Paleo Pesto Chicken

With Hannah home over Christmas break I thought it would be cool to try some of her weird paleo food and maybe clean my diet up a bit that way. So we started looking around on pinterest and other places and found a recipe for paleo pesto chicken. To be quite honest with you, I laughed. Right, we're totally gonna make pesto with no cheese. Haha, no. But well, my curiosity got the better of me. I had to try this. Yes, I was assuming it would be pretty pathetic, nothing can be nearly as good as real pesto. But for my weird paleo sister I would try it.

So we made the pesto with me shaking my head the whole time. I know pesto, and this, this was not pesto. But I mainly kept my skeptical comments to myself. It does not go well when you insult someone's eating choices I've found. So we whipped up our "pesto", cooked and cooled and chopped our chicken, mixed it all together and than came the important part: tasting it. Would it taste like pesto? Or was I just gonna gag? Hmmm, okay, not as good as real pesto, but ehh, still quite good. Worth eating. ;)

We served it on whole kale leaves with some toasted pine nuts sprinkled on top. Mmmmmm!

~Alyssa <3

Green Smoothie

A few months back I had a rather bad experience with green smoothies. I had decided to just make up my own with no recipe and hope for the best (typical me, right?). Well without going too much into detail, about two bites into the thing it was poured down the drain never to be mentioned again.

So after that experience it took me a little while to build up the courage to try again. But with trying to get in shape for my dance performance and just feeling like trying something different I finally tried again. This time with a recipe though. ;)
I decided to go with a simple, basic smoothie to start with. I know a lot of green smoothies have tons of veggies in them, but they also taste like it. I figured I would go easy on myself and start with something more...edible?
The recipe I found which I believe was called "beginners green smoothie" (perfect, right?) was made from only a few ingredients.

1 cup Spinach
1 cup Frozen pineapple
1 Banana
1 cup coconut milk
1 Tablespoon chia seeds (optional)

Literally all you have to do is throw it in your blender (in stages if your blender is as pathetic as mine) and blend it all up. Making sure that it's all well ground up, you don't want bits of spinach in your smoothie (eww).

Well let me tell you this IT WAS AMAZING. It didn't taste weird at all, in fact it just tasted like a normal smoothie, except better. I can't wiat to make these next summer with fresh fruits and veggies form my own garden. I guess that means I'll actually have to get my lazy self up out of my bed and plant a garden though...hmm...

Here are a couple pictures of my "green martian goo" as my dear little brother called my lunch. :)

~Alyssa <3

Birthday Cake

So  about a month ago I threw a surprise birthday party for one of my best friends and I needed a cake. A perfect cake. Something spectacular. So I started thinking of all the flavors that she likes....chocolate...nutella...oreo...coffee... Hmm, well that's something to work with. So I hoped on my computer (no not literally) and started looking for a recipe. To my utter disappointment there was no recipe that combined all of the flavors. What? Come on, we must have it all. I will not settle for mediocrity. So I found one recipe here, and one there and combined them all into one cake.

I knew the frosting was going to be pretty sweet so the cake had to be a slightly less sweet chocolate. None of that sickeningly sweet milk chocolate stuff for me. I needed a good dark cake.  I've always had a hard time finding a good chocolate cake. I find that almost every single recipe is either, not chocolaty enough, crumbly or just plain odd. So wish trembling fingers I chose one off the internet. Would it work? Would it be good? Would it be perfect? The struggle is real guys, you better believe it.

So chocolate and coffee, check. Now I need nutella and oreo. Well nutella frosting was kind of a "duh". Because come on guys, what's better than a little (maybe more than a little...) nutella frosting? No I had never tasted it before but I knew that it would be perfection. Call it women's intuition. And for once my intuition was spot on. Making that frosting was quite possibly the best decision I have ever made, unless making sure there was extra counts as a decision...

Now the day I made the cake I went to my supplies and realized I had forgotten to buy oreos. I quickly collapsed on the floor in a flood of tears. "It was a tragedy. I couldn't make the perfect cake. There was nothing to do. Oh woe to me.". Don't you dare call me a drama queen! I was being completely realistic. Humph! Luckily my darling mother came to the rescue. Would half a box of oreos be enough? We (praise the Lord) had those in the house. I fell at her feet sobbing out my endless gratitude and jealously ran off with my precious oreos. Preciousssss, my preciousssssss. ;)

Now was half a box enough for my plans? Well we'd have to see. In any case it would have to suffice. I very, very carefully, like a brains surgeon, cut them in half. Gently, gently, one false move and a crack would enter the rest of the cookie damaging it for life. And than I could be fired from the job...and possibly sued... not good. Due to my great skill, they all came through with no complications. They were safe.

After placing them around the top of the cake I had plenty left, so I crumbled the rest and put them all on the top. But the rest of the cake just looked bare. Something was wrong. Noooo! But I must remain calm, "can we fix it? Yes we can!" No Alyssa, shut up, you're not Bob the Builder. You're Alyssa the Amazing"! Okay...no that was worse. Moving on. I realized that I had plenty of cookie crumbs on top of the cake, so why not remove some of the and place them around the bottom of the cake? Much better, much better indeed.

Now, now the cake was perfect, or as perfect as a cake can get. But would it taste as good as it looked? Well I had to wait for my answer until later that night when I got to taste the cake. The first taste. The thought running through my mind? "And in that moment I swear we were infinite". Okay, no not quite, I didn't really fall in love with a piece of cake...I promise. No, I'm not that weird. Not at all.

But anyway, enjoy the pictures of that mouthwatering cake. I wish you could smell it. Someone really needs to invent that don't you think? Hmm...anyone want to start working on that for me? Oh and than while you're at it why not just make it so you can reach into the screen and pull out whatever food there's a picture of... Like wow, we're in the 21st century, you'd think someone would have invented that by now, just saying.

~Alyssa <3