"My Mom's Muffins" for anytime of the day, or loaves

These muffins are so good, so good you see.  You can eat them with a fox, you can eat them in a box.

Or you can eat them for breakfast, you can eat them at playdates, you can eat them with lunch.

They have all kinds of good stuff in them.

I had lent all my muffin tins out to a friend and only realized that after I had the batter made.  No biggie, just poured it into three well-greased loaf pans and continued.  I baked them for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick came out clean.

The Pioneer Woman calls these:
My Mom's Muffins
but, they're not actually my mother's muffins... yet...
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup flax meal
1 cup oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp b soda
2 tsp b powder
1-2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup buttermilk *
1 egg
1 banana, mashed
1/2 cup applesauce
1/4 cup molasses

- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Thoroughly grease a 12-count muffin pan.

- In a large bowl, combine flours, flaxseed meal, oats, brown sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, walnuts, and raisins. Stir together until combined.

- In a separate bowl, mix together the buttermilk, egg, banana, applesauce and molasses.

- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring until it just barely comes together. Batter should be wet and sticky; if needed, splash in a couple extra tablespoons of buttermilk.

- Scoop 1/4 cup helpings into the muffin cups and bake for 16-18 minutes, or until deep golden brown.

* If you don't have buttermilk on-hand, pour 1 Tbsp lemon juice or vinegar in a measuring cup and pour on milk to top it up to 1 cup.  Let sit about 5 minutes.

Menu planning, the final installment, the "meat" of the matter

I plan our weekly menus and usually stick to them.  This is how I do it, this is what works for me.  There are many ways to go about this task and perhaps you will follow this method or perhaps you will take an idea or two away and create your own method.  I would love your feedback in the comments section.

This helps keep my food budget reasonable by avoiding frequent visits to the grocery store where I always pick up more than I went in for and make impulse buys. 

Menu planning helps tremendously with my stress level as well.  There's no opening of the fridge at 4 or 5 pm and wondering "what's for supper?".  There's also no stopping at the grocery store when everyone else is in the same mild, daily panic mode.

I don't plan breakfasts or lunches ahead of time, I just keep things in the pantry that we like.

For breakfast, we rotate a few choices: waffles, pancakes, crêpes, eggs, bacon, toast, cinnamon roll pancake squares, French toast, hot cereal and (as a treat) cold cereal.  Before I go to bed, I check out what we have and pretty much know when I wake up what we're going to eat for breakfast.  Sometimes, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I even prep it before I go to bed (coffee pot ready to be turned on, dry ingredients and wet ingredients measured out but not mixed together for waffles, for example).  We all get up and eat at the same time, that's just our way of doing things.  This may not work for you.  Perhaps for breakfast you'll be the only one up and will reach for something you have made ahead and frozen as you are walking out the door.  Good options for this may include a muffin and Thermos of milk, a breakfast burrito, breakfast cookie with a small yogurt, overnight oats or hot cereal in a Thermos with a piece of fruit.

Lunches for the take-away people (those who leave the house for work or school) are typically a leftover of last night or the night before as the main course.  As fillers, I fill tiny mason jars (1/2 cup size) at the beginning of the week and just pull them out of the fridge all week long so making the lunches is not too tedious for me.  Some common fillers are yogurt with fruit and grains or seeds, trail mixes or nuts and dates, custard or pudding.  I try to always add a couple pieces of fresh fruit or a carrot and some kind of treat, like a cookie or piece of cake or something like that.  My Man also has PB and jam in his lunches on Monday that he leaves at work and all week long I add two pieces of bread to his lunch every day for a sandwich.  On the weekends or for the stay-at-home people, lunch is usually my fave combo of soup and sandwiches.  Whatever is on-hand.

Supper is the meal I plan ahead of time and shop for.  Here goes everything.

So, it's Thursday night and the wees are in bed, the Big Kid is at the pool and your Man is playing a racing game on his iPad... it's quiet!  What do you do?  You meal plan!  YAY!  (This will be long the first time and each time after that it gets super easy and fast, trust me, please.)

Take out a sheet of paper and jot down all your family's favourite suppers.  All of the meals you love, like and eat anyway.  Include the fall-back meals, we're being realistic here.  If you have a picky eater, start a new list in the top right corner of your page listing the things your picky eater will eat and that you will want to have on-hand.



This is the book I use for all my meal planning...

 



Open it up and my scribbler is there with pens and pencil along with a small folder for the tried and true recipes.

Here is a glimpse of the tried and true recipes, I don't clip many.

 

Now, outside the margin on the left of your list, use an initial to identify the protein source.  Being from a meat 'n potatoes family, the meals are usually based on the meat so identify what meat each meal is.  For example, if you wrote "tacos " you would initial that with a "B" for beef or "F" for fish.  If you were making vegetarian tacos, you would use a "V".  Meatless meals thrown in there are usually good budget-stretchers and tend to be a healthier choice, so we'll go ahead and add one meatless meal a week into the plan.
B = beef
C = chicken
P = pork
F = fish
V = meatless
I also use "S" for soup meals and "I" to indicate it's a pasta meal on top of identifying the protein source.

Here is my long list of meals to choose from to create weekly menus. 
Note the protein indicated to the immediate left of the list.

On a new piece of paper, I create a protein pattern / meal pattern for the week. 
Monday is Beef
Tuesday is leftover or meatless (leftover from Sunday's big meal)
Wednesday is Pork
Thursday is Beef
Friday is Chicken
Saturday is a Fun / or Yummy or indulgent meal
Sunday is a big meal, hoping to have leftovers

You may choose themes for your suppers instead (Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Burgers and fries...).  For some families, they know Friday night is taco night or pizza night!



See the list of meals in the body of the page, the day of the week immediately to the left of that
with the day of the week a bit further to the left again.

I try to cook double batches to freeze some, but honestly, with this many mouths for each meal and then wanting to keep one or two lunch size servings for the next day, I rarely actually get that second batch in the freezer.  You may have better luck with this strategy if your family is smaller.  I do have a sauce day as often as I can and get lots into the freezer with that.

So, you have a long list of meals to choose from with the protein source on the left and you have some kind of pattern that will work for you.  Take a third piece of paper and this is your weekly menu for the coming week.  Quickly jot down the pattern you've chosen to follow then peruse your long list of meals you enjoy and fill in the blanks.  Voilà, one week done.  Go ahead and plan a second week.  A third, and before you know it, you have an idea of what the month might look like.  But, woah, let's stick to one week at a time for now.

Take a look at what you have in your house already ("shop your pantry first") then figure out what you need to buy.  You may want to factor in a second grocery run halfway through the week to replenish your fruit, vegetables and, if you're like us, the usual staples of milk, eggs and bread.

Tomorrow morning, with the kids in daycare for two hours, a full belly and list in hand (maybe even organized according to the layout of your favourite store) you breeze through the store picking up all that you need for one week's menus.  Go home and divvy up the meat for the week's meals, freeze most of it for later on in the week.  If you have time, cut up a bunch of veggies in containers in the fridge to pull from to make meal prep easier.

Another angle to take on this is to start with the weekly flyers and create your menu based on what's on sale. 

Another take on this is to strictly buy ingredients when you shop and not prepared or convenience food.  Have a hankering for Thai?  Make it!

Once you get good at this, there's Once A Month Cooking!  That sure looks pretty but, boy, it's a big commitment that first weekend of every month.  I do see how it would be beneficial for the people who arrive home at 5:30 on weeknights and bedtime is at 7, this would eat up valuable weekend time though.  I guess Once A Week cooking mightn't be overly ambitious.  A nice start is double-batch or big-batch cooking to cook once and eat twice, I fully support this concept.

Raw food diet, vegan diets

Just a random blurb of a thought and hopefully you can help me with your comments for, against or just about, a couple different ways of eating.

I often find recipes that I make and enjoy that are vegan and / or raw.  One does not equal the other.  But in an unending quest to reduce refined sugar intake and highly processed ingredients (not eliminate) I usually fall on raw food sites and / or vegan sites.  Without wholly adopting the eating style, I do appreciate and sometimes love the new recipe I have found.  Occasionally they become a new "regular". 

My thing is this: when I think of vegan food and certainly raw foods, I think of cooling adjectives.  I think of things that are stored in the fridge or freezer.  I think of fruits and vegetables.  I don't think warm and comforting thoughts. 

Take, for example, chocolate pudding.  My first thought is milk, sugar and cocoa in a small pot bubbling on the stove and eaten warm.  In order to reduce the milk and sugar, I find a recipe with avocado.  I have no qualms whatsoever with it, it is yummy and chocolatey and I have achieved the immediate goal of less sugar and milk product.  But, by combining the ingedients in the food processor or blender, the end result is cool in temperature.

Is this more of an ayurvedic conflict inside me? 

When I want a brownie, I want warm, gooey and fudgey.  Not terms I associate with dates and nuts finely ground together and pressed into a pan and put in the fridge to set or cool.  And again, the date / nut mixture is good and good for me and I like it, but it's not a brownie.

Is this so deeply ingrained in me, like my fingerprint, that I will always feel this way about the things that make me not feel good about myself afterward?  I don't think I have an intolerance to dairy, gluten and sugar, but I have never eliminated them from my diet so cannot say for sure.  I do know that the days / hours that I consume less of these three things I feel better.  Is it because combined these things combined usually produce and "extra" food and not a necessary food, not even a nutrient dense food.

When I think of throwing together a picnic or food for the road, I kind of check off meat, cheese, fruit, bread and wine (or drink).  Can we subsist on this?  Is this the way to go?

You usually come to me to find answers but on this note, I have few.  I would really like to hear your thoughts on this.  Share and tell me what you eat that makes you feel good, what makes you feel not-so-good, how you balance your healthy eating lifestyle with your what-you-want-to-eat self.

About quinoa and a recipe for black bean salad

I just got home from a wonderful gab session about making wise food choices.  It was great!  Some people learned a new word today and I feel inspired to chat a bit about it.

Today's word is "quinoa" and is pronounced keen-wah and is brought to you by the letter Q.  Who doesn't love the letter Q?!  It's so regal, even when writing it.  Go get a pen and paper and jot down a few Q's just to better appreciate where I'm coming from with this.

Here I will pull a few quote from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites (1996): "Quinoa is no twentieth-century hybrid; its recorded history of cultivation and use date back to the Incan empire.  Indigenous to South America, this wheat-free grain has been rediscovered in the last five years and is suddenly widely available.  Quinoa contains all eight of the amino acids the body cannot produce, is rich in vitamins and minerals, cooks in about 15 minutes, is easily digestible, expands almost five times in cooking and can be eaten plain or used to thicken soups and stews.  It has a mild, nutty aroma and slight crunch.  Pastas made of quinoa flour are also available.  Quinoa and quinoa products can be found in natural food stores and in many supermarkets."

Here is a good picture I found online of uncooked (raw) quinoa.

Raw, uncooked quinoa



 

 Here is a good picture I found online of cooked quinoa (ignore the bits of green - that is not quinoa).

Cooked quinoa with green bits added for effect

I have served quinoa alongside of chickpea curry, added it to soups and stews (like fast red lentil soup) and in salads (particularly salads in jars).  You can make a hot cereal with quinoa for breakfast or bake quinoa into muffins.

Here is a recipe for a quinoa black bean salad also from the Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites.  They have another little blurb on the properties of quinoa: "Higher in protein than any other grain, quinoa is chewy with a delicious, almost nutlike flavor.  Bolstered with the nutritional power of black beans, this salad is hearty, healthy eating at its best." 

WHAMO!  Eat this, be healthy.  OKAY!

Quinoa Black Bean Salad
from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites
serves 4 as a side dish
1/3 cup quinoa
1 cup water
1 tsp olive oil
4 tsp fresh lime juice, or more to taste
1/4 tsp gr cumin
1/4 tsp gr coriander (I leave it out)
1 Tbsp finely chopped fresh cilantro (I'd use fresh mint)
2 Tbsp minced scallions (or green onion)
1 15 oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups diced tomatoes (28 oz can diced tomatoes in a pinch)
1 cup diced sweet peppers (any colour)
1/2 cup corn kernels (fresh off the cob, canned, or previously frozen and now thawed)
2 tsp minced fresh green chiles (I leave out)
salt and pepper to taste
- rinse quinoa well in a sieve under cool running water.  In a saucepan, bring the water to a boil, add the quinoa, cover, and simmer on low heat, until all of the water is absorbed and the quinoa is tender, about 10-15 minutes.  Allow to cool for 15 minutes.
- in a small bowl, combine remaining ingredients, add the cooled quinoa and S&P to taste and combine thoroughly.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  Garnish with lemon or lime wedges.

This dish would also be great with some cubed, cooked sweet potato thrown in there; for the colour, texture and more vitamins!  Cook the sweet potato along with the quinoa for no loss of nutrients.

It would be good as a side dish to a corn chowder for a supper serving or all on it's own for lunch.

What did you learn today?

Old fashioned cooked butterscotch pudding

I don't know if it's the pregnancy (17 weeks yesterday!) or the weather or just me but I have not been craving chocolate at all of late.  Not even a little.

Other flavours are coming into play and that's wonderful!  I made an Orange Chiffon Cake for the wee-est one's (so far) second birthday.  I made an Oatmeal Cake yesterday with coconut broiled on top.  I'm gravitating toward lemon-y things and craving, got-to-have desiring butterscotch and caramel flavours.  Go figure!

Enter, butterscotch pudding! 

Tonight I made a quick microwaved butterscotch pudding for two and shared it with the Big Kid.  MMMMMM

Here is a recipe that I will be making next for a bigger batch to share with the whole clan.  Here is an adult version to try someday that I have whiskey in the house (I like the fact that it's one pot and seems to cook rather quickly).

Still no camera since it was dropped in the tub a couple of days ago.  It's in a rice bath for a few more days to dry up and then we'll see.

Dana’s Microwave Butterscotch Pudding

So, here's another quick-fix treat for late-night snacking.

I know, I know, you've resolved to lose 100 lbs in this New Year and I'm not helping.

Make this butterscotch pudding and share it with a loved one.  Eat it as a snack and walk it off.  Dip celery sticks in it.

It's just a perfect butterscotch pudding that happens to be made in the microwave (no risk of scorching your milk), cooks in four minutes, doesn't add heat to the house (hello, homemade pudding in July!) and, best reason of all, is made from scratch!  No funky ingredients, no preservatives, no wonky aftertaste.  Just pure butterscotch bliss. 

Enjoy warm or chilled.  Enjoy.

Dana’s Microwave Butterscotch Pudding
from a now-defunct website Dana McCauley
4 tsp cornstarch
½ cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
pinch salt
1 cup 2 % milk
2 egg yolks, beaten
2 Tbsp cold, salted butter, cubed
¼ tsp pure vanilla extract
- Blend the cornstarch with the sugar and salt until well combined in a microwave safe bowl or large glass-measuring cup. Whisk in about 1/4 of the milk until smooth. Blend in remaining milk, whisking until smooth.
- Cook mixture in the microwave on HIGH for 1 minute. Whisk well and cook for 2 minutes longer or until thickened. Spoon a little of the hot milk mixture into the eggs. Stir until smooth. Scrape the egg mixture into the hot milk mixture using a rubber spatula. Whisk well and cook for 1 minute longer on HIGH. Whisk in the butter and vanilla until smooth.
- Cool to room temperature. Makes 2 servings.

I don't know who Dana is, but she came up with the recipe and I haven't changed one thing so I kept her name in the title as she has done.

Stir-fry

Yay for craving vegetables again!  Hip, hip, hooray!

Tonight I made THE best stir-fry I've ever made without following a recipe.  I also very much needed and wanted vegetables so that helps bring the level of satisfaction up a bit when it's "just what I wanted".

I got inspired yesterday and made a weekly menu plan that includes spring rolls, vietnamese noodle bowls, and a few stir-fries.  I have in my pantry for this week rice paper wrappers and rice vermicelli.  I went grocery shopping today and stocked right up on a variety of vegetables including, but not limited to, bok choy, bean sprouts, peppers, cucumber, fresh mint (!), carrots, ginger and garlic.  Ah!  I made the vietnamese noodle bowl for lunch today with a sauce that included Thai fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and vinegar.  I thought for sure the Big Kid would devour it and ask for more but, boy, was I wrong!  He turned his nose up at it after the required "couple of bites to give it a chance".  He thinks it was the mint, but I think it was the sauce on top.  I haven't given up on this, it really seems like a dish he'd like with the right balance of sauce flavours for him.  Maybe with some meat on it or shrimp!

I then used the Three Wees' nap time to chop, chop, chop.  How inspring it is to open my fridge and see all those veggies washed and cut up just begging to be snacked on or cooked with.  SIGH!  I chopped up just about every vegetable in my kitchen and put them in mason jars or clear plastic containers so I know right away what I have.  I don't prep onions or garlic ahead of time, I find the smells are too strong in my fridge so I just cut them up when I'm ready to cook.

For supper, I whipped up a most fabulous stir-fry with all those pre-prepped veggies with soy sauce and hoisin sauce.  I served it on rice vermicelli.  What a joy to have on-hand, those rice vermicelli are!  After spending time at the park with the kids while they biked, supper can still be on the table in 10 minutes.  The kids thoroughly enjoyed the noodles and kind of ate around the vegetables but I think that's a given at this age.  The Girl Twin fed the remainder of the "baby"'s meal to her and that was pretty cute considering she didn't finish her bowl.

Tomorrow is sauce and lasagna making day!

So, no pictures of my beautiful stir-fry, vietnamese noodle bowls from today as Girl Twin dropped my camera in the bathtub yesterday.  It may be a little while before I buy another so try to stick with me.