Vegan banana chocolate chip muffins

And the beautiful weather continues! Beautiful = really hot, but I’ve been enjoying it.

The other day I found myself with some getting-browner-by-the-moment bananas.  That means it’s time to bake!

Vegan Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

These are delicious!

Ingredients:
-- 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
-- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
-- 1/2 tsp sea salt
-- 1 cup cane sugar
-- 1/3 cup coconut oil
-- 3 to 4 ripe bananas, mashed
-- 1/4 cup water
-- 1  tsp vanilla extract
-- 1 cup vegan chocolate chips

Directions:
-- Preheat oven at 350 degrees.
-- Mix together flour, baking soda and salt.
-- In a separate bowl, stir together cane sugar and coconut oil.  Add mashed banana, chocolate chips, water and vanilla.
-- Stir together wet and dry mixtures, place into muffin tins, and bake for 30 minutes.

 

I promise, these are amazing.
The combination of banana and coconut oil in baked goods is really something special

 

Hatching Eggs

Remember the bird nest on our deck porch light?? The other day I decided to peak inside and look at the eggs, and all of a sudden I saw movement!  The eggs had hatched! It was exciting. 

Tonight we were sitting on the deck, and momma bird was feeding her little babies, about 5 feet from us:

The picture’s blurry because I cropped it and zoomed in, but this way you can see the little birds reaching up to get food … so cute!

Urbavore Urban Farm

What a weekend! Long and great.

Here’s a quick whirlwind: Mumford & Sons concert + getting our car towed, cleaning house + baking vegan banana chocolate chip muffins, Urbavore grand opening + lemon snow cones, good friend in town + taking her to the airport, church, eating with friends, more snow cones, seeing Forks over Knives + chickpea burgers for dinner.

Urbavore Urban Farm

As I mentioned we would in my BADSEED turnip post, on Saturday we went to the grand opening of Urbavore Urban Farm.

Urbavore is located at 5500 Bennington Avenue in east Kansas City, and is a branch off of farmers Brooke Salvaggio and Daniel Heryer’s BADSEED Friday night market. Their new farm stand will be open on Saturday afternoons.

Per their website, Urbavore is “working to create an “edible oasis” that brings organic growth, sustainable life, and creative solutions to a city neighborhood”.

There was a lot to explore on their 13.5 acre property, which is located only 7 miles from their downtown Kansas City storefront.  Brooke and Daniel are on the way to creating a “wholly sustainable, off-grid farmstead that includes an organic orchard, heritage livestock, and alternative infrastructure”.

Some pictures from around the farm …

Where the “little chickens” live:

Most of them were hanging out underneath the trailer.

 

A little ways away from the trailer is another chicken house were the “big chickens” were hanging out:

Ducks:

And then the huge, awesome vegetable garden:

 

Look at that delicious looking kale! So much of it, yum!

 

And to add to the excitement, Fresher than Fresh was there, serving their snow cones farmers-market style.

It was just about 100 degrees on Saturday, so by the time we had walked around the farm, we were more than ready for something cool and thirst-quenching!

Lemon snow cones perfectly refreshed us. The herbs inside the cones were fresh from Urbavore’s farm.  It was absolutely delicious, perfect way to end a walk around the farm.

 

Along with their expanded farm grand opening was the beginning of  their city-wide compost drop-off.  We plan to start our own compost eventually, but until then, we’re glad to have a place to bring our scraps.  We know they will be put to good use, and not simply wasted!

Basically, we love what Brooke and Daniel are doing and I’m glad we got to check it out!  We’ll be frequenting Urbavore from now on.

What was the highlight of your weekend?

Week in the lens of Instagram: Part Two

Another week has gone by!

Here’s a bird’s eye view of our week via Instagram {and no gonna lie, some of these were taken with MagicHour instead … I like their filters).

{Whole foods hot bar and shrimp cocktail}

 

Most likely the top two foods consumed in the LLL household this week ….

{Apples with peanut butter and fresh orchard bread from Fervere}

 

{Cupcakes were made}

{My love of iced coffee – with unsweetened almond milk & agave – was born}

 

{Life was “lifted”}

Have an awesome weekend, everyone!! What’s on the agenda?

Smart Spaghetti

Happy June, everyone!

How did it all of a sudden become JUNE?!? I have yet to figure that out. Though I’m certainly not complaining … I love this time of year!

Spaghetti with Grilled Chicken

I’ve been a busy little bee working this week, and my wonderful husband has been helping me around the house.  Enter this spaghetti:

It was topped with grilled Organic Smart Chicken:

And this new {to us} pasta sauce:

We thought it was pretty good, and really low sodium for a store bought sauce.

It was a delicious simple meal.  I love it when I work late only to walk out of my office and find dinner waiting for me.  My husband is a keeper, that’s for sure!

  

“Switch”ing it Up

And just  for kicks … here’s my latest favorite afternoon icee:

If you can’t already tell, I like to try new fun drinks and The Switch has definitely climbed up to being one of my favorites!

 

I’m pretty stuck on black cherry right now.  The ingredients are simply:

“Ingredients: 100% Juice (Filtered Sparkling Water Sufficient to Reconstitute Juice Concentrates, Apple, Grape, Acerola and Cherry Juice Concentrates), Natural Flavors, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)”

Perfect for a healthy, carbonation fix!

Watch out Izze, I love this stuff!
Hope everyone has a great Friday … we’re going to a Mumford & Sons concert