Yummy PB Oatmeal Cookie Balls

So this afternoon I finally got around to trying a recipe I had jotted down in one of my notebooks...a Chemistry notebook, actually. More Chemistry and less recipe browsing/surfing may have gotten me a better grade in that class!

I wish I had written down where I found this recipe so that I could give credit where credit is due, but unfortunately I didn't. So if you stumble across my blog and know where it came from, please feel free to comment!!

These tasty balls started out with a cup full of peanut butter. I choose to use a natural peanut butter made only of PB. Add to this 1 cup of honey and mix well. Next you'll want to add 3 cups of oatmeal and 1/2 cup of ground flaxseed. I mixed the oatmeal and flaxseed together first in a separate bowl (additional dirty bowl=yuck!) just to get a more homogenous mixture and to prevent biting into a clump of flaxseed later on! When that is nice and thoroughly mixed you can add other ingredients to your family's tastes. I added dark chocolate chips and walnuts to ours. You may also want to consider dried frut, raisins, butterscotch chips, or something along those lines. Get Creative ;-) From here you just pinch off about a TBSP's worth and roll into balls. You can stack in a container between sheets of wax paper, or put in mini-baking cups. Store in the refridgerator. These are perfect for packing in lunches, as an after school snack, or maybe if it's your preschooler's turn to provide a snack! Just please be considerate of any food allergies in your preschool classroom!!

Two thumbs up from my family. They are disappearing out of the fridge! I'm thinking next time I will experiment with almond butter. Enjoy!

Eating More of Whole Foods...

So one of my new goals in our home is to eat more naturally. Nothing faddish or extreme. I just want to know exactly what is going in our mouths and bodies. Maybe I just spend too many late nights reading articles and forum posts, but it's becoming really important to me that we move towards eating a more plant-based diet in conjunction with consuming foods which are as close to their natural state as possible. Did you know that the acids in our stomach which break down consumed meat are 1/20th of those of a carnivore?





At any rate, in light of my current goal I tried out a new recipe this afternoon, using my trusty immersion blender, which I purchased off Amazon. I washed, cored, sliced, and rough-chopped four nice-sized apples, threw them in my smallest crockpot, squeezed about a half a lemon's worth of juice over top, gave a quick stir, and then set them on low for 4 hours. When they were nice and soft, I threw my blender in the container (love not dirtying another dish!) and blended them thoroughly...skins and all! The skins have virtually disappeared and I feel great with my homemade applesauce. It has the vitamins contained in the skin (which my kids never eat) since I didn't peel the apples and there is absolutely no added sugar. I separated it into individual serving containers and cooled them in the fridge. We had some for lunch today and I must declare this one a success!!

Hello. That's all...

Welcome to my blog! I'm hoping that this post will be the first of many as I experiment with weblogging. As are we all, I am short on time, so quite possibly this will fall by the way side as does many of my hobbies, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't! I'm a full-time momma, wife, student, and former military service person who now works from home as an Independent Contractor. I craft. I create. I experiment...that's really the purpose of my blog, to keep track of those extracurricular types of things!