Headbands and food

First we'll start with some crafty goodness then move on to lots and lots of food pics.

-headand swap-

So I joined the headband swap hosted by Pink Lemonade (http://www.pinklemonade-blog.com/2011/08/headband-swap.html) and couldn't be more excited to participate.

Here is the lovely headband I received from Christina May at The Andrews Update (http://theandrewsupdate.blogspot.com/)

Thank you, Christina May!

And here is a picture of me modeling the one I made for her:

I used this tutorial (http://www.rufflesandstuff.com/2011/05/no-sew-fabric-flower-tutorial.html) from Ruffles and Stuff.  It was super easy and fun!

Here's one finished flower, with the Bachelorette playing on my computer, and R cooking dinner in the background - life isn't bad :)

-now for the food-

In no particular order, we'll start with my peanut butter filled apple snack.  This is so simple that it feels almost silly to write about it but I love them so much that here we go:

All you do is cut an apple in half, use a spoon to scoop out the core, cut little triangles out around the stem, fill with peanut butter and put the halves back together.  The apple doesn't really get very brown this way and it's an awesome on-the-go snack!

Next up we have homemade Promethus (http://www.prometheussprings.com/)

R loves this drink but at $4+ per drink I decided to give making it a try.  So, I took a ton of ginger, washed it, threw it in the vitamix, covered with water, and blended.  If I did this again, I would peel the ginger first (remember to peel your ginger with a spoon, it's easier than a typical veggie peeler) and then blend it.  Then I made simple syrup by simmering 2 parts cane sugar with 1 part water.  For the spice, I added whole dried chilies and also added fresh mint leaves to the simple syrup when it was done cooking.  Next you strain your "ginger juice" through a fine mesh strainer and pour into ice cube trays to get ginger ice cubes (pictured above.)  To make a drink, I threw one or two ginger cubes in a glass, added ice, a tablespoon or two of simple syrup and topped it off with water.  Delicious!  I've been also throwing a cube or two of ginger in my water bottle in the morning in an effort to drink more water.

Now for Ani Phyo's raw spanish scramble which I posted about last week.  Here is my version:

I mostly followed her directions, except I added extra tomato, cilantro, and hot sauce.  I didn't have any tumeric so I added nutritional yeast instead.  This came out awesome, R and I both loved it!

For this last one I'm using a video I found on google instead of my own photo.  Although I've made these twice in the last week, both times they were eaten so fast that there was no thought of taking a picture for the blog.  Here we have fried padrones with kalamata olive bread:

Basically you wash padrone peppers and dry very well (otherwise you with have splattered hot oil everywhere.)  Fry the padrones until browned, salt with course sea salt, and pour into a bowl.  Add extra olive oil to the bowl and serve with bread to dip in the padrone flavored oil at the bottom of the bowl.  You can eat the entire pepper except for the stem.  These are so delicious and have never lasted very long in my house.  Enjoy!

Off to enjoy some delicious Ethiopian food at Queen of Sheeba (http://queenofsheba.biz/) with 2 of my besties, JB & KT.