Extracting vanilla

When I was at the grocery two days ago, I grabbed a big tub of yogurt as I do on a regular basis. They didn't have my favorite brand, so I chose another. Except that I picked up the wrong tub. I'm a plain yogurt kind of gal. I like to mix it into all kinds of things: smoothies, salads, sauces, dips. You name it; yogurt makes it better. But I mistakenly pulled the vanilla from the case. I didn't even realize it until I made a smoothie yesterday and took a big old sip off the straw. Uck. That awful taste of fake sweetness. Whoa is me, what to do with 26 more ounces of this stuff? Well, today I did some experimenting and found that it's not too difficult to mask the taste in a smoothie: add a tablespoon or so of lemon juice and just a dash of real vanilla extract and voila! Nothing but peach-blueberry goodness.

Best breakfast ever…

This hit the spot this morning like nothing else could… one of our neighbors is constantly giving us gifts of fruit — earlier this week she gave us a couple of mangoes. I let them sit a little too long, so this morning I whipped up a quick and easy smoothie/lassi. Chopped up the mango into the blender (all done hovering over the blender so all the juice would drip down my arms into the blender), added a dollop of honey, a couple of ice cubes and a bit of water to make it mix nicely. The result was DELICIOUS! I know I haven't posted about cooking in quite some time — with my new schedule of working two weeknights in a row at the beginning of the week, I just can't seem to get on a regular grocery shopping, cooking routine. But I am determined to figure it out — there are too many delicious recipes waiting to be tried out there! Stay tuned…