Blended Chocolate Peanut Butter Chia Pudding

I love the idea of chia seeds and all the great nutrients they contain (google to learn more), but I like my puddings to be smooth.  I don't like chia seeds stuck in my teeth.  I LOVE this pudding!

2-3 Tablespoons Peanut Butter
3-4 cups non dairy milk
1 cup chia seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2-2/3 cup cocoa Powder
1/2 -2/3 cup Maple syrup

(Yes, I give ranges of ingredients... It's 'cause I started with the first amount and then sample/taste and add some more of the ingredient in question, but I don't measure that carefully.)

Put it all in your high speed blender---blend until smooth.  Pour into 8 serving cups and chill overnight (or stick it the freezer so you can enjoy it in a couple of hours).

Makes 8 servings.  Probably 250-ish calories per serving if you use flax milk (this is what we're using most of the time for "milk" now).

Enjoy!
 

(Yes, we eat this for dessert and breakfast.)

One rainy day (October 16)!

I made two soups...

Split Pea soup and a Chipotle Mexican soup

Here's the Split Pea soup recipe:

1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups dried split peas
1  teaspoon salt -- (I didn't think this was too much, but you may want to start with 1/2 teaspoon or less if you're watching your salt intake)
6-7 cups veggie broth (I split 3 veggie broths between two soups, so I'm not sure how much exactly.  Also, if you broth is salty, this will relate to how much salt you add.)

2-3 carrots, chopped
3 potatoes, diced
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
pinch dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions
In a large pot over medium high heat, saute the oil, onion, bay leaf and garlic for 5 minutes, or until onions are translucent. Add the peas, barley, salt and water. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low. Add the carrots, celery, potatoes, parsley, basil, thyme and ground black pepper.  Simmer for 1-2 hours, stirring occasionally. The split peas should get very soft and start to fall apart.  See picture!

Next time make more as 4 of 5 of us really like this soup!  (P.S. I like to add a little sriracha to my split pea soup!)

 

Chipotle Mexican soup recipe sometime soon.

Veggies

I am totally out of the blog habit here! Maybe I can make it a goal, for November, to blog once a week. I know Nanoblopomo is supposed to be every day, but that seems a little crazy right now.

For the last few months, our garden was going insane... I've been dealing with tons of eggplants, tomatoes (making soup with them), and now we have zucchini.  Did I tell you about our zucchini? Back in June, we had two plants that were going gangbusters... and then a rabbit ate them.  It was a very sad day.

I had gotten about 4 or 5 zucchini, but it was barely July and I wanted more zucchini.  Nick cut the plants way back and he thought they might make a come back.  I was dubious.  My friend Patti gave me a little zucchini plant from her garden.  It wasn't getting enough sun and she thought it might do better at our house.

We transplanted the zucchini and then we had a heat wave.  We thought her poor little plant might not make it.  Miraculously it did and lo and behold, our two plants came back, too.  All 3 started producing again in September.

Her plant turned out to be a crooked neck summer squash.

Because our garden is very prolific, I now have zucchini in the new deep freeze so I can stick it in soups and make bread with it this winter!  I have lots of summer squash, too.  (Note, it's near the end of October.  Note our summer garden is till out there and we don't have the winter one in yet.  No worries, our winter one went in during November last year.)


Today, I finally made something other than veggie soup with a tomato base.  Today I roasted zucchini, summer squash, and onions with olive oil and a little garlic.  I made angel hair pasta and figured we'd eat the veggies with marinara sauce. My vegan who loves veggies did that.

I also made zucchini hummus (using almond butter instead of cashews), but it turned out runny.  I decided it would make a lovely sauce on top of the pasta with roasted veggies.  Indeed, it did.  Nick and I loved it!  It was so tasty I forgot to get a picture of it.  Maybe tomorrow we can get one with the left overs (most likely not!).

  I have more zucchini and onions to roast in the oven!  (And more to freeze!)