What I ate: 05-06-12

My mother has been buying these cocoa coated almonds at Sams Club and they are really addictive. On this particular day I was wondering if I could make my own so I coated a bunch of almonds with cocoa and put them in the oven to roast.

I didn't add any sweetener and so they really tasted nothing like the store bought ones though. Of course then I looked it up online and found that lots of people have tried making their own version of these and pretty much everyone uses a sweetener of some kind. I was trying to be brave and healthy and go without it, but it just wasn't very easy to eat them that way so after roasting them I caved a coated them lightly with maple syrup. This made them better, but extremely messy. Yet another "Julie Surprise" where I'm the only one who seems willing to eat it. :P

Here's a recipe I found later on pinterest that I should have used. Maybe I'll try again sometime.
The only real difference here (besides the order of ingredients) is that her recipe includes flour. I'm guessing this is to tone down the bitterness of the cocoa so it's not so strong. I wonder if I could find a good flour alternative that doesn't cost much. Hmmm . . .

What I Ate: 04-03-12

On the morning of April 3, 2012, my girls were asking for eggs and toast for breakfast. We only had about two eggs left and so I wasn't sure how far that would go between the two of them. (let along their mom) Somehow in talking with them though, it occurred to me that I could make french toast and that would make the eggs go further. To my surprise my almost 5 year old asked, "What's french toast?" I was like, "Really? has it really been that long that you don't remember it?"  So I figured it was high time I made some again.
When I was a kid my mom always let us put powdered sugar on our french toast even in addition to the sugary jam or syrup. I have powdered sugar (possibly from my grocery shower seven years ago? o.O) but since we've been trying to cut out processed foods I hadn't touched it in forever. That particular morning though, I was feeling a bit nostalgic and decided to let the girls try some along with their organic butter and real maple syrup. Just for the experience. (I know, it seems a little backwards to give a child organic breakfast with powdered sugar on top.)
After two happily sugared up children left the table to go play, it was Mommy's turn for breakfast. We had one remaining slice of organic nine grain bread and barely enough egg mixture to just coat it, but I made it anyway and when it came to topping it I almost caved into the nostalgia of powdered sugar, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, so I gritted my teeth and stowed it back in the pantry during which process my eyes fell on the container of pure cocoa powder and I had a little eureka.

Oh, my goodness! I was soooo goood!  After I took these pics and started cutting into my french toast the cocoa began to blend with the maple syrup and basically turned to chocolate syrup. Yet, not at all resembling the nasty plastic-squeeze bottle junk you can buy in the store. It was rich a sweet but wholesome tasting too. I'm so glad I discovered this trick!
I have since experimented with making chocolate syrup using those two ingredients and it works really well, only you have to expect it to be a bit thinner than the store bought version because when I used enough cocoa to make it thick it was a bit too strong, even for someone like me who loves really dark chocolate.

Organizing Drink Mixes

I just thought I'd post up here some things I did recently to reduce clutter and reuse empty containers around my kitchen.

May you be inspired.

First of all, I bought some Hot cocoa mix in bulk almost 2 years ago for a big movie project my husband and I were doing, and hardly any of it got used for that. We have since brought it to multiple parties in the hopes of using it up, but the fact remains that I've been frustrated by these little individual serving packets for a long time now. They don't stack neatly, and they fall all over the cupboard. (And we're finding it hard to want to use them much when we seem to get at least two Stephens canisters every holiday season as gifts . . . I tend to favor the flavored cocoas!) Anyway, a while ago my husband just put all these packets into a grocery bag and put them on a shelf.

Lovely.

Needless to say, this has been an ongoing issue with how neat my kitchen feels for me.

On the other hand, I recently went through a big jar of peanut butter and felt the need to wash out the container rather than throwing it away. My mom used to reuse these jars all the time when I was a kid, and I was pretty determined to find a good use for it. (I bet you can see where this is going, huh?)

This is what I came up with . . . I filled the jar with as many cocoa packets as I possibly could; taking care to measure exactly how much one packet contains. Then I typed up a label and directions on my computer and printed it then I simply cut it out taped it on to the jar.

Tada!
Now all that cocoa fits nicely in my cupboard. Surprisingly, I still had a few packets left after this, but they were manageable. I rubber banded them together and tucked them in the back of the cupboard behind the big jar.

My husband is a big fan of drinks. Especially drink mixes. I guess it's just how he was raised. My mom always rather discouraged too much drinking of "Sugar Water" as she so deftly called it. But Jake's parents have had Kool Aid and the like pretty much at every meal even to this day.

Anyway, to appease him, we have a few of these colorful packets laying around the house, along with some fruit flavored teas. These latter ones did have a box at one point, but my toddler destroyed it. Thus, I also had these drink packets cluttering up my cupboard, but as they are of different flavors, brands and quantities I obviously couldn't do here what I'd just done for the cocoa. So I did this.
This was one of those mayonnaise containers with a flip top. All the packets fit nicely into it and it fits nicely onto a shelf.

Yay for organization!