Banana Nut Granola With Quinoa

I am in the weeds, Friends. I will admit this to you wholeheartedly. I am truly behind. My kitchen has taken a backseat to life lately. Surely you understand this. I can’t be the only one who gets overwhelmed by life and ends up drinking one kind of smoothie, slapping ham on toast and eating handfuls of spinach straight out of the bag. This is a thing right? Besides baking different variations of this bread to cart off to my family, I have not exactly flexed the muscles in my food brain. It’s losing muscle mass. It’s sitting there in a smoothie rut. Flabby. We can’t have this, right? Let’s tell my food brain to wake up and go for a walk.
On Tuesday morning this is exactly what I did. I sprung out of bed and decided it was time to create something that was not toast. Also, my husband had been not so subtly hinting  for a couple of weeks that he would be utterly thrilled if I would replenish the granola stash. While we were grocery shopping he decided he might get some sort of sugary cereal, I told him I didn’t like his moves, he told me that if I made granola he wouldn’t even be considering it. Touche. Point taken. There was also a week where the empty granola canister kept appearing on the counter magically as if to say “GRANOLA! NOW!” I am not sure how it got there. I did not put it there. I don’t think the cat or the dog have the dexterity to grab the canister from out of the pantry and place it on the counter. This only leaves one human. I am not going to point fingers, but I will give you a hint…I am married to him. […]

The Greeña Colada Smoothie

I am slutty for coconut.

You guys have probably figured this out by now. I can put it in a salad, I will sprinkle it on your donuts, and I will most certainly use it to make nutella. There is simply no shame in my game.

However, I have not publicly declared my love for pineapple. This is a love that  runs deep through my Hawaiian veins. It is some serious affection. I will eat it until the acid makes my tongue start to burn.I have vivid memories of sitting with my Papa in his kitchen and having him sprinkle salt on pieces of freshly cut pineapple, and then, as he would say, “we went eat it up.”  He is a good eating partner. I remember being small and always placing myself strategically near him if he was eating something like poi with dried shrimp or was cutting up a fresh tuna into sashimi. I am no fool. I would bat my big eyes, reach out my chubby kid hands, and a piece of fresh sashimi always seemed to land in my finger tips. I knew how to work that glorious system. Honestly, I think he just loves to share the things that he loves with me. It was a source of pride for him to see his tiny granddaughter developing a serious taste for all of the flavors he had grown up with on the islands. […]

Avocado Egg Salad | Please Don’t Pinch Me

I am not great at St. Patty’s Day.
When I was a kid, I was almost always the gal who forgot to throw on something green on St. Patrick’s Day. When I arrived at school there would usually be an enthusiastic red-head waiting in the wings to pinch me silly. You know this kid.  There was one at every school.  My defense in this matter was to lie and say that I was totally wearing green underwear or to quickly craft something green and attach it to my person. I once wore a paper chain around my neck that I crudely colored in with a green crayon. Times were tough. It was a matter of survival. Pinching hurts. Green paper-chain jewelry can help. […]

Baking As Therapy | Cinnamon Raisin Pumpkin Bread {Gluten Free}

On Friday night the phone rang.
The voice on the other end of the line was shaky. My heart sank somewhere deep into my gut. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Grammie had a stroke.”
My brain stopped. My heart froze. My body went numb and I found my formerly-upright self, sitting on the floor, clutching the phone so hard my hand started to lose all feeling.
“Is she okay?” I managed to get out in a slightly tortured, high pitch squeak.
“She’s in the ICU. They are watching her very closely.” I could hear the heartbreak in my mother’s voice as she told me she had to get off the phone.  As broken as I was feeling after receiving this news, I reminded myself that this was her Mama. This was the woman who raised her and rocked her to sleep and put band-aids on her boo-boos and reminded her to be kind and taught her how to love everyone. All of the things that my Mama has done for me. […]