Noelle likes Good Food

So I know you have all been waiting with baited breath. I told you I was going to reveal to you today what I used my coconut butter for. Are you ready? I used it to make homemade coconut dark chocolate. If that doesn't make your mouth water, I don't know what will. It was a work in progress that took a few days. But I definitely learned some things along the way, and I will share with you what I learned. I based my first attempt off of a recipe I found on the internet. I used the double boiler method by placing a bowl with the ingredients over a pan of simmering water. The three components are cocoa powder, coconut oil, and sugar (I used stevia instead). Once they were melted and mixed together I tasted it and it was bad. I don't know if it is because I used the Hershey's Dark Cocoa Powder but it was chalky and nothing like the creamy chocolate I was looking for. I thought pouring it into a pan and letting it solidify would help things and they didn't. It just t...

Have you ever heard of coconut butter? Essentially you take shredded coconut and puree it until creamy. You can use it as a condiment for anything you want to taste like coconut. You can put it on oatmeal, spread on a baked sweet potato with a dash of cinnamon, on muffins, pancakes, cornbread, etc... The uses are endless. I am a coconut lover, and so this stuff is practically gold :). I have never bought it from the store because of the high price tag. The cheapest I've seen it was $11.99 for a 16 oz. jar. That being the case, I can't tell you how the taste of my homemade stuff compares to store bought coconut butter. I can tell mine is a little gritty, but that doesn't really bother me. Also, after knowing how much I can save by making it at home, I will never look back. To figure out savings I found that the cheapest store bought coconut butter is $11.99 for 16 oz. According to my measurements I can get 16 oz. of homemade coconut butter from 6 cups of shredded coconut...

I wanted to go grain free today and see how I feel. For breakfast I had homemade chicken broth with turmeric and collard greens. I know that that is not a normal breakfast, and there are many that would never eat it even if it wasn't for breakfast. But, I have gotta say it gave me energy and didn't leave me craving more carbs. I had raw pumpkin seeds as a snack a few hours later.  For lunch I made a big scramble with 2 cups spinach, 6 mushrooms sliced, 2 eggs and spaghetti sauce over the whole thing. I made myself a big plate of baked kale chips to go on the side. For one serving I used 4-5 kale leaves with the center stem pulled out and the leaves torn into large chunks. Remember that they shrink when baked. I seasoned them with salt and pepper, and placed them in a toaster oven preheated to 400 degrees. It takes between 10 and 15 minutes but be careful because they burn easily! I walked away for too long and came back to a few burnt chips. It was a great lunch and...

I just finished eating lunch and I am supposed to clean the house. But, I don't particularly feel like it right now. Instead of getting up and doing it anyway, I sat down to start catching up on all the blogs I am subscribed to. Then I decided that if I am sitting down and procrastinating, I might as well do something a tad more productive and write a post. I was going to write about my attempt at homemade chocolate. But then it turned out tasting terrible. I need to make some adjustments before I can recommend any recipes. Instead I will tell you about yesterday's dinner. About six months ago my husband and I went to an italian restaurant for dinner.  He ordered Gorgonzola Alfredo with Steak and Mushrooms and liked it so much he requested it for his birthday. His birthday was yesterday, and I remembered that dish and prepared it for dinner last night. He grilled the steaks outside, and I used spinach linguine, a homemade alfredo sauce with gorgozola mixed in, and add...

I have been thinking a lot about what I want my focus to be on this blog, and I have an idea. Right now my husband and I are on a tight budget. We are trying to spend as little as possible and save as much as possible. We are saving to put me through school, as well as saving for a down payment on a house. Those are some pretty big things and we are trying to be as proactive as possible when it comes to cutting costs.  For example, we recently turned off cable to cut bills, our grocery budget per month is $200, I only go grocery shopping twice a month with a planned menu and list of things to buy, I rarely buy clothes new, etc..  My idea is to blog about saving money while still incorporating all the things I am interested in. I want to live out the reality that we can eat healthier, live better, be greener, and spend less all at the same time. I am going to write about my grocery shopping process, the pros and cons of couponing, what to do when you can't afford organic, ho...

I was doing research last night about how to improve my blog, and be more a part of the blogging community. What I read made me stop and ponder. It left me with more questions than answers. It seems that I have been sitting on the sidelines and I need to refocus and and be more proactive to create the online community that I am looking for. I need to ask myself a few questions. Why am I doing this? There are many different reasons to have a blog, and each reason will create a different end product. When I started, I just wanted to have a place to post recipes. I also was looking for accountability. I have so many goals for everything. I was unfocused, and going nowhere, and I thought writing about them and making them public would give me more motivation to accomplish them. I realize that I am still unfocused in my blog. How do I define a focus when I have so many things I am interested in? Right now those things are healthy eating, saving money while being healthy, nutrition educat...

I am excited to share with you some of the great food I ate yesterday. I told you on Monday that I am going sugarless for ten days, and my goal is to try to eat more vegetables and balance out my cravings. It is going well and I believe yesterday was a great success. It included a lot of coconut and collard greens, and that makes me happy :). For breakfast I ate a banana sliced in half with natural peanut butter and unsweetened coconut.     For lunch I ate summer rolls. They originated in Vietnam and the name literally means "mixed salad rolled". You can take whatever filling you want, with options including meat, sprouts, vegetables, rice noodles, and herbs. Then you wrap it up in a thin wrapper made out of rice, and is generally served with a dipping sauce. It is naturally gluten free, fresh tasting, and a meal I enjoy frequently. Yesterday I put avacado, cucumber, mushroom, carrot, and cilantro leaves in my summer rolls. I used a recipe for Spicy Mustard Green and ...

I have been going a little overboard on the sweets lately. It seems that once I have even a taste of something sweet it leaves me craving more. I even ate some of the peanut butter bars that I made for Chris yesterday that were filled will butter, sugar, and enriched bleached white flour. Ah. When I eat that stuff it makes me feel bloated, unsatisfied, and gives me a stomachache. When I do make the healthier snacks I tend to eat too much at a time. Like when I made pumpkin no bake cookies the other day and ate the whole batch by myself in a day and a half.  I have decided that I need to take a little time to go without sweets. For the next ten days I will be avoiding sweeteners in my foods. Even my beloved raw honey and that delicious honey cherry jelly that I love to put on everything. I will try to focus on eating more vegetables and balancing out my cravings a little bit.   So that means for the next ten days no more carrot cake... No more chocolate nutty flax squares.....

We have this ongoing debate at our house about tortillas. I like corn tortillas and Chris likes flour tortillas. I have made them both from scratch before, and Chris doesn't even like the homemade corn ones. Crazy, right? I was trying to find an alternative that is gluten free and corn free to try and compromise on our tortilla differences.  Then I came across this incredible blog called Book of Yum that has gluten-free recipes from around the world. I love the passion that she has for other tastes and cultures, and I want to try so many of her recipes. She has a recipe for an indian roti or flat-bread made solely out of sorghum flour. Sorghum is a source of protein, calcium, and iron and naturally gluten free. You can go and check out her blog and look up some of the great recipes at Book of Yum . To view her sorghum flat-bread tortilla recipe with detailed instructions click here .   The dough is made out of sorghum flour and water. The technique for this is similar...

Today has been another stressful day. I have been trying to apply for college to start classes spring semester.  My case is a little special because I was home-schooled and I also qualify as a non-traditional student; meaning it has been five years since I graduated high school and I don't have to submit SAT scores. I emailed the admissions office almost a month ago and asked them if I had to submit SAT scores because I was home-schooled and they said no. So I haven't been worried about it. I have submitted everything else and today I found out that I do indeed need to submit them because I was home-schooled. It is too late to take the test again to be able to still be accepted for the spring semester. So I called the SAT place and they will send my old scores, but they are in the archives and it will take them 2-4 weeks to find them and send them out. I don't know what to do, but I am going to be really disappointed if I can't start classes because of it. Any suggestio...

Do you ever have 'blah' days? I definitely do, and when I feel 'blah' I want to eat all the junk I can get my hands on. Yes, I am confessing to being an emotional overeater. Then I feel gross from eating too much which makes everything else worse and it is just not a good thing. I try not to keep much around the house that could be a temptation. But in desperate times my husband's Reese's Peanut Butter Ice Cream might get eaten because I just don't care. I am getting better at this, but it still happens sometimes, and today stinks. Thankfully I had planned on making crackers and boy did those crackers save me from that darned peanut butter ice cream in the freezer.  I found this recipe for Whole Grain Cracker Bread from Kim at Affairs of Living . It calls for cooked quinoa, buckwheat flour, salt, sesame seeds, olive oil, and water. Lo and behold, I had leftover cooked quinoa in the fridge, and only had to sub in sorghum flour for the buckwheat and poppy s...

Wow! It has been a great weekend! My wonderful friend Jessica M. came up for a few days, and we had a blast. We both share a love of nourishing food, finding bargains, making crafts, dancing, and so many more things. We cooked, we shopped at thrift stores and yard sales, and we went to a football game on Friday night. The only sad thing was we ran out of time to do everything we wanted to do together. The first night she was here we baked up a pumpkin and experimented a bit.  Jessica took the seeds and mixed them up with a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon. We put them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes to make sure they cooked evenly. We took them out when they turned golden brown.  These were the best pumpkin seeds I have ever eaten. They were slightly sweet and satisfyingly crunchy. Not too shabby for some chicks with zero pumpkin seed making experience.  Second, we made pumpkin oatmeal cookies. They were extremely ta...

For those of you that know me, I have been talking about starting a garden for 2 months now. I was looking for a way to do it inexpensively, and I found out that time is the best resource you can have. I borrowed countless books from the library and read one about lasagna gardening. So I have decided to start a few lasagna beds that will be ready by next spring. The amazing thing about it is that you don't have to buy any soil. You can layer different matter and after it sits for a while you are rewarded with rich compost.  To make my lasagna beds I bought four 2x4 foot raised beds at a recycling center for $2 a piece.  I got newspaper from family, and the recycle bin at  my local grocery store. I soaked it in water and laid it out in each of my beds. It is to stop the grass and weeds from growing. We have a local farm that raises pasture fed beef. I emailed them the other day, and they graciously let me come and shovel up 2 containers worth of manure for free. ...

I used to dislike cauliflower. It was always mushy, and tasteless. But recently I started roasting it in the oven, and I will never go back. It gets a bit crispy around the edges and still retains that satisfying crunch without being bitter. I love eating cauliflower this way.  I made roasted cauliflower, baked tilapia, and polenta for dinner tonight. I thought it was super tasty. This post is for anyone that has sworn off of cauliflower. Maybe experience has led you to believe that it is a vegetable that is destined to become bland mush. But I am here to tell you that it can be made into something flavorful, crisp tender, and fabulous! The great news is that it is also in season right now. So grab a head a cauliflower on your next trip to the grocery store and roast away. Roasted Cauliflower: Serves 4-6 as a side dish 1 head of cauliflower Olive oil Salt and Pepper Paprika Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut up one cauliflower and spread it out on a large pan. Drizzle wi...

This is our final pose for a dance we did at my old church.  I am the one in the middle with the hat. I had the morning to myself today and I didn't know what to do. Normally I have a whole list of things I need to get done and today I was drawing a blank. Well, maybe it was more like I didn't feel like doing what I needed to do, yet I didn't want to sit around and be lazy either. I get the most pleasure from being productive and getting something accomplished. Oddly enough, if I spend a whole day doing nothing I feel more drained than rested. I think I get this from my Mom :).  I started by doing my devotions and journaling a little bit. Then a thought popped into my head. Why don't I ask God what He thinks I should do this morning? It is strange that I didn't think about that first, instead of waiting until I couldn't think of anything else. I am trying to be more intentional in my pursuit of God and I know I need grace to seek Him first. So many times I onl...