recipe: homemade sugar-free ketchup

Recently, Casey and I cut sugar and artificial sweeteners completely our of our diet. There are many reasons why but we won't get into that much right now. Alls I'm saying is... Diet Coke. Haven't had one in 9 days. Crazy! (Casey hasn't had any diet coke in 26 days, she wins...) Anyways, in this time, we have found ourselves needing ketchup occasionally. We don't need it that much but when we do, we want to be able to use it. Everything in the store has sugar and the sugar-free kind is always a little weird (and made with artificial sweeteners). But since we have also had interest in eating mostly foods that are not processed we figured... why not just make our own? We will know exactly what is in it. And everyone will be happy. Yay! So here goes...

Homemade Sugar-free Ketchup

Ingredients:

6 oz. can Tomato Paste

2 Tbs. Mustard

1/2 cup Water

1/4 cup White Wine Vinegar

1/4 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar

2 Stevia Packets (we used SweetLeaf)

1 tsp. Salt

1 tsp. Onion Powder

1 tsp. Garlic Powder

1/2 tsp. Red Pepper Flake

1/2 tsp. Oregano

Directions:

1. In a small sauce pan over medium heat, add the water, vinegars and stevia.

2. When the stevia has dissolved, add the rest of the dry ingredients.

3. Whisk to get rid of any lumps.

4. Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk together until smooth.

5. Simmer for about 5 minutes and your ketchup is ready! If the consistency is too thick for your liking, add a little more water to loosen it up.

Makes 16 servings

Serving Size: 1 Tablespoon

Calories: 7.8

If you are like us, you immediately tried this. While it was warm. And you wanted to eat it all. It's. That. Good! But it is now in the refrigerator for the next time we make burgers. Which I hope is like, tomorrow.

xo, Savannah

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the 5 minute updo: braided gibson tuck

 I have to say, I've missed doing hair tutorials. Mostly, I just like to come up with new ways to do my hair and then I get to share it with you! This updo is so simple. I love it because it works with my overly thick hair. It's usually a task to get all of my hair together in a small area (buns and such) but the braid holds it all together.

Here's what ya do...
1. Part your hair to the side.
2. Put your hair in a low pony using a hair tie.
3. Braid your hair below the hair tie and secure with a clear elastic.
4. Make a hole with your fingers in the center of your hair, above the hair tie.
5. Flip your braid through the hole.
6. Pull it all the way through, your hair will look twisted on the sides.
7. Roll the bottom of the braid into itself, upward, towards the top hair tie.
8. After you've rolled it all the way up, pin it in place with some bobby pins. Loosen the braid and pin the sides of the braid to your head. Just do what you need to. Hairs sticking out everywhere? Embrace the messiness or pin 'em in. Use hairspray if you'd like.
9. That's it! At this point, I twisted my bangs and pinned them back. They were nuts so pinning them back was the only thing that was going to happen with them. If you don't have bangs, word. It'll take you even less time to do this hairstyle on yourself.

Here are some other views of my hair.

And because Casey requested it...

xo, Savannah

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