Blog Archives

Quick & Healthy Energy Bites

These energy bites are super easy to whip up and are ready in about five minutes. I always have oats on hand and whenever I’m in the mood for something sweet but not too bad for you, we make these tasty “balls”.

The flax seed adds a great roasty toasty flavor, especially if you grind your own from flax seeds. If you don’t have peanut butter, you can substitute it with any other nut butter. Sometimes I like to throw in a tablespoon or two of spiced speculoos cookie butter too. Because I can’t leave anything *too* healthy.

Chocolate & Cherry Oatmeal Espresso Cookies

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I wasn’t lying when I said that we make oatmeal cookies all the time. They serve as a great base for many different flavors and can be customized with consistent results. They take less than 15 minutes from bowl to mouth (if you don’t mind burning your tongue) and only dirty one bowl.

This particular flavor combination was inspired by a vacation we took to Seattle. I had heard a lot about Macrina Bakery and we loaded up on baked goods while we were there. We managed to keep ourselves from eating all of the cookies and brought back a Rick’s Apricot Chocolate Espresso cookie. I substituted apricots with dried cherries here and used ground espresso powder.

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May Foodie Penpals

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Our Foodie Penpals package was from Carrie!

What we got was: mango passionfruit tea, cinnamon apple chamomile tea, blueberry superfruit tea, lemon ginger tea, vanilla chai tea, acai berry tea, green tea, green superfruit tea, chamomile tea, licorice spice tea, english breakfast tea, hazelnut coffee, banana chocolate chip muffin mix (with a recipe), 5 pieces of Dove chocolate, almond milk (to use with the muffin mix), cherry cola, coconut cream pie lara bar, hemp granola bar, dandelion and burdock soda, and a lovely note!

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The sodas look really interesting. Nicole LOVES that brand of Dandelion & Burdock soda. Cherry Cola is my favorite type of soda, besides Shirley Temples. The tea array was great. It really was a wonderful variety for me to try. All of them were good! The coconut cream bar sounds delectable. I will have to try it soon! The chocolates are always welcome in any package!

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I made the banana muffin cups already because I had perfectly 3 over ripe bananas and I wanted to make something with them – how perfect. The almond milk was the perfect size to use with the recipe too. Only complaint I have is that I need to make those muffins again. Perfect for breakfast! I would add a pinch of sugar in the mix if I did it again. Or drizzle honey (Nicole’s suggestion) on top. I did sprinkle some on top and baked them a little more and that seemed to work okay.

What we sent to Jean

What we sent to Jean

We sent to Jean, from Alabama! She loved her package and sent us a nice email and a picture.

For more information on Foodie Penpals, follow the link below.

The Lean Green Bean

Oatmeal Cookies

I find it hard to believe that I haven’t posted about these Oatmeal Cookies yet. We make these cookies so often that I’ve almost memorized the recipe. I say almost because I don’t usually make these, my boyfriend does. He’s much more of a cookie/pie guy and not so much in to tarts and cupcakes.

This recipe is very flexible. The traditional recipe calls for 1 cup of raisins, but we usually sub them for more interesting ingredients. You could try other dried fruit, chocolate, peanut butter, or nuts. Our go-to is half peanut butter chips and half mini-chocolate chips.

These are best right out of the oven, but last several days if covered.

I accidentally forgot the “additional” 6 tablespoons butter mentioned in the recipe below– that’s almost half the butter and these cookies still tasted great! Because of the lack of extra butter, it did make 19 cookies instead of 24 (I was doing a half recipe).