Cooking: Pumpkin swirl muffins

Here is my first post where I show you how I convert a normal recipe to make it a little more healthy for your family but just as YUMMY!

Pumpkin Swirl Muffins are a perfect blend of spicy pumpkin with a little swirl of cheesecake on top. My kind of muffin and a wonderful treat around the holidays! This recipe makes about 12 regular size muffins.

Muffins:

• 1 15oz can of pumpkin  (I used organic)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil  (in this case you can also use olive or coconut oil)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar (There are MANY great substitutes for white sugar. I used Agave nectar which they now sell in most grocery stores but you might have to go to the health section. Stevia is a good natural choice or one of my favorites 100% Maple Syrup! You normally don't have to use as much as the recipe calls for so in this case I used 3/4 cup Agave Nectar.)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups all-pourpose flour (I blogged about white vs. 100% whole grain so you can understand why I would make different choices when it comes to this area and other options you have. I had Spelt flour on hand so I used= 1 1/2 cups Spelt flour. To make this Gluten free use Buckwheat flour)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Swirl filling:

• 8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature (For those of you who are Lactose intolerant like I am there is a great substitute for cream cheese made by Tofutti and is pictured below)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 5 tablespoons sugar (4 tablespoons of Agave nectar)
• 1/8 teaspoons vanilla extract

Crust:

• about 6 Graham crackers (Trader Joes has YUMMY Graham crackers made without high fructose corn syrup, pictured below)
• 3 tablespoons of butter (dairy free option : Earth balance)

Start by preheating your oven to 350F (180C)

Mix pumpkin, oil, and sugar (agave) together.

 Add eggs, one at a time, combining thoroughly after each.
add vanilla

 whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices in separate bowl.

 Slowly add flour mixture to liquids, combining thoroughly and scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula.

 Line you muffin tin with paper cups or grease.

 Here comes the fun part! Divide up the 6 graham crackers into ziplock bags and let the kids pound on them and make them into graham cracker crumbs! Heat up 3 tablespoons of butter in a bowl then mix in your graham cracker crumbs until moist.

 Evenly pour the crumbs in each muffin cup, then press firmly down to flatten on the bottom of the cup, making the crust!

 Then evenly pour your pumpkin muffin mix into each muffin cup.

 Now for the cheesecake swirl filling. Here is a picture of the cream cheese substitute I used.

 Mix together cream cheese, sugar(agave), egg yolk and vanilla until well combined.
I let my kids lick the beaters but you always have to be carful with this when raw egg is in the mixture!

Add a small spoonful of the cream cheese mixture on top of each muffin.

 Swirl with a skewer.

 Bake times:

• mini muffins : 20-25 min
• standard muffins: 25-30 min
• jumbo muffins: 30-40 min

You will know they are ready when toothpick or butter knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Here is a picture of finished product, NO white flour and NO white sugar and showing off the YUMMY graham cracker crust!

*Two things you could do to add to these muffins would be to sprinkle chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans) to the top of the muffins before baking or add a cup of dark chocolate chips to your pumpkin muffin mix, mix them in before separating out into muffin cups!

Stickers!

Stickers are so much fun! Most times I just have to pull out a few books of stickers, paper, and markers and my kids will be busy for at least a half an hour. Most of the time you can find books of stickers in the dollar section at Target or at Michaels! 

This is what happened today with the stickers! Forget the paper, lets put them all over our body! =)

HOMEMADE STICKERS

*Heres another idea: You can have your child cut out pictures in magazines and make their own stickers! All you need is 2 Tablespoons of any flavor Jello gelatin and 4 Tablespoons of hot water. Stir in a small bowl until gelatin is dissolved. Then paint on the back of your cut out pictures. Let dry, Gelatin side up, for an hour and your homemade stickers are ready! WARNING: these will taste good so make sure when you lick the back to apply them to paper, you don't lick ALL of the gelatin mixture off! =)

Open ended art

Craft Time doesn't always have to be so much work for mommy! Bring out what you have on hand like: Paper, Markers, Colored Pencils, Tape, Scissors, Toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaners, and even candy wrappers. Just let them create! The trick to your child staying at the table longer is all in the surrounding! Fix some hot coco, put on some music, and, the most important key, Create with them! This doesn't mean help them with their project! Do something you enjoy like scrap booking, drawing, or even bring out a puzzle. My son and I had a relaxing hour this afternoon creating together. He is very proud to show off his creation on my Blog. He calls it "Volcano, Snow, & Candy Corn Land"

Let their Imaginations soar! =)

Cooking: Chocolate Bowls!

Balloons are so much fun! If you are going to play the balloon game from my last post, that means you already have some in your house! All you will need for this project is:

1. thick balloons
2. chocolate for melting, any kind you want!
3. non stick spray
4. a needle/knife (I used the sharp end of a compass)
5. Parchment paper
6. Something to fill you bowl with (I give suggestions at the bottom)

Here is how you start! Let your kids have some fun washing the balloons as you blow them up! You know how much they love to play with soap and water!

 After you dry them off, spray the bottom with non stick spray!

 Now you want to melt your chocolate! We already had Almond Bark for a different project so that's what we used! A healthier option would be Dark Chocolate!

 After it's melts it time to dip your balloons! OK, now here is where I had a problem.... the pictures above show that we blew up water balloons but when dipped into the chocolate, they POPPED! To much heat for how thin they are! In a quick moment, I grabbed my large thicker party balloons and blew them to about the same size as the water balloons, washed, and sprayed them!

 Now we are back on track! Dip your balloons in your melted chocolate and just go about and inch up from the bottom of the balloon. set the on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

You can make as many of these as you want, I made about 10 balloons and there still was room on my cookie sheet for more! After you have them all dipped, put in fridge to cool. About 10 minutes later, bring them out and pop your balloons!

 Here is what it will look like! YUMMO!

 Because of the season, I am going pumpkin CRAZY so in ours we added a scoop of Pumpkin Ice cream!

 The best part about this is we brought it over to a friends house and got to share our sweet treat with them just for fun! That's what life's all about! Sharing in sweet moments with friends!

* Other ideas you could do with a white chocolate bowl is sorbet and fresh cut fruit! If you have a peanut butter chocolate fan, try using peanut butter chocolate chips for melting with chocolate ice cream inside. Most kids would probably go for a milk chocolate bowl, vanilla ice cream inside, and don't forget the sprinkles! For the healthiest option, how about a Dark Chocolate bowl with just fresh cut fruit!

****Check out this fun idea for Christmas Time****

Click HERE to see more!

Pop the Balloon Game!

I promised something fun! 

My son Brenden inspired me to do something with balloons! He had an idea to put little balls of play dough in a balloon. Its fun to play with and it makes cool sounds when you shake it! I wanted to make a game out of it so I surprised the kids with 3 packages of mini lego figures. If you have never seen these, its just different lego guys that come in a small bag, all in pieces! 

 Here are the three characters all in a pile, straight from their bags! I figured they would all be a good size to fit into little water balloons.

 Here is a picture of one of the pieces going into a little balloon.

 After the piece was mostly stuffed into the balloon, I stuck my balloon pump in there to get it blown up! The mini balloons WOULDN'T get blown up without a pump!!!

 This process took a little while but they were with me through the whole process because I was documenting for the Blog. If I were you, I would do the blowing up balloons by myself and then let the kids have a surprise when they play the game! They won't know what is inside!

 Put all the balloons in a pile. Count down and then they get to pop the balloons by sitting on them!

 The water balloons are so much easier to pop, especially if you have little kids playing! However, I had a little trouble fitting certain lego pieces into them so I added a couple large balloons in the mix.
Below you can actually see the legos inside the balloon that Brenden is about to pop!

 Here are the three lego guys we got, put together after the game!

Now, we played with Legos, but there are many ideas of things you can use to put inside the balloons! Since its Halloween time, you can put a single SMALL piece of wrapped candy or a spider ring inside!
If you are doing this for a birthday party you can use small party favors like silly bands and other fun prizes, just make sure its something they can't break when sitting on the balloon!

*My suggestion after playing this game is little water balloons for younger children. It's not fun if they are struggling to pop the balloon. Save the large balloons for bigger (school age) children. Part of the fun is watching them struggle to pop the balloons! =)

Check out this short video of my kids playing the game!

Whole Grain Vs. White

I hate to just load you up with facts that aren't so fun but I can't show you how I convert recipes unless I tell you WHY I convert them first! No one can explain this better the Dr. Michael Roizen.

"White bread is made from wheat grain that has been stripped of the outer shell and germ. Why is this a bad thing? When you eat breads and pastas made from this type of wheat — also called enriched, bleached, unbleached, semolina or durum flour — or rice flour, your body quickly converts this carbohydrate to sugar in your bloodstream. Your brain likes the feel-good rush of the sugar and sends out the message, more, more, more! Your arteries — not so much. Essentially, regularly raising your blood sugar can damage proteins called glycosylates. One of that protein’s jobs is to hold your cells and arteries together. When the arteries aren’t held together properly, your body tries to plaster the holes with LDL (bad) cholesterol. The result: atherosclerosis, which means your arteries are hardening and thickening, thanks to the fatty deposits, putting you at a high risk of heart attack and stroke. One-hundred percent whole grains, meanwhile, take longer to convert to sugar, are much less addictive than white flour/bread, and they also stay in your intestines longer, which means you stay fuller longer. That’s pretty fantastic, don’t you think?"

Read More http://www.ivillage.com/why-are-whole-grain-breads-and-pasta-better-you-white-bread-and-pasta/4-n-143806#ixzz1aqkfoRk6
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When my mother in law first started her diet we just switched ALL flour in recipes to Organic 100% Whole Wheat flour but as you all know white flour is so SOFT and Whole wheat doesn't have that same consistency. Although I still use Whole wheat flour for some recipes, my favorite substitutes over time which stand up to the soft consistency of white flour are Whole Grain Spelt, Barley, Oat, and Quinoa. A lot of times I mix them, a little bit of this flour and a little bit of that flour. Here is a picture of what I have in my kitchen now. You will most likely have to go to the health food section in your grocery store to find these different flours!  

When making choices with your bread, pasta, and flour PLEASE read ingredient list on the back and watch out for the words: enriched, bleached, unbleached, semolina or durum flour. 


I PROMISE MY NEXT POST WILL BE SOMETHING FUN!!!! =) 

First food post: Why Organic?

Since this is my first food post I just want to give a little information about why I try to cook the way I do. If you read my first blog "Here I am" you know that my mother in law, Nancy, has totally gotten off all medication just by changing the way she eats!!! She eats all Organic and Local (Food grown at farms close to your home) food.


What is Organic food mean? Definition from Wikipedia-
Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.^[1]


I'm gunna get a little controversial but this is MY blog so I'm gunna say it! The food and drug administration want to tell us that pesticides, etc. in food not labeled "organic" aren't proven to do anything to anybody. But when you have positive results sitting in front of you, like my mother in law, you cant ignore it!


So if the fruits and vegetables that you are eating aren't organic, then most likely you and your children are consuming different pesticides and/or chemicals! So its easy right? Just eat Organic!!! Unless you have lots of money, it's not that easy, buying Organic is EXPENSIVE!!!! So I will help you out with a list of foods that normally contain more pesticides than others (dirty dozen) and food that is safer to buy nonorganic (clean 15). 
this is copied from: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/


As you can notice in the "Dirty Dozen" they are fruits and veggies that you eat the whole thing, even the skin! Also they are very hard to grow without bugs touching them and to be perfect store quality!!! So how can you consume them without also consuming the chemicals used in their growing process? Even after being washed, pesticides are still found! 


Hopefully these lists help you in making better choices for you and your family! =) Also, now that we have Trader Joes in Kansas City, your organic produce can be more cost effective!

EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce

Dirty Dozen

Buy these organic

1

Apples

2

Celery

3

Strawberries

4

Peaches

5

Spinach

6

Nectarines
– imported

7

Grapes – imported

8

Sweet bell peppers

9

Potatoes

10

Blueberries
– domestic

11

Lettuce

12

Kale/collard greens

Clean 15

Lowest in Pesticide

1

Onions

2

Sweet Corn

3

Pineapples

4

Avocado

5

Asparagus

6

Sweet peas

7

Mangoes

8

Eggplant

9

Cantaloupe
- domestic

10

Kiwi

11

Cabbage

12

Watermelon

13

Sweet potatoes

14

Grapefruit

15

Mushrooms