Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup

Have you ever looked at the ingredients in a can of cream of mushroom soup? No? Well, first of all the list is way longer than I feel like it should be for such a simple food, but it also has so many words I can’t pronounce it would make your head explode. To be honest, without even looking at the ingredients, the fact that it stays the same shape as the can when it comes out should be some sort of hint that something is wrong. LOL!

So, in order to avoid the cream of mushroom cylinder I searched for a cream of mushroom soup recipe that I felt safe serving my family this Thanksgiving. Not only did I want one without so much crap in it, I also wanted one that went along with my semi-Paleo lifestyle. Well, I didn’t really find one, so I edited a non-paleo version that I found to make it paleo compliant! It’s grain free and dairy free and you would never know the difference!

Ingredients:

1 carton of baby bella mushrooms (about 12-16oz)
1 tbsp olive oil or ghee
1 onion, diced into small pieces
Garlic- I used about 6-7 cloves, but you can use more or less depending on your taste
Jalapeño pepper- chopped (Note: If you don’t like spicy foods, I would take the ribbing and seeds out of the jalapeño before putting it in to your mixture.)
1/4 cup white wine of your choice
1 cup chicken broth- you can make your own or use this kind that has less additives
8-10 oz coconut milk
Fresh thyme
Crushed red pepper
Salt and pepper

Directions:

Add your oil or ghee to your pot and sauté your onions and mushrooms. Season these with your spices.
Cook until your mushrooms are soft.
Add your chopped garlic and jalapeño pepper.
Cook for another minute or two and then add your white wine.
Let the veggies and spices simmer in your wine, stirring intermittently, for a few minutes until it has soaked up a bit of the liquid.
Add your chicken broth and coconut milk to the mix and let the entire concoction simmer again until it thickens up a bit.
Once the soup is to the thickness of your liking, take away from heat.
If you wish to serve your mushroom soup chunky, you can stop here. If you want true cream of mushroom to put into casseroles and use in your cooking continue on.
Put the soup mixture into a blender or food processor. (This one is reasonably priced and ranks pretty high on Amazon.)
Blend your soup.
You can serve as a soup with sprigs of thyme like I did (It’s great with a steak!) or you can use it to cook with! We plan to use this exact recipe for our thanksgiving green bean casserole!

This soup is actually really good by itself as well. I LOVE mushrooms and needed a little something extra to go with out steak dinner one night so I made this. So good. If you happen to try the recipe out, you’ll have to let me know how it went! Have you ever tried to make your own base ingredients for recipes to cut out all of the additives and preservatives in your meals? Let me know what you made in the comments below!

Here I Am

Well, here I am. My life has completely changed over the last month. No, I am not pregnant. I am unemployed. Yep, you read that right, unemployed. I came home from our 2 week long European extravaganza, walked in to the door at work (15 minutes early too!), and was immediately laid off. Let me tell you, that was a shock. Just a couple of weeks before my vacation my boss and I had been talking about the next year and where my job was going. We were talking about what new tasks I was going to take over and how there was a possibility of me going down to 3 quarters time in order to work on my shop a bit more, yet still have benefits. Yeah…laid off.

I’ll tell you honestly, I was in complete shock for a good hour. I grabbed my things, left the building, drove the block home, and then called Wes. I told him what happened in a completely calm manner, and then it hit me. I lost my job. I had no job. That job I brag about to my friends and family for being so wonderful and having such great employers…yeah, it wasn’t mine any more. It hit me like a ton of bricks and I was mad. Mad because I didn’t get a legitimate reason. Mad because I felt led on and a little taken advantage of. Mad because had I known, we would have stayed with Wes’ aunt in the south of France for an extra week! Lol.

Well, what to do now? First things first, I spent a week figuring my life out. I decided what was best for me and my little family and then I got myself a pedicure. I spent a little time by myself, a little time cuddling my pup, and a lot of time talking with my husband. That’s just what you need to do in your first week off after being laid off. You do you.

So, what you may ask, are you going to do now? Well, that’s a tough one because it’s all kind of up in the air. Right now, I am working on my shop, my blog, my health, and searching for a new job. You know what? All of these things combined, they feel like a full time job. Like MORE than a full time job! My shop is doing pretty well with all of the Halloween costumes I’ve been selling, blogging is always an unending amount of work, staying healthy is a full time job in and of itself….and looking for a job…well, if you’ve done that before you know how it goes. I want to be picky, I want to find something that I will love with people that are amazing. Something like what I had at my old job. <sigh> Until I find that, my hobbies of blogging and sewing will just have to do:)

Now that you all have a full update on my life lately, what’s going on in yours?

FroYo Breakfast Muffins

This post is sponsored by ZonePerfect but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

Ok, go ahead and TRY to tell me those don’t look good. That’s what I thought. AND, the part that makes them even better is hidden. You can’t even see the chocolatey goodness that is the Perfectly Simple bars at the bottom of the muffin. Yup. Chocolate.

First, let me start by saying that these bars by themselves are really good…but crumble them up and make them in to breakfast muffins with frozen yogurt and they are in a whole new ball game.

When I was told I could get some of these babies just for a review I jumped on the chance. I mean, I’m training for a half marathon, I can really use a good protein filled breakfast for those days when I have early morning runs. They have a few different varieties including cherry almond, but I went straight for the chocolate, because lets be honest I don’t have a whole lot of that these days! I was a little skeptical, because anything that claims to have protein in it usually tastes like chalk, but these actually didn’t! So, iI wracked my brain for a way to showcase these bars that wasn’t just, “they’re really good by themselves and I ate an entire box in 2 days.” (Although, that is true.)

You know, so I obviously scoured Pinterest looking for some cool way to incorporate granola type bars into a recipe and came up with absolutely nothing. FYI, you should be aware that when you put granola and recipes anywhere near each other on Pinterest you can only find out how to make your OWN granola bars.

Well, I eventually started looking at breakfast recipes, since I knew that’s when I would be eating the bars and came across one for froyo muffins. That’s when it clicked…these muffins could really use a base…you know, like cheesecake. It would also be really awesome if that base had chocolate in it and was filled with protein. Boom, enter the Perfectly Simple bars. Crumble those babies up, put them at the bottom of the muffin tin, add you yogurt and berries, and freeze. Presto! You have an awesome morning snack that will help you get through til lunch.
Now, I like to make things a bit healthy around here without quite so much sugar. With there being sugar in the bars, I needed to be extra careful with my other ingredients, so I made my own strawberry yogurt. I basically just took a few strawberries, put them into the food processor, and added them to some plain yogurt. This cuts way back on the sugars in the yogurt. Oh, and there is a coupon available for $1.00 off of Perfectly Simple bars- which I got at my local Target, BTW!

Ingredients:

Strawberries
Blueberries
Plain Yogurt
Perfectly Simple Bars
Cupcake Liners

Directions:

Line cupcake pan.
Crumble up Perfectly Simple bars.
Blend up strawberries in a food processor and add them to plain yogurt.
Put yogurt on top of Perfectly Simple bars,
Sprinkle on some berries.
Put in freezer for 2-3 hours or until solid.
Enjoy!

WIWW: Fall T-Shirt Dress

I ordered this dress before we left for Europe and had to wait the entirety of our trip knowing that it was sitting on my desk waiting for me at work. I loved it when I saw it online on Zulily, but I love it even more in person. It’s a comfy cotton material and when you throw on that belt it shows off the good and hides the bad. It’s amazing! It isn’t on the site right now, but here is a similar one from the same brand. (Brand is “Buy In America” if you are curious!)
Get The Look:

Zulily Dress (Similar) // Alloy Booties // Charming Charlie Handbag & Bracelets // Sam Moon Earrings // Target Sunglasses

I know I’ve been a little MIA lately, there has been a lot going on in my life. It feels good to be taking style photos again and I hope to keep it up! I woke up early, grabbed a coffee, and went to the park to take these. I’ll be back later this week to share a great breakfast recipe I just discovered as well as a bit of yoga for Fit Friday! See you all then!

Fit Friday: The Level

I was offered a free Level in exchange for a review of the product. All opinions are my own honest opinion and I would never promote a product that I didn’t love and use myself.

As many of you know already, I use a standing desk during the day. I have been standing daily for the last 2 years and it actually hurts my back to sit for too long now! I love the way it makes me feel and it gives me SO much more energy than I ever thought possible! I will never go back to sitting down during the day, but I have been trying to find new ways to make better use of my time while I’m standing there working. Lucky me, I have found a really great product to help me along!

We all know that standing there doing lunges and squats is possible at certain times, but lets be real…you aren’t going to stand there all day long doing these little exercises. You’ll do a few here and there and then the rest of the day you just stand there. Well, you lean…you tap your foot…you wiggle back and forth. Standing there all day can make you a little restless and can even make your legs and hips start to hurt. I found that I was leaning on my desk a lot of the time because my knees would lock and I would end up with pain in my legs. Well, needless to say that was a bummer. I needed to find something to help me stand without hurting my body so much. Enter the Level! I was sent a Level to try out and I am in love.

The Level is essentially a balance board that keeps your body engaged the entire time you stand at your desk. It increases your range of motion and engages your core the entire time you stand on it. You pretty much try to balance yourself on it and it has even been shown to increase your heart rate a bit while you do so. It definitely takes a little bit of time to get used to, but after trying it out for a few weeks I will definitely be using it from here on out.

To read a little bit more of the science behind The Level, check out their website! They are even willing to demo products to companies and schools if you are interested in trying them out for your workplace!