Daniel Fast Whole Wheat Drop Biscuits

I tried to modify a vegan biscuit recipe to make it Daniel Fast friendly. This obviously makes them less fluffy, but the Tapioca flour/starch is key to making it more like a biscuit and less like a rock! This recipe makes biscuits that are crunchy on the outside and a bit doughy in the middle. For a little less moisture, you could another 1/4 cup whole wheat flour, or make smaller biscuits.

There would have been more in the picture, but they smelled so good, I ate them...

Ingredients:
1 1/4 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 Cup Oat Flour
1/2 Cup Tapioca Starch/Flour
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp Olive Oil
1 cup almond milk

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees
2. Mix flours and salt in a bowl
3. Add the olive oil, and stir with a fork until crumbly
4. Add 1 cup of milk and stir until just mixed
5. Drop onto a baking stone, or pan with parchment paper
6. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until light brown

Makes 6 Biscuits

They tasted like fresh whole wheat bread! I was kind of surprised that this more or less worked the first time I tried it! Obviously they aren't your mama's biscuits, but they are nice for feeling a little more full on the Daniel Fast, plus, they are way healthier than normal biscuits.

Daniel Fast Adventure #1 - Miso Soup with Spinach and Kale Salad

I've always wanted to make miso soup. It's one of the few soups my husband actually likes, and in this cold weather, soup is an absolute must. I felt like it was the perfect recipe for our first dinner after starting our Daniel Fast.

I decided to combine this recipe: http://veganyackattack.com/2012/11/13/mushroom-onion-miso-soup/and this one: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/miso-soup/ to create a miso soup that was more to my liking.

I personally like to take recipes and adapt and change them as I see fit. I'm sure you'll do the same. I've even made the recipe flexible in the ingredients listed below:

Ingredients:
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp olive oil
1 package of silken tofu, diced
4 cups miso broth and 3 cups water OR 7 cups water and 3tbs miso paste
4 green onions, sliced or chopped
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
1/2 white onion, thinly sliced
1tsp sesame oil
2 cups kale, spinach or seaweed mixture  (I used kale and spinach as the store had no seaweed at the time)
2 cups mushrooms, sliced (I used Monterrey Mushrooms, only because they were half the price of Shitake mushrooms)

I bought all of my ingredients at Sprouts. You really can't beat their prices when it comes to farmer's market grade quality. 2 hours were spent in that store and I enjoyed every minute of it. Gotta check those labels when you're doing a Daniel Fast! (That said, I might have cheated a little bit....) I also bought some of their Fruit and Veggie Wash.

One of my students did a science project about Fruit and Veggie wash, and I was convinced. Don't even get me started on the one that kept a McDonald's Cheeseburger for 30 days without it rotting a single bit. That's part of why I'm trying to eat healthier!

Full disclosure: The Miso Broth pictured does contain cane sugar. The store did not have miso, so I was stuck buying this. I would have rather done things a bit more authentically, but all of their other miso replacement products seemed less healthy than this one. Next time I will go somewhere else to look for miso.

Directions:
1. Place the both types of onions into a large pot over medium heat, along with the 2 tbsp. of water and cover with lid. If the onions start to stick to the pan, add the olive oil one tbsp at a time. Stir the onions every 2-3 minutes and add the garlic in once they start to turn clear.

2. After roughly 7-8 minutes, add the mushrooms to the pan and cover with lid, stirring occasionally until they reduce in size and become soft.

It smells AMAZING at this point, just sayin'.

 3. Carefully pour the miso broth (or 7 cups of water and miso paste) into the pot. Cover with lid and bring to a simmer over low-medium heat for 10 minutes.

4. Add the seaweed or kale and,tofu pieces and sesame oil, stirring until mixed and warm.

Tofu looks so weird

Pretty yummy! Husband approved, too!

For the salad, I used the leftover pieces of the kale/seaweed mix and I cut up some peppers. I mixed a little olive oil and sesame seed oil and garlic powder for a simple salad dressing. It was yummy. I may even use more sesame oil if I do it again.

What I would do differently:
If I made this again, I would definitely find real miso, chopped the onions into smaller pieces, and try and find seaweed. I'll post again if I repeat the recipe with a variation!

What a New Year Brings

I have a few goals for 2014. I wouldn't really call them New Year's resolutions, but there are some things I have been wanting to do or planning, and many of them are going to happen in 2014! Not all dollar store related, but I figured I might as well throw in a few person touches on this blog and it might transform a little along the way.

1. Run a 5K
I did a 5K fun run before, but I did no training, ran for about a mile or so and then felt like death walking the rest of it. I actually want to train for a 5K and run the whole thing. I've never been much of a runner. I basically hate running and have no desire to do it at all, but I need some sort of fitness goal, and if training for this gives me a goal, then I will get in better shape along the way. I also want to get back into Pilates, which I love. My husband is all for this one. He ran when he was in Middle and High School a little bit, and he definitely thinks we should get our butt off the couch a little more. We did a little running before the Christmas holidays, but now that the busy season is over, we can get back in gear.

2. The Daniel Fast
If you don't know what the Daniel Fast is, read more about it on the website, here: www.daniel-fast.com
It is basically vegan diet with even MORE restrictions. The idea comes from the book of Daniel in the Bible. To most people, this is a 21 day fast, but of course I have to be different. For me, this is to have more of a lifestyle change in my diet by eating only healthy foods for 4 out of 7 days a week. The plan is to eat vegan-extreme Tuesday - Friday and then unrestrict myself Saturday-Monday. That said, I'm not going to go crazy on the weekend just because I can. I simply know that if I did such a limited diet all the time, I would be more likely to cheat and give up than if I had some built in cheats. It will simply be a time to add in meat and bread, and is more convenient on days that I know I'll be eating out or eating with my husband's family (which we do every Monday).

Both of these first two goals I feel very spiritually convicted about. I've been a lazy, idle, and gluttonous person very often in my life, and it doesn't honor God. I feel a very real confirmation that this is from him and he is going to bless it. Hopefully that helps me keep going. As this is going on, I also plan to study the words of Jesus daily; really prayerfully consider the words he spoke, and what they mean for then and now.

3. Travel. lots of travel
The hubs and I want to take a big vacation before we have children, and we've decided on Italy. He's been there before (as well as pretty much all over Western Europe), but I've never been anywhere outside of North America. It's really exciting for me. We will go in the summer, since I teach. We know it's the busy season, but it can't be helped. Now that it's the year of the trip, we are going to start planning, and I'm really excited about that process.

I'm also going to be visiting Washington D.C. as a sponsor for a school trip. The awesome thing is, if 10 or more kids participate, I don't have to pay a cent for anything. I haven't been to D.C. in over 10 years, before their was a World War II memorial, so I'm really excited.

We have a tentative plan to visit Las Vegas over a long weekend during my Spring Break as a sort of anniversary/just for fun trip. We don't gamble, but I've been wanting to see Cirque du Solei's LOVE (their Beatles' show). Now that Britney Spears has a residency there, we might have to check that out, too.

Larry the Cable Guy Beer Bread

A dollar store find I promised to review and sort of forgot about. My bad.

So not only did I try this and like it, I've already used it twice! Both times I used a lager type beer, although. I'm not sure it matters. I brought the bread to a dinner party each time, and everyone LOVED it. That said, I think the ingredient that makes people like it is the entire stick of butter it calls for. Can't argue with that.

Since trying the beer bread, I've spotted another Larry the Cable guy food product at Dollar Tree. However, it was beer fish batter, and since I never cook fish (It's not that I don't like it, but the smell....ehh) I've not purchased it. I think it would definitely be worth a try if I were to cook fish...

Since I'm a teacher, I'm going to use that as an explanation for why I've started this blog and abandoned it during the school year, but the Dollar Store is my best friend as a teacher, and I hope to share more about how I've utilized it this school year.

Posts about prize boxes, book storage, and carnival games coming soon!

Gift Wrap Tips and an Easy DIY Gift Bag

I LOVE wrapping gifts. I love wrapping the gifts I buy more than I love shopping for them. Part of that may be due to my getting so much of my gift wrap from the dollar store. There is nothing worse for me than looking at gift wrap at places where you tend to buy more gifts (for me, that's Baby's 'R Us, Target, etc... I have a different gift registry to look at once a month at the least at this point in my life). If you really wanna go all out, you could end up spending almost as much on wrapping the gift as you did on the gift itself. Throw in a card from one of those places, and you've easily busted your budget.

Do what I do: Make the extra trip to Dollar Tree.

Wrapping Paper
Of course, like anything else at the dollar store, you have to be a little careful about quality and quantity, especially with wrapping paper. You need to check your footage on the rolls. Sometimes you're simply buying a dollar's worth of wrapping paper you could get anywhere else because it's a small quantity. You also need to be careful with the quality as well. I bought some wrapping paper that was pretty cute for a baby shower:

Gotta love the baby elephants. You probably can't tell, but they're saying "Mama and Dada" and "GooGoo / GaaGaa" so I had to buy it. Unfortunately, when I got in on the present, it was basically transparent. Could totally see what the gift was. I just pretended it wasn't and hoped no one else would notice, put a bunch of ribbon on it and strategically placed the card, but I probably won't be buying this type of of wrapping paper again. I've also noticed that some wrapping paper I've bought wrinkles and tears much more easily than other wrapping paper.

Here is what to buy:

Dollar tree has several styles of this "brown paper bag" type wrapping paper with different designs. It's durable, wraps well, and I like this style, personally. I just bought another style I saw on my latest trip, although next time I need to get something a little less girly, which they usually have in a red-checkered print.

Gift Bags
You really can't go wrong with a gift bags at Dollar Tree, but I really like to get my money's worth by looking for two-packs. Again, they usually come in the brown paper bag material, but I like that.

One way I've learned to get a really unique looking gift bag is to buy a two pack of the brown paper bags and getting some of the cute three-dimensional stickers they also have there. It's as simple of a DIY as it gets (I'm not crafty enough to do anything other than simple DIYs....)

 Before

After

I feel like it gives you something really unique that's great for a gift. Add some tissue paper, which of course they sell for a dollar in HUGE packs at dollar tree. I had to restrain myself from the cute stuff they had last time I was there. I'm limited in space, or else I'd have an entire room dedicated to wrapping paper and my teaching supplies. Some day....

Dress up a photo frame - DIY

I bought this frame at Dollar Tree:

I thought it was a pretty cute frame for Dollar Tree, but I wasn't a fan of the matte, and I hate being limited to a horizontal picture. I have no idea what picture I'm going to put it in at this point, but I wanted to change it a little.

So next, I bought this shelf liner:

I think I even saw a DIY on Pinterest with this same shelf liner, and someone put it on the back of a bookshelf or entertainment center. Not quite my style, but for a frame, this shelf liner and I can get along just fine.









After unceremoniously taking out the ugly matte and throwing it away, I lined up the back of the frame on the back of the shelf liner and traced with a pen:

Because the shelf liner has squares on the back, I gave myself an extra square for something to fold over onto the back of the frame:

I peeled of the back of the shelf paper and lined up the back of the frame:

Folded the liner over like so:

Finished product:

I like it much better. I could even put a 5x7 in there if I cut off about 3/4 of an inch.

Before

After

When I'm ready to put the picture in there, I'll simple tape it in place. You could even make a collage with the frame if you wanted to. Easy Peasy. Maybe I'll find something else to do with the shelf liner. I might even line my shelves, imagine that!

Food at the Dollar Store - Dos and Don'ts

One thing about the dollar store that can be less than thrifty is the grocery section. You have to be careful, because a lot of the stuff they sell is less than a dollar at the normal grocery store. Here are a few "do's and don'ts" I've created for myself.

DO buy a loaf of bread
The bread at my local dollar store is the good, name brand stuff. They have a good selection if you go there on the right day, too. You rarely can get even store brand bread at the grocery store for $1 unless it's on sale. The catch is obviously that the sell by day is probably a few days away. In my experience, that bread lasts way after the sell by day. I've also noticed that the store tries to hide the fresher bread with a later expiration date in the back of the store. (Can't fool me, I look at EVERYTHING!) 

DON'T buy their off brand soda
OK, so I honestly haven't tried it. I just know it must be gross. They usually have 20 ounce bottles of the good stuff for a dollar, though. I can't seem to resist that on a hot day. I like to think of it as a reward for another dollar store trip successfully accomplished.

DO try new things
Sometimes you see products at the dollar store that didn't sell at the regular store. It might have an expiration date on a product where most stores want a little more shelf life, but it's still good. It might just be some odd ball product that didn't take off. But if it sounds interesting, why not try it? After all.....It's only a dollar!

Haven't tried this yet, but I'll let you know when I do:

DON'T buy canned vegetables
Well, you really shouldn't eat them anyway, because fresh or frozen is better, but canned vegetables are always cheaper in the grocery store. Even if they have them for 50 cents a piece, sometimes the grocery stores have them on sale for less than that.

DO check serving sizes/ounces
Sometimes a product that seems like a good deal, really isn't because it's smaller than you realize. I bought a biscuit mix that made me dream of having Red Lobster cheesy biscuits at home every night. The result was delicious, but it only made 6 biscuits. A can of biscuits at the grocery store usually makes more. That said, I totally went back and bought 4 packages because they were pretty tasty and I wanted to eat them again. (Did I mention my other addiction is carbs?)