Favors and ideas?  I have an idea: don't try to substitute bananas for ice cream.  

Let me go back.  I am watching what I eat.  Typically, this consists of watching way too much food go into my face, but lately, I have been watching portion sizes and things.  It is summer, after all, and darlings, my kids, bless them, really love to go to the pool.  So I would not be the mama in the mumu, I decided to get healthy.  

Which is a problem, because I love my sweets.  So, when I saw a recipe for how you can replace ice cream cravings with frozen, blended bananas, I nearly wept with excitement.

Like a little spring lamb, I chopped and froze all the bananas that we had in the house.  I couldn't wait to throw those bad boys in my Cuisinart.

Well, sure enough, I cough down dinner to get to dessert.  Tossing the banana chunks in my food processor with gusto, darlings, I blended them up.  Bananas and vanilla extract and some honey, oh my.

And the result was a cruel, miserable lie.  Frozen bananas taste like bananas, not ice cream.

There, I have spared you the humiliation of having to learn this lesson for yourselves.  Frozen bananas are wonderful if you are craving cold bananas, but from now on if I want ice cream, I'm going to eat ice cream.  A whole little half cup of delicious, frozen heavy cream and sugar.  

I will just eat it less often and save those frozen bananas for my smoothies.  

​

Isn't it gorgeous????  I can't wait for you cheeky ladies to read it!!

Here's the low-down on the plot, darlings:

 She's great at giving advice, too bad she never takes it…
Piper Anderson wants to be a serious journalist at a serious paper covering serious news. Instead, she’s stuck at the Pendleton Falls Herald, where her massive investigative skills are wasted penning the paper’s advice column, Miss Behave. 
Her shot at a meaty story comes when she’s assigned to write up a profile of a local business, Brookes Jewelers. She is determined to write the piece so she can use the article to impress a real paper.
Unfortunately Hunter Brookes, co-owner of Brookes Jewelers and the Pendleton Falls Herald, is rather persistent, in his own hot little way, that the piece should be nothing more than a glorified sales pitch. 
But when diamonds disappear, Piper may get the chance to do a real investigation, leading her to confront family secrets and worst of all, turn to her mother for help.
Piper soon realizes that there is more to Mr. Brookes than a tight ass and a ridiculous fascination with name tags. Together they deal with roasted pigs, crazy cat ladies, and gun-toting fashionistas.
In all the chaos, they just might find the one thing that neither one was looking for: true love.





​So tell me, what do you think??

I suck at making those zoodles, and I have zucchini bread packed into my freezer like I plan to one day use zucchini bread bricks to fend off zombies in the apocalypse my older son swears is coming.  And yes, I did take away his Walking Dead watching privileges, btw.  

But I still have zucchini, so on Amazon Prime day, I went ahead and bought a food dehydrator and the first thing I made?  Zucchini chips!  And they were terrific!

Here's how I did it:

First, I sliced the zucchini on a mandolin.  Then, I tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Threw them into the dehydrator so that they were touching, turned the thing to 140 degrees for 8 hours and voila!  Delicious chips!  Like potato chips, only green and actually good for you!

If you like, you can make them in the oven as well. Set the temp to 200 degrees and cook for two hours or so until they're crispy.

So, what's a girl to do on a rainy day when stuck in the house with active children.  Why, feed them sugar, of course.  I know, darlings. probably not the best course of action, but since I ate as much sugar  as they did, and we just wrapped up an epic dance-party throw-down, I say it was a wise choice.  

Here is the recipe, sweeties, enjoy!

This is a trick title, of course, my darlings, as there is absolutely nothing wrong with pesto.  

The problem is, frankly, the children.  I love them, but today I made roughly three thousand pounds of fresh pesto made with both fresh basil and fresh garlic that I picked from the garden, and what do the kids want to eat for dinner?  

Chicken nuggets.

Yes, hours of my day spent in the kitchen, gleefully preparing this taste of summer for the family to be able to enjoy mid-winter.  

Never fear, though, lambs, I am strong, so tonight there will be only pesto for dinner.  Pesto on pasta, maybe pesto on bread, or even pesto-laden baked zucchinis.  There will be no chicken nuggets.

So, darlings, if you would like to torture your sweet cherubs my making fresh pesto, here is my recipe:


Traci's Pesto

3 cups fresh basil, firmly packed (make sure to pick the leaves at the top part of the stalks, where the leaves cluster together, the leaves from the stem can be a bit bitter)

2 cloves garlic

1/3 cup pinenuts (I buy mine bulk at Big Y or Costco)

2/3 cup grated or chunked Locatelli Pecorino Romano (Pecorino Romano is like parm., only a bit more flavorful)

2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil.  (Because why mess around?)

pinch of salt

pinch of pepper

Throw everything together in a food processor except olive oil, and blend until smooth.  You may have to scrape down the sides a bit.  Then slowly pour the olive oil through the top so that it emulsifies.  

If you are going to serve it right away, you may want to add a half teaspoon of fresh lemon juice so that it keeps its color.

Serve over everything. (Except chicken nuggets.)

​  

,So as a vegetarian, it can be, um, trying to get your kids to eat.  Tofu?  Disgusting, they say.  Tempeh?  Ick, no, mama.  So what is a girl to do to get her fussy boys eating foods that don't end with the word chip?  Well, scratch that, foods that aren't slathered with butter and cheese?

First, of course, darling you must pour yourself a glass of wine.  Mommy needs to think, after all, and  during the long days of summer with its the three billion loads of dirty pool towels, missing goggles, and all that whining,  down time is a necessity if one is to have the energy to put food in front of their little sunburned faces.

I've found that the best course of action to get kids to eat healthy is just to simply lie.  Yes, that's right, I'm not stretching the truth, whatever that is, I am flat-out fibbing.  I tried shoving mashed up cauliflower or broccoli into brownies but they could tell.  I tried having the kids cook the veggies that they pick from the garden themselves and they would take a bite, make a face, and pour themselves a bowl of cereal.  

So now I make those delightful fake chick'n patties and pass them off as real chicken nuggets and you know what?  Even my little one, the one that refuses to eat jelly because it is a form of fruit, scarfs it on down.

Gardein's Chick'n teriyaki is now a family favorite, pair it with some brown rice, some baby corn and boom, a balanced meal that doesn't make the kids threaten to go leave and live with the nice neighbor lady who serves corn dogs.  

Winning, darlings, it's all about winning.