Food for your Face 1 - Oatmeal Scrub

A few of you who are my friends know that I like to try to go natural/organic with all my skin care and bath products too.

So I'm going to post a few recipes for your skin that you might like to try.  I know that the face wash at least is a pretty big hit with some friends and relatives.

Here's the first one!

"Fix my face" oatmeal scrub (after Jon started using this he said that it totally fixed his face)

Ingredients
2 parts oatmeal
1 part sugar
honey (enough to make a paste)

Procedure
1. Put the oatmeal and sugar into a blender and process until both the oatmeal and sugar are powdery.  If the mixture is too coarse it will scratch your face too much, so try to get it as powdery as you can.

2.  Place your powder in whatever container you'll be using for your face scrub and slowly add honey while stirring.  Add just enough to make it into a paste.  It might be stiff at first, but the next day it will feel more like liquid, so don't add a lot of honey.  Just make sure there's no leftover powder pockets or dry powder in the mix.

3.  Use it!  You can use it right away!!  If you want more of a mask experience apply a few tablespoons to a dry face, leave it on for 5 minutes and rinse off with warm water.  Your face will feel firm, soft and pretty much fantastic afterwards.
To use it as a daily scrub/cleanser apply about a teaspoon to a wet face and rub all over.  Rinse with warm water.
I usually do a 3 step face routine using the oatmeal scrub as the cleanser, witch hazel as the toner, and extra virgin coconut oil as the moisturizer.

You can use it as a body scrub too!

By the way, extra virgin coconut oil on your face?  Yes!  Don't worry, it's amazing.  Not only will you smell like coconut, but it absorbs into your skin quickly (you only need a tiny bit even if you have super dry skin like mine), and it leaves your skin SO soft.


In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father,
thank you for giving us all sorts of plants and natural remedies!  You truly provide for everything we could possibly need!  Amen.

Beef and Mushroom Tart

So keeping with the lower carb meals tonight I present something mildly experimental.  I got this recipe from my mom a long time ago.  It's actually an hors d'oeuvre that we make for parties, but tonight I thought I'd try a bigger version and just make it into a meat pie/tart type of thing.  I think it turned out pretty well. 

Since I'm trying to keep the carbohydrate count low so I can pass this next 3 hour gtt I had to make a few changes to the recipe.  I don't actually know where she got the recipe for this, so hopefully it's okay that I'm posting a modified version. 

In the original recipe if you were going to make these as  hors d'oeuvres for a party you would smash slices of bread into muffin cups to use as tart shells and use a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup along with the other ingredients in the filling. 

For tonight's recipe I made my own whole wheat pie crust (so that'd be about 10-12 grams of carbs for 1/8 of the pie).  I didn't use the cream of mushroom soup, but used real mushrooms and thickened up some milk with some parsley and a bit of added garlic powder and onion powder instead.  If I had used the cream of mushroom soup 2 things would have happened:

1.  It would have tasted better.

2.  It would have had 6.75 more grams of carbs per slice (assuming you had 1/8th) of pie. 

Since I was planning on eating more than 1/8th of the pie I decided to skip the soup.  If you're not so worried about carbs I'd definitely say use the condensed soup (get the organic kind without msg!!). 

Otherwise, on it's own this was pretty good!  I had the flavor of the hors d'oeuvres in my head, so this pie wasn't as amazing as those, but not too shabby for a low carb, weekday meal. 

Here's the recipe if you want to make it!


Beef and Mushroom Tart

Ingredients
(Pie Crust)
1 1/3c whole wheat flour
1/2c butter cubed
1/2 tsp salt
3tbsp cold water

(filling)

1lb ground beef

1cup mushrooms diced

1/2 green pepper diced

1 small onion diced

3large cloves of garlic minced

1tbsp butter

1cup milk

1tbsp flour

1tbsp parsley

salt and pepper to taste

garlic powder and onion powder to taste

1/3cup cheddar cheese grated

For the filling:

1.  Brown the ground beef. If you're not using lean meat drain off some fat.

2.  Add the mushrooms, green pepper, onion, garlic and butter and saute on medium heat until the onions are translucent and the green peppers are soft. 

3.  Sprinkle the flour over the beef and veggie mixture and stir it in. 

4.  Add the milk and bring everything to a boil over medium heat.  Allow the sauce to get thick and bubbly.

5.  Add the parsley, salt and pepper, and garlic powder and onion powder if you think it needs a bit more kick.  Stir everything to combine well.

6.  Take the mixture off the heat and cool down a bit.

For the crust:

1.  Combine the flour and salt in a food processor.  Just pulse it a couple times.

2.  Add the cubes of butter slowly while pulsing. 

3.  When the flour and butter look like coarse crumbs add the cold water slowly.

4.  When it comes together into a ball it's ready to roll out.

5.  Roll out the dough on a floured board until it's larger than the pie plate. 

6.  Carefully place your dough in the pie plate.  Roll the edges over and if you want to be fancy flute the edges. 

7.  Prick the bottom of the crust and bake in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes.

Bringing it together.

1.  When the pie comes out fill it with your beef and mushroom mixture and top with cheddar cheese.

2.  Bake in a 350 oven for 20 minutes!



Before it went in the oven!





The finished product.



 Hope you enjoy it!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for the Christmas Season and all of the joy that comes with celebrating your son's birth.  As we begin this New Year help us all to remember the gift you have given us in your son and the gift of our lives.  Help us to remember not to squander what we've been given and appreciate it and cultivate it every day.  Amen.

1 hour gtt

So I know I've been absent for a while.  At first it was due to the sicknesses and computer mess ups.  Then the holidays rolled around, we travelled to Canada to be with family and I honestly didn't feel like blogging instead of spending time with my family.  After the Canada trip for Christmas we spent the New Year with Jon's family. 

Throughout the time I haven't been blogging I was trying out lots of recipes for Christmas, baking birthday cakes for my Mother in Law, making gingerbread for Clare's birthday, making fudge and toffee for Christmas, and various other Christmas cookies.  Unfortunately me, pregnancy, and sweets don't do so well together. 

Last Thursday I had my 1 hour glucose tolerance test (the pre-screen for gestational diabetes) and I failed it.  I chalk it up to the taste testing from all my holiday baking and the eating with abandon I did over the holidays.  Let's just stay I didn't exactly stick to my whole foods, organic, balanced diet over the last month or so.  So having the glucose test after the holidays was a pretty upsetting wake up call for this preggo.  Thankfully I have another chance before I'm diagnosed for certain with gestational diabetes.  Sometime in the next 3 weeks I'll be taking a 3 hour glucose tolerance test (not fun) and if I pass that then I'm in the clear. 

I failed my 1 hour gtt with my first pregnancy too, so I'm trying to be hopeful and pro-active thinking that if I just adjust my eating and get back to normal I'll pass the 3 hour (like I did with my first pregnancy). 

In the meantime, I'll probably be posting a few veggie and low carb recipes as I'm trying to swing my blood sugar the other way.  So basically I'm going to be cutting the carbs a ton until I get back to normal and pass my 3 hour gtt for sure. 

Prayers please, as gestational diabetes will really affect my chances of a vbac!

Oh yes, and I'm currently trying to figure out how to get quality grass fed meat that doesn't cost a billion dollars again since my local butcher went out of business.  Blah.  So at the moment I only know where to get good chicken!  I'm hoping that the health store will at least have a some grass fed ground beef and stir fry beef available!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father,
  thank you for modern medicine.  Without it I wouldn't have taken notice of how poorly I was nourishing myself lately.  Please help me reign in my desires for unhealthy food for the health of my baby so that we can have a successful and healthy birth.  Amen.

Cranberry-Orange Pie with Cornmeal Streusel Topping

Hi Blog universe.  I'm sorry I've been away so long.  I got sick around thanksgiving and got out of the blogging swing and to be honest I just haven't been making anything original lately.  Well, nothing I make is really original, but I keep making repeats.  Roast chicken, spaghetti, enchiladas, pizza (lots of pizza, this baby loves pizza), salmon, chili, etc.  Same ol' same ol. 


I have to apologize, I might not be able to post pictures of the fantastic things I'm blogging about for a while.  You might have to make due with the pictures from the links I post.  Our computer is going on the fritz and has contracted some virus that my hubby is trying to get sorted out.  Lucky for us he happens to have another OS that is workable on the same computer (yeah I don't get it, I just use it).  So I can blog, but I can't load pictures on this OS because the program is in the other virus attacked one.  Lame. 

In other news.....
I did make this FANTASTIC pie for Thanksgiving.  I made it exactly as the recipe states

HERE from Simple Bites

except that I used my Mother in Law's pie crust recipe.  Mostly because I have it memorized and because we love it.  I don't actually know if I'm allowed to divulge the recipe for that here, so you'll have to make due with your own favorite pie recipe or the one from the link.

I honestly wasn't sure about how this was going to turn out.  It looked good in the pictures and sounded decent.  I was just so unsure about the streusel topping.  Now don't get me wrong, I love a good streusel topping on a muffin or coffee cake, but on pie?  On cranberries?  Cranberries and orange?  I wasn't sure.  But since the pumpkin pie was spoken for by my sister in law, and the apple pie was being made by my mother in law, I decided to go off the deep end and bring an experiment to Thanksgiving dinner.

I'm SO glad I did!!  I think I will have to make this again for Christmas at my family's celebration.  It was so amazing.  My husband (who I usually have to pull comments from) even said it was great several times.  He even looked at me strangely when I let him have the last piece of it a few days later, like I should have been jealously guarding it for myself.  Ha ha! 

I'm telling you, you have to make this pie.  Go out and buy the ingredients now.  You won't regret it.

I know it's extremely late, but Happy Thanksgiving.  Happy Advent!

I will probably be posting more about baking adventures and mishaps in the next few weeks as I try to wrap my mind around how to make fudge without corn syrup or marshmallow creme and bake a billion gingerbread cookies for my kiddo's birthday party.  Stay tuned.  This Advent season is going to be a bake-a-palooza.



In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear God,
  we thank you for giving us time with our relatives, time to relax with our families and time to thank you.  Thank you for bodies that heal themselves and all of those things that we forget to thank you for.
Amen.

Indian Butter Chicken

I think a lot of the time when I love food in a restaurant there's always a desire for me to recreate it at home.  You probably noticed this if you read the slightly failed chile encrusted steak!  Unlike that recipe, this is definitely a success!  Hubby rated this a 5 tonight!  Woohoo!  I've been trying to make some of his favorites this week since it was his birthday yesterday, so I was pretty excited when it got his good reviews.  He really likes Indian food, so that was a great compliment!

I did a few things differently with this tonight than I usually do.  *One change made marinating everything much quicker.  +The second change made the flavor SO much richer.

I really think this rivals any restaurant Butter Chicken.  The sauce tonight was so good that if I was being totally gross I'd probably just eat the sauce like soup.  Hmm...that was probably too much information for you.  HA ha!!  I blame the baby.

Try this!!  You definitely won't regret it.  Though I'll warn you, it might ruin your experience of butter chicken at the next Indian Restaurant you try.  Ha ha! I'm a little too full of myself after eating this it was that good!  This is a pretty special occasion dish around here because it requires a few special ingredients that aren't usually in the kitchen like serrano chiles and heavy cream.  I didn't used to have garam masala or fresh ginger in my kitchen all the time, but I just learned to keep buying those.  This also requires a bit more planning because of the long marinating time.

Makhani Chicken (Indian Butter Chicken)
Adapted from THIS RECIPE on allrecipes.com

For marinating
1 1/2 pounds of meaty chicken pieces cut into chunks(I used cut up thighs tonight)
2tbsp lemon juice
1tbsp chili powder
1/4tsp salt

1 c plain yogurt
4 large cloves of garlic
1/2 tbsp garam masala
1 tbsp chili powder
2inch chunk of ginger sliced
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4tsp salt

2 tbsp melted butter
Sauce1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tbsp ginger minced
1 tbsp garlic minced
1 serrano chile minced
1 15oz can tomato sauce
1 tbsp chili powder
salt to taste
1/3 c water
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp fenugreek
1 cup heavy cream

1.  Combine the first 4 ingredients in a large container with a lid.  Set it aside and put the lid on while you work on the rest of the marinade.

2.  Combine the next 7 ingredients in a blender (I used my magic bullet) and blend until smooth.  *This was the first change I made.  I used to mince everything and mix it together, but I think this is so much faster and probably gives a better flavor.  Pour the blended marinade and the melted butter over the chicken in your container and mix well.  Cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours (I usually do overnight).

3.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

4.  Pull the chicken out of the marinade and bake on a tray in the oven for 45 minutes.  Set aside the marinade.

5.  While the chicken is baking heat the butter and garam masala in a heavy bottom pot until it starts to sizzle.  Add the ginger, garlic, and chiles and saute until soft.

6.  Add the tomato sauce, chile powder, salt, water, and the rest of the marinade (+adding the marinade was the second change I made to the recipe).  Bring to a boil on medium high for at least 5 minutes (this is important to kill off the bacteria!) stirring constantly.  Cover and bring the temperature to low and simmer for 30 minutes stirring occasionally.  Add a little more water if your sauce starts to get too thick. 

7.  Add the honey and fenugreek and take off the heat.

 8.  Add the chicken and heavy cream.  

What my chicken pieces looked like when they came out of the oven.

 

Adding in the cream.


9.  Serve with hot naan or over rice!

It sounds like a lot of work at first, but you'll get the hang of it.  It's definitely worth the work!!  I don't really know where I'd find organic butter chicken in a restaurant either!


In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear God,
  we know that you provide everything for us and are always helping us toward holiness.  Please let us be content with what you have given us while always striving to do your will.  Amen.

Yucatan Lime Soup

Today is Jon's birthday!!  I am relatively sure that this is his favorite dish in my repertoire.  The first time we had this soup (well sort of) was on our honeymoon in Mexico almost 4 years ago.  It was our second to last day there and we went on a snorkeling excursion on the island of Cozumel.  After snorkeling, our excursion included lunch.  We headed over to a quaint traditional looking Mexican restaurant (I wish I remembered the name of it) and this soup was the starter.  Well it was something like this soup.  They served it with garlic bread and it paired so well.  The flavor of the garlic bread being flooded with lime soup was fantastic.  Mmmmm.

  When we got home, I was determined to try to replicate the soup because we liked it so much.  I spent a lot of time searching on the internet for the right recipe, and this seemed like it would come the closest and taste the best.  We were also honeymooning on the Yucatan Peninsula, so with the name I thought it would be a safe bet.  At least the region was right! 

Unfortunately I really can't remember what the original tasted like anymore, but this is so good.  I think it comes pretty close.  I was a little hesitant because I didn't think a food network recipe would be authentic, but it seems like it could be.  Maybe my Mexican friends can tell me if they try it.

I'm just going to post the recipe from the website.

Yucatan Lime Soup

I didn't make any real changes to it.  Well, okay I made a few changes.  Okay, well I made 7 changes.  But they're really small changes! 

1.  I used chicken thighs, not breasts because organic chicken breasts are ridiculously expensive and I didn't want to cut up a whole chicken today.  I also let the bones simmer with everything because bones in broth are supposed to be good for you.

2.  I let everything simmer for an hour before adding the lime right before serving.  That way the lime taste is still bright and fresh.  I used the juice of 1 1/2 limes.

3.  I didn't want to buy an avocado because organic avocados are really expensive.

4.  I fried the tortilla separately while the soup was simmering.

5.  I don't ever use vegetable (soybean) oil.  I used organic canola oil to fry the tortillas.

6.  I used 4 cloves of garlic, I think I have a garlic problem. 

7.  I added another dash of cumin when the chicken was sauteeing.

Don't substitue the fresh fried tortilla for bagged tortilla chips.  The freshly fried tortilla chips make such a huge difference!



Saute the onions and cajun seasoning (Emeril's essence).



Add chicken, garlic, chiles, and tomatoes.

Saute everything for a few minutes.



Add the chicken broth!

Oh and tonight I found that if you use homemade chicken broth it tastes SOOOOO much better.  I had previously store bought boxed chicken broth and it just doesn't compare.



Add the lime juice, garnish with tortilla strips, cilantro and a slice of lime!  Yum!



Tonight's attempt was the best I've ever done so far.  I think it was the broth!  Jon said, "Wow that's really good" three times during dinner!!  Woohoo!  That spells birthday dinner success in my books.

Try it out and let me know what you think!  I love reading comments!!

Birthday man also got a mini cherry pie for dessert, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post that recipe.  It's his mom's.  I'll have to ask!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father, 
  thank you so much for my amazing husband!  Please continue to bless him with health and holiness and help him to continue to be a wonderful husband to me and father to Clare and Mikey.  Amen.

Pesto Meatballs

This recipe came about because I wanted meatballs, and I wanted them with pasta, but I didn't want them with tomato sauce.   (I can't remember if I was pregnant when I concoted this recipe, but that sounds like a pregnant train of thought.  The fact that I can't remember also lends a compelling argument for the timing of this recipe creation.  Ha ha!)  I figured meatballs with alfredo sauce would be too weird, so by process of elimination, pesto was left!  Honestly, I was pretty skeptical that this would turn out okay because I don't think I had ever heard of a peso meatball before.  At that point I hadn't looked for a recipe on the internet.  In fact, I didn't actually look for pesto meatballs until the ones I made had already been eaten.  I did find some recipes for them, so I'm not that orginal (darn!).

So if you google pesto meatball recipe I'm sure you'll be able to find other recipes for this.  They might be better, I don't honestly know.  I do know that we like these, and I make them every other time I buy a huge container of basil. 

Pesto Meatballs

Ingredients

1lb ground beef

1 egg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup onions minced
1/3 cup pesto sauce RECIPE HERE
1/4 cup milk
2 tsp black pepper
1tsp salt

Method
1.  Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well.  I think it's best when you mix with your hands, but a wooden spoon should work as well.



All ready to go into the oven!



 2.  Form the meat mixture into balls.  The ones I made were probably 2 inches in diameter, maybe a bit larger. 

3.  Bake the meatballs on a rimmed baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes until there is no more pink inside. 

Serve with pasta and more pesto sauce! 

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father,
  please bless the father of my friend Cory.  Bring him healing and bring comfort to his family.  Amen.