Noelle likes Good Food

Much to the curiosity of my husband and most other people, I enjoy silence. Most of the time I drive in silence, if I am home alone I will work in silence, I workout in silence, etc... I think a lot and never seem to run out of things to think about. Especially when I am working out or studying I need silence to focus. Also, my part time job is cleaning houses and for the last 2 years I have cleaned in silence. But, eventually I got tired of thinking to myself all the time and found myself wanting to listen to something.  My solution became podcasts! I have subscribed to several free channels that have great information about organic farming, herbalism, and traditional food preparation and it has been such an encouragement to hear their interviews and stories. I am thrilled to have found a way to incorporate learning about what I am passionate about into my current job.  Along that note, several podcasts I have listened to recently discussed nourishing herbal inf...

One of our good friends got married on Saturday. Months before the wedding the groom asked me to make a treasure map cake. Of course I said yes! I took TONS of pictures and tried to be selective about the ones I chose to include in this post. Still, I think I have over 40 pictures here so you have been warned. Now you can sit back and enjoy looking through the pictures of a cake that took me three days to make! I made my own fondant for all of the decorations. Since fondant alone doesn't hold its shape very well, I added tylose powder (it is used in making gumpaste). It worked like a charm. I kneaded it in after adding the color until it went from playdough consistency to clay consistency.  I let the palm tree leaves harden on upside down muffin pans for 1 day before I assembled them.  The 1st layer. The 2nd layer The 3rd and final brown layer.  The fondant showed the bumps and unevenness of the rice krispies a lot more than I anticipat...

My twin sister and her husband came to visit us recently! I was very happy to have them here! We always have a great time together and their visits normally include lots of yummy food. This time my sister brought her new mini donut maker and we put it to good use :). To go with the donuts we made scrambled eggs, and the guys each had a biscuit. As you can see we demolished our breakfast and there was not a single donut left!  Gluten Free Donuts dipped in chocolate sauce and topped with chopped peanuts.  We adapted  THIS  recipe from Sia's Cooking Blog. Gluten Free Donuts 3/4 cup old fashioned oats, processed into flour 2 T sorghum flour 2 T tapioca starch 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut 2 T honey 1 T organic sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 cup coconut milk 1 tsp vanilla 1 egg pinch of salt Chocolate Icing 1/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips 1 T cocoa powder 2 T coconut oil 1/2 tsp van...

My cousins were in town from North Carolina last weekend. They were able to spend several days hanging out with my sisters in Douglasville. I drove down last Sunday and joined them for the day to make makeup! I told myself I would take lots of pictures so I could blog about the event. Unfortunately, I only took a couple. But I got quite a few pictures that my sister's posted on Facebook! Thank you to all my family members who are better than me at documenting important events :)! The day happened in several stages.  Part I: Dinner Prep I planned an elaborate asian meal for dinner so we all pitched in and got the preliminary chopping, pureeing, sauce making, mixing, and rice making done first.  Part II: Making Beauty Products We started by making homemade remineralizing toothpaste. I would go into detail on all of these beauty products but this blog post would get REALLY long. So, I will just include the links to all of these recipes so you can try...