Diggin’ It (September, 2015)
A bright yellow leaf fell to the ground in front of me as we walked the dogs the other day. That was my first clue that the seasons, they are a changing. There’s also shorter days and cooler nights that are showing their cards just a little. But you’ll get no complaints from me. I love this season the most!
Of course, who doesn’t love the fall? And to be completely honest, there’s actually quite a few things (besides changing leaf colors) that I’m loving this time of year. So, you know what? I thought I’d share some of them with you. In fact, I’ve go this series, Diggin’ It, that I’ve had going on over the last year or so, sharing stuff that we’re loving! To keep everything on the up and up, we’ll let you know when something has been provided for us for review. But our opinions are our own, always and forever, amen. In today’s DI post, we received samples of the Celestial Seasonings Chai Lattes and teas. I’m a huge fan of chai tea and Adee is the big espresso lover in our house. Some of these Celestial Seasoning tea products combine the two quite nicely. We’re so excited to share them with you!
So, without further ado, let’s talk about what’s high on our Diggin’ It list this month.
1. Chai like it! Adee and I are like the yin and yang of tea vs. coffee. I’m a big fan of the tea and she prefers a cup of espresso over just about anything else. Seriously! So when Celestial Seasonings reached out with these samples of fall chai seasonings and Celestial Lattes, I was head over heels in love with them from the get go. And then when Adee found out some of these products included espresso (like the Dirty Chai)? She was over the top in love as well. Don’t ask me to tell you my favorite, although you might hear me whisper “the Mountain Chai” if I had to. Even Shawn commented when he smelled my cup of tea brewing. You can’t go wrong with chai spices! And I really love that Celestial Seasonings is offering their chai concentrate so I can now make my own iced chai drinks. Like the box says, Be Your Own Barista! Simply add ice to a glass with a little bit of almond milk and some Celestial Seasonings tea concentrate. It’s my favorite treat, regardless of the season!
There are a lot of great recipes that incorporate chai tea flavors, including Chai Tea Muffins, these vegetarian Chai Cheesecake Bars with Pumpkin Spice Ganache, vegan Chocolate Chai Cake, and Chai Spiced Sugar Cookies. It’s true, life is better with a little chai, chai, chai!
2. DIY Microwave Popcorn. I was at a party last year when someone introduced me to this handy little popcorn contraption. You use it to make your own homemade microwave popcorn. We love the nice, clean flavor of the popcorn! Simply spray the bottom of the bowl with vegetable spray, add 1/3 cup of popcorn and microwave for around 2.5 – 3 minutes (depending on your microwave). Once the popcorn is done, carefully remove the lid (watch out for escaping steam!), spray a little more vegetable spray and sprinkle with salt (or your other favorite popcorn toppings). Voila! Can you say Friday night, popcorn, and Netflix?!
This DIY microwave popcorn maker is around $9 at Target. And we’ve had ours for years and it’s still making a great bowl of popcorn time after time.
3. Bring on the Flavuh. Adee got this book, The Flavor Bible, for me for Christmas because it was on my Amazon wishlist. That’s because when I was a student in the Rouxbe Plant-Based Pro Certification program, they referenced the Flavor Bible and I knew it was something I had to have. And then recently I interviewed Christine Pittman on the Chopped Podcast and she talked about how much she uses this book as her go-to resource for blog post planning. Now, I loved the book before, but hearing how much someone you admire likes something…well, it just takes it up a notch or two in my book!
The Flavor Bible lists ingredients in alphabetical order and describes great flavor pairings. You know, because flavor rules!
4. Dumpster Diving. Confession. Shawn and I dug a dresser out of a dumpster. Can you believe it? Well, actually, what I should say is…can you believe someone would throw this in a dumpster? Seriously! And there were actually two of them, so we grabbed them both. We took them home, washed them off, sanded down the varnish a bit and painted them. Adee had dibs on the first one so we painted it to fit her room decor, in a colorful, don’t-ignore-me magenta. The second one we painted white and added multi-colored knobs. We had the paint sitting around so the only price tag for this project was the knobs and our pride (dumpster diving in the suburbs has a certain…faux pas feeling to it). We reminded ourselves we were saving some perfectly good furniture from heading to the dump!
Well, that’s it for today’s Diggin’ It! We hope you love today’s shares and that you’ll come back for our next edition. So, what have you been diggin’ lately? Anything fun that you can share, leave in the comments below!
Fun!