Organic Granny

  We enjoyed this glorious salad on Christmas Eve.   It started out as a "bowl" in that the roasted butternut squash and quinoa were still hot when we added them in.  The next day we ate it as a more traditional salad cold from the fridge. Either way, the textures and flavours come together very nicely-- it is flavourful, yummy and filling while low-fat with no added refined sugar.  It is also vegan and gluten-free. Another winner from Candace Feldman's * Lean Into Plants *.

This yummy easy-on-me plant-based chocolate-cherry cobbler is a recipe of the fabulous *Forks Over Knives* team.  Link below. Chocolate-Cherry Cobbler, an incredible Christmas Confection!  So delicious, and low sugar, vegan, no added oils  and gluten-free if you opt to use GF quick oats. Also, quick to put together with most ingredients already in most of our cupboards.  Two kinds of cherries are suggested for this decadent dessert: frozen unsweetened dark sweet cherries (4 cups) and frozen unsweetened tart cherries (1 cup).  It might be tough to find either one or the other in your local market. You could consider other berries in a pinch  sweetening as needed. You could also use just one of the two berry types.   Find the full recipe HERE . If you have extra cherries, you might want to try the following great fudgy chocolate smoothie (approved by NutritionFacts.org's Dr. Michael Greger) Fudgy Chocolate- Cherry Smoothie                                                   (Click on

We have come to the end of our 10-day junket through the joys of combined crafting and cooking-baking until next Christmas!  We have one more craft and one more batch of cookies to bake... are you ready? We are going to look at some fairly simple but artfully placed center pieces as our last craft. If you have stashed away your Christmas  pine cones of all sizes  and greenery from years past-- maybe even inherited some along the way-- you will be well on your way to being able to design and put together a centerpiece that you can take pride in. Relax with a cup of tea and your favourite seasonal background music.  Now, with no judgements on how hard this is, or how skilled you are, etc. etc. etc., watch the video and catch the vision!  If you want to send me a photo of your creation, I would be very happy to post it here!  Just let me know in the comments and we will arrange something. 7 Christmas Ornaments with Pine Cones DIY  The video: And now to cap our Cookie Recipes for the seri

We are Celebrating Day 9 of 10 Days of a Gluten-Free Christmas with a recipe for GF plant-based Snickerdoodle cookies and a beautiful tissue paper paper craft that may grace your window, or perhaps become a gift in someone else's window! One of my all-time favourite Christmas crafts involves tissue paper.  If you are someone who 'saves' your wrapping paper from year to year, you likely have a number of tissue paper caches.  Get them out and make beautiful window "stained glass" using clear contact paper and pieces of tissue.  Below is a design for you to copy from, or you can find many other "coloring pages" to download and use as templates for what you want to display. Make a frame from black poster board, or just black construction paper.  After you have put the design on the one sheet of contact paper, cover with a second sheet of contact paper.  Be sure to provide a small hanger as is shown here.  Tape it to a window.  The idea is to relax and creat