All Rileyed Up

Q: What do you get when you cross one of my favorite times of year with one of my favorite foods to eat?
A: An aaaaa-vo-caaaaaaa-doooooooh Halloween treat, oooooh! (I hope you read that with your ghostliest voice)

Behold the Green Goblins!

The Green Goblins are a quick n’ easy recipe with Mexican avocados (AKA the Hass variety) that you can serve at all your Fall Festival-slash-Harvest -slash-Halloween-slash-whatever other politically correctly name exists-parties. Of course, when it comes to avocados, you’re probably thinking April through June, cool dip for a hot day, but hey, guess what — you can get avocados all year long, and when you have a food that is naturally green and gooey, how could you possibly pass up using it in a Halloween dish?

Ingredients:

4 Hass avocados
Juice from 1 lemon
1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons finely chopped green onion
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 turns on a black pepper mill

Box of Sesame crackers or Triscuits (Triscuits are in the picture because, ahem, I got carried away taste testing the sesame crackers)
1 can of sliced black olives
1 bag of julienne carrot strips
1 bag of shredded red cabbage
1/2 cup ground pumpkin seed (optional)

How to Make:

Mix the avocados, lemon juice, cilantro, green onion, salt, nutmeg, and black pepper all together. You can put it in a food processor or mash it with good old fashioned elbow grease. If you’re cooking with children, you can put all the ingredients in a Ziploc bag and let them mash it up.

Lay out the crackers and snip the end off the Ziploc to pipe out the mashed avocado, or use a watermelon baller to scoop it onto the crackers.

Place two olive slices for eyes, and then poke the carrot strips into the middle. Use a piece of shredded cabbage for the mouth.

Once you have a full platter, sprinkle with ground pumpkin seed (I made mine by popping a handful of roasted seeds in my Magic Bullet for 10 seconds).

You’re done! Eat!

You can make up your own avocado recipe and enter the Spookamole contest, as well as check out other Fall-themed avocado recipes at the Avocados from Mexico website.

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I wrote this review while participating in a Spookamole blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Avocados from Mexico and received avocado items to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Mom Central had an opportunity to do some salsa sampling, and what else could I say besides, “Olé!”

Husband and I sampled three large bottles of the Mild Salsa Mexicana, Medium Salsa Verde and Hot Salsa Taquera. After sampling the salsas, Husband said to me, “Have you written your review of the salsa yet? Because it should just say, ‘Yes.’” If you knew Husband, you would know what a serious compliment this is. Much like our Italian friend who adamantly opposes jarred spaghetti sauce, Husband rejects jarred salsa. But not this one. Oh no. Rosarita was very very kind to him. In fact, I’m a little jealous of her now.

The Mild Salsa Mexicana can basically be used in everything, and I do mean everything. We ate most of it with chips because we’re the kind of people who like a glass of salsa with a dash of chip on top. I did have a little bit left over that I added to a batch of black beans I was cooking.

The Hot Salsa Taquera I cooked into a quinoa dish that could also be done with rice: cook 1 cup quinoa or rice, add a cup and a half of cooked black beans, a cup of whole kernel corn, and this bottle of salsa and you have yourself a feast fit for a salsa-eating kung fu fighting master (I’m not actually sure what that means but I thought it sounded good, because, you know, it takes a lot of energy to do kung fu).

FYI, Rosarita salsa is available at Walmart, because everything is available at Walmart, as well as select grocery stores. You can always visit their website for additional information.

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I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Rosarita and received a *sweet* set of samples to facilitate my candid review. Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

The Transformers cake, crafted painstakingly by yours truly, via fondant, courtesy of Little No Limit’s Gourmet Girl’s Easy Bake cake decorating set

The whole shebangabang, cupcakes, tableclothes, napkins & plates, ALL Transformers ALL the time!
(psst — the wine in the back of the photo? all mine…)

And the smile of thanks makes it all worth it

Did you ever try the Atkins diet? Most people gave it a shot, and I am one of them. I had pretty decent success with it too, and yes, kept it off (by reintroducing carbs and maintaining a balance between them, protein, and fat). I recently tasted Atkins Penne Pasta and Atkins Pancake Mix, and have to say, the Atkins brand penne pasta does not taste like your run-of-the-mill low carb pastas. It actually tastes likes normal pasta. And by that, I mean good.

The pancake mix is pretty decent, but I only got one batch out of my bag because a certain mouse decided it liked Atkins pancake mix too. So there you have — Atkins pancake mix: good for people AND mice.

The Atkins people are also running a contest right now, a recipe contest. So break out your best recipe and send it on over, but for the love of Martha Stewart (er, should I have said for the love of Dr. Atkins?), don’t recommend coating anything with crushed pork rinds. I read that as a recipe one time and I thought I was on Punk’d. Pork rind breading? ARE YOU KIDDING??????

Info on the the Atkins recipe contest here. Remember, no pork rinds. I’ll see to it that you’re disqualified. Heh. As if I had that power.

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I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Atkins and received samples to facilitate my candid review. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

These are the cakes the school provided at The Boy’s Kindergarten graduation. Cute, aren’t they?

Been eating Healthy Choice® foods lately?

I don’t eat much in the canned and premade foods department, but it’s always nice to know about some of the better ones for when I’m having a lazy night. Anyone who has been down the canned soup aisle knows what I’m talking about when I say there are like a zillion choices. And if you’re not buying strictly based on price, chances are you’re buying with your health in mind. So Healthy Choice has a new line of products with a medical study to back their words.

Cardiologist Dr. James Rippe of the Rippe Lifestyle Institute conducted a 6-month study:
*Both were groups of men and women who were overweight and had high cholesterol.
*Both groups were given the same exercise plan: 15 minutes of walking 3x/week beefed up to 45 minutes of walking 4x/week over the course of the six months.
*One of the groups made no changes to their diet. The other group followed a diet plan that included one low-fat Healthy Choice meal® every day.

After 24 weeks, the Health Choice® group had lost an average 18 pounds of fat and 3 inches off the waistline, and had reduced their cholesterol by 12 points.

(ie, not too shabby)

So what do you say? Are you ready to embrace a healthier lifestyle? This doesn’t mean you go out and buy all the Healthy Choice® foods and live off of it (though I’m sure ConAgra wouldn’t mind). This means you put down the candy bar, you stop eating four helpings at dinnertime, you add in some fresh fruits and vegetables, and for goodness sake, you get up and move. The exercise plan in this study wasn’t exactly The 300 Workout. 15 minutes of walking three times a week can be accomplished by anyone, anywhere.

So please, think about your health. Think about your kids’ health. And think about exercising and eating right. And if you’re going to eat a premade meal, know that Healthy Choice is the only major brand that can call 100 percent of their products “healthy” by FDA standards.

Thanks to MomCentral for telling me about the study.

Here is an interesting article from Science Daily about some San Diego surgeons performing minimally invasive operations to destroy liver tumors. I really thought the article could have used better pictures…

“Now, patients at UC San Diego have a new option called ‘microwave ablation.’ Simply put, we zap and destroy liver tumors with heat derived from microwave energy.” –

And now for more adventures in microwave cooking!

“Microwave ablation causes the tumor to be quickly and precisely removed.”

With this procudure, we’ll have you in and out of there in no time, it’s eeeeeasy…

“In addition to liver disease, microwave ablation has promising potential in the treatment of lung, kidney, and bone cancer.”

Optional title: A Man, A Cancer, A Microwave.

In conclusion, you should really learn to love your microwave.

So a while back, I saw the Lego cake mentioned on Beck’s blog, and I knew that I had found the cake for The Boy’s birthday party because I was able to make a cake for everyone. The green one is my favorite as far as looks go. The big yellow cake is a traditional yellow cake. I was a bit disappointed in the icing, which came out more liquidy than it should have and I was kind of in a rush, but it tasted great nonetheless. The two smaller ones are one gluten free, vegan cake split in half. The green icing is made with soy milk and vegan butter and the blue icing is made with hemp milk and coconut butter. The icing was tasty (although the coconut butter makes for a bit gritty a texture) but the cake itself wasn’t so good. Do any of you GF cooks know why it tasted great and bread-like fresh out of the oven, but after a couple hours of sitting around kind of took on a solidification in the middle that made it hard and chewy in a bad way?

(I know this was supposed to be my Wordless Wednesday post, but, what can I say, I’m chatty today. More WW pics here and here.)

I’ve decided to participate in this:

So here is my wreath and Santa bird feeder, which is a friendly, welcoming accompaniment to my dogs’ angry barking when the doorbell rings:

The Boy’s Christmas count down chain:

My Christmas tree (the lights didn’t do so well on film) - do you see the heart-shaped Elvis ornament?

And next to the tree is our mantle, where we put all the Christmas cards and the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and blah blah blah:

I love Christmas. There’s lots of little things around the house, but I dunno, I didn’t really think you should see my bathroom and my shelves and my bed and all… there is such a thing as too familiar, you know…

One can get too familiar with vegetables, you know!

On that note, here’s a veggie-full dish I made the other night:

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cup quinoa (or rice)
1 can packed pumpkin
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
4 cups broth
1-2 tbls olive oil
2 tsp minced garlic
salt and pepper, to taste

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil until clear. Add celery and carrot and saute another 1-2 minutes. Add broth and pumpkin and stir until the mix is free of any lumps. Add quinoa or rice and bring to boil. Once boiling, add garbanzo beans, stir, then put lid on and turn to simmer for 20 minutes (do not take lid off or stir). Turn off heat, stir again, put lid back on, let sit another 10 minutes. Done.

(Psst - you might want to add a few spices to this if your kids are open to it. Mine are not. Husband adds tobasco to his. I add paprika.)

Little No Limit brought this home from school:

Huzzah!

Well, such a fabulous artistic rendering couldn’t go unnoticed and it wasn’t long before both kids were asking for REAL gingerbread men to decorate.

As luck would have it, we went to a birthday party over the weekend and the craft was deorating gingerbread cookies. Or as the package described them, “Gingergread Boys.” (Many jokes about strategically placed gum drops ensued.)

Here is Little No Limit’s gingerbread boy:

Wocka wocka wocka!

And here is The Boy’s gingerbread boy:

I have ears. Like them?

He couldn’t even eat this cookie because it wasn’t gluten free and the icing contained dairy, so I shall be making new cookies at home this week for him to make and consume.

For other children’s artwork, visit Magic Marker Monday, and also check out Our Little Tonginnator’s fabulous angel.