Bits and Pieces

Tidying up some bits and pieces this morning!  In no particular order:

Thanks to Jules of Big Girl Bombshell for the Beautiful Blogger Award!  I was so flattered to receive it - right back at ya Jules!  Please check out her blog - there's lots of good food for thought and her new site design looks awesome!

This morning I'm trying to recreate some of the Miraval recipes, specifically the black rice & edamame salad, and the asparagus/proscuitto appetizer.

I used this recipe for the salad, and it came out beautifully.  Not exactly like the Miraval version but pretty close.  Yum!  No need for a recipe to make the appetizer - I just blanched the asparagus and wrapped it up in the proscuitto.  Double yum!

Yesterday I discovered the make-your-own-trail-mix bar at Whole Foods.  I made mine with walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame sticks, dates, currants, dried ginger, chocolate chips and m&ms.  Triple yum!

Now I'm off to Barnes & Noble to write my next bog post for iecycle.org - if I stay home to write I'll eat my way from one end of my kitchen to the other.  I'm writing about organic lawn care this time around - hard to imagine taking care of a lawn with all this snow around, but spring will be here before we know it!

Yummo Granola Bars

I've been looking for a good pre-workout snack recently that would be easy to toss in my purse and eat in the car on the way to the gym.  And of course something that doesn't contain a ton of chemicals with unpronounceable names!  I'm happy to say I found an amazing recipe for homemade granola bars - they are chewy and sweet, are super-easy to make, and have no preservatives, high fructose corn syrup or other chemicals!  I substituted a half-cup of chocolate chips for the raisins (gotta have that chocolate fix), added about 1/4 cup ground flax seed to the mix, and reduced the cooking time to 25 minutes to keep them on the chewy side. 

They came out so well that I'm going to make them again as soon as this batch is gone - which will undoubtedly be very soon.  Next time I'll add some peanut butter or almond butter to give them a bit more protein - I'll report back on the results.

Wanted: Your Weight Loss Tips - Cookbook Giveaway!

Tiffany at From 12 to 6 is sponsoring an awesome giveaway this month - just post a weight loss tip to her site and she will enter you in a drawing for a great cookbook by Ellie Krieger!

You can check out the contest HERE.

Don't delay - the drawing is November 24th!