Mika's Warming Cocoa Blend Recipe

• Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup Cocoa Powder (found in baking isle)
  • 1 1/2 cup Sugar (white or natural, not "golden" or brown)
  • 1 tsp Cinnamon (Powdered)
  • 1/4 tsp Clove (Powdered)
  • 1/4 tsp Chili Powder
  • 
    

• Instructions 

  1. Mix all dry ingredients and store in an air-tight container.
  2. ----------
  3. To use, put 2 Tbsp of the mix in a mug and pour in 1 cup of boiling water.
  4. Stir well.
  5. At this point add 2 Tbsp of 18% cream (or milk for the low fat folk) for extra deliciousness.

Went To Mom's For The Weekend

I decided that I really needed to talk to mom in the same room 'cause texting sucks and we had much to discuss so after making sure she didn't already have plans, I hopped a train last Friday and went to mom's house.

Mom and lil sis are currently in a tiny little place so I knew I'd be sleeping on the futon... I didn't realize how tired that would make me for the next few days.

Anyway, we got a lot of the room-mate stuff settled. We discussed what appliances we would like to buy for the household and looked over different models together. We discussed what we all consider to be healthy for our bodies and our minds (turns out we're all introverts!)

Our electricity rates on London vary by time of day, so we discussed using electricity wisely and leaving un-needed devices off during peak hours, as well as pre-cooking on the weekend to avoid too much cooking in the electric oven during peak times.

The food thing took up a lot of talking and we settled on these ideas:

• Eating only those foods which are good to us, meaning no gluten and no pork.
• Eating beans, quinoa, chickpeas, peanuts, lentils, and other plant sources of protein more often and meats less often.
• Eating a variety of vegetables daily, including "weird" ones.
• Buying dry goods(rice, beans, toilet paper, etc) in bulk and store them carefully.
• Going to the farmers markets every Saturday (or every other Saturday depending on needs) getting deals where they can be found and storing what won't be eaten that week in the freezer or as canned foods.
• Spending Sundays together pre-cooking and doing general prep work for the week ahead. This may involve making a large batch of pasta sauce of which only one jar gets used that week and the rest put away for later, or even just cutting the veggies for snack packs.
• Doing this prep work with a glad heart knowing it will help us eat healthy foods in reasonable amounts.(avoiding traps like popcorn-for-dinner-cause-I-don't-want-to-cook, or wow-I-haven't-eaten-all-day-and-that-whole-12"-cheesecake-looks-snack-sized).

We're also going to have a house warming party the first weekend so we can have everyone over at once and then not have to deal with social calls the next week or two while unpacking. :) No that's not really the reason, but it is a nice side effect. We've found these past few years that we all think fairly similarly and we not only enjoy each other's company, but also enjoy quiet time with the others around (reading, surfing, playing a video game) so I'm certain that living together is an excellent choice for us.

~ ~ ~

We will encourage each other to stretch and grow stronger physically

We will allow each other to grow spiritually in our own ways

We will clean our home enough to be healthy

We will relax in our home enough to be sane

We will honour our commitments

We will cherish each other

We will have fun

~ ~ ~

Banana Bread Bites, Sort Of

I decided I was going to make bite-sized banana bread today. 

I found a nice gluten-free recipe on Shape.com and tweaked it to what I wanted/had available. I didn't want to use the cherries or raisins, and I did want to use mini chocolate chips. I had two bananas in the freezer waiting to be banana bread and I was a fool thinking I could do without the third. I swapped out buckwheat flour for rice flour and used potato starch instead of corn starch.  

Made a dozen normal size.and two dozen of the adorably teeny size. (lip balm for scale)

I'm not posting the changes I made as a new recipe because it came out really dry... like, butter or drink of milk needed to swallow dry. They're tasty, but Oh So Dry!. Next time I'm going to make sure to use all 3 bananas, and I'm going to mix the chips into the batter instead of sprinkling them on top.

BROWNIES!

I made these yesterday afternoon for desert with dinner.

I must say, they were very well liked.

I got the recipe for these lovely temptations from Chocolate-covered Katie. They are not only awesomely delicious, but are gluten-free(good for me) and full of good stuff like protein. I've written the recipe how I did it. For the original, click the link to Katie's blog.