Well, lately, I’ve been in the mood for strawberry smoothies, not a strange everyday kick, only once in a while when the mood hits. So, today, I thought I’d share how I make my strawberry smoothies.

All that is needed is these four ingredients: raw almonds, water, frozen bananas, and strawberries.

Boil the almonds for 3 minutes in water.

Remove the almond skins.

Throw the peeled almonds into a blender and blend with a cup of water. Strain the pulp if you like.

Ta da! You have just made almond milk!

Add strawberries and frozen bananas and blend until smooth.

And that’s it, strawberry banana almond smoothies!

Yoink!

I uploaded the pictures and thought I’d share this recipe for July 4th. Ummm…that didn’t happen.

So, why don’t I share it now since the photos are already online and I am procrastinating from editing other photos.

Start with some finely diced up onion. Add a squeeze of lime to this.

Roast tomatoes, garlic, and jalapeño pepper.

While those are roasting, grab some cilantro and chop it up finely.

Your roasted garlic, jalapeños, and tomatoes should be a bit blackened.

We seed the jalapeños but leave them if you like the heat. Then pulse the tomatoes, jalapeños, and garlic up in a food processor. Add the chopped cilantro and salt to taste.

This is a yummy roasted tomato salsa.

But we like guacamole.

So we get two avocados.

Smoosh that up nice and good.

Then add it to the salsa and there you have our roasted tomato guacamole.

A few weeks ago, we made some gingerbread cookies. Flume shaped. What is a flume you ask? I don’t know exactly. I always thought flume was used like, a flume of water. But recently, during extremely cold weather in the mornings, my phone has been forecasting flumes with pictures of snowflakes. I’ve never heard that term applied to something that looks like a snowflake. And snow?! In my area? Really, dear phone? You must be mistaken.

But anyhoo, cookies. This is my favorite gingerbread cookie recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. I like them because they’re soft and chewy, not crunchy.

Maybe this recipe was not the best use of this awesome snowflake cookie cutter we got from Alice. Thank you Alice! The cookies spread too much and the little shapes I cut in the big snowflake, baked closed. Oh well. They were still yummy.

Oh and see the little divot in the small flume? I was busy with Nathan when that batch beeped in the oven. I told Alan to check it gently. I walked into the kitchen later to find a whole bunch of cookies with these very noticeable divots in them. Bwa ha ha! That’s not what I meant by gentle.

A month ago or something like that (I cannot remember), my sister sent me a link about milk possibly causing eczema. After our struggles with Nathan and his poor face I was willing to try eliminating milk from my diet. And it worked! Did you notice how nice his face looked in the pictures from his birthday party? See:

It took a bit after I stopped drinking milk for his face to heal but then after that, it just stayed good. We wondered if it was really such a simple thing, the milk. So, one day we gave it a test. I drank some milk. Immediately, that day, he started scratching at his face again. Can’t be a coincidence right? So, I’m off of cow’s milk again. And it seems to be working again.

I now drink almond milk. Homemade almond milk! I don’t drink milk that frequently so I make only about 2 cups at a time so it doesn’t go bad. Here’s how I make it:

The only catch for me is, I don’t know exactly what is wrong with cow’s milk that is effecting Nathan. So, what else do I need to avoid? Cheese? Heavy whipping cream? What do I replace those with? And do I have to worry that he shouldn’t drink cow’s milk himself?

It’s too much to think about. Maybe I should just hope the milk thing is a coincidence and his face got better because he outgrow it. Yeah, let’s all hope really hard that’s what it is.

Well, I’m doing it now. Finally.

Yum! I know what I’ll be making this weekend.

This recipe is from Cook’s Country April/May 2005 issue. They call it root beer float but when I think of root beer floats I think of root beer and ice cream so I’m calling this root beer jello floats.

I like this recipe though it was strange at first. I’m not used to jello being carbonated but it grew on me. Weird but in a good way. But I’m the only one who eats this. Alan thinks root beer jello is strange and Isabelle will only eat the whipped cream.

If anyone makes this let me know what you think, I’m curious to see other people’s reaction. Am I just strange in liking this?

This recipe comes from Cook’s Country April /May 2005 issue.

According to the magazine the sugar balances the acidity from the lemon juice. Snap peas and cherry tomatoes are yummy by themselves so sometimes I don’t even bother adding the sugar, lemon, or garlic.

See, easy peasy side.

Update- I combined two recipes (one from Cook’s Illustrated and one from Cook’s Country) to make these individual bread puddings. I’m not exactly sure what I did but here’s what I think it was: