Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Makeup Party

Our Cute Young Womens Group

We had a short lesson on modest make up and then
began to play with my stage make up. I showed the girls how to do Geisha makeup like I did when I was in the King and I and I showed them how fun fake eyelashes are :)
Our Geisha Megan and Katie our newest member
Teaching rag curls :)
Brittany with Rag curls with 20's bangs
Sierra
Cuta Alyssa with funky gold eyelashes and curly hair
Marla and Payton. Like mother, like daughter


Megan

Smores and Hotdogs for FHE











Sunday, April 11, 2010

Sushi Making











In the last few years, I have developed a love for sushi. I had raw fish before in Mexico and Chile, fish so called "cooked" with lemon but still slimy and odd textured. I went with Laura to my first suchi bar and LOVED it. My favorite was the las vegas roll, the deep fried shrimpy goodness that is tempura. Since then we have discovered several sushi restauraunts that serve good sushi including an all you can eat sushi buffet in Vegas and even some decent california type rolls from Wallmart. We even found a good restaurant here in Martinsville that have sushi deals for lunch and our whole family can have sushi for $24. Jack loves it because they do hibachi cooking and light onion volcanoes and cook his food in front of us. Charlie loves sushi too, he got his first exposure when he was just a few months old.

We had BYC at our house and following tradition wanted to make some dinner/ appetizers for all the kids in the branch. Laura decided that we needed to make sushi. Our branch pres warned us that these are southern kids who just like biscuits and gravy and may not eat anything different, especially if it's not deep fried. I thought maybe they wouldn't ask us to host it again if we traumatized the teenagers with sushi rolls. Thanks to Laura who made a special trip to Danville, we got all the ingredients and Jack had lots of fun trying to roll them up. It actually is alot harder than it looks, sometimes the seaweed wraps break or we would try and fill them to full and then we couldn't get them to seal. It took us a few hours to make 3 or 4 cookies sheets full of sushi-type rolls (We didn't use raw fish, just chicken, crab, cheese, ham and even some hot dog bits.) Although we were nervous, all the teenagers tried them and most of them liked them alot! Most of them went back for seconds... I think a few eyes were opened to the goodness that is sushi tonight.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Robby's Latest Adventure

INSPIRE









Robby and Alissa opened a Food Cart Business where they are making organic juice and raw pies. These pictures are from christmas time and we tried some of their yummy pies. Instead of using eggs sugar or oil, they use coconut milk and chop up nuts to squeeze the oil out and then they all stick together just like a regular pie only healthier because non of the ingredients have lost their nutritional value. We tried a chocolate and a key lime pie that was delicious!


Here is the approximate recipe if you'd like to try it.


Key Lime Pie
Tart and sweet at the same time, it really hits the spot!
Makes one 9" pie, serving 8-10

Crust Ingredients:
3 C fine almond flour*
4-5 fresh medjool dates
2 T coconut oil
1/2 tsp. sea salt

Filling Ingredients:
2 small ripe avocados
1 banana
1 1/4 C juice from key limes (regular limes will also work fine)
1/2 C mango chunks
1/2 C agave nectar
1/3 C coconut cream concentrate or oil
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Preparation:
To make crust, place almond flour, dates, coconut oil, and sea salt in a food processor and blend until it balls up. Firmly press crust into pie pan and set aside.

To make the filling, process all filling ingredients in a high-powered blender such as a VitaMix until smooth and fluid. Pour into pie shell and freeze about 4-6 hours or longer. I like to serve this topped with a little shredded coconut and mango chunks or slices.
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*Almond Flour is made when you grind almonds for making almond milk. Almond pulp is what is left over. After the grinding process, strain it as much as possible and dry it in your dehydrator. It is kept best in the freezer in an air-tight bag or container.

If you do not wish to go through this process, you are certainly welcome to just use ground raw almonds, but you won't get the same fine texture on the crust. I learned that from these guys. Isn't that cool you can make flour from almonds? While Robby is in India, Alissa is holding down the fort literally and starting an awesome business.
Good Luck Robby and Lis in your New Venture!!