Mixed Berries Jalapeno Chia Sauce

If you want an alternative to the classic cranberry sauce, this is a good candidate. It is sweet, fruity and spicy. The chia seeds give it a good supple texture. Try this with your favorite roasted meat or fried dish. Delicious. Also you can just eat it as is. 

Mixed Berries Jalapeno Chia Spread

• 6 oz. blackberries
• 8 oz strawberries
• 2 tbsp jalapeno slices from a bottle
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 6 tbsp maple syrup
• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• salt to taste

Place all the ingredients in a blender and pulse till the mixture are fine.  

Pineapple Carrot Coconut Snowballs

These coconut snowballs are "healthy-fied" with the addition of carrots and raisins to the pineapple cream cheese mixture.  They are melt in your mouth morsels which are not very sweet.  I consider it a perfect dessert to give to my granddaughter Maddie who loves carrots.  It will also appeal to her mom, my daughter Wendy, who prefers that her daughter not get used to desserts that are too sweet. 

Maddie at one year old with me.  I do have a  piece about Maddie and Me in this blog.

I have made Green Ice Cream for Maddie which she loves.   I incorporated spinach and cucumber in the list of ingredients.  At that time when she was barely one year old, Maddie was not into vegetables except for carrots.  Right now, she loves green beans and even ate my spicy Kale and Butternut Quesadillas with a lot of cute contortions of the face of course because it was spicy.  I have, however, discovered that at one and half years old, she has very unpredictable taste in food in the sense that she might shun what she had liked before.  Liking carrots, however, is a constant.

Maddie in her cute surprised pose.  Her latest adorable antic.

When I was developing this recipe, the handling of the cream cheese pineapple mixture was difficult when it comes to rolling it into balls even with refrigeration.  I decided to add a tablespoon of coconut butter to the mixture and that really helped.  I also mixed half of the carrot coconut mixture to the cream cheese pineapple blend and that further made the rolling into balls much easier

Pineapple Carrot Coconut Snowballs

 

Ingredients

1/2 cup cream cheese, softened to room temperature

1/2 cup of unsweetened crushed pineapple, well drained

1 tbsp coconut butter (optional but it really helps in rolling into balls easier)

1/4 cup raisins (you can use half this but the ball will not be as sweet)

1/4 cup shredded carrots

1/2 cup dessicated sweetened coconut flakes

For topping:

1/4 cup more shredded carrots

1/2 cup more dessicated sweetened coconut flakes

Mix the first three ingredients in a bowl.  To this mixture, add the raisin, 1/4  cup shredded carrots and 1/2 cup coconut .  Refrigerate the mixture for 30 minutes.

Mix the topping mixture consisting of 1/4 cup more shredded carrots and 1/2 cup more coconut in a bowl. 

Roll the refrigerated mixture into small balls (about 1/2 inch diameter).  Roll the balls in the carrot/coconut topping.  You can place them in mini cupcake paper holders for ease of handling.   The balls are still soft and melt in your mouth beauties.  Enjoy.



Easy Irresistible Fruit Salad and the Art of Doing Nothing

The Art of Doing Nothing

We just came back from Myrtle Beach and unlike other vacations and cruises we had taken before we did nothing and we are proud of it.  My husband are both very intense workaholics and this is quite a feat to achieve.  My husband Bob mentioned at the start of the vacation that he preferred not to be forced to do things for fun like what happened in our past cruises.   So we just took it easy.

I just want to share pictures I took that capture what our stay was like at the Marriott Hotel and its beach.

 

Learned how to play from the children.

Watched and listened to the ocean waves.

Looked out from our bedroom window to admire the view.



Watched people do nothing.

Lastly don't you wish you can do this?



Beautiful lady at the airport who shared the message on her T-shirt.  By the way she did not follow the advice on the T-shirt .  She was on her way home like we were when we met her.

You won't be able to resist this salad!

Three ingredients.  No cooking needed.  Easy yet irresistible. 

We prepare this fruit salad during special feasts in the Philippines.  We rely on canned fruit and cream since apples, grapes and peaches in the fruit cocktail do not grow easily in the Philippines.  The typical Filipino fruit salad uses canned Nestle cream and condensed milk for the dressing but I substituted cream cheese for the former. 

Other recipes on the web feature other fruit like fresh cubed apples or canned pineapple tidbits.  Some recipes add Filipino nata de coco or bottled or fresh young coconut called buko but I prefer to be a minimalist and limit the ingredients to three.   I served this at a recent party and one of the guests who is a good cook herself loved it.   Here is the recipe.

Easy Irresistible Fruit Salad

Ingredients:

3 (29 oz each) large cans fruit cocktail, drained
1 8 oz cream cheese
1 (14 oz) can condensed milk (I usually use half of this amount since I prefer the salad not to be too sweet)

Instructions:

Thoroughly drain the fruit cocktail until you do not see any juice dripping from the colander. 

Mix the cream cheese and condensed milk thoroughly.

Transfer the drained fruit cocktail in a large bowl and pour into it the cream cheese and condensed milk mixture.   Carefully blend the dressing to the fruit cocktail.  Chill in the refrigerator if you can wait.