Instagram, Raw Brownies, & A Future Giveaway

I'm letting you know now that this post involves several different topics and may be lengthy.

  This past Saturday my mom and I along with our assistant pastor, his wife, three of his girls, his sister (our past youth leader), his niece, and nephew went shopping at the Grapevine outlet mall as a day of fun. We all met up at cracker barrel for a late breakfast before spending 7 hours roaming the very crowded mall.  My mom was told by some friends that we had to eat at the Rainforest Cafe because it is a unique experience so we made reservations to have a late lunch/early dinner. When it's was time to be seated, we were lead into a dark room that is heavily decorated to look like a rain forest with mist machines at the bar, mechanic animals that move every few minutes with sound effects, and the staff was dressed like safari guides.

Healthy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie Dough! {No Bake}

  Lately I have been posting mostly sweet recipes and it kind of bugs me since I don't want y'all to think I only eat chocolate-covered treats throughout the week, especially since most of the recipes I've been sharing I actually made as far back as a few weeks ago but waited to post about it. After stopping by Central Market the other night and buying a few pounds of chicken breasts, a pound of large fresh scallops, and a lot of green veggies like baby bok choy (one of my favorites) I have several savory recipes in mind to share soon. I've also been thinking up a few new recipes for soup since according to my mom the changing weather will be "soup weather" soon.

But right now we are still talking about sweet treats. 

  Have you ever stopped by Katie's blog: Chocolate-Covered Katie? Her blog is full of amazing small portioned desserts that are healthy so you don't have to feel guilty about having nutella fudge, chocolate pumpkin brownies ,and I especially want to try the cookie dough dip. This recipe was kind of inspired by her cookie batter recipes.

Buttermilk Oatcakes & Berry Compote

  

  These oatcakes (like pancakes) are great because they are filling, healthy, and have a good chew from the oats. The creator of this recipe wanted to show how easy a high-fiber & healthy breakfast could be without butter and extra fats. 

   The oatcake recipe can be categorized as having "no refined sugars" if you leave out the sugar which is what I did. This recipe makes 12 pancakes so having only 1 tbsp of sugar doesn't really matter; you could add more sugar if your family likes sweeter pancakes. I left out the sugar and just topped the cakes with the compote and some extra maple syrup and both my dad (who loves sugar) and I were happy with how they tasted. In the magazine, this recipe is labeled as high fiber, heart healthy, low cholesterol, and healthy weight. 

Pecan Almond Date Bars

   I finally got my packages of almond flour and coconut flour in the mail a few days ago so I decided to look up some of the recipe that I've bookmarked in that past to make. As soon as I saw Allie's post for Pecan Date Bars, I knew what I was baking first. I love dates and I add pecans to almost every baked good that I can so I thought this would be a good recipe to try my first recipe labeled Gluten-free & Paleo among many other labels!
  The Paleo diet is basically the diet of our ancestors with meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, but doesn't include dairy, grains (gluten), or processed foods. I'm not saying that I'm going to switch to an all Paleo diet (at least not now), but I do like the idea of it and how many people that say that they feel so much better after being on it for a while. Here are a few good sites for learn more about Paleo: Multiply Delicious (I've bookmarked  & pinned so many of her recipes), here, and here.

Chipotle Turkey Burgers with Avocado Mayo

This will be a short post since I have school work to do that I've been kind of neglecting, 2 kittens who seem to have more energy than I do and a never ending appetite, and a few recipes that I have to find and try out for this weekend. 

I'm actually not a big red meat eater when compared to my dad, but I do like a good burger and a rare-medium steak, and of course I love BBQ, but those things aren't always that good for you. So that is why I like to eat veggie burgers, but I don't ever remember eating a turkey burger, so I decided to make a recipe since we had some turkey in the freezer. I based this recipe somewhat off this Southwestern Black Bean Burger recipe and I decided to make an avocado mayo to oppose the heat from the chipotle. 

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.

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.