St. Patrick's Day

I have a bit of Irish in me, don't we all on St. Patrick's day, I like to celebrate and get in the green spirit with trying to cook up creative green food. Regular old green sugar cookies, donuts, and cupcakes weren't going to cut it since I've been trying to eat more natural and learned that adding food coloring to your food is like adding chemicals and processed ingredients into your food. So I did some digging around on the internet and found an interesting recipe for Green Muffins, courtesy of http://pamelasalzman.com/. The green muffins were colored with spinach instead of food coloring and from the pictures on the website I decided to give the recipe a try.

You can get the basic recipe on Pamela's website here http://pamelasalzman.com/green-muffins-recipe-perfect-st-patricks-day/.

I did a few things different-I left out the oil and added an extra banana-total of 3 bananas and I added a handful of so of blueberries to the batter. I also used half the amount of spinach listed in the recipe and they were a lighter shade of green than the originals, which may have something to do with why you can't taste the spinach, I'm not sure so I can't comment on that.

You mix all your dry ingredients together and blend all the wet ones together, Pamela folded in the mashed banana at the end but I just added it to the wet ingredients in the blender and it worked fine.

These turned out great, I may be adding spinach to baked goods more often! My husband was a little hesitant to try them, we were both very curious.

In the end they were a great St. Patrick's day breakfast and a great way to pack in some extra fruits and veggies. I strongly suggest hopping over to Pamela's site for this recipe, it was made with wheat flour and there are no added fats or sugars, that's if you omit the oil like I did, you are using Maple syrup instead of refined sugar and I promise it doesn't taste like a spinach pancake, it will taste like a blueberry banana muffin. I'm excited to experiment with this recipe maybe adding chocolate chips or a glazed icing on top...hmmm my wheels are spinning.

Of course I got festive with my attire for the day, I celebrated with some green fingertips and leprechaun socks!

Hope you enjoyed your St. Patrick's day!

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Freckled Flair

There is a change happening on Caseyslife365... I'm changing the name of the blog along with instagram for any followers. 

The new web address is www.freckledflair365.blogspot.com you can follow along with me on instagram to see my instalife @freckledflair365.

Thanks for following and I really hope this doesn't make things too confusing. I wasn't expecting the blog to take off the way it has and I thought it needed a new name, what do you think?

Sephora

I am supposed to be on a spending detox but I just couldn't pass up Sephora when it was about 20 feet from the Pub where I had lunch on Saturday. I had read about this Dallas blush from Benefit on Rosie's blog www.thelondoner.me, she has one of the best blogs in my opinion. 

I stopped in Sephora and a nice woman with a belt of brushes and sponges came over and applied this beautiful dusty rose blush with it's light shimmer on to my cheeks and I was in love. I had to have it, no question about it.

 As I walked up the counter to make my purchase I noticed this little box of mascaras, the lash stash to go, it caught my curiosity. I asked the woman at the counter and she explained that for $25 you get 5 small sample tubes of their top mascaras and also enclosed is a certificate you bring back to the store after sampling the lot of them and you can get a full size of your favorite one. Not a bad deal, since most of these mascaras run over $25 for a full tube. So far I have tried the bad gal lash by benefit and love it, I might even like it better than the they're real mascara I have been using also made by benefit.

I can't say I'm proud that I went to Sephora since I had a bit of a shopping spree lately I was supposed to be cutting back, but I can say I do not regret walking in there one bit!

Undressed Skeleton Grilled Hawaiian Chicken

One of my favorite blogs to read is Undressed Skeleton, this girl really works the healthy lifestyle. She was overweight as a teen and that lead her to an eating disorder, she then learned that she needed to get healthy and she has been using her blog to help others along the way. She has some interesting recipes that call for ingredients I am not too fond of, but great if you are serious about training. She occasionally uses things like protein powder in her muffins and pancakes, and I don't plan on adding that to my pantry. I do like her blog, http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/post/29056586230, as a good resource for healthy recipes and general healthy living ideas. 

Last night I gave her Hawaiian Grilled Cheesy Stuffed Chicken a try, and it was delicious! The combination with the cheese didn't sound all the good at first but I thought well cheese can't hurt a recipe so why not try it out. This was my first time using the Hawaiian marinade too, and I will be keeping this recipe in my rotation, it was so easy and some of the best chicken I've made in a long time. The problem with chicken is it can be very bland, and then you add so much to it for flavor that you add lots of fat and calories in the process and turn something healthy into a greasy fat laden mess. 

You can find the recipe in detail on her blog http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/post/29056586230

I chopped green and orange peppers, with some onion and they didn't have jalepenos at the store so I went with serrano, much spicier than I expected in case you aren't sure about serrano peppers.

I started marinating the chicken in the hawaiian marinade around noon and let it soak up the flavor for about 6-7 hours. I used only 2 of these wedges of laughing cow cream cheese to stuff in the breasts. The chicken breasts I used were pre-trimmed and it was difficult to make the pocket and stuff them with the cheese, I got as much in there as I could.

Put foil down on the grill, spray it with some non stick cooking spray, place the chicken down, then cover with the chopped veggies, and drizzle some new hawaiian marinade on top. 

The finished product, the chicken and veggies had so much flavor, we paired it with a couple ears of corn, and it was delicious!

The Londoner's Epic Fish Tacos...Kind of

Last night I made yummy fish tacos, however I completely forgot to take pictures, so I'm going to use one from the blog that I got the recipe http://www.thelondoner.me/2011/11/epic-fish-tacos.html.

Rosie makes some pretty yummy recipes and seems to live a pretty nice life, I really enjoy reading her blog and have tried a few of her recipes that have all turned out rather yummy! The londoner is possibly my favorite blog out there. 

I did make a few changes to the recipe not for flavor reasons, just because it's what I had on hand to make the recipe.
I used 1 lb of tilapia fillets and marinated them according to Rosie's recipe, with the olive oil, garlic, cilantro, kosher salt, and lime. I did realize that a larger mortar and pestle are going to be on my shopping list for this weekend, my little one for spices was not big enough, I had to mash in a couple batches to get enough marinade, but it worked. I didn't put guacamole on the taco, just some sliced up avocado, some fresh salsa, romaine lettuce, and the secret sauce. The secret sauce was a variation on Rosie's because my husband doesn't really like mayonnaise so I used just some low fat organic sour cream mixed with some hot sauce, and it was awesome, this secret sauce is going to be added to a lot things from now on! I also topped mine with a bit more fresh cilantro, because I love it! Thanks Rosie for the great recipe as always!