have to rinse them fresh before adding them. Stir, fry, add sauce if needed. at the VERY last second, I add the garlic. Give it a last quick mix up and plate (bowl)

Creamy Chai Soap

What a treat! I made a couple tweeks from the method used for my first try soap.
here's a step by step:

First I grated 2 Cups of pure unscented glycerine soap. Added 1/4 C Almond oil, and 1/2 C water and put it in a "double boiler system" like so.





















Next, I added yummy spices that smell good, and some raw honey. 1tsp cinnamon, 1/2tsp allspice, 2tsp cardamom, 1Tbsp honey. I also added 1.5 Tsp ground gluten free oats (flour).




















Last time, much of what I added settled at the bottom of the loaf, producing an uneven bar. So this time, I tried something that worked perfectly. I used an immersion blender and blended it as I alternately placed the container in the fridge to bring the temp down.
























I think I'm going to let this batch cure for a few weeks, it's very soft. Maybe I'll try it as a shampoo bar