Crochet Madness!

In my previous post I said that baby blanket was the last blanket I would do that involved squares joined together. That was truth, this blanket actually was made before I started my baby blankets, but I finished it off JUST in time to wrap it and take it out to my dad's for Christmas. I had to tie in half the blanket. My favourite part. I love this blanket. It is huge. It took forever. It is comfy and warm. Its so bright and cheerful. Most importantly? Its FLAT! The border join, known as the "join as you go" is flat and cute. I love my blankets flat. I made it for my step mom for her Christmas present. Merry Christmas!! It was about time she got her own blanket. My dad has had his for years.

This christmas I learned my step sister was pregnant, so I have 7 months to make her a blanket. So much for me ending the crochet madness. Hers will be simple. I will not make another crazy hard blanket. Famous last words?

Crochet Baby Blanket #3

3 down, 1 to go. The next one is much easier to do. I swear! I thought this one would be fairly easy, and not as time consuming as the blackberry salad blankets I made for my sister and friend. WRONG!! This blanket took me 3-4 times as long to finish as my yellow and grey blanket. Terrible. Completely time consuming. Its beautiful though. And little baby Norah is only 3 months old now, so maybe its about time she gets her blanket. I believe this will be the last blanket I do that involves squares that need to be put together.

I found the design on pinterest, shocking I know. It took a couple minutes but I finally found a tutorial on her blog to show me how to make this amazing blanket. So away I went. I chose my colours and started on the medallions. After a couple were made I realized how easy time consuming this blanket actually was. The worst part was once all 90 squares were completed, I had no idea how to join them all together. The tutorial didn't tell me how to join, so I scoured the internet for DAYS trying to find a way that I liked. Finally I settled on a way that would create a raised border between each. Instead of doing a single crochet to join them together I decided to slip stitch the entire thing, which created a smaller raised border. Not my favourite, I like a flat blanket, but my patience time was running out so it was what I did. I like the pictures better than the actual blanket. I will never make this again. No matter who asks. Well, there are a few people that may be able to convince me. Stupid sisters.

Me Vs Christmas Tree: 3 Strikes you're out!

I love Christmas. I love decorating for Christmas. It makes me so very happy to come home and turn on my Christmas tree lights and sit on my couch with a warm blanket and enjoy the ambiance of my cozy little Christmas retreat. Usually my house is decorated by early November, and this year I had every intention of following that timeline.

My mom gave me her old tree that she bought for super cheap at Zellers, it was the display model and it was missing a row of branches. I had just bought a house and couldn't afford a tree so I was more than happy to use it. I managed to make it look far better than I ever thought possible for a few years. I lent it to my step sister for her wedding and something happened to it and its never been the same since. Consequently this year I decided that I would splurge on a new tree. I looked all over town, I measured my small little living room and I found the most amazing fake tree at Costco. It had "real tree technology" which is an amusing title. It was cheap, it was beautiful and it should fit in my living room with half a foot to spare, perfect for my tree topper. It took me hours to set the tree up and put lights on it. Sadly as it was a foot taller than my previous tree I didn't have enough lights, or ribbon to complete the tree so my tree sat there with the bottom half unlit. The tree had a small amount of clearance and I decided it was time to test out the star. It fit, but it was ridiculous, millimetres to spare. and it was just too fat. It looked ridiculous in my tiny living room. Down it came, over 6 hours wasted in total to set up and take down. Strike 1.

Way too close to the ceiling, but it was GORGEOUS

I was done, I was upset, I was exhausted. My week off work was over and I had wanted my house clean and decorated before I had to go back to work full time. Now I had my decorations strewn all over the room and I didn't want to take them downstairs, nor did I want to lug up my old tree. That thing puked plastic needles like crazy. So my room was in limbo for a couple weeks as I went from store to store looking at all the other fake trees for sale. Can I just say that there is a lot of crappy looking junky trees for sale that are 2-3 times as much as I paid at Costco? Ridiculous. I couldn't find a single tree under $700 I would be willing to put up in my living room.

This was a GOOD angle

Everyone told me to buy real. I love real trees. The smell alone is amazing, and they remind me of my childhood. They are a lot of work though. I have a small car, no way to transport it. I'd have to buy a stand, I'd have to find a way to dispose of it in the new year. Blah blah blah, whine whine whine. I remained in Christmas limbo, becoming a little more Scrooge-ish each day. Then my mom declared she was forgoing using her GORGEOUS artificial tree this year for a real one, and would bring me one as well. Who was I to refuse. So while I was at work they went and picked up a beautiful height appropriate tree and a stand and brought it over to my house when I was off work the next day. We set it up, made sure she was straight and away they went. The worst part about a real tree is letting all the branches settle for 24 hours. So I waited. When I finally was off work and able to start to decorate my tree I noticed the tree was at an angle. So I called up my mom and got some help to straighten it. Within 45 minutes of their leaving the tree was right back at a 30 degree angle. I was beyond frustrated. I left it alone to see if it was going to fall over. It didn't. I spent an hour getting it straight, in which time it almost fell on me 2-3 times. Strike 2.

STRAIGHT!

I just tossed the decorations on, usually I make
sure it looks symmetrical.

I then lit my tree up. Once again it started to tip. I can not explain how frustrated I was. I decided I would not decorate it, I would just turn it on and smell it. That lasted a couple days and then I went to town straightening it again. This time I noticed that the trunk was mushy and the stand was digging in and that was why it was tipping. I gerry rigged the tree and if I didn't touch it, it was perfect. 3 days later it was still perfectly straight so I decorated my tree with my decorations and it made me smile.


 I was in love. The smell, the lights, the decorations. It was gorgeous. I left it for another day or two, and then decided I should probably attempt to water it as it had been 5 days without water. Idiotic. Christmas was 5 days away. The tree would have been ok until then. The tree was not happy with me and tried to crush me a few times, but I straightened it and thought it was secure, I let go and went upstairs to grab something and heard a loud clatter. I ran down the stairs afraid to see what was the matter. What to I see, not to my surprise? My tree on the ground right before my eyes. Strike 3.

Stupid Tree

Path of destruction

I was done. DONE. No more. I lifted the tree up with one hand, and with the other I grabbed all my decorations and tossed them on couches and chairs safely. Trying not to break the beautiful ornaments. That was the easy part. The hard part was taking off the 4 strands of lights with one hand. Once that was done, I opened my sliding door and tossed it outside. Along with the stand and my soggy tree skirt. Luckily the waterproof tree skirt took all the damage and barely any tree water and grime got on my carpet. Then I sat on my couch and tried not to cry. Three strikes you're out. Well played Christmas tree. Well played.

The amount of needles on my carpet was astonishing. Well, I guess the astonishing thing is that there were still needles left on the tree. My vacuum managed the situation better than I anticipated, however this whole thing has led me to the decision that I am buying a Dyson.

 Luckily I still got to enjoy christmas trees at my mom's place, my dad's place, and my sister's place, which made the sting of a Christmas free zone home a little easier to handle. Next year I'm not sure if I'll pull out the old tree or attempt a real one again, but I'm thinking the fake one may win out!

DISNEYLAND!!

Last month I went to Disneyland with a friend and her 3 girls. Her husband isn't a "crowd" person, so he wasn't into the whole Disneyland scene. Lucky for me. I got to be nanny for the week and go experience the magical world of Disney for the first time since I was 5! It was crazy to see how much had changed. A lot of the rides were still there, but had been altered according to new movies that have come out. Pirates of the Caribbean used to be just a Pirate ride and now it is a ride that has Captain Jack Sparrow in it. The Tarzan tree house used to be Swiss Family Robinson's tree house. It was a great week. We had a lot of fun. And the best news? We are still friends after our first major excursion together :)

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Baby Blankets

Just over a year ago my little sister and I went down to visit our older sister in Washington and found out my little sister was pregnant. As much as that was good news, there was actually a negative aspect to the news. I had to lift my crochet ban. A baby blanket was necessary, I had made a blanket for my older sister after she had her son (granted, it wasn't really a baby blanket. It was much too big). So when we got home I went out, bought some yarn and then scoured the internet to find a cute idea.

Let's back track a bit. I learned to crochet years ago when I used to work casual, and did a lot of night shifts. Life on 3A was a bit different back then. There were hospitals in the smaller communities surrounding us that had a maternity unit, there weren't as many surgeries. I don't know really what happened but we had a lot of slower night shifts back then. Now not that many years later, our shifts are rarely really slow, but back then I needed something to keep me awake. An LPN taught me how to crochet a single and a double crochet stitch and away I went. I single crocheted a queen sized blanket for my dad for christmas. It took months. It was not especially pretty, I never learned how to count stitches, or ensure my gauge was accurate, or consistent. So it is huge. It is ridiculously warm. He loves it. It took me months to complete, and I promptly stopped crocheted for almost a year. Then the next christmas I made a smaller double crochet blanket for my brother. I tend to overdose myself on things, and then avoid them for a long long time. Crochet is no exception. I have made a couple blankets here and there over the years, never for myself. So I decided to make myself one to match the colours that I want in my room. I started by thinking up an awesome granny square design that utelized 3 different sizes of granny's. I made up a ton of the one size, made 2 of the small size, put them all in a bag, and tossed them behind my chair. Not to be looked at again for 2 years, when I had to dig it out to get my hooks for my new baby blanket project. So here we went again. I always had made huge blankets that took ages, but this was a baby blanket. Small, quick, painless right? Wrong.

I found the cutest pattern on Moogly called the Blackberry Salad Striped Baby Blanket. Its adorable. And luckily it had a video tutorial, because I do NOT know how to read a pattern. So I figured out how to work the stitch and set out to make the blanket. 

Clearly I did not pay close enough attention to the pattern. I got this far in my new project before I said ENOUGH and tossed it behind the chair and ignored its very existence. I had managed to chose a stitch that would take as long to do a baby blanket as a queen sized blanket would take in a different stitch. What can I say? I clearly don't like to do things that are simple... uh right. 

It wasn't until 2.5 months AFTER my nephew was born that I decided it was time that I get started on his blanket again. My friend had told me a couple months before that she was expecting baby no. 2 and asked when a good time to put her baby blanket order in. I laughed and said that my sister's wasn't even remotely done yet and my nephew was already born. So I pulled out the bag from behind my chair and looked at the blanket. Not excited, let's just be clear about that. I hunted down the pattern online again, watched the video to remind myself how to do the blanket and discovered that I did the blanket wrong. The bobble stitch should be every 4th stitch, with 3 single crochets in the middle, then after the bobble stitch row, a double crochet row. I was doing every other stitch a bobble, and then did a single crochet row following. AKA, I made it MORE difficult and time consuming then it actually should be. But the blanket was started, and I'd put way too much time into it, so I decided to continue. It took me 2.5 lifetimes hours to complete the next row of blue that is NOT in the picture. Then I turned it over to look at it and discovered that I had screwed up... at the beginning of the row. Aka almost 3 hours of work was useless. I then promptly gave up. I tossed the started blanket in the bag and grabbed the yarn and went to work on the RIGHT pattern. I don't know why it was so difficult but starting the blanket out with the right amount of chains was almost impossible. It took me over 30 attempts. I almost gave up completely but thankfully I got it right. And away we went. 

I wasn't going to unravel the first attempt at the blanket because it represented so many hours of work. However I eventually ran out of yarn and was determined to NEVER finish that first blanket. So it got unraveled. It was sad. But I made some cute little balls of yarn out of it, and discovered balls of yarn are much much easier to use than what Walmart sold me. 

The flash messed up the actual colours, the brown is DARK

Once I got the chains right the blanket was fairly steady going. I finished it in a couple weeks. I had planned on only making it a square but my sister wanted it to be a crib blanket, so I made it bigger. It is a fairly heavy yarn, and a thick stitch so it is a nice warm blanket... I almost want one for myself, but I know how well making myself a blanket goes.

I had decided there would be no more blackberry striped blanket action for me. I was done. I told my friend that she should find a blanket online and send it to me so I could get an idea of what she wanted. She found an adorable rose blanket that looked impossible and required a purchase of a pattern, which I have already established I wouldn't be able to read. So we agreed I would make the same style of blanket. Yippee.

And may I say that getting the correct chains to start was every bit as difficult this time around as it was the first. I don't know what is wrong with me, but clearly I should stick to blankets that don't require counting.

I used a thinner softer yarn for this blanket as my friend lives in Arizona so my sisters blanket would probably give my friend's baby heat stroke. 

I had 4 blankets to make in total. 2 down 2 to go. I made this one second, despite this particular friend being due in January and my other friend being due in November. If all had gone as planned it would have been fine. I finished this blanket quite quickly, but Miss November bumped up the schedule by delivering 5 weeks early. So now I have to quickly decide what I am making, and get it made. Good luck to me.

Finally an organized spice cupboard!!

I hated my spice cupboard. It wasn't quite complete, I had a bunch of stock jars from whatever grocery store I'd bought the spices at. A hodge podge if you will. So I started to hunt for options. None of the spice racks appealed to me, plus they didn't have the right spices for me. I finally found jars that I was in love with, however they were only online at Target and they only shipped to the states. So when I was down in the states I found awesome jars at World Market. They found a couple boxes for me and all but one of my new jars made it home safe and sound. Then next dilemma was how to label the jars. I searched online, but there really wasn't much, all the labels I found to buy were either ugly or didn't match my spices that I had. So I went to Michaels and just walked around. For 2 hours. And I figured out a slightly labour intensive idea.

I bought a roll of chalkboard contact paper, a chalk marker and a punch. The punch didn't work and the marker wasn't very good so I returned them and just cut them out the old fashioned way. ought a roll of chalkboard contact paper, a chalk marker and a punch. The punch didn't work and the marker wasn't very good so I returned them and just cut them out the old fashioned way. For my bigger jars that I bought at Ikea, I used little wooden cutouts as a stencil. I bought better chalk markers from Michaels. They are awesome. They won't smudge and they are erasable with a little bit of water... which is good as I'm sure I will discover some misspelled spices.

It will drive me CRAZY that there is one missing there. Crazy.

I bought two different sizes from World Market. One is a 3 oz bottle which I used for most of the spices. I also bought a few 7 oz bottles which I put my Mrs. Dash Chicken and Southwest Chipotle as I am obsessed with them and use them a ton. I love my new spice cupboard. It matches my glass containers that I've been slowly accumulating over the last couple years from Ikea and Walmart. The great thing is I didn't even use 1/4 of my contact paper! I still have a bunch of glass containers, so I will eventually get around to it... but probably not till after Disneyland next week! Can't wait!!

Materials

spice jars, as many as you need

chalkboard contact paper - regular 19.99 at Michaels, it was on sale for $14

Chalkboard marker $9 on sale for $7 (Useless "Bride" marker, rubbed right off)

Craftsmart Chalk Marker set - regular $19.99 for 4... Thank you 50% off coupon! $10

Craft Punch $34, with a 40% off coupon only $20.99 (also useless, wasn't able to punch through the paper

Scissors!! free! As I have a bunch of random scissors everywhere.

wooden cutouts $1.50 for 3. I only used the 1 shape though.

So it cost me $24 to do the project. I'm not including the cost of the jars... 

Did I mention I LOVE IT?

Out with the Old, In with the New!

My kitchen is tiny and it drives me crazy. Tiny, barely any counter space, and NO DISHWASHER. Oh, did I mention that I only have one sink as well? Yup. That is correct, no dishwasher and only one sink, barely any counter space. It all adds up to aggravation. When I moved in my kitchen was equipped with your average run of the mill faucet. It wasn't tall enough for me to be able to fill up tall jugs or my large Brita Jug. Then one day I was looking through the postings on Kijiji and I found a new faucet for my kitchen. Its beautiful, tall, brushed nickel. I loved it. Best of all? It was only $25. So I bought it, and promptly enlisted my dad to switch it out. When I bought my house I definitely have stepped up my game in the (minor) home renos. (aka... hang my own pictures, move most of my own furniture, put together furniture etc). However, plumbing was not on my list of things I wanted to do. My dad did a great job and I loved it.

Now I was able to do so much more in my sink. And wow, did  this faucet increase my water pressure, a happy bonus. I loved it... for a couple years. Until I realized that a sprayer would make my kitchen life so much easier. So I searched for a couple months for a nice one. Let me let you in on a secret. Faucets are ridiculously over priced. So I opted to wait, and my patience paid off. Canadian Tire is celebrating their 90th anniversary (happy birthday!!!) this weekend and so they had a 3 day sale, where I discovered a gorgeous spray faucet for 50% off. Well, 50% according to the flyer, but somebody forgot to go to math class. It is normally $199, on sale for "50%" off, for $90. So, most certainly NOT 50% off, but their lack of math prowess was my gain! So I quickly snapped up the stainless steel version of the faucet, brought it home and had the idea that maybe, just maybe I would add (simple) plumbing to my list of reno accomplishments. That thought lasted 2.5 seconds and I promptly texted my dad for help. He agreed to come over the next day to help, and I pulled out my faucet to look at it next to my sink. Now, my sink is most definitely not brushed nickel, but it also isn't as shiny as the stainless faucet. I was torn. So I ran back to Canadian Tire and bought the brushed nickel faucet so I could side by side compare and make a decision. Brushed nickel won out. After getting a couple free showers sprayed in the face a few times, my dad got the faucet working and I am in love. In fact, he liked it so  much that he bought the extra one off me and now I don't have to bother returning it!

I. AM. IN. LOVE!!! I was supposed to wash those dishes to return to my dad, but somehow that didn't happen until after he left. Oops! Ha ha. But let me tell you. This faucet makes me happy, so this is my new favourite thing for the day!

Kash came to visit...

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My nephew Kash and my sister came up to visit us from the states. Kash got to spend a few days alone with his grandparents. My step mom is learning to use her camera, and I think she's a natural. So to showcase her beautiful photography I decided to make a shutterfly book. I'm so excited to see the finished product at the end of the month when we go down to visit Tamara!

Magic Lotion Bars

Last week I had a huge reaction to something I ate, compounded with being at work and using the awful gloves that we have at work. (OK, so they probably aren't AWFUL for the general people, but for me, I react to them on the best of days.) The eczema was just horrible. By far the worst I have ever experienced. I had been doing research on natural remedies, as I am not one for taking medications, especially corticosteroids. One of the things I discovered was coconut oil is amazing for eczema. I started to use that and it cleared up my eczema relatively quickly considering I wasn't using steroids. However, with this reaction that I had, the coconut oil wasn't able to penetrate through the rough disgusting rash. Despite my constant slathering of the oil, it just wasn't doing the trick this time. So it was back to the drawing board. Enter the miracle of Shea Butter! I was at a store where I found a sample of pure shea butter, put it on my hands and wow! It actually penetrated through and softened my hands up a tiny bit, enough for me to start working it out with the coconut oil that I had. Lucky for me a few weeks before this I had ordered shea butter and beeswax to try out lotion bars that I had discovered on One Good Thing By Jillee's Blog. It is the recipe for MadeON's Hard Lotion Bars. I've seen a few different recipe's for lotion bars, however this is the recipe I decided sounded the best. Shea butter and coconut oil are touted to be amazing for eczema and dry sensitive skin. Both of which I am a victim of. On day 6 of dealing with this reaction, I came home from work to find my package from Mountain Rose Herbs sitting on my door step! I was so excited that I immediately made it. OK, that's a lie, I immediately OPENED the box, looked at all my fun purchases, then proceeded to have a nap. AFTER the nap I put the lotion bar ingredients into action!

Ingredients: (equal parts)
-shea butter
-coconut oil
-beeswax
If you want harder bars, add more beeswax, softer add more coconut oil. If they are too greasy you have too much coconut oil, if too sticky you have too much shea butter... Just re melt and adjust!
That's it! Easy right? First I want to talk a tiny bit about what kinds of ingredients you want to use. Most important? UNREFINED! I can't emphasize enough how you need to spend a tiny bit more and buy unrefined cold pressed product. If you buy refined shea butter or coconut oil all the miracle healing elements of the shea and coconut oil is killed. The high heat that they expose it to will decimate any healing properties, meaning your lotion bars will not be as fabulous and miraculous. They will still be chemical free (yay!) however they will just be lotion, not magical lotion. Yes magical. So please please please buy unrefined! I purchased my beeswax and my shea from Mountain Rose Herbs, and the coconut oil is from my fav local health food store Oliver's Health.

First, you need to construct a double boiler. When baking, my double boiler is a pot of water with a Pyrex bowl on top. I was wary of using a baking bowl because I don't trust my ability to clean up the bowl after. So I opted for an extra Pyrex liquid measure, the bonus of this is that i was able to pour the mixture easily into the molds of choice.

I have a flimsy little kitchen scale that I used to measure out all my ingredients. For easy transfer and clean up I placed a piece of parchment paper over the scale before I measured it out.
 I did the melting in three steps, melting first the beeswax, which has a melting point of around 145*F  (about 63*C). When the beeswax is all but melted, I add in the shea butter, which has a melting point of around 90*F (32*C). After the shea is almost completely melted I add in the coconut oil which has a fairly low melting point of 76*F or 24*C. Using a bamboo skewer to stir everything up, it usually melts quite quickly (I made an ounce of each ingredient and it melted within 4-5 minutes).
Then take the Pyrex out of the water and dry the outside off, and pour into molds. (For lip gloss tubes, fill halfway, let harden a bit and then fill up to the top) Toss into the freezer or fridge until it hardens completely (about 30 minutes in the freezer). Once hard, they should easily come out of the mold. Now you have magic. Because of the low melting point of the shea butter and the coconut oil (both well below the body's natural temperature) when you rub the bar over your skin a thin layer of lotion will coat your skin. Just rub it in a tiny bit and the beeswax will seal that moisture into your skin. That's the magic! I put it on my angry red hands a few times that night and when I woke up they were much much happier. When I went to work the next day I took it with me and used it throughout the shift. Instead of coming home with hands that were red, raw and painful, I came home with fabulous hands! Its been 3 blissful days since I made the bars and I have almost perfectly healed hands. I'm sure the steroids would have cleared this up a lot quicker, however I am just not comfortable continuing steroid use now that I've actually researched it a bit! So I will continue to use my magical lotion bars and hopefully I will be able to prevent any flare ups. Lucky for me my manager agreed to order special gloves for me at work as well. I now have fabulous green gloves that are lined with organic aloe. I feel so special :) No more tingly painful hands when I put on gloves.

My original batch made 6 little cubes of lotion, as well as one circular lotion bar. I have given away all my little cubes for people to try and everyone LOVES them. As a nurse you have to wash your hands a million times a day with harsh antimicrobial soap, then sanitize your hands with an alcohol spray a billion times a day. They've formulated these to be as moisturizing as possible but let's face it. It's not enough. With these lotion bars, they protect your hands while you wash over and over and over again!

I made a second batch today,  with 2 oz of each ingredient. I made a few apples, cubes, large circles, a couple lip balms, and i poured some into a 1/2 ounce tin. This is all that's left after my step mom stopped by and I gave her a few tidbits to take home to the family to try out. LOVE!

Spicy Hummus

Falafels and Hummus go well together. They go fantastically together. In fact, every time I make falafels, I have to make hummus.

Normally I make the hummus in my Vita-mix, this time I wanted to test out my new food processors 4 cup mini bowl and blade. It did not work as well I would have liked, so I ended up scooping it into my vitamix and finishing the job. Maybe if I used tahini instead of raw sesame seeds the food processor would work better, but as I have a Vitamix and sesame seeds, I will continue to use the Vitamix for this recipe, which I just so happened to get out of the Vitamix recipe book, and altered just a bit.

4 cup mini bowl

Spicy Hummus

NOT the right consistency

2 cups chickpeas
1/2 cup raw sesame seeds
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
3-4 cloves garlic
Italian seasoning
3 dried red peppers (spicy!) adjust as per your taste in heat

Place all the ingredients in the Vita-mix in order, turn on the vitamix to variable speed 1, then turn the dial to full and flip the switch to High. Run the blender for 1 minute, make sure you use the tamper to push it all into the blades.

Trusty Vitamix 

The RIGHT consistency

Easy with the Vita-mix. I found the food processor didn't grind up the sesame seeds as well as required, and the texture wasn't quite smooth. With the Vitamix, I can get it to the perfect consistency. Can I just say I LOVE HUMMUS? I cut my pita in half, spread on a healthy serving of hummus and threw in a few falafels. Then I cut the rest of the pita into wedges and dipped them in hummus. So good.

Not a fabulous picture, but super delicious

Baked Falafel

A couple of years ago I had never tried a falafel. I tend to avoid deep fried foods, but I had heard nothing  but good things about the falafel. So I set out to find out if it were possible to bake these little balls of deliciousness into something healthy. I still have yet to try an actual fried falafel, however these little cookies are delicious.

The main part of the falafel is the chickpea. You can buy them in dried form or in a can. I am not a huge fan of anything canned, as a lot of cans are lined with BPA. So I buy them dried and soak them over night. By soaking them you are able to fully rinse them and they will be easier to digest.  I started by tossing 1.5 c dried chickpeas into my 8 cup measuring cup, and filled it with water, the next morning they'd more than doubled their size. I've left them in the fridge for a couple days before I remember that I wanted to make hummus or falafels.

Baked Falafels

2 cups chickpeas

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 Tbsp parsley

1 Tbsp cilantro

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

2 Tbsp whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp olive oil

Usually I make my falafels in my Vita-mix, however I just bought a new Kitchenaid 13 cup food processor and I was anxious to try her out. First off, let me tell you. She. Is. HUGE. I believe she will be called Big Bertha. I tossed in the chickpeas, as well as a tablespoon of chia seeds, and away went Big Bertha. Once they were ground up I tossed in the rest of the ingredients. All of them, in no particular order.

 Once it was well mixed I pulled out one of my cookie scoops and scooped onto a baking stone. You don't have to use a baking stone, however I found that I tend to make something more if I can be a little bit lazy. The baking stone allows me to be a little bit lazy because I don't have to flip these little bad boys. Once I'd scooped out all my falafels onto the baking sheet (odd number because I wasn't super vigilant about ensuring they were all the same size). Then I squished them down so they were a bit flat. And baked them for 30 minutes at 375. (flip them at 15 minutes if not using a baking stone)

Et voila! Healthy, fibre rich, delicious falafel cookies!! Did I mention delicious?? I made a small batch of spicy hummus, smeared it on a whole wheat pita, tossed a few in, and was in heaven!