Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter

You guys it’s happening. Everything is turning up pumpkin spice. It is barely just the beginning of fall and I’ve already heard the infamous PSL muttered a thousand times. Personally, I ain’t a fan but hey, I get it. I get the need to put pumpkin spice and everything nice into everything once fall comes around. I mean have you read the title of this post… guilty as charged!

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter | Popcorn & Chocolate

No, but for reals, it ain’t fall into you have your first delicious bite of pumpkin spice. For me it was this peanut butter that also has some real pumpkin and sea salt thrown in to give a perfectly delicious salty and sweet taste.

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter

It isn’t really fall into you buy ALL the candles from Bath and Body Works either. Oops… sorry bank account. I can’t let fall pass without my whole apartment smelling like ‘autumn’ or ‘vanilla pumpkin cupcake’.

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter | Popcorn & Chocolate

BUT I digress.. back to this pumpkiny pumpkin spice peanut butter. It is so perfect dolloped onto your morning bowl of oatmeal or enjoyed with a banana or apple as a snack. Or, let’s be real, just straight from the jar. So grab a spoon and dig in!

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter | Popcorn & Chocolate

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup peanuts
  • 2 Tablespoons pumpkin
  • 1.5 teaspoons coconut sugar
  • 1.5 teaspoons pumpkin spice
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Procedure:

  1. Roast the peanuts at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes, flipping halfway through. You want the peanuts to be toasty brown but not burnt.
  2. Once the peanuts are cooled from the oven, put in the food processor and grind until smooth. This could take anywhere between 4 and 10 minutes. It depends on how smooth of a texture of peanut butter you want.
  3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the food processor and grind until blended.
  4. Make sure to store your peanut butter in an air-tight container in the fridge and eat within a few weeks.

Just as a side note – this peanut butter is very adaptable to how you like your peanut butters – if you like more salt add more salt! If you want it more pumpkiny add more pumpkin! It’s totally up to you! I liked the peanuts to be the dominant flavor so I didn’t add as much as the other ingredients.

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter | Popcorn & Chocolate

There you have it – a tasty fall treat to welcome fall with open arms (and mouths)! Ain’t nothing like some pumpkin spice and everything nice.

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter | Popcorn & Chocolate

Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter | Popcorn & Chocolate

Salted Caramel Popcorn

Caramel Popcorn

Oh popcorn how I love thee. I love it when you are buttery. I love it when you are kettle-y. I love it when you are cheesy. I love it when you are spicy. I love it when you are sweet. Oh but I especially love it when you are sweet. I will just eat you up I love you so.

Caramel Popcorn

Do you like my ballad to popcorn? I figured it was about time I let them know how much I do truly love them. I mean I did name part of our blog because of them…

Salted Caramel Popcorn

Recently Rose and I have been popping all sorts of delicious popcorn creations in the kitchen. We thought in case there was anyone else out there who possibly loves popcorn as much as us two that we would share one of said recipes for you.

Caramel Popcorn

We created a caramel-melt-in-your-mouth-sweet-and-delicious popcorn. It only seemed right what with all the salted caramel drinks popping up everywhere. Plus, caramel is pumpkin pie spice’s lesser known cousin that sometimes get a bit neglected. (Don’t worry pps lovers we have some recipes for you soon too!) But right now it’s time for the caramel corn.

Caramel Popcorn

Bring on the crunchy sweet deliciousness!

Salted Caramel Popcorn

Ingredients:

  • 1/3 cup popcorn kernels
  • 2 tablespoons coconut sugar
  • 3/4 tablespoon butter (I’m sure you could use coconut oil too, but we used butter here)
  • salt

Steps:

  1. Pop the kernels. We used an air popper but you could also do them on the stove. This will make about 5 cups of popcorn so if you have an air popper, be prepared with a big bowl!
  2. In a small saucepan, heat the sugar and the butter on low heat, stirring frequently so the butter melts into all the sugar and doesn’t burn. Stir frequently but not constantly until all the sugar is melted into the butter – about 5 minutes. You want the mixture to stay runny and not start to clump because once this cools, it will start to harden together quickly.
  3. While the mixture is hot, drizzle over your popcorn. I used a spatula to help drizzle.
  4. Salt the popcorn to your liking. We used pink himalayan sea salt and used less than a teaspoon since we wanted a sweeter treat.
  5. Let cool and enjoy!

Salted Caramel popcorn

Salted Caramel Popcorn | Popcorn & Chocolate

What I Ate Wednesday 9/16/15

Hi all! I’m here sharing a what I ate Wednesday for you. I thought it would be fun to show you what a typical day of meals for me is. Plus, who doesn’t love stalking what everyone else is eating??

Greek yogurt bowl

Greek yogurt bowl

Breakfast: Plain Greek yogurt with figs, strawberries, blueberries, ground flax seed, and Mamma Chia cinnamon pecan clusters. This is one of my go to breakfasts because it is quick, easy, and filling. I usually throw in whatever fresh fruit we have and top with my favorite granola or cereal – the more the better!

Quinoa salad with a side of grapes

Lunch: Salad with quinoa and roasted veggies with some cotton candy grapes on the side. Lately I have been trying to roast or stem a bunch of veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, zucchini) on Sunday so I can throw them into my lunches for the week. I also have been making a big batch of quinoa on Sundays. Can we talk about something for a second? Cotton candy grapes. Like what? How? Yum? These things taste exactly like cotton candy it is kind of crazy and you kind of need to try them. Okay done rant.

Luna bar

Snack: Luna Protein Bar. I like to have a snack around 3:30/4pm to tide me over until dinner. I had a meeting at this time so I had to grab something quick and this protein bar definitely did the trick. Plus who doesn’t love some cheeky afternoon chocolate?

Cuban salad bowl

Mind the messy avocado..

Dinner: Cuban Salad Bowl from Simple Roots. We love love love this salad bowl. We bought some plantains last week and needed to use them up so we whipped up this delicious bowl of goodness.

Tea and chocolate

After dinner treats: Celestial Bengal Spice Tea and some peanut butter chocolate. I love ending my day with a warm cup of tea even if it means I pee 9428 times in the night. I also got to have something sweet to go with it!

I hope you enjoyed peaking into my food life. Comment below what you ate today too!

Thanks Peas And Crayons for linking up!

What We Ate 8/17/15 – 8/22/15

Hey everyone! Just sharing our delicious eats we had for dinner last week. I have to start to figure out what we want to make next week as well. If you have any suggestions comment below!

BBQ chicken Asian salad

Monday: Chopped Asian BBQ Chicken Salad from Half Baked Harvest. We absolutely love this salad! We’ve made it a couple of times before and I always forget how simple and quick it all comes together. Those tortilla chips are sooo good.

Cauliflower rice and sweet potatoes

Tuesday: Spicy Cauliflower Rice, Cinnamon-Paprika Sweet Potatoes & Avocado Mash from Blissful Basil. We recently got into making cauliflower rice and have been trying out different recipes that involve it. This one was simple oh so delicious. The sweet potatoes were probably my favorite part!

Peach pizza

Peach pizza and salad

Wednesday: Peach Pizza with a side salad. This is our go to pizza recipe in the summer – it is refreshing and light. I can’t get enough peaches! Yum!

Thursday: Leftover Cauliflower Rice with Cinnamon-Paprika Sweet Potatoes. Still good leftover!

Friday: Leftover Peach Pizza. It’s Friday so we had to have some pizza to ring in the weekend!

Saturday: Takeout – we were out and about running errands so we grabbed some quick food to go.

What We Ate 8/2/15 – 8/8/15

Hello my friends! This past week has been pretty low-key for us; nothing too exciting going on now. We were back in Cape Cod the previous weekend and are headed to New Hampshire to visit my family this upcoming weekend. It has been a busy summer but a great one so far! I can’t believe it is already August and stores are putting out all their back to school stuff. I also can’t believe I haven’t been in the back to school rush for 2 years now. These years after graduation really fly by! At least we have good food to enjoy them!

Egg dinner

Sunday: Breakfast for dinner. We had just driven home and didn’t want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking up dinner so we threw together some scrambled eggs and steamed veggies. I always love eggs for dinner for something quick and easy.

Vegan creamy pasta with veggies

Monday: Easy Vegan Alfredo by the Minimalist Baker. We were craving some cheesy pasta but since Rose has recently decided she thinks she is lactose intolerant we skipped the cheese and made a vegan alfredo instead. The recipe was good and we of course added some veggies to ours because that’s what we love to do!

Vegetables

Spring rolls

Spring roll

Tuesday: Spring Rolls with Carrot-Ginger Dipping Sauce from Martha Stewart. We tried a new spring roll recipe and this one did not disappoint! Something about the summer just makes me want fresh raw veggies. The carrot-ginger sauce was messy but oh so good.

Wednesday: Leftover pasta!

sweet potato falafel

Thursday: Sweet Potato Falafel Pitas from Sweat Peas and Saffron. These falafels came out so well. I love sweet potatoes in pretty much anything so I was dying to try this recipe and I’m so glad we did. It was delicious and we now have plenty of leftover falafels for the week!

Friday: Leftover falafels- yum yum!

Zucchini bread pancakes

Saturday: Vegan Zucchini Bread Pancakes by The Vegan and The Chef. Apparently breakfast for dinner was the theme for this week because we couldn’t resist making these scrumptious pancakes after I saw the recipe online. I know zucchini pancakes might sound a bit odd but you must try these they are so delicious! Caroline also has a beet pancake recipe that we are going to try next.

At Home Mini S’more Bites

Banana mini s'mores

Happy National S’mores day!!! Now this is a holiday worth celebrating! There is just something so perfect about a burnt marshmallow stuck between two graham crackers and some melted chocolate. However when you don’t have a fire handy to melt said marshmallows, things can get a bit tricky.
S'moresHave no fear though! We are here to share an at home s’mores version that only takes about 5 minutes and a microwave. We are going to keep it simple and sweet (just like the s’mores) and show you our mini at home s’mores.

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For the base of the s’more we used sliced banana. Next we took some melted chocolate and spread it onto the banana round. We added a marshmallow cut in half on top of that and then drizzled it all with chocolate and some graham cracker crumbs. Pop in the freezer for a couple of minutes for the chocolate to harden. And viola at home s’mores that don’t require making a fire or too much of a mess (until you eat them!)

Mini s'mores

We got a little creative and added other things into the s’mores, such as peanut butter, coconut, and toffee bits. It’s all up to what you are craving! I hope you have a great National s’mores day and get to eat some s’mores in some form or another!

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What We Ate 7/19/15 – 7/24/15

Forgive us for the lack of posting lately. We have been spending most of our weekends on the Cape, soaking up the sun and waves the best we can. But we didn’t forget about you! We have some projects planned that we want to share shortly so don’t give up on us either! In the meantime, here is our usual what we ate the past week so you can sneak a peak into our daily food routines.

Spiralized carrot salad

Saturday: Spiralized carrot noodle salad. We recently bough a spiralizer so it has been nothing but zoodles all day every day. We made this easy and quick salad by spiralizing a carrot over a pile of leaves and then adding some other veggies and toppings.

Indian chickpea and vegetable soup

Monday: Indian chickpea and vegetable soup. Don’t ask why soup sounded good when it has been a heatwave here recently, but it was what we were craving. We had made a similar soup before but couldn’t find the magazine the recipe was in so we found this one instead. It was easy and quite delicious! And spicy! We added some potatoes to it because why not.

Brussels sprouts salad with walnut sauce

Tuesday: Roasted Brussels sprouts salad with walnut sauce from Veggie Primer. Yum this meal was delicious! The walnut sauce was the best part of the whole dish. I could (and did) eat that sauce on everything!

Wednesday: Leftover Indian chickpea soup. Gotta love having leftovers!

barley mango salad

Thursday: Barley mango salad with avocado yogurt dressing from Running to the Kitchen. We bought some watercress at the beginning of the week, but unfortunately it went bad before we made this salad…  which was a bummer but the salad still tasted good with some romaine under it. I was loving the alfafa sprouts!

Friday: Whole Foods! Friday was a rush and we had very little food in our house so we ended up getting some hot food to go at Whole Foods. It was totally worth it and absolutely hit the spot.

4th of July Pops

red white and blue fruit popsicle

As a kid growing up in New Hampshire where the summers are hot and sticky there wasn’t anything that I wanted to eat more than a nice refreshingly cold popsicle. I used to spend my summer days swimming and then go and buy a popsicle from the little stand by our pool. It was always such a hard decision which popsicle to get; do you get the ones with the gumball eyes? Or the creamsicle? Or the classic red, white, and blue firecracker popsicle? You really couldn’t go wrong with any of those choices.

red white and blue fruit popsicles

As it has gotten closer to the 4th of July I’ve been seeing the firecracker popsicles taunting me at the grocery store with their festive coat of red, white, and blue. My 5 year old self started drooling at remembrance of those decadent delights. The purple stained lips and tongue, the sticky fingers, the wonderful surprise as you go from each different flavor. Oh, how my stomach longed for those popsicles. After a few days of not being able to shake that craving I had to take action. I whipped out my blender and grabbed some fresh fruit, yogurt, and milk from the fridge. I was going to make a festive treat that could be enjoyed guiltlessly at anytime of the day, and one that would hopefully not stain my teeth purple..

red white and blue popsicles

Here, my friends, is our version of the infamous firecracker popsicle perfect for your 4th of July soiree. It’s quick and easy to make and tastes delicious! Not to mention it is full of nutritious fruit. Enjoy the simplicity of a wonderfully refreshing popsicle on the 4th of July.

red white and blue fruit popsicle

Ingredients:

  • 1/3  – 1/2 cup strawberries – or any red fruit
  • Yogurt – we used greek yogurt, but you could sub dairy free yogurt as well
  • 1/3 cup blueberries
  • Honey, or sweetener of choice
  • Milk – we used almond milk

1. In a blender blend together around a 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of fresh strawberries, 1 tablespoon greek yogurt, 1/2 tablespoon honey, and a dash of milk (around a tablespoon or 2 depending on how well your blender can blend non-liquid foods). Pour the contents from the blender into your popsicle molds; this made about 4-5 popsicles for me. Put popsicles in the fridge to set up for about 15 minutes.

2. For the next layer just blend together greek yogurt, 1/2 tablespoon honey, and a splash of milk. I did about 1/2 cup of greek yogurt for all of the popsicles. Pout this next layer on top of the strawberry layer in the popsicle and again let it set up for about 15 minutes.

3. For the blueberry layer, blend about a 1/3 cup of blueberries, 1 tablespoon greek yogurt, 1/2 tablespoon honey, and some milk (again, it depends on how well your blender works). Pour the final layer on top of the greek yogurt layer and stick the popsicle stick into the mold. Let the popsicle fully freeze before enjoying on a hot summer day!

Red white and blue firecracker popsicles

These popsicles are so yummy and easy to make, plus with all the greek yogurt they add a good source of protein for an afternoon snack! I’ve been munching on these once I get home from work pretty much every day this past week. Yum yum yum, my childhood self is quite content with these new ‘firecracker’ popsicles!

melting popsicle

Got to eat them before they melt!

What We Ate 6/21/15 – 6/27/15

Somehow this week we had a lot of leftovers to catch up on. They were all delicious of course, but that meant we didn’t get to try too many new recipes. We also have been trying to go out to eat a bit more to get us out of our usual routine. Since it is summer now it is nice to be able to walk into town and go grab some food you normally wouldn’t cook for yourself or to try a fun new cocktail. Since moving to Allston, we have been able to try a lot of new places to eat and having been loving them all. This week we went to Park in Cambridge and it was definitely a fun place to go and eat.
kale salad

Sunday: Leftover Mexican Brussel Sprout Slaw. We made this last week and it came out great!

kung pao chickpeas

Monday: Kung Pao Chickpeas with some added veggies. We followed this recipe but then added in some cauliflower, broccoli, and peppers then served it over brown rice. This came out really well and we will definitely be making it again!

zucchini boat

Tuesday: Leftover Zucchini boats from last week with a side salad.

Wednesday: Leftover Kung Pao Chickpeas.

Veggie burger

Thursday: Good ol’ veggie burger and a salad. Always good, always hits the spot. Shout out to my bunny grahams!

Friday: Out to dinner at Park in Cambridge. We got a chicken dish with mashed potatoes, peas, and onions. Plus some delicious cocktails. The food was very good just a bit of a more hearty meal, possibly more suitable for the winter months if you catch my drift.

What We Ate 6/7/15 – 6/13/15

Hello! Have you missed us? We have been busy bees moving apartments and living with about 1094 boxes in all of our rooms. As you can imagine we haven’t had much time or room to keep up with PAC these last few weeks. However, we are back and coming up with some fun summer treats to share! But, as always, first we will share what we have been munching on the past few days.

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Monday & Tuesday: Brussels sprout salad, chicken, and roasted sweet potatoes and parsnips. This was a hog podge dinner that we just threw together with what we had in our fridge. We roasted the sweet potatoes and parsnips in a little bit of salt and pepper and some rosemary.

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Wednesday: Stir fry veggies summer rolls. We have been on a summer roll kick lately! I’m not sure if it is because we have been trying to use up a whole pack of rice paper rolls or if it is because they are so fresh and delightful when it is hot outside, probably a little bit of both. We stir-fried up some peppers, zucchini, corn, and asparagus in a dash of soy sauce and some teriyaki and then rolled them in the rice paper with avocado. Yummo!

Thursday: Cambridge, 1. Rose met me at work and we strolled into Cambridge to grab a slice (or two) of pizza before I had to head back to work.

Friday: More summer rolls!

Saturday: Beat Hotel . We went out to dinner with Rose’s parents at the Beat Hotel in Cambridge. It was really yummy and very filling, we both got their Earthly Delight Bowls, which feature a grain, a protein of choice, and some vegetables. We will definitely be going back as they have a long cocktail list (not to mention 36 types of wine on tap!?)