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Grain-free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix in a Jar {Gluten-free, Paleo + Vegan}
With the holiday just a week away, I am sure, if you are like me, you still have a handful of last minute gifts to take care of. I always promise myself I won’t leave anything until till the last minute, and yet here I am, one week out with a few final gifts left to get. Thankfully, I have always loved the idea of handmade gifts, the personal touch and the thoughtfulness and these gifts can be made right up until the last moments before the actual holiday. Enter my Grain-free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix in a Jar!! Because cookies are always a great idea, especially when someone else does half the work for you. If you get lucky, whoever you gift this mix to, they’ll have you over for dessert, when they bake them.
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Perfect Grain-free Chocolate Chip Cookies {gluten-free, paleo, egg-free, dairy-free, vegan}
Last month marked 6 years of Tasty Yummies. WOW! How that happened, I actually have no idea. I still remember the day I decided that I wanted to share my recipes with the world and it truthfully doesn’t feel that long ago. It’s been an interesting handful of years with varying challenges, lots of healing, yet so very much to celebrate. Mostly, this website and my own personal journey to health, these both always felt like the first steps to finding my true purpose. With years of my health bringing various challenges and curve-balls, I have realized that this was all part of my path to being able to help others in a much deeper way than just recipes. This was part of my journey for reasons that now finally make sense to me.
For the first many years I started this website, really until late 2014, I had looked at the long journey towards health I had already been on and how I was feeling in that present moment and somehow I let myself get accustomed to “good enough”. While I can look back now and see how terrible I was still actually feeling, I was letting myself compare it to my past (and to other’s) and it all just seemed fine enough. I looked at others battling with chronic illness and other serious afflictions and I somehow felt that I had no place complaining, that I had no right thinking my afflictions were “something”. After all I hadn’t been to the hospital, I could get out of bed every morning. I didn’t have cancer or lyme disease. I would read other blogs, I saw drastic and scary before and after photos, even comments here from my readers, going through just terrible, awful things – it all made me feel like I had no right thinking I wasn’t well. I felt like I was being nit-picky, complaining about having no energy and having chronic digestive issues. So, instead I would chronically repeat to myself “it could always be worse”. While this positivity served it’s purpose for me in some ways, in many ways it was a very dangerous addiction to “positivity” that was actually hindering my healing.
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Grain-free Crispy Chicken Skewers with Mustard Aioli
It’s been a tad quiet here on the website and my social media outlets while I enjoyed the magic of the holidays with my family in NY. I took a little break from the constant posting and checking all the social channels, while allowing myself to be fully submerged in the short time I had with my family. Those trips back home are never long enough, they fly by in the blink of an eye and I find myself packing my bags up to come back to our home in California, in what feels like mere hours after we had just left.
I know I am repeating myself when I share this thought, but whether traveling and visiting family or in my own home entertaining guests, I very much subscribe to the notion that just like the rest of the year, the holidays should be about balance. Making mindful choices, but also not limiting yourself to such an unhealthy degree that you wander through the season feeling deprived, left out, unhappy or unable to relax and enjoy your loved ones. A few extra starchy carbs or a little extra unrefined sugar, by way of those tasty homemade gluten-free cookies or maybe a little extra dairy than normal in those traditional homemade meals your family makes, I can promise you that it won’t kill you (this is all outside of any existing allergies, of course). If you eat a little off your usual plan, doing so knowing it’s a treat, it won’t derail your hard work from the rest of the year. It’s not only about the balance but also, the energy and the emotions you harbor when eating. Dropping the guilt and the feelings of “doing wrong”, this matters and it certainly affects how your body chooses to respond to the treats, as well.
Eating healthy and choosing real food is so incredibly important and generally at the forefront for most of us, but allowing it to take a backseat to family and friends, love, laughter and memories, in my mind, this is certainly as it should be, especially during the holidays. This season I have been on a mission to create dishes that celebrate the holidays with my loved ones, yet still fall within my idea of healthy, real food. Read the rest of this entry »
