Double Chocolate Biscotti

I know, three recipes in a row. Bear with me, though! I didn't have a lot of time to play in the kitchen lately, but almost everything I tried when I was able to get in there with spare time enough to experiment turned out fabulously and I want to share!

Up today: Double Chocolate Biscotti from Crunchy Creamy Sweet! (Photo hers, of course.)

This experiment was inspired by the fact that I have started making my chocolate chips and had just finished a new batch. (If I'd realized how simple and delectable homemade chocolate chips were, I'd have started making my own years ago!) I use Chocolate Covered Katie's recipe except that I use honey instead of stevia.

Anyway, I'd never made biscotti but felt like it probably shouldn't be that hard. Turns out it's super simple, and the results are amazing! They weren't brick hard like so many of the ones you buy at coffee shops. They were just crispy enough to have an engaging texture, and they were insanely rich. I made very small slices and you only needed one at a time. Plus, the batch made a lot - so much that both my husband and I took some into work to share (to rave reviews). I will definitely be checking out Crunchy Creamy Sweet's other recipes soon!

Crock Pot Spaghetti Squash

Squash is one of those things that I never had growing up and didn't have any idea how to cook when I got out on my own. I started with butternut squash and yellow squash, but this is the first year I've really tried to do anything with spaghetti squash.

That being the case, I opted to go with Stupid Easy Paleo Spaghetti Squash, in which you essentially cut your squash in half and drop it in a crock pot with some pasta sauce and walk away. The results? Pretty good, but I'll use some minor tweaks next time.

First, sauce tends to get a little runny in the crock pot, so I'll plan to heat up a little extra sauce on the side so I don't feel like it's quite as soupy when served.

Second, I will not use this for a one-pot meal next time. It tasted great, but the squash didn't yield as much as I expected for it's size. Considering that my crock pot only fits one squash, I'll need to plan to make something filling to go with it and be all set.

I'm very happy to have found this recipe, because it's extremely easy and healthy. I'm also pleased to have discovered the site it came from - Paleopot.com. What's not to like about a site full of crock pot recipes that aren't full of imitation food-like product (such as cream of goop soup), the way so many crock-pot sites are? Hopefully it will yield many more great new recipes as the fall progresses!

Raspberry Swirl Rolls

So... I've been MIA around this blog for nearly the entire summer. Life got a little crazy (more on that later), and there just wasn't any time to sit and blog.

Now that fall has officially hit, I'm hoping to carve out a little more time to get back to doing fun things like blogging. I thought I'd start with some recipes!

Up first: Raspberry Swirl Rolls from the Shopgirl blog. (Photo below obviously hers - no photo I could ever take would be that gorgeous!)

The dough on these was flawless and a half batch was exactly the right size to make six decadent rolls in my jumbo muffin tin pan. This culinary escapade was inspired by the need to use up some delicious raspberry jam a friend gave me that was not going to last long, but I am convinced it would turn out just as magically with any fruit or jam you wanted to use.

This one is decidedly a keeper!

Free Summer Reading

Gifts are a love language and, while I am only now struggling to learn to speak it well, my husband  is a natural - he instinctively picks great gifts. Last year, to my astonishment, he presented me with a Kindle Fire for my birthday. I'd always assumed I'd stay an old-school, real-book kind of girl. While I've found that the Kindle is not a replacement for real books, I love it!

Ebooks are significantly cheaper than their counterparts, particularly in used-bookstore-bereft areas like mine. Possibly the best part, though, are the free books.

A friend clued me in to the fabulous reality that Amazon has free ebooks for the Kindle every day.

One of the recent free
book selections.

The selection changes daily (sometimes hourly), and contains a good mix of fiction and non-fiction across genres and reading levels. There are occasional kids books, and lots of youth/ young adult books, too. They're downloadable with a single click, and yours to keep. That means no stressing about finishing things before they automatically return themselves (like digital library books do) or finding a great book but not being able to share it (like the ebooks you can borrow via Amazon prime).

[Hint: from the Amazon main page, put your mouse on "Kindle", then select "Kindle books" from the menu that pops out to the right. On the right edge of the page that opens will be a "Top 100" list, and the tab next to it is "Top 100 Free". It will list the first 10, and at the bottom of that list will be a link to the full 100. It sounds convoluted, but it's really quick and easy once you know where to look.]

It's proven an awesome, no-risk way to check out new authors and new series. Even though I have very little time to read right now, I've got some great stuff tucked away in my Kindle for later - things that will keep my brain occupied and significantly lessen the temptation to buy any books. More money staying in my pocket, and more space staying free on my shelves! (Plus, as my Mom has pointed out, a Kindle takes up almost no space in a suitcase or shoulder bag, so you can take great beach reads on vacation and still have room for all your shoes!)

Where is your favorite place to pick up free ebooks?

Small Steps: Mastering Henna

When I was a business major, lessons about what was and was not appropriate business attire were frequent, consistent, and presented as gospel. The Disney standard prevailed: no tattoos, no extraneous piercings, muted professional clothing, and no crazy hair colors.

Back in November or December, I finally decided that although it was helpful to know what that standard was, it no longer applied to me. I can’t use traditional dye on my hair, as one try was enough to prove that it (A) it is prohibitively expensive, and (B) it fries my locks to permanent straw until it completely grows out. (Which, by the way, takes years considering how long my hair is.)

As usual, Amazon came to the rescue with Wine Red Henna hair dye. The first time around I made an

Not my hair... this is the demo picture on Amazon for the
dye packs I buy.

ungodly mess, but the results were decent enough that I wanted to keep going. I’ve re-dyed my hair a couple times now, and have finally mastered the process. Having burgundy hair is much more fun than my natural brown, and the Henna is completely safe and has actually been really healthy for my hair, so I thought I’d share a few helpful tips that I’ve learned through the process.

Use natural hair care products, and sparingly. Around the same time I took a chance on Henna, I made the switch to all natural, very simple hair care products. I no longer wash my hair every day, but only as needed. Most of the time, I use just a cider vinegar rinse and it is more than enough to get my hair clean and soft. When it really needs a cleaning (after playing in the mud or too many woodchips), I use an olive oil based shampoo bar (from Frugally Sustainable or Wickedly Scent). This saves me a ton of time, significantly extends the life of the dye, and makes for noticeably stronger, healthier hair.

Use plastic wrap instead of the shower cap. Being stylish while your hair is “baking” is not happening, so you may as well at least be practical! Skip the shower cap - it won’t contain long hair anyway, and is prone to drips. Grab a roll of plastic wrap from the kitchen and wrap your head up turban style in that. It banishes annoying drips, contains long hair, and lets you actually move around get stuff done while you’re waiting! Plus it answers the question of what to do the second time around if you’re able to get more than one use out of a dye pack.

Use good gloves. The flimsy, ill-fitting gloves that come with most packs are useless. Grab some all-purpose disposable gloves in the correct size for you, and use those instead. They’ll make your life so much easier. (It’s always good to have a box in the house anyway!)

If at all possible, use a hand-held shower head. When it’s time to rinse, a hand-held shower head is by far the fastest, easiest and least messy way to go. (If you have short hair, you could use the kitchen sink and it’s sprayer instead.)

Last but not least… don’t panic. If the color doesn’t look just like the box when you’re done rinsing the mud out, don’t worry! It tends to deepen slightly as it sets over the next 24 hours, so it may settle in. If not, unlike commercial dyes, Henna is completely safe and non-destructive on your hair, so you immediately layer other shades (of Henna-based coloring) over it to temper, boost or otherwise adjust the color to something that works for you.

Simply Delicious Amish Cooking (book review)

In my experience, Amish cookbooks can be amazing or horribly frustrating. Some of them show you how to make traditional foods from scratch without any fancy kitchen gadgets and leave you blissfully savoring hearty, stick-to-your-ribs fare. Others pretend to be such books… until you flip to a promising sounding recipe only to find Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning packets or a pint of Marshmallow Crème in the ingredient list.

Sadly, this book fell in the latter category. Based on a Florida Amish community, it tries to offer glimpse into their lifestyle by interspersing clips from the local Amish newspaper among the recipes. Unfortunately, I was unimpressed on all counts. There were far too many recipes that felt like they belonged more in a modern women’s magazine than an Amish cookbook.

The snippets from the paper created no emotional connection, were often extremely short, varied widely and had no coordinating theme or order. The Kindle format also did this book no favors. Recipes and ingredients lists were broken up across pages wherever the break happened to fall, and the handful of pictures were mostly grouped together in the middle, making for lots of dry, dull pages. I won’t be recommending this one to friends.

Bread & Wine

I added this book to my reading list after seeing the great review it got over at Modern Mrs. Darcy’s blog. I don’t usually like books that are a collection of essays, but this one was very well done. It was well organized, and the ideas spooled out in a cohesive, logical fashion. Ms. Niequist writes with passion, but at an easy-to-read, relatable level. If you love food, you’ll love this book.

One of the things I liked most was the way she advocated for balance and simplicity amongst the often over-done and over-hyped world of food, entertaining and community building around the delights of the table. Through sharing her own family’s experiences, she opens a door to the reality of building life with others. From the heart-reaching value in putting together meals everyone can eat, no matter what their food complications (allergies, etc) to creating food traditions to the importance of being genuine (it’s okay to bring store-bought meatballs when life is too crazy to make homemade), she reminds us all that part of being human is connecting around the table, and around great food – whether it’s triple layer chocolate cake or a simple stew. It’s the heart and the connecting that count.

This was an easy, enjoyable read and one that reminds us of everything that’s truly important in life – a great way to start the summer!