Almond milk and mango chiller- perfect for summer!

Hello, everybody! Mary Jane here and I'm hiding in the Umatilla National Forest at the moment. Why? Well, look at this heat! My poor little dude in the reflection was trying to be happy about heading to the library for "slime night" but his red and sweaty face convinced me it was time to get out of Dodge! 

But before we did, we made some delicious chillers to cool down... And they were needed because my son was raising money for Scout Camp. 

 That included splitting wood and offering them with fire starters for $3. Great price because the wood was donated to him!

 The same person donated a lot of hen and chicks in flats, saying "if you can sell them, they're all yours". Of course we can! We hit the thrift stores and the cabinets for cute containers...

 I loved this little pail! We have so many craft supplies, we just added cute beads and rocks and such.

 And for the 4th of July, we made red, white, and blue!

 Aren't these cute? Perfect for those BBQ cook outs!
                                  
A friend donated a bunch of leftover wedding supplies. Aren't these cute!

 We sold almost everything we made, and all the firewood. Success! He made his goal for camp, AND enough for hiking boots and some other camping essentials. He mowed lawns for $10 ($5 for elderly, veterans and handicapped) and we met some very lovely people in our small town.
                                      
We did learn not to offer delivery. :) My suburban has a turning radius of 80 feet, it seems, and I tend to hit curbs. Lesson learned!

 OK, on to the recipe! Add two cups of slivered almonds and 4 cups of water in the blender.

 Pour over a tea towel. Let it drain, squeeze if necessary.

 It doesn't look like much, but with a 1.2 tsp of vanilla and some honey...

 Ta-dah! Almond milk with frozen mango slices, a little vanilla and honey to taste. I liked mine with mint. SO refreshing!

Ok, I hope everyone is staying cool! Until next time!

Winter Sunshine

Jan Drexler (The Mid-Westerner)

Why haven't there been many pictures of Thatcher lately?

Have you ever tried to catch wiggly fur ball?

There's my handsome boy! I had to bribe him for this one... :)

On to today's recipe - -

A couple weeks ago, our own Cate Nolan shared a post about turmeric. If you missed it, go read it now, but then come back! Here's the link.

This recipe is how I get my turmeric, my vitamin C, and lots of other good stuff.

And it's so tasty!

I have to give credit to a couple other people, though. I didn't think this one up on my own!

The core of this recipe is from Trim Healthy Mama's Singing Canary. (also delicious, but a little more complex).

Then last spring, my friend Martha Greene of Marmee Dear & Company, shared a simpler version on her Facebook page. (Check out her Facebook page!)

I tweaked her recipe a little, but not much.

You need some special ingredients for this drink, but they're easy to get thanks to the internet.

The Daily Sunshine Drink

If you have one of those handy stick blenders (I love mine!), combine all the ingredients in a 1-quart mason jar and blend them there.

Otherwise, put the ingredients in your blender...

Ingredients:

1 cup water
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 teaspoons stevia sweetener, or 3/32 teaspoon pure stevia
1 teaspoon Vitamin C powder
1 scoop integral collagen
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon orange extract, or 8 drops orange essential oil
1/8 teaspoon lemon extract, or 4 drops lemon essential oil
pinch mineral salt

Blend together, then add 4 to 6 ice cubes and more water to make one quart, and your drink is ready to enjoy!

Now, about those special ingredients...

These two are your Vitamin C powerhouses. The lemon juice is in your local grocery store. I buy the Vitamin C powder on-line. Each teaspoon of the powder provides 450 mg Vitamin C. Here's the link to this powder on Amazon.

I buy my Integral Collagen from the Trim Healthy Mama website. What is this stuff? Here's the link from THM to tell you more about this product. Basically, it's gelatin broken down into shorter amino acid chains. You can substitute gelatin powder for the collagen without affecting the benefits. Here's a link to gelatin powder on Amazon. Or you can use Knox gelatin (those orange boxes from your grocery store).

Benefits? It's supposed to soothe joints, your nervous system and help your skin, nails and hair. I know my nails are stronger and my hair is thicker since I've been using this.

It's just another form of my mom's remedy for brittle nails from the 1950's - Jello. :)

Sorry about the fuzzy picture...  Be sure to use a good quality turmeric. Some of the cheaper brands have been found to be less than pure, triggering a recall a couple months ago.

I use stevia as my sweetener of choice. You can also use sugar, but that tends to defeat the low sugar lifestyle I'm trying to maintain...

The Truvia, on the left, is a blend of stevia and erythritol (a natural zero carb sugar alcohol). The erythritol lessens the bitterness that some people taste in pure stevia.

The stevia package on the right is from Trim Healthy Mama. I haven't found it to have that bitter edge, but different people have different tastes.

I use 3 teaspoons of the Truvia, or 3/32 teaspoon of the pure stevia. (In THM language, 1/32 teaspoon is called a "doonk." So 3 doonks.) :)

The flavorings. Katie, my future daughter-in-law, is my supplier for doTerra essential oils. I really only use this one and the lemon for this drink. They add a zing!

But you can also use extracts from the grocery store to achieve the depth of flavor that makes this drink sing. I'm not into essential oils, and I'm sure there are benefits from using them instead of the extracts, but I'm really looking for flavor here.

Real Salt from Amazon

There has been a lot of talk about salt lately. Between the pink Himalayan Salt and the black salt from India, and every color in between, you can go crazy trying to figure out which is the best. And some of those gourmet salts are pretty spendy...

Some people will say that salt is salt. Good old sodium chloride is all you need.

But I figure that if I can increase my intake of beneficial minerals while I'm salting my food, why miss that?

I use Real Salt as my mineral salt. The price is reasonable (especially when you buy it in bulk), and it's been around for years.


And one more thing - - If you like cold drinks in a Mason jar, don't forget to put a sock on it.

Clean orphan socks love to find new purpose as a drink cozy!


This drink is one way I stay healthy during cold and flu season. What are your favorite tricks?

Jan Drexler loves her family, her home, cooking and just about anything made by hand. But she loves her Lord most of all.

Stop by Jan's website to learn more about her books: www.JanDrexler.com

Homemade Mint Lemon Refresher or How to Make Sodas

Hello, everybody! The Fresh Pioneer is back and I first wanted to share some of our local library's art. This is all made with a paper punch and those free paint chip samples. Isn't it awesome! 

 This is my favorite. I really love trees and have quite a few tree art pieces in my own house. I think I'd try this if I thought I could make it look as nice!

 Soooo, I found this great book called "Homemade Rootbeer, Soda and Pop" (you can get it here on Amazon) in our local library and we were very excited to try it out. There are a lot of "make your own pop" books but I liked this one because it has historical recipes. If you've read my Austen Takes the South books, you'll know I loooooove old recipes and always include the history of the food when I write it into a scene. Food, history, and stories. The perfect trifecta!

 First, this funny recipe from Anonymous in 1771 for Pumpkin Ale. No, we didn't try it, but it made us think of Harry Potter's Pumpkin Fizzies! Anotherpart of the book reminds readers that there was no line between alcoholic and non-alcoholic back then. It was more of a matter of how much alcohol, since anything that was fizzy was slightly fermented, and therefore had traces of alcohol.
This is relevant. I promise.
                                                  
So, I thought this lemon mint refresher sounded wonderful. Remember, I really have no experience in fermenting anything but I figured sugar, flavoring and some fizz... what could go wrong?

 First, piles of mint... Check!

 Vintage jar filled fresh lemon juice... Check! (I was making a big batch, so if you try the recipe, follow the one above. I was tripling and adjusting as I went.)

 Pour boiling water over the mint leaves and let it set. (Oh, be sure to wash them first. Ours came straight from the garden and needed to be de-dusted.) Pour the mint water and the lemon, sugar, and yeast together. Put on the lid. Let it sit for a day. Now, this is where I went wrong. It was very warm in the laundry room where I had the jar (it was supposed to be in a cool, dark place) and plus, I left it for two days.

 So, when I went to open it up, the lid nearly popped off! My friend who works at a winery shook his head when I told this story because I'd basically created a lemon-mint BOMB in my laundry room. So glad I didn't let it sit for a week! The whole thing could have exploded.
But it didn't!
What it did do was fizz all over the place. My friend said we'd made "no-messin'-around" bubbly, like champagne. It was certainly... *gasp* No what I was heading for. We all had a sip and declared it quite interesting and chalked it up to a learning experience. I think we'll still with mixing flavors with soda water!

And one last photo. My husband took this picture of a snapdragon seed. SO funny. If you have snapdragons, go check them out. They're like tiny people.

Until next time! Feel free to stop by my author pages at Mary Jane Hathaway or Virginia Carmichael, or by my blog on The Things That Last!

Starbucks Copycat Low Calorie Strawberry Cream and Lemon Chiller Drinks- and FREE BOOK!

Hi, everybody! This is a repeat post from July 2014 (that was my year for good recipes, apparently) and it's become a favorite in my house!

But first I have to share this picture of our kitty cat. I honestly didn't know if he was enjoying the sun or was a victim of a terrible tricycle accident. :O

So, going back to 2014 now, at the time of the original post, we were in the middle of a heat wave. I can happily say we have gorgeous weather as I type this, and when this post airs, we should be at the beach, so I'm betting it will NOT be 104F the second time around... but I could be wrong!
Without further ado...

I got this great cookbook at the library. The author battled diabetes and other health issues so she tries to take the most popular recipes and remake them several different ways. Each recipe has about four or five alternatives, whether you're cutting fat, sodium, sugar or carbs. I loved this idea! I don't have a problem with sugar, but I would love to cut unnecessary fat from my diet, so I thought I'd try some of the recipes and see if they were as good as they looked.

BUT this happened: record-setting temps all week. 107 on Thursday but some said 109F unofficially. I figure anything past 100 is officially whatever you want to call it because we're all melting and nobody's going to be around to argue.

 So I decided to make some of the drinks in the book. The first one is called "Luscious Lemon Slim Smoothie".
1/3 cup low fat milk
1 TBS instant sugar free lemon pudding mix
1/3 cold water
1/3 Greek yogurt (non fat)
 2 tsp lemon juice
1 cup ice

 I got out the ninja, but you can use a blender. This entire process took about 3 minutes, start to finish. Definitely doing this for refreshments when we have guests!
Add the milk and pudding mix together, and let sit for one minute. Then add all the other ingredients.

 I wasn't really sure how this would taste, since I'm not big on sugar free products. They always have an odd flavor to me. But this was delicious! Light, cool, lemony, and very filling.

 Of course, always better with some whipped topping and a few blueberries. The kids split one and I gave the other to hubby. He said it was "savroso". I told him to hold on, I was still testing recipes. He was in the garden, so he just handed me back the jar and went back to work.

Nutritional information: 100 calories, carbs 14, fat 1.5, protein 10g, sodium 350mg

 The next recipe is apparently copied from a famous Starbucks recipe. We have one but I don't often go there, so I haven't tried the original. What I know is that this one IS DELICIOUS.

1/2 cup nonfat milk
1/4 cup nonfat half-and-half
2/3 cup frozen strawberries (about 6)
3 TBS sugar (or substitute)
1/2 cup crushed ice

 Place all ingredients together and blend.

 I was really surprised at how "strawberry" this was. I thought since they were frozen, it would turn out like a lot of strawberry ice chunks, but I think the half-and-half brings out the creamy flavor.

 For me, this was closest to a real treat. Rich and flavorful, like a milkshake but not as heavy. Again, kids shared some and I took the rest to hubby. He said, "delicioso". I told him to just wait... there was more.

Nutritional info: 150 calories, 25 carbs, fat 1.5 g, protein 7g, fiber 2g sodium 65mg
In comparison, the real Starbucks version has 380 calories, 15 g of fat, and 57 carbs!

 The next recipe was Mocha Fudge Mudslide Milkshake. This took a few ingredients I didn't have but I think I can use the sliced almonds in another batch of granola, so I figured it wouldn't be too expensive to try. If it didn't work out, I'd just stick to regular milkshakes!

2 tsp sugar free hot fudge topping
2/3 cup low fat milk
1 tbs vanilla sugar free instant pudding mix
2 tsp instant coffee
2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup no sugar addeded or light ice cream
2/3 cup ice

 First, wipe the hot fudge up the inside of the glasses. Put them in the fridge to chill.
Combine the milk and the pudding mix, blend, and then let it sit for 1 minute.
Add all other ingredients and then blend until thick and creamy. Carefully pour into the glasses and top with whipped topping and almonds if desired.

 These definitely were tasty-looking. But would they pass the Munoz taste-test??

Apparently, the answer is YES. They were devoured, and I had to make more. My kids decided that this was the best dinner they'd ever had and they wanted it to be 109F every single DAY. (Forgive them, they know not what they wish for.)

Nutritonal info: calories 205, carbs 35, fat 4.5, protein 8, fiber 4, sodium 480mg

My personal favorite was the lemon chiller. The cookbook author also gives several different flavor ideas made from the same "starter" of instant pudding mix, low fat milk and yogurt. I have some strawberry pudding so I might try that and see if it's as refreshing. For a 100 calories, it sure beats a popsicle on a hot day.

Now, before I go, I thought I'd share a few pics of my kids. Every year on their birthday (which most were born in the summer- no cracks about keeping warm, I've heard them all, haha) we open their baby boxes.

 My soon-to-be 13 year old's Sunday dress might not fit her anymore.
                                                         
Just for giggles, here's her birth announcement in the paper. Yikes.

 The four year old's foot is still chubby, but these shoes aren't going to fit at all.

 My 11 year old's first tshirt is wayyyy too tiny.

My nine year old says, "Ugh, do I have to?"

But I think my fourteen year old wins. She was a preemie who had colic and screamed for the first three months of her life. She weighed 5 lbs 11 oz and was 18 inches long, now she's taller than I am.

And here are her size 11 feet and her baby booties. That's my baby! Time does fly... and I'm so very grateful for the health and well-being of all my children. 

Now, if they'd just clean their rooms...

EDIT June 2016: Awwwww, my babies are so little! It's amazing how much they grew in just a few years. What a fun stroll into the not-so-distant past.

My book A Star To Steer By is also free from the 24th through the 29th. It's one of my favorite books!

Here's the blurb:

Roxie Sunshine Hardy is perfectly happy living in Philadelphia, far away from her hometown. Growing up as a chubby nerd obsessed with classic literature, Roxie finally feels like she’s found her place in the world. She’s kept her full name a secret and has never, ever, ever told a single soul how she spent her high school years. People might think growing up in a family bakery is delightful, but Roxie knows the reality. Spending countless sweaty afternoons inside Sunshine Bakery’s big, pink foam cupcake costume is the stuff of her nightmares. 

Those terrible days are behind her now, but when her family needs her, Roxie decides to return to Natchitoches. She assures herself that it’s only for a few weeks, and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Dante’s Inferno that she’ll have to get into that cupcake suit. 

Moving from New York City to Natchitoches shouldn’t be a problem for Andy McBride. The slower pace, Creole culture, and friendly locals make up for the lack of any good Thai take-out. But Andy hasn’t counted on how much he’d miss his brother, Mark. He can’t uproot Mark from his group home for the mentally disabled back in New York, so Andy tries to go on as usual. To everyone else, including his fascinating neighbor from Philly, he’s living the carefree life of a wealthy bachelor, but Andy is haunted by the knowledge that Mark might not be around for much longer. 

When an unlikely friendship blossoms with Sunshine Bakery’s anonymous dancing cupcake, Andy decides to stop pretending to be someone he’s not. He learns seizing the day isn’t just for poets, and life is too short to be without the people you love. A story of family, loyalty, and a true love that can’t be disguised, A Star to Steer By will warm your heart. 

Be sure to drop by my author page at Mary Jane Hathaway, or my other author page at Virginia Carmichael, or my blog at The Things That Last! All my newest book news and musings is there, including anything else that strikes my fancy!