My Green Drink

Since I found out that in no shape or form should you ever consume raw kale I was on hot pursuit to find a replacement for my standard green drink recipe this summer. So after a lot of searching and looking at different recipes on the web I came up with my own green drink recipe. You can make this in a vita-mix or you can leave the fiber behind and juice it. This drink saved my life all summer long. Also this was the ultimate water retention reducer. I would drink this down and all my puffiness would detox right out of me. I would weigh my self before hand and then after and could not believe it.

Pretty easy recipe and only use organic:
one large cucumber
four or five stalks of celery
five or six leaves of roman lettuce
One lime
five drops of SweetLeaf liquid Stevia
1/2 cup or so of low sodium mineral water

Optional additions:
one green apple:)
coconut water:)


Juice all together and pour into a glass, add some ice and top with mineral water, and add liquid stevia to taste. If you are vita mixing then you probably might want to half the recipe.

Sweet mornings in disquise with super foods....

Sorry the photo is not that great I took it with my old camera that died a few months ago. Thank goodness Ben had a spare for me to use.

My morning almond milk, double shot, home made latte would not be complete with out Raw Cacao Powder from Navitas Naturals. I was reading a article on Harvard Health Publications about the heart healthy benefits of Cacao Powder and anti inflammatory properties. It is for sure a SUPER FOOD in every since of the word reading more into the article. Doing more research I found that two and half tablespoons gives you 2% calcium, 8% Iron, 4 grams of fiber, 3 grams of protein and 67.5mg of magnesium. The kicker is that it has fifteen more times the antioxidants found in a glass of red wine and twenty-one times that of a cup of green tea, even blueberries cannot compete with this stuff!!!!

The Cacao Powder is rich in flavonoids that can help with so many things from pre-mature ageing, fighting environmental damage happening in out bodies, anti-inflammatory properties and help with heart health in lowering blood pressure. Even help with your mood and boost endorphin levels.

The cacao powder also makes a excellent hot chocolate as well. I just add a little more sweetness to the almond milk and leave out the espresso shots. If you do not have a milk frothier just add two cups of some kind of milk and two tablespoons of the cacao powder and heat over medium heat while whisking until heated, combined and frothy. I like to add a few pinches of cinnamon and nutmeg and maybe a little vanilla extract or peppermint extract. YUM!!!

probabaly the last to know about a london fog latte...

So I was reading Kath Eats Real Food daily blog post last night. She was at FoodBuzz in San Francisco and she mentioned she went to Bread and Cocoa. This is a cute place on Sutter Street near the Fincial District part of San Francisco. It is a great place to get a quick healthy and eco-friendly bite in the the morning or for lunch. She mentioned she got a London Fog tea latte. Now, I pretty much only buy cappuccinos when I am out and about. I never even look at the menu when I order ever. I just ask for the same thing a small..low..fat..or..almond..milk..dry..cappuccino. I drink a lot of tea at home so I never think to look at the tea drink selection or the drink menu as a whole. So I thought hmm.... that sounds good how do you make it at home. I did some searching and compered methods, ingredients and decided corn syrup laden, synthetically flavored vanilla syrup is just not my style, so I will go the other route. So here us my take on the London Fog Latte.

-one or two Earl Grey tea bags or some loose Earl Grey tea
-one cup of boiling water
-one cup of milk of choice steamed and frothed
-a little bit of some kind of sweetener: a squirt of agave nectar, one packet of stevia, a few drops of liquid stevia, good old sugar, honey or coconut palm sugar, what ever lights you fire!!!
1/4 tsp of vanilla extract

-Boil some water and open up two tea bags for a super strong taste or one for normal. I am using Numi brand aged Earl Grey tea with bergamont. I prefer Mighty Leaf's Earl Grey though.
-Fill the cup up half way with the water. Cover the cup with a saucer and set your timer for five minutes. No more the five minutes! Anything more and your Earl Gray will be bitter tasting.
-After the timer goes off squeeze your bags and take out of the mug.
-Add the vanilla extract and your sweetener stir to combine.
-Then pour the milk to the rim.

Enjoy, YUM!!!!

Halloween Re-Cap

We bought a ton of candy and gave it all away!!! The bowel pictured is actually huge!!

I carved three Fairytale pumpkins and used these LCD flicker battery operated candles by GE(got them at Loews for $7.00) this year. I think they did the trick I just put two lights in each pumpkin.

 After my carving session Mama needed a pumpkin Latte! I was inspired by Mamapea's recipe on her blog Peas and Thank You, but since I have a frother and two types of espresso makers I made mine tailored to my taste and my equipment!

Make a couple of shots of espresso. I used my Italian espresso maker instead of my Nepresso. Make your froth. I have a frother that works great! I add about 1/4 cup of milk to my Nepresso frother just enough to make some nice thick froth. I have seen little hand held frothers that are about $20.00 if you do not want to make the a huge investment. You could also just delete the froth or try and whisk some in another small sauce pan over medium heat. I am froth crazy person so I got the best and most efficient one on the market.

 Add a cup of milk of choice, two big table spoons of pumpkin, a good pinch of clove, 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, a good pinch of nutmeg(not pictured),1/2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice, 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract. Then whisk together until smooth. Turn heat to medium low making sure it does not boil.

Add a pack of stevia(liquid stevia works best anywhere from 7 to 14 drops depending on how sweet you want it) or some raw honey like 1/2 tbsp and whisk again. Taste test it to make sure it taste like pumpkin pie. If it doesn't add more spices until you get the right taste.

Add about a teaspoon of half and half to make it extra creamy if you have it on hand.

Add your foam first, then the espresso and finally pour the pumpkin mixture and sprinkle with cinnamon. This was a bit of trail in error to get the Latte to taste like a slice of pumpkin pie, but I finally got it:) This makes one huge mug or two normal size mugs of Pumpkin Pie Latte Goodness:)

I made spicy pumpkin seeds from my pumpkin carving adventure. Ben asked about ten times when would they be ready when he got home from work. You can see in the picture almost half are gone! You have to dry them out in the oven on 250 degrees for about three hours make them dry enough to make them crunchy if they are fresh from the pumpkin. Quite a task to separate them from the stringy flesh of the pumpkin. You have to put them in a strainer and run water over them and pull the seeds away from the flesh by hand. Once they where pretty dry I toss them in grape seed oil, brown sugar, garlic powder, cinnamon and chili powder. Then turned the oven to 350 degrees and toasted them for about 30 minutes(tossing them about every 10 minutes). If you buy them already dry they take about 10 minutes and then toss them in the oven then another 10 minutes.

 I received so many complements on my pumpkins from all the Moms in the neighborhood. I had a little group of ladies huddled around them asking where I got them and the LCD lights! I think a good day had by all!

Fall in a Cup by Numi Organic Teas

Love Fall!!! I was so happy to move from Southern Cal to Northern Cal because I knew I would get to experience Fall. Especially in the Sierra Foot Hills you really get to experience the seasons change. I love the colors of Fall and the cool crisp air and yes, I like the rain that comes with all of it to. We have started the season with a quite a few rain showers especially last week. We had a storm front that came in that put me in the mood for a Fall themed tea. So I went hunting and found this great Organic tea by Numi. It ran about $5.00 for a box of 16 tea bags. The company uses no artificial flavors, fair trade tea leaves and is USDA certified Organic ingredients.





The Orange Spice White Tea has all the right stuff for a great cup of Fall. The tea includes: cinnamon, orange peel, cloves, white tea leaves, hibiscus, allspice, ginger, lemon grass, schizandra berry and dried lime. All organic and all preservative free! I like White Tea because it has less caffeine then other teas and has more antioxidants then a cup of green tea.

I usually use loose tea because it is more eco-friendly, sometimes cheaper and you can always get a better cup of tea, but it is hard to find.  I order mine online and some of the higher end markets carry a decent selection on hand.

So to make the cup a little more like loose tea I use two Tea bags instead of one to get a richer flavor, and I added some orange zest and a squeeze of the half of the orange that I used to zest. Also I used a bit of liquid Stevia drops and a dash of cinnamon and it was great. With my cup in hand, I was ready to tackle my laundry list of things to do and perfectly happy to do it while sipping this tasty cup of tea! Enjoy!!!!

If you would like to take a look at Numi's Selection here is a link to their website at numitea.com