In the kitchen

1. Did you know you can make dried bread crumbs really easy and practically free. Well, free if you normally have bread on hand and don't always use the ends. Now you'll have a use for those ends. And you can even freeze those ends until you're ready to use them, if you'd like, and then make up your own bread crumbs. When you're ready to make the crumbs, stick your bread(can use whole pieces) on a pan, put it in your oven warmed to 300 degrees and cook them until they're done, about 10 minutes, turning them over halfway through. Once you've done this, crumble them up(in food processor, by hand, with a rolling pin in a ziploc bag, the sky is the limit) and you've got your own bread crumbs!(this is a picture of the breadcrumbs before I crumbled them...and next time I will bake them in whole pieces to save some time).

2. Until recently, I used my huge roaster pan maybe once a year on Thanksgiving if we hosted Thanksgiving at our house. Now, I use my roaster pan weekly. I mix and bake my granola in it. It is the perfect size. I'm happy to be getting more use out of this pan, unless you call collecting dust useful.

3. Here is my granola which I now keep in a plastic cereal container(used to keep it in a gallon Ziploc, but I like this better because I'm not using all my ziplocs and it has a convenient spout/pouring top). Here it is stored in the cupboard. I also recently bought some nicer looking tupperwares from the dollar store. I store my bulk items in there that I purchase from Winco or health food stores. In these I have Chia seeds, flax seeds, whole and chopped dates, steel oats(more on these later), unsweetened coconut, fruit juice sweetened cranberries and sunflower seeds. I also get wheat germ in bulk(it is SO much cheaper at Winco than at a normal grocery store) but it gets stored in the fridge.

4. A friend of mine has an aloe vera plant that had a bunch of 'pups' and she needed to get rid of some to allow the mother plant to continue to grow and have some room. I was the lucky recipient of one of those plants. I tried putting it into a smoothie a couple of times, but Scott and I really didn't like the coarse texture it brought to the smoothie or the taste. And it's something that probably shouldn't be consumed regularly. So I think we'll just keep this plant as medicine for sunburns or other skin irritations.
5. I've been soaking almonds and flax seeds for awhile now(almonds for our almond milk, flaxseeds to add to green smoothies) but a little while ago I sprouted seeds with tails for the first time. I felt like a little kid, anxiously checking my jar every few hours, to see if any sprouts had come up yet. It took several days to sprout and another day before they turned green, but it was worth it. I only put about a 1/2 a Tbsp in a jar and it made so much! It completely filled my quart jar at the end. I made alfalfa sprouts and soaked them in canning jars that I put a little piece of wire mesh(I got mine at a store like Home Depot) on the top in place of the lid. That made it really easy to wet and rinse each day. And they just sprout right there in the jar. We've put a little in a smoothie and added some to a sandwich. I like these on the Black Bean and Quinoa Burgers which you can find under my recipe tab.