BBQ Chicken, Snoodles, and Slaw Salad

I really wish I could come up with some catchy way to say BBQ Chicken with more S's. Slathered S'poultry? Nope.

On to the recipe! Or, rather, helpful instructions!

I've been craving some sweet potatoes lately, and I also recently found the spiralizer kitchen gadget that I bought months ago! When you spiralize a sweet potato, what do you get? Snoodles, apparently! (per my friend that's what they're called, so if that's not the case, I blame her)

If you're unfamiliar with a spiralizer, it essentially is this gadget that cuts vegetables into long strands of noodles. It's pretty sweet. Google that, stat.

My darling decided he was going to make broccoli & cauliflower salad, which is delicious, and obviously needed to be consumed with gusto and an appropriate main dish.

So. Between my craving for sweet potatoes, and the nummy slaw salad, and there being some leftover plain, cooked chicken in the fridge, adding BBQ chicken to the meal was a no-brainer.

Step 1: Make Slaw Salad. Chop broccoli, cauliflower, and crispy bacon pieces, and toss it all together with your preferred coleslaw dressing (and maybe add a little honey for some extra sweetness). Let it sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

Step 2: Spiralize your sweet potatoes, toss with some oil (or leftover bacon grease if you're awesome like me), and bake in a 400 F oven until tender.

Step 3: Chop your already cooked chicken, toss with your preferred BBQ sauce, put it in an oven-safe bowl, and pop it in the oven next to your snoodles to get all nice and toasty warm.

Serve the chicken over the snoodles, and the slaw salad on the side. Or all touching and happily coexisting in the same bowl like I did.

DIY Green Smoothie "Powder"

Right - so this whole idea started because I have SO MUCH CHARD in the garden right now. Like,

trimming and laying out the chard for dehydrating

I'm *almost* sick of eating it. Almost. So I decided to start preserving it now - and rather than go with the traditional freezing of the chard, I decided to dehydrate it! Super easy.

Step 1: Clean the chard.

Step 2: Dry the chard.

Step 3: Trim off the stems, and save those for making bean salad (use to replace the celery).

Step 4: Lay in a single layer in your dehydrator, or place right on the oven racks like I did.

Step 5: Put your oven on the lowest setting (mine goes down to 150 degrees F) and let it cook for... hours. Like, three hours, or until it's dry and crumbly.

Step 6: Put it all in a food processor and whip it, whip it good, until it's all finely ground.

Step 7: Store in an airtight container.

I'll call that done!

You can add it to green smoothies, soup, dip... and other cooking things. Sorry, not super creative with the how to use it right now. BUT I'm sure that you'll think of something!

BEWARE - allllll of that chard in the first photo dehydrated down to less than a cup of chopped, dried greens. Don't add a ridiculous amount to your smoothie, a whole salad's worth comes to just a couple of teaspoons. If you add more than that you take the risk of... well, probably a lot of time on the potty.

Sheep Cupcakes!

These just turned out too cute, I had to share!

Stupid Beetles

Thing are growing fast! Especially the greens, we're harvesting lettuce and chard several times a

poor bean leaves

week and can barely keep up! We put in a row of raspberries, leaving room for more.

But you know what's not so cool? BUGS EATING MY STUFF. The beetles have arrived, and they're working their way through my beans. A bucket of hot, soapy water is one of my favorite ways to deal with beetles. Knock them off the leaves into the bucket and they drown. No pesticides, easy peasy.

bye bye bugs

Egg White Peel Off Mask

You know those nose strips that you get damp, put on your nose, let dry, and when you peel them off it's like a forest of gross coming off your face?

You can DIY that for pennies and do YOUR WHOLE FACE. Just an egg white and some single ply toilet paper (or two ply separated in half).

I just did this tonight and it worked. Pretty sweet! No photos, because eww. We don't need to go there. Watch this video for the how-to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtOJ9URjTUY