Nutty butter balls

First of all, I am so tired of fruit flies in this house and I don’t know where their breeding ground is. I have set up two contraptions: 1) a glass bottle with strawberry tops, sealed with saran wrap with a few holes poked in and 2) a glass jar with apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap with a funnel on top. Neither are working, though I forced two into the acv mix myself. I couldn’t even leave my leftovers out last night to cool before storing them without guarding them from those nasty drosophilas.

And man, oh man, it is HOT outside!!

But on to the good stuff.
Last night I made a delicious snack? Dessert? It’s hard for me to give them a name, as they are a mix of so many ingredients. This is an estimate of what I put in them.
1/4 c chopped walnuts
1/4 c chopped pecans
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tbsp cinnamon
in one bowl
1/3 c of raisins and goji berries
used a small blender to blend into an almost, but not quite, puree mixture, then added that into the bowl of nuts/spices
1/4 c almond butter
1/4 c peanut butter
1 tbsp honey
some raw shredded coconut
mixed well, and rolled into balls.
I chopped up a few raw cacao beans and rolled a few balls in the chopped cacao beans.

this made about 8 two-inch sized balls, that i stuck in the fridge to store. The process is really messy, but they are delicious and totally guilt-free. Plus, I have heard great things about raw cacao beans, so when I make these again, I will add some chopped pieces to the actual mix. These are also incredibly versatile, and ingredients can either be omitted or added, along with adjusting the amount of nut butter/honey to keep the mixture roll-able.

and, because I can’t get over how cute Lucy is:

It’s berry season!

Two weekends ago my mom came down to visit from around the Seattle area. We went to an organic u-pick blueberry farm. It was also the weekend of the country fair (which I decided to skip out on this year) so I had to figure out an alternative route to get to West Eugene.

When we got there, we saw so many cars parked on the side of the road, and I was worried it was going to be really crowded. But, it wasn’t too bad, though there were a lot of little kids running around. We both carried around provided buckets and filled them up in a couple of hours.

And apparently, you’re not supposed to wash them until you are about to eat them. I didn’t know that, and I washed about half of them to store in the fridge. Then I read that tidbit online, and stored the other half in the freezer, unwashed. Cameron and I will need to go picking again, as we’re almost out!

The other afternoon I made some blueberry bran muffins. I usually make blueberry muffins with whole wheat pastry flour, but wanted to try something different this time. I didn’t like the bran muffins nearly as much as I liked the other ones that I usually make. Oh well. the batch made 15 muffins, too much for us, so I’ll be giving some to my neighbor.

It’s also blackberry season! Himalayan blackberries are an invasive species around here, and they grow like crazy here, though mostly near water. Every day for the past week, I’ve gone out to pick some around my block. Spiders have begun to spin webs in front of some really ripe blackberries, so I have to be careful. Though the other day I was at school and felt something tickle my arm, so I looked down and a spider was climbing up a single strand of web attached to my arm…

Anyway, two days ago Cameron and I took a bike ride on a path with more blackberry bushes than you can imagine. We found a good spot and picked a nice amount, some of which we would make blackberry cobbler out of. There are a lot of fruits that are still green, or not fully ripe yet, but there are still plenty that are.

I’ve also noticed that black walnuts are coming along… but I’ve heard that they are nearly impossible to break open, but are well worth the task. There are plenty of walnut trees around Eugene, so I plan on collecting some in a few months.

fresh out of the oven… you can see the steam coming off of them.

recipe from here: baby bran muffins

Homemade croutons

I know… it’s been a while. 

But as I started chopping up an old loaf french bread (that has been sitting in the pantry, rock hard, for way too long), I thought about how I haven’t posted on here in quite some time, and decided to grab my camera and tripod. 

I melted some butter and tossed the “cubes”, adding some olive oil to make sure they were fully coated. I realized I only had one garlic clove, but chopped it up anyway and added it in. I added some onion powder (garlic powder would have been nice too, as the garlic pieces didn’t really stick on very well), pepper, and either thyme or oregano (no label).

baked it for 350F until they browned a bit, 10-15 minutes.