I think it was maybe a year ago when I first tried out a recipe I found for tahini-free hummus (because I couldn't find any in my grocery store). It taste a little different every time I make it because of my disdain for actually measuring ingredients.

For the hummus:
-Drain a can of chickpeas and put into the blender/food processor along with about 20% of the drained liquid from the can.
- Mince 1-2 cloves of garlic (depending on how garlicy you like it to taste) and add to chick peas
- Pour in a few tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt and a dash of lemon juice 
- Blend.
- Add more olive oil if you find the consistency is still too thick.
The end.

For the pita:
-In a large bowl mix:
4 cups all-purpose flour in a large bowl
2 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
2 Tbs shortening
-Add 1.5 cups of warm water and knead until smooth (add more water if it feels too dry, but not too much so it becomes sticky)
-Divide dough into roughly 8 balls, then using a rolling pin flatten them into circles. Try and make sure they aren't too thick
-Turn the stove to medium heat and use a non-stick frying pan (no oil or anything) to cook the pitas one at a time (this takes about a minute on each side, little browning spots will be visible).

See, pretty easy.

Then you can use a pair of scissors to cut the pita up.
Or you could do like I did earlier in the summer and just make mini-sized pitas:

Refrigerate any left over hummus in an airtight container. To be honest, I don't know how long it keeps for because it's always gone within 3 days of being made...so I know it lasts at least that long! 

When I've got the ingredients I like to make what I refer to as my healthy smoothie. But my friends and family affectionately call it "Gross!" followed with,  "What kind of a smoothie is that?! Why is it green?? Ew!". 

The main ingredient is a handful or two of baby spinach, a banana or two, bran flakes, honey, what ever yogurt is in the fridge, and what ever other fruit there is in the kitchen (e.g., apples, raspberries, blueberries). So like I said, it's my healthy smoothie. Just happens to look a little gross. I'm gonna look into some protein powder type things to add to it's health benefits as well, but I hear that stuff doesn't come cheap so we'll see what I find.

Inspired by the blog 'Things Organized Neatly', I decided to show you what I put into my smoothie this time around in such a fashion:

And this is what it looks like after it's blended:

To me it just tastes like banana with a twist of something else. This time I actually added a bit of orange-grapefruit juice while blending it because I decided I want to thin it out a bit and change up the flavour a little more.

Really, this smoothie is more of an adventure of random flavour and easy way to get servings of fruits and veggies. It also make me really want a juicer so I can try some of these delicious looking combinations over at Vanilla and Lace.

Would you drink a smoothie that looks like that?

Two evenings ago my GHC ladies had our seasonal vintage exchange and end of the summer tea party. Normally the tea party would be held outside but it was raining so we had to stay indoors. At first I was going to serve burgers for dinner but realized that is not tea party food. So instead I prepared sandwiches and such.  I made little flags out of skewers and paper to label a few things using some clip art I found on google. Simple but effective.

I like the way I set up the tea table this time, using the drawer to display the different kinds of tea available and just filling all the tea pots with boiling water so people could make whatever kind they wanted themselves. 

I actually never took any pictures of the vintage exchange itself but it's basically just a big clothing swap we do each season.  After dinner we draw numbers and get to go up in groups to choose one things each round from the mini store we set up with our old clothes. The groups take turns until all the highly prized pieces are picked through then it's free for all and everyone goes up and grabs however much they want.
It's really a fun way to refresh your wardrobe for free and so easy to plan with your friends.
You should give it a try.

Today is my godson Aaven's 2nd birthday.
Since he is in the Philippines right now and I can't be with him on his birthday I sent him a video message to wish him happy birthday that included a picture montage of him and I to the song 'Happy Together' by the Turtles. Cheesy, but it was literally the first song that popped into my head when I got the idea so I decided it must be fate and rolled with it.

So in honour of his birthday I thought I'd share with all of you some photos I took of him when I'd babysit him while he still lived in Canada. He was an adorable little model for me. Also, many of him are from before he could walk so he couldn't escape the camera anyways. Hehe

There's a lot so just click to make them bigger:

And here are a few from when he visited this summer:

Hopefully he is having a fun birthday over in the Philippines and hopefully I get to see him again soon. And to end off this post, here's a link to the post his dad wrote about him, and link to one from his mom.
Happy birthday Aaven, I love you!

My sister's birthday was a few days ago and I made her red velvet cupcakes. Well, that was the plan at least. I made her some last year for her birthday as well but at that point I had never tasted one for myself so when the recipe called for only 2 tablespoons of cocoa I was sure it was wrong and I added a lot more. Needless to say, they weren't really red velvet anymore. Or red. I think I have a picture of one actually:

See, they look like chocolate cupcakes. Oh well. I still liked them.
Anyways, so I decided to make them again this year, but with the right amount of cocoa this year. So I set to work using this Red Velvet cake recipe from Bakerella and it was going very smoothly until I realized I didn't have enough red food colouring. I especially wanted them to be red because that's my sister's favourite colour but alas, since that couldn't happen I settled for purple.
Purple velvet cupcakes.
Once they were in the oven and I sat down to watch TLC's "Say Yes to the Dress". It's probably one of my favourite shows to watch, and so I neglected to get the cupcakes out of the oven in time, causing them to be slightly burnt at the top and bottom.  But c'est la vie. It was too late and I had no supplies to try a second batch so I iced them, sprinkled some cocoa powder on top and topped them off with red heart toothpicks so at least part of the cupcake was involved with the colour red.

If you ignored the slightly burnt taste of the top and bottom and focused on the centre purple area, I thought they tasted pretty good. I really liked the cream cheese icing that came with the cake recipe. It was very zingy.
When my sister first saw the cupcakes she asked what the brown stuff on top was, I replied, "it's cocoa for Coco". Not sure why I had to explain that it was supposed to be cutesey since her nickname is Coco and I put cocoa on top...because I'm pretty sure I said the exact same thing to her last year...and she asked the same question. Then again, considering she was surprised at her birthday gift this year, even though I showed it to her the moment after I had bought it a month back, that really shouldn't surprise me.