food – Page 87 – Hewes Family Fun

Recipe: Honey Lemon Ginger Syrup

March 18, 2016March 17, 2016Abby H.1 Comment

P1050863 I’m no doctor, but I do know that when we don’t feel good, nothing is more soothing than lemon and honey.

I recently made a very soothing syrup, and I had to share it with you. I put 1/3 cup of the syrup in the bottom of a coffee mug and pour boiling water over it. I have been drinking a mug full twice a day.

It’s quick and easy to make!

Ingredients:

2 C honey (real honey, none of that honey flavored syrup junk!)
Juice of 10-12 lemons (reserve two lemons and chop them up)
A Thumb sized knob of ginger, peeled and sliced

Directions:

In a saucepan, combine the honey, juice, and ginger.
In a jar with a screw on lid, pack in reserved chopped up lemon pieces.
Cook on low for about 20 minutes. Do Not boil!
Pour honey mixture over lemons.
Screw lid on and let sit on counter until it reaches room temperature.
Store in the fridge.

If you’re looking for the science behind all of this, Lemons contain a lot of vitamin C! Honey is very soothing and coats a sore throat. Remember that honey should not be consumed by anyone under 12 months of age. And ginger contains anti-oxidants.

Gardening: Fun for the whole Family!

March 17, 2016Abby H.

watering and talking to the bell pepper plant.

Henry loves to garden. He loves planting seeds, watering, talking to the plants , and harvesting the fruits and veggies (even if he isn’t too hip on eating them all-yet!)

I think that it’s because of our heritage. My Maternal Great-Grandfather was a farmer in Minnesota.

Since we live upstairs in a condo, we don’t have 40 acres to plow and sow. So, like many urban farmers, we turn to container gardening. I have a growing Pinterest Board dedicated to container gardening, and I encourage you to join it!

Here are a few ways that we were able to start our garden on a budget:

I kept my eyes peeled on Craigslist free section for pots, I also put feelers out on social media for anyone getting rid of pots. That’s how we scored an awesome clay pot for our wild flowers!
We purchased heavy duty plastic pots at 99 Cents Only. They have a great selection of basic gardening tools, pots, planters, and tomatoes cages- all for $1.49 or less!
I found a great deal on seeds at Dollar Tree. I was able to pick up this box of seeds for only $1.00! I only used part of the box, since we don’t have a lot of room for our flowers. In addition to American Seed brand, they also had some Burpee brand seeds!
Most gardening stores are having sales right now- check out your local shop and see what kind of plants are on sale! We picked up a huge bag of soil, organic tomatoes (complete and in a planter with a cage), Green Bell Pepper, a 6 pack of strawberries, and a lavender bush for less than $50. We opted to purchase some plants in addition to seeds, just so Henry doesn’t lose interest in our garden (waiting for a tomato seed to grow into a bush is mind-numbing).

We are saving money on water too! Whenever it rains, we get out our rain buckets and collect as much as we can. It usually is only a few gallons, but we are able to use that water and not turn on the tap.

If you are new to gardening and aren’t sure what to plant or where to plant, check out Sunset Magazine’s Climate Guide. It will give you the ins and outs of when and what to plant. Luckily here in San Diego, it’s pretty temperate all year, so we can plant a lot of different plants.

Some of you may be wondering why we are growing wild flowers and lavender, since neither will produce any food. Well, no food for us, but food for bees! Without bees to pollinate the flowers on our fruit and veggies plants, there would be no food for us to harvest and enjoy! I try to plant flowers each year to entice the bees to visit our garden!

Last year we hand garden stakes with the names of our crops written on them. The sun faded them in no time. This year, we opted to do garden stones. I found a great project on pinterest and changed it up based on our needs.

We were recently gifted with two HUGE boxes of craft supplies and they contained these really cool wooden Whirligig/spinners (kinda like these). All we had to do was paint them! We quickly painted them up and added them to our planters!

I think gardening is a wonderful project for any family. It can be as small as a tomato plant on your patio, or as big as renovating your backyard to have a mini-farm! Gardening teaches kids about the life cycle of plants, and how to care for something else. I think it’s important that everyone know where food comes from, and how hard it can be at times (especially when you are waiting for it to ripen), so that we don’t take for granted our food.

Talk Back: I’d love to see your gardens too! Please comment with a photo, or let me know what you are growing!

Score a free box of Quest Bars from VitaCost!

March 11, 2016Abby H.

We eat a lot of protein bars, especially when when we are on the go on the weekends and on busy school mornings. I love a cup of black coffee with a protein bar in the morning!

Right now you can score a free box of pumpkin pie Quest bars from Vitacost.com when you use code FREEPUMPKIN at checkout with any $25+ purchase.

I love Vitacost- They have great deals on vitamins, supplements, and natural skin and body care. They usually have great promotions and freebies too! Just type in Free Sample into the search bar here.

Oh and it gets better! Free Quest bars, Free Samples, and $10 off!! Sign up through my link here (I get a $10 discount off my next order of $30 or more too) and you’ll get $10 off your order of $30 or more.

Not sure what to buy? I get PB2 from Vitacost!

Protein Shake Recipes!

February 7, 2016Abby H.12 Comments

For some of us, our New Year’s Resolution to lose weight has already started to peter off. NOT ME! I’ve got 40-ish lbs to drop to get back down to my pre-bitty Bird weight. I’m using protein shakes to help me.

A few years ago hubs and I did Sharp Weight Management to lose weight and to this day, we still use the protein shakes that are part of their program. HMR shakes are tasty and have a good amount of protein and other nutrients. All of the recipes below use HMR shakes, but you can use whatever kind of protein powder you like best (everyone has their favorite!).

I usually start my day with a coffee based shake!

Hazelnut Mocha: Mix Chocolate protein powder with tablespoon sugar free chocolate pudding powder, 1 tablespoon Cocoa powder, 2 tablespoons Sugar Free Torani Hazelnut syrup, and 12-20 ounces of strong, hot coffee, When blending hot drinks in the blender make sure to vent the lid or it might pop off! To do this cold, use cold coffee and add 8-10 ice cubes.

Cinnamon Dulce Latte: The same drink at Starbucks (made with Fat Free milk and without whipped cream) has 210 Calories. With my version, you save 40 calories, and score at least 10 more grams of protein- this will vary for you, depending on how many grams of protein your protein shake has. Mix vanilla protein powder with 12-20 ounces of hot coffee (I like a larger drink, so I add more coffee), 2 tablespoons of Torani Syrup Brown Sugar Cinnamon (sugar free), a dash of cinnamon. When blending hot drinks in the blender make sure to vent the lid or it might pop off! To do this cold, use cold coffee and add 8-10 ice cubes.

Frappacino: If you have leftover coffee after making your morning pot, don’t throw it away, put it in the fridge and make yourself a blended frozen protein shake. They will taste just like a frappacino, but with a lot less calories. The average ice blended drink from a coffee shop has 300 calories!

The basic Frap recipe is as follows:

Protein Powder (the amount indicated on your package for 1 serving)
12-20 oz cold coffee
8-10 ice cubes (add more if you want it more icy)

Add in any of the following:

2 tablespoons of your favorite sugar free syrup
1 tablespoon Cocoa Powder, Ovaltine, Sugar Free Pudding powder (your choice of flavors)
Use Walden Farms Calorie Free Chocolate Syrup (or one of their other ice cream syrups- they make caramel and strawberry too) as a drizzle inside the cup and on top to make your drink with more of a Coffee House Flair without adding any calories!

Here are a few more of our favorite shakes. When we did the Weight management program through Sharp, we drank 6-8 a day, so creativity was the key to keep us from becoming bored and deviating from the program. (AKA cheating) These days, I use these shakes as a swap for a higher calorie dessert most of the time. That way my sweet tooth is happy, and I’m consuming WAAAY less calories!

As a note, I usually use a lot more ice to make it more “ice cream-y” and less like a chocolate milk.

Cherry Cheesecake shake: 1 pouch vanilla HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free cheesecake flavored powdered pudding, 3 pumps (roughly 3 tablespoons) sugar free black cherry Torani Syrup. You can substitute Strawberry syrup in place of the black cherry.

50/50 Bar Shake: 1 pouch vanilla HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free vanilla flavored powdered pudding, 3 pumps (roughly 3 tablespoons) sugar free orange Torani Syrup.

Eggnog shake: 1 pouch vanilla HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free cheesecake flavored powdered pudding, 1tsp. rum extract, sprinkle/dash of grated nutmeg. (Mr. C had this on X-mas eve and it was FABU!)

Lemon/Raspberry Shake: 1 pouch vanilla HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free lemon flavored powdered pudding, 3 pumps (roughly 3 tablespoons) sugar free Raspberry Torani Syrup.

Peanut Butter Cup Shake: 1 pouch chocolate HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free chocolate flavored powdered pudding, 2 tablespoons of PB2 powder.

Almond Joy Shake: 1 pouch chocolate HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free chocolate flavored powdered pudding,2 pumps (roughly 2 tablespoons) sugar free Almond Torani Syrup, and 2 pumps (roughly 2 tablespoons) sugar free coconut Torani Syrup . You can use 1 tsp. Almond extract if you prefer in lieu of the almond syrup.

Mounds Shake: 1 pouch chocolate HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free chocolate flavored powdered pudding,3 pumps (roughly 3 tablespoons) sugar free coconut Torani Syrup .

Milky Way Shake: 1 pouch chocolate HMR shake, 6 oz cold water, 6-8 ice cubes, 1 tsp. sugar free butterscotch flavored powdered pudding. To make a snickers shake, add 1-2 Tablespoons of PB2.

Butterfinger: Mix chocolate protein powder with 1 tablespoon PB2 Powdered Peanut Butter, 1 tablespoon sugar free butterscotch pudding powder, 1 tablespoon Cocoa powder, 8-10 ounces of cold water and 8-10 ice cubes. Blend on high until the ice cubes are incorporated.

Mud Pie: Mix chocolate protein powder with 1 tablespoon sugar free chocolate pudding powder, 1 tablespoon Cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon Ovaltine, 8-10 ounces of cold strong coffee and 8-10 ice cubes. Blend on high until the ice cubes are incorporated.

Chocolate Malt: MIx chocolate protein powder with 1 tablespoon sugar free chocolate pudding powder, 1 tablespoon Ovaltine (choose the malted variety- it’s in the yellow package), 8-10 ounces of cold water and 8-10 ice cubes. Blend on high until the ice cubes are incorporated.

PB&J: Mix vanilla protein powder with 2 tablespoons PB2 Powdered Peanut Butter, 2 pumps of your favorite fruit flavored Torani Syrup (strawberry, grape, raspberry are just a few), and 8-10 ounces of cold water and 8-10 ice cubes. Blend on high until the ice cubes are incorporated. Tastes just like a PB&J!

Later in the week, I’ll be posting my home made protein bar recipe and an oatmeal protein muffin recipe- perfect for keeping you on track!

It’s BACK! Free FroYo Day!

January 25, 2016January 25, 2016Abby H.

Is it wrong that I look forward to this every year?

Screen Shot 2016-01-25 at 10.37.39 AM February 1st is National Frozen Yogurt Day and that means free Fro Yo at Menchie’s!

It’s from 4-7pm on Monday, February 1st!

Fine Print: The first 6 ounces are free on February 1, 2016 from 4pm – 7pm. Additional ounces are at cost to the consumer. Limit one cup per guest while supplies last. Flavors are available at participating locations, while supplies last.

This is going to be a great after school treat for our family! As more Free Fro Yo offers are announced for other fro yo companies, I’ll post!

DIY Frozen Pizzas!

January 19, 2016Abby H.8 Comments

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A cheese pizza baking away (and a calzone)!

We love Pizza. Probably too much. About 6 months ago, hubs bought How to Cook Everything: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food,10th Anniversary Edition by Mark Bittman. It’s amazing. We’ve cooked a lot of stuff out of it, but the best is probably the pizza crust recipe.

It’s easy -only three ingredients, but I usually add a few extra! You can make a few batches, put a ball of dough in the freezer, and save it for when you want pizza, but are feeling lazy. OR- You can make a couple frozen pizzas (which I do once a month), and when you are feeling really lazy, you’ll have no need to call Noid or Cesar (wow, both of those totally date me, right?)

DIY Frozen Pizza

Makes 1 pizza

Crust (recipe adapted from Mark Bittman’s):

3 c flour, plus extra for kneading
2 t. yeast
1 c. very warm water (90-100 degrees)
2 T parmesan cheese (it’s ok to use the Kraft in a green canister stuff)-OMIT IF YOU ARE VEGAN!
1 T Olive Oil
dash salt
dash pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Mix all of the ingredients together until a soft sticky dough ball forms.
Turn out onto a floured board or counter top and knead briefly.
smooth a round ball of dough into a clean bowl. Cover bowl with a cool, damp cloth and allow to rise someplace undisturbed for 1 hour.
After an hour, punch the dough, and turn out onto a floured board or counter top and knead for 2-3 minutes. At this time, you can roll the dough out and move onto the next step, or you can do a secondary rise (makes the crust extra crispy and chewy). If you elect to do a second rise, repeat step 3 and 4.
After dough is rolled out to your preferred size and shape, lift into well greased cookie sheet or pizza pan. pierce the crust with a fork several times. This keeps the crust from getting weird bumps and lumps during the par-baking.
Par-bake crust for 3-5 minutes. Allow crust to cool completely.

Now that you have cooled par-baked crust, it’s time to get topping! Transfer the pizza to a large piece of aluminum foil.

1 cup or so of sauce, your choice
1-2 c. cheese
Assorted toppings (precooked meats, veggies, fruit, herbs, etc)

Top the pizza as you like,, wrap the foil around the pizza, loosely around the top of the pizza so you don’t squash the toppings. Place in a large freezer zip top bag (don’t forget to label what kind of pizza it is) and freeze. pizzas should freeze at least 24 hours before cooking.

To heat, bake pizzas at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes

Some of our favorite pizzas include:

Gyro (Sprouts sells it wit hthe pre-sliced deli meat!), feta, and spinach
Caramelized onions and peppers and sliced meatballs with cheese
whatever veggies we have in the house (broccoli, spinach, onions, peppers) topped with cheese
chicken, bacon, and pepper jack cheese

You can substitute in whatever your fav crust is, whatever sauce, cheese, and toppings you like! And because the pizzas are room temp/cooled when you top them, it’s a great opportunity for kids to help assemble pizzas. These pizzas are a frugal way to have a yummy dinner- Each pizza costs about $3.00 and feeds the three of us!

A New Month (and Year!) Means New Coupons!!

January 1, 2016Abby H.

Here is your monthly reminder! A new month means new printable and electronic coupons!

Check out the following sites:

Coupons.com (printable an e-coupons),
Redplum (printable),
SmartSource (Printable),
SavingStar (E-Coupons)

One of my favorite websites to help me plan out shopping trips is Hot Coupon World. They have a Coupon Insert Schedule here. Remember if clipping coupons isn’t your thing, but saving money is, check out my list of Smartphone apps that can save you the big bucks!

Here are just a few of the new coupons that have me excited:

What is overage? (or how I score groceries for free)

December 18, 2015December 18, 2015Abby H.1 Comment

DSCN7877 Overage is a wonderful thing. If you read deal blogs or watch Extreme Couponing on TV, you’ve heard the term, but maybe you aren’t familiar with the meaning.

Overage is money that you receive back, either as cash in hand or money off the rest of your order when you have a coupon whose face value is higher than the price of the items.

Most grocery, drug and mass merchandisers do not allow overage. They will adjust the value of the coupon to make the items free. Walmart, however, does allow for overage. This means I shop at the largest Wal-Mart closest to us, because it has a huge grocery section. I usually go once a month.

For those in the military or who have base privileges, the commissary also allows overage.

The secret to getting the overage is to purchase the least expensive item allowed by the coupon. Often times, this means the smallest item allowed. If there are no size restrictions, this means you might be able to use a coupon on a travel or trial size! Check all of the fine print on your coupons.

For example, I received 2 coupons for $10.00 off any Butterball item (I won them in a contest online) and this is how I used them:
2 Butterball Turkey Burgers $6.98/each

-2 $10.00 any Butterball Turkey product coupon
= $6.04 Overage

Generally, I use overage to purchase items I did not have coupons for (usually fresh fruits and vegetables).

If you are looking for some recent coupons that might provide you with some overage at Walmart, Paul over at I Heart The Mart has an awesome list of items at Walmart for $1 or less.

What have you scored recently for free or received overage on?

Review: Lovely Candy Co. Tasty holiday treats!

December 15, 2015December 15, 2015Abby H.

The Lovely Candy Company sent me a box of their super yummy treats recently, and oh my goodness are they tasty!

The favorites were The Fudgee Rolls and the Sea Salt caramels. They were so decadent and rich, without having too many calories or fat. The cherry licorice were a follow up favorite. Lil’ Man devoured them!

What I really liked is that Lovely candies are all natural, certified gluten free, tested non-GMO, certified kosher and contain no high fructose corn syrup or artificial ingredients. So while they are a sometimes treat, I can feel better knowing they are a better choice than other candies out there!

We still have a few bags to try, but I’m sure they will be super tasty. We don’t eat a lot of candy, so it takes us a while to get through treats! These would be a great addition to any holiday gift basket or stocking!

Lovely Candy Co and US Family Guide provided me with complimentary candies to facilitate the review. I was not financially compensated to write this post, all opinions are my own.

Holiday Cookie Recipe: Chocolate Yum Yums aka Poop Cookies!

December 4, 2015Abby H.

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My mom makes these awesome cookies that we referred to as Poop Cookies as kids. But they are really called Chocolate Yum Yum’s. And Oh, Lord are they delicious…..

They are delicious, chewy and chocolately. You’ll have a hard time keeping them around.

Once you make them, you’ll see why we called them Poop Cookies.

Chocolate Yum Yum’s (aka Poop Cookies)

Ingredients:

1 c. chocolate chips (your fav. variety- Vegan, GF)
1/3 c butter (You can use coconut oil if you are vegan, don’t use spread)
16 large marshmallows (You can use vegan marshmallows)
1 t. vanilla
1c. coconut
2 c. oatmeal (GF oats are a great substitute. Don’t use Steel cut oats)

Directions:

Over medium heat, combine chips, butter, and marshmallows. The mixture may separate when melting, but that’s ok. Stir frequently to prevent chocolate seizing.
Once the mixture is melted and smooth, remove from heat and add remaining ingredients and stir until well combined.
Drop spoonfuls onto waxed paper on a cookie sheet.
Refrigerate for about an hour or until firm.
Serve with cold glasses of milk

Mom has made them with lemon marshmallows and white chocolate chips. With all of the marshmallow and chip flavors, the combinations available are endless!

If you are looking for another Poop Cookie Recipe, Check out Seraphina’s Unicorn Poop Cookie recipe here. They are really good!

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