July Foodie Pen Pals

Everyone! It's time for another month of foodie pen pals! This month, my pen pal was Carolynne from Chicago, IL. She didn't disappoint with her box. She even listened to what I said when she asked about things I love! 

I told her I was interested in flavored honeys recently, and she sent me a bottle of blueberry blossom honey. After trying it, I realized it was just honey harvested from blueberry plants - not blueberry flavored But still delicious! I used it on some banana chips I made a week ago and they were delicious. 

She sent:

 garlic sesame crackers

pecan caramel turtle

blueberry blossom honey

freeze dried tropical fruit

Qbel bar

Reed's Ginger Chews

Oatmeal Apple Currant cookie 

Something exciting was that the cookie was from a local vegan bakery! How cool is that? It was really moist and delicious. Full of flavor. I loved it. I already know I love those ginger chews, so that was exciting. The freeze dried fruit made a great snack while I was working on the school newspaper, and the pecan turtle was very chocolate-y and caramel-y. The crackers were crunchy and delicious. I still haven't tried to Qbel, but I can't wait. That is something that I have been wanting to try for a long time!

Not to mention, Carolynne has great handwriting. 

Thanks for the package, Carolynne! 

Wanna join the foodie pen pal fun? Here's the details - just email Lindsay to sign up!

-On the 5th of the month, you will receive your penpal pairing via email. It will be your responsibility to contact your penpal and get their mailing address and any other information you might need like allergies or dietary restrictions.

-You will have until the 15th of the month to put your box of goodies in the mail. On the last day of the month, you will post about the goodies you received from your penpal!

-The boxes are to be filled with fun foodie things, local food items or even homemade treats! The spending limit is $15. The box must also include something written. This can be anything from a note explaining what’s in the box, to a fun recipe…use your imagination!

-You are responsible for figuring out the best way to ship your items depending on their size and how fragile they are. (Don’t forget about flat rate boxes!)

-Foodie Penpals is open to blog readers as well as bloggers. If you’re a reader and you get paired with a blogger, you can choose to write a short guest post for your penpal to post on their blog about what you received. If two readers are paired together, neither needs to worry about writing a post for that month.

- Foodie Penpals is open to US, Canadian residents & UK residents.  Please note, Canadian Residents will be paired with other Canadians only. We’ve determined things might get too slow and backed up if we’re trying to send foods through customs across the border from US to Canada and vice versa. So, I’m going to keep two separate lists and match US w/ US and Canada w/ Canada!

***If you’re in the UK, please contact Carol Anne from This Is Rock Salt at rocksalt@thisisrocksalt.com to get involved! 

Much love, 

Daring Bakers: Lemon Loaf with Fresh Berries

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

I took her recipe for Meyer Lemon Loaf and tweaked it just a little bit by adding fresh berries for an extra burst of flavor. This was so yummy! My mom loved it so much that she ate nearly the entire loaf by herself!

Lemon Loaf with Fresh Berries

Makes two 8” x 5” (20 x 13 cm) loaves

Adapted from Recipe Girl’s Meyer Lemon Loaf

Ingredients

LOAF:

2 2/3 cups all-purpose unbleached flour

¾ teaspoon baking powder

zest of 3 lemons

2 cups sugar

6 large eggs, at room temperature

¾ cup  sour cream, at room temperature

2 tablespoons  rum (can omit – I did!)

1½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice

pinch of salt

9 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

1 pint raspberries

1 pint blueberries

a handful of sugar

SIMPLE SYRUP:

½ cup sugar

½ cup water

Juice from 1 medium lemon 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to moderate 350°F. Butter and flour two 8” x 5” loaf pans.
2. Sift together flour and baking powder; set aside.
3. Place sugar, lemon zest, and eggs into a large mixing bowl and beat with a whisk until the mixture is a light lemon color and thickened a bit. Whisk in sour cream, then salt, then rum (if using) and lemon juice.
4. Gently whisk in the flour in four parts, then whisk in the butter in three parts. You’ll have a thick, pourable batter flecked with lemon zest.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pans.
6. In a separate bowl, mix fresh berries and sugar. Allow to sit until berries have started to ooze juice. Using a spoon, cover the tops of each loaf with the berry mixture.
7. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.
8. While the loaves are baking, prepare simple syrup. Boil together sugar and water and stir until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice.
9. Turn the loaves out of their pans onto a cooling rack and brush liberally with the lemon syrup, repeat brushing as you feel necessary. Let cool.

I'd say it looks pretty good - wouldn't you? :) 

Much love,

Product Review: Stirs the Soul Chocolate

A girl always loves her chocolate, right? I know I do!

A couple weeks ago, I received a package in the mail from Stirs the Soul, a raw chocolate company who uses sustainably grown, fairly traded, and dairy free chocolate to make their products. After trying Fearless Chocolate a while back, I was excited to give this raw chocolate a try!

Upon opening my package, I found a huge amount of goodies! Hemp cups, raw, dehydrated, and chocolate covered bananas, figs, and currants, and five different raw chocolate bars. What a selection! The chocolate bars included: Cayenne Cinnamon, Maca, Lavender, Honey Rose, & Spiced Chai and Currant. All of them sounded intriguing and were very unique in the their flavors. They were also very different from each other!

First up: Hemp Cups. I was expecting these to be a creamy butter made from hemp seeds, similar to peanut or almond butter. However, it was nothing at all like that! The filling wasn't very creamy at all, and I found it to be rather bitter and in need of more sweetener. I've never had hemp seeds before, so I don't have anything to compare this too, but I wasn't a fan. Overall, these needed a lot more sweetener!

Next: the chocolate covered, dehydrated fruit. This was by far my favorite thing that I sent sent. Super yummy! The fruit flavor was extremely strong in all of them, which was fabulous. The chocolate was sweetened with dates, which I had never heard of before! It tasted good though! Not quite as smooth as their honey, agave, or coconut palm sugar sweetened chocolates, but still good. The currants were my favorite! I don't think I've ever had currants before, but after this experience, I love them. They taste very similar to raisins. Bananas and figs were great as well!

Finally, we have the chocolate bars. My personal favorite was the Maca Chocolate - it was the sweetest of them all, light in flavor, and also the smoothest. It was the only bar sweetened with Coconut Palm Sugar. Next, I liked the Spiced Chai & Currant Chocolate. Strong chai flavors and full of yummy currants! The Cayenne Cinnamon Chocolate was my 3rd favorite - it definitely has a kick from the cayenne! My least favorite were the floral chocolates - Honey Rose and Lavender. Maybe it's a personal preference, but I can never get myself to enjoy eating either of them. They tasted too flowery and had a lack of sweetener. The lavender, which was sweetened with agave, produced the smoothest chocolate as far as consistency goes.

Overall, I wasn't a huge of fan of these products. I loved the chocolate covered raw fruit - they are deleicious, and the maca chocolate was pretty good. Would I buy them from the store? No, probably not. If you're used to extremely strong dark chocolates and don't have a huge sweet tooth, then I think you'll really like these!

The Daisy Rating

3/5 daisies

Disclaimer: All opinions stated are my own and no one else's. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review. 


Much love,

Sunrise Smoothie

After only two days on a sort of Daniel Fast (I've been failing miserably in my preparation for the real thing), I'm craving sugar. Really badly. 

All day I've been craving blueberry muffins. And dark chocolate. 

Which I guess is a good thing that I'm limiting myself with the sugar. This is showing me just how addictive sugar really is, and how much I need to stop indulging in it so often. But it's one of my guilty pleasures! 

I must repeat to myself: sugar is bad, sugar is bad, sugar is bad, sugar is bad....

I had some leftover fruit that I threw in the freezer yesterday, so I decided to make a smoothie with it today. I like to call it the sunrise smoothie, because it's peachy color reminds me of the orange sky that a sunset brings with it. The plum peel leaves beautiful light red flecks all throughout the drink.  

Nearly empty....

Gone!

Ingredients:

½ peach

1 apricot

1 plum

¼ c. cantelope

6 oz. orange juice

½ c. water

Directions:

Chop up all fruit into bite size pieces. Place in a plastic baggie and freeze until hardened.

One frozen, place fruit, OJ, and water in a blender and blend until no pieces of fruit remain.

Pour into a glass and enjoy!

Much love,