A Special Summer Treat

Nothing says summer like a basket full of juicy blackberries. I wish I could say that I picked all those big round, delicious looking blackberries, but we bought them at our local farmer's market.

With all these blackberries just begging to be eaten, I knew I had to make something special with them. I decided to make blackberry jam!



Other than making apple butter I've never made homemade jam before. I found an easy recipe to follow and you can find the recipe here: Blackberry Jam Recipe

I know that jams and jellies are always full of too much sugar than I'd like, so I substituted half of the sugar with honey. It still tasted very sweet!



Included in all the fresh fruits we picked at the farmer's were some ripe peaches. They smelled amazing!  You know what sounded like the perfect treat for a busy day? Peach and Blackberry Cobbler. Yummy!

I saved one small basket of blackberries and picked out two of the juiciest peaches. Here is the recipe I used: Blackberry Peach Cobbler Recipe.



Once I chopped up the peaches and added the blackberries it looked so pretty I just had to take a picture.



It wasn't long before the kitchen smelled heavenly...

Now you can't have cobbler without ice cream. Dairy-free ice cream is becoming more and more popular and we found one that actually tasted so creamy and perfect. It was called "So Delicious" vanilla ice cream made from cashew milk.



Well, I don't have to tell you how delicious it tasted - just by this picture you can see how scrumptious this treat was. It was a huge hit with my family and I'm planning on making it again soon.



What's your favorite homemade dessert? Have you ever made your own jam or jelly?

You Can't Get Fresher Than This!

Hi all! I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything. These last few weeks I have been trying to find activities to keep my summer busy and you know what, it's working. I've been so busy I can't seem to find the time to write a new post.  But that is going to change soon. I have so many new projects planned for the next few months and I can't wait to share them all with you.

Last weekend my Mom and I went to our local farmer's market and we came home with so many healthy goodies. You can see all of the delicious and FRESH food we bought in the picture above. YUM!  Also, it's a hint about what a few of my upcoming post will be about. I'm hoping to share with you all some of the ways I used the yummy food we picked out.

Have you ever gone a farmer's market? What's your favorite fruit? Or vegetable?

Homemade Strawberry Lemonade!

Don't you just love it when a rather ordinary day starts out kinda dull but by the end of the day it has turned out to be a day worth remembering.  That's how I feel about today!

Today started out poorly.  For starters, I slept in this morning.  Sleeping in always puts me in a grumpy mood because I think of all the time I have already wasted by not having an early start.  Deciding not to let it get the worst of me I decided to make the best use of the rest of today. 

I have started a new photography challenge for March.  It's called "March photo-a-day" and for each day of March there is a word that I need to portray in my photography. Today my word was 'yellow'.  I asked my mom for ideas this morning and she mentioned that we have a lot of lemons.  You can't get more yellow than that, right?  

 I sliced some lemons for my picture, then one thing led to another (kinda like the book "If You Give a Pig a Pancake").  After slicing my lemons I decided to make a lemonade drink.  I noticed we also had some strawberries in the fridge so I  slice them up too.  I ended up with strawberry lemonade.  

My strawberry lemonade tasted amazing! It turned out better than I had anticipated and it just wouldn't be fair if I didn't share.  My homemade lemonade is also sugar-free and I could not even taste the difference. 

Taking my sliced lemons and strawberries I put them into my cute mason jar mug (that even has my name on it!) and filled my jar up with filtered water.  Any water will do but I like to use filtered water because it tastes better in my opinion.  I also added some ice because I like my water cold.  

In order for the drink to start tasting like the lemon and strawberry you need to let the fruit sit in the water for awhile.  You can put the drink in the fridge and let it sit overnight if you desire.

In order to make my lemonade taste good right away I squeezed half of a lemon into my drink.  Now for my secret to making my lemonade taste sweet without using sugar.  It is really quite simple.  All I added was stevia.  

We have a box full of small packets of stevia we keep in the cupboard for tea. I added one packet to my drink and WALLA!  You have delicious lemonade that looks and tastes amazing. 

I hope you get a chance to try this simple refreshing and healthy drink. 

The Cutest Cupcakes

  
On Saturday my sister made these adorable cupcakes for Valentine's Day. She followed this tutorial she found on Pinterest.  I couldn't resist taking out my camera and snapping some pictures.  

I hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day and enjoyed wonderful fellowship time with those you love.  I hope chocolate and cute cupcakes were a part of your Valentine's Day too. 

How to Cook a Pumpkin!

The best part of fall is pumpkin spice everything! Pumpkin Spice Lattes, Pumpkin Pie, Pumpkin Bread...  My favorite is Pumpkin Pie.  I love making Pumpkin Pie, but this year just the normal pumpkin from a can routine was not enough for me.  I decided to make my pie from a real pumpkin.  The pumpkin I used was a Cinderella Pumpkin.  I was so excited  about getting my own pumpkin that I had my own little picture shoot with it (Yeah, I know, I'm weird, but the picture above is my favorite from the shoot).

Today I am going to show you how I cooked my pumpkin and made pumpkin puree with it.  I was so surprised at how easy it was.  

First you wash your pumpkin (I almost forgot this step).  I decided to cut my pumpkin in half from the stem down.

I also cut the halves in half because it made it easier to get the seeds out.  I used a spoon and scooped out all the seeds and the stringy pumpkin gunk.  I placed all the pumpkin half's onto a big cooking pan.  I filled the pan with a thin layer of water and covered the pumpkin with tinfoil because I didn't want to burn the edges of my pumpkin. I cooked it in the oven for about two hours at 375 degrees.

I was surprised that my pumpkin had barely any seeds.  The Cinderella Pumpkins are more for cooking so they had a lot of meat to them and not a lot of seeds.  

While the pumpkin was cooking I seasoned the the pumpkin seeds, half with a garlic seasoning and the other half with a BBQ seasoning and olive oil.  

I put them in the oven for about twenty minutes.  I normally don't like pumpkin seeds.  I don't know why.  I kinda think it was more of a mind thing.  But I find that when you make something you don't necessarily know if you like you are more likely to try something new.  I found out that I actually really liked the pumpkin seeds.  We decided that the garlic seasoning was the better flavor.  

Back to my pumpkin.  Once it was soft and a little bit mushy I took it out of the oven and let it cool for about 30 minutes.

I scooped all the mushy meat of the pumpkin into a bowl.  It was really stringy. When I was done I was left with just the skin of the pumpkin.

Using a hand blender I blended the pumpkin mush (I'm calling it that cause that's really what it was), until it had a nice smooth texture.

What you now have is basically the same stuff you buy in a can. Fresh homemade pumpkin puree that is ready to be used in all of your pumpkin recipes.  I found that it is a little bit watery compared to the canned puree.  Next time I think I will try to drain some of the liquid out of it before I use it in my recipes.

I used my pumpkin to make pumpkin pie.  I was happily surprised to find as I took my first bite of the pie that the pumpkin flavor was really rich.  

I had a lot of leftover Pumpkin Puree so I froze some in an ice cube tray to use in smoothies and I used the leftover to make homemade Pumpkin Butter.

If you've never had Pumpkin Butter, you have to try it.  It is like fall in a jar.  I could just smell that stuff all day as it cooked in the crockpot.   I followed this really easy recipe I found on pinterest.  A link to the tutorial is below.  My favorite part is that there is no sugar in the recipe.  The main sweetener is honey.

http://tasty-yummies.com/2014/10/28/how-to-make-crock-pot-pumpkin-butter/

So that was my cooking adventure this past week.  I'm trying to try at least one new recipe every week so I plan on doing many more tutorials.