Recipe: Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

More pumpkin, please. I make pumpkin recipes all year around. Any excuse for something that calls for pumpkin, I'm in!

This smoothie is good. It takes a little prep but for the taste and nutritional punch it delivers, it's worth it. I did a version with a couple of handfuls of mixed greens and it was good. But if you want the true pumpkin pie flavor, save your greens for another smoothie.

I'll be sharing more of my favorite smoothie recipes soon including green smoothies. I'm a big fan of the wonderful team at Simple Green Smoothies and they have inspired my green smoothie habit almost entirely. You can hop on over to their site for some recipes right now. I can't say enough about their recipes being the best for "beginners" or those that think they could never stomach greens in a smoothie. :)

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie
Makes 1 smoothie
Original recipe here.

Ingredients:
1 cups Almond milk
1/4 cup Rolled oats
1 tbsp Chia seeds
1/2 cup Canned pumpkin
2 tsp Molasses
1/2 Banana, frozen
2 tsp Pumpkin pie spice
1 tbsp Pure maple syrup

Directions:

1. In a medium-sized bowl whisk together the milk, oats, and chia seeds. Place in fridge for 1 hour or preferably overnight. I took the original author's advice and prep'd it the night before.

2. Add soaked oat mixture to blender along with the pumpkin, molasses, frozen banana, spices and maple syrup. Blend until smooth.

Peanut butter cookies and a personal project

A healthier peanut butter cookie.

I made these cookies and I liked them. A lot. So did the kiddos. I didn't get to making pumpkin or banana bread yesterday so I put one of these in my big boy's lunch today.

First, these cookies have sugar. They are cookies after all! The recipe I adapted this recipe from called for half white sugar and half brown sugar. I used all brown sugar because I prefer it over the white and some say it's a tad less processed? Regardless, I used it! You know those chocolate chip/chocolate drizzled granola bars you see/buy at the grocery store? These would be a good homemade replacement. You could even shape them into more of a square or small bar rather than round like a cookie. I hope you'll give this quick recipe a try.

Now for a little something a little more personal. Here's the scoop. I'll be 40 in six months. Any birthday can be a "big" birthday. For some 40 may or may not be. For me, it is. The most important part for me is embracing it, being excited about it and being present the moments leading up to it. I plan on learning more about myself over the next six months. I want to push the limits I've put on myself (oh there are so many!). I've been moving in this direction very slowly for a very long time. My goal is to step it up. So there it is. I'd love it if you followed me here at MFM. I could use the encouragement. Oh, and you know, you could join me... maybe you want to commit more fully to yourself, feel more inspired and learn to be more mindful as well. A big birthday or not, six months from now - who knows where we'll be?

Peanut Butter and Flax Cookies
Adapted from here.
Makes 15 cookies

Ingredients
2 tbsp Coconut oil or butter, room temperature
1/2 cup Natural peanut butter
2 tbsp Milk (your favorite type)
1 egg or 1 flax egg
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1/4 to 1/2 cup Brown sugar, unpacked (I used a bit less than a 1/2 cup)
1 cup Oats
1/2 cup Whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 tbsp Ground flaxseed
1 cup Dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Line baking sheet with parchment

Directions
1. In medium bowl, cream coconut oil or butter and peanut butter (this can take a while if mixing by hand).
2. Add milk, egg, vanilla and sugar. Mix well.
3. Add oats, whole wheat flour, salt, baking soda and flax. Stir gently to combine.
4. Mix in chocolate chips (still be gentle!).
5. Scoop with regular size cookie scoop onto lined baking sheet.
6. Bake 10 - 12 minutes.
7. Let cool (if you can wait that long) and enjoy!

Notes:
Make these vegan by using coconut oil, almond or other non-dairy milk, flax egg and vegan chocolate chips.

Swap out the peanut butter for any nut or seed butter if you like.

Let me know if you try replacing the brown sugar with honey or maple syrup. I'd love to know what adjustments were made and how they turned out.

Note: This recipe is an update from this original post.

Bancakes!

Not the best pictures. It was an early morning experiment!

I was looking for pancake muffin recipes and came across a two ingredient "pancake" recipe. After making them, I've decided to call mine "bancakes."

I happen to love bananas. I think if I had to pick a favorite food it would be bananas. I put them in my green smoothies, oatmeal, pancakes, eat them with peanut butter and on top of yogurt and ice cream. But I've found that not everyone shares my love for bananas. If you don't like bananas, this isn't your recipe. But if you love them like I do, you'll dig these. They're actually more like a crepe than a pancake. There's no fluffiness. It's more like sponginess. They come out pretty thin and cook up quickly. I added a teaspoon of pumpkin spice to the mixture because it's my favorite spice. It worked really well. You can add any spice you fancy and top with syrup, fruit or even chocolate chips! I think if you were to blend it finer than I did, you could get them super thin and roll them like crepes.

You'll find quite a few of these pancakes on Pinterest (some with much better pictures than mine!). And once you're there, you'll likely get inspired to make other variations like this one. I'll be trying it tomorrow! So if you like/love bananas, you should give this a try. I ate mine plain, I didn't even use a fork. But like I said, these can be dressed up any way you like.

Bancakes
Adapted from here.
Made three cakes

Ingredients:
1 Banana, ripe and mashed
2 Eggs
1 teaspoon Pumpkin pie spice

Directions:
Combine banana and eggs. Add spice and mix until well blended. Spray a pan with cooking spray (I used coconut oil) and heat to medium. Pour batter in pan as you would pancakes and cook for about a minute per side.

Energy Scoops, Balls, Handfuls or whatever you want to call them!

These things are fantastic. Really. My sons and I did a happy dance the first time we ate one. This recipe comes from Eating Rules, a blog that I frequent. I've been participating in the October Unprocessed 2013 over there. It's been challenging. I thought I ate mostly unprocessed but I quickly realized that I do rely on a decent amount of food that is considered processed. Not "highly processed" but not "unprocessed." So the month hasn't been perfect but I'm learning new stuff like how easy it is to make my own almond milk. I'll be doing that ASAP. If you want to learn about how Eating Rules defines unprocessed, click here. They have a guide you can download as well.

Okay, back to the yummy mounds of goodness. I followed the recipe exactly with the exception of leaving mine in the shape of the scoop I used. This recipe is versatile. You can use any nut or seed butter, you can leave out the chocolate chips (I wouldn't!) and make them any size. They kind of taste like oatmeal cookie dough to me. I encourage everyone to make these. They're easy, affordable and make a great potluck or party item. I've also started to put them in my son's lunch on Fridays as a special treat.

Energy Balls
Original recipe here.

Ingredients:
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
½ cup peanut or almond butter
½ cup chocolate chips
8 medjool dates (pitted)
1 tablespoon chia seeds
1 tablespoon flaxseed meal

Instructions:
1. Place all ingredients in food processor.
2. Mix thoroughly. Mixture will look crumbly.
3. Scoop or roll into balls.
4. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Popcorn

Recently inspired by my cousin and a friend that has her own popcorn business, I've kicked up the popping here at home. I've always liked popcorn. Not the buttery stuff you get at the movies or the fake tasting kind from a microwave bag but plain with a little salt.

My cousin, Della and I share a love for coconut oil and seeing all her talk (gotta love facebook!) about her popcorn made with coconut oil and salt, I decided to make a batch of my own. I normally skip the oil by throwing some kernels in a brown paper bag and then putting it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Season with a little salt and it is good to go. But popping with coconut oil is right up my alley and between my cousin raving about it and me helping my friend pop and package her popcorn in a commercial kitchen, I was ready to give it a try. The results were yummy!

Popcorn can be nutritious. It's a whole grain and contains a bit of fiber. Did you know most of the nutrition in popcorn comes from the hull? Yeah, the part that often gets stuck in your teeth. The hulls contain polyphenols - antioxidants that prevent damage to cells. Although, there is some debate about how much we actually benefit from the antioxidants in popcorn because how much we absorb may not be significant enough. Regardless, if not slathered in butter, excess oil, excess salt or a fake sugary or cheesey topping, it is a healthy snack option. Popcorn is also very economical. A 28 oz. bag of organic popcorn kernels was only $1.99. That makes for a lot of popcorn. Conventional kernels are probably cheaper but being that I'm avoiding GMOs as much as possible, I opt for organic.

I talk about and use coconut oil often. But this was my first time popping with it. It was easy and tasted great. So great in fact the entire batch was gone in less than 24 hours. It wasn't oily but could have been I suppose if too much oil was used. I highly recommend popping with coconut oil if you haven't already done so. Here's how I did it:

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Organic popcorn kernels
2 tablespoons Coconut oil
Sea salt

Using a large pot with a lid, heat up coconut oil over medium high heat. Add kernels, cover with lid and wait for popping to begin. Continuously shake pot back and forth to avoid burning (I wear oven mitts). Remove from heat once popping slows down and/or stops. Sprinkle with salt while popcorn is still hot.

Resist the Lunchables

With back to school time in full swing, let's talk Lunchables. I'll start on my soapbox. I figure it's best to come out swinging and lighten up from there! I've read and heard more than a handful of people talking about giving their children Lunchables for snack and/or lunch. The conversations are sort of matter of fact, you know, like it's the norm. I also see ones where it seems the parents are either near burnout or have given up.

What confuses me the most is the amount of people okay with feeding their children this highly processed, who knows where the "food" came from, always has a treat, salty tray of food product. I can understand the temptation to reduce some of your workload during the school year as well as save a buck or two but does it have to come in the form of highly processed food that is not providing proper nutrition to the kiddos and ruining their palate at the same time? For me, it's about nutrition as well as teaching my kids healthy eating habits. Processed meat, cheese and crackers with a water (with "Kool-Aid to sprinkle in a little flavor and fun") and some Jell-o and cookies to top it off is not healthy and certainly will not assist our children with learning how to make healthy food choices.

I usually say this somewhere in a post like this - I'm the Medium Food Mama, not Totally Green, Organic and Crunchy Mama. I appreciate the need for some convenience and the occasional packaged food (can we say Mac & Cheese?) but providing a steady diet of highly processed "kid food" is not good for anyone. I also understand budget. And it truly frustrates me that crappy food is the cheapest food. Better organized people may beg to differ with crappy food being the most affordable because well, you can grow some of your own produce, join a co-op or eat organic rice, beans and veggies most of the time BUT it's just not feasible for a lot of folks. I looked into a co-op myself and it was too expensive to join. I also make a lot of my own versions of convenience foods, not all of it turns out to be less expensive. I walked by a cold case of Lunchables at Target this morning and the price I saw was $1.52. A "meal" (in a lot of people's minds) for a buck fifty is likely gonna trump a sandwich on whole wheat with organic turkey, organic produce and avocado with a side of organic fruit for a lot of people. Unfortunately.

The Lunchables facebook page has almost 590,000 likes. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese has over one million. Pages for companies that offer healthier convenience foods for kids like Plum Organics (84,800), Annie's Home Grown (285,800), Amy's (49,300), Clif Bar (110,850) and Nature's Path (267,700) have significantly less followers. So is it about money or lack of nutrition knowledge or just plain denial? I'm not sure yet. From my rookie research though, I lean towards it being a bit of each with a little nostalgia and comfort mixed in.

The challenge of eating healthy on a budget and with little ones that may be a little picky is not going to go away but in my opinion items like Lunchables can. There are plenty of alternatives to these yucky little trays. Here's a few links to give you some ideas.

Mom's Plan
Weelicious
Easy Lunchboxes
The Nourishing Home

Recipe: Raspberry Almond Yogurt Loaf (Beta!)

I had an idea that led me on a search for a raspberry yogurt bread recipe. While on that search, I found a handful of recipes but not any that I was compelled to try as is. That's when I decided to wing it. The results were not perfect but decent. And based on my husband's comments, good enough to post.

I based my recipe on this one and went from there. I wasn't sure how much leavening I would need to add by using whole wheat and all purpose flour in lieu self-rising flour so that's when the "winging it" commenced. Part way through mixing the batter, it was clear it was lacking moisture - like severely lacking. I added milk and it seemed to do the trick. Experimenting was fun and has inspired me to do more of it. I've got super ripe bananas waiting to be used. Yay!

If you decide to give this recipe a go, I highly reccommend wrapping it tightly and refrigerating to keep it moist. Also, checking it while baking, as you would with any new recipe, as you don't want it to overcook. I think if it did overcook, it would be a brick. I'm going to continue to work on this recipe and variations of to make it less fragile. If you know what I mean?

The best part about this bread is the occasional crunch of almond (that didn't get entirely ground) and the intense pockets of raspberry. This is not a very sweet snack but more mild like a traditional scone. Perfect with coffee or tea.


Raspberry Almond Yogurt Loaf
Makes one standard loaf

1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/3 cup Ground Almonds
2 Eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup Fat Free Greek Yogurt, plain
1/2 cup Milk, 1%
3/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 cup All Purpose Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 cup Raspberries, frozen

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard loaf pan with parchment paper.
In a large bowl combine brown sugar, ground almonds, eggs, yogurt and milk. Add whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder and salt to mixture. Gently combine. Fold in raspberries. Spoon into prepared pan, smooth top of batter and bake for 50 minutes.

The importance of being healthy

Two years ago today I lost one of my best friends. Her name was Lisa and she was truly an amazing person. She embraced life no matter what it threw at her. Even when it threw a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer her way, she "rolled with the punches."

Lisa was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer in 2007, shortly after I had my first baby and right as she turned 40. I will never forget the day she told me. I had made a stop at my mother-in-laws to change and feed Gav, only a handful of weeks old. My cell rang and I was happy to see "Le" pop up on the caller ID. I always enjoyed Le's calls, we could talk for hours. But that day, it was different. Le told me the tests had confirmed it was breast cancer. As the tears started flowing down my face, she said not to worry, it was all going to be okay, she was going to be fine. Le had a knack for turning negatives into positives. It was natural for her and convincing to everyone around her. Being more of a "glass half empty" person, I needed Le in my life. She would always see it half full. Even with breast cancer.

When Le and I met, I was just seeing the light at the end of a very long Post-traumatic Stress Disorder tunnel. In 2001, my husband was diagnosed with stage four non-hodgkins lymphoma. We spent our first wedding anniversary getting his first round of chemotherapy. It was the heaviest thing I'd ever faced. I held up better than I thought I would. We got through each test, each scan, each doctor's appointment, each up and each down - somehow. But a couple of years after cancer, when the doctors told us we could get on with our lives - I lost it. I was overwhelmed with the thought of the cancer coming back, the infertility issues we now faced and the hundreds of other emotions almost losing my husband brought. It sucked.

By the time Le came into my life I could talk about what had happened with perspective. I could also laugh again. Oh and how she could make me laugh! The thing I attribute to my healing the most (next to therapy) is running. I started running to distract myself from obsessing about illness and infertility. To help me NOT think. What it actually did was help me gain perspective, think about the lighter things in life and it made me lighter! I lost 25 pounds. Losing weight always puts a smile on a girl's face. Running, eating well and laughing helped turn myself around (forward), which led to a closer marriage, which led to a baby. A "miracle" baby as Le referred to him.

Eating well is important. So is exercise and mental health. And although everyone, fit or not, is susceptible to illness or other ailments, being healthy gives us a "leg up" in the battle. And it's days like this I am especially reminded of the importance of health and why I make good food a priority for my kids. As well as how I need to apply it to my life consistently again. In the craziness that is my life, I often forget about my nutritional needs and skip out on exercise because "I have no time." But if I don't make time, I'll be ill-equipped to handle even the smallest of challenges let alone something bigger. So here's to Lisa and to making time to partake in the benefits of seeking out good food, fun and balance for my family. May you be inspired to do the same.

Making "less waste" lunches

Gav started preschool yesterday and even though it's only six hours a week with no need to pack a lunch I thought it would be a good time to practice creating healthy, fun and less waste lunches. Waste-free is a little too strong of a term for me right now (I may use plastic wrap or something else now and then that will need to be thrown in the garbage) so I'll stick with "less waste" for the time being.

I've found major inspiration from Melissa at Another Lunch. She makes beautiful and fun bento lunches. I suggest checking her blog out, it's fab. Along with inspiration though, I've now got a major bento bug and can't stop shopping for the perfect lunchboxes. I seriously can't stop... I've already bought a few that I've changed my mind on and continue to find more. I also have a trip to Japantown in SF in the near future planned which I know will result in even more purchases. All this in only a few weeks. I'm in trouble!

Pictured above is a bento-style lunch I made for Gav in honor of his first day at preschool. It was waiting in the fridge for him when we got home. He loved it, especially the car shaped piece of cheese. Oh and he seems to love opening the box. Unlatching the hinges and taking the lid off adds to the fun for him!

I'm new to creating bento lunches so I have a long way to go in the cute and creative categories but so far the boy is digging it. It's such a great medium for making healthy food look more beautiful than it already is and that's especially important for picky little eaters. Bento-style meals fit right into my medium food lifestyle - they're simple to prepare, considerate to the environment, give me a creative outlet and a neat way to showcase my mix of homemade snacks and healthy convenience items. I've also bought boxes for the hubby, baby and me. I'm officially bento crazy!

Medium food for thought: On average a school-age child using a disposable lunch generates 67 pounds of waste per school year. That equates to 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for just one average-size elementary school. (wastefreelunches.org)