chicken tacos with pineapple slaw & mango salsa

Today it was 85 degrees. What?! It is full on Sprummer here in California. So it is time for a yummy, light recipe that matches the sunny vibe.

Chicken tacos with pineapple slaw and mango salsa

 These tacos were so yummy and definitely hit the spot on a hot day. They taste very fresh and light, but are also packed full so we really didn't have any room for sides.

Make coleslaw in advance, even right when you wake up in the morning, it is always best to let it marinate, it really gets better throughout the day the longer it all mingles in the fridge

 Pineapple Coleslaw

1. Bag of cabbage mix
2. 1 C mayonnaise
3. 1/4 C apple cider vinegar
4. 1 tsp Celery seed
5. 2 Tbsp sugar
6. 1/2 inch chunks pineapple cut from fresh pineapple or from a can (drained and rinsed)

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Celery seed is key and it makes coleslaw have that unique "coleslaw" taste haha so don't skip it!! It would also be good to cut back a little of the sugar and add in pineapple juice for a fuller pineapple taste. Cover and put in fridge until dinnertime. Let mingle for AT LEAST 1 hour to get the best taste out of your slaw!

 Mango Salsa

1. Jar of your favorite salsa
2. roughly chopped chunks of mango.

I kid. Kind of...haha thats exactly what I did, and you should do it too because it's way easy. I suggest getting a saucier salsa rather than a pico de gallo because it will be just a tad sweeter to go with the mango. There are tons of great mango salsa recipes online so make it from scratch if you are feeling ambitious! ; )

Other ingredients & Extras

1. Small taco sized tortillas (wheat or corn)
2. Mexican blend cheese
3. Grilled, sliced chicken made and seasoned to your liking 
4. Fresh Avocado 

The evolution of a taco.

1. Melt cheese on to tortilla 2. Add heaping serving of mango salsa 3. Add grilled, sliced chicken

4. Pile on pineapple slaw 5. Top with fresh avocado 6. Skewer that bad boy to keep it closed!

It was so, so yummy and super filling! 

butternut squash teething biscuits

ridiculously easy homemade teething biscuits (or dog treats for that matter)

Piper is teething and will chew on anything and everything. My iPhone was getting a little slobbery and I had half a leftover baked butternut squash - so these crazy simple biscuits were born!

{Pre-heat oven to 425}

 2 cups whole wheat flour, 1/2 -3/4 C mashed butternut squash (or pumpkin or banana) 2 Tbsp coconut oil, and 4 Tbsp water.

place all ingredients in a large bowl. Mix. And mix and mix and mix. You don't want these to be light and fluffy, you want these suckers to be rock hard. Roll out onto a floured surface with a rolling pin so they are relatively thick (I am a very precise baker, as you can tell)

Cut in fun shapes - a circle! a heart! a christmas tree!

I did the funnest of them all - a scalloped circle. Piper is gonna love it.

Bake for 15 minutes or until rock hard (but not burnt, come on now)

give to baby.

{obvi always supervise your baby while eating, I cannot promise these will not break off in to pieces)

store in airtight jar or tupperware

Piper loved them! I'll be honest though I had to break it in half to let her know it was food and not an actual toy. They are are that rock hard. They gum up nicely and do not break easily. It entertained her for a good 20 minutes while I prepped dinner. Win!!

She dropped the other half on the floor and it took the dog a good 5-10 minutes to play with and eat too so... double win!!

homemaker dinner party

This past weekend I hosted a little girl's night at my house. I invited all the girls I knew that are recently engaged or married or are in a relationship that will definitely, most likely, almost definitely turn into marriage material! Haha. It was so much fun!! By no means am I saying that in my 2 years and 2 months of marriage that I have all (any of) the wisdom, but I also know that I would have liked the perspective of a women JUST on the other side of the fence when I was getting married. One with no kids, one who was just barely not a newlywed herself. So that is what I did. I invited these ladies into my home and we had a wonderful night talking weddings, engagement stories, recipes, crafts, and our men. (in the best way possible of course!)

DIYs

1. Card making

 We made some fab cards together ranging from birthday, thank you, bridal shower, you name it! These girls got so creative with it I loved seeing the end products!

  2. Homemade Laundry Detergent

The next DIY we did together was making laundry detergent. It was a practical & different craft for them to take home! I will post the "recipe" on the blog in a few days!

each girl got her own jar to take home! They all added different combos of the essential oils so they all came out so different and yummy smelling!

Dinner, dessert, sweets, & treats

Making dinner together was a blast! We made balsamic & brown sugar chicken with oven roasted potatoes, spinach salad with blue cheese and dinner rolls. 

After dinner we made some "Polar Express hot cocoa" (again, another post for another day...so.good)

and the last girlie left standing and I watch a movie.

swag bags.

Whats a party without swag??

I picked up these awesome bags for 0.99 each at Office Depot of all places and filled it with goodies!

Cute socks for the colder weather that is (eventually??) coming, kleenex for the purse, my favorite cleaning tool the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, a printed M-F cleaning schedule by Squirrelly Minds and a gorgeous scripture printable by French Press Mornings. They were also able to take their DIY laundry detergent and their homemade vanilla (not shown above) home in their cute bags!

Like I said we had a blast and it was so much fun hearing about all their wedding plans and what is going on in their lives. It was seriously an awesome evening!

Cleaning printable can be found HERE

Scripture printable can be found HERE

replica Trader Joe's buffalo chicken wrap

I am seriously obsessed with this buffalo wrap from Trader Joe's. I buy it anytime I am in the vicinity of a Trader Joe's around lunch time. It is so yummy! I recently picked one up for lunch (go figure!) and I turned it around to see what all was in it so I could replicate it at home and I was BLOWN AWAY by how many ingredients were in it! Like the bad stuff...stuff I can't pronounce. : ( 

Oh well all the more reason to recreate it at home!

My homemade version only has 4 ingredients inside a flour tortilla!

Copycat Trader Joe's Buffalo Chicken Wrap

1. 1 Large burrito or wrap sized tortilla (there's is made on a red tomato tortilla, which they don't sell so I made mine with just plain flour...I would like to try the tomato one though!)
2. Frank's Red hot sauce - depending on spiciness level desired shake to your own discretion
3. 1 tsp butter
4. 1 celery stalk chopped fine
5. grilled shredded or chopped chicken - about 1 cup per wrap

Chop the celery and toss it into the bowl with the chicken

melt butter in microwave then add Franks red hot sauce to the melted butter, whisk to combine. I added about 10 shakes of the sauce. Add additional shakes for more heat and a more saucy wrap or less for a dryer, toned down wrap. Add the butter/sauce mixture to the chicken and celery

Thoroughly coat chicken in sauce

Lay chicken out on tortilla and wrap it like a burrito!

Enjoy!! 

When I make mine in the future I will most likely put ranch or blue cheese dressing on the tortilla before I wrap it or serve it on the side! 

mixed berry & almond milk smoothies

I have weird food aversions in the morning (I have all my life). The thought of eating toast in the morning makes me want to gag. I tend to like to drink my breakfast and seeing as that usually turns into an acidic coffee fest with no sustenance I have come to be a big smoothie fan!

Here is one of my go-to smoothies in the morning and some link love for some that I want to try!

This is a VERY basic smoothie with basically no creativity or thought- which is great for the morning!

Mixed berry & Almond Milk smoothie 

• 1 1/2 cup frozen mixed berries
• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 1 Tbsp chia seeds

Blend mixed berries & almond milk on high until combined - add more liquid if it is too sticky, and more fruit if it is too watery! Stir in chia seeds with a spoon after smoothie is done - don't waste good roughage by blending the seeds!! Haha Add any kale or spinach if you have it - why not get those greens in?

see? so. simple.

I like to add garnish and a fun straw to make it more appealing to drink! But hey thats just me and my weird relationship with food! 

I get the bags of frozen fruit at Trader Joes. I rarely deviate from mixed berry, but will make the occasional tropical smoothie from time to time. And I love using almond milk because dairy leaves me feeling bleh in the morning and there are only around 40 calories in 1 cup of almond milk so - score!

Here are some smoothies I have been wanting to try!

Pioneer Woman's pumpkin smoothie - Sounds a little heavy for the morning, but hey tis' the season!

Ashley over at Pomegranate Bandit has some amazing smoothie recipes! I want to try them all! Her pumpkin smoothie seems to be less heavy than Lee's so I would definitely try it!!

Elsie + Emma over at A Beautiful Mess have some killer smoothies as well! I'm loving their Peanut Butter Hazelnut Smoothie as well as the Raspberry Coconut smoothie.

YUM!! 

mini apple + pear pies

Last night there was a ladies dessert night at the home of a woman from our church. I knew I wanted to make something fall-ish and I had tons of apples and pear from our CSA delivery box. 

Pie. Sounds good. But kinda messy...hmm how about mini pies! 

Yes. 

Pre heat oven to 350. Makes 12 mini pies. 

Ingredients

• Enough pie crust to make 12 muffin tin sized rounds (i used a large biscuit cutter) and enough extra to make designs on top. 
• 3 ripe apples
• 3 ripe pears
• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• 3/4 Cup sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp milk + 1 egg (not pictured) beaten with a fork.

Bake for 30-35 minutes. 

Wash apples and pear and peel. Slice thin and pat dry with paper towel.

Add apples and pears to large bowl 

Juice the lemon and add to the bowl of apples/pear along with the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. 

I do all of these spices by sight, but I think I added about 2 tsp of each - maybe more cinnamon. 

The fruit tends to get very wet/soupy so when adding the filling to the pie shells, used a fork or slotted spoon so your pies don't get soggy!

Ok for the pie crust I used store bought, but obviously homemade would be better!

Cut the pie crust into 12 equal rounds that fit inside muffin tins - I used my doughnut/biscuit cutter and it was the perfect size!

I decided to make my own parchment liners for the pies so that they wouldn't stick to the muffin tins and they would look cute to take to the party - let's be honest! I just cut large squares out of parchment paper and pushed them down inside the muffin tins, creasing the sides as I went.

Here you can see what I mean with the parchment paper. 

Anyway...back to the recipe. 

Once the dough is cut out and the parchment paper is in place then put the dough round into the muffin tins and just kind of...make them fit. Its ok to mold them into the tins, since they won't be perfect when you push them down. Just make sure the dough is solid and there are no gaps or cracks - fill these in with extra dough. 

Ok fill the little pies and add extra dough to the tops in literally any shape or pattern you want. I like that they are a little janky and misshapen and "rustic" looking! Just make sure they all have some sort of vent hole. Brush top dough with the milk/egg mixture.

Bake for 30-35 minutes.

They were so yummy and extremely easy to eat, perfect for a party setting. The perfect little serving of pie! 

p.s. I tried to make cinnamon & nutmeg whipped cream to go on top but it was a disaster!! The whipping cream never whipped and It was just a mess!!

But...homemade whipped cream or vanilla ice cream WOULD be the perfect addition to this sweet treat!

breakfast in the rain.

This morning we woke up to the most glorious sound and scent. 

Rain slowing padding on the ground bringing up the smell of earth.

One of my favorite things in the world.

The whole backyard was drenched, our plans of hiking were ruined but sometimes you just need to stay in on a rainy day and make a greasy breakfast for you & the love of your life.

I couldn't have asked for a better morning. I love my husband so much and he makes me feel like home, he makes me laugh. He is definitely my best friend...and not just in a cliche married way...but legitimately we have crazy jokes and try so hard to make each other laugh, he's the first one I call when I have a bad day or something good happens. I loved sharing my morning with him before we both go off to do our thing today.