Cherry Almond Granola

I seriously cannot believe that it is almost Memorial Day weekend already. Where has the month of May gone? Oh yeah, a lot of it has been spent in our backyard working hard on our 2014 Outdoor Project. All three of us now have bumps, bruises, calluses, scrapes, and anything else that comes along with having a construction site in your backyard. We are getting there slowly but surely and we will continue to plug away until we are finally done.

In the meantime I decided to sneak away into the kitchen while Ashlyn was taking a nap this last weekend. When we made our plant based switch one of the things we had to give up were the boxes of processed sugar laden cereal. Now, I have never been a big fan of the stuff. I was the weird kid that preferred Raisin Bran over Lucky Charms. Mark on the other hand liked his cereal. Luckily in his old age he has come to appreciate the taste of cereal that has a little more nutritional value than just sugar covered marshmallows.

I was looking for a substitute for our boxed cereal when I realized that granola is cereal that is not processed. Seriously it was a total DUH moment. I guess I always ate granola with yogurt, but never considered pouring milk on it (almond milk in our case). Let me tell you it is a fantastic substitute for boxed cereal. I was searching around for a granola recipe that our whole family could enjoy and came across this 100 Days Granola recipe. This has been our go to for at least 6 months now with a few changes that I made to suit our family.

We all really like this recipe, (I make a double batch every week if that tells you anything) but I felt like a little change up was in store. I decided to make a little variation on it. I had some cherries in my freezer that I needed to use up and decided a cherry almond version of this granola definitely needed to happen this weekend. This one is for sure a winner in my book and with cherry season coming up I know that I will be making this variation again very soon.

Cherry Almond Granola

3 1/2 cups rolled oats*
1 cup walnuts chopped*
1 cup pecans chopped*
1 cup unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups frozen pitted cherries (thawed)*
1 1/2 Tbs lemon juice (1/2 a lemon)
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp salt

-Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
-Mix the oats, walnuts, pecans, coconut, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and cinnamon together in a large bowl.
-Place the cherries and lemon juice in a food processor. Puree until the cherries are completely broken down and look almost like cherry juice.
-Place the honey, olive oil, almond extract, and salt in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high for 1 minute until warm and able to whisk together.
-Pour the honey mixture and cherry puree onto the oat mixture and stir together until evenly coated.
-Spread the mixture onto the prepared pan in one even layer. Bake for 2 hours.
-Remove from the oven and let cool for 30 minutes. Break up the granola into chunks and store in an air tight container.
-Enjoy with almond milk, yogurt, over ice cream, or even on top of a salad!

*Do not use quick oats.
*Use any nuts you would like. I only had walnuts and pecans on hand but obviously almonds would be fantastic in this.
*I used frozen cherries, but i am sure fresh would work as well.

Our 2014 OutDoor Project

Oh my goodness gracious I am finally able to take a breath for a minute today. It feels like we have been going non stop for the past 2 weeks. Mark and I are both exhausted and we still have a long way to go. What am I talking about? Well, we decided to replace our deck. Last year we updated the landscaping in the front of the house, this year is a much, much bigger project. I really wanted to post a new recipe and I have been meaning to for the last two weeks, but it is just going to have to wait right now.

Before

Before

Back to the deck. Isn't it funny that when you start a DIY project it always becomes a lot bigger than what you think it will be when you start? That has been our experience so far with the few DIY projects that we have tackled. I guess this is what happens when you own a house that is older than you.

This is what we found after tearing the decking off. Gross!
OK, Mark is not gross, just the wood.

This is the biggest beast that we have slayed yet. OK, we are still in the fight, but we are starting to win. It is kind of like in the Hobbit when they are fighting the trolls. At one point it looks like it is hopeless, but then Bilbo starts to outsmart them. Yep we are now outsmarting this beast and that reference definitely showed my how big of a nerd I really am.

This is part of the reason we had to replace the structure.

We really thought that we would just have to replace the decking, stairs, and railing, but we would leave the structure. Little did we know that the structure was done wrong when the deck was built. The scary part is how wrong it was done and that it was probably not safe to be using it.

Yep, more structure issues. Just like a construction job, two guys standing around while one does the work.

After more materials than we planned on in the beginning, not to mention the million and one trips to Home Depot and Menards we are feeling a little more confident. We are slowly but surely making progress and thank you to some of our friends otherwise I am not sure what we would have done when it came to the structural issues. That part was way above Mark's pay grade anyway. We will keep you updated on our progress.

Our new deck sitting on our lawn.

The old deck. It is my job to break down this pile. I get to learn how to use a circular saw this weekend!

Making progress.

We are finally structurally safe.

Do your DIY projects always turn out to be a bigger project than you originally thought? Anyone else have to take a million and one trips to Home Depot during a project?

Simplifying our Home: The Coat Conundrum

Today I am back with my series on simplifying and organizing our home. I don't know where you are from, but for us in the Midwest winter means cold, cold, and more cold with some snow sprinkled in. At least that is how this last winter turned out to be. With the cold comes coats, hats, gloves, more coats, and still more coats. Our family has a serious coat issue.

I had to remove about 7 coats to actually show you the coat rack.

Along with our coat issue we have issues hanging our coats in the coat closet. I don't know why, but we do not hang our coats in the closet. It is not that we can't. It is not like I went and electrified the door handle so I could sit back and laugh every time someone tried to open the door. That would be kinda funny, kind of like those hand buzzers, but I don't think my family would appreciate it.

Our coats always found a place hanging on the the back of our dining room chairs. I am guilty of it also, but it just drove me nuts! I don't know why, call it habit, convenience, laziness, but that is where they always ended up. I could not stand it and decided to do something about it. Actually I recruited Mark to help me. I decided that since our coats always ended up in our dining room then we needed a place to put them in the dining room that was not the table. So, I scoured the web and found a solution. A coat rack in the dining room.

Yep so it is kinda like our laundry basket in the living room Simplifiying Our Home Conquering the Moutain. I mean really who has a coat rack in the dining room? Well, we do for two reasons. Our foyer is too small to fit a coat rack and our coats always end up in the dining room anyway. Ok, so off on a tangent I felt all fancy typing out foyer, but seriously we have a little landing where we open our front door, the garage door, and toss our shoes off of our feet. I just like the name foyer better than small landing where maybe two people can barely fit. Anyway after looking online for awhile I found a coat rack that I really liked that Mark could easily build for us. Giving credit where credit is due this is where I found it DIY Coat Rack.

I was really drawn to the big chunkiness of it and knew that it would serve our family well. We decided to change up the topper by using a deck post topper instead of their original topper. We also added lower hooks so Ashlyn could easily hang up her stuff. It has really been a very useful and purposeful addition to our home. I also think Mark did a really good job. Props to you honey!

This has solved our coat issue and I now have my dining chairs back. The simple solution of a coat rack in the dining room may be a little out of the box, but it works for our family.

Chewy Chocolate Brownies

I don't know about you, but there are some most 99% of days where I have some serious chocolate cravings. My name is Angie and I am a chocoholic, OK let me rephrase that a dark chocoholic. I cannot
stand milk chocolate way too sweet for me, but give me some dark chocolate and you will never see it again! MU AH HA HA*evil laugh*. I do my best to tame the dark chocolate beast inside of me, but there are times where it cannot be tamed, thank you PMS! Unfortunately I have to say that I am 100% positive chocoholism is a genetic disorder and unfortunately Ashlyn gets it from both sides (Mark uses chocolate chips as a garnish on desserts). My proof is that Ashlyn will ask to have chocolate chips for dessert, and I will have to occasionally say yes and join her on our chocoholic journey.

Once we switched to our plant based lifestyle I was not sure chocolate and I could ever be friends again.

Sad I know. I remember when I was forced to remove dairy and soy from my diet I did not go near chocolate because every ingredient list I read contained milk. Oh what a fool I was. It didn't even occur to me back then that it wasn't the chocolate that contained milk it was the milk they put into the chocolate that I had to stay away from. I think at that moment the clouds parted and a beam of sunlight shone down upon my kitchen (think Lion King). That meant that unsweetened cocoa powder, unsweetened baking chocolate, and vegan chocolate chips were all waiting in line to be shoved into my mouth.

Brownies are a weakness for me. I love brownies, but most homemade brownie recipes that I found turned out to be for cake like brownies. The cake like brownies are good, but just not my cup of tea. If I want cake I will make cake. When I think of brownies I think of the chewy, gooey brownies that you get when you pour out that box brownie mix. Now, I do not buy those box mixes anymore (just look at the ingredient list), you may have a hard time pronouncing all of the ingredients.

So I dug around the net for a chewy brownie recipe and the best one I found came from America's Test Kitchen. Now I did not like the 2 1/2 cups of sugar or that it was made with white flour, so I did a little change up. Actually a big change up. I changed the recipe so now it is vegan which means dairy and egg free. I also reduced the sweetener to 1 2/3 cups and changed the white flour to whole wheat. This is not a healthy recipe by any means, but I like to think that I increased the health factor from the original recipe. If you like those boxed brownie mixes this one does take a little more time, but I promise it is worth the work.

Chewy Chocolate Brownies

2 Tbs ground flax (flax meal)
6 Tbs hot water
1 3/4 c white whole wheat flour
3/4 tsp salt
1/3 c unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 c hot brewed coffee
2 oz unsweetened chocolate (Baker's chocolate) chopped fine
2/3 c olive oil
4 Tbs coconut oil (melted)
2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 c sugar
1 c brown rice syrup
2/3 c chocolate chips (optional)

-Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9x13 pan with aluminum foil. Grease the foil with coconut oil. Set your pan aside.

- Combine the 2 Tbs ground flax with 6 Tbs water in a very small bowl. Set this aside to "gel up". This is going to be used instead of eggs.

-In a small  bowl whisk together the flour and salt and set aside.

- In a medium bowl whisk together the cocoa powder and coffee. Once smooth whisk in the unsweetened chocolate until smooth again.

- Whisk in the olive oil and the coconut oil. The mixture will look curdled at this point. Add in the flax and water mixture (that you set aside earlier) along with the vanilla. Whisk the mixture until smooth and completely combined.

-Whisk in the sugar and brown rice syrup until the mixture is smooth and the sugar is fully incorporated.

-Add the flour mixture to the chocolate mixture and fold the two together with a spatula. Don't overmix, you just want them combined. If adding in the chocolate chips fold them into the batter now.

-Transfer your batter into your prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

-Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 90 minutes. After the 90 minutes remove the foil and brownies from the pan and place back on the wire rack. Let cool another 60 minutes before cutting.

-Enjoy your chocolate fix!

Simplifying our Home: That One Dreaded Space

Do you have that one dreaded space in your home? The room or closet or cupboard that you just dread looking at? That one place where you put all of the stuff that you don't know what to do with? That place where you close the door when company comes over? That place that drives you so crazy that you just have to keep the door shut and keep walking past acting like you don't have a dirty little secret hidden behind that door? That space that makes you feel like you should be on Hoarders? I have that space. As much as I hate admitting it our space is a whole room.

We have a third bedroom in our house that I have struggled with since the day we moved in. Nobody sleeps there and we don't own an extra bed so I really wasn't sure what to do with it. It started as the place to put stuff because I didn't know what to do with said stuff. Obviously that didn't work for long since that is a nice way of saying it was just a dumping space for stuff that we didn't want to look at. I then tried it as a sort of craft room/book and movie storage room and guess what? It ended up as a dumping ground again. Yep I had a stuff dump.

I kept the door to that room closed as much as I possibly could. I really could not stand looking in there because it made me want to pull out my hair. I seriously cannot stand a mess. OK let me clarify because I do have a 3 year old so our house does get messy. I cannot stand a mess that can't be cleaned up in 5-10 minutes. I don't mind forts in the living room or books strewn across Ashlyn's bed. What I can't stand is a bunch of stuff that is taking up valuable space just because it is so disorganized. This is what I was dealing with.

One day I had enough and just started pulling it apart. I first purged the room and closet again and was able to add to my garage sale pile. I then went through the remaining stuff and was trying to figure how to deal with it. Then a light bulb went off in my head, why not put one of my shelving units in the closet! It completely changed the way I looked at how to organize that room. By putting the shelves in the closet I was able to organize all of my craft supplies and free up the room. I then moved all of the books from those shelves onto the existing shelf on the wall in the room.

I was amazed at how much space I now had to work with. I moved Ashlyn's dresser into the room (it didn't really fit in her room to well anyway). I now had the beginnings of a bedroom. I put all of the movies into the dresser along with my sewing machine and the CD's that we have. Yep we do still have CD's. I cannot believe that before I only saw a dresser as clothes storage. I blew up the air mattress that we own and threw some bedding onto it that I already had. I actually had a functional room!

I learned a lot from this little transformation. I learned to be open to new ideas when it comes to arranging your existing furniture. I learned to use pieces of furniture that I already own to serve me even if it is not for the intended purpose. I also learned that I don't need to spend money to get satisfaction out of my house. Now I love to keep the door open and look at the simple space that I created in an afternoon without spending a dime.

Simplifiying our Home: Conquering the Moutain

I am also trying to simplify some family habits that we have that just drive me crazy. The first was the dirty clothes on the living room floor. I know, most people have this issue in the bedrooms, but we had this issue in the living room. We had dirty socks, sweatshirts, workout gear, pajamas, You name the article of clothing it has probably seen my living room floor. When they did get picked up they just got thrown to the bottom of the stairs and I ended up with a trecherous clothes pile at the bottom of the stairs. Some days it felt like the Mt Everest of clothes was forming at the bottom of the stairs and I would have to strap on some crampons and get an ice ax to climb to the top.

I was tired of the clothes on the living room floor and I was tired of navigating a mountain of dirty clothes at the bottom of the stairs. I decided that I had two options. I could try to change our habits or I could come up with a different solution. If I tried to change our habits that meant nagging Mark, Ashlyn, and myself to take the dirty clothes up to the laundry hampers in the bedrooms. Eventually I would get tired of nagging and they would get tired of listening, so nothing would change. Obviously we have been through something like this before.

I had to think outside of the box. I knew that the clothes were going to end up in the living room, and eventually at the bottom of the stairs. So what could I do to stop the process of them going from the living room to the bottom of the stairs? After I had asked myself this question a hundred times finally on the 101st time the clouds opened up and the light shone upon me ala Lion King.

Put a small laundry hamper in the living room! 

I know, who has a laundry hamper in the living room? I proudly say that I do! It has only been a couple weeks, but as of right now it has solved our problem without the nagging!

This was originally destined for shoes, but is now thriving as a laundry hamper.

Ashlyn happily puts her dirty clothes in there. I don't have random socks sticking out from under the couch. I even have a convenient place to throw my dirty kitchen towels. Now, I may eventually get one with a lid, HomeGoods here I come, but for right now this is what works for us. This was a simple solution to an odd family habit. I am loving this process so far.

Simplifying our Home: The First Great Purge

The older I get it seems like life just gets more complicated. Yep fairly certain that statement just made me sound like I am an old lady, but think about the stages of life. As a baby you just eat, sleep, cry and poop. As a toddler you are learning to walk and talk. Then you hit preschool and you start learning the alphabet, counting, and imaginative play. You are now in school and comes reading, writing, math, and science. And on and on it goes in life learning more and more complicated tasks, facts, and theories.

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Now, don't get me wrong, I love to learn new things and I love seeing Ashlyn learn something new everyday, but sometimes all of that learning can cause us to over complicate the things that should be simple. Right now at my phase in life I am feeling like my home is over complicated. I am on a mission to simplify my life by simplifying my home. 

No, I do not have a complicated automated home with a robot maid named Rosie and son named Elroy. Now, I really wouldn't mind having a robot maid named Rosie, maybe then my dishes would be done all of the time. A robot maid would be nice, but then I would always worry about it going all terminator on my ass and trying to destroy the human race and all that jazz. Yep totally think about robots taking over the world, or even zombies for that matter.

See Rosie the robot totally look like she could turn into a terminator at any moment.
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What I am talking about is the complication of having too much stuff. Yes, I know it is a total first person problem talking about having too much when there are people in the world that don't have anything, but this is what is going on in our home right now. I am on a mission to simplify our home. I am tired of having stuff that has no meaning or does not serve a purpose to our family. I am tired of having boxes in my closets full of stuff that just sits there taking up space. I am tired of my cupboards being full of gadgets and items that I have not used in years. I am tired of having stuff in my home just to have stuff.

I have started the Great Purge in my home and it feels so refreshing. I have started cleaning out closets, sorting through boxes that haven't been opened since we moved 1 1/2 years ago, going through my kitchen cupboards, etc. I made a rule that if the item has not served a purpose in the last 6 months and if it has no sentimental meaning to our family then it has to go.

I now have this huge pile in our basement ready for a garage sale when the weather warms up. I have also decided that whatever does not sell is not coming back in the house, but will be donated. Maybe someone else can find a purpose for these items in their home.

This is just my first pass, so I am sure I will have more to come, but I cannot tell you how freeing this feels. I don't know why but cleaned off spaces and empty shelves just feel comforting. Maybe it is because I have no attachment to these items, or maybe because the emptiness is giving me inspiration for creating meaningful purpose to that place previously filled with stuff. I am not sure, but whatever the reason it feels good.