Peppermint Black Bean Brownies and Simple Living Toowoomba Essential Oils Workshop

Well, that was a long title but I am forever losing track of some of the content of my posts so I thought I would add a bit extra in this one so that I can find the Brownie recipe in the future. One of our regular Simple Living Toowoomba workshop presenters, Racheal, gave us a lot of very helpful information on Essential Oils today and she even cooked Brownies for morning tea. The recipe can be found on the DoTerra website  Peppermint Black Bean Brownies but after looking at the recipe on that site I would say that Racheal replaced the chocolate chips with nuts. It was very yummy I must say.

I don't bake very often but I might give it a try in the future and replace the honey with Dextrose and use nuts as well instead of chocolate chips or perhaps use cocao nibs. If you would also like to try out the recipe please keep in mind that doTerra Peppermint Essential Oil is used as one of the ingredients and that the doTerra oils are therapeutic grade and it is usually not advisable to ingest run of the mill Essential Oils. There are some more recipes here if you are interested.

Racheal, as I have mentioned before, is a very competent presenter for one so young and she has a wealth of information about using natural products in her home, growing food organically, making soap and so on.  Anyone who wanted to contact her about the products can just click on doTerra Wellness Advocate and I am sure she would be only too pleased to answer any questions you have in between looking after her six wonderful children. I did a post about the oils a while back if you would like to check it out Experimenting with doTerra Essential Oils. There is also some information about household cleaning products Racheal gave us in another workshop last October and I have just made some more washing powder using her recipe which I have written out in the post A Lovely End to the Day.

When checking out the doTerra website just now I came across a page  Do It Yourself which might be helpful to those who want to make their own beauty products, cleaning wipes, wood polish, deodorant etc.  Hmmm, I think I will be spending some time going through all those recipes. 

Racheal also brought along some very interesting looking books including Modern Essentials: A Contemporary Guide to the Therapeutic Use of Essential Oils. Sorry the photos are a bit blurry but I didn't have my glasses on to check what they looked like after I took them. Oops!

We had a number of new ladies there today which was great to see and there was a great swap as lots of produce and home made items were brought along. I came home with a bunch of beetroot, one of Racheal's perfumes and a lovely mint plant which I can't remember the name of but it was Asian from memory. It is too wet to go outside and see what it was called but I am sure it will grow well. It will be added to my mint collection as I already have 'ordinary' mint, chocolate mint and pennyroyal mint. The only problem is I rarely use them so I will have to remedy that situation very soon I think.

 Our very last Simple Living Toowoomba workshop for the year will be held on the 19th November and Chris from Gully Grove will be showing us how she makes her sourdough. This is going to be a very popular workshop so don't forget to book in here  for it if you would like to come. I have linked to the sourdough posts on her blog. She makes hers in a different way from the method I use which is from the tutorials on Celia's Fig Jam and Lime Cordial. 

 It is always helpful to see how others make their bread and Chris read on my blog that I wanted to add more fibre to the Sourdough White Sandwich Loaf recipe that I use as I don't like using white flour too much and she made some suggestions so now I add a lot of flaxseeds, sunflower seeds and pepitas. I really need to branch out and experiment with other recipes now but it is just so convenient to use one I am familiar with and I don't have to think too much about what I am doing :-) I was talking to a lady today about sourdough and to scroll down to the bottom of the page on my blog to find the labels and click on 'Sourdough' so, if she is reading this, here are the posts I have made about sourdough. I am no expert as I have mentioned before but there might be a bit of helpful information there.

We are already planning for workshops for next year and ones on felting/spinning and weaving,  permaculture and how to use herbs are in the pipeline depending on the availability of presenters. If you live in the region and know of someone who would like to present a workshop then let Margy or myself know. We are never too old to learn something new.