Microwave Caramel Corn

This is so easy and delicious that I'll be trying to make it more often.  We watch a lot of movies, so occasionally I'll go the extra step and make us a batch of salty, buttery, heavenly popcorn.  I decided last week that caramel corn was sounding better, so we gave that a try....it made WAY too much, but better too much than not enough!

I started out by popping a little over 1/2 cup of popcorn kernels.

In a microwave safe dish, combine the following ingredients:
1/2 stick butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 light karo syrup
1/2 tsp. salt

Cook until mixture starts boiling and then cook another 2 minutes.  I'm not sure, but am guessing mine was in the microwave in the neighborhood of 3 minutes.  Remove and add 1/2 tsp. baking soda and stir.  Pour over the popcorn and mix well....and enjoy!  (Although next time I will cut this all in half and we'll probably still have leftovers!)

Bring on the health!

This post will probably bore quite a few people, BUT too bad.  Just think, bathing suit season is right around the corner, so you may want to listen up!  With spring here and summer practically around the corner, I'm trying to eat healthier...and now is a good time to try and make that move since you can start getting fresh fruits and veggies!  I encourage you to check out your local farmer's market.  We started doing this last year at the Old Post Office Plaza on Thursdays in downtown St. Louis and loved it.  They will be back on Thursdays this year, but over the lunch hour.  Soulard is another great market to check out.

Something new I'm going to try this year is also ordering food from Community Helpings Coop.  They have TONS of locations all over St. Louis and your city may have something similar.  There is no commitment, but you order your produce/food online by the due date and then pick it up at a designated time/place.  Everything is grown locally.  The best deal I've heard about is to do the $23 deal where you get a huge box of assorted food- but this only works if you aren't picky about what you get.  Visit the site here.

Here are some switches we've also made at the grocery store to be more healthy:
Mott's Medleys- these juices taste terrific!  They have carrot juice blended in with them so you get a serving of veggies (and fruit) from a glass, but you can't even tell.  I in fact like this better than just the standard juice.  The other thing is we always try to buy our juices with Calcium or some sort of extra vitamin.

Smart Balance- We switched from just buying Parkay or the cheapest butter/margarine at the time to getting Smart Balance which also gives you Omega-3's.  Not really sure how healthy this is, but it tastes good and has to be a little better than what we were using before!  I saw Dr. Oz talk about this and he claims it is 1 of 5 vitamins that every woman should be eating.  He goes on to explain- It's good for your joints, skin, vision, brain, heart, helps lower bad cholesterol levels and even boosts fertility. It's an anti-ager and an anti-inflammatory. It's found naturally in a variety of delicious foods including walnuts, salmon, tuna, olive oil and avocados.


Healthy Life Bread- The only bread we ever buy anymore is Healthy Life Bread wiith 35 calories per slice.  You can get many varieties (white, wheat, wheatberry, etc.) and even get it fortified with double wheat, flaxseed oil, etc. 

T-shirt Quilt

Ok, I've been a HUGE slacker and need to get back to blogging.  Here is a short post, but something I thought was really cool.  So back in high school I had heard about this idea and thought it would be cool to have my mom make me one.  I had a lot of t-shirts from over the years that were memories of vacations, school sports, etc.  You may not want to really wear these around anymore, but you want to save them...so what better way then to turn them into a blanket!  Well my poor mom has been working on this for like almost 10 years I think now cause she did one for my sister also...but the time was well spent, cause it turned out awesome!  If you look around on the internet, you will find tons of pictures and different ways people have gone about these...luckily I like mine the best!

Here is the entire thing laid out:

Here is a closeup of one of the t-shirt squares:

 Here you can see some of the different materials and stitching done:

And lastly, here is the material that is on the entire back:

Great job mom!