Hi, I'm The Mama...

...and I am a muffin addict. I know that the first step is admitting you have a problem, but what if I don't want to stop? Is there a 12 step program for baked goods?

Today, I baked a big batch of pumpkin spice muffins. These are actually fairly healthy. Pumpkin is great for you, and I use applesauce instead of oil and half whole wheat flour, half white flour. You could probably make it healthier by reducing the amount of sugar in the recipe, but you run the risk of having bland muffins if you do it that way. You can substitute pumpkin pie spice for the nutmeg and ginger for equally tasty results. I got this recipe from a friend of mine and modified it to suit my tastes.

Healthy-ish Pumpkin Spice Muffins


4 eggs
1 can pumpkin puree
1.5 cups applesauce (I like cinnamon applesauce for this)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar, NOT packed
1 tbs vanilla extract

2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2-5 tsp cinnamon (use more or less on all spices depending on what you like)
1-2 tsp ground nutmeg
1-2 tsp ground ginger
1.5 cups whole wheat flour, sifted
1.5 cups white flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 400.

Combine all of the wet ingredients in the order listed. Mix well. Add all of the dry ingredients except the flour. Mix well. Sift 1.5 cups white flour into the batter, mix well, then repeat with the whole wheat flour. If you don't have a sifter, just shake it into the batter slowly. Sifted flour will give you lighter muffins.

Spoon batter into greased muffin cups and bake at 400 degrees until a toothpick or fork inserted into the center comes out clean (about 30 minutes). The recipe is high-yield and makes about a dozen large muffins.

*Edited to add: I went to Calorie Count this morning and entered the recipe into their recipe calculator. If you're curious about the nutrition breakdown, click here. It's slightly off because it doesn't recognize a difference between white flour and whole wheat flour, so I'd guess the nutrition grade would be better than a B- on account of the wheat flour.

Snow Day!

The rest of the country is heartily sick of snow, but here in Texas snow is so rare that we get very excited when it happens. The school district that I work for cancelled school, so I got an unexpected day off. We've played in the snow, I've done some much-needed laundry and cleaning, and I have chili in the crock pot. I know it was on the meal plan for tomorrow, but who can resist making chili when there's a whole 1/2" of (melting) snow on the ground?

My chili recipe has a secret ingredient: cocoa powder. Yes, I know, it seems like it wouldn't be good. Just trust me on this one and try it. You'll be happy you did.

Easy Crockpot Chili


1 lb lean ground beef, browned and drained
1 can beans (I used pintos today, but I actually prefer kidney beans in my chili)
2 cans Rotel or other brand of tomatoes and chilies
2 cans tomato sauce
1/2 bottle beer
1/2 cup water or broth
1 whole onion, diced
3-4 tbs minced garlic
Chili powder to taste (the more you use, the spicier it will be.. I like a lot, so I use between 4-6 tbs)
Cumin to taste
Paprika to taste
1-2 tbs sugar
1 heaping tbs unsweetened cocoa powder

In a skillet, brown your ground beef. Drain it and throw it into the crock pot. Sautee your onions and garlic with a bit of water (to keep it from burning) in the skillet. Add them to the crock pot once the onions are translucent. Add your Rotel, tomato sauce, beer, water, sugar and spices. Stir it up well and let it cook on low heat all day. If it looks too thin, take the lid off of the crock pot for a while to let some of the water evaporate. Be sure to taste it as it cooks throughout the day so that you can tweak the amount of spice you want it to have.  Serve with some shredded cheddar cheese and/or sour cream on top.

For the love of God, never buy canned chili again. Eat this instead!

You can always substitute fresh ingredients for canned if you have them on hand. I use canned beans because soaking them takes more time than I want to spend, but if you have the time fresh ones would probably make it even better. I would use either poblano or jalapeno peppers to go with freshly diced tomatoes if you don't want to use Rotel. If you want to leave out the beer, you can substitute an equal amount of water or broth and it will still come out pretty well.

I'm going to try my hand at beer bread tonight to serve with the chili (notice a theme in my cooking today?). I found this recipe this afternoon and it looks simple enough to throw together, so I'll give it a shot and see how it turns out. *Added after cooking and eating said beer bread: This recipe is a winner, although with the amount of butter it calls for I can't call it health food by any stretch of the imagination. Next time I'll cut the butter down.

One of my better ideas this week was to try this out. You'll never use a mix again if you try it too.

I've managed to stick to my meal plan on all but two days of this week. I did re-arrange which days I made what, but I feel like I'm doing okay. I'm still not to my goal of cooking every single night, but I'm doing far better than I was. We're eating less processed crap and more good food. The sad thing is, I know how to cook, but because we live a typically American busy lifestyle, it is just all too easy to reach for the frozen dinner instead of spending the extra 20 minutes to whip up something homemade.

If you think about it, the harried lifestyle most of us have is the number one culprit in our nationwide obesity epidemic. When Mom and Dad both work 40 hours or more every week, plus take care of kids and a house, finding time to eat right and exercise becomes much more difficult. Who wants to hit the gym when you've just put in a 50 hour work week, done 10 loads of laundry, changed umpteen million dirty diapers, and scrubbed the floors? Who wants to take the time to cook when you can have hot food in front of you in 5 minutes?

Crappy food choices and a lack of exercise will make anybody fat, but it's hard to fight the temptation when you're just plain exhausted all the time. If we could somehow slow life down a little without also losing our proverbial shirts, I think we'd be a healthier nation overall. Since the likelihood of that little pipe dream happening is pretty slim, I'll do my best to force myself to eat better. A Planet Fitness opened up not too far from my house, so I think I'm going to go sign up this weekend since they only charge $10/month and they're open 24 hours. I owe it to my kid to be healthy so I can be around to spoil his kids rotten.

Now if I can just hold on to my resolve at the end of an exhausting workday, I'll be good.

Where Did Last Week Go?

So, last week was almost a total loss. The Giant came down with a fever and cough on Sunday afternoon, and spent almost the entire week sick. My mother-in-law came down for a few days to watch him while the Carnivore worked his usual rotation so that we wouldn't have to miss work, and whenever the in-laws are here they like to treat us to dinner. The Giant ended up seeing his regular doctor twice last week for his fever,  had some specialist appointments on Wednesday and Thursday, and ended up having to take another round of steroids along with some antibiotics to kick out the sickies. Steroids turn him into one giant temper tantrum. I cooked twice last week (a baked ziti using the leftover meat from the whole chicken I made last weekend and some salmon pinwheels with quinoa courtesy of my local grocery store), cobbled together some salads using Tyson chicken tenders and odds and ends we had lying around, and had some pizza courtesy of my mother-in-law.

This week, I'm going to try my hand at meal planning. I have a chicken and shrimp gumbo going in the crock pot for today. I've never made a gumbo before, so I cheated and bought dry roux at the store rather than attempt to make it myself. I'll save that for another day. To make the gumbo, I sauteed a chopped onion, bell pepper, and minced garlic in a skillet with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 vegetable oil.  Most recipes call for celery and okra, but I don't have celery in the house and I can't stand okra, so I left them out. While the veggies were cooking, I turned the crock pot on high and threw in 36 oz of chicken stock, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of corn (drained), a dash of salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, chili powder, and about 1 tbs of sugar. After the onions were translucent, I removed the veggies from the heat and added 1 cup of the dry roux and stirred it up, then threw that in with the broth. I have two boneless skinless chicken breasts in there cooking, and once they're cooked through I'll shred them by hand, throw them back in, and turn the heat on the crock pot down to low. About an hour or so before I plan to serve it, I'll add some frozen raw shrimp that is already peeled and deveined. I'll serve it over rice that I plan to make in my brand spankin' new rice cooker.

It's a work in progress. I hope it turns out!

The rest of the week will look like this:
Monday- Chicken fajitas (I buy pre-marinaded chicken at the grocery store)
Tuesday- Use the leftover fajita meat for homemade nachos, since I have a long day scheduled at work.
Wednesday- Dirty rice and cajun-seasoned green beans
Thursday- Swimming lessons for The Giant, so it'll either be sandwiches or a frozen pizza
Friday- Tortilla crusted tilapia (bought frozen from Costco), wild rice, and mixed vegetables
Saturday- Crockpot chili and cornbread

I'll be blogging with pictures all week to try to keep myself accountable.

Update:


It was delicious! This one is getting added to my rotation. Even The Giant scarfed it down, saying "Mmm, gummo!!".

Wipe the drool off your chin.

Weekend Cooking and Introspection

Weekends are usually for chores, but for the past few weekends I've also been trying to make some things that will help with meals during the week.

I love muffins, and breakfast for me is frequently a homemade muffin, some fruit, and a cup of coffee. I'm strange in that I can eat the same breakfast over and over and not get sick of it. So, on a weekend, I might make a batch of a dozen muffins and freeze them. Bread products in general freeze well. I can pull them out one at a time, zap them in the microwave for about a minute, and I have an instant hot breakfast. If you prefer to eat different things in the morning like a normal person, the freezing trick is great because your muffins won't go stale. Last weekend I had some raspberries to use up, so I made raspberry muffins using a new recipe. Those weren't as good as I thought they'd be, so I'm leaving them in the freezer for variety's sake. Today I'm trying a cinnamon muffin recipe that I found here.

I made a few changes to the recipe. I doubled it, substituted half of the oil for applesauce, and half of the flour for whole wheat flour. I also added a tsp of vanilla extract and put a cinnamon streusel topping on them.

Can't wait to eat these. Must. Resist. Until. Breakfast.

I have a whole chicken cooking in the crock pot as I type. I combined some minced garlic, salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, and thyme in a bowl and mix it up. I then took the garlic mixture and shoved generous amounts of it under the skin of the entire chicken. I stuffed the body cavity with sliced baby portabella mushrooms and the leftover garlic, and then let it cook in the crock pot on high for the afternoon. 


When you cook a whole chicken that way, no extra liquid is needed. The chicken will naturally end up with a good bit of juices in the crock pot as it cooks. You can use those juices to make a gravy by combining one cup of the juices with one cup of water, salt/pepper/spices you like, and some cornstarch. Bring it to a boil and then reduce heat to let it thicken. 


I'll serve the chicken and mushrooms over either rice or quinoa and have a salad on the side, and then the leftover meat will go into a pasta bake for tomorrow's dinner. 

Taking the meat off the bones is the hardest part of this dish.

This "not eating out" thing hasn't been easy, and it's only the first week. Since the purpose of this blog is to give myself some accountability, the pressure is on to be honest about what we're eating. It's a good thing since it gives me some external motivation to provide better meals for my family, but it is HARD. I find myself planning meals in advance, whereas before the start of this little experiment I would usually start thinking about what I was going to make for dinner on my drive home. I'm thinking that meal planning to some degree is going to be the key to making this experiment successful, but that is one habit that is going to take some time to develop. For now, I'm just proud of myself for having a plan for not only today's main meal, but tomorrow's as well. I've even got breakfast going for most of the week. 


We've eaten out twice this week: once on Thursday (which I already blogged about), and once yesterday because I had a workshop to go to all day and then we went to the zoo and had dinner out at Jason's Deli afterwards. Compared to previous weeks, we've cut our eating out in half at least. It's not perfect and it certainly isn't in line with the goal I wrote down in my first post on this blog, but it's improvement. 

Comfort food

I almost caved in and picked up a bite tonight. We did our big shopping run at Costco for the month, but I came home and cooked anyway. Score one for fighting temptation.

I made a dish tonight that makes me think of my childhood. We ate this once a week for years. For a long time, I couldn't touch it because I was burned out on it, but after a long stretch I ended up making it again. I've added my own tweaks to it, but the basic recipe is the same from my childhood. We always just called it "casserole", but it isn't really a true casserole in that it isn't baked in the oven.

Cheesy Hamburger Casserole

1 can cream of mushroom soup

Mushrooms, either canned or fresh (fresh is better)

About 3 oz of cheese. Use your favorite kind.

1 lb ground beef, browned and drained

1/2 package of egg noodles (I use the kind made without egg yolks)

Finely chopped frozen spinach

Onion powder

Small amount of garlic powder

Pepper to taste

Brown your meat and drain it, then put it back in your skillet. Add your cream of mushroom soup plus one can full of water, your mushrooms, spinach, cheese, and seasonings. Stir it all up and turn the heat on medium, stirring frequently. While that's simmering, boil your noodles and drain them. When your sauce is no longer runny, stir in your noodles and serve it. 

The spinach is something I added to sneak vegetables into the dish. When it's finely chopped, you don't taste it at all. I didn't get any complaints from either of the men in my life.

 Our side dish for tonight was some organic frozen mixed vegetables from Costco served with a little butter, salt, and pepper. Nothing fancy, but simple can be good. 

Not a bad shot for an iPhone picture, if I do say so myself.

This meal isn't the healthiest thing in my repertoire, but it isn't horrible if you choose healthier cheeses, noodles, and cream of mushroom soup. Sometimes comfort food is worth a few extra calories.

Remember how I said I'm not Martha Stewart?

I'm not Suzie Homemaker, either. I fell off the cooking wagon today. Well, not so much fell off as intentionally stepped off. See, today was one of those days where my feet hit the ground running when the alarm went off at 5, and they didn't stop moving until after the Giant was in bed 20 minutes past his bedtime.

In addition to my usual 7:30-3:30 day at work, plus 30 minute commute each way, our daycare provider's daughter is super sick. My sister agreed to watch the Giant for us, but she lives in a town that is an additional 30 minutes away from the city I work in. The Giant is in swimming lessons at an indoor facility that is located (you guessed it) 10 minutes away from my house... in the opposite direction of my sister's place. Swim lessons start at 5:15, and we managed to sneak in right at 5:15. By the time that was done, it was 6:00 and the Giant's bedtime is at 7.

Tonight's menu: A Jr. Whataburger with cheese and some fries for me, and a chicken strip, a cup of peaches, and some fries for the Giant. If you're wondering why the Carnivore isn't mentioned in all of this, it's because he works 12-13 hour shifts plus a 20 minute commute and doesn't get home until around 9 or so.

It's hard to find the balance when you're juggling a full-time job and a household. I'm hoping that in our case, doing this blog will motivate me to cook more often, but not make me feel guilty for the nights like tonight where homecooked food just wasn't in the cards. I suppose I could have planned it better and had something going in the crock pot, but, well... I didn't. Life goes on, and I've already been thinking about what to make for tomorrow night so that counts for something, right?

FFYS

I was brought up by a single mom who worked nights. As a consequence of working nights, she frequently functioned on very very little sleep. She still managed to get a hot dinner on the table most nights, but occasionally we were told that it was an "FFYS" night. FFYS stands for "Fend For Your Self", and it meant that we were to either reheat leftovers or cobble together whatever was available from the freezer.

Tonight was an FFYS night. The Giant goes to a home daycare, and his daycare provider's daughter was diagnosed with RSV today. If you don't know about RSV and young children, all you really need to know is it's a very serious virus when the child is two or younger. So, his daycare provider took him over to our backup person, but by the time he got there it was a full two hours past his usual nap time. The backup person laid him down, but he didn't nap. Two year olds who have not napped are scary little creatures. Poor little guy was alternating between demanding food, demanding to play outside, and losing his balance while standing still and falling over. Cooking was not in the cards.

So, my menu of the evening was leftovers from last night with a cup of pineapples instead of veggies. It's still homecooked, so I say it counts. The Giant, on the other hand, had a hot dog and pears. Some battles are just not worth fighting

So I'm not Martha Stewart. Then again, I've also never had a fraud conviction...