Mint Chocolate Milkshake

Today was National Mint Chocolate Day.  And anyone who knows me knows I think there are no finer combinations than mint and chocolate.  That taste... it's a beautiful thing.

So, in celebration of this wonderful day (because how could I not celebrate it!?!), I made a mint chocolate milkshake and used my THRIVE Gourmet Hot Cocoa Mix. 

I even shared it with my husband and toddler.  Rave reviews all around!  So here's how I did it:

MINT CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE
1 1/4 cups fat-free milk*
6 ice cubes
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon mint extract (depending on your preference)
3 tablespoons THRIVE Gourmet Hot Cocoa Mix
6 Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies
1 1/2 cups vanilla ice cream

Place everything in the blender and blend until it looks like a milkshake :).  Then drink it up!  You can even garnish it with an additional Girl Scout Thin Mint.  But that's not required ;).

*Denotes other ingredients available through THRIVE Life.

So, here's to you, mint and chocolate!  You'll have a special place in my heart forever ;)!

Easy Fruit Salad

One of the things I love most about having my home store through THRIVE Life is the fact that I have a home store!  Does that sound redundant?  Probably.  But there have been many times when I've had the automatic thought, "Oh that recipe sounds good, but I don't have x ingredient." 

But then I remember my home store -- and I realize I do have that ingredient after all!!!

I had one such experience the other day.  I had made a breakfast casserole for dinner, but felt like I wanted something else to go along with it -- otherwise the plate would look kind of bare!  I had recently purchased some fresh strawberries which needed to be used up, plus I had bananas and red grapes (also in need of being used).  So I thought of the fruit salad I make for every large family gathering we attend.  It's such a simple recipe, and it's so delicious!  This time I would just have fewer fruits in it than usual, and no big deal...

Then I remembered I had some extra fruits after all!  I could add my THRIVE Raspberries!  And that's just what I did!  I just threw them in dry and let them get all soggy from the yogurt!  I've done this multiple times with yogurt parfaits, and I love how they turn out when they are allowed to sit and soak up the yogurt!  Saves time, too, since all my THRIVE foods are washed and ready for me to use!

So here's the recipe I made the other day.  It's very simple, and we always get a lot of compliments about it.  I'm actually pretty excited to try this with more THRIVE fruits in the future and see how it turns out, because I could actually make this fruit salad with all THRIVE ingredients, and I think that's pretty awesome!

EASY FRUIT SALAD
1 large banana, sliced*
1 cup red grapes, rinsed and dried*
5-6 ripe strawberries, rinsed, dried, sliced*
1 cup THRIVE Raspberries
1 cup strawberry yogurt* (or yogurt flavor of your choice)

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.  Allow to chill for 1/2 hour and serve!

*Denotes other ingredients available through THRIVE Life.

This was a perfect breakfast-y complement to our breakfast-for-dinner casserole :).  And in the future, when I have them on hand, I'll be adding apples* and blueberries*!

THRIVE Sugar Cookies

As my little girl gets older and able to do more (she is almost 22 months now...), I find that she wants to do more.  Which makes sense ;).  So I've recently tried to find new activities she and I can do together.  One of the activities we recently tried was making sugar cookies.  And, conveniently, I had my THRIVE Vanilla Sugar Cookie Mix, which meant I only had to mix together 3 ingredients!  It made the mixing fast and easy -- and my little girl was able to help add the major part of the ingredients (the cookie mix).  She loves to be involved in all aspects ;).

I followed the recipe on the #10 can of the mix, which called for butter, and egg, and water in addition to the cookie mix.  I opted to use THRIVE Butter Powder, because I love that stuff!  And because I didn't have any softened butter and I didn't want to wait! 

We also opted to do roll-out cookies, so she could try her hand at cutting out shapes (which was an interesting experience for me, but she loved it!).  So we actually added a little extra flour as well.  Again, the recipe is on the can :).

Anyway, we frosted some of the cookies with canned chocolate frosting (because I had some in the fridge) and did some sprinkles (another learning experience for mommy!).  And then we delivered most of them to friends.  Because they were delicious!  And I didn't need them hanging around the house with my extreme sweet-tooth!

Dinner and Dessert -- With THRIVE Help!

I love THRIVE Life foods.  For a number of reasons.  But I don't use them exclusively.  And that's just because I have a lot of the ingredients on hand already, which I didn't purchase through THRIVE Life.  Or they are items not available through THRIVE Life.

But when I do have those THRIVE goodies on hand to help me out...  It's just awesome!  Because I am often able to shave 5 or 10 minutes off my meal prep, simply by not having to chop onions or clean and chop celery, etc.

Yesterday, I was making dinner for my family as well as taking some to a friend who recently had surgery.  And THRIVE Life helped me out!  Here are all the THRIVE Life Ingredients I used in yesterdays dinner (and dessert!):

For dinner, I made Salisbury Steaks, mashed potatoes, and purchased a pre-made chopped salad kit (just for something a little different).  Dessert was chocolate chip cookies. 

(sorry for the sideways picture!)






I love these chocolate chip cookies!  I have made them before using THRIVE Butter Powder as well, but this time, since I am running low on the butter powder (need to get that on order!), I used regular butter.  You can find the recipe here. 

I love that THRIVE Whole Egg Powder allows me to eat raw cookie dough guilt-free when I'm pregnant ;).

The THRIVE Chopped Onions saved me some time for the Salisbury Steaks, and the THRIVE Potato Beads saved me a ton of time!  I didn't have to wash, peel, chop, or boil potatoes!  I just brought water and milk to a boil with some butter and a couple other seasonings and added in my THRIVE Potato Beads, and voila!  Side dish was done!  And I love that!

Don't get me wrong:  I am excited about all the things I can prep ahead of time using so much of my THRIVE Life ingredients.  But even on the days when I'm just using a few of the awesome THRIVE ingredients to cut some corners and save myself some time and effort, I'm grateful to have my home store of delicious THRIVE Life foods!