Christmas Traditions!

Hello hello :) Its Christmas Time and we all know that means lots of family and lots of family traditions (Fiddler on the Roof anybody?). Well, since I've become a Warnick, Mr. Warnick and I have loved coming up with our own family traditions! Last year we started a Christmas tradition that we are going to carry on for a long time. We made gingerbread houses out of real gingerbread.

My Gingerbread house 2013

Mr. Warnick's Gingerbread house 2013

We loved it and decided to do it again this year. So on Sunday night we got to design our houses on graph paper and, after making the dough on Monday, I used our templates to cut the pieces of our houses out. They spent a short time in the oven, and after a quick trip to the dollar store for candies we had all the necessities for our houses. 

Here are the recipes I used for the Gingerbread and the Royal Icing:

Ginger Bread (from Martha Stewart)
1 1/4 C Packed Brown Sugar
3/4 C Unsulfured Molasses
1/2 C Butter
1 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
1 Tbsp Ground Ginger
1/2 tsp Coarse Salt
1 1/4 C Milk
1 Tbsp Baking Powder
6 1/2 C Flour

• 
  
• Combine the brown sugar, molasses, butter, spices, and salt in a pot over medium heat. Let the sugar get nice and dissolved. This will take about 10 minutes (I even let mine boil just a tad). Then add the milk and stir it really well. Once it is all mixed in you can remove it from the heat and let it cool.

Once the milk mixture has cooled down, pour it into a big mixing bowl. I use my beloved Bosch and it works wonders! Add the baking powder and flour and mix all of it together until it is completely combined. Divide the dough in half and shape them into disks. This helps you to have less dough to work with at a time and also helps the dough cool. Wrap the disks in plastic wrap or put in a ziplock bag and squeeze all the air out. Refrigerate overnight. On Monday when I saw that I was supposed to refrigerate overnight I had a "Between the Lions" moment. 

Refrigerate overnight?!?!?!?!  NAW!!!

But I did refrigerate it for a few hours. While it was cooling I made the Royal Icing and went to the dollar store for our candy. 

Once the dough has been refrigerated for at least a few hours (I would say 3 at the minimum, or else its a sticky mess) you can roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface. Roll it till its just 1/8 inch thick. Try to get it so its an even thickness all the way across. That way when you cook your pieces they won't be uneven. It is harder to build a gingerbread house with pieces that don't match in thickness. After the dough is rolled out place your templates on top and cut out your pieces. Preheat the oven to 350 and cover a cookie sheet in parchment paper. Bake the pieces for 15 minutes, and turn the cookie sheet halfway through. This year, right after our pieces finished baking I rolled them with the rolling pin to make sure they were nice and flat and not curved. Once the pieces are completely cool you can start building your house.

Royal Icing (found the recipe here)

1 lb Confectioners Sugar

1/2 C Egg Whites ( you can buy a carton of egg whites at the store so you don't have to separate them from the yolks.)

1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

Put all of the ingredients in a big bowl and use an electric mixer to mix them until they are very white, shiny, and will hold soft peaks. It can take anywhere from 7-15 minutes. My arm got tired making this and so Mr. Warnick helped me out :) Afterwards, we scooped all of the icing into a big ziplock bag and squeezed all of the air out. This kind of frosting hardens up pretty quick when it is exposed to the air so it is important to get it into an airtight container of some sort. 

The next step is to buy candy. Buy anything that you can imagine decorating a gingerbread house with. This year we ended up with gum drops, the round mint candies (green and red varieties), candy canes, m&ms, sno caps, chocolate wafers, the peely twizzlers, pretzel sticks, and cinnamon toast crunch (I used this for shingles on my roof, chex would probably work pretty well too). 

My Gingerbread house 2014

Mr. Warnick hasn't quite finished his house yet because he used the icing to decorate his roof so it looks all snowy. It looks really good, but it took a long time to dry. 

Mr. Warnick's Gingerbread house 2014 (a work in progress)

Look at that awesome snowy roof!!!

Tortillas--sorta...

Mr. Warnick and I have talked a lot during our marriage about how we want to be able to play with our kids when they are young and as they grow older. We don't want to be limited by our sore joints or lack of energy or anything like that. We wanted to exercise and eat lots of healthy foods so we can stay in good shape for our kids. I have another reason I wanted to do this, and I'm sure McKay feels the same, we just haven't talked about this reason as much. Growing up as a member of the LDS church we were always taught that our bodies are temples. They are a sacred gift that our loving heavenly Father has given to us. I want to take care of this wonderful gift so that I can continue to serve my heavenly Father as long as possible. 

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, McKay and I decided about a month ago that we wanted to start working towards our goal of being healthy. We had already started running together, and that was a good start. But now we specifically tried to eat healthily. We decided to follow a certain "diet". No, it is not a diet in the way that everyone else thinks about it. We are not necessarily trying to lose weight or anything like that. It's called the Paleo Diet. The way that I had it explained to me is this: all animals have their own diet, a mix of everything that they eat. Pandas eat bamboo. Horses and cows eat grass. Bears eat berries and fish. And so on and so forth....So the Paleo diet is supposed to be the "Human Diet". It consists of the things that our ancestors (hunter/gatherers) ate as the human race evolved. As such, the foods are supposed to be the foods that the human body evolved to eat and do well on. I know, a lot of you probably don't necessarily agree with this, and thats fine. But the foods we have been eating are healthy whether the cavemen ate them or not. 

So, what does the diet consist of? A lot of veggies, some fruit, and some meat. Thats pretty much it. Oh, and some good fats! Before agriculture started and humans could grow grains and before everything had added sugar in it, humans mainly ate veggies, fruit, and meat. No, the hunter/gatherers didn't farm cattle, they followed the herds and hunted them. That means we can eat meat, but they didn't have any dairy foods. So we don't eat milk, yogurt, ice cream, cheese, butter, and all the other dairy foods you can think of. We don't eat any foods with added sugar in it. You might think that is horrible and all of our foods must only be savory. Nope, we can use organic/pure honey or maple syrup. Yum! We also don't eat grains, because the hunter/gatherers didn't grow crops, they gathered what plants they could find. So no bread, rice, oatmeal, etc. 

There's a lot of science behind all of this too. Grains have gluten. Gluten is a protein that can tear up your intestines and cause a lot of problems. Many people don't have a problem with it because they have eaten food containing gluten their whole life, but why not just be safe. Milk has lactose and a similar protein to gluten called casein. We are the only species that drink milk past infancy. And we don't even drink our own species milk (granted that would be really weird...). Lactase is the enzyme that our bodies produce that allow us to digest lactose. Scientists have found that children stop producing so much lactase right around age 3 or 4. Because we still drink milk our bodies adapt (which is pretty darn amazing). But many people cannot digest lactose and this is what we know as lactose intolerance. Casein is the protein in milk that is similar to gluten. It can really tear up your intestines and create problems. A lot of people agree with cutting out sugar from your diet, so I'm not going to go into that explanation. 

Anyway, I'm not trying to convince any of you that the Paleo diet is the only true/correct diet and that everyone should eat this way. I am just laying out a lot of the information we researched before we decided to try out Paleo. We didn't want to go into this life change without some good information. 

I'm sure a lot of you will wonder where we get all of the vitamins, especially the vitamins and minerals that dairy foods provide. Well, where did our ancestors get them? Vegetables and fruits can provide all the vitamins and minerals needed. 

The Paleo diet also encourages people to eat foods grown locally. Our ancestors couldn't just go to the store and buy some bananas that were grown in South America. If you think about it, people that lived in Africa had a much different diet than Eskimos living in the arctic. Eskimos ate a lot of blubber! And they still thrived. How in the world did they get enough nutrients out of a piece of whale blubber? I don't know...but the point is that our bodies adapt to where we are living and what foods are available. So yes, I've heard the argument about the people that live in communities with a lot of dairy farming. Their bodies do adapt to be able to handle a lot of dairy foods, and thats great for them. But, not everyone can handle dairy.

A big part of the Paleo diet is that it is a personal thing. Not everyone's body can handle the same foods as everyone else. It is important to listen to what your body likes. Everywhere I read about Paleo says to try many, many different foods. And if something doesn't agree with you, don't eat it again. It's pretty simple. 

Any who, I could go on and on, but this post is already pretty long. So I'll get to the point. Mr. Warnick and I have been eating Paleo for over 3 weeks now. We've both lost weight and feel energized and good. We have had 2 meals in the past 3 weeks that aren't Paleo and we felt kind of yucky afterwards. Our bodies like the foods we've been eating. We might not continue to be as strict as we have been for this first month, but we enjoy whats foods we have and we eat well. We bought a Paleo cookbook that has a bunch of really great recipes that we have enjoyed trying. 

One thing we really missed at the beginning of this month were tortillas. Before, we always had quesadillas, breakfast burritos, and everything else inside tortillas. But, they're made with white flour or corn flour which are no no's on Paleo. So I searched Pinterest. I found a recipe for tortillas that are completely Paleo! You can find the original recipe here. They use arrowroot powder and coconut flour, which are both very Paleo. Hooray! The tortillas turn out a little more like crepes than tortillas but they work perfect for what we use them for. 

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

-2 eggs

-1 tsp melted coconut oil

-1 tbsp water

-1/4 C arrowroot powder

-1 tsp coconut flour

-pinch of salt

Whisk the eggs, coconut oil, and water together. Then add the dry ingredients and mix well. Mine came out with little clumps of flour so I just got a spoon and crushed all of the clumps I could. 

Heat a skillet (no oil needed). Once heated pour some batter into the skillet and roll around so that the batter evenly coats the bottom of the skillet. The edges will start to pull away as it cooks. Cook for 1 minute on both sides. And voila! You have a Paleo tortilla, good for fish tacos, breakfast burritos, and anything else you want. We love this recipe. 

Beach Crazy!

No, this is not a foody post. 

I just need to get it out there, and maybe complain just a teeny bit. 

When I was younger my family lived in Arizona, but because my parents grew up in San Diego we often vacationed there.  We traveled to San Diego every summer, as well as during many holdiays. 

After years of visiting California, we finally moved there, not quite to San Diego, but we still found a beautiful place in the Monterey area. My family spent 11 years in Salinas, California. 

Salinas is about 2 hours south of San Francisco and is very close to the coast. 

Only 12 miles from where we lived in Salinas to the ocean! (as the crow flies)

So, my life experiences have taught me that the beach/ocean is a wonderful, beautiful place. It is one of my most favorite places to be and swimming in the ocean is one of my most favorite things to do. I absolutely love it! 

In San Diego the water was warmer and it was a little more fun to swim there than in Monterey. I could swim and boogie board all day long. The exhilaration of catching a wave and riding it all the way into shore is so amazing. Yes, I know its not surfing. I've been there and tried that and maybe with practice I could catch on, but boogie boarding is more my thing. So fun! Plus laying in the sun on the hot sand feels so good and is so relaxing (as long as you remembered your sunscreen). 

In Monterey you can swim and boogie board too. Its a different experience, but still fun. However, in Monterey I preferred walking along the beach (barefoot of course!) and watching and listening to the waves break on the shore, and most likely catching a glimpse of an otter or seals playing, pelicans diving, and quite possibly whales. Bon fires on the beach is another activity I adore in Monterey. Just smelling the salty air is relaxing to me. 

Younger all of us :) We love our seaweed!

I have so many amazing and wonderful memories of things that happened at the beach. 

When I was a little girl, my twin (Larissa) and I always celebrated our birthday at the beach. We'd barbecue hotdogs and hamburgers and play in the water the whole day. 

When I got older the beach was sometimes a hang out place for my friends and I. Sometimes we just walked along the beach, other times we had bon fires, once in a while we'd bring a blanket and stargaze, and every now and then we'd swim! 

My little sister (Jessica) and I once randomly picked up some popcorn chicken from KFC and went to eat it on the beach. She and I have some pretty exciting memories at the beach, remember Jessica? 

So, as of late, I haven't been able to visit the beach. Why? Because I'm living in Idaho! I love Idaho. It has its own beauty and so many places to explore. Plus my hubby is here :). 

But recently, I've been feeling so land locked. I just want to go to the beach, and not a "beach" at a lake. The Beach. With the ocean. 

Ya know? 

Its just different from a lake beach, not the same. I miss the beauty of the beaches around Monterey. Because its a little closer to Norcal, its less populated, less touched and bothered. It feels clean and perfect. Just beautiful. 

See that blue blue water?!?!

Of course its not just Monterey beaches that I miss, San Diego too. The warm sun and perfect boogie boarding waves. 

Also, lets not forget the amazing sunsets we see over the water. It's not a view you can easily forget.

I miss the beach terribly. I miss burying my feet in the warm sand. I miss digging my hands into the wet sand at just the right moment to catch a handful of sand crabs.

 I miss diving into the waves. I miss the salty taste of the water. I miss boogie boarding. I miss finding star fish on rocks. I miss seeing my footprints in the wet sand. I miss being sandy. I miss laying in the warm sun on a beach blanket.

 I miss hearing the seagulls. I miss chasing the seagulls away. 

I miss being at the beach when it's raining (Jessica). I miss being exhausted after a day at the beach. I miss watching kids play at the beach. I miss watching the fireworks on the 4th of July at the beach. 

I miss giving seaweed to Estin. I miss pretending to see a jellyfish to scare Jessica. I miss swimming to the buoy with Larissa and Adam. I miss surfing with Kristen. I miss bon fires in the sand.

 I. Miss. The. Beach. 

So, whats a California girl to do? Hopefully sometime soon Mr. Hubby and I will be able to take a trip to the West Coast and relax at the beach together. Anyone want to buy us airplane tickets or pay for the gas? 

Delicious and Easy Peasy Homemade Peanut Butter!!!

Yes, I know, its been quite a while since I've said hello on here. The reason? My last semester of classes as an undergrad! My last semester at Brigham Young University Idaho began in January and man is it a beast! Its taking up all of my time, so even though I've been experimenting with yummy recipes, I've had no time to post them! Back in December I meant to write a post about the cute gingerbread houses my hubby and I made (completely from scratch!). But I just got busy and haven't found time to post until now. But gingerbread houses will have to wait till another time. Today is for peanut butter.

Last month, McKay and I realized that we still had over $100 on gift cards to Bed, Bath, and Beyond from our wedding. We got excited and started looking at what we wanted to get with the money. We settled on a pretty nice food processor. We had been wanting to try our hand at homemade hummus and I had seen some nut butter recipes I wanted to try. So we made the purchase and waited for our lovely Cuisine Art food processor to arrive. I was so excited, and it came so quickly! We made hummus that night, but are still experimenting with the recipe, so that will also come later. Our next experiment with the food processor was peanut butter.

Peanut butter is probably the easiest thing to make! All you do is put 16 oz of peanuts into the food processor and turn it on. Thats it. Really.

You might not believe me, because at first it looks like this and you wonder how it will ever become smooth creamy yumminess. But just be patient...

It takes between 5-10 minutes, but it will slowly become peanut butter....

As the food processor does its thing and the peanuts get more chopped up, they release oils that will moisten it all up and the peanut dust will start to become a ball of peanut dust all stuck together...

And after just a little longer it looks like this:

Yum!

If you like chunky peanut butter you can toss a handful of peanuts in at this point and pulse the processor a few times to get the chunks. I like my peanut butter nice and smooth though, so this is how it stayed. When you first finish it, its fairly warm from the spinning blade. This means that you can practically pour it into whatever airtight container you plan to store it in. I'd recommend storing it in the refrigerator since there are no preservatives in it, but it should last a good month (if not longer!). 

The first time we made our own peanut butter we also threw in about a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips into the food processor. The heat and the blade melted/chopped those up and we got a nice chocolatey-peanuty butter that was delish to just eat on a spoon. That's pretty much how we ate the whole jar :)

Any who, try it, its delicious and so easy. Plus its pure peanuts! How cool is that? Have fun!

Crock-potted Pork Roast

Okay, this isn't any special recipe. Its super easy and probably 99% of the time comes out deliciously. But I wanted to blog about this because of a weird thing that I found on my roast. I bought the roast a few weeks ago on an awesome sale at Broulims. Its a 6 or 7 pound pork should roast and I bought it for $4. Pretty dang good, right? So this morning when I went to prepare it for the crockpot I put on the cutting board and noticed a rough feeling layer on top. I thought it was that little absorbent mat thing that other meat packaging has. However, when I tried to remove it, I just couldn't. I realized then, that it was the pig's skin! The actual skin! Pig skin still on my roast! Euww! It was the weirdest thing. I didn't know they leave the skin on some roasts! My roast was a pork shoulder picnic roast, and when I looked it up later it seemed that leaving the skin on these roasts was normal....weird but ok....

 

Anyway, on to the recipe. Its really simple. Put the roast into the crockpot, add carrots (baby or chopped), chop up a few potatoes and add those too. My mom often adds chopped onions as well, but I didn't have any on hand. I sprinkled the top with garlic salt and voila!

Its ready to sit in that crockpot for 8-10 hours on low or 6-8 on high. Yum!

When I was looking up the weird skin, I came across this recipe for pulled pork using a pork shoulder roast. It looks so yummy! I think I'll try it in the near future....

Baked Potato Soup

So, a few Christmas's ago my grandma gave my sisters and me a cookbook full of her "tried and true" recipes. In it she included little notes about where she got the recipe, a time she made the recipe, or something about how to make the recipe. It is on of my most cherished gifts. I absolutely love it and love making recipes from my grandma. Thanks Grandma!

Its been getting cold here in Rexburg and actually snowed a good amount. While I'm not so pleased with the snow, it makes for great soup weather. I love soup! And I am loving learning how to make a lot of different kinds of soup. This baked potato soup recipe comes from my grandma's cookbook and let me just say that everything in the cookbook is delicious, so get ready:

Baked Potato Soup

2/3 cup flour

2/3 cup butter

3/4 tsp salt and pepper

6 cups of milk

1 tbs chicken bouillon 

4 medium sized baked potatoes

12 slices cooked and crumbled bacon

4 green onions chopped up

1 1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese

1 cup sour cream

You start by making a roux--melt the butter over low heat. Once it is completely melted, and the flour and whisk till smooth. Cook for 1-2 minutes stirring constantly (it burns easily). Then gradually whisk in the milk and raise heat to medium.

The mixture will slowly get thicker and bubbly. I added about 1-2 cups of chicken stock to thin it out a little because it got really thick. 

Once its all thick and delicious add all of the rest of the ingredient, except for the sour cream. Don't add the sour cream until just before you serve the soup. Make sure everything is mixed in and hot. 

Once you're ready to serve this yumminess, turn off the heat and mix in the sour cream. I didn't mix it all the way in, because it was really yummy eating it just swirled in....if that makes sense...yah.

McKay told me that when he mom used to make this soup they would eat it topped with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of cheese. Sounds delish!

Anyway, this is a super yummy soup and really easy too. Make it and stay warm :)

Spinach Mozzarella Grilled Cheese

Hubby and I decided we wanted to start getting Bountiful Baskets every once in a while. For those of you who don't know what these wonderful things are, go here. Basically, you get a huge box full of fresh fruits and veggies for $15! Amazing right? We got our first box this past Saturday and were amazed at how many yummies we got. Included in the box was a big bunch of spinach. Now, I've never really been the kind of person who loves spinach. I'll eat it in an occasional salad, and it can be yummy as a topping on some pizzas. But other than that, I don't eat it very often. So I've been trying to figure out what to put our spinach in. I found this delicious sounding recipe for these grilled cheese sandwiches, and we just so happened to have mozzarella! It was perfect. Here's the recipe:

Spinach Mozzarella Grilled Cheese

1 1/2 Tbs olive oil
1/2 onion (chopped real small)
1 clove of garlic minced
8 oz of fresh spinach
4-8 slices Bread
Butter
1 cup mozzarella cheese (or more!)

So you all know the deal with grilled cheese. Spread butter on one side of all the slices of bread. I made this recipe into 2 really full sandwiches. But I think its supposed to be made into 4.

Heat the olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and saute until onions are soft and almost caramelized. Then add the spinach and a small amount of water (1/4 cup maybe). Let cook until the spinach is wilted, stirring constantly so it doesn't burn. Set aside mixture.

Now, set one slice of bread (butter side down) into the pan and add a nice layer of mozzarella cheese. Spread some spinach mixture on top and add another layer of cheese. (Go ahead and add some salt and pepper to taste). Top with the 2nd slice of bread (butter side up). Cook on a low temperature so that the cheese has time to get all melty and tasty.

Voila! Now you've got one tasty grilled cheese! McKay and I thought these would be so yummy with tomato soup. I found a really delicious recipe that I'll post later. Enjoy!!!

Pumpkin Seeds with Brown Butter and Sage

McKay and I carved a pumpkin for Halloween and saved the seeds to bake them. I searched for a yummy sounding recipe and this is what I found. It was on this website, along with 8 other yummy sounding recipes Sounds delicious, but when I cooked them you couldn't taste the lemon and sage flavors. So I think next time I'll put more of both of those in. Here's the recipe how I found it:

Brown Butter and Sage Pumpkin Seeds

2 cups pumpkin seeds

3 tbs butter

2 tbs sage

1 tbs lemon juice

Make sure the seeds are nice and dry. I dried mine in the oven for about an hour at 200°, stirring every 15 minutes or so. 

Next the butter. I'd never made "brown" butter before so I looked it up. Its supposed to add more flavor and be tasty. So you put the butter in a skillet and wait for it to melt. Then you wait even longer for it to have a brown tint. The way the recipe describes it is "golden brown and nutty". It certainly smelled very buttery.
(This is not brown enough)

(You can't quite tell, but this is nice and brown)

After the butter is brown, add the sage and the lemon juice and stir real well. 

Then toss the butter mixture with the seeds in a large bowl.

Spread the seeds out evenly on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes at 325°.

****Theses are the changes I would make. I'd probably add 3 tbs of sage and 2 tbs of lemon juice. I would also probably cook them at 300° or even 275°. My seeds came out a little too done, so I would also only cook them for 10-15 minutes at the max. Our oven is a little too ambitious and sometimes heats up way too much. So the original recipe might work great for you. Play around with the temperature and cooking time until you find what works for you.****