Blueberry Basil Lemonade

Blueberry picking is so much fun! And, although it sounds silly, I love to wash them and dry them and freeze them, knowing they will be so delicious come winter when they're out of season and I am craving some blueberries.
But, while it's still summertime, nothing beats a fresh lemonade.

Blueberry Basil Lemonade
lemonade of your choice (homemade, store bought, etc).
1/4 cup of fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup blueberries

Place 1 cup of lemonade and 1/2 cup of blueberries in the blender. Blend until blueberries are roughly pureed. Pour together with lemonade into a pitcher. Roughly chop the basil leaves and add to pitcher. Allow to refrigerate at least 2 hours, or overnight, for flavors to blend together.

My Vitamix came in the mail!

Lately my husband and I have enjoyed so many delicious superfoods in our smoothies, like spinach, kale, spirulina, hemp, ground flax, chia seeds and keifer. But we noticed that our smoothies became kinda chewy in our Ninja.

Don't get me wrong, we love our ninja, but decided to do some research on better blenders since we have smoothies almost daily. The results were pretty remarkable: Vitamix is the way to go!

But, those blenders are hundreds of dollars. Those videos that compared ninja vs vitamix in green smoothies, berry smoothies, frozen drinks, homemade nut butters and soups blew us away. There seemed to be no comparison to a Vitamix.
We're not really impulsive buyers but this product sold itself! For consumers like us who use their blender on average more than once per day, we wanted quality.

Lucky us, we find the Vitamix 5200: Getting Started on sale for $150 dollars off, plus free shipping from Target. Wow! We would have paid the full price, but that's am amazing deal!

So, 2 days later we have a new blender and we are living happily ever after :)

In reality, we're trying out new recipes and using the heck out of it!

Here's what I tried this morning for breakfast:
1 cup strawberries
1/4 cup blueberries
1/4 cup pineapple
1 carrot
1 cup spinach
1/4 yogurt
Optional: 1 Tbs ground flax seed
Optional: 1 Tbs hemp hearts
Optional: 1/2 tsp spirulina
Add orange juice until desired consistency.

Dump it all in the Vitamix, gradually blend up to variable speed 10 for 30-60 seconds. And ta-da, a Green Good Morning Smoothie!

Enjoy!

Homemade Crunchy Chocolate Bar

So my husband and I have been setting more healthy eating goals, and this week we're cutting out processed sugar. The only goodies we're eating are homemade. Thankfully, I'm not a big baker so there isn't too much temptation!

But, as excited as I am about this, I'm not sure I can give up on chocolate! Just a piece or 2 at a time, every few days, ya know what I mean?! (Come on ladies, you know what I mean!)

Anyway, I had to find a healthy alternative. And ta-da, I hit a home-run! I'm pretty sure I can totally give up store-bought chocolate for this awesome recipe! Here it is, simple, easy, tasty-enjoy!

Ingredients:
-1/4 cup cocoa powder
-1/4 cup coconut oil
-3 Tablespoons of agave nectar
-1-2 Tablespoons of quinoa

Directions:
Heat up a skillet over medium-high heat.  Add quinoa and toast for 4-5 minutes, stirring frequently (will start to swell and brown slightly).
Melt the coconut oil.
Add the agave and mix with the coconut oil.
Add the cocoa powder and mix, mix, mix.
Place in chocolate mold, or on wax paper, or in a ziplock, whatever works best for you! (I took a rectangle plastic lid, lined it with wax paper, and used that as a mold.)
Sprinkle with the toasted quinoa.
Place in freezer to harden. Store in freezer.

Happy, healthy eating!

*Note, this was slightly bitter to me. Since I prefer milk chocolate to dark chocolate, I will try to add a teaspoon of cane sugar to my next batch.