Summer Days

Summer is so wonderful!  Extra hours of sunshine, cookouts, fireworks, lake days, get togethers…….I’m summer’s #1 fan!

Yesterday, afternoon I didn’t have a documented snack.  It was eaten in random, while passing through the kitchen.  My undocumented snack included a spoonful of Justin’s all-natural chocolate peanut butter and a handful or 2 of cinnamon teddy cereal.

The afternoon quickly snuck away from me and I was left trying to figure out a desert to take to a church gathering.  The goals of the dessert:  make it clean and to not have to go to the grocery store to buy anything. 

I went through a few cookbooks and settled on a Hungry Girl recipe.  While I love the simplicity of Hungry Girl recipes…..they are not clean eating!  Lisa of Hungry Girl chooses a lot of products based on calorie content.  And while, obviously, being calorie conscious is very important, eating overly processed foods to save a few calories is just not worth is to me!! 

Triple Berry Pie

Original recipe authored by Hungry Girl

Ingredients:

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Add Ezekiel cereal to a ziploc bag and smash, or add cereal to a blender or food processor and grind to a breadcrumb-like consistency. 

Combine crumbs with butter mixture, cinnamon, and truvia packets in a bowl.  Stir until well mixed

Spray an oven-safe 9-inch pie dish with non-stick spray.  Evenly distribute mixture and press firmly to form crust.  Press crust into edges and up along the sides of your pie-dish

Bake crust for 10 minutes, remove, and cool.

In a medium-sized pot, heat berries over a medium heat until they are mostly thawed.  Add Sugar in the Raw, cornstarch, and vanilla extract to berries.  Mix well.

Once berry mixture is thoroughly heated and begins to bubble, reduce heat to low and cook for an additional 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Cook until mixture thickens.  Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Once berries have cooked, evenly spoon into pie crust.  Allow pie to cool and set in fridge for several hours before serving.

**I calculated, if this pie is cut into 8 slices, there are approximately 176 calories per slice.

Dessert Making Process

Ready to start cooking. 

 All my ingredients [minus the frozen bag of berries]

Cereal, truvia, cinnamon, and butter mixture combined to create the crust

Pressed crust into pan, ready for the oven

Let the berry process begin….

This whole process was just waaaay too easy!! 

I decided that I had extended my crust up the sides of my pan too high, so crushed the sides down which I thought made it look even prettier!!

Off to our young married church event we went….

Dinner

Not only are Russell and I true fans of Mexican food, so is pretty much everyone at our church.  Check out our Barberito’s spread:

I started off by fixing up a taco

My taco shell was filled with:

I enjoyed my taco with some un-sweet iced tea.

Following my taco, I refilled my plate with the same combo of toppings, but skipped out on the shell and grabbed a few nacho chips

These chips don’t touch the deliciousness of my Food Should Taste Good multigrain chips.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think to tote any along with me.

Eating tasty food and hanging out with good people out in the beautiful weather just makes for a perfect summer Sunday evening. 

While eating and hanging out, we were entertained by the dogs

and the kids

Have I mentioned that Russell and I are the only one’s in the young married group from our church that don’t have kids??  Umm yea….we plan on keeping it that way for a while too. 

No southern church event would be complete without dessert.  While the spread of desserts were quite lengthy, I stuck to 1 spoonful of 2 separate desserts and 1 cookie

I know, I know…..I didn’t even get my own dessert.  I did get compliments on it though!! 

Ohhh how I love summer!!!  Unfortunately, summer break is winding down for all the kids….school starts back in about 3 weeks.  I remember spending countless hours on our huge trampoline as a kid and numerous days in the pool.  What were your favorite summer activities as a child?