Yoda Cake pops

Yoda cakepop photo from Rosie K.

My talented friend Rosie made some yoda cake pops recently, using red velvet and chocolate as the base.  With a toothpick she hand scored all the wrinkles, since we all know that yoda is old and wrinkled!  I love her attention to detail and these are really cute!  She mentioned that she made more than 20 of these and each yoda had a different facial expression!  Check out her post for more photos and details!

Six Layers of Goodness



Six Layers of cookies


My mom recently sent these yummy cookies - what a thoughtful and lovely surprise!  her cookies are the toast of the town, and while I would love to eat them all - there are 6 other cookie monsters I need to share them with!

In case you can't tell, the top and bottom two layers are the same - chocolate chip cookies, which are perennial favorites!

The 2nd picture features the top of the box - 10 yummy chocolate chip cookies.  The 2nd layer of cookies is a less sweet cookie with orange zest on top - I think they may be sugar cookies with less sugar or something.  The 3rd layer featured sea salt chocolate on top, and the 4th layer was the same cookie base but with a raspberry thumbprint.  The 3rd picture at the bottom shows the 4 cookie varieties on one plate! 

The top layer features chocolate chip




Four different cookie varieties on a plate



How green is your drink?

Here's a healthy concoction - check out the before and after pictures.  I started the organic green smoothie with romaine leaves, dino kale, 3 stalks of celery, 2 cucumbers, 2 head of brocolli (including stems!) and to sweeten this naturally, a pear!  This all went into a champion juicer, and out came the yummy glass of green goodness!  I love the emerald green color.  Green smoothies are an acquired taste, and I do feel so healthy after this refreshing drink.  Because I don't juice regularly, it is a time and labor intensive project for me, but I think if I did it more often, i would be a lot faster at disassembling the machine and cleaning all the parts.  I wish i could juice more often.

Before

After

Happy flowers

Gerbera daisies make me smile.  We spread some sunshine today with these flowers for our neighbors!  This is a recycled craft project using glass jars, some pebbles and fresh flowers.  The tags are made from  various craft paper scraps, and the ribbons are recycled as well!

Bento Friday

I recently got a new divider plate lunch box.  Even though I do have a lot of food containers, they seem to disappear pretty quickly also - sometimes they break or crack, or people borrow and don't return them, the dishwasher eats them, the mister leaves them at work and other people adopt them, etc etc....

Today's lunch is half made and half bought.  I grilled asparagus, and steamed the broccoli :-).  The wrapped green item in the largest compartment is a vegan style waldorf wrap with a cashew paste, apples and other yummy goodies.  The wrapper is an edible leaf.  It was strange at first bite, but tasted good enough to finish.  Yes, I'm trying to explore healthy food choices!

Strawberry Basil water

The basil leaves are from my new herb garden, and the strawberries are organic from today's farmer's market.  I drink a lot of water, and sometimes I like to vary my drink of choice by infusing it with fruits, vegetables, or in this case both.  I love the pink color and slightly fruity essence from the strawberry, and the herbacious taste from the basil.  This is a cool refreshing natural no calorie drink.  Try it and you will love it.  Other varieties I like include:

• Adding cucumber slices to water.  This is often done in spas, and also one of my go-to lunch spots, mixt greens
• Adding lemon slices to water
• Adding both lemon and cucumber slices together - very refreshing!
• Adding orange slices
• Adding lime wedges

Let me know what your favorite natural addition to water is!  I'm always on the lookout for new ideas.

Strawberry Basil Water

Bento Friday - Grilled!

Today's bento box is actually just a clear plastic container.  I will transfer it onto a paper plate before heating it up as these clear containers are not safe in the microwave even though they are supposed to be microwaveable.  It's been a while since I posted one of these bento Fridays.  My lunch features grilled tilapia fish and grilled asparagus spears.  I am laying off the carbs today.  I've been on a healthy food kick recently, which explains the grilling.  Gotta love George Foreman for making grilling avaialble to the masses!