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Raw Sweet Potato, Carrot & Spinach Soup

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I’ve been having a heck of a time getting warm today even though it’s supposed to be a record breaking warm day. I decided to have soup for lunch and boy was it GOOD! 🙂

raw_sweet_potato_carrot_spinach_soup

I bought some sweet potatoes the other day and wanted to use them but, like a lot of days, I sometimes feel sweeted out from all of the fruit I eat and most of the recipes season with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. I wanted something spicy!

I chopped up a large carrot and blended it with a cup of water. I then cut up two sweet potatoes and chunked them and tossed them in. The mixture was pretty thick so I added another cup of water. Then I found some little orange peppers that I forgot I had and tossed in a couple of those and some onion. I then added some of the home made taco seasoning that is always in the cupboard and cilantro. Oh how I love cilantro! 

I blended it all in the Vitamix until it was warm. Then I poured about 2/3 of the soup into my bowl and added a big handful of spinach to the remaining soup in the blender and blended it. I tried to swirl the two colors of soup but I think I had too much green to make it pretty but, oh well, it was delicious and that’s better than pretty, right? 

Raw Sweet Potato, Carrot & Spinach Soup
Serves 1
Delicious, spicy raw soup!
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Prep Time
10 min
Total Time
10 min
Prep Time
10 min
Total Time
10 min
Ingredients
  1. 1 large carrot
  2. 2 cups water
  3. 2 sweet potatoes
  4. 2 mini orange peppers
  5. 1 cup spinach
  6. chopped onion to taste
  7. 2 tsp home made taco seasoning*
  8. cilantro to taste
Instructions
  1. Place 2 cups of water in Vitamix and add carrot. Blend.
  2. Add chopped sweet potato and peppers. Blend until smooth.
  3. Add onion, taco seasoning and cilantro. Blend until warm.
  4. Pour 2/3 of soup into bowl. Add spinach to the remaining soup and blend until smooth. Pour in the middle of first soup and swirl. Garnish with more cilantro and cracked black pepper. Yum!
Adapted from Raw Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Spinach
Adapted from Raw Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Spinach
Lauri Rottmayer https://www.rottitude.com/
 *I use the taco seasoning recipe found here.

 

Almond Fauxsants

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Back before Christmas, I was discussing Almond Croissants with my friend Gini Dietrich. You see, I haven’t been able to find an almond croissant in this state since we moved here. Gini said we should try and make almond croissants over the holiday break and then check in and see how it went.

convo

After commenting on the release of her new book the other day (Yay! Can’t wait to read it!), I asked her if she had made the croissants.

croissant

I was laughing. We had also watched all five seasons of Breaking Bad and it’s as good a reason as any for why I hadn’t tried to make the croissants yet, either.

I finally decided that I was going to give it a whirl. I used this recipe. It looked easy enough.

But I’m here to tell you that they are NOT croissants. I’d call them Almond Fauxsants. 😉

fauxsant_closw

The dough is somewhere between a biscuit and a bread dough. I knew it as soon as I touched it this a.m.

Upon reflection, I can see clearly that this could not have ended up as a croissant because adding yeast to the dough would make it doughy, bready. Not flaky.

Back in the day, when we lived in Saudi, we had a friend named Ko. Ko made croissants one day. He told us that he folded and folded and folded butter into the flour. This, I can see, would make a flaky croissant.

Anyway, I tried to make these look like croissants but I skipped the egg wash and the almond sprinkle on top. I’ll save that for when I figure out how to make real croissants. 🙂

fauxsant_tray

PS – These “tasted” like almond croissants because of the almond filling I used for the insides. But I could have avoided the whole bready vs flaky thing by just eating it off the spoon. 😉

PSS – I guess I cant really cross 107 – Make almond croissants off of my goals list since these were not really almond croissants. 😉

Cookbook Cook Through: Week 4

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We’ve just finished up week four of the cook through of the Every Day Paleo cookbook. I made three recipes this week and they were all wonderful.

First I made the Dry Rub Burgers. This makes some tasty burgers. The recipe makes quite a bit so we’ve actually had these twice now. We love them!

dry_rub_burgers

Next we tried Frittata for All otherwise known as let’s watch Lauri and David eat a lot of eggs. It was delish! David can’t wait to have this one again. It was easy to prepare. I was a little afraid of putting my skillet in the oven but it was fine and the frittata turned out perfectly.

frittata

The third recipe I tried was Curried Cauliflower. We both love Indian flavors and roasted veggies so this was a perfect recipe for us. We ate it all. An entire head of cauliflower. Yum!

I’ve really been enjoying this challenge so far. We are going to Florida tomorrow so I won’t be cooking anything from the cookbook the week we’re gone but I’m looking forward to what I chose next! 🙂

The Ghost of Christmas Past

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So I really should have written this blog post a couple of weeks ago when it was happening. But since it made me so happy, I’m going to go ahead and post it now.

We haven’t had a real Christmas tree for around 10 years. The last time I put one up was in 2002 but it never got decorated. You see, I worked for the company who does the merchandise for the Outback Bowl and we worked our tails off for the month prior to the game, getting only Christmas day off. Decorating the tree just never got done.

Our place in Bartlesville wasn’t really big enough for a tree. But, a couple of years ago, David wasn’t home and I really wanted a tree. After hanging an ornament a friend gave me on the lamp, I realized, “Hey, this lamp is shaped liked a tree!” And I decorated it. 🙂

lamptreeSo this year, I was so excited to be in a big enough house with enough time to have a Christmas tree and decorate it! I waited sort of late-ish because David was out of the country and I wanted to have the whole experience with him.

We bought a beautiful, real tree. With a Detroit lean.

leanAfter a few snips, we were able to get it standing straight. It was SO much fun going through the trunk of our Christmas tree ornaments. I had forgotten exactly what we had. I decided I wanted to go with red and nutcrackers. I pulled out what we had and then we supplemented with more from the store.

radko

Then we let the Glambaby help by putting candy canes on the tree.

glambabyAnd, of course, the golden Elvis at the top. This year, I secured him to the ribbon which made him stand out even more.

elvisangel

I couldn’t have been happier with the way the tree looked after we were done decorating it. It was GORGEOUS! And happy making. 🙂

treeOne of my friends made a crack about the pine colored carpet and I agree it’s hideous. I can’t wait until we pull it up. But for Christmas? It totally worked.

I ordered stockings embroidered with our names and hung them on the mantle along with my nutcracker collection. Oh how I missed my nutcrackers!

fireplace

I added a couple of camels from our time in Bahrain.

camel

And a tiny woodland creature.

beaver

Then I found my big nutcrackers and the reindeer that Geoff made in shop class.

big

I think it all turned out great and I’m so happy we got to do it. I can’t wait for next year! 🙂

Book Review: My Name Used To Be Muhammad

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My Name Used to Be Muhammad: A True Story of a Muslim Who Became a ChristianMy Name Used to Be Muhammad: A True Story of a Muslim Who Became a Christian by Tito Momen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an incredible, true story of a man who was born in Nigeria and raised to be a Muslim cleric.

Tito Momen, formerly Muhammed Momen) began memorizing the Quran when he was six years old. He was eventually sent to Syria to study further and was disappointed to find that the college he was attending was strictly Muslim studies and no engineering or art which he would have loved to have included. He found the instructors to be bullies and was sent home where his father was completely disappointed.

He then went to Cairo where he would study for his PhD in Islamic studies. Through his own research, he began to doubt that Mohammed was truly a prophet.

He visited the LDS church with a friend and eventually converted to Christianity. Because the LDS church wasn’t recognized in Egypt and because his Nigerian college brothers felt he had committed a grave sin, Tito was jailed for his beliefs under the guise of drug trafficking which he had never participated in.

This is the story of a man’s growing faith and it was gripping and inspiring!

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Book Review: Bellman & Black

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Bellman & Black: A Ghost StoryBellman & Black: A Ghost Story by Diane Setterfield
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was really drawn into this book and I didn’t want it to end. That’s one of my yardsticks to decide if a book is good or not.

Bellman & Black is called a ghost story but I didn’t even realize that until I was halfway through the book. It didn’t strike me as a ghost story in the traditional sense but it was definitely a haunted story about a man named William Bellman.

When he was a child, he killed a rook with his catapult. That seemed to be the underlying theme throughout the story. William goes on to become the successful owner of a fabric mill and have a lovely family with four children and a wife he loved dearly. Then all of the family, except the oldest daughter Dora, died of fever which many people in the area did.

When it seemed as if Dora would die, too, Will runs into a dark man (whom he comes to refer to as Black) at the cemetery. It seems as if he makes a deal with the devil, Dora recovers, and he becomes successful as the owner of Bellman & Black an emporium where people go for all their needs brought on by a death in the family.

William loses himself into the business and it consumes him. I feel like there may have been a deeper message in this book that I missed but that’s surely not the author’s fault. The writing is beautiful, the descriptions are lovely and, although it’s a dark story subject, I really loved this book.

I look forward to reading Setterfield’s first book, The Thirteenth Tale.

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Book Review: Promote Yourself

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Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career SuccessPromote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success by Dan Schawbel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was a big fan of Dan Schwabel’s first book, Me 2.0 and I was looking forward to reading this new book.

Promote yourself is a book aimed at Millennials. This is a tough job market and the book gives great advice about how to get ahead in today’s marketplace. Although the title might suggest that the book is about how to be your own, loudest PR agent, it’s really more about how to put your best self forward and make yourself indispensable at your job.

For Millennials looking to get ahead at work, I highly recommend this book! 🙂

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Book Review: The Nazi Hunters: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi

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The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious NaziThe Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a very interesting book. I’ve read a lot of books about the Holocaust but never about the capture of Adolph Eichmann and was looking forward to reading about it.

This is a true story about the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis’ Final Solution and one of the most notorious Nazis.

I was on the edge of my seat as I read how the team of Israeli’s planned to capture Eichmann and carried out their plan to a successful conclusion. I enjoyed the photos and other exhibits shown of the events in the book.

If you are interested in this topic or want to learn more about it, I know you will find this book as interesting as I did.

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