Category: culinary fun

One of the very first things I pinned on Pinterest many moons ago was this:

Here was the (FALSE) description:

strawberries dried in the oven. taste like candy but are healthy & natural. 3 hrs at 210 degrees……might be better than Twizzlers

So after having intended to make these for a year or two, I finally got around to trying them last night. After more than two hours of baking, I opened my oven to find this.

Those look almost the same, don’t you think?

They taste worse than they look.

I don’t know why I was surprised – the description should have tipped me off. Better than Twizzlers? There is no such thing.

This might go down in history as the dumbest Mommin’ It Up post ever (and seriously, that’s saying something) but I have a VERY REAL quandary that’s plagued me for years and I need your help.

How do you drain the grease when you brown hamburger?

See? I told you it was stupid.

But I am completely serious here! Last Friday I made a quadruple batch of chili for a school event, which required browning eight pounds of hamburger. I cooked two pounds at a time, and it required both me and Andy to drain the grease each time. Our method was to attempt to hold the skillet up and rotate it just enough for the grease to come out. We aimed for the grease to flow into a glass jar.

Needless to say, we had a giant mess on our hands. And we spilled a lot of hamburger. And Andy almost caught his sleeve on fire. Four times.

There has to be a trick to this. Clue me in, people!

Topics have been a little heavy around Mommin’ It Up this week, so today I want to talk about something happy…

Green smoothies! Woo!

I came across green smoothies about a year ago, and while I loved them, I had a hard time figuring out the best way to make them fit into my lifestyle – I am always running out the door in the morning, and chopping fruits and vegetables doesn’t work well with that scenario. A few weeks ago, though, I decided to make packages of the ingredients and freeze them, and it’s worked out really well. I grab a couple of them out of the freezer every morning, run hot water over them, and blend them up. Voila, breakfast and lunch!

Green smoothie recipes are all over the internet, but my go-to site is IncredibleSmoothies.com. I like them best with just fruits and vegetables – no milk/yogurt/whatever. Dr. Oz also has one, but he and I aren’t on speaking terms after the $25 bottle of raspberry ketones he told me to buy didn’t melt fat off my body. Anyway, my very favorite is spinach, apple, pear, banana, and celery.

Try it! You’ll love it, I promise!