An All New HEAB

Time to get down and dirty with some almond butter lovin’ here at Heather Eats Almond Butter! Are you ready?!?

Many thanks to Cory at Zesty Blog Consulting for all the time he spent helping me transfer my blog to a self-hosting site…and by helping, I mean he did all the work! There are still some kinks to work out, and I would love to hear your feedback. Is the blog loading fast enough? Also, with my old blog, I could respond to your comments via email, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get my replies to your inbox. However, I’m not sure if that is possible or not.

I’m planning on devoting more time to the blog, especially when we get home from our Babymoon. Some days, I might even publish two posts. How would you feel about that? I ask as I don’t want to overwhelm any readers. Also, once the HEABlet arrives in November, I plan to be a stay-at-home mom. As much as I love my career as a massage therapist, I won’t be able to work nearly as often. I’m hoping to see a few clients a month, maybe on Saturdays when CD is at home to watch the baby, but I no longer plan to work evenings. So, hopefully, I will get to spend more time with all of you.

So, here’s to an all new HEAB and the many adventures that await us both. Thanks again for your continued support…because of you, I consider my blog the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Love you guys. 🙂

A Hike With A Side Of Tater Lovin

Yesterday, Chris and I took Erin’s advice and spent the afternoon hiking around Brown Bridge Pond. Thanks for the suggestion Erin as we thoroughly enjoyed our 4.2 mile walk through the woods! The forest was so quiet and serene, and the only other people we encountered were a few kayakers floating down the water.

After our hike, CD made us an early dinner of his almond butter chili as we can’t seem to get enough of it. So good. Have you tried it yet?

Later in the evening, I baked myself a HUGE sweet potato in the oven, mashed it up, and ate it from a waning Trader Joe’s crunchy almond butter jar. There were several spoonfuls of nut butter still left in the jar…way more than I thought. Love that! Also love that CD finally remembers to save those last few bites of nut butter for my jar concoctions. Thanks CD…it only took me about a year to train him. 😉

Why do people feel the need to cover their sweet potatoes in brown sugar? I promise that if you bake them in the oven (for about an hour at 425°), the sweet potato will get ooey gooey & sweet all on its own.

This morning, I incorporated the rest of my potato into a breakfast sandwich…and it was amazing.

Warmed Great Harvest Extreme Cinnamon bread with mashed sweet potato and Naturally Nutty Pepita Sun Seed Butter.

Speaking of ooey gooey, check out the center of this bread. It’s like a big cinnamon roll. YUM!

What’s your favorite breakfast sandwich?

The blog may be down for a few hours today as I begin the server switch. Please don’t forget to resubscribe to HEAB if my posts stop showing up in Google Reader, but hopefully everything will transfer smoothly. Thanks so much for all of your continued support of my blog! 🙂

HEAB Quirks

Some of the weird things I did over the past 24 hours:

Ate chocolate potato pudding from the waning Naturally Nutty Chocolate Butter Toffee PB jar.

Potato pudding: 1 baked white potato blended with Jay Robb’s chocolate rice protein powder and unsweetened vanilla almond milk. It was…different. I didn’t hate it, although I have to admit the best part was the peanut butter at the bottom of the jar! I think I’ll stick to my favorite pureed squash recipe in the future or use a baked sweet potato instead.

Dinner was CD’s Almond Butter Chili (his best batch yet!). Again, all we have here are at the cottage are plastic bowls, and I do not like putting hot food in plastic. So, I ate my 2nd meal of the day from a nut butter jar. The Naturally Nutty 16 ounce jars make great bowls!

Post-chili, I was still hungry…totally playing the pregnancy card on this next one…definitely not a typical HEAB evening snack but quite delicious!

Popcorn drizzled with Coconut Vanilla Bliss and topped with Strawberry Whoppers, aka, Vajayjay candy.

Woke up at 2 AM hungry again and proceeded to snack on Puffins in the bathroom so as not to wake Chris.

I ♥ Puffins.

Speaking of weird, check out our neighbor’s mailbox…

Disturbing, no?

Fess up: Weirdest thing you did yesterday?

Heather Eats Seed Butter

Thanks to everyone who left me a comment yesterday regarding avoiding food allergies in babies. I must admit that I’m now more confused than ever as there is so much conflicting info. out there. The two pieces of advice that I definitely plan to follow are to take a daily probiotic and to breastfeed for at least 6 months. I actually have a bottle of these probiotics in the fridge at home, but I am so bad about taking one everyday. However, that’s going to change when I get home! I also plan to nurse for at least 6 months, if not longer as I know breast milk offers the best possible nutrition for the HEABlet and will help to strengthen her immune system as well. As far as my food intake goes, some of you said it helps to abstain from likely allergens while others of you said it is important to introduce the baby to these foods. So, what I’m thinking is I’m going to continue to avoid soy and cow’s milk proteins since I have problems with those myself (I won’t lie…I still really want to try Moomer’s ice-cream before we leave Michigan!). Other than that, I’m going to continue eating how I normally do, but perhaps eat less wheat and peanut butter. Also, I tend to eat the same foods over and over, and I’m going aim for more variety.

Let’s see, breakfast yesterday was Great Harvest Extreme Cinnamon bread (dessert on a plate I tell ya!) with Naturally Nutty Pepita Sun Seed Butter and butter + strawberry preserves.

Thank goodness for seed butters! Although I love my peanut and nut butters, I’m going to try eat more pumpkin and sunflower seed butters. Plus, once this loaf of cinnamon deliciousness is gone, I’m not going to buy any more wheat bread.

Something else I’m going to be eating more of????

Brown rice tortillas! Love these things, and I ate one for lunch yesterday stuffed with bacon, turkey, and mashed avocado.

About 5 minutes after lunch, I was still hungry and made another tortilla stuffed with Pepita Sun Seed Butter and 1 square of unsweetened chocolate, all melted and ooey-gooey. That did the trick – I was stuffed!

Dinner was veggies stir-fried in butter with mustard stirred in at the end and topped with goat cheese.

And my post-dinner snack consisted of 1/2 cup oats cooked in water in the waning Vanilla Almond Butter jar with 1 square unsweetened chocolate. Again, not giving up peanut/nut butters entirely, just going to try and incorporate more seed butters into my life.

I think this is my favorite Naturally Nutty Nut Butter thus far. Very sad it’s all gone. 😦

So, that’s the plan: daily probiotic, breastfeed, eat less wheat, dairy, peanuts & nuts, and eat a larger variety of foods. Again, the HEABlet and I thank you for all your advice. In fact, my stomach was jumping all over the place as I typed this post. I think CD and I might have a little gymnast on our hands. 🙂

Two things before I go,

1) The blog transfer begins today, and if you signed up to receive my blog posts via emails in the last week, you may have to sign up again. However, those of you who signed up prior to last week should continue to receive HEAB in your inbox. I’m sure there will be a few glitches here and there as I get everything figured out, and so thank you for your patience and understanding. Also, many thanks to Cory from Zesty Blog Consulting, my favorite technical guru, for all his hard work!

2) Lindsey from Sound Eats has created Healthy Living Blogs, a site designed to enhance the positive community of the healthy living blog world. HLB boasts ways to find new bloggers listed alphabetically and by location, in addition to forums to deepen healthy discussion and support. Be sure to check it out if you get a chance.