Posted on

Food Fridays – Lots of Basil

I got my second bunch of basil this week, so I figured I should probably do something with it, other than just add it to the jar on my counter with the first batch of basil. Basil lasts a long time if you put it in a jar of water on your counter.

So, this week I tried out two recipes with basil. I have lots of tomatoes on hand too, so I decided to use lots of veggies and I made spaghetti sauce.

Spaghetti Sauce

4 Large Tomatoes
3 Green Onions
1/2 Cup fresh basil leaves
3 Cloves garlic
Salt & Pepper to taste

Cut the tomatoes in rough slices, slice the green onions, and place all ingredients in a pan. Simmer over medium/low heat until tomatoes are cooked down. I cooked mine for about 1.5 hrs but you could do it faster (I was trying to cook off some of the excess water from the tomatoes). After veggies are done, place in a food processor and pulse until all chunks are gone.

Serve over pasta and topped with grated parmesan cheese.

IMG_0818

Basil Berry Sparkling Ice

I found this recipe here on Kroger’s website. But the measurements were confusing for me, so I didn’t really do exactly what they said.

8 Large Blackberries
6 Fresh Basil Leaves
2 Cups Blackberry Sparkling ICE (it’s a brand Kroger sells but any blackberry sparkling beverage will do)
2 Cups Sparkling Lemonade
1/4 Cup Lemon Juice

Put the blackberries, basil leaves, and lemon juice in a pitcher. Mix up and let set for a few minutes, or until ready to serve drinks. Right before serving, pour the blackberry sparkling ICE and sparkling lemonade into the pitcher.

I refrigerated my drinks before opening them but if you don’t refrigerate first, you will want to serve this over ice.

Posted on

Premama Prenatal Vitamin

PremamaPrenatalDrinkInBox

I received a free 30 day supply of Premama Prenatal Vitamins to try and review. I got signed up for this a little late and they wanted a review by today so I’m going to review my 3 days of using the vitamins so far and then post another review the end of the month when I’ve had more time to try this.

First of all, I have a really hard time with prenatal vitamins. I’m currently pregnant with my third child and up until now (I’m 19 weeks) I have avoided anything but the occasional children’s vitamin. I tried so many vitamins with my first two and every one of them made me sick. I have morning sickness the first trimester and if you add nausea from the vitamins as well (I actually feel better when I’m NOT taking them) I just couldn’t do it this time.

I have heard that a liquid vitamin is a lot easier on your stomach than a pill but I really hate the taste of vitamins – I don’t even like the chewable vitamin C’s I prefer to swallow them whole and then drink something right after to get rid of the taste.

All that said, I was really excited to get to try the Premama Prenatal Vitamins. They’re a powdered drink mix, which is pretty close to a liquid vitamin in my opinion and supposed to help with nausea. I’m currently in my second trimester and don’t have nausea anymore so I can’t really say if the vitamins help with this or not, I am planning to have a fourth though so I’ll give these vitamins a try then and see what happens.

On my first try, I didn’t mix the mix with quite enough juice (they recommend that you mix it with juice) and I didn’t stir it in very well so it was rather gritty. My second try I used more juice and stirred it longer and it worked much better. Just make sure you stir the mix well in a full 8oz of juice and you won’t have any problems.

I was very pleasantly surprised that this drink mix has no bad taste! I completely expected my juice to taste nasty and that I would have to somehow choke this vitamin down. Definitely not the case. I’m so pleased!

They use a special iron blend (you can read about it here) which is supposed to be easier on your stomach. My iron levels are always really high (still normal, but on the high side) so I was so happy to see that they are using iron that’s easier to absorb and less likely to build up and make me sick. After 3 days of taking this I still feel great and if the vitamin was going to make me sick it probably would have done so by now.

My opinion, I really like this vitamin so far. A pill is more convenient, but since this is easy to get down and doesn’t make me sick I can deal with having to mix it every morning. I’ll do another short review the end of this month after I’ve used the vitamin longer but I’m pretty confident that I’ll continue to like it.