First Date and Updates

                     

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate Heather L. on winning a date with me. This Friday, we will be purging her soon-to-be daughter's room. I'm pretty excited. Heather is probably a bit scared. For the other entrants, your kindness towards Heather was amazing. For that, I'd like to offer you all a quickie--a 4 hour decluttering session. If interested, let me know by e-mail or commenting here. Let's just say I like to get around!

Secondly, some changes are happening here at Minimalist Mommi. A new site is in the works that should hopefully be more user friendly and, well, prettier than this old Blogger blog. Don't worry, I'm not just going to up and ditch you all. You're likely to be over informed of the process. Maybe it'll be too much, and you'll just ditch me. Time shall tell.

Lastly, it's been one of those days. The Hubs got some amazing news at work about a new shift. However, that doesn't go into effect for over a week. Thus, a lack of thought out, insightful posts is to be expected as my brain is fried from the sheer amount of never-ending preschooler questions, non-stop bathroom trips thanks to potty-training a toddler (and a big brother who now purposefully Bogart's the toilet), and the rotation of mess begging to be cleaned. Please bear with me as I'm just trying to stay afloat this next week.

And just so you don't all get grumpy, here's a quick From Scatch recipe....

Crunchy Cake ( a.k.a. Chocolate oatmeal brownies)

I found this recipe in a carb panic. Our ingredients were limited, but these things turned our surprisingly tasty. I took this recipe, but edited it to fit what we had. Here's what I did:

Ingredients: 

-2 C Oats (1/2C old fashioned & 6 packets of plain instant oatmeal)
-1 C Sugar
-1/3 C Cocoa Powder
- Pinch salt
- Dash Almond Extract (out of vanilla)
- 1/2 C Canola Oil (kids broke jar of coconut oil)
- 2 eggs or equivalent egg replacer (used Ener-G egg replacer)


Instructions:

-Grease an 8x8 pan & set oven to 350F/180C
-Combine oats, sugar, cocoa, and salt
-Add in remaining ingredients and combine well
-Place batter in pan
-Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean


We loved the flavor and cakiness brought on by the instant oats. For a smoother texture, stick the oats in a food processor. They could also be made into cookies, but I'm lazy and generally just stick everything in one pan and just cut after the baking. The best part about this recipe is that it's flour free and possibly gluten free too! It you can to make it super decadent, add chocolate chips. Enjoy this simple, easy treat!

(Sorry, no pictures. We gobbled them up too quickly along with all of the aforementioned stress taking me away from my trusty camera. Pictures next time. Pinky swear.)