Homemade Honey Nut Cheerios

So a few weeks back I had gotten plain Cheerios on a great deal, I got 4 boxes for only $2! Unfortunately my cereal eating husband didn't enjoy the plain Cheerios.  So using the basic recipe from my granola recipe, I came up with this! I have to say it pretty good without being overly sweet.  I sort of threw things together, so I will give as close to exact measurements.

4 tbsp butter
1/3 cup honey
Dash of salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 of a box of Cheerios
1/4 cup of slivered almonds

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.  Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.   Melt the butter, honey, salt, and cinnamon in a saucepan.  Once the butter has melted, add the vanilla.  Drizzle the mixture on the Cheerios and almonds, and mix well until all of the Cheerios get covered.  Spread evenly on the baking sheet.  Bake for 30 minutes.  Let cool completely, and break up to store in an airtight container.  I think if you used less Cheerios you could probably make cereal bars because they do stick together somewhat.  Enjoy!

Eating Well on a Budget

My husband and I are working hard to pay off our debts, which means having a super tight budget for groceries.  I have been only been spending $100 a week, and that includes dinners, lunches, breakfasts, personal/household items, and enough food & cat litter for 5 cats! Its been tough but do-able.

Breakfasts: My husband is super easy, and a creature of habit.  He has cereal every morning.  So one staple is milk, obviously, and then cereal.  I either buy cereal by couponing, or if I am able to do it, make a home made granola.  Recipe is here! For me, I tend to get bored easily.  So I either eat the granola, or make pancakes or muffins that I can keep in the fridge or freezer.

Lunches: Again, hubby is a creature of habit.  He eats PB & J EVERYDAY!! So it requires bread (which I am wanting to invest in a bread maker), natural PB (just peanuts and salt), and natural strawberry jam.  Which have you looked at the everyday jellys/jams? They have "high fructose corn syrup" and "corn syrup" listed on there...I think they separate it to avoid showing that there is probably more corn syrup than strawberries.  But anyways, so for me, I work from home.  I eat whatever is leftover from dinners or a PB & J once in a while.

Dinner: In efforts to save money, at least once a week we eat eggs in some sort of way.  Like quiche or scrambled eggs with veggies mixed in.  I try to eat at least 1 veggie based meal a week.  Since it is just the two of us, I cook 3 meals, and usually get 3-4 nights worth of leftovers.

Its been difficult but we are working really hard to keep eating clean, but on a budget.

Double Decker Taco

When I was younger I was an avid eater at Taco Bell.  There was a double decker taco they had that I loved, and ever since my husband and I lived together I have been making these tacos at home.  This time I have made it all clean eating!

 

 

Tacos to me are a very loose recipe, and can be altered to your own tastes.  Here is what I did.

Refried beans (I got the recipe from 100 Days of Real Food and I kept about half of the liquid because I like thinner refried beans)
Get the recipe here

Ground beef
- organic grass fed ground beef
- a mixture of spices ( chili powder, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, salt and pepper)

Cook beef until no longer pink, and when the beef is almost done add spices so the flavor gets seared into the meat.

Tacos
- refried beans
- seasoned ground beef
- soft tortilla shells (I like to make homemade ones but had to do grocery store convenience-THESE ARE NOT CLEAN!)
- hard shells ( I used blue corn shells)
- shredded lettuce
- salsa
- plain chobani (or sour cream)
- you can add anything else your heart desires!

Spread a good layer of refried beans on the soft shells.  Place the hard shell on top.  I find if you break it in half you can lay it flat on the soft shell, and it's easier to fill and close up.  Add ground beef, salsa, lettuce, chobani, and whatever else and close up your taco.  Enjoy!

P.S. yes that is a cloth napkin, I'll talk about that some other time!

Starting from Scratch...literally!

At 28 years young, I have gone through many different diets.  I've been vegetarian, did the South Beach diet (didn't last long), I was even vegan, although I felt so good being Vegan-it wasn't practical.  I watched both of my parents die of cancer.  That made me think more and more of the food I ate as a child.  We ate lots of red meat, boxed processed foods, canned vegetables, canned meat (ewww!!), and man did I drink A LOT of soda.  My dad passed away when I was 24 years old, and as a stress eater I definitely put on some weight after he passed.  Then my mom passed 2 years later, and while she was sick, was when I began to research vegan diets.  There have been lots of studies showing that a vegan diet can reverse the cancer death sentence.  I tried to convince my mom on that, but she was a meat and potatoes type of woman and she wasn't giving up her meat! But then the practicality of it came in, being in a hospital everyday, makes it pretty hard to be on a strict vegan diet, so that was when I fell off of the wagon.

So fast forward to 2012, and I saw how much weight I had gained.  Well, my sister and brother-in-law, who own a Crossfit, took me and my husband to the Crossfit games.  My husband and I looked at all of these fit people, and although we weren't obese or even remotely that over weight, we were the heaviest people there! And Crossfitters are known for the "Paleo Diet", but that was not for me, I was Vegan, I love my beans!! But the diet that caught my attention was "Clean Eating", I had bought a book by Tosca Reno a few months back.  So my husband decided, even if our grocery bill was gonna be higher, it was worth it if it made us healthier in the long run.  We also started to Crossfit, but unfortunately since I coach cheerleading and work full time, I don't have time to do it anymore.  I do, however, do modified Crossfit workouts with my cheerleaders, which is a lot of fun (well they don't think so!). So this blog is devoted to my clean eating adventures, as well as any other helpful advice on having a happy healthy lifestyle.  Plus, I do love my hippie dancing! Maybe that is what helps stress levels? :) or maybe its the wine...its one of those!