Eggless Caramel Ice Cream. I created this delicious concoction by accident and I am so glad my ingredients were lacking that day because I just love how this creamy dessert turned out.
Every time I go to Costco I buy Half & Half. Mainly because I hate to use cream and sometimes I just can’t make a sauce work with just milk. I also love it because you can get a half gallon of half & half at Costco for something ridiculously cheap like $3. The dilemma I face is that I hate to waste and I just don’t use very much half & half. Many times I end up dumping much of it down the drain, which I just hate to do. I have found a solution to my quandary…
I am many things – wife, mama, cook, daughter, sister, friend and an avid coconut lover. It is funny how taste buds work. Sometimes you just love eating something and you meet someone else that just hates it and you wonder, “how could that be?” I am that way with coconut. I LOVE it, my husband hates it. I kinda don’t get it, but I know so many people that hate coconut that I guess it is just one of those acquired tastes. On the other hand, my husband LOVES mushrooms and I loathe them. Oh well, the finicky taste bud…
My husband was away for a few days on a golf trip and since he was gone I decided to indulge my love of coconut with my absolute favorite recipe for Macaroon’s. This is Ina Garten’s recipe and there are only five ingredients to these little clouds of bliss. So good, so easy. What else could a coconut lover ask for?
I have always had a love/hate relationship with granola. You see, I love to eat granola, but I am often put off by the extremely high-fat, high calorie granola that comes with the itty bitty service size. Some different brands of granola I have tried have as much as 10-12 grams of fat per serving. I love chocolate far too much to be wasting those fat calories on granola so I passed on granola for ages, until now.
I feel like the skies cleared once I started making this recipe. It is so flipping good. One of the main things I love about this recipe is how versatile it is. The base includes oats, crisp rice cereal, coconut oil and either maple syrup or maple flavored agave syrup (I am sure that honey would taste delicious here as well.) All the other ingredients can be included, excluded and/or swapped out based on what you have on hand. I included chia seeds and hemp harts in this granola recipe due to their nutritional benefits. However, if you don’t have those ingredients, by all means leave one or both of them out. Same goes for the almonds. You may also notice that I have excluded dry fruit from this recipe. I did this because I actually prefer to enjoy this granola with fresh fruit and I find dried fruit to be extremely calorie dense and overly sweet.
Whew! That is one long title for a recipe! However, I will tell you that all elements are so amazingly delicious and really make the dish go from really good to crazy good so bear with me on this. I have previously blogged about how I love a one pot meal and one of the main reasons I love meals like this is because I can re-heat them and often times these one-pot wonders actually taste better when they are served reheated. This chili recipe definitely falls into that category.
My oldest son loves to cook and I love his love of cooking. Between football and lacrosse, he is very busy, but always finds time to watch one of the many cooking shows that is regularly on in the background.
One weekend morning we were watching “The Kitchen” and the Sandwich King, Jeff Mauro made Fried Ravioli. My son was intrigued and became insistent that he make a batch. Since we have recently gone gluten free I purchased a package of Three Bridges 3 Cheese Ravioli, with hopes that the ravioli would be tasty. Normally fried ravioli consists of flour and breadcrumbs, however I decided to use rice flour in place of the flour and toasted breadcrumbs from several slices of Udi’s bread and we were good to go. Aside from helping out with the ingredients my son made these all on his own. I am so proud of him in general, but this is just another example of his creative and fun personality that is always up to try something new.
