The best part is, with a few variations this cookie recipe can become just about anything you want it to. These have some of my favorites in them, Earth Balance Vegan Butter and Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips. I also made ours with my favorite gluten free flour blend from A Little Insanity, and I bought my flour ingredients and chocolate chips from Vitacost.
Who doesn't love a chocolate chip cookie? The kids beg me to make these, and I could easily double the batch but I'm afraid I'll eat them all. No joke. That's how good they are. I just made a triple batch so we could bring them to allergy friendly festivities at school and still have some leftover at home.
The best part is, with a few variations this cookie recipe can become just about anything you want it to. These have some of my favorites in them, Earth Balance Vegan Butter and Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips. I also made ours with my favorite gluten free flour blend from A Little Insanity, and I bought my flour ingredients and chocolate chips from Vitacost.
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Since we went orange picking over Thanksgiving weekend, I've been digging out all our saved recipes containing orange or juice, plus coming up with a few others. This is inspired by a recipe I made years ago, with ingredients from our fresh produce delivery and using our delicious oranges. The best way to describe this is light and refreshing. The delicate bite of the cabbage and radishes combined with the sweet fruits, along with the burst of the pomegranate arils in your mouth is to die for.
This makes a great side dish, or if you're having it as your entire meal I'd add a protein topper such as chicken, fish, tofu or beans. I had some leftover lemon pepper chicken and it went perfectly with this tasty salad. This comes together very quickly, with the exception of cleaning out the pomegranate. You can buy a package of them already cleaned to save time if you wish. Orange Juice Pancakes are an absolute treasure in this family. The recipe is so simple, the kids can help make it and it's fool proof. They are loved so much, that the kids literally stand at our feet holding up a plate so we can drop fresh, piping hot pancakes on them, and they are demolished before the next round is finished cooking. Even the baby has started standing near the stove, begging for another. The ingredients are things we usually have on hand, and now that we've picked our fresh Merrill oranges the kids are begging for pancakes and a glass of freshly squeezed juice. I wanted to get this up quickly, so I didn't take a bunch of pictures of the step by step, but you won't need them. It's that easy! This time we used oat flour since I'm in the middle of a 12 day detox with my Juice Plus+ group. For the kids, I tossed in a few of our favorite allergy friendly Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips as a treat instead of syrup. We always double the recipe on this because we usually have a grandparent or two pop in for breakfast when we're making these. Even if they don't, the leftovers reheat nicely the next morning for the kiddos. Either way they always get eaten!
Last weekend we hosted a Tower Garden workshop at our house, and I learned all sorts of new tips and tricks about growing a successful tower. Such as, I needed to trim off the outer skinny celery stalks to get larger stalks growing in the middle. My celery is a deep green color, with large flat leaves and unbelievably fragrant, so it was just perfect to whip up a batch of yummy celery almond pesto!
This recipe is so light and delicious, but has a powerful flavor punch. It's great on pasta, spread on crostini as an appetizer or an amazing dip for fresh fruits and veggies. A scoop of it in your favorite salad dressing can rock your world. Brushed on to grilled chicken or fish, it can really dress up a dinner. Plus, it's super easy to make and oh so pretty!
Hands down, freshly made guacamole is the most requested snack in our house. I've been making it for years and have tried out many variations, but this. This! It's so simply perfect and delicious. So delicious, in fact, that the tiny Merrills in the house were hanging on my legs asking if it was finished, so I didn't even take the time to wipe the bowl edges and give you a pretty photo. I told you this would be real life cooking, didn't I?
I've tried out dried spices in the past, but chopping things fresh makes all the difference in this very few step recipe. Note: I always chop double the ingredients so I can make a second batch the next day. It's what my people want.
I'm sure by now you've seen salad in a jar ideas online, especially on Pinterest. I heard about the idea of turning it into a party at the Juice Plus+ Leadership Conference I attended back in October and I knew I had to host at least one! I did a little asking around and immediately pulled together a group of great friends (and some of their friends!) for not only a fun girls night get together, but we actually made healthy salads for the week! I've been eating mine and boy, are they delicious. Everyone had such a great time and I keep hearing how much we all love knowing we have our healthy lunches or dinners already prepared. A glass of wine or iced tea and some guacamole made our evening complete. We will definitely be doing this often!
Here's how it works. I wanted to keep our guests to about 10-12 so the ingredients were manageable. Each guest signed up to bring one ingredient in a large quantity to share for the group, plus as many jars as they wanted to fill. I made five simple homemade dressings - 5 minute recipes below - and bought some lettuce. We ended up with a beautiful selection of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, broccoli, peas, onions, a selection of nuts and seeds, dried cranberries and chickpeas. We set up an assembly line, and in just a few minutes we all had our jars made! 2-3T dressing goes in the bottom, followed by harder ingredients that won't get soggy, working in layers moving up. The ingredients with the most potential to get limp go at the top. If you have larger jars, you end with your lettuce or greens at the top layer. If you have smaller jars, your lettuce goes in a baggie or container on the side. I set out a marker and some small removable sticker labels so everyone could mark which dressing they used in each jar. I found my stickers at Publix years ago and I've been working my way through the box. They are so handy for making meals ahead, freezing meals and even just letting your family know what's stored in all those containers in the fridge. Plus they peel right off without leaving sticky residue on your containers. Amazon has some choices here. When it's time to eat, you just put your lettuce on the plate, then dump out the jar on top and you've got a perfectly tossed, dressed salad. Yummy! With ingredients listed above, jars will keep fresh all week long in the fridge. We had some leftover smoked chicken from dinner the night before, so I added just a bit to my plate when I ate my salad. I don't recommend things like eggs, wet cheeses or meat inside the jars unless you're going to eat them the very next day.
My favorite part of carving pumpkins is roasting the delicious seeds. The whole family stands by the oven waiting for them to come out and cool so we can taste the first one. Typically I follow the same recipe every year, from Elyse over at Simply Recipes. This year I decided to mix it up a bit and try something new. My searching brought me to another favorite site, Oh She Glows, and wouldn't you know it, she linked right back to Elyse's recipe! I did a combination of the two recipes, plus added some seasonings we love. We carved four pumpkins this year so we had a LOT of seeds. I divided mine into three so we could make our different flavors. Let the fun begin!
Have you had enough pumpkin spice yet? Me neither. I think fall is my favorite season, and there's nothing better than the delicious aroma of something sweet and spicy coming from the oven. We have a banana chip muffin recipe that's a staple in our house, but once and a while I like to mix things up a bit. That's how this delicious recipe came about.
The best part about this recipe is it's unbelievably easy to substitute for allergies or dietary preferences. I'll give you a few variations, plus the details on how I made this batch dairy and gluten free. One of my littles is a huge fan of chocolate, another loves vanilla. I'm a huge fan of the entire Enjoy Life brand because they are so allergy friendly, and we have always used their chocolate chips. I typically buy them, along with many of my other dry packaged goods, from Vitacost because their prices are really affordable. Most importantly, they deliver in 2-3 days and delivery services are a major part of my busy life. There's always a pile of boxes at the door filled with healthy staples for our household. Vitacost also has this awesome refer a friend program, which I've shared with so many people already! Here's a link for mine. Won't you be my healthy friend? https://goo.gl/9JPbAu Ok, back on track. One day my sweet middle child who loves when I call him Birdie said, "Mommy? When can we have vanilla chips?" I knew this would be a challenge to find something already made that's dairy free, an absolute requirement for us. I was scouring the internet for recipes on how to make my own when a friend shared a link to these by King David. One day I'll get around to trying my own healthy recipe -maybe when there's an extra hour in each day, but for now I'll stick to these tasty treasures. They're a perfect addition to this recipe. |
About Dana Merrill
I'm a busy mom of three, determined to maintain a healthy lifestyle amidst the beautiful chaos. Links
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