Chocolate Berry Protein Shake {Vegan}

Death. 

It's a factor in life.

 You know it will happen to everyone and everything eventually, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you are prepared for it. We've been at the ranch for almost nine years now and in that time I have been able to see the miracle of life many times, but also come to know the heartbreak of death. Earlier Saturday afternoon, my mom and I went to the vet to put Hedgie to sleep. A few months after I got Hedgie, he got cataracts which took his sight and I noticed that he seemed to be having what appeared to be seizures. The last 2 weeks though, I knew something was wrong because he stopped eating, was shaking, and seemed really lethargic. The vet looked him over and said by the state his teeth he was much older than we were aware of. Since the vet and most of the other staff had never seen or treated a hedgehog, he became quite popular even in his sickly state.

He's 4lbs heavier than her yet he likes using her as a pillow.

Gus Gus also has a vet appointment since he hasn't seen a vet in his little life and he also has a little wheezing problem that I first noticed a few months ago. It almost sounds like asthma except he doesn't wheeze all of the time and acts like a normal spoiled kitten, but just to be safe him and Charlie will be going to visit to vet tomorrow afternoon. I doubt they will appreciate it, though.

My mom's birthday is tomorrow so she is treating herself to a 2 hour massage. She isn't the biggest dessert fan besides cookies and sometimes apple pie so she just asked for some cream cheese filled strawberries that I'll dip in chocolate. I'll probably post a pic on instagram.

Peach Lemonade

  This post is going to be short since today is a busy day.. I've been in the process of making a recipe index page which has made me realize that a few of my old posts needed to go and others need to be re-posted with better content and pictures.
  Anyway, I wanted to share a very good recipe for peach lemonade since I have already made  Cherry limeade Slushies & Strawberry Lemonade. This drink is sweet, tart, and perfect for the hot (and sometimes dreadful) August days.

Peach Lemonade

recipe: What Megan's Making

3 ripe peaches
1 cup sugar*
5 cups water
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1-2 cups water (optional)**

1. Peel (I found that a paring knife works best) and chop the peaches. Combine the peaches, sugar, and water in a medium pot and heat over medium-high heat for 10 minutes, or until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.
2. Blend the peach water in batches until smooth and strain through a fine mesh strainer into a pitcher. Add in the lemon juice and chill in the fridge. If you want a milder (less tart) lemonade, add in the extra water.

Notes:
*The amount of sugar depends on how sweet your peaches are so you can start with 3/4 cup and then add more. The peaches we have been getting here smell and look great, but aren't as sweet as they usually are.
**The extra 1-2 cups of water is optional- it depends on how strong and tart you like your lemonade.

Fresh Limeade & Cherry Limeade Slushies

  I'm not a fan of Sonic's food, but I do live their cherry limeades...I always get the largest size so it will last me longer. We bought a bag of fresh cherries since they were on sale even though we had a bag in the freezer, but they still had their pits in and I didn't want to wait for them to defrost before pitting them to make what I wanted.                             

  Anyway, I looked on several sites to get some good recipes and I got a few, but most of the recipe I found either used dried cherries, prepared pie filling, or preserves. I thought about making a clafoutis which traditionally uses the whole cherry because the pit are suppose to give the dish an almond-like essence, but can be difficult since you have to tell everyone who eats it that there are pits in the dessert so they have to be careful. I thought about trying to make it with pitted cherries and just add a splash of almond extract instead. I made a chocolate cherry shake today that I found online, but you couldn't taste the cherries, barely tasted the chocolate, and it tasted watered down...so that recipe was a no. 

Berry Blast Smoothie

 A lot has gone on this week.

 One of the many tornadoes that hit Texas this week hit on the other side of our town, but as far I know everyone is alright, but some of the houses are damaged and a few small businesses were destroyed. I think this was the first time that we actually stayed in my parents closet during a tornado warning because usually they hit nearby towns or cause very little damage so there usually isn't much cause to hide. I'm glad we don't have to many tornadoes in our area because there were 6 dogs, 3 cats, my dad, I fitting tightly in a walk in closet. I also took my purse with my chargers, my camera bag, a bag of Fritos (which came in handy to keep the dogs calm from both the storm & not to go after the cats), and the blanket I am currently working on. We had 4 dogs in the house when I remember my two, Marley & Oddball and when we went to open the back door to get them, hail came raining down. When we did come out of the closet, the outside was so dark you would have thought it was 8pm, but it was actually just before 5pm.
  There was no damage to out house or animals, except a few shingles on the roof came loose and none of our animals wanted to come out of the hiding places to eat their dinner.

  I have had this post for a while, but never did publish it, until now. I was going to actually post about a recipe I found for sweet -sweet potatoes fries with brown sugar and cinnamon unlike most sweet potatoes fries recipes with paprika and cayenne, but I can't seem to find the recipe today. Instead, I will try to make my own recipe tonight and them post it later.  So I'll share this smoothie recipe with y'all.

Cantaloupe Smoothie

   This past weekend I bought a cantaloupe to eat, but once I got home and cut into I realized that I wasn't as ripe as I needed/wanted it to be. Since I had already cut and chopped half of the melon, I decided to leave the other half whole to see if it would ripen a little more.

This past weekend

This post does not contain a recipe even though I have a recipe & pictures of roasted baby potatoes and green beans which I made last night. Instead, this post is just about what I did this weekend and some new food products that I discovered and tried.

This past weekend a lot happened.

I got my camera, a Canon Rebel t2i and some accessories-My cheeks were sore from smiling so much.
I took over 160 pictures with my camera in under 36 hours.
I made brownies for our youth's bake sale/lunch in.
We went grocery shopping.

My mom and I went to Sprouts, which is like a smaller version of Whole Foods or Central Market to see what they had. Sprouts is considered tiny when you compare it the the layout of WF or CM, but they have most of the same stuff and it doesn't take you a few hours to look at everything in the store. Among other things, I got
tried Hubert's Lemonade which comes in many flavors, but I went regular lemonade and it was very refreshing.











 My mom bought a container of Truffettes de France truffles which were amazing! Usually truffles can be expensive, but we got a whole container for less than $5. These truffles were rich and smooth, and reminded me of brownie batter. I also grabbed a box of Gluten-free brownie mix, which I hid when I got home. I'm thinking about making the brownies soon and seeing if my dad will notice anything about them. The last thing I grabbed before we left Sprouts, was Chocolove's almond & sea salt in dark chocolate bars which has to be one of my favorite chocolate products. The down side is the only places I can find them are Whole Food's, Central Market, Sprouts, and online and seeing as we don't go to WF or CM very often I usually grab a couple bars which lasts me a good while. The last time we went to Central Market though, It was before valentine's day and I went to grab my almond and sea salt bars, but they were completely out, they had their other flavors, but I wanted my  favorite...I guess I'm not the only fan of their chocolate.

Cameras & A Healthy Chocolate Shake

    For a while now I have been thinking about getting a DSLR. Well, recently amazon has reduced some of the prices on their cameras so I started to do some research on what camera would be good for me since this would be my first dslr camera and to see what was in my range (my price range and my skill range).The  Canon eos Rebel T2i is the main camera I have been looking at and I already have 1/2 of the money!Flickr has it ranked #2 out of 206 of its Canon camera. I love my Nikon coolpix l120 and it takes great pictures, but with a dslr I can go further with my photography. I talked to my dad to ask him if he thought if it would be a good idea, or if I should just save my money (which I kept debating between the 2) and to my surprise he said that it would be a good idea. I was shocked to say the least. I've been looking all over the internet to find out more about this camera and where I should purchase it. I also have looked at the Canon Rebel T3 & Canon Rebel T1i.

Strawberry Lemonade

My cousin is having a girl. Yay!
The baby blanket is coming along  nicely. Im starting to think up with new ideas on for my next few projects. One thing I really want to make is a cowl. And then Pinterest comes up with things like this, this is cute!, or this cute owl and I become completely addicted.

Slikey wanted to see what I was doing.

Today we discovered that my pup, Oddball (who will turn 1 on the 13th) is a thief.
Sometimes, he or his mom, Marley will go over to the neighbor's house and bring us their newspaper- if only we could teach them to take it to the neighbor's back door instead.
Well, today, they didn't steal the newspaper.
Instead, Oddball jumped in the neighbor's back yard were they keep their dog, Banjo, grabbed his stuffed toy, and jumped back over the fence and ran to our back porch. Our dogs generally run free, but our neighbors keep Banjo in a backyard with a fence that is about 5 feet high.
Here is a little info to help ya'll understand more:
Banjo was dropped off in front of our neighbor's property before we moved nexed door, and was very afriad of people, even our neighbors. Well, we have coyotes in the back of our property and one night they attacked Banjo, making him have to go to the vet, and stay inside the house for a few weeks to recover. And ever since then he has to stay in his yard. The coyotes have never attacked our dogs, I think because we have so many. Also when we had Chubby, our large male, he would be on a chain at night and would bark all night long. Well, come to find out in the morning the coyotes had brought some dead rabbits and left them about 5 feet from the end of Chubby's line. I guess like a peace treaty.

and back to the story...
When my dad came in the house to show me, Oddball followed loyaly and sat down thinking that dad was going to give him the toy. Well, I kept Oddball in the house while dad went over to give Banjo back his toy.


Okay. Now lets talk about this drink......

Love for Kids & a Power Smoothie

     This past weekend my mom and I volunteered at Love for Kids, which is something that some friends of ours have been doing for years. Basically thousands of kids from the Dallas/ Ft. Worth area get to come out to the Circle R Ranch, play games, gets their face painted, ride horses, and eat all they want. So they get the chance to be care free kids if just for a day. Plus, every bus that the kids arrived on (There were over 60 full sized school buses!And then more came in vans)  were packed with presents designated by each child's sex and age group.
  Saturday morning I wasn't feeling to good. Actually I felt awful, but I still was going to go to the camp. By the time we got out there it was freezing cold, but as the day went on it warmed up a tad bit and the wind died down. Time also seemed to fly by and I soon forgot how bad I was feeling. We arrived at 9:15 and we were suppose to be at our first stations by 10, but we were made into "human fenceposts" to guide the kids coming off the buses into the camp entrance which took almost 2 hours.Some of the kids were absolutely adorable! Then Fred (family friend) and I went to our stations which were with the horses. Fred lead the horse (we had a gray gelding named Ghost) and I was a sidekick- basically I walked next to the horse to make sure the kid didn't fall off. We walked Ghost for 1 1/2 hours before putting him to pasture to rest and going to help clean up and eat.
  By 2pm all of the volunteers (there were hundreds) were all lined up, waving goodbye as the buses left with some very happy kids on board.

This was one of those experiences that helps put everything back into perspective and cherish what you have.