Roast Garlic Gravy

Hiii everyone! I'm back!! Didja miss me? I missed you! I have to say, though, I had THE BEST time! It was so wonderful to see my brother and spend so much time with him. We also got to check out San Antonio-which is an awesome city and I cannot recommend the River Walk down there enough! So beautiful and so many amazing restaurants! We did a lot of fun stuff, and I'll talk more about it on Saturday, but yeah the best part was definitely my baby brother. It was so hard to leave him and know I won't see him for another 6ish months (after he's done with his tech training for his intel job in the airforce). But at least I can send him care packages now! I know he misses his sissy's food lol.

I would put roasted garlic in everything if I could. So I obviously jumped at the chance to put it in gravy!

Now...I get that gravy season is sorta technically over. But like...is it? Is it ever really over. 

I think not. But...yeah you might not be making turkey and might not have drippings. I certainly didn't when I made this. Sooo I've included a way to make this both with and without drippings. Huzzah!

This gravy is rich and creamy and has a delicious mellow garlic flavor and seriously takes any mashed potato recipe over the top. A must make, in my humble opinion.

Multi-Nut Butter

I've been sitting on the idea of making a nut butter with a variety of nuts for awhile. And then I recently realized that I actually have 4 varieties of nuts, right now, in my kitchen. So it was nut butter time!

As I've mentioned quite a few times before--making homemade nut butters is unbelievably easy and so entirely customizable. You can add pretty much anything you want to it--honey, chocolate, vanilla, etc. Or you could add nothing and just let it be an ultra healthy nut butter! This is the same. I've given you the amounts of nuts and the varieties that I used but you can completely mix it up to suit your own needs! And your end result is a delicious, healthy, natural (and no-stir!) nut butter!

For my multi-nut butter I had almonds and peanuts as the predominant nuts (peanuts have a good amount of oil so that way I wouldn't need to add oil during the process. And almonds are ultra good for you!) and then walnuts (which I don't love but are some of the healthier nuts) and pecans (which taste oh so good but are prob. the least healthy nuts). And then I just added a smidgen bit of salt and honey. And now I have a delicious, creamy (of all the nut butters I've made this one doesn't get as thick and hard in the refrigerator-which I looove) thing to spread on my pancakes, toast, or to bake with!

Get on board and get your food processor ready!

Almond Peanut Butter

I'm like a walking advertisement for making homemade nut butters. I always tell people about it and they look at me like I'm crazy (or they'll even ask "...isn't there butter in peanut butter?"....*sigh*). But seriously, I cannot emphasize this enough:

MAKING HOMEMADE NUT BUTTERS IS REALLY REALLY RIDICULOUSLY EASY. 

LIKE...I MEAN IT.

Allow me to break down the entire process:

Throw nuts in food processor (or powerful blender).

Process.

...that's it.

The only time it might get a smidge more complicated than that (which is still insanely easy) is if 1. You decide to add in other stuff like chocolate, honey, salt, etc. Which involves--throwing those things in with the nuts. Again...that's it. OR 2. If you're using a drier nut (such as almonds) you may need to pour in a little oil (olive oil, peanut oil, canola, coconut, etc.) That's all. I'm not kidding when I say ANYONE can make this.

Now, although this nut butter has almonds in it-it is paired with the very oily peanuts which means this is a super duper easy one. I just put the nuts in there, let them go, then I had tasty tassssty almond peanut butter!

Enough about how easy it is to MAKE this almond peanut butter, let's talk about how easy it is to LOOOVE to eat it! Before I moved to NYC I had never had a nut butter other than peanut butter-heck, I didn't even know they existed! One day someone mentioned how almond butter was healthier and I tried it and was like "Eh it's good but not as good as my good 'ole pb!"

As I've already mentioned, almond butter did grow on me. However, it could never replace peanut butter in my heart. But now...I DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE! I get all the best flavors of almond and peanut butters in one place, and the health benefits of the almonds get in there too.

Really....I can't think of a better thing to spread on my toast. Or waffles (speaking of which, keep an eye out for a particularly special waffle recipe next week!). Oooh or maybe bake in cookies??

Endless possibilities. :)

Basil Pesto

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I'm totally into pesto-I mean, what's not to like? It's Italian, there's basil, Parmesan, and garlic: these are all things I like! But, I've always held off from making it for myself because I was lazy and didn't want to go looking for pine nuts. And then, the wonderful, talented Joan over at Chocolate Chocolate and More posted her recipe for a super simple, super awesome looking pesto: and it uses walnuts or pecans instead of pine nuts! Huzzah! Pecans I have! Pecans I can use!

So I went to buy some basil. I'll tell you what, I have such garden envy. I want a garden with herbs (particularly basil) and maybe some veggies. I would love to just be able to walk outside and pick some leaves of basil or oregano, or grab a tomato for Michael's sandwiches, etc. etc. Buying produce and herbs is a pain, because everything goes bad so quickly! So yeah I'm totally into the idea of having a garden but...not working on it. I don't wanna weed and till and plant and water, I pretty much just wanna reap the benefits...

does that make me a bad person?

Whatever. I don't care.

I care about this pesto and how creamy and delicious it is and how many ways you can use it. Use it on pasta, spread it on bread, etc.! It's so incredibly easy to make too. Like. Crazy easy. Pretty much just throw in your food processor and go! The hardest part, for me, was grating the Parmesan cheese. And that wasn't even hard. So yeah.

PESTO!

(hehe sounds like "presto"...like a magic word...I crack myself up)

Homemade Dark Chocolate Walnut Butter

I know the season of gift giving is sorta kinda over.

But this can totally be a gift for yourself.

Before Christmas I made my cousin, Emily, some dark chocolate walnut butter for her gift. She said walnuts were 1 of her favorites and she loves chocolate so...it was a pretty easy decision! 

It is seriously silly how easy it is to make flavored nut butters. It's like...oh here's some walnuts. And here's some melted dark chocolate. Bada bing bada boom we're in business!

 Michael tasted some and got very jealous that I did not make this for him. This is a great sweet treat, but still healthy (nuts=good and dark chocolate=antioxidants, right? right.) Spread this on toast, dip apple slices in it, or just spoon this dark chocolate walnut butter into your mouth-there's no wrong way to eat it!

Homemade Peanut Butter

Tomorrow is National Peanut Day.

We should celebrate.

With peanut butter.

HOMEMADE Peanut Butter.

Got 5 minutes? Got peanuts? Got a food processor?

Yes?

Then you can make peanut butter, my friend.

Seriously, this recipe isn't even a recipe. It's like a...hey...take some peanuts...or other nuts...toss em in a food processor. Want salt? Throw some in there.  Process. Wait. Watch it turn into a ball. Does it break down and get smooth? Good. No? Put a little bit of oil in there, whatever sort you prefer.Wanna flavor it? Throw whatever the crap you want in there. Want it crunchy? Put some peanuts in there towards the end so there are some little chopped peanut bits in there. Done. End of story. You have amazing homemade peanut butter. It's homemade, unprocessed, all natural, AND (in my case anyway) has no oil separation. 

Oh yeah, and it's the best peanut butter you'll ever taste.*

I'm obsessed. I am (probably) never buying peanut butter again.

(unless you're stupid like Michael, in which case you'll say "It tastes too much like peanuts." That boy will not be deterred from his processed junk. *sigh*

Raspberry Jam (Pectin Free)

The boyfriend loves raspberries.

He also enjoys having jams/preserves. I pack his lunch for work everyday, and I oftentimes make him a PB&J with whatever jam/preserves we have. For awhile, we had some that were given to us by his family. Then we ran out. Around this time, I also had a couple bags of frozen raspberries leftover from something or another. Also around this time, I think I was reading a blog post with a jam recipe. And I was like, "Whoa-that's it? That's all jam is?!" So I had the brilliant idea to google a raspberry jam recipe. Then I learned about pectin. I don't have pectin, and don't particularly want to buy any, so I made sure to search for pectin free recipes. And then I found one. This recipe makes a lot of jam, but I only had enough raspberries for a half batch-so that's what I made. It came out perfectly! I was (and am) so proud of myself! 

Homemade Chocolate Syrup

As you may know, I try to, whenever possible, keep the food I buy/eat as unprocessed/natural as possible. Michael fights me on this.

He says he isn't against it in general, just that we can't afford to not just buy whatever is cheapest. Plus, that boy loves Cheetos, Kool-Aid, etc. But sometimes, I attempt to replace his unhealthy faves with something a little better. He drinks chocolate milk pretty much every morning, and I really hated having to use Hershey's chocolate syrup, knowing all the gunk that was in there. So, when I found this recipe on Annie's Eats, I was ecstatic! I made it almost right away! 

Now, this chocolate syrup still isn't healthy, but it certainly is A LOT better! There are only a handful of ingredients, and you more than likely have all of them already. Plus-this syrup has a much richer, tasty chocolate flavor, so you can use less than you normally would!

Michael even admitted it's better than Hershey's.

Use this chocolate syrup for drinks, over ice cream, or whatever you normally use chocolate syrup for.