Dandelion Green Juice

Hello, Spring. You snuck up on me. I think I blinked and you showed up with your blue skies and your green hills and your different shades of wildflowers. I am totally not complaining. Look at the glorious view from our hike this weekend. It feels nice to have sunshine on my pale and wintered shoulders. Thank you for the tan lines. I can now pass as someone who spends time outside. I no longer look like that kid from The Secret Garden who was not allowed to leave his room. Cheers. You’re a good friend. […]

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. […]

Carrot, Apple & Ginger Juice

It’s juice time again.

I like ’em real thick and juicy.

That actually does not pertain to how I feel about my juice, I have just been listening to a lot of 90’s music lately. Like…a lot. Like…I might have spent over an hour looking up music videos from the 90’s on YouTube last Friday. No big deal. Subsequently, I have had the song Baby Got Back stuck in my head for days. This only becomes awkward when you start singing it subconsciously in the checkout line at the grocery store. The woman in front of you turns around after you get to the “L.A. face with a Oakland Booty” part of the tune. You make eye contact. You stop singing. You think about winking at her but realize that just perpetuates the weirdness. Don’t make it weirder. It’s too late, you already winked. She probably thinks you’re hitting on her. Oh man, you can’t recover from this one.  Not. At. All. You could try to explain that you have just been listening to a whole lot of 90’s music lately, and you were not singing the song directly to her. You could try to explain that you sometimes just wink in awkward situations, or you could lie and say you had something in your eye. The explanation of your behavior will only make things weirder. You grab your groceries and pretend like you forgot something in the produce section. You wait until this person leaves and find another check out line. Whew. Yikes. Get out of there. […]