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Ginger Apple Kombucha Cocktail
After a week in Western New York, I am in a fall mood! We we hit up the The Great Pumpkin Farm and went to the Mayer Brothers Apple Cider Mill, and I tried to enjoy as much fall food and flavors as I could in this short trip home. There truly is nothing like fall on the east coast.
Apple cider from the east coast, is probably one of my favorite things in the whole wide world! Sadly, I have yet to find anything quite like it, in our new home! I have found some OK ones in Southern California – but there really is no substitute. While it isn’t as good as the ones in Buffalo, I grabbed some decent cider a few weeks ago at a local market and was inspired to create this fall cocktail, featuring some of my favorite local kombucha – Fine Feathers Kombucha!
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Zucchini Fig Smoothie
I was trying to come up with a clever name for this smoothie that would sound less, I dunno, intimidating or strange. But in brainstorming kitchy smoothie names I came to the realization, that I want the world to know how amazing zucchini is in smoothies. It provides a creaminess that is so conducive to a smoothie and it also gives me that green that I like to start my day off with – from something other than the same ‘ol greens like kale or spinach. Plus, it’s a really great way to use some of those HUGE over grown zucchini that just get all strange to cook with. I scoop out the seeds if they are big and seedy and I just chop up a cup or so. skin included and throw it in.
We have soo many figs coming from our tree and so many beautiful large heirloom zucchini from the garden, that this Zucchini and Fig Smoothie has become a regular around here. This smoothie is creamy, a little spicy, sweet, filling and sooo totally addicting. You gotta trust me on this one guys, just put some zucchini in your next smoothie!
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Summer Berry Probiotic Smoothie
I am sure you have read plenty of articles and posts about the many benefits of probiotics by now. Rather than carrying on about their many wonderful benefits and why you should be including them in your daily life, I though it better to just share a delicious Summer Berry Probiotic Smoothie that is sure to make your belly happy.
If you do want to read all about how wonderful probiotics are and all of their many incredible benefits, I encourage you to check out this great post: 3 Tasty Ways to Heal With Priobiotics. I also encourage you try your hand at making your own probiotic-rich water kefir or my simple homemade coconut milk yogurt – two wonderful ways to easily include more of that beneficial bacteria in your life.
This smoothie is not only rich in probiotics, from the yogurt and probiotic drink, but I also included other super-food ingredients sure to please your tummy! Ginger, which has long been known to alleviate symptoms of gastrointestinal distress, and provide calming, anti-inflammatory and immunity boosting properties. Cinnamon, another digestive aid, known not just for it’s comforting, warming, aroma, but for it’s powerful anti-bacteria properties, its help with reducing bloating, and its help in improving circulation and digestive discomfort. Finally, I added some chia seeds, which is a great way to include healthy omega-3 fats and of course, one of your digestion’s other friends – fiber. Plus, I really love how thick chia seeds make my smoothies!Read the rest of this entry »
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Peaches and Cream Smoothie (Vegan)
Smoothies are seriously my favorite, easy weekday breakfast. I wake up, practice yoga and immediately head into the kitchen to throw together a delicious, nourishing smoothie made from whatever I have on hand and it always keeps me full till lunch!
I almost always have a quart or two of my homemade almond milk on hand for just this reason and I let the fruit and veggies we get from our CSA box determine what the flavor of the day will be.
We’ve been getting these beautiful, organic juicy, sweet peaches from Tony, our farmer, and they have been an absolute treat, while we are waiting for our own peach tree to do it’s thing.
This Peaches and Cream Smoothie is creamy, rich and so easy to throw together. I add a small amount of raw honey when I make my almond milk and the peaches we have been getting are quite sweet, so I find no additional sweetener is needed, but you can use your own judgement.
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Watermelon Hibiscus Lime Cooler
Having an organic farmer that shows up at your door every Wednesday afternoon with the freshest, yummiest and most in-season foods is literally a dream come true for this girl.
It’s like my own personal Food Network show where I am given a box of random ingredients and I have to create something delicious with them. I guess the only difference is, I don’t also have to use random canned weirdness, fish body parts or other strange things no one has ever heard of.
Basically, it just means I get to play with my food and I get to be creative with different delicious treats, each week. It really is so fun.
Lately, we’ve been getting all kinds of amazing fruit in our boxes and most excitingly we have been getting these big beautiful watermelons that are seriously the tastiest things I have ever had. So sweet, so juicy and just so perfect for these hot sunny days we’ve been having.
I created these non-alcoholic Watermelon Hibiscus Coolers simply because at one point we had more watermelon than we knew what to do with. They are soo refreshing, so perfectly sweet and aromatic and a beautifully impressive, refreshing treat when you have guests. I served these at the little Memorial Day BBQ we hosted here at our place. Some was even served as margaritas (recipe below) with silver tequila and a little extra fresh lime juice.
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Carrot Cake Smoothie {Gluten-free and Vegan}
After moving out here to California, from New York last year, the list of things that we love about living out here just continues to grow and grow. There really isn’t much to complain about when you live less than a mile from the ocean, the sun shines every day and you are living the life you always dreamed of. That said, the one major draw back to being here in California, is being away from family. After living 15 miles or less, away from my family my entire life, being roughly 2,500 miles away from them this past year has been the only thing I don’t love about being in California.
This is something that bothers me most of the time, but for obvious reasons with the holidays it is the hardest. Even the smaller holidays, like memorial day or labor day. Because I know if we were living at home in New York, no matter what we had going on, we would all take a break from our busy lives to get together at my parents house for an entire day, brunch in the morning, cocktails and snacks in the afternoon, playing with the kids and of course, a huge dinner. Since living in California, Mark and I haven’t gone home for any of the holidays and we have done out best to make the most out of them together. Both Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years were full days, planned with friends and majorly delicious meals and we made brand new traditions and memories. Walking barefoot on the beach on Christmas day, definitely didn’t suck. That said, both last year and now likely this year too, we didn’t plan a thing for Easter. It kinda crept up on us.Easter isn’t a big holiday for my family, by any means, but we would always get together with the family, the kids would have some sort of easter egg hunt, we would often times have brunch with the extended family and then we would have a traditional dinner or ham or something similar back at my parents house.
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The Kentucky Mojito
OK, so I might be wayyy too insanely excited about today’s guest blogger, my girl Gina from So…Let’s Hang Out. Lovely Miss Gina is just about the most magical, polar bear loving, super sweet lady you will ever meet. I am proud to have her as a friend and to bring her here to Tasty Yummies for the first time to share an incredible cocktail with you guys. I hope you enjoy.
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Firstly, I want to thank and virtually chest bump my friend Beth for letting me come over to her really pretty corner of the interweb today and sully you all with booze and tomfoolery. I think we can both agree that this lady is pretty tops! Like, if we were texting right now and you asked me, “how do you feel about Beth from Tasty Yummies?” I wouldn’t have enough Emojis to properly respond. I’d have to use all of them. But, I think I’d probably use the one that looks like tap dancing twins more than once, because it just feels right. There would be exclamation marks and goings-on about how this lady is for reals one of the loveliest friends and one heck of an inspiring blogger. Since this is still my fantasy text to her, I think I’d end it with these Emojis in the following order: donut, ramen noodles, panda bear, thumbs up, jazz hands, tap dancing twins, donut, donut, guy with mustache, camel, tap dancing twins, donut.
It’s so like me to write an entire paragraph of arguable nonsense without introducing myself. Hi there! *Waves enthusiastically*My name is Gina and I write over at So…Let’s Hang Out. It’s a whole lot of gluten-free recipes, the occasional drawing of animals in human clothes, and spontaneous dance party encouragement all doused in copious amounts of oversharing about how I learned for the hundredth time that cooking bacon without wearing pants is just not a good idea. Splatter. Bare thighs. No. Just, no.
I know we’re just getting to know each other (even though I’ve already talked about my penchant for not wearing pants—too soon?) so, why don’t we just do this thing over cocktails? That would probably be best.
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Vegan Pumpkin Pie Martini – Gluten-free and Refined Sugar-free
I will keep this one short, yesterday’s post was enough words to read for the next week. Phew! What can I say, sometimes I just have stuff I wanna chat about. Thanks so much for being here to read it and all the rest of my ramblings!
I originally was only going to be sharing this recipe with my email list. An exclusive content kinda thing. But, I just can’t keep this from you guys and I am a little bit of a sucker. Many of you asked if you could still get the recipe even if you aren’t on my mailing list so I decided rules are meant to be broken, even if they are your own.
Too many people hate emails lists and I kinda don’t blame you. My inbox is a hot mess most days. If you are a busy person and you have a lot of stuff coming and going from your email everyday, adding one more could just be the tipping point. I don’t ever want to annoy you, my friends. So, for those of you that don’t want to mess with emails, I didn’t want you guys to feel left out. I don’t like holding out on you guys and this one is way too yummy to not be shared with the masses. So here ya go – enjoy this, share it and make it part of your holidays this year.
