Recipes, projects & products that don’t suck.

Whether you need a super quick, last-minute, delicious appetizer for NYE or you are looking for healthy recipes to kick off the new year, I’ve got just the thing. It’s crazy-easy to make and the flavor is amazing. This vegan, gluten-free Classic Hummus with Toasted Pine Nuts recipe comes from Liz at The Lemon Bowl. Liz is co-creator of Taste of Michigan, the food bloggers event I attended back in October. Her blog is full great information and healthy recipes. During a KitchenAid demo, Liz made her hummus for us and we all relished the sample. I also became a little obsessed with the fancy new KitchenAid 13-Cup Food Processor with ExactSlice™ System. Lucky for me, Macy’s had a killer sale on Black Friday. Ever since it…

I don’t know how it happened, but the wheels started to fall off a couple of weeks ago. I think the low point of my slippage was when we lost power for 24 hours. We didn’t dare open the refrigerator/freezer, so instead we ate peanut butter sandwiches, Pringles and chocolate. And it wasn’t vegan dark chocolate. Somehow I even let my morning smoothie routine slip. And what do ya know – my skin started to look TERRIBLE (breakouts everywhere), I became lazy and unmotivated, I was “backed up” (sorry if that’s t.m.i.), and I just didn’t feel good. I knew I needed to get back on track with lots of water, fruits and veggies. Over the past month or so, Hubs and I have watched…

In February, I will have been vegan for a year. This is my first time navigating through the holidays with the challenge of eating vegan. I must say, it sure does cure the problem of over-eating when you have very limited dishes to choose from (pretty much the ones you bring yourself) at parties and family gatherings. It really simplifies things and forces me to make good choices. I’m on a bit of a mission to convince my friends and family that vegan does NOT equal yuck. As I was searching for crowd-pleasing vegan side dishes I could bring, I came across a recipe for Cranberry, Apricot and Wild Rice Pilaf. Today, I did a trial run. No surprise here – it turned out great….

I’m BACK!!! I wish I could say I was away on some exotic vacation, but sadly that is not the case. The truth is I’ve just been so busy that blogging had to take a back seat for the past week. I won’t bore you with what I’ve been up to – it’s not that interesting. Although we did get to celebrate Christmas a little early with my family last weekend. Our full group of 51 was reduced yet again now that two more families have moved out of state (including my sister’s family who now live in Texas). With the 16 who moved away, we are now down to 24 in Michigan. This doesn’t make Grandma happy. Thank goodness for technology that keeps us…

In my last post, I wrote about the vegan Artichoke Spinach Dip I was going to bring to a holiday party. We went to the party on Saturday and no one there knew I was vegan or that I brought a vegan dish. They must have liked the dip because there was barely any left at the end of the night! I also went to a holiday party on Friday night and brought vegan, gluten-free banana bread. This, too, went over very well. Personally, I LOVED it. I found the recipe on Gluten-Free-Vegan-Girl, a blog written by a very smart, beautiful 17-year-old girl in Norway whose English is far better than most Americans’. Solveig just started her blog in June of this year (same as me!)…