Wednesday, August 21, 2013

I made a smoothie...

I made this smoothie today, and I liked it.



Here is what is in it:

2/3 cup frozen blueberries (that you picked in early July, washed, dried on several layers of paper      towel, froze in a single layer on a rimmed cookie sheet, then put in several quart size bags before      placing them in the chest freezer - because this is a freezer blog)
1 frozen banana (a fresh banana will work, but again, freezer blog)
6-10 large basil leaves
1/2 cup coconut milk (Trader Joe's Light - leftover from making Chana Masala earlier in the week)

Blend the first three ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add coconut milk and pulse a few times. Enjoy.

I am in no way a smoothie master. This one was a shot in the dark made with what I had, but it turned out just sweet enough with a bit of a tropical flair. I feel strongly enough about it that I am recommending it to you!

Are there any favorite smoothie combinations out there?

Nutrition Information: Calories - 220; Fat - 6.7g; Potassium - 417 mg; Fiber - 6g; Protein - 2g; Vitamin A - 10%; Vitamin C - 18%

Friday, August 2, 2013

Cookies for breakfast

Hello?! Cookies for breakfast!?

Why haven't I thought about this until now? I mean, I've thought about it in the sense that I've definitely eaten cookies for breakfast before, but to bake cookies with the expressed intent to eat in the morning? Genius. Paired with a piece of fruit, this actually isn't the most unhealthy breakfast in the world.

I can't wait to feed these to my kids. I wonder if they will sing my praises like Bill Cosby's kids did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3trDL5MWlw
Which gives me another ingenious idea. Breakfast chocolate cake. I'll have to think about that one.



I don't recommend eating three. One will definitely suffice but just looks so sad and lonely all by itself on a plate.

Breakfast Cookies
Adapted from the King Arthur flour website with many substitutions

1/2 cup butter,
1 cup almond butter (can use peanut butter or any other nut butter)
2/3 cup honey
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1 1/4 cup flour (I used white whole wheat)
1/3 cup oat bran
1/3 cup flax meal
2 scoops Whole Foods vanilla soy protein powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
add ins: you can use any combination of nuts, oats, dried fruit, etc, totalling 3-4 cups
 1 cup rolled oats
 1 cup chocolate chips
 1/2 cup dried cranberries
 1/2 cup dried coconut

Preheat oven to 350. In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer beat together honey, butter and almond butter until light and fluffy. Add eggs, milk and vanilla and mix until combined. Next add dry ingredients - flour, oat bran, flax, protein powder, salt and cinnamon - and mix until combined. Fold in whatever add-ins you are using.

Drop by scant 1/4 cup spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool for 3-4 minutes on the cookie sheet then transfer to cooling rack.

If you are freezing: to defrost just microwave for about 20 seconds and enjoy. I ate a frozen one this morning and it was the best. I'm going to have to bury these deep if they are going to last more than a few days!

Nutrition Information per 2.5 inch cookie (1/22 of recipe): Calories - 240, Fat - 13g, Fiber - 4g, Sugar - 14g, Protein - 7.6g, Iron - 9.2%

Thursday, August 1, 2013

I sorta kinda met a goal...

This is how I normally operate: have extremely low expectations for myself, and then I will be a rock star no matter what I do.

This is how it plays out: the goal for the day is to keep the children alive and fed. Oh, I got a load of laundry done? Domestic Goddess. Oh, we walked to the park? Best mom ever.

See what I mean?

Obviously this blog has been working against my rock star strategy. I think at the beginning I said that I was going to make and freeze two things per week and blog about it. That hasn't exactly happened, so I have chosen to interpret that goal in a looser way. If in two and a half weeks there are twenty-six items in my freezer, I will have met the goal. It should not be surprising to me that more than 1/2 of a task would be accomplished in the final 1/10 of the time allotted (and 1/2 of that 1/10 will be spent in the Poconos where I can freeze nothing). I have never really known another way. I'm not really interested in knowing another way either.

Now that you know my goal-setting philosophy, you might be surprised to learn that I set and met a goal. Kinda. Sorta.

Last week I said I wanted to make and freeze 5 relatively healthy things that could be eaten in a pinch when I'm looking for a snack. I made granola bites, flourless peanut butter cookies, and oat bran pancakes. On Thursday and Friday of last week I made quinoa mini quiches based on this recipe from Iowa Girl Eats. I made mine without ham and threw in some shredded zucchini, green onion, and basil. They were pretty tasty. I used a regular-sized muffin pan and a whole mini-quiche still came in under 90 calories. I also made flour-less chocolate zucchini  muffins from GreenLiteBites. There was somehow not a banana to be found in this house, so I replaced the banana with 1 cup of shredded zucchini. I added sweetened shredded coconut and a little extra honey to compensate for not having the sweetness of the banana. They turned out surprisingly good. Heartier than your average muffin, and definitely not as sweet. Newsflash: I have a sweet tooth. However the above recipes have much less sugar than your average baked good. I'm trying.

There you have it, a mini freezer-goal accomplished. It is also heavily ingrained in my personality to tell you all of the ways that I didn't exactly meet this goal. I didn't actually blog about it last week. I didn't do separate posts about the muffins and quiche. I have to make more granola bites and bean cookies because we keep eating them. Pancakes aren't really a snack. Okay, so in the first paragraph where I say that I keep low expectations for myself? That's probably a bunch of BS. This is like blogging therapy. In the ten minutes I took to write this post I realized that I actually usually set impossibly high standards for myself that I can't always meet. From now on, I'm gonna be a rock star instead.