Buttery Soft Pretzels

Thursday nights are summer concert nights and finger foods are just perfect to munch on. Since I've already done burritos and calzones, so this week was pretzels. It's been a while since I've made soft pretzels, for some reason the last time I made them, I recall them being time consuming and a little too much work, although they were delicious. This time, things were a little different. Everything went smoothly and was actually very simple. Found the recipe on Allrecipes. They were delicious, especially those fresh out of the oven. We will be making these again for sure. ^_^

Fresh Fruit Tart

My take on Martha Stewart's Grape Tart. Oat crust with pastry cream, topped with cherries, mangoes, blueberries and raspberries.

Lemon Sherbet

Made some lemon sherbet from the Joy of Cooking website. It was so good and refreshing. We did a taste taste with the Luigi Lemon Italian Ice and this one was so much better. It was just more "lemon-y" and I had even omitted the lemon zest, just cuz I'm a little lazy that way. This recipe's a keeper. ^_^

Kale Chips

If I ever went totally raw, one thing I think I would miss would be chips. Looking at raw recipes, I came across Kale Chips. Many of them were flavored with "cheese" or "bbq" but I wanted to try the simple version first, so I tried Simply Raw Recipes' Basic Kale Chips.

Started off with this beautiful, almost-a-shame-to-have-to-cut-up flowering kale.

Seasoned with only olive oil, lemon juice, and salt. This actually tasted pretty good even before turning into chips.

The chips came out pretty good, a tad too lemony, but mmm mmm mmm! Gonna have to give the cheese and bbq version a try. ^_^

Please Stop

Although I appreciate comments I don't like how people would take advantage of another person's site to create a link to advertise their own. Especially inappropriate ones. I will keep deleting your comments and not post them, so please stop wasting my time and yours. Thank you.

Plum Sherbet

My uncle has a plum tree so he gave us a bunch of plums. I've never made any sort of plum dessert before so I tried making Plum Sherbet. Turned out a little tart but still very delish!

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Plum Sherbet

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2 1/2 c. plums, sliced and pitted

6T-10T sugar, depending on plum ripeness

1 t. lemon juice

pinch salt

1 c. heavy cream

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Puree everything together and strain. And put in your ice cream maker.

Raw food: Day 2+

Yesterday I tried continuing the raw food diet for the second day. Body started detoxing around 1pm, headache and drowsiness hit hard I had to take an one hour nap. Woke up somewhat refreshed and could still feel the detox. I give in and have a piece of toast and I start feeling better . Later I eat some leftover crab legs before they go bad and some grapefruit for my evening snack. I feel normal the rest of the night, decide to step on the scale and I've lost five pounds! I'm not the kind who weighs herself daily, maybe once a week. So I'm not sure if the weight loss is due to the raw food diet since it's only been a day or two, but my weight's been pretty consistant for 20+ years (minus the pregnancy years, of course). Morning of Day 3: last night I went to bed kinda late (that's why I usually don't nap ^_^) woke up 6.5 hrs later feeling well rested. I usually sleep 7.5-8 hrs. My body wasn't achy like most mornings. Feeling pretty good so I had a raw breakfast. Seeing my folks for lunch at a Mexican restaurant today so I wonder how my body will react. Maybe a taco salad and let my kids eat the shell...

Raw for a Day

The raw food diet has been catching my interest lately, especially since reading Steve Pavlina's blog. Having been eating mostly vegetarian the last few months, it seemed like it was a good time to just give this thing a try. The kids are with my parents for a few days so I don't really have to cook, it was perfect timing to try it out for a day.

Breakfast: a bowl of fruit. I was surprised how much this filled me. I couldn't finish it all. I went to my usual Jazzercise class afterwards and felt normal.

Mid-morning post-exercise snack: Celery sticks with homemade raw peanut butter and sunflower pate, and leftover fruit from breakfast. The raw peanut butter was ok, I'm so used to roasted nuts that the "raw" taste didn't appeal to me a whole lot. The sunflower pate, on the other hand was really good.

Late Lunch: Lettuce boats with sunflower pate and guacamole. These were really good. My main concern with this diet was that I'd be constantly hungry. Surprisingly this was not the case. The mid-morning snack filled me enough that I didn't have my lunch till 2pm.

The sunflower pate tasted good as dip too. It would make a good spread for crackers.

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Dinner (sorry, forgot to take a pic): Big salad and a banana.

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Overall, I felt pretty good. Felt a little tired around 3pm but I'm not sure if it's from the exercise or a mild form of detox. Later in the day I developed a mild headache as well, possibly my body going into detox but I'm not sure if that can happen so quickly. The only food craving I got was for warm white rice around 7pm, but it may have been a craving for something warm, for rice isn't strong in flavor.

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Having read about the benefits of this diet I think I'm going to start incorporating it into our normal diet, maybe have a raw meal a day or have a raw day once a week, maybe even start sprouting. I'm not going to strictly enforce it but am going to try to do another raw day today.