My new summer drink is green tea lemonade

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Green Tea Lemonade is the quintessential summer drink. It’s pleasantly sweet, seriously refreshing, and has a kick of caffeine to get you through the day!

Hello warmer weather and hello green tea lemonade, my new favorite drink. It’s pleasantly sweet, seriously refreshing, and has a fun little kick of caffeine to boot. I can see myself drinking this — and every variation I can think of — all summer long.

Last weekend we drove to Cincinnati to visit family and celebrate my oldest nephew graduating from high school. Of course, finding places to stop along the way is generally difficult since the kids want one thing (McDonalds) and the husband and I want another (anything but McDonalds).

We generally compromise on Panera (or, let’s be honest, grab the kids McDonalds and us something from Panera) and go on our merry way. My go-to order is the Fuji Apple Chicken salad and one of their charged lemonades. I love them (and apparently so does The Big Kid).

500-ish miles and 3 super charged lemonades later, I decided that I needed to try making my own version at home. I began looking up green tea lemonades and was seriously surprised at how easy they were to make. I have a feeling I’ll be experimenting with flavors now that I know just how good it is with a plain lemonade.

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An easy bison chili recipe to make for dinner this week

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Looking for a delicious meat-based chili? This bison chili is packed with flavor and some subtle heat for a truly tasty dinner. Eat it as is or pair it with spaghetti noodles and you’ll have dinner everyone will be raving about. Except for maybe your kids, because let’s be honest. Their palettes aren’t exactly … … Read more

An easy and delicious slow cooker lentil and bean chili

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This slow cooker lentil and bean chili is an easy and delicious crockpot dump meal that the whole family will enjoy. It only requires 10 minutes of hands on time and is perfect for those week nights where you only have a few minutes tops to devote to dinner.

I feel like there are two types of chili eaters in the world: Team Beans and Team Gimme The Meats.

I fall squarely into Team Beans. There’s just something about beef and tomato sauce together that makes me a little queasy. I hate meat sauce on pasta. Spaghetti and meatballs is an hard pass for me. And beef-based chilis are just plain gross. (And yes, I DO like ketchup on my hamburger. I’m not a monster.)

The very first time I tried a bean based chili, I was pleasantly surprised. Turns out it wasn’t the chili I hated, it was the meat in it.

I have a tried and true vegetarian chili recipe that I love to make in the colder months. It has a nice heat to it and is filled with fire-roasted tomatoes, chickpeas, kidney beans, and corn. I also make a buffalo chickpea chili that is seriously heaven in a bowl. (I should totally bring those recipes out of retirement. In the meantime, you can find them in the recipe archives e-book.) And now, I have a lentil and bean chili to round out the trifecta of awesome.

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Dairy free muffins made from dried mangos

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Perfect for breakfast, lunch, or snacks, these small batch dairy free muffins made from dried mangos are packed with flavor. They are also the perfect way to use up that dried fruit that’s been sitting in your pantry for way too long.

A few months ago, I picked up a bag of dried mango from our local BJ’s because it’s seriously the best. Like, better than any other brand I’ve tried. The first time I had gotten a bag, it was gone in two days flat. I was telling The Little about how excited I was to have some again, and asked her if she would be interested in trying some, too.

Of course she said yes. Who can resist such a delicious treat?! So I ripped open the bag when we got home, handed The Little a piece for herself, and took a bite. It wasn’t as good as I remembered it, but maybe my tastebuds were a little off that day… The Little took a bite a few seconds later and instead of oohing and ahhhing about it, she made a funny face.

I picked up the bag to see if something had changed, but everything looked the same. And that’s when I noticed it. The small lettering on the top of the package that said unsweetened.

Face. Palm.

The unsweetened variety was most definitely not the same and most definitely not very good. It just wasn’t for me. (That’s a fancy way of saying it was effing disgusting and not at all what I had hoped it would be.)

So instead of throwing it directly in the trash and feeling cranky with myself for wasting $14 on a bag of dried mango, I tucked it into the back of our pantry and told myself that I’d find something to make with it. Eventually. I’m pretty sure I even went so far as to look up ideas on Pinterest to see if there was anything that was of interest. There wasn’t, so it sat. And sat and sat and sat in our pantry.

Until today.

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The strawberry lemonade smoothie is the perfect summer time treat

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This strawberry lemonade smoothie is slightly tart, mostly sweet, fresh tasting breakfast treat that is absolutely perfect for those warm summer months. It’s also dairy free and has no banana in it — something that’s almost unheard of when it comes to smoothies.

I’m pretty sure my love affair for smoothies has been going on for close to fifteen — maybe twenty — years. I like them fruity, i like them green, i like them decadent and sweet. I like them for breakfast, lunch, or dessert. I like, just love them. So long as they are dairy-free, of course.

Smoothies fell out of my diet recently for a few reasons. First being it was winter and I naturally just don’t crave them when it’s cold. I was also following a low-carb approach to eating, so that knocked off pretty much all fruit from my repertoire. I’ve slowly been working my way back to them and am loving every single solitary sip.

The first smoothies I went for were of the green variety. My favorite being a peach, mango, and spinach smoothie with mango nectar thrown in for good measure. I picked up a bottle of aloe vera juice to experiment with and stumbled upon a great recipe for a strawberry lemonade smoothie that used aloe vera juice.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have quite enough strawberries to round out the drink and ended up grabbing what I had in my freezer: frozen pineapple and cherries. I also had a giant bag of frozen avocado pieces and decided to throw caution to the wind and use those as well. I was tempted to throw in some spinach (because why not), but decided against it for purely aesthetic reasons … I didn’t want a brown smoothie.

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Getting kids to try new things by having fun with food

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Looking to have more fun with food and encourage your kids to try new things? Yeah, me too. That’s why I created the food+fun challenge. Each week, we plan out a week of fun themes and play with our food. If you want to read about how this got started or find a list of 35+ kid-friendly themes, you can find that here in the initial post. 

Week one was such a hit that everyone agreed we should continue with our food+fun challenge. Everything felt easier this time around, especially since the kids were 100% on board and excited about the possibilities. To my utter delight, the kids both requested that we do a secret ingredient challenge every week; they loved the guessing game that ensued and I love trying to trick them and/or sneak random and unexpected ingredients into our meals. Clearly a win-win on that one!

Some highlights from the week included finding and enjoying lots of mini foods, a pie tasting party for pi(e) day, and going bowling in honor of bowl day.

These are the themes we chose for our second food+fun challenge menu: 

M: chicken noodle soup
T: use it up day + pi(e) day
W: secret ingredient day
Th: crunchy day
F: green day
Sa: mini food day
Su: bowl day

See below for the delicious details of what each day entailed and also for the recipe links so that you can get in on the fun.

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Encouraging kids to try new things by playing with food

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Encourage your kids to try new things by playing with food. This is week one of our food+fun challenge where I’ll be planning out a week of fun food themes to get my kids to try new things. If you want to read about how this got started or find a list of 35+ kid-friendly themes, you can find that here in the initial post.

We started off week one of our food+fun challenge with a bang! There were so many great theme choices on the list and it was such a treat to look up recipes with those themes in mind. It was the first time in a long time that I had felt inspired about cooking and was truly looking forward to what our days had in store. It was also the first time in a really long while that the entire family took part in the planning; it’s usually me and my iPad looking up recipes and feeling a whole lot of resentment.

These are the themes we chose for our first menu:

M: yellow day
T: surprise ingredient day
W: pantry challenge
Th: simple sandwiches
F: food by letter
Sa: out to eat
Su: eat like a celeb day (lionel messi)

See below for the delicious details of what each day entailed and also for the recipe links so that you can get in on the fun.

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