Chocolate Orange Mousse

Disclosure- I received the mentioned product courtesy of the sponsor for the the purpose of this review. All opinions are genuine, based on my experience with the product, and have not been influenced by promotional items. 

They say if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it because then it will definitely get done. And do you know who that busy person usually is that knows how to get things done even though they are juggling a million other things through the chaos of each day? A mom. Because moms are amazing. I think about the moms that I know in my life and how each of their life stories are different, but what they all have in common is that even through the challenges of their lives, they are all incredible mothers in their own right. From my own mil who became a mom at the tender age of 15 but has managed to hold her family together for more than 55 years. A true matriarch and the glue that binds our family together. My mom who single-handedly raised 4 children while holding down 2 jobs to ensure we had everything we needed. We may not have got a lot of what we wanted, but we never went without what we needed. And my best friend, while still raising her young family, has me in awe of how she's able to pour so much of herself into her family and community while planting seeds for the future to make sure everything she's touched thrives. These three women are just a blip in the long line of unsung heroes that we call mothers, and there are millions more who have their own unique stories too. They all deserve to be celebrated year round, because one day simply isn't enough to honor the women who sacrifice so much of themselves for their families. But, because they are moms and selfless, they'll not only take the day that they are given, but will be ecstatic over any small token of appreciation shown for the love and devotion she passes to her family every day of the year. And most moms would much rather have those small tokens over flashy celebrations. A handwritten card, a bouquet of flowers, a meal she didn't have to make herself, or even a yummy dessert, like this Chocolate Orange Mousse, a simple and understated recipe from Golden Blossom Honey. One that's perfect for mom not only on Mother's Day, but every day of the year. 

 

I thought about sharing a breakfast recipe this week to honor mom with this Sunday, but kept returning to the chocolate orange mousse because it's elegant without the fuss, and that's something that most mothers would appreciate more than flashy gifts or fancy dinners. And what mom doesn't love to indulge in a little chocolate treat every now and again? There are only 4 ingredients, so this recipe is definitely more about the thought than the time invested, but is incredibly delicious all the same. Even my picky daughter was caught sneaking a few bites from the batch I made this week, exclaiming that they taste like the chocolate orange slices that are a popular candy at Christmas, and I agree with her flavor assessment. So if Mother's Day doesn't happen to be your jam, save the recipe for the winter months and bust it out for the holidays. It's one of the recipes that can work all year long, but for us, we'll be sharing the sweetness of it this Sunday with all of the moms we hold near and dear in our circle.

 

Ingredients

1 (12 ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips

2 cups whipping cream, separated

zest of one orange

1/3 cup GOLDEN BLOSSOM HONEY

 

CLICK HERE FOR FULL RECIPE

 

You can find this recipe, as well as many more delicious recipes right on the Golden Blossom Honey recipe page! Be sure to follow Golden Blossom Honey on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on new products and promotions.

If you like this recipe, be sure to come back every Friday, where I feature a new recipe from Golden Blossom Honey, and be sure to Pin It on Pinterest! 

   

Happy Mother's Day!

 

 

Mexican Casserole

Disclosure- I received the mentioned product courtesy of the sponsor for the the purpose of this review. All opinions are genuine, based on my experience with the product, and have not been influenced by promotional items. 

If we are talking our three most favorite holidays, mine rank:

1. Halloween. 2. Christmas. 3. Cinco de Mayo. 

Normally we host the Cinco de Mayo party, but this year we're going to end up skipping having the festivities at our house. It makes me sad that we won't see my sil's famous fried tacos this year, but Jason and I are exhausted. Nonstop travel all this year and the return of the opening of our building this week at the summer market has zapped any energy either of us had. Playing host, even for an afternoon, is not a task we want to add to our overflowing schedule right now. We will, however, still make our little family of 3 some Mexican inspired dishes, then plop down on the sofa and just sit for a change. While I do know how to make my sil's tacos, I'm not a big fan of cleaning up all of the grease splatter, especially when we're cooking only for 3 people this year. Instead, I am going to bake us a Mexican Casserole, a favorite dish of ours that we've made many times since finding the recipe on Golden Blossom Honey awhile back.

This is a simple and somewhat health conscious dish. There are so many good-for-you ingredients packed into the recipe, minus the cheese and tortillas, but I am sure you can find healthy-ish versions of these two items at your local grocers if you wish to make that change. I leave everything as-is when we bake this, with the exception of cilantro because I don't like it. I will chop it up and sprinkle it over my husband's portion though since he's a fan of the herb. I also double the cheese because I'm of the mindset that cheese makes everything better, so the more the merrier. But even with the extra cheese, it's so much healthier than the fried tacos we'd normally indulge in for the holiday, so I call that a win. This Mexican casserole can be eaten as a standalone meal, or if you'll be hosting or attending a party, it also serves as a fantastic side dish for scooping with tortilla chips. I realize that there are already chips mixed into it, but they absorb most of the liquid and end up soft, so pairing this with a fresh chip is a most excellent *said in my most Bill and Ted voice* way to enjoy the recipe a different way. 

Ingredients

2 (15 ounce) cans kidney beans, rinsed and drained

2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 large red bell pepper, chopped

1 large yellow bell pepper, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

3 tablespoons chili powder

3 teaspoons ground cumin

1 can (28 ounces) tomatoes, chopped, reserve juice

1 cup vegetable broth

1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

2 tablespoons GOLDEN BLOSSOM HONEY

salt and pepper, to taste

4 cups tortilla chips, crushed

1 cup cheddar cheese, grated

CLICK HERE FOR FULL RECIPE 

 

You can find this recipe, as well as many more delicious recipes right on the Golden Blossom Honey recipe page! Be sure to follow Golden Blossom Honey on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on new products and promotions.

If you like this recipe, be sure to come back every Friday, where I feature a new recipe from Golden Blossom Honey, and be sure to Pin It on Pinterest! 

   

Do you make anything special for Cinco de Mayo?

 

 

Really Fast Microwave Brownies

Disclosure- I received the mentioned product courtesy of the sponsor for the the purpose of this review. All opinions are genuine, based on my experience with the product, and have not been influenced by promotional items. 

My daughter and I are guilty of needing a late night snacky snack sometimes and for some reason brownies always sound good. The problem is, they always take a lot longer to bake than we're willing to wait to curb our sweet tooth. So we end up settling for a scoop of ice cream or a few cookies, but we're both still silently irritated that we didn't have the foresight to make a pan of brownies earlier in the day. So my curiosity was quite piqued when I stumbled upon a recipe over at Golden Blossom Honey for Really Fast Microwave Brownies. One, because I don't use my microwave often except to reheat my tea a million times a day because I forget about it and it goes cold, and two, because I bought these silicone cake pans off of Amazon last month and have been obsessed with using them any chance I can get. Because my metal cake pans wouldn't work with this recipe, I just had another reason to pull them out and put them to use.

 

Honestly, I wasn't really expecting this recipe to work out. Probably because I have never baked anything in a microwave before, my expectations were quite low. I figured I'd probably be scraping the batter into the trash and reaching for a box of Betty Crocker Mix instead. Imagine my surprise when I removed the pan from the microwave and exclaimed to Allison, "Holy, shit! It worked!" "But the real question is, how does it taste?" she responded. We each reached for a square and were pleasantly surprised that not only did they bake in 6 minutes, but they tasted good, too. Great flavor, great texture, not dried out. However, these do bake into a cake-like brownie and I prefer a fudgey brownie. That's not a knock to the recipe at all, but an observation to point out for those who prefer one texture over the other. I am going to try this recipe again and cut the cook time down to 5 minutes to see if I can change the consistency a bit, but if not, that's ok. I am thrilled we have a new go-to brownie recipe for our late night sweets cravings and won't have to wait long to get our brownie fix in. 

Ingredients

2 eggs

1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup GOLDEN BLOSSOM HONEY

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

CLICK HERE FOR FULL RECIPE

 

You can find this recipe, as well as many more delicious recipes right on the Golden Blossom Honey recipe page! Be sure to follow Golden Blossom Honey on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on new products and promotions.

If you like this recipe, be sure to come back every Friday, where I feature a new recipe from Golden Blossom Honey, and be sure to Pin It on Pinterest! 

   

Do you cook in your microwave or use it just to defrost/reheat?

 

 

Mediterranean Zucchini with Carrots and Golden Raisins

Disclosure- I received the mentioned product courtesy of the sponsor for the the purpose of this review. All opinions are genuine, based on my experience with the product, and have not been influenced by promotional items. 

While I don't normally start clearing out my garden beds until May, an act of nature forced me to get an early start on it this year. Allison and I were in the basement when we heard a loud crash. "The heck was that!?" I yelled to Allison. "I don't know, but the neighbor boy is running into our back yard," she yelled back. We have some very old and very large oak trees in our back yard, and even though we recently had them assessed, a limb the size of a small tree snapped right off of our largest oak tree and came crashing through our picket fence, the middle of our girl's very large wooden swing set, and some of my garden beds. Thankfully we only need to replace 6 pickets on the fence, the play set we were going to tear down anyway, and the weather has been nice enough that an early spring project wasn't going to be the end of the world for me. I haven't thought about what veggies and herbs I'll be planting this year, but I do know that we'll be doing tomatoes and zucchini again since they are such low maintenance plants, and with my summertime schedule, I don't need more on my plate than necessary. The thing that I love about zucchini is how much payoff you get for such a small investment. At the end of the season we are swimming in zucchini we end up giving so much of it away. It also leaves me with looking for new and interesting recipes to keep the veggie exciting all summer long. I had saved this Mediterranean Zucchini with Carrots and Golden Raisins recipe from Golden Blossom Honey to make for Easter this year, but since my mom took care of the side dishes, it went back into the save for later pile. Until this week when I caught a good sale on both carrots and zucchini that I decided that it didn't need to wait until I had my own abundance popping up before trying the recipe.

 

 

While I had earmarked this as a holiday side dish, I quickly decided that it would make for an amazing summer time lunch option. I had never thought to mix raisins with carrots or zucchini, but somehow it just all worked together. I liked the extra sweetness that the raisins provided and the added texture and crunch that the almonds offered. Often times when I find a new recipe like this, I like to start thinking of ways to switch it up the next time I make it, but this one was absolutely perfect as is. I'd honestly not change a single thing about it. This is a dish that you need to have on hand for summertime side dishes or picnic and holiday gatherings throughout the season. It's light and refreshing and an amazing garden fresh dish if there ever was one! 

Ingredients

1 Tablespoon butter

1 clove garlic, chopped

6 cups zucchini, grated

1 Tablespoon GOLDEN BLOSSOM HONEY

3/4 cup carrots, grated

1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted

3/4 cup golden raisins

 CLICK HERE FOR FULL RECIPE

 

 

You can find this recipe, as well as many more delicious recipes right on the Golden Blossom Honey recipe page! Be sure to follow Golden Blossom Honey on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on new products and promotions.

If you like this recipe, be sure to come back every Friday, where I feature a new recipe from Golden Blossom Honey, and be sure to Pin It on Pinterest! 

   

Have you ever had property damage from falling trees or their limbs?

 

 

Hominy Spoon Bread

 

Disclosure- I received the mentioned product courtesy of the sponsor for the the purpose of this review. All opinions are genuine, based on my experience with the product, and have not been influenced by promotional items. 

I've been spending a lot of time in the south lately, from Tennessee to Georgia and over to Florida, and it has reawakened my soul to all of the things that I miss from my southern roots. I'm longing to get back to slamming screen doors, sweet tea, and bacon fat green beans. I admit that I didn't have an appreciation for some of the cuisine like okra or grits growing up, but now that I'm older, and maybe a little wiser (that might be questionable on any given day), I've been more open to trying foods that I shunned as a kid. I remember feeling a bit miffed when my school would serve grits for breakfast instead of the Quaker oatmeal that I preferred, probably because it didn't have those strawberry or apple bits in them that I enjoyed so much. With that memory fresh in my mind, I bought a small container of grits at the grocery store a few weeks back to see if my now adult palate would be more welcoming to what my younger self refused to accept many years ago. I set off to find a suitable recipe and ended up making cheese grits because can you go wrong with any recipe that has cheese in it? While I ended up enjoying grits much more this time around, I'll admit that I still prefer my steel cut oats for breakfast. I still had quite a bit left in the container to use up, so I thought that I'd put them to good use on chili night and make a batch of Hominy Spoon Bread, a Golden Blossom Honey recipe, instead of sweet cornbread that we normally eat with chili. 

 

While my cornbread is normally a cake-like texture, I found that I ended up quite enjoying the grittier, crunchier texture of this spoon bread way more than I thought that I would. With minimal ingredients it was a snap to mix together. The bake time isn't short by any means, but worked out perfectly for me since I like to simmer my chili for hours on end and I didn't have to figure out end times for either dish. The bread itself was light in flavor, but I always smother my breads in butter and a drizzle of honey, making this an awesome substitute for traditional cornbread. I was thinking of ways that I'd like to play with the recipe and for our next batch I want to mix in some diced jalapeños and caramelized onions to add a little heat. I'll also use this as a base and try mixing in a few different cheeses, so instead of cheese grits, I'll have a delicious cheesy grit spoon bread. I think it would be fun too to also play with some chocolate or caramel, or maybe some fruits and see if I can turn this into a dessert spoon bread. I love recipes that get the wheels turning in my head for a fun twist to mix things up!

Ingredients

2 cups quick-cooked hominy grits

3 Tablespoons GOLDEN BLOSSOM HONEY

2/3 cup milk

2 Tablespoons butter or margarine

2 eggs, beaten

 CLICK HERE FOR FULL RECIPE

 

 

 

You can find this recipe, as well as many more delicious recipes right on the Golden Blossom Honey recipe page! Be sure to follow Golden Blossom Honey on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on new products and promotions.

If you like this recipe, be sure to come back every Friday, where I feature a new recipe from Golden Blossom Honey, and be sure to Pin It on Pinterest! 

   

Do you eat grits?

 

 

Barbecued Black Beans and Rice

 

Disclosure- I received the mentioned product courtesy of the sponsor for the the purpose of this review. All opinions are genuine, based on my experience with the product, and have not been influenced by promotional items. 

April showers are bringing those May flowers, but June can hurry up and get here because I'm ready for sunshine all day. More specifically, getting out of the house and enjoying picnics in the park. I haven't seen much of my husband this year, maybe a total of 2 weeks at most, since he's been down south working. He'll be back on his way home next weekend to finally stay in place and I can't wait to get back into date nights. One of our favorite things to do is grab a meal from the deli or pack a picnic and head to this little Amish community about 45 minutes from our house. There we like to sit under the gazebo that's right next to a duck pond and and just enjoy the quietness and stillness of the countryside while eating our meals. As I was browsing through Golden Blossom Honey's recipe index last week while planning out some ideas for our summertime picnics, I came across a recipe for Barbecued Black Beans and Rice and thought it sounded perfect not only for date nights in the country, but for all of the warm weather gatherings we'll be invited to over the next couple of months. 

 

You all know that I am a sucker for any recipe that's quick and easy, and I cannot even stress enough how this beans and rice recipe is the quickest and easiest of them all. But don't think that just because it's the easiest it isn't the tastiest because flavor is something that's definitely not lacking here! When I think of barbecued beans, I think summertime cookouts, but while this dish is going to be the star of many of our picnics and parties this season, I am actually also going to squeeze it into our Cinco de Mayo celebrations next month. Allison and I found that it made an excellent side dish to the tacos we had for dinner earlier this week when we served it with some tortilla chips. I also used the leftovers for lunch the next day and paired it with some spoon bread (recipe for that will be coming next week. Stay tuned!) From parties to picnics, you can't go wrong showing up with this dish in tow this summer! 

Ingredients

2 cans (16 oz each) black beans, rinsed and drained

1 can (14 1/2 oz) Italian-style stewed tomatoes

1 can (4 oz) chopped green chili peppers

1 can (15 oz) whole kernel corn

3 Tablespoons barbecue sauce

1 Tablespoon GOLDEN BLOSSOM HONEY

3/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder

salt and pepper, to taste

CLICK HERE FOR FULL RECIPE

You can find this recipe, as well as many more delicious recipes right on the Golden Blossom Honey recipe page! Be sure to follow Golden Blossom Honey on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on new products and promotions.

If you like this recipe, be sure to come back every Friday, where I feature a new recipe from Golden Blossom Honey, and be sure to Pin It on Pinterest! 

   

Where's your favorite spot for date night?