Very Berry Cream (No added sugar)

I love these colors they are so vibrant and beautiful. I was thinking today they did a great job picking the right colors for our flag. I love celebrating the 4th of July and thinking about all the reasons I am grateful to live in America. Have a wonderful weekend.

What really great is these taste wonderful too. So when you combine them together you have a great treat. No sugar needed just a banana.  A fun way to enjoy the 4th of July.

Ingredients

1/2 C almond milk or other milk
1/2 C frozen blueberries
10 frozen strawberries
2 frozen bananas chopped up
1 tsp vanilla
2 T chia * optional (Great added benefits)
 garnish with extra fresh berries for topping

Directions  serves 2

1. Pour all the ingredients into the blender.
2. Blend and pulse until all creamy.
3. Serve in cups and top with fresh berries.

Start your Day Healthy Smoothie

This smoothie is loaded with fruit and spinach. It is a great way to start on your day healthy. I love having smoothies for breakfast.

Ingredients

1 C cashew milk or milk of your choosing
1/2 C cold water
1 to 1/2 C fresh spinach
1/2 C frozen mangoes
1 C mixed berries
1 frozen banana
1 orange peeled
2 T chia
1/2 scoop protein powder optional

Directions  serves 2

1. Pour all the ingredients in the blender starting with the milk and going in order.
2. Blend and pulse until smooth. Serve and enjoy. Enjoy a great start to your day.

Berries with Coconut Cream and Quinoa Porridge

Some people think it is yummy to just pour cream over your berries without even whipping it. So I decided to make a healthier version and use coconut milk. I added the quinoa for extra nutrition. So you can choose if you want to have it with quinoa. So pour up yourself a bowl today and enjoy. I enjoyed mine for breakfast.

Ingredients

1 C quinoa washed well
3 T chia *optional
1 C milk of your choosing
1 C water
1 1/2  T honey or sweetener of choice
1 T coconut oil

Toppings

 full fat coconut milk
mixed berries




Directions serves 4

1. Put washed quinoa in saucepan and stir on medium heat until lightly toasted. (golden colored)

2. Stir in the chia, milk, water, honey and oil. Let the mixture come to a low boil for a couple of minutes. Stir it a couple of times.

3. Turn the heat down to low and cover with a lid. Stirring it occasionally. Let cook for 20 to 30 minutes or until completely softened. 

4. Pour into individual bowls and top with coconut milk and berries. 

Toasted Quinoa Chia Berry Bowl

One of my most satisfying breakfast is hot cereal. No joke. When we went on vacation a couple months ago that is what I ordered. I just feel like it starts my day off on the right foot. I feel a nice full satisfied feeling. I hope you enjoy this recipe. Have a great day. :)

Ingredients

1 C quinoa washed well
3 T chia
1 C coconut milk or milk of your choosing
1 C water
1 1/2  T honey
1 T coconut oil

Toppings

Sliced Bananas, Berries, Milk, Yogurt and Nuts

Directions serves 4

1. Put washed quinoa in saucepan and stir on medium heat until lightly toasted. (golden colored)

2. Stir in the chia, milk, water, honey and oil. Let the mixture come to a low boil for a couple of minutes. Stir it a couple of times.

3. Turn the heat down to low and cover with a lid. Stirring it occasionally. Let cook for 20 to 30 minutes or until completely softened. 

4. Pour into individual bowls and top with your favorite toppings. 

It is a Delicious Day with Steel Cut Oat and Berries

I love Oat Groats! I think they taste even better than an oatmeal cookie. I think part of it is that I know am eating something so healthy. I love the texture of them when I eat them. I had it cook while I was doing my exercise and it was perfect and ready to eat when I was done. With all the great fresh fruit out there right now, there are a lot of options to put on top of it. I chose fresh strawberries. They added a fresh and natural sweetness so I didn't use much honey.

It is a delicious day! That is the word that comes to me on days like today. It is a beautiful blue sky day with sunshine and a slight breeze. It was so nice to exercise and enjoy the breeze coming in the window. I hope that you are having a delicious day as well. :)  

Ingredients:
3 C water
1 C Steel Cut Oat Groats 
2 T honey * vegan add a different sweetner
1 T coconut oil
*cinnamon and fresh nutmeg sprinkled on top optional
*fresh cut up fruit (love berries with it)
almond milk or coconut milk poured over the top 

Directions:
1. Pour into a saucepan water, oats, honey and coconut oil. Turn it to medium high heat. Let it come to a boil. Turn down the heat to low and let in cook until it thickens about 30 min. 
2. Serve into bowls. put on fruit, sprinkle with spices if desired and then top off with almond or coconut milk. Enjoy! Store the leftovers in the fridge in an airtight container.  

Have a delicious day!

* To shorten cooking time soak in water over night in covered pot.

Healthy Sweet Pocket of Raspberry Jam Muffins (wholegrain)

What are you doing to enjoy your Summer. I having been on a mission to do something fun each day, before Summer vacation is over. Sometimes at the end of Summer I think of all the things that I wish I had done. So that is why I am working on doing something fun each day. It has been a lot of fun. I have created some impromptu gatherings that have been a lot of fun. It has been fun to enjoy family time and the great outdoors. I love to soak up all the outside time that I can. So what do you do in the Summer time when all the world is green ..? (from a song I sang at church when I was younger.) It has been fun to get peoples responses. Make the most of Summer it is slipping by way too fast.

I found a version of this recipe in a magazine and changed it up to make it healthy. It was a great way to use this. The berries tasted great in them. You could use any kind of berries. It had been a while since I had made muffins. It was a nice treat. 

Ingredients:

2 eggs

2 T honey (More if you want sweeter)

3/4 C of rice milk or any kind of milk

1/4 C coconut oil

2 C spelt flour

2 1/2  tsp baking powder

1/4tsp salt

1 1/4 C raspberries (replace with any kind of berry)

1/2 C raspberries preserves all fruit. (You could use any kind of berry)

Directions: Heat oven to 375  makes 12

1.Beat together in a bowl eggs, honey, milk and oil. Set aside 

2. Pour into a new bowl flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in the wet mixture. 

3. Fold in berries until just mixed.

4. Scoop out one cup of batter and set aside.

5. Grease muffin tins. Pour in the remaining batter into the cups evenly distributing. 

6. Pour 1 tsp of preserves into the center of each muffin tin on top of the batter.

7. Then evenly distribute the 1 cup of batter on top of all the muffins. 

8. Place in hot oven and bake for 15 to 20 min. Cool on cooling rack. Enjoy!

Yummy Spinach Berry Kiwi Smoothie

I feel like Spring is coming. This smoothie will help you feel like Springtime. It is sunny hear today. The sky is blue. Yeah! There is snow on the ground but Spring is coming. I can feel it.  :)

This smoothie is loaded with lots of great nutrition too. One of the ingredients Kiwi's are rich in Vitamin C and also Vitamin A, B6 & K. They also have folate, magnesium, phosphorus, copper and fiber. The seed contain omega 3. My 4 your old grandson loved this. :)

Ingredients:   
4 kiwi peeled
2 bananas
1 C frozen berries (I used raspberries)
1/2 plain yogurt
1 C fresh spinach
2 T honey optional
1/4 tsp almond extract
3/4 C water
1 1/2 C ice
2 T flax seeds * Optional

Directions:
1. Pour all the ingredients into the blender and blend until smooth. Serve immediately. 

Green Berry Smoothie

Here is another breakfast option. We have this a lot. It is a great way to get a lot of nutrition in one glass. Using frozen fruits and vegetables makes a big difference. You can add other ingredients as well.

Ingredients: Makes 2-4 servings

3-4 C kefir or milk of your choice (almond milk)
1 C frozen berries (I use blueberries or boysenberries most of the time)
1 C frozen spinach (I buy it already frozen much cheaper :)
1 to 1 1/2 frozen banana (adds creaminess)
2-4 T flax
2 T chia
4 T coconut oil *optional
1 T whey protein powder * optional
1tsp cinnamon (today I tried pumpkin spice yum!)
(and whatever else you want to throw in)

Directions:

1. I pour the kefir in first and then the other ingredients follow. I use my bosh blender and it blends it all up with no problem.

Mango and Berry Green Salad with Mango Dressing

Hope you had a fun and Safe weekend. We had a wonderful weekend. We got away to southern Utah and enjoyed a fun family reunion with 65 of us. We enjoyed helping my Dad celebrate his 80Th birthday. I am so very thankful for the parents I have. They have blessed my life over and over again. Enjoying family time together is something I cherish. It is fun to see my own immediate family growing too. I loved the fireworks last night. It was a perfect night for it. I love America! This is a wonderful time of year!this time of year.

This was a salad that my daughter made for Father's Day! I just hadn't posted it yet. I got the idea for it, when we ate out for lunch. I thought it was something that could be made at home and it was. It was a nice colorful salad, and it tasted good as well. It is a nice salad for Summer.

Ingredients:

2 Heads of Romain lettuce washed and torn in pieces.
1 1/2 C blueberries
1 1/2 C Mangos cut in bite size pieces
1 C Marion berries or strawberries or both
candied nuts optional * would be wonderful!
1 bunch of green onion chopped * Optional

Dressing:

1 Mango chopped in pieces
1/2 C water
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 T rice vinegar
1 T olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp basil
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 T honey

Directions:

1. Prepare lettuce. mangos and berries. Nuts and green onion if desired. Put lettuce in a bowl and toss in the mangos first and onion and nuts if using them. Add the berries last and toss them only once. The blueberries will run onto the mango if you toss to much. Serve the dressing separately.

2. Pour all the ingredients into the blender and pulse a couple minutes. Adjust taste to your preference. You can refrigerate before serving. d Serve the dressing separately. So people can add on the amount desired. It could taste great with out dressing too.

Homemade Yogurt Parfaits

Sometimes you have to just smile. :) I made these parfaits for my families breakfast. As they came down to eat, they were a little skeptical of what it had in it. It made me smile to myself, and think about the fact they have gotten to be the guinea pigs of the family. I used to have 7 children at home, now I am down to 2. My cooking has changed a lot in the last couple years. For me it is a new adventure to try new things. It is exciting to have some things I have never made before. I love filling my grocery basket up with new things instead of buying the same old thing. The thing that comes with experimenting is new foods, of course, is trial and error. :/

My latest thing I am trying is goats' milk. I went to a dairy and bought it fresh. I have heard a lot of great things about it. I am making kefir out of it. I made goat cheese out of it last night. It turned out well. My husband had gotten some goat cheese a couple of weeks ago, I really enjoyed it. So I love the continual learning, but my children never know what they are going to be eating. It is nice to be able to smile and laugh about it too, which I did do with them yesterday. It felt really good to laugh too. They will have fun memories of this time, and hopefully they will take some healthier ways to eat with them when they leave home. I know some of my other children have, and that makes me happy. For now I appreciate their patience with my desire to create and make new things. Each day is a new adventure for them and for me. :) There is so much out there to learn. I have learned so much, and yet have so much still to learn.

These Parfaits were really yummy. We have had them before, here is another version to try. I made homemade yogurt the other night, so it was the perfect breakfast when we were on the run in the morning. It would make a healthy dessert as well.

Ingredients:

3 C homemade plain yogurt or store bought
3-4 T honey (depends on how sweet you want it)
1 tsp vanilla
3-4 T flax ground up
1-2 C homemade granola
1 banana
1 C blueberries or another kind of berry

Directions:

1. Mix yogurt with honey and vanilla.

2. Then get a dish and make layers. I started off with. a scoop of yogurt, sprinkled on a teaspoon of flax, then homemade granola, spoonful of berries, a few cut up pieces of banana, then do those steps again. End with granola sprinkled on the top.

I hope you are having fun learning and exploring too!