Black Bean Brownies

Now,  before you judge this recipe, keep reading and give it a chance! I was a little skeptical at first, but regardless,  thought it would be worth trying at least once.

I found a similar recipe months ago while looking though healthy desserts,  and stored the idea away for a time when I had a random can of black beans hiding in my pantry.

I'm happy to announce that I finally did have that can,  and also a very wicked chocolate craving, as I always do when I decide to bake! Another great thing about these is black beans are fairly high in iron, and if you're anything like me, when you're craving chocolate, you could also do with a dose of iron! ;-)

Another perk to these is they are gluten free, which is something my family and I have recently become.

First off, I was incredibly pleased with how easy this recipe was. Stick all the ingredients in a blender and blend till smooth.  Brainless,  just how I like my baking!

There are a number of variations of this recipe online,  including eggless or sugar-substitute ones.

I didn't choose those. :-)

My chosen recipe has eggs AND sugar. I mean,  they are brownies after all...

Here it is:

Preheat oven to 350° and grease an 8x8 inch pan.

Blend the following ingredients in a blender or food processor: (I used our ninja- best blender ever!)

1 can black beans,  drained and rinsed
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3 tbsp oil
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
A pinch of salt

Pour into the pan and sprinkle with chocolate chips.

Bake until the top is slightly crispy and the edges pull away from the side of the pan. This took me about 40 minutes.

Something I thought pretty cool is Adrian couldn't even tell what they were made of! They were so chocolatey and rich!

My First Wood Staining Experience

I found these gorgeous, handmade wood pieces at a garage sale a few weeks ago for $1 each and just had to get them! I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to use them for, but I thought they would make yet another awesome diy craft for me this summer. Jaxson is an amazing napper, and while his schedule is slowly starting to change, he does still have at least one 2-3 hour nap a day, and if I use my time wisely, that's a great chunk of time to get stuff done!

Naturally, i've been taking full advantage of that and have been trying my hand at some new things, including knitting, round looming, painting, gardening, and now this: wood staining!

Unfinished pieces, they're even beautiful as they are, non?

I bought a gel stain at Rona and a varnish overcoat so at least the wheel barrow could handle being outside. The wheel barrow also came with a couple small pots that I immediately planted some mini dahlias in, so I wanted to make sure I could water them in it without warping the wood. 

The process was amazingly simple, incredibly fun, and was over before I knew it! I finished staining both pieces, and cleaning up before Jaxson even woke up! The gel stain was great - it was way thicker than I expected it to be, but I liked that. There was zero spatter onto myself, and it went on evenly and simply!

Stained and ready to weatherproof!

I let them dry outside overnight and then coated them with the waterproofing varnish and voila! I'm really impressed with how easy this was to do, and at how good they look! I had a ton of fun doing this, and now make it a point of looking for wood pieces at garage sales or thrift stores that I can sand down and stain! 

Now I just have to be careful to buy useful things and not get stuck just buying for the sake of staining! We've all been there, right? Right??

I love the natural stain outside, because it just finished this piece nicely and doesn't detract from the beautiful plants!

This little tool box became my handy-dandy beside-the-couch lotion, nail clipper, kleenex holder, phone and tablet charger! It looks great and is compact so I have more space for my cups of coffee in the morning!

Homemade Tooth Paste and Tooth Powder

A few months ago, I decided to try making my own toothpaste once we had run out of the expensive, natural kind we were using. A friend of mine here in Saskatoon had tried it with pleasant results.

There are a ton of recipes online, and it took me the better part of Jaxson's nap to do some research and decide on one that a liked... And I couldn't even narrow it down to one after all that! I found two very different recipes and liked the sound of both of them, so I decided to make just a small batch of each!

I wasn't worried about either of these cleaning our mouths, because all the ingredients are cleansing, antibacterial and/or antimicrobial. I mean, I use coconut oil to oil pull with amazing results!

These are the two recipes I tried:

Wellness Mama's Remineralizing Tooth Powder, with my own variations based on my ingredient availability

I made this recipe as follows:

3 tbsp bentonite clay
1 tbsp baking soda
2 tbsp crushed mint leaf (ground with a mortar and pestle)
1 tbsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp ground cloves
Peppermint essential oil to taste

Crunchy Betty's Coconut Oil Toothpaste, again with my own small variations based on research and the availability of ingredients.

For this recipe, I used everything except the glycerin:

3 tbsp coconut oil
3 tbsp baking soda
Stevia extract to taste
Peppermint essential oil to taste

Both Adrian and I have been using them for a few months now and we both like them a lot!

:-) 

To be honest, it's kind of nice having two different kinds - that way, I have some choice. More often than not, I use the tooth powder in the morning and the paste at night.

Pros for these recipes:

1. They last forever! A single batch of each lasted Adrian and I almost 3 months.

2. Both keep my breath fresh and mouth clean all day.

3. The coconut oil one helps whiten teeth - at least I noticed a difference when I used that one exclusively.

4. Both taste great!

Cons for these recipes:

1. The powder texture takes a bit of getting used to and you really need to rinse out your mouth or you'll have a brown, gritty smile!

2. Both make a bit of a mess of your sink - the coconut oil paste requires washing with hot water, the powder just requires a quick wipe down.

3. The coconut oil paste hardens and needs to be scooped out with a finger or knife.

I ended up making another batch of toothpaste a couple weeks later, to take up to the lake with me so I could leave the original batches at home for Adrian, who had to come back before me for work. For this paste, I tried halfing the amount of baking soda, because I found the original recipe quite salty and have read that it can cause tooth sensitivity, though neither Adrian nor I, nor my friend and her husband have noticed this. I have to say, though, I do prefer the paste with less baking soda, and I still feel just as clean and fresh!

Tooth powder on the left, paste on the right

I'm super happy with all of these recipes, and am enjoying the nice, all-day clean and fresh feel!

Cinderblock Gardening

This spring, we moved upstairs in the house we were living, and therefore got more creative liberty with the yard and garden. Being on a budget, as we are, I started looking on Pinterest for DIY Planter Boxes and fell in love with the cinderblock look!

We found some, incredibly cheap, at the ReStore in Saskatoon, and went to town! Other than cinderblocks, all you need is construction adhesive, hardware cloth or chicken wire, and landscaping cloth.

Adrian and I had fun piecing them together and finding the pattern that looked the best. We settled on two walls - one for mostly culinary herbs, but also some splashes of colours with flowers, and one in our sitting area featuring bug repelling plants. 

I'm in love with the look, and they have done so well! I've really been impressed.

This is how they looked when I first planted everything. I was late in getting things in, so this didn't happen until the first of July! Next year i'll get started sooner.

In this one, i've got parsley, basil, peppermint, cilantro, lavender, sage, oregano, marigolds, geranium, lobelia, and a couple more bright, hanging flowers.

In this, our smaller bug repelling wall, we've got marigolds, geranium, lemon balm, lemon thyme, rosemary, basil, peppermint, lavender, bee balm and an extra lobelia for added colour.

What each plant repels:

Marigolds: mosquitoes, 

Geranium: mosquitoes, beetles

Lemon Balm: mosquitoes

Lemon Thyme: mosquitoes

Rosemary: slugs, flies, mosquitoes

Basil: flies, mosquitoes

Peppermint: flies, aphids, mosquitoes, some beetles

Lavender: moths, fleas, flies, mosquitoes

Bee balm: mosquitoes

I wanted to also get lemongrass and citronella, but couldn't find any, late as I was getting these in the first place. I'll try again next spring for those.

Two weeks later, we've already got some growth!

I ended up moving the lavender into a big pot so that it had more room to take off.

Two weeks later, there's explosive growth!

And these are the most recent pictures... Two weeks later. Unbelievable growth and very ready to harvest! It amazes me how fast changes happen in nature.

I absolutely love the look of these, and am so happy we did it! All in all, including plants, black earth, manure, peat moss, the cinderblocks, construction cloth and adhesive, and landscaping cloth, we spent about $150 for all of this! I'd say that's a pretty good price for what we got out of it!

We plan on making a few oil infusions with some herbs for winter cooking, and are hoping to bring a few inside to over-winter. We'll see how that goes!

Hush/Sensory Bottles

Months ago, I found a pin on Pinterest for something called a Hush Bottle, and googled it to get more instructions. Intrigued, I clicked on it and what I found was so visually entertaining, I knew I just had to try it! These bottles can be used just for visual stimulation, or for time outs - give your kid the bottle, shaken, for a time out and let them come back when the glitter has settled.

The ingredients, so simple:

A plastic bottle
Ultra fine glitter
Glitter glue (pearlized is best, but if you can't find that, use a pearlizing medium)
Hot, but not boiling water

Food colouring, if desired (I used gel colours)

I could not find pearlized glitter glue,  so as I noted above,  I just added an acrylic pearlizing medium and that seemed to do the trick. 

There isn't really a set recipe for this.  I ended up just playing around until I thought it looked cool. For this reason,  DON'T fill the bottle completely until you're sure you like the way it looks. When you do, fill it and super glue the cap on!

What I did:

I put a bit of pearlizer in...

Then, I added water and shook to blend.

Then I added about half a bottle of glitter glue, a bit more very hot water, and shook till the glue was completely melted and the were no clumps.

Next,  I added glitter and food colouring - I eyeballed it, but I probably added about 1.5 tbsp of glitter, and enough food colouring to make it look nice - and shook well.

Food colouring at the neck of the bottle, glitter starting to sink to the bottom.

I played around a bit after this, and ended up adding more glitter glue: as a rule off thumb, if you want the glitter to settle faster,  use less glue;  if you want it to settle slower,  add more glue!

Fully mixed and shaken

Since Jaxson is too young for time outs,  I made these purely for fun and entertainment,  not for time out timers, so I didn't need the glitter to settle all that quickly. These settled after about 12 minutes.

Completely settled

I'm incredibly happy with the results.  Even Adrian liked them!

Goof....

I made them during Jaxson's afternoon nap, and we ended up needing to wake him up, because it was getting late, so he woke up a little out of sorts. These worked so well as a distraction! He really liked them!

My tired boy 

I will probably end up making these again when Jaxson's older and needing time outs!

Edible Goop #1

I recently subscribed to a page on Facebook called Fun At Home With Kids and I absolutely love it! There are so many great,  simple,  safe homemade activities on there, for all ages that I'm dying to try.

Last month,  they obviously had a thing for gaks and goops. There were a ton of different kinds posted every day: sparkly, different consistencies, edible,  inedible (in most cases this meant with borax), the list goes on.

I decided to try an edible version,  because Jaxson is JUST starting to get away from the whole stickeverythinginhismouth phase and I wasn't sent entirely sure he wouldn't just try to eat it because I planned to let him play with it in his high chair,  for simplicity.

So I tried this edible gak recipe.

1/4 cup Holy Basil seeds (tukmaria)

1 16oz box cornstarch

2.5 cups water

food colouring (optional)

I was a little unsure where I would find tukmaria seeds in Saskatoon,  but lucked out when I went into a halal market in our neighbourhood. 

I also didn't really want to use food colouring, so instead I used some spirulina to make the gak green! It turned out better than I expected, though it did smell like spirulina... not that that's the worst thing in the world.

I dissolved the spirulina in water first,  then added that to the corn starch and tukmaria seeds. 

Mixing with my hands was the easiest way to do it. 

And it started thickening pretty quickly! 

After it was completely mixed, I let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours. 

The result was fantastic! 

It took Jaxson a little while to get into it....

And Daddy had to help him along by folding his hands into it....

 Even then, he was still a little unsure and had to show Mommy just to make sure it was ok...

But after that, he had a blast with it!

We all really enjoyed this stuff,  and I'm excited to try another recipe like this soon!