Beautiful Food

I love color. Actually, I thrive on color. I love to have a multitude of color around me, in all shades and tints.

The same is true for my food. Although I'm not one to plan my meals based on color, I do love it when my food is both delicious and beautiful! With that in mind, here are four recipes for yummy, colorful food.

First are these strawberry covered chocolate brownies. Seriously, these were amazing. I think the brownies would have been amazing by themselves - deep, dark, intense fudgy chocolate. But, the strawberry topping just added that extra punch of fresh flavor and bright color.

Next is a slightly thrown-together meal that was way better than I expected! I made the walnut crusted pork tenderloin from the Whole30 book, which is rubbed with a spice mixture containing mustard powder, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, and lots of paprika to give it a beautiful red color and slight kick. I then made mashed potatoes, and decided to use my leftover kale to make colcannon. Not familiar with colcannon? It's an old Irish dish of mashed potatoes with kale or cabbage. I chopped the kale into "ribbons", and then 1 inch pieces, and then steamed it while the potatoes were boiling. After mashing the potatoes with some coconut oil and milk, I added the kale. It was SO. GOOD. I like kale, but I really think that this would be a great way to hide it if you didn't. And come on, look at the bright green! How could you not love that?

Breakfast this week is also all about hiding. Hiding my two daily eggs. Because sometimes I get sick of eating eggs every. single. day. So, I'm making coconut flour pancakes, and topping them with bright, beautiful strawberries. These whip up super quickly, and taste pretty good, though I'll admit they're still not as good as fluffy, gluteny, buttermilk pancakes. But, I get my eggs and my good fats all in one. Speaking of good fats, if you decide to cut the recipe in half to make just for yourself, make sure you cut the coconut oil in half, too. Your stomach will thank you. (Yup, I forgot that yesterday.....)

Lastly is dinner this week. This recipe for buffalo chicken casserole was shared with me by my friend Sarah, who rather coincidentally switched to the same diet as me at the same time (yay for buddies to help you get through!). And when she told me how delicious this was, she mean't it! This may be the healthiest junk food around. And by junk food I mean it tastes like you're devouring an entire bucket of buffalo chicken wings loaded with creamy ranch dressing. And by healthy I mean it's packed full of protein, good fats, and a full serving of veggies. Plus it's bright orange. Major win.

So, if you ever crave color like I do, there are four great ways to feed you stomach and your eyes!

Rain, Rain

Today, it rained. Wonderful, glorious beautiful rain, on and off and very heavy for at least an hour or more.

It's been an interesting summer, being in a drought and all. Especially with working at the museum, where I'm much more connected to the earth, and really notice the effects of the weather. Brown, crunchy grass; crops not growing; deer eating anything that is watered; real and true threat from fires.

I've been feeling a bit like I'm living Sarah, Plain and Tall - Skylark. Although I haven't seen that movie in a while, I distinctly remember their desperation for rain and joyous thankfulness when it finally came.

So, in lieu of pictures of today's rain (since my phone camera is kinda pathetic and wouldn't do it justice), I've complied a few of my favorite rain pictures!

 E. H. Shephard

 Rain In The Oak Grove - Ivan Shishkan

 Rain's Rustle - Leonid Afremov

And, because chocolate makes even the best things better.....chocolate chip cookies tonight! This was a last minute recipe choice, after realizing I only had coconut flour, and not almond flour. They are delicious! Yup...there's one missing on that tray =)

Summer Nights

Amazing, breath-taking sunsets in Penn Yan.

"...Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice." - Psalm 65:8b.

Peach muffins and a berry pie for an Independence Day Picnic. Forgot to take pictures, but here are the recipes!
http://cookeatpaleo.com/peach-paleo-muffins/

I used this recipe for the pie, substituting tapioca flour and coconut sugar:
http://tiphero.com/old-glory-berry-pie/

Here's the pie crust - definitely not the flaky, golden crust I'm used to, but still a delicious crust!
https://elanaspantry.com/paleo-pie-crust/

Batavia Muckdogs and a picnic with Stephen's co-workers.

When it's been a terribly hot day full of house-cleaning and sweaty chores, you kick back with a cookie dough milk shake and a favorite movie.

Praying for rain, but it just won't come.........

No More Training Wheels

I started this whole diet-change journey by doing the Whole30. Totally changing your diet can be really overwhelming, so I was incredibly thankful to find that there was a very detailed, here's-everything-you-need-to-know book written just for Whole30. That book was definitely the "training wheels" for my foodie-bike. I could find any meat or vegetable recipe, and they had suggestions for what other recipes to pair it with in order to make it a full meal. Hey presto, a super delicious meal plan, all ready to go.

But, there are only so many recipes in that book; as good as they are, I still need more variety. So, the last few weeks I've begun expanding my horizans and searching for more recipes (thank you, Pinterest!) This week, I really feel like I have been able to shed the training wheels and meal plan all on my own; finding new recipes, combining them with Whole30 recipes, lots of mixing and matching. So, here are some of my meals:

Breakfast this week has been egg burritos. I found a new recipes for paleo flatbread, combined it with an egg, bacon, and veggie filling I had used in the past, and added avocado mayonaise from the Whole30 book. Yum yum! The flatbread was way too salty, but otherwise great! They were a little too small to actually wrap the filling in them, so I opted for open-faced, but it was still nice to have something "bready" to make it more like a burrito than just scrambled eggs.

Lunch this week was meatloaf muffins with sweet potato "frosting" and roasted broccoli. The meatloaf muffins were super tasty, and I loved how quickly they cooked! I'm not sure if I would put the effort into topping them with the sweet potato if I was storing it for lunches again (especially since I had extra sweet potato that just got lumped on the side anyways), but it would be fun if you were serving them that day. The roasted broccoli was a staple from the Whole30 book.

My first dinner for the week was chili-lime chicken, paired with grilled pineapple and roasted peppers and onions from Whole30. I was afraid that this chicken was going to be too spicy, but it was just perfect! I've really grown fond of lime recently.

Mmhmm....and people think I can't eat anything ;-)

The View From Where I Sit

Anniversary Date to Aladdin's Natural Eatery in Pittsford.

My rooster Buddy at Hetchler.

Livingston Gardens - my favorite peaceful place. 

A nice bound edge is a beautiful thing, especially when it means you're almost done with a very, very, very time-consuming project!

The Seminary blackboard, with a lesson on spelling.

The Wardian Case and the sensitive plant - such a fun teaching point with kids.