Welcome to the weekend, my friends! I hope your week (and your weather) have been fantastic and that you’re enjoying the holidays however you choose to celebrate them. We enjoyed a dusting of snow this week and I was in heaven for the brief day that it lasted on the trees. 

I can dream of a white Christmas, but this year, it’s only a dream. We’re supposed to hit 60 degrees on Monday (just a few degrees lower than the forecast for Phoenix) – what kind of nonsense is that? At least I can look forward to an afternoon walk in the warmer weather.

What we’re EATING: It’s been a seriously delicious week over here without a single new blog post to show for it. (And I’m not at all sad about that right now.)

Sean made the Ground Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry the other night and I may be guilty of having hidden the last serving for my lunch – zero guilt here, that’s how we roll. I tossed the leftover beef and broccoli with some leftover Noodles with Cabbage and the combination was so flipping good it gave me an idea for another new recipe.

I made a batch of Cinnamon Crinkle Cookies and then proceeded to eat an absurd number of them with my morning and midday and late afternoon coffee. I’m pretty sure that when a cookie encourages me to drink more and more coffee, it might not be a good thing, but the cookies are just so perfectly chewy with a buttery cinnamon sugar flavor, sigh. I love them.

We’ve been on a roll with Breakfast Sandwiches lately, although they often get made closer to lunchtime. I’ve also been informed that “Dad’s sandwiches are better than yours, Mom” with the added non-apologetic comment, “Sorry, but it’s true.” So, it looks like I may need to investigate exactly what makes his better. (Odds are good that it’s a whole lot of meat, as my carnivore crew can’t get enough bacon and sausage in their breakfasts.)

I made a version of this Cashew Chicken Salad, but wound up swapping so many ingredients both because they sounded good and because I didn’t have everything on hand, it became a whole new recipe. Not sad about that though, as I made notes so that I can make it again. The whole family was eating the chicken salad on crackers, right out of the mixing bowl.

My youngest son helped, actually did most of the work, to make his favorite dinner last night and it was perfection. Buttered Steak Bites (with mushrooms) and a big pot of Truffle Mac and Cheese, along with a Read more

Cranberry Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This cranberry orange cake with cream cheese frosting is bursting with holiday flavors. Perfectly moist with the softest cake crumb – the combination of sweet oranges and tart cranberries makes it perfect for Christmas.

It’s not even Christmas until you’ve had some sort of orange cranberry baked good. Am I right? The flavors and scent of those two fruits together just sings! Have you tried our orange cranberry bliss bars?? Or our cranberry orange bubble bread (perfect for Christmas morning!)?? Now you can try this orange cranberry cake too!

Oh hi there! My name’s Fiona and I’m so excited to meet you! I blog over at Just So Tasty, and today’s my first guest post on Oh Sweet Basil.

I love baking, eating cake, and listening to country music. (Is that embarrassing? The country music part I mean???) And making tasty treats for the people I love is one of my absolute favorite things.

I was so excited when Carrian asked me to share recipes on Oh Sweet Basil, so today I’m starting off with this easy Cranberry Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. It’s a perfectly moist vanilla sheet cake infused with fresh oranges and dotted with tart cranberries. Then it’s frosted with tangy cream cheese icing and decorated with sugared cranberries and orange zest.

What Do I Need to Make Cranberry Orange Cake?

Here is just a quick list of the ingredients so you can get an overview of what you will need. All the measurements and details can be found in the recipe card down below.

Sugared Cranberries

• Granulated Sugar
• Water
• Fresh Cranberries

Cranberry Orange Cake

• Dry Ingredients: Cake Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and Salt
• Wet Ingredients: Unsalted Butter, Granulated Sugar, Egg Whites, Vanilla Extract, Milk, Sour Cream
• Cranberries tossed in Flour to keep them from sinking in the cake
• Orange Zest and Juice (fresh)

Cream Cheese Frosting

• Unsalted Butter
• Cream Cheese
• Powdered Sugar
• Whipping Cream or Milk
• Orange Zest

How to Make Cranberry Orange Cake

There are three different parts to this recipe – the sugared cranberries (used for aesthetic reason and are optional), the cake and the frosting. Here are the basic steps for making this cake:

Sugared Cranberries

1. Dissolve some of the sugar into the water in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat to create a simple syrup.
2. Stir in the fresh cranberries until they are well coated and then remove the berries with a slotted s

Today, I’m so excited to welcome Ali Shapiro to the podcast!

Here’s what we talk about in today’s episode:

– Her health and wellness background

– The “all or nothing” mentality

-The importance of flexibility for maintaining long-term consistency

147: Ditching the “all or nothing” mentality with Ali Shapiro

Ali is the host of the top-ranked podcast Insatiable, a holistic nutritionist, integrated health coach, and rebel with a serious cause.

She’s academically, practically, and empathetically aware of how the medical system, diet culture, and body positivity movements all have their own flavor of crazy.

Ali developed TRUCE while in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where she drew from her 17+ years of working with real life clients and her own personal healing journey from emotional eating and having cancer as a teenager.

Ali’s work and clients’ unique success has been featured in well + Good, mindbodygreen, Prevention, Women’s Health and Forbes, as well as industry leading podcasts Being Boss, Tell Me Something True, and Food Heaven.

Follow Ali on Instagram and check out her website here.

More resources from this episode:

I love love love the meals from Sakara Life! Use this link and the code XOGINAH for 20% off their meal delivery and clean boutique items. This is something I do once a month as a lil treat to myself and the meals are always showstoppers.

If any of my fellow health professional friends are looking for another way to help their clients, I highly recommend IHP. You can also use this information to heal yourself and then go one to heal others, which I think is a beautiful mission. You can absolutely join if you don’t curre

White Chocolate Sugar Cookies with Peppermint Royal Icing

We love a classic Christmas cookie, but lately we’ve been enjoying new versions of old favorites. We have taken your traditional sugar cookie and transformed them into something magical – White Chocolate Sugar Cookies with Peppermint Royal Icing!

The white chocolate makes the cookies so decadent, and the peppermint in the royal icing makes them your quintessential Christmas cookie.  They are soft and pillow-y, just how a sugar cookie should be, and the royal icing is glossy and gorgeous! I guarantee these cookies are going to becoming a new Christmas favorite!

Whenever I make sugar cookies, it immediately takes me back to my childhood.  I remember my mom making sugar cookies while she let me and my siblings make a huge mess of tiny pieces of paper flying everywhere as we cut out snowflakes to hang in our windows. We thought hanging snowflakes in the windows was the sure way to guarantee a white Christmas, or at least snow that year!

Now I ask myself, why in the world did I want it to snow?! I’m not the biggest fan now.  Maybe that makes me old.  Or just boring.  Or maybe it makes me smart!  I’m going with smart! Snow is cold (and I loathe cold), wet, messy, dangerous for driving, and just bothersome. Before you all go crazy on me, it is pretty!  Freshly fallen snow on the trees and rooftops is gorgeous!  As long as I don’t have to go anywhere and can admire if from the comfort of my warm home, it can snow all it wants!  I just became 95-years-old!

Nailed it!

Okay, now I’ve gotten all side-tracked! These sugar cookies are easy!  Have you ever seen those mesmerizing videos of people doing the most ornate and beautiful cookie decorating ever?  I could watch those all day!  They make it look so easy that anyone could do it!  And then have you ever tried to do it?  Hahaha!  You could put me on an episode of Nailed It with some of my creations!  So I stick with the simple shapes and decorating!

Plus, this way my kids can help, and kids love everything about making sugar cookies! I mean, what is there not to love?!  Making the dough, rolling it out, cutting out shapes, baking the cookies, and then decorating them…it’s like one big party!

Extract Mania

These white chocolate sugar cookies with peppermint royal icing just scream Christmas, but one thing I love about these cookies is that you can swap the extract for any flavor to fit any holiday or season.  Here are some ideas:

• LEMON for spring or summer, Mother’s Day, a baby or bridal shower
• COCONUT for summer or Easter
• MAPLE for fall or Thanksgiving
• ORANGE for just about an reason or season
• CAKE BATTER…say what?  Yes, I did see cake batter extract the other day at the store. I bet that would be delish in this recipe!
• RASPBERRY for Valentine’s Day or a girls night
• ROOT BEER becaus

Sharing the details about the Sakara January reset and what to expect. 

Hi friends! How’s the week going for you? I’m definitely feeling the pressure of the last-minute scramble. I got a lot finished early this year, but still find myself with the tiny things left on the to-do list. I’m really trying to get through everything over the next couple of days so I can lower the stress level a bit for Christmas.

If you’re feeling like me, and already looking forward to January, I thought I’d share the details of the Sakara reset if you’d like to join in.

There are a LOT of resets/detoxes/cleanses floating around this time year, and this is one of my very favorites. I’ve had a taste of their reset programs multiple times, and am really looking forward to nourishing Sakara eats, especially after the holidays and a Disneyland trip!

I’ll be sharing more in an upcoming post with my wellness/healing plan, but here’s a bit of what I’m doing as we head into the new year:

– Sakara reset, followed by a 14-day Dr. Cabral detox to open up liver pathways, straight into the CBO protocol

– I’ll do a full post on the CBO protocol, but in a nutshell, when I started to do some digging and functional testing with my eye issues and allergies, I learned that as expected, my gut health is completely out of whack. I have major candida, yeast, and bacterial overgrowth, which could be contributing to my inflammation and allergies.

With these results, for a client, I would recommend a detox to open up liver pathways (along with pre-protocol support), into the CBO protocol. This protocol is designed to kill the *bad* bacteria in the gut, rebuild the beneficial bacteria, and heal/seal the gut wall. It’s 12 weeks, and I knew there was NO way I was going to attempt it over the holidays and the avalanche of family birthdays. I figured I’d wait until January, when I could really commit to the eating plan and healing. I’ll definitely share more about the entire process.

As far as Sakara goes, this is a treat I order for myself each month. It’s packed with nourishing, organic eats that I didn’t have to cook, and the meals are always beautiful, filling, and vibrant. Of course, they’re doing a little something special for the new year!

Sakara January Reset details

Here’s how the Sakara January reset works:

– You can choose between one of two plans: Read more