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I don’t really need an excuse to eat pie, but I need an excuse to make one.  When I heard that Jan 23rd was National Pie Day.  I figured I’d make a pie to honor it. Key Lime Pie is one of my favorites, so I decided to give it a shot.  Little did I know how easy it was to make!  Now that I know I will probably make them more often.  I always assumed they were complicated b/c a key lime pie tastes so good, but heck there are only 3 ingredients!

I picked up a bottle of Nellie and Joe’s key lime juice and just followed their recipe.

Pretty darn simple eh?

Mix it up!

Why make my own when the Elf does it so well?  Yum.

After it was done, I topped it off with some chemicals in a tub and voilà:

Nom, Nom, Nom.  So good.  Unfortunately Gary doesn’t really like key lime pie so I will have to eat the whole pie myself.  Oh well.

I’m up to the challenge.  See how my right eye is all wonky?  That means it tastes really good. Nice and tart, just the way I like my key lime pie.  It was a tad sugary though.  I think I’d like to try a recipe next time that involves some sort of cream cheese or something aside from condensed sugar milk sludge. That stuff is sickeningly sweet, yo.

And now some pie facts:
According to a 2004 survey* by Crisco^® and American Pie Council, one out of four Americans prefer apple pie, followed by pumpkin or sweet potato (17 percent), anything chocolate (14 percent), lemon meringue (11 percent) and cherry (10 percent).

Nearly twice as many people prefer their pie unadorned as those who like it ‘a la mode,’ with either ice cream or whipped cream topping.  

     Pie came to America with the first English settlers. The early colonists cooked their pies in long narrow pans calling them ‘coffins’ like the crust in England. As in the Roman times, the early American pie crusts often were not eaten, but simply designed to hold the filling during baking. It was during the American Revolution that the term crust was used instead of coffyn.

After dinner I had a hankerin for something sweet.  Alas, my cupboards are bare. I am out of anything to make something good with, no brown sugar, no butter, no chocolate chips, no coconut, you get the picture. However I remembered that I do have Oatmeal!  And for some reason I started thinking about some no bake cookies that we made in middle school home etc class.  Do they even still have home etc?  I got to looking around the internet and found a recipe that seemed similar and I tweaked it to include items I had here and the result was magnifique!  Nothing healthy about these things!



Monica’s Quicky No Bake ChocoPBOaty cookies

• 1/4 cup apple sauce (or butter, but I didn’t have any and I don’t think it made a lot of difference)
  
• 1 cup sugar
  
• 1/4 cup milk
  
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
  
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
  
• 2 cups quick-cooking oats
  
• 1 teaspoons vanilla

Add the apple sauce, sugar, milk and cocoa into a  saucepan.

Bring to a rolling boil and hold for 1 minute.

Remove from heat.

Stir in the oats, PB and vanilla and drop by tablespoons onto wax paper.

Let cool until set or stick in the fridge.  Or just eat warm straight off the wax paper as I did!  Enjoy.

Well since I have all this kale hanging around my house I was thinking last night that I needed something else to make with it.  Wouldn’t you know that I got this recipe in my inbox this morning in my Runner’s World email.  How weird is that.  This recipe comes from The Athlete’s Palate: Dan Barber.  I had never heard of that cookbook, but I think I am going to buy it on Amazon. 

Tuscan kale thrives in cooler months and is packed with vitamins A and C as well as cancer-fighting phytochemicals called glucosinolates. If you can’t find this slightly sweet-tasting variety, use the small, tender leaves of regular kale.

2 tablespoons dried currants
7 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar, divided
1 tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 bunches Tuscan kale (about 1 pound), center ribs and stems removed, leaves thinly sliced crosswise
2 tablespoons pine nuts, lightly toasted Parmesan cheese shavings

Place the currants in a small bowl; add five tablespoons of the balsamic vinegar. Let them soak for at least one hour or up to overnight. Drain the currants.

Whisk the remaining two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, honey, oil, and salt in a large bowl. Add the kale, currants, and pine nuts; toss to coat.

Let marinate for 20 minutes at room temperature, tossing occasionally. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese shavings over salad. Makes six servings.

CALORIES PER SERVING: 110
CARBS: 14 G
PROTEIN: 4 G
FAT: 6 G

On deck today is a run at some point.  Hopefully outside b/c it is a balmy 39 degrees out there!  It’s amazing how good the 39 can feel after suffering throught the teens and 20s for a few weeks.   Fonzie needs it too, he was up looking to play ball like 3 times last night. I need to wear his butt out. Howeve,r I can feel that my gut is a little funked up from all the fiber yesterday. I forgot that I also had a GNU Fiber bar at one point in the day. Uh oh Houston we may have a problem. I cannot run with a funked up belly I will be pooping my pants 1 mile into the run.  Good times. 

Tonight I made these for the husband.   I had seen them on the shelf for awhile and they were on sale, so I figured why not.


I made mine with 1 egg and 2 egg whites, instead of 2 eggs and applesauce instead of veggie oil.

I ordered these great silicone cupcake thingermerbobs because I saw them on Stef’s More to Life Than Lettuce blog and thought they looked neat and they are!

Yum to the um, very good.

I was very pleasantly surprised.  These muffins are moist and light and so good I want to eat them all. But I won’t.  I don’t want to be shatting my pants tomorrow from all the extra fiber, thank you very much!

I got brave in the kitchen today and also made some Kale chips. Who knew!  Seriously, whoever thought this up is a genius.

I chopped the kale up into pieces, sprayed it with Pam Olive oil and sprinkled with Garlic Salt.  Then I stuck in the oven at 400 degrees for about 8 mins. I took them out when the edges got brown and a crispy.  I hear these are easy to overcook.  I just can’t get over the texture, it is so chip like. I will be making these again and again and again.

I read 2 articles today that really caught my eye.  The first my sister sent me and I just thought it was so cute:

I do in Aisle 2, Couple Marries at Whole Foods
I mean how sweet is that? This couple meets at the grocery and then gets married there. I love a good love story and I love a good grocery store, so put them together and it makes for a great story! 

New York Strong Man Joe Rollino killed by car at 104
Would you look at this guy, he is 103 in that picture! He once lifted 3200 lbs, he started performing as a strong man in the 1920.  He got struck and killed by a car.  “A decorated World War II veteran and lifelong vegetarian, he could still bend coins between his fingers.”  What caught my ear when I heard about this during the news on Howard Stern was that he was a lifelong vegetarian.  People didn’t use to be vegetarians when he was a kid. So I just found that really interesting.  Now if he isn’t an advertisement for healthy living, I don’t know what is.

This recipe comes from my lovely sister Tina, she is one hell of a cook.  I haven’t personally had this, but made something similar this weekend.

2 cups dry wild rice or brown rice cooked in chicken broth.
after rice cooks, mix in:
2 Tbs. non-hydrogenated buttery spread like Smart Balance
1 Tbs. tangerine or orange rind (I didn’t do this)
juice of one tangerine or orange (no more than 1/3 cup)
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/4 cup sweetened dried cranberries
1/4 cup slivered almonds, roasted (I didn’t roast them)
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper

Doesn’t that sound divine!  Go make it and let me know what you think.  Couldn’t be any easier and according to my brother in law Tim, this rice dish is DELUXE!!!!