Strawberry Rhubarb Oatcake

I have been eyeing rhubarb for a while, and every time I see a recipe I like, the rhubarb is not in season. BUMMER! This year, I was keeping an eye out for some that wasn't ridiculously expensive and when I found some, I scooped it up. It took me about a week to find just the right recipe but it was totally worth the wait! Get Healthy With Heather is a fellow Secret Recipe Club Member and her recipe is fantastic! I made some adjustments but the original premise is based off of her recipe. This is PERFECT for breakfast, or you can have smaller portions as a snack or a dessert.

Strawberry Rhubarb Oatcake
Printable Recipe
Ingredients:
3 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup white flour
1 tbs cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbs brown sugar blend
2 eggs
1/2 cup mashed banana
6 oz fat free vanilla yogurt
2 tbs oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk
 9 oz rhubarb, diced (about 2.5 cups)
10.5 oz strawberries, diced (about 2 cups)
1 tbs sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Spray 9x13 glass baking dish with pan spray. Dice and rinse rhubarb and strawberries, sprinkle with 1 tbs sugar, stir to coat and set aside.  Mix your dry ingredients (oats, flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, and brown sugar blend) in a mixing bowl until well combined. In a separate mixing bowl, combine the wet ingredients ( eggs, banana, yogurt, oil, vanilla and milk). Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients and add the strawberries and rhubarb. Stir until coated and well combined Pour in to baking dish and bake for 45-60 minutes or until cooked through. Serve and enjoy!!

Serves :

12 @ 4 PPV

10 @ 5PPV

8 @7 PPV

Linked At Amee's Fit & Fab Fridays, The Latest Edition

Ritz Breakfast Bake

A simple and affordable meal, that can be adapted to mostly any taste, by adding extra veggies, some additional protein, and using your favorite CHEESE :) This recipe is cooked up in a 9x13 dish, but you could half the ingredients and make it in an 8x8 if that better suits your needs.

Ingredients:
36 ritz crackers (about 1 sleeve) crushed fine, I put mine in my mini food processor
12 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tbs onion powder
2 cups prepared white gravy (pour-able consistency, but not water thin)
1/2 cup cheese

Preheat oven to 375. Spray glass 9x13 dish with cooking spray. Spread the crushed crackers in the bottom of the dish. Drizzle the gravy as evenly as possible over the cracker crumbs. In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs, milk and onion powder until well combined and pour this evenly over the gravy and cracker base. Top with cheese. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until puffed and cooked through. Serve and Enjoy! This would be great topped with some salsa, hot sauce, or as my hubby like it, with maple syrup :)

Serves 8 at 7 PointPlus
Serves 6 at 9 PointsPlus
Serves 4 at 14 PointsPlus




*this recipe was originally posted as a guest post over on Coupon Savings In The South! Drop by and check out her page!

Linked at: the Latest Find, Recipe of the week: Eggs

Old Navy Style Council: FREE SHORTS!

I was pretty ecstatic to be chosen by Old Navy and CrowdTap to be part of the Old Navy Style Council Summer Style is short and sweet promotion where I was able to visit Old Navy and get a free pair of shorts. I have never been a big fan or shorts shopping, regardless of what size I have been. Old Navy offered a nice variety of styles, sizes and patterns to choose from! I grabbed my armful of different styles and headed for the dressing room!

I love their cute hangers :)

                          I loved the cute tie belt on these shorts, but they were a tad short for my taste!

These shorts were super short and comfy but I wasn't quite feeling the print. Looking back at the pics

I realize I like them a bit more now than I did in the store! The length of these 5" shorts

was more my speed :)

These were easily my absolute favorite. The fit was comfortable, with out being too baggy

or too tight. And the colors were so much fun! Perfection, in the form of shorts!

Comfy and cute without being clingy. The perfect summer outfit!

My friend Jennifer aka Twinny got to get a free pair of shorts too. 

I was pretty happy we both have super white legs :)

And her super cute son Michael Goofing off!

I was very pleased with the selection the was offered at the store near me! I was hoping to try on some of the bermudas, which there weren't too many off, but that helped get me out of my long shorts funk. The sizes were good as well. I picked the same size of all the shorts that I tried on and they all fit well. It was nice not to have to run back and forth picking up other sizes to try.

Want to learn how to be a crowdtapper and have the chance for excellent opps like this? Check out this link and sign up! They offer some awesome rewards. I am very proud to be a Crowdtapper!

* I was given 2 coupons to get free shorts from Old Navy. However all opinions expressed in this post are my own, honest opinions. I was not given any additional compensation for my opinions.

Peanut Butter Banana Bread {Secret Recipe Club}

Another month, with another wonderful Secret Recipe Club assignment! If you are new to my blog and are unsure of what the Secret Recipe Club is, each month the members are secretly assigned another member from the group, and then we go and find an irresistible recipe to recreate and post on our own blog.  It is so much fun to browse through the other blogs and find awesomely wonderful recipes to make :)  A big shout out to Amanda, the founder of this wonderful club, and to Suzanne, the hostess of group B who helps us keep all of our stuff together :).


This month, I was assigned Allison's Blog, Sweet Flours. Allison is from the West Coast and she also has another blog site called Have the Cake. I highly suggest checking out both pages!  Her blog is full of so many wonderful recipes, with such a great variety of ingredients, I was having trouble choosing! Would it be the Pepperoni Pizza Puffs, Pesto Meatballs, or Jalapeno Sausage Cheese and Egg Braid? I actually ended up baking, and making the Peanut Butter Banana Bread :) Thank you for being in the SRC Allison and allowing me the chance to wander around your blog and discover tons of yummy new recipes! <3 I didn't have an actual loaf pan, so I baked this in a 2 quart baking dish and will have wide thin slices :) Allison also added a glaze to her bread, which I decided against for the time being but I will probably try it later!


Printable Recipe
Ingredients: 
1/2 cup ground oats
1 cup white flour
1/4 ground flax seed
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon


1 1/2 cup ripe mashed bananas (about 3 large bananas)
1/3 cup fat free vanilla yogurt
2 eggs
1/3 cup creamy honey roast peanut butter
2 tbs melted coconut oil


1/2 cup brown sugar blend


Preheat oven to 350. Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl (except the sugar blend), stir til well combined. In a separate mixing bowl, combine the wet ingredient and beat til well combined. Beat the sugar blend in to the wet ingredients, then beat the wet and dry ingredients together. Pour in to baking dish ( 9x5 loaf pan or 2 quart rectangle baking dish) that has been sprayed with pan spray, smoothing the top, and bake for 50-65 or until cooked through. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out and cool on a wire rack.

Serves 20 at 3 PPV

Serves 16 at 4 PPV

Serves 12 at 5 PPV

Baked Kiwi

I bought a six pack of kiwi fruit from Walmart the other day and wanted to try something new with them! I came across this recipe, with a video that shows you how to prepare it! :) ( Should have watched the video better, I didn't cut the bottoms off so mine kept trying to roll around :) )

Ingredients:
2 Kiwi fruit
1 tsp honey
sprinkle cinnamon

Preheat oven to 450. Cut thin slice off the bottom of each kiwi to keep it from rolling around. Cut the top off the kiwis. Place flat end down in baking dish, pour 1/2 tsp honey on top of each kiwi, and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cook for 5-7 minutes, or until heated through. Serve and enjoy!

These were yummy, but kind of hard to scoop the insides out with out getting sticky. I ended up slicing the fruit out and putting it in the baking dish with the excess melted honey :)

3 PPV for both!



Linked at: Newly wed Linky,Fit and Fabulous Fridays,

Ugli Fruit

Have you heard or seen Ugli Fruit before? And I don't mean the funky moldy stuff :)
Ugli Fruit:

Yes, that is grass behind the saucer.
and yes, i was in the front yard in my PJ's
and yes my husband came around the house and asked if I was trying to find good lighting :)

I have seen these in the produce sections a few times and finally decided to pick one up. I got this ugli from Walmart! After reading some online about suggestions on how to eat and how to prepare it, I learned  that it is easy to peel and eat. I cut the top part a but at the stem to get it started, but then the skin peeled off really easily. Much cleaner than any orange I have ever eaten.

I really enjoyed the flavor of the fruit and so did Ed. I even caught him snagging an extra section out of the fridge and that surprised me. It has a citrus flavor but is very sweet and juicy!

For more information on ugli fruit, check out the links below:

How to buy an Ugli Fruit

Health Benefits of Ugli Fruit 

Uses for Ugli Fruit

Cinnamon Dip

Back before Easter, I won The GooseBerry Patch Simple Shortcut Recipes Cookbook from a giveaway hosted by Leah at Beyer Beware. I LOVE this book. (And Leah's blog) This cinnamon dip is superb and so easy to make. I let my boss try it at work one day and he said it was "so good, he would eat it with one eye closed" or something to that effect!


Ingredients:
1 8oz container of cool whip, thawed ( I used Lite)
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbs brown sugar


Combine all ingredients, cover and chill for at least 30 minutes. Serve with fresh fruit! Enjoy :)

16 servings @ 1 PPV
8 servings @ 2 PPV

Fruit Salsa {Cinco de Mayo: Seneca SC Weight Watcher Style}

Most of you know I LOVE my Weight Watchers meeting. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I drive them crazy, but that is okay :) We have a really great group, and this week debuted some new changes including an earlier meeting time and a new meeting room set up. Sheri sends us out a weekly email, with great info, recapping the last meeting and giving a snippet of what to expect in the meeting this coming week. This time she asked for snack ideas since we had a meeting on Cinco de Mayo! This recipe is the one that I sent to her, that she ever so graciously made for us to eat. Totally yummy, nothing but good reviews around the room! Recipe Credit goes to All Recipes. Sheri was also super awesome and brought some of the new Crystal Light "Mock"tail drinks for us to try! We have the Appletini, Mojito, and Margarita! Those were really yummy too :)

{you can see Sheri on my Before and After page! Annette is over there too! :waves: }

1 Fuji Apple, peeled, cored & diced
1 cup fresh sliced strawberries
2 kiwis, peeled and diced
2 bananas peeled and sliced
1 tbs fresh lime juice
2 tbs white sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Mix all of the ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl and stir to combine. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes before serving. Serve and enjoy!

The only part of the recipe that have any PointsPlus is the sugar. According to recipe builder, this makes:
32 servings @ 0 PPV
16 servings  @ 1 PPV

Thank you Sheri!!!! :)

OXO Salad Spinner {Review & Giveaway}

May 3rd (12:01 AM EST)  - May 9th! (11:59 PM EST)

Kitchen gadgets are always a fun purchase and there are tons of do-dads out there for just about any job. There are a lot of these items that are a one and done type of product, where you use it once and then it goes back in the gadget drawer or cabinet, not to be used or seen again for quite a while!

The OXO Salad Spinner is one kitchen gadget that I never knew I needed! We all know it can be a hassle when you rinse your salad greens, or even berries to dry them before serving without using tons of paper towels or waiting for ever. This handle little gizmo does all of the work for you! A quick, green alternative :)

The OXO Salad Spinner is so easy to use! You simple rinse your greens/berries, put on the lid, pump the center button a few times, Push the brake to stop it and you are ready to go! I was impressed with the amount of water that it got off of my lettuce (click the picture above for a larger view) The lettuce stated fresh and crisp in the storage container for at least 48 hours (that is when I used the rest of what I had rinsed).  The convenience of having fresh rinsed berries and lettuce help make it easier to make better eating choices by having the preparation already done.

With the lettuce I rinsed and spun above, I made a GLORIOUS Tuna Bite Salad, using some Tuna Bites from this recipe, fresh grape tomatoes, grated parmigiana cheese, some croutons and an oil & vinegar dressing. So yummy!!

Some of my favorite aspects are:

-Easy to Use

-No Slip Ring on bottom

-Convenience: Rinse, Spin & Store

-Top Rack Dishwasher Safe
-Healthier food, faster!

For a step by step video, showing exactly how the OXO Salad Spinner works, click below:

**OXO provided me with 2 Salad Spinners free of charge, one to sample and review and one to giveaway. I was not provided additional compensation to write this review and all opinions are my own, unless otherwise specified.