Recent Recipes

One good, one bad...

Good) Homemade peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars:  I saw some people on Pinterest or somewhere talking about making granola bars and thought that sounded like something I could handle.  These I make and keep in the freezer and just eat them right out of the freezer...I really like cold chocolate chips.  The recipe makes 12 small bars.  They're just enough that I can eat one right before running and have some sugar and protein in me but not feel sick while running.  I substitute applesauce for the coconut oil and leave out the wheat germ.  I tried one of the other granola bar recipes on this blog and it was a MAJOR bust, so now I've been nervous try other kinds besides these since I like them so much.  I'm kind of a peanut butter and chocolate addict...

Bad) Honey garlic chicken thighs: Aldi has chicken thighs on sale so I thought that I would buy some and try them out.  I normally just buy chicken breasts, but decided to live on the wild (i.e. cheap) side.  I googled "slow cooker chicken thighs" and this is what came up and seemed easy and sounded good.  Now I'll admit, it says to cook it for just 6 hours and I did more like 8...but it just came out kind of burned.  The sauce was pretty much black.  Not real appetizing...but we all still ate it, Shom even took the leftovers home.  I think the flavors have potential, but maybe just not this cooking method.

The Virtual Bookshelf

(I know that normally in the summer, I actually post here...that just hasn't happened.  We'll see if we can post a few things before summer runs out on me!)

One of my goals for this year, kind of a quasi-New Year's resolution, was to read more.  I feel like sometimes I don't have a very good vocabulary and tend to just read books that take no mental effort, so it seemed time to put in some effort.  Two things have really helped with that - two of my friends agreed to read some books with me in our own little mini book club and Brad gave me a kindle for Christmas.  So since December, here's what I've been reading (in no particular order):

-Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
-Dracula (Bram Stoker)
-The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
-The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
-The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
-The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
-The Sign of the Four (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
-The Black Tulip (Alexander Dumas)
-The Adventure of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
-The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
-Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
-The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
-A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute)
-Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls)
-Crazy Love (Francis Chan)
-The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
-Chasing Mona Lisa (Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey)
-Shadow in Serenity (Terri Blackstock)
-An Eye for an Eye (Irene Hannon)

Except for the last few, most of these were even "real books"...you know, without an FBI agent love story in there somewhere.  I have enjoyed most of them - I'd put The Scarlet Letter as my least favorite.  Favorites were probably A Town Like Alice and The Help, at least those were the ones I couldn't put down :)  I like being able to get a new book anytime with the kindle, and most of these that I read on my kindle were free.  I still like paperbacks, and five of these I read as real books instead of digital.  This is definitely way more books than I normally would have read by this point in the year, so I'm up for suggestions if you have any favorites...especially if they are free on kindle!