I love carbs.  I mean I really love carbs.  Pasta, bread, bagels, pasta...did I mention how much I love pasta?  As I watched the numbers on the scale slowly go up over the years, I've come to realize that my metabolism just can't handle the amount of starchy carbs I've been eating.


Gone are the days when I'd have an English muffin for breakfast, a bagel sandwich for lunch and some sort of dish with pasta...or heaven forbid, a grilled cheese sandwich on slices of French bread.  I've been limiting my starchy carb intake and amping up my fresh fruits and veggies as well as my protein.  I've added things like chia seeds to my diet.  Now, hard boiled eggs are a good snack instead of some crackers.  (Sorry, rosemary and olive oil Triscuits!  I do miss you!)

To help with the change in diet, my mom and I purchased the Nutra Ninja Nutra Bowl Duo so we could start making healthy breakfast smoothies.  (We aren't getting paid by Ninja for this blog post, so what follows is my honest opinion.) I had been pinning healthy smoothie recipes for days in anticipation.  So as soon as it arrived in the mail I unpacked it and got it all set up.  I even looked through the recipe book that came with it.


And I of course had to make my first smoothie not long after that. I was inspired!  I read through the directions on how to use the system, filled my cup the correct way (fresh on the bottom, liquids, sticky stuff, then frozen), twisted on the blender blades and snapped it into the base unit.

This system is easy to use with the Auto-iQ technology.  I selected the boost because I had some seedy fruits then hit the smoothie button.  WHOA!  I thought the blender was going to lift off like a rocket!  This little baby has some serious power behind it at 1200 watts.  No wonder why the base had suction cups on the bottom to stick it to the countertop!


The result was a perfectly blended smoothie.  No chunks and most of the seeds were ground up well into fine little bits. No yogurt was stuck to the sides of the cup unblended.  It was really quite amazing compared to our old blender.      

Ever since, I've made myself a smoothie nearly every morning for breakfast.  Occasionally I will let myself have something starchy or I'll opt for something with eggs, but as a lover of all things fruit, I have really been enjoying these smoothies!


And with the two cups that come with the system, both my mom and I can enjoy a smoothie in the morning.  We have even pre-prepped smoothies the night before, sticking the cups in the fridge.  In the morning we add some ice and blend.  The results were just as perfect.

I really love tart things.  It's an inherited trait.  As a young girl, my Oma loved to eat lemons like oranges.  So any chance I get to have tart citrus fruits, I'm all in.  This particular recipe can be sweetened up to taste by adding honey if you aren't a sour puss like me.

I just love the dark pink color of this smoothie!  And the tart flavor mixed with sweet fruits is so much better than the faux taste of cherry limeade drinks you get at fast food joints, plus it's way healthier.  The chia seeds give you an added boost of omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, fiber, iron and calcium.  Limes aid in digestion, cherries and pomegranate seeds are packed with antioxidants and the blueberries and blackberries have vitamin C.



Yum

I love a good excuse to throw a party with yummy food.  So in conjunction with Alice Scraps Wonderland, I threw a premier party for Shadowhunters, a television show on Freeform (the new name for ABC Family) based of the world-wide bestselling book series The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare.

I'm a huge fan of the books and so I picked out foods mentioned in the series or foods that seemed to fit a character's personality to serve at my party. Alice Scraps Wonderland made some fun food name cards to label the different foods on the buffet table and has been making beautiful mixed media Shadowhunters inspired tags that are perfect to display on a buffet table full of food!


In the first book, The City of Bones, Jace pulls a tub of leftover spaghetti out of the fridge that is clearly labeled with Hodge's name when he sees Isabelle attempting to make dinner.  (Apparently Izzy can't cook and no one at the Institute wants to eat the food she makes.)  So my mom, Sylvia, made her famous lasagna sauce (a super secret family recipe--sorry!) and boiled some spaghetti noodles and I labeled it "Hodge's Favorite Spaghetti."  We also added a little shredded fresh parmesan to the mix!  And since garlic bread goes wonderfully with spaghetti, we made some and I decided to name it "Simon's Anti Vampire Garlic Bread."  It's perfect for the nerdy boy who believes garlic might save him from those bloodsucking nighttime monsters.  I also made a mixed green salad topped with apples, strawberries, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds.  With all the fruit it was quite magical for this time of year so it was bestowed the namesake of "Magnus' Magical Salad."  And I bought some Izze sodas (because of Izzy, duh!) to wash it all down with.  I really wanted some blackberry flavored Izze sodas to mirror the sultry color of Izzy's lipstick in the TV show, but my local grocery store was out so I went with grapefruit--a pretty girly pink, plus clementine because it's one of my favorites!


For dessert I chose to make some vanilla cupcakes iced with my favorite buttercream (chocolate cherry) that I tinted black.  I sprinkled on a few white candy pearls and made angelic runes with melted white chocolate to place on top of the cupcakes.  I labeled these "Clary's Artistic Angelic Rune Cupcakes" because in the beginning of the show, Clary doodles Shadowhunter runes without knowing what she is doing.  In one of the later books in the series, Jace mentions he likes mangos so I picked up a mango sorbet and a mango sorbetto.  We all know Jace is charming and smooth so I labeled this "Jace's Smooth Mango Sorbet."  I served up a scoop of the cold yummy goodness in a chilled martini glass.  In the books, Madame Dorothea (known as Dot in the TV show) asks Jace and Clary if they would like tea when they came to visit her in the first book.  Jace tells her anything but Earl Grey because he hates bergamot.  So I found a Mortal Cup-like chalice in my Oma's china cabinet and stuffed it with bags of Tazo's Earl Grey tea.  I pulled out some of my sister's vintage teacups and a teapot as well.


As for tablescaping, I used a black tablecloth with a white and silver table runner.  I always like differences in hight when setting up a buffet table.  It's very artistic and pleasing to the eye.  So I used one of my Oma's fancy cake stands to hold the cupcakes up high and propped the salad bowl up on a short vase turned upside down and stuffed with a silver organza napkin and a strand of glimmer lights.  I also added silver mercury glass candle pedestals and candles then placed the tags created by Alice Scraps Wonderland around the table.

Don't forget to visit Alice Scraps Wonderland's blog for more on the tags and cards!