bring on the sun

Hello! Hope you guys are enjoying the giveaway I have going on! I’m excited to have the chance to host it for my amazing readers.

First and foremost I wanted to give you guys the recipe for the yellow squash muffins. These muffins were melt in your mouth delicious. They do have a good amount of butter in them, so you could play around with how you could make these a little healthier but I believe that great baked goods are so delicious because of the butter. This recipe made almost 2 dozen muffins for us. Let me know if any of you try to make these! They’re a great recipe to have on hand.

The weather has been amazing here in Baltimore. Some say it’s too hot, but I will take this any day over rain or snow. It does feel like it practically skipped spring and went straight to summer. For dinner the other night I decided to make a homemade pizza. We had just gotten a few chairs for the deck from my parents so it was the perfect opportunity to eat dinner outside and enjoy the weather. I made half cheese and on the other half I added some fried oregano and basil, onions, mushrooms and fresh spinach. Of course once it was out of the oven I topped it off with red pepper flakes and garlic powder. Nothing is more convenient than Trader Joes 99 cent pizza dough.  I always buy a few and throw them in the freezer until needed then just leave them out on the counter to defrost.

In the book “Born to Run” They talk about a drink using Chia seeds. I’ve seen them a few times on various blogs and knew I needed to try it.

Called Chia Fresca this is supposed to be a natural type of red bull. It gives you energy and fills you up as well as quenching your thirst.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp chia seeds
1 C water
2 tsp agave
juice of half a lemon

I added 1 tbsp of chia seeds to 1 C of cold water and let that sit in the fridge for 15 minutes. Then I stirred them up and added 2 tsp of agave and the juice of half a lemon. Thats it! Stir it up again and it’s finished.

The seeds created it’s jelly like effect from being soaked in the water but they were still crunchy. It does look funny having all the seeds floating around, but I like crunching on them while drinking. I drank this right before I went back to work for lunch and usually after lunch i’m exhausted and tend to have a hard time keeping my eyes open. This actually kept me wide awake and kept me full until it was time for dinner. Not sure if it was the placebo effect here, but either way, it was tasty and a great way to get some great nutrients in from the chia seeds.