Stuff I used to eat

Sometimes I long for the days that my metabolism was a little faster and I could happily shove whatever I wanted into my face without worry. It’s crazy to think of all the things I used to eat when I was a kid that I would never include in my diet today! I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane and recall some of my childhood favorites. Starting with:

1. Dunkaroos!!!!!

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Oh my gosh please tell me if you were a 90’s kid you remember these!!! I remember we had to go to a specific grocery store to get them because the regular one didn’t carry them. And they were definitely a special treat. Never enough frosting!!!!!

2. Oatmeal Cream Pies

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Pretty sure I could probably house 2-3 of these in a sitting. All of the Little Debbie snacks were winners….ho-ho’s, nutty buddy’s…however these were my favorite.

3. Fruit by the Foot

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These were also a rare commodity in my house, so that only makes them 10x better. Fruit Roll ups, Gushers, etc. also fall under this category.

 

5. Half Baked

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Pretty sure that this item was solely responsible for my Freshman 15 in college. Eating an entire pint in one night was not unheard of.

 

6. Peanut Butter and Crackers

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Had to be Ritz crackers!!! Could also consume an entire sleeve of crackers dipped right into the peanut butter. This was my choice after school snack.

7. Frosted Flakes

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For about the first ten years of my life this was the only cereal I ate!!! It’s so funny the stuff we’re picky about when we’re kids that now seem ridiculous. I hated any other cereal and had to have this one on hand at all times!!

8. Fudge Stripe Cookies

I’m pretty much drooling looking at this picture…..so hard to eat just one…row! These are the perfect mixture of buttery, chocolate-ly, flaky goodness.

 

So as you can see my diet has changed A LOT! Now I get excited over kale and rutabaga. I’d like to indulge in one of these favorites sometime though! I think I’d have to go with either the ice cream or cookies if I could choose one right now. On that note, I’m going to fix myself a snack.

Let’s hear it- what were your favorite childhood snacks!?!? Any of these??

Spinach Garlic Pizza

Please note this recipe is NOT one of my healthier ones but delicious anyways. My eating has been all over the place lately! Planning on a big change soon….I’ll be updating you on that soon…

Anyways, I have been using Oh She Glows whole wheat pizza dough recipe for over a year now! It’s great and it works perfectly every.single.time. The only time it remotely went wrong was when my yeast wasn’t good. Other than that it is no-fail! So much better than store bought.

I make the pizza dough the night before so I can just take it out and roll out. I usually make a pretty standard topping pizza with peppers and onions but we had that Thursday night for dinner so I mixed it up with a spinach garlic variety.

 

You’ll need:

2 tbsp olive oil (obviously I am using the garlic infused olive oil from Olive a Sudden)

6-7 cloves of garlic (you don’t want to kiss anyone after this one)

2 cups cheese of choice (I used mozzarella and mild cheddar)

1 cup thawed spinach

1 small onion

Dried oregano and parsley

garlic powder

– Roll out your pizza dough, place on baking sheet, and rub with 1 tbsp olive oil

picture from the other night, but oh well

– Put your garlic cloves in the food processor until they are minced- drizzle in the rest of your olive oil while running.

-Spread the mixture on the pizza dough and cover with onions, cheese and spinach.

-Sprinkle dried parsley, oregano and some garlic salt.

-Cook for approx. 15 minutes, or until cheese is slightly browned on top.

Ummm did I mention leave spinach off half the pizza for your picky fiancé? I enjoyed the spinach!

It’s delicious. Actually, I’m eating it now.

In other news, today ended another cycle of my creative exploration cooking and recipe elective at school.  The kids were REALLLLY good to me this time around!!!! Take a look at the pumpkin cardamom cupcakes and almond butterscotch cookies they made to bring in. Don’t be jealous.

Pumpkin cupcakes were easily one of the best things I’ve eaten. Love my job at times like this!

Hope everyone has a good weekend! Happy Friday!

White Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve! Hope everyone is having as blessed and happy a holiday as I am. I haven’t put up anything on the blog in a couple of days considering I’ve been traveling home and participating in lots of holiday parties and fun.

We got home Friday and drove into a straight up blizzard white outas soon aswe arrived in our hometown……I have to say it was the first time I was really actually happy to see snow. Looks like it will be a white Christmas after all! Eveyone has been complaining about not having snow…I’m over here thinking WHO CARES!?!?!? But honestly, if it doesn’t affect my driving or ability to get to work..it’s actually kinda pretty.

We went to party after party after party this weekend…and I’ve consumed way too much food to admit on here. I did end up making some yummy recipes that I’d like to share… including

White Chocolate dipped Christmas Strawberries

Nearly overdosed on Christmas cookies but I managed to make more…only ate two while making this batter because my body was literally rejecting any form of sugar by Monday morning.

These were the peanut butter kiss cookies I usually make…modified base made from Dashing Dish’s peanut butter protein cookies! They came out delicious and no one could tell they were ‘healthier’. I’m not going to go out on a limb and say they are healthy…I’ve had way too many cookies in the past two days and none of it could be considered healthy. But hey…it’s Christmas!

Made it to the salon today and got a Christmas manicure. I never get manicures…but I love it!

It’s been a great weekend and holiday. I feel so incredibly blessed for all the love in my life. I really have no words for it .In my thoughts are people that aren’t as fortunate as I am to have such loving family and friends to spend the holiday with. Hope you Christmas is just as blessed! Happy Holidays XOXOXO

can you see someone hiding in this picture!!?!?!

 

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza!

This weekend was packed with holiday fun. Friday I attended a Christmas party with my co-workers, and Saturday was Austin’s office party.

Last night at the party!

Today I got to work in the kitchen making several of the Christmas cookies that I had been planning on. I made three batches, and I am saving two more batches for when I get home next weekend. This has been months of planning in the making! Obviously I am on blogs and Pinterest a lot so there were a lot of options when I was planning on what cookies to make this year. I narrowed it down to five different kinds:

1) Chocolate brownie cookie thumbprints with Nutella

2) Peanut butter Thumbprints with White Chocolate Hugs

3) Sugar Cookies

4) Pecan and White chocolate chip cookies

5) Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles

 

I set out to tackle the Nutlla thumbprints, sugar cookies and white chocolate chip cookies today. I ended up using a mixture of different recipes to get to the final product.

I originally got the Nutella idea for cookies here, but I wanted the base to be a little ‘healthier’. One of my favorite blogs, Chocolate Covered Katie, had this recipe for brownie cookies that I used for the base. Then, instead of rolling the dough in hazelnuts, I rolled them in pecans. I pressed my thumb into the ball, baked for ten minutes, and the result was rich, delicious, glass of milk on the side chocolate pecan hazelnut cookies!

Please excuse my disgusting cookie sheets….

 

The second ones I tackled were a bagged organic sugar cookie mix that my mom had given me. Simple but good!

 

The last, I took this low fat chocolate chip cookie recipe from Skinnytaste. This website never lets me down! I wanted to doctor up the cookies by adding these different ingredients:

With these rich and delicious ingredients, you won’t even be able to notice that the recipe has only 4 tbsp of butter and 1 egg white!

They came out delicioussss! I had one too many of these in the tasting process…woops! I highly recommend this recipe for lower-fat chocolate chip cookies. It subs applesauce and you can’t even tell. Literally these were the real deal.

Let’s hope I get cookie sheets for xmas…..

I froze most of the cookies to take home for the holidays next weekend. However the main reason I wanted to make some this weekend was to give some to co-workers this week. I was going to wait until Friday, but I don’t think I’ll be able to!

Hopefully I will blog next week about the other batches of cookies I’ll make. Happy Holidays and have a good week!

Question: What cookies are you making this year? Trying out any new or do you have a tried and true favorite?