Whole Wheat Sausage Bread...one of our cooking day traditions!!

The girls in my family always do cooking day right before Christmas.  We all get together and cook things all day long.  One of today's items was sausage bread.  My mom made up a recipe when we were younger for sausage bread.  This year, since we are eating clean, we cleaned up the recipe.  I made the bread dough from my Basic Whole Wheat Bread Recipe.  We used sausage bought from my favorite farmer, Wendi.  The Recipe is as follows..

Whole Wheat Sausage Bread
2 loaves of bread dough
1 lb of sausage
1 pepper
1 onion
organic butter
Olive oil
Optional:mozzarella cheese

Brown sausage in skillet until no longer pink with onion and peppers.  Let cool.  Roll out bread dough one loaf at a time. Pour sausage mix on to rolled out dough.  If the sausage mixture is too warm, it will make holes in the dough and difficult to roll up.  Roll up edges in to a loaf.  Rub with olive oil. Bake in 350 oven for about 28-30 min.  While hot rub with butter.
The optional cheese: we sprinkled over the sausage mixture before rolling it up.
We dipped it in marinara sauce...MMMM so good!!

our sausage and cut up onions and peppers

fry sausage with onion and pepper until done

we drain the sausage and let it cool in here or place it outside if it's cold

Roll out the dough and fill with mixture

We made some with and without cheese..roll it up and place on baking sheet and
rub in with some olive oil

Baked at 350 for 30 min and then rubbed over with a little butter

This is the inside of a cheese one

We dipped it in marinara sauce

Chad likes it :D

A glimpse at cooking day..wait..they are playing cards..and yes..my sister has two in there:D

We got a new camera and Chad likes taking pics :D

The crew

My mom wouldn't let me post any photos of her cooking...I got a good one too :D ...really good one..but since I want my Christmas presents..I won't do it :D

It's another holiday nail idea!

I just love my new set that I got from Amazon. I like to save money and time by doing mine own and changing it up.  I had lots of people ask me about this, so I am posting another idea that I did today with my holiday nails :D

what colors I used

I used these two plates to make the dots and snowflake

I polished them like this

I stamped them like this

Finished holiday nail idea..I dabbed some random spots of the glitter polish





These plates are so fun and easy. Use your own polish, scrape it off, stamp the stamp over it, stamp it in a rolling motion over your nail!!

Cracker Candy..all cleaned up...YES!!!

Welcome healthy version of cracker candy for Christmas. Or, as we call it in my family "crack". We love it and it's addicting and I so wanted to make a healthy version that taste as good as the original. Yah! It's so good!! Thanks to coconut sugar.

I am going to do a post on coconut sugar.  It's the latest health buzz as far as sweeteners go. Coconut sugar, derived from the flowers of the coconut tree, is an organic, sustainable natural sweetener.  This sugar has a low glycemic index and is also a nutrient powerhouse, filled with lots of vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Coconut sugar is minimally processed, unbleached and contains no preservatives.
I was so excited on how this turned out..I decided to post this recipe before I go in to great detail about coconut sugar.  I found it at Earthfare and have requested it at Ingles with the managers.  They just love me there for all my suggestions of products, I know :D

Here is the recipe:

Cracker Candy

Whole Wheat Saltine Crackers

1 cup organic coconut sugar

1 cup organic butter

1 bag semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips

Bring to boil butter and sugar..boiling for about 2 min. or until forms a soft ball in water. Line a baking pan with foil and spray with eat clean cooking spray. Line the pan with saltine crackers.  Pour the butter and sugar over the crackers.  Bake at 350 for 10-15 min being careful not to burn.  Pour bag of chocolate chips over the hot crackers.  Spread out evenly as they melt.  Wait to harden or put in the freezer to harden.  Break in to pieces.

They have a good variety of brands of organic whole wheat saltines at Ingles.

boil sugar and butter until soft ball forms about 2 min

Pour over crackers on foil sprayed with cooking spray and bake for 10-15 min in oven

Pour bag of chips on top and let melt and spread out

I'm impatient so I put my in the freezer or outside to cool

Break apart in little pieces and enjoy





Queen B's Ooey Gooey Eat Clean Cinnamon Rolls

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These are not calorie free... now. They still have sugar..just the healthy kind, so eat sugar in moderation. These are going to Chad's work Christmas Breakfast today...

Eat Clean Cinnamon Rolls
Start by making the  dough from my Whole Wheat Bread Recipe..I make mine in the bread machine to do all the work and then take it out :D
Divide the dough in half. Roll half out in to a 8x12 inch rectangle. 
Filling: combine 1 1/2 sucanat sugar, 1 Tbs cinnamon, 6Tbs of organic melted butter, 1 tsp vanilla
Spread with half of the filling.  Roll up and cut into 1 inch slices.  Place cut side up in muffin pan or on a baking sheet sprayed with eat clean cooking spray.   Let rise until doubled in size.
Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.
Icing: 8 oz organic cream cheese,  1-2 Tbsp honey, 1 tsp vanilla, 3 Tbs milk. Whip cream cheese adding honey and vanilla to taste. Whip until smooth.

roll out the dough

filling ingredients

whisk filling ing. together

crumble over dough..I cut the edges off to make the dough perfect

Roll it up

This half I made small to make mini ones

cut them up

I place the mini ones in mini muffins pans

I did the bigger ones on a baking sheet
Them them all rise to double their size and bake

Icing ing.

Whip with hand mixer until smooth

Mini's all done

Big ones all done

Wrapping Paper Bows

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I like to reuse, recycle, save money, go to yard sales and goodwill...that's all part of being in a "healthy hive" with the Queen B.  This is a simple easy way to use your left over wrapping paper scraps to make the cutest bows. This is 2 sided paper that I bought for 75% off at Sams last year after Christmas, but you  can use one with a white side too.

Here is the wrapped present
Up at the top is some left over scraps

I cut them in to strips about 2 inches wide
 (you can make them smaller for a tighter curl or bigger for a looser curl)
I cut different lengths..about 24 inches and 12 inches

Take the scissors and run down the edge like you would curl a ribbon
this curls the paper. It may not look like it's curled, but it is..lay it down on a table and let it curl up.

see

Here are a bunch of curls.  whatever side you have up when you run the scissors down it, will
be the side you see the most of.

next...I taped them on top of each other

Here is the final package

Here are a few I did for the boy's gift in another 2 sided paper