Microwave Pumpkin Spice Carrots

This past week I wanted a quick side dish to go with our pork and potatoes.  Remembering I had a bag of carrots in the fridge I grabbed them and whipped up this kid approved side.  They were done in just 5 minutes.  Can't beat that!  The picture isn't the best, but you have to try these!  They are awesome!

Some carrots, coconut oil, honey, pumpkin spice and 5 minutes is all you really need to make this tasty side.

Microwave Pumpkin Spice Carrots

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1 lb. bag carrots chopped into 1 inch pieces

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1/2 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Place all ingredients in a microwave safe dish and cover.  Microwave for approximately 5 minutes or until carrots are tender.  Stir and serve.

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22 Healthy Crockpot Recipes for Weeknight Meals

I have always enjoyed cooking in my crockpot/slowcooker, but this fall I have been hitting it pretty hard.  In fact, it now has a permanent home on my kitchen counter.  Crockpot meals are generally so simple to throw together and have such wonderful flavor.  I love the added bonus of how amazing my house smells from them!  I have been rounding up some recipes for you to try.  I hope you enjoy them.  Let me know your favorite!

 Venison Stew Recipe

 Slow Cooker Spicy Chicken Thighs

 Frugal Vegetarian Chili

Sweet Potato Mash

 Slow Cooker Chicken Drumsticks

 Slow Cooker Pizza Stuffed Peppers

Creamy Chicken Corn Chowder

Healthy Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches

North Carolina BBQ Pulled Chicken Sandwiches

Crazy Pineapple Chili

 Crockpot Lemon Rice Soup

Easy Slow Cooker Chicken Parmesan

Slow Cooker Mexican Chicken

Tender Slow Cooker Roast

Easy Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Crockpot Drumsticks with Fresh Tomato BBQ Sauce

Slow Cooker 7-Can Soup Recipe

Slow Cooker Sweet Potato Chili with Hatch Chiles, Corn, and Beef

Easy Celery Rice Soup (with Slow Cooker option)

Slow Cooker Green Tomato Garlic Chili

Cinnamon Applesauce (no sugar)

Crockpot Sausage with Peppers and Onions

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Perfect Brown Rice Pasta Every Time & Tuesday Twitter Linky Party #32

Sorry I am a little late getting this up this week!  My internet was down this morning.  Such a frustrating problem for a blogger!  Today I am sharing with you how to make perfect brown rice pasta.  Since starting my new dietary lifestyle, brown rice pasta has become a staple for my family.  While it is a fine substitute, it can be a little bland and mushy if not cooked correctly.  It took me awhile, but I think I have finally perfected the art off cooking it!  

You will want to start with a good quality brown rice pasta.  There are many varieties out there.  Play with them and see which you like best.  You will want to follow the package directions for cooking, and apply the below tips to get the best tasting brown rice pasta ever!

• Add extra water to your pot.  This will help the pasta to cook more evenly.
• Add a splash of olive oil to your water.
• Be sure to generously salt your boiling water.  I use a good palm full of sea salt.
• Stir frequently to reduce noodles sticking together.
• Do not over cook!  Use the time stated on the package as your guide.  Test noodle to make sure it is perfectly cooked.  It should not be tough (not cooked completely) or mushy (overcooked).
• Drain completely and rinse with cold water.
• Once drained drizzle Extra Virgin Olive Oil (about 1 tablespoon) all over noodles.  Sprinkle with some additional sea salt.  I personally love to use a organic garlic and sea salt mix I get from B.J.'s Wholesale.

Doing these steps will truly enhance the flavor of your bland brown rice pasta and no one will know that you are serving something healthy!

Serve this pasta with your favorite sauce or plain with a sprinkle of your favorite cheese.

Now onto our party!  Be sure to share the party with your friends for an even better party!

Welcome to the The Ultimate Linky's Twitter Party!

Thanks for coming and linking up here to the Twitter Linky Party! You can come back here every week on Tuesday for this whole summer to get more followers on twitter! Our goal is to grow this party so that there will be new people linking up every week so that you can continue to get new followers! There are two linkies in this party! You can do just one or both linkies if you wish. On the first linky, you will link up your Twitter URL for your Twitter account so that you can be followed. On the second linky, link up the URL of a tweet you would like to be retweeted. Please follow me and Tammy from The Ultimate Linky on Twitter, add the button to your sidebar or party page, and then link up and follow the directions for who to follow/retweet! If you are the last three to link up, your links will be manually added to the beginning of next week's link-up so that you get your follows. You can always follow more if you decide to! We also would love any shares that you could give to help spread the word about this party!

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You can also link up one tweet that you would like to have re-tweeted. This is the same concept as above except you only have to tweet the two links above yours. I will make sure I tweet the last link(s).

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Crock pot Sausage with Peppers and Onion Plus Twitter Tuesday Linky Party # 23

Crock pot sausage with peppers and onions is a simple go to for when you only have a few minutes to prep.  Throw it all in the pot in the morning and by dinner it is ready to go!  This dish is super versatile as well.  Serve it over pasta, put it on a roll for a delicious sandwich, or eat it all on its own.

Print this Recipe
1 lb Sweet Italian Sausage (could also use hot sausage if desired)
1 Green Pepper Sliced
1 Red Pepper Sliced
1 Onion Sliced
1 Can Crushed Tomatoes

Brown sausage in a skillet on the stove.  Once browned place in a crock pot and cover with veggies and tomatoes.  Turn to high and cook for 4-6 hours.  Check occasionally to make sure it isn't too dry.  You may desire to add a tablespoon of water to the sauce.

And now time to do some partying!

Once you are done linking up here, hop on over and enter for our
$100 Visa Giftcard Giveaway!

Welcome to the The Ultimate Linky's Twitter Party!

This is the second week that I get to be the co-host of this party along with Tammy from The Ultimate Linky, the host of this party. You can come back here every week on Tuesday for this whole summer to get more followers on twitter! Our goal is to grow this party so that there will be new people linking up every week so that you can continue to get new followers! There are two linkies in this party! You can do just one or both linkies if you wish. On the first linky, you will link up your Twitter URL for your Twitter account so that you can be followed. On the second linky, link up the URL of a tweet you would like to be retweeted. Please follow me and Tammy from The Ultimate Linky on Twitter, add the button to your sidebar or party page, and then link up and follow the directions for who to follow/retweet! If you are the last three to link up, your links will be manually added to the beginning of next week's link-up so that you get your follows. You can always follow more if you decide to! We also would love any shares that you could give to help spread the word about this party!

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<a href="http://theultimatelinky.com" title="The Ultimate Linky"><img src="http://theultimatelinky.com/twitter.jpg" alt="The Ultimate Linky" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

You can also link up one tweet that you would like to have re-tweeted. This is the same concept as above except you only have to tweet the two links above yours. I will make sure I tweet the last link(s).

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Party Perfect Pesto Pasta Salad

I usually try to share allergy friendly recipes, but this past weekend we had a birthday party for Bud and I wanted to share this beautiful pasta salad I made for it.  This recipe can easily be adapted to allergy free and is rather versatile.  The fresh veggies mixed with pasta and a yummy pesto sauce make for this most glorious dish.  You can use any vegetables you like, I chose peppers, onion, asparagus, and mushrooms.

There are a few things I think I will tweak the next time I make this.  The first being, I think next time I will lightly saute the veggies.  The other being that next time I will make a creamy pesto sauce to go over it.  I believe this dish would be wonderful served either hot or cold.  I personally liked it both ways!

Pesto Pasta Salad

Print this Recipe!

Ingredients

1 lb. Farfalle Pasta cooked via package directions

1 Small bunch thin asparagus, chopped

1/2 Cup button mushrooms, chopped

1/2 Cup red pepper, diced

1/2 Cup yellow pepper, diced

1/2 Cup green pepper, diced

1 Small red onion, diced

1 Jar pesto sauce 

Directions

Mix all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl.  Gently stir and then chill for several hours (can also be served warm).  

*Optional - The pasta soaked up a lot of the sauce while it chilled, try adding a small amount of Extra Virgin Olive Oil should this occur.

** Optional - An additional add in could be sun dried tomatoes.

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Allergy Friendly Easter Dinner Menu

I am hosting Easter dinner for my husbands family on Sunday, and so I have been thinking a lot about what to put on the menu.  Usually when I think of Easter dinner, I think of ham and baked mac and cheese.  It is what my grandmother served at our family gatherings every Easter.  While I will most likely make the traditional Easter meal I grew up with, I thought it would be fun to come up with an alternative Easter menu.  You will notice that this menu has recipes that will work for The Virgin Diet, or could easily be adapted for it.

Easter Dinner Menu

Salad

• Spinach, Avocado and Pumpkin Seed Salad by Nigella

Entree

• Grilled Leg of Lamb with Preserved Lemon by Martha Stewart
• Maple and Brown Butter Glazed Carrots by The Well Traveled Wife
• Oven Roasted Asparagus by Taste of August
• Oven Roasted Cauliflower by A TIPical Day

Dessert

• Raw Almond Butter Cups by Oh She Glows
• Gluten Free Carrot Zucchini Cake by Sarah Bakes Gluten Free Treats

What will you be serving this Easter?

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Eggless Banana Quinoa Pancakes

Back when I started The Virgin Diet, I thought I was saying goodbye to all of my favorite foods forever.  My two biggest problems are eggs and corn.  They are in practically everything and make it so difficult to find things I can eat without having to worry about how I will react to it.  As I began to research, I discovered that there are lots of great options for subbing out eggs in recipes.  

My new friend, Charlie at Pickled Okra recently shared a great post about eggless baking!  Be sure to hop over there and learn some of her tips and search through her wonderful recipes on this subject.  

OK and so now for a few tricks of my own...

I am going to admit here that I have never really used measurements for this one, so I am ball parking it.  If it doesn't turn out quite right, don't give up on them.  They are awesome!  Just tweak to your own liking and give it another shot!  :)

Eggless Banana Quinoa Pancakes

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Ingredients:

1 ripe banana

3/4 cup of quinoa flakes

1/4 cup gluten free oats

1 tablespoon chia seeds

1/2 cup almond milk (coconut milk is also fine here)

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

pinch of salt

optional - 1/4 dried cranberries, chopped walnuts or both

optional - 100% pure maple syrup

Instructions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, mash banana well.
2. In a separate dish allow the chia seeds to soak in the almond milk for about 2-3 minutes to soften.
3. Add quinoa flakes, oats, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt to your banana.  Pour in the chia seed/almond milk mixture.  Stir, mixing completely.  Batter should resemble pancake batter.  If too thick add a little more milk.
4. Pour about 1/4 cup or less of the batter onto a pan over medium heat.  When edges start to look done flip.  
5. Top with optional items and enjoy!

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How to Peel a Banana

I think like most people, I have always peeled my bananas by either pulling back or cutting the steam open and them pulling the peel away.  Recently I learned a new trick.  I shared a video for it my Facebook page, but my kids enjoy this new method so much that they said I needed to share it again.  This new way (or at least new to us) makes it so easy to get the banana open.  Even Pumpkin has figured it out!  

If you have ever watched a monkey eat a banana, then you have already seen this method in use.

Smart little critters!  ;)

Step 1:  Pinch the base end of the banana.  

Step 2: Squeeze it as hard as you can.

Step 3:  Pull the peel back.

Step 4:  Enjoy your delicious banana!

I would like to give a shout out to my lovely model, Buzz.   Didn't he do a great job demonstrating this for me?  ;)

How do you peel your bananas?

Linking up at Eat. Create. Party!, Weekend Wind Down

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Oven Roasted Cauliflower

My mom makes this really great recipe for oven roasted broccoli.  It quickly became a family favorite and my boys call it "burnt broccoli" due to the slightly charred appearance.  Because they liked it so much I started to do other veggies the same way.  My personal favorite is this super simple oven roasted cauliflower.  I hope you enjoy it!

Oven Roasted Cauliflower

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Ingredients:

1 bag frozen cauliflower

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons fresh ground garlic salt (I use an organic grinder version from B.J.'s Wholesale)

1 pinch of black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375˚.

2. On a baking sheet, spread out the frozen cauliflower.  Drizzle the olive oil evenly over the cauliflower.  Sprinkle generously with the garlic salt and pepper.

3. Bake for about 30 - 35 minutes or until cauliflower is cooked through and browned on the bottom.  It should be crispy on the edges and soft towards the center.

What is your favorite side dish?

Linking up at Eat. Create. Party!, Weekend Wind Down

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Jungle Fruit Sculpture

This year our Cub Scout Pack did a Jungle themed Blue and Gold.  It really ended up being a lot of fun.  I was so glad that we had some great moms that stepped up and planned virtually the whole event!  Since I wasn't wrapped up in the details of the day, I had some free time to make this jungle fruit sculpture.  Sorry about the quality of these pictures.  I just got a new phone, and for some reason my images from it are always grainy.  I think it is a setting I have to figure out because it is suppose to be a good camera.

I got the idea for this from a picture I found on Pinterest.  The link only lead to an image, so I called my parents and asked if they wanted to help me figure out how to build it.
We attempted to put this together twice.  The first time was a nightmare, but the second time was a huge success.
For the first attempt we tried to use a large cake board and drilled three thin dowel rods down into it.  Our hope was that the pineapples would be stable enough that it wouldn't go anywhere.  This was not at all the case.  The juice from the pineapples ran down and made the cake board flimsy, which in turn made the dowels come loose.  The end result was a huge pile of fruit on the floor.  It wasn't pretty!

Finally hubby and my dad cut a piece of thick plywood for under the cake board and cut a broom handle for the rod.  Hubby drilled wholes down through the pineapples so that we could slide them down over the broom handle.  This worked well and held up nicely.

What you will need:
4 pineapples
3-4 kiwi
2 mangoes or small watermelons (we used mango because watermelon is so hard to find right now)
2 oranges
1 lemon
1 tangerine
red grapes
8 bananas
toothpicks
wood skewers
broom handle
wood block or plywood
assorted fruit for eating
plastic tablecloth

1. Start by preparing your broom handle and board.  You will want to measure the handle against your pineapples to see how long you need it.  Make it just a hair shorter than the pineapples will be stacked up.  Screw it into your base centered, but set back slightly.  Cover your board with tin foil or a plastic table cover.
2. Remove the top and bottom of three pineapples. Save the tops from each of them. On the fourth remove only the bottom from your pineapple.  Drill a hole the same size or slightly smaller than your broom handle all the way through the first three pineapples, but only a little more than half way through the fourth.  You don't want a hole in your tree top!
3. Slide the pineapples down over the broom handle so they resemble a tree trunk.  Then using wood skewers attach the pineapple tops and kiwi around the top of your "tree"  You may need to trim the pineapple away from the leaves so it looks nicer.
4. To make the monkeys, take one lemon and cut it in half.  Trimming the lemon lengthwise would help make it look more like a monkey.  I didn't do this and realized my mistake too late to fix it.  Notch out a nose on the top of your lemon (just two small v's) and then trim a mouth on the underside of the lemon.  You could even pin a piece of a cherry there to make lips if you wanted.  I trimmed the end off the lemon, but in hindsight I wish I hadn't done that.  I think they looked more like bears as a result.  Use your toothpicks to attach the nose to the face. 
5. Slice a tangerine into quarters and using toothpicks place them on the top of the orange as ears.   I got mine a little too high up, try to place yours more to the side of the face to resemble a monkey.  
6. Cut a red grape in half and push it onto the face using a toothpick.  Everything will be a little loose, but once it is up against the tree it will not move much at all.  
7. Using your mango or small watermelon (watermelon would work better, but may be hard to find based on the season) as the body, attach the head using your skewers.  We ended up having to trim the skewers so make sure you have something that will snip them easily. I don't recommend sawing them as this might damage the fruit.  
8. Figure out where on the tree you want your monkeys to go.  Using skewers, push one through the head into the tree and another through the body into the tree.  
9. Now you are ready for some arms.  Get your bananas and using half skewers attach one side of the banana to the tree and the other to the body.  Do this for each of the monkey's limbs.  
10. Slice the fruit that you will be serving and arrange it beneath your tree.  We spread a plastic table cloth around underneath it to help contain all the juice from the fruit.  It worked well as a barrier.  

If you feel really adventurous, you can add an extra pineapple and an extra monkey.  When buying the fruit for the tree, look for fruit that is not yet ripe.  It will be more firm and less juicy which should make it a little bit easier to work with.

Have fun creating!

Linking up at Moonlight & Mason Jars, Krafty Inspiration Thursday,  Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop, All Things Pretty, Let's Get Real Party, Freedom Friday, Weekend Wind Down, DIY Sunday Showcase, Pin It Hop Monday

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Vanilla Pear Granola

Granola doesn't last long around here and it is gets expensive to keep buying, so I wanted to try making it. I had NO idea how easy this stuff is to make!  I actually think I heard angels singing as I made it the first time!

If you have never made it before, you must try it!  So simple and tastes way better than any store bought I have ever eaten!

For this recipe, I used half of a fresh chopped pear.  I was a little concerned that it would create too much moisture, but it didn't (not that it mattered, the whole batch was gone in one day!)  If you are concerned about that though, try using dried pear pieces instead. 

In a large bowl mix together gluten free oats, quinoa, salt, cranberries, allergy friendly chocolate chips (I LOVE Enjoy Life Brand, they are a must try!)  In a small sauce pan heat up your coconut oil, honey and organic brown sugar.  Stir it until it resembles caramel syrup.  I actually did this part in the microwave, just checking and stirring it every 15 seconds or so.  Now stir in your vanilla.

Once you have your sweetener ready, dump half into the dry mix and stir.  Dump the remainder and mix until well blended.  Pour the whole lot out onto a cookie sheet.  I lined mine with foil to make for easy clean up and because my pans are pretty nasty.  I really need to get some new ones. Now bake it for about 30-35 minutes.  If you want small pieces stir it often.  If you like it chunky, don't stir it at all.

 My kids kept wandering into the kitchen while this was in the over to ask what smelled so good.  I had to fight them off once I finally pulled it out of the oven.  Once it was cool, they attacked it like a bunch of vultures!  I will most certainly be making this again!

Print This Recipe

Vanilla Pear Granola

Ingredients

• 4 Cups Gluten Free Old Fashioned Oatmeal
• 1 Cup Quinoa
• 1 Cup Dried Cranberries
• 1 Cup Enjoy Life Chocolate Chunks
• 1/2 Pear (roughly chopped)
• 1 Tsp Salt
• 1/2 Cup Honey
• 1/2 Cup Organic Brown Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Coconut Oil
• 1 1/2 Tsp Vanilla

Cooking Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. In a large bowl combine all of the dry ingredients.
3. In a small sauce pan heat coconut oil, honey and brown sugar. Stir until it is well mixed and resembles caramel sauce. Do not over cook.
4. Stir is vanilla to the sauce pan.
5. Pour half of the sweet mix into the dry ingredients and stir. Pour in the other half and mix well.
6.  Dump mix onto a baking sheet and spread evenly.
7. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until starting to turn light golden brown.  Note: if you don't want it chunky, stir it about every 10 minutes.
8. Remove from oven and cool   

Linking up at Manic Monday Linky Party, Pin It Party, The Makers Link Party, Happiness is Homemade Link Party, Moonlight & Mason Jars #46, Create It Thursday, Thursday Favorite Things, Krafty Inspiration Thursday, Let's Get Real Party, Weekend Wind Down

Enjoy!

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