Category Archives: Etcetera
Smoothie Sunday: Carrot Cake Smoothie
Smoothie Sunday is back everyone! After taking the winter off from smoothies, now that the weather has finally turned warm it’s time to go back to smoothies. While starting the brainstorming process for smoothies I decided I wanted to try to work some more veggies into smoothies this year, since I didn’t use any last year except avocado (and even then I believe that’s technically a fruit). One of the first things that came to mind was a carrot cake smoothie. Carrots are a vegetable, but they’re on the sweet side, and carrot cake is definitely sweet, so it would make it seem less like drinking veggies, and more just yummy. While a lot of my smoothie recipes call for yogurt, mostly just to add substance, in this case the yogurt plays a vital flavor role. The vanilla yogurt adds a sweet tang, similar to the cream cheese frosting that normally tops carrots cakes, without as much fat and sugar and whatnot. This smoothie is like eating dessert for breakfast, but it’s good for you!
What you’ll need
Recipe Time! Chipotle Brownies
As some of you may know, I’m on a continuing quest to find ways to use up leftover chipotle peppers (the canned ones in adobo sauce). Even after using them in the original dish I needed them for, making chipotle butter, and chipotle ranch, I still had some left. It was time to expand my thinking. Since the combination of chocolate and spicy is a popular thing now, I turned my mind to dessert. Now, I may have mentioned before (though I’m too lazy to actually go back and check) that I’m not the biggest fan of brownies. I know, I know…I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But in this case brownies seemed like the perfect subject to turn to for my chipotle experiments. Actually considering I’m kind of a weenie when it comes to spicy it’s somewhat surprising that I’m the one who came up with these brownies. And that I actually like them! But the chipotle adds a nice subtle, smoky kick without setting your mouth on fire. So I guess the point you should take away from this is that if someone who isn’t a huge fan of brownies or spicy likes these brownies they must be really good. 
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Tea Time: Garlic Green Tea
One handy feature on the behind the scenes aspect of this blog is that we can see what kind of search terms people used to find our blog. Sometimes though, people find our blog through search terms for something that we don’t actually have directly on our site. It always makes me a little sad when this happens, thinking about someone coming here and then leaving disappointed. So whenever possible I want to try and remedy that. One search that’s come up a few times is “garlic green tea” or some variation on that. And while we have our regular garlic tea (and also garlic lemonade) recipe, I want to give the people what they’re looking for! So I came up with a garlic green tea recipe as well.
Quick Recipe: Chipotle Butter
Every time I make a recipe that calls for chipotle peppers in adobo sauce I always have a bunch leftover, since I usually only use one or two at a time. This time instead of just immediately handing the rest to Erik to use in some flames-shooting-out-of-your-mouth dish for him to make for himself I decided to be thrifty and figure out some other things I could use them in.
One of the things I came up with was a chipotle compound butter. This butter will be good on anything you’d use regular butter on that you want to give a bit of kick to.
Chipotle butter is really good on a bagel.
Quick Recipe: Tzatziki Sauce
If you’ve had a gyro, you know the magical sauce known as tzatziki. This yogurt based sauce is common in Greek cuisine, often being served with grilled meats. It can also be used as a dip. Tzatziki sauce is one of my favorite condiments, and not just because it was a topic of conversation during me and Erik’s second date. I just find it super yummy. Luckily it is super easy to make at home. This is good news, since, while delicious, Greek food does tend to be on the more expensive side.
It may not photograph well, but it certainly tastes good.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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