Pumpkin Pie Muffins

These are delicious! Incredibly moist, surprisingly healthy and taste like little pumpkin pies. I ate the last one this morning and will definitely be making them again this weekend.

I can’t lie. Looking at the list of ingredients, I was incredibly skeptical that these would be good. They are actually probably in the top 5 of best muffins I have ever made.  So good, that I would consider eating them for dessert with a little whipped topping on them like pumpkin pie!

Recipe adapted from Chocolate Covered Katie.

Muffin ingredients:

• 1 3/4  cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup pure pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons pumpkin butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup milk of choice
• 1/4 heaping cup of coconut oil

Filling ingredients:

• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons pumpkin butter
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1/8 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

For the muffins: 

Preheat oven to 400F.

Whisk flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon and salt together.

In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin puree, brown sugar, pumpkin butter, milk, and coconut oil until smooth.

Gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet. Do it stages and make sure not to over mix.

Divide batter evenly into a previously greased muffin tin. My batter made 12 full size muffins and 6 mini muffins.

Let the batter rest while you make the filling.

For the filling:

In a small bowl, combine the pumpkin puree, sugar, pumpkin butter, coconut oil , pumpkin pie spice and salt.

Divide filling evenly on top of the muffin batter.

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out of the muffin clean. Obviously , I baked the mini muffins for less time, probably 10-12 minutes.

Let cool completely.

These keep for about a week in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Walk it off

This past winter, I got a great deal on a watch. This was no ordinary watch, but one of those sporty heart rate monitor exercise watches. The only problem with these watches is that the battery doesn’t last nearly as long as a regular watch as they are working so much harder and tracking so much more. So, the battery died about 2 months ago. Last week, Brian was trying to change the battery and accidentally broke the LCD screen on it. He very kindly bought me a new watch, which might actually be an upgrade to my old watch. This one also had a pedometer, calculates the calories you burn throughout the day based on your heart rate and you can set daily goals on it. I really like. It’s also very motivating to move more.

I had a lot of errands to run this weekend and by run, I mean walk. Since we don’t have a car, I do a lot of walking, especially on the weekend. Motivated by my watch to walk a little more than usual, I logged about 20 miles this weekend. How did I fuel all of this walking?

Big breakfasts! And lots of coffee.

Saturday morning, I was very indecisive about what I wanted for breakfast, so I had a little bit of everything. Strawberries and watermelon, an egg with sriracha, and a piece of cinnamon toast. Half with pumpkin butter and the other half with mashed banana and a little cookie butter.

After a morning trip to the store and an exciting sale on homemade guacamole, I had a lunch of lots of fruits, veggies and an open-faced chicken and guacamole sandwich.  I love homemade guac, but when they sell the good stuff for less than I can make it, I’ll take it!

A dinner of more chicken and guac, veggies, hummus and chips. I’m really trying to take advantage of the last of the fresh veggies while I can.

Saturday night, I made some falafel with an extra helping of greens.

Then I spent a night in with a glass of wine and my sewing machine doing some mending for Brian.

Sunday’s breakfast was a helping of toast, guac, bacon and eggs with a pumpkin pie muffin.

That was a very finger-licking and runny yolk! Mmm!

Brian had a banana and chocolate chip muffin reheated with a smear of cookie butter on top.

After running errands, a long shoe shopping trip for Brian, lunch at Native Foods(salads for both of us), and buying fabric for me, I did some more sewing. I sewed a yoga mat bag for myself. I have lululemon’s big mat. It is no longer available on the website, but is wider and longer than the average yoga mat and great if you are taller than average and struggle to stay on your mat during classes. Hence it being bigger than average, it doesn’t fit in most yoga bags. So, I loosely followed Kick Stand Fitness’s directions to make a bag. It took me about and hour, start to finish. I even added an interior pocket. Super easy and functional. Definitely work the 1 yard of fabric and one hour of work.

Sunday’s dinner was fruit, salad and veggie lasagna. I bought the lasagna pre-made and thought it was great. Packed with flavor and protein, I’d definitely buy it again.

With falafel and leftover veggie lasagna, it looks to be another veggie filled week! And what is great is that during this week’s heat wave, we can live on leftovers and I won’t have to heat up the kitchen!

Goodbye, summer

Friday seems like so long ago that I can hardly remember what we  did.  We had plans to go out to eat, but with some torrential down pours right after I got home from work, we decided to order in. We ordered in some chicken shawarma from a new restaurant. It was so-so. So far, I haven’t found a place that competes with a a restaurant by my work. Then we set up an assembly line and put together our wedding invitations. After that was done, we rewarded ourselves with some couch time and started watching Orange is the New Black. Is everyone else watching this show? You should be! It’s great.

Saturday morning, I got up and made a veggie loaded breakfast with homemade tomato sauce, spinach, and eggplant. It was so delicious.

Then I headed out for a busy day of going to the post office, hair cut and eye exam. The lovely lady at the post office gave me multiple kinds of misinformation including that we needed more postage for our invitations and that they don’t sell the stamps we need at that post office. Being that I needed to get to my hair cut, I delegated the other post office run to Brian. He had a pleasant post office experience, unlike mine, and the man at the other post office said we didn’t need extra postage, hand stamped our invites and mailed them for Brian. After having several unpleasant experiences with the post office closest to us, I will never be going there again. I will happily go out of my way and take extra time to go to a different office. Before my haircut, I stopped at a burger place by our wedding venue and tried out the Hurt Burger. It was supposed to be incredible spicy, but I didn’t think it had much of a kick, despite having jalapenos on it. The fries were really good though. My excuse for eating a burger and fries for lunch is that I need to be able to give wedding guests accurate information about eating establishments around our hotel. Ha!

Sunday morning, I experimented with a new pancake recipe for Brian. They were incredibly dense and not the proper color, but he said they tasted great. Maybe it was all the cookie butter I slathered on them.

Frustrated by his wonky pancakes, I didn’t pay much attention to my breakfast cooking and botched my eggs. I spent a good while at my garden then went to my last class of aquatic exercise of the summer. IO am saddened that I will have no more opportunities to be in the pool.  We had a quick “clean out the fridge” lunch before going to buy groceries and run errands. We stopped at Target and goofed around in the toy aisle. I spent the rest of my evening planning Monday’s cook-a-thon and watching more episodes of Orange is the New Black.

Monday started off with a bang and an open-face egg sandwich. I headed into the kitchen to make black bean brownies, pumpkin muffins with pumpkin pie filling tops(they taste much better than they look), homemade, bbq sauce, curried ginger pumpkin soup, sunbutter and ended the day by grilling steak, burgers, chicken and veggies. We should be eating well all week!

My long weekend was wonderful and productive with plenty of fresh air and exercise. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Easy cinnamon streusel French toast

I made an easy cinnamon streusel French toast for Brian this past weekend.

Have you ever been to Costco? Have you ever been there when samples of their cinnamon streusel bread has been given out? Holy moley! That stuff is good.

I have been able to resist buying a loaf before, but I couldn’t on this last trip. I blame the full moon. After getting it home and looking at the nutritional information, the loaf immediately went into the freezer. This bread is going to be a treat and a rare one at that. Granted the slices are large and thick, but it is 220 calories a slice. Wowza. No wonder it tastes so good.

On Saturday, I pulled out one piece of the bread to thaw. While it was thawing, I beat together one egg, a teaspoon of vanilla, a dash of cinnamon and a tablespoon for two of milk.

Heat up a skilled over medium heat and add a pat of butter.

Dip each side of the bread in the egg mixture and let excess mixture run off of bread.

Cook on each side until browned. Whlie the bread was cooking, I cut up a very ripe banana and tossed the slices in the skillet as well, to caramelize(turn once).

Once done, put on a plate, top with slices of banana, a sift of powdered sugar and a little syrup.

Monday, back at it

It’s already Monday again? My weekend was so full of fun activities that it feels like I haven’t been to work in a week!

Thursday night, I was incredibly happy to eat a very summery meal of a half of a BLT with fruit, veggies and a few chips. See that sweet corn? It was my last ear from a batch I received from Iowa. Possibly the best sweet corn of my life. So sweet and tender it made my heart sing.

Friday night we picked up our wedding invitations and envelopes. Eeek! It’s coming so soon. I’m so excited! Brian and I grabbed dinner at Native Foods. He had a curry bowl and I had the indo salad. Both were amazing. We loved our own choices and each other’s so much that we switched bowls half way through. Sharing is caring. After running some more errands, I got home and collapsed on the couch for the night.

Saturday I got up early, did laundry, worked out and watered the garden before heading to a bridal shower in the burbs.  I had a surprise strawberry waiting for me when I got there to water:

Brian and I had a nice breakfast together before I left for the day. I made him cinnamon streusel French toast with caramelized bananas for breakfast. I had eggs and toast.

I got to hang out with some fun Hawkeyes at Sarah’s beautiful shower:

The rest of the day was full of bachelorette fun.

Sunday morning I slept in and headed to water aerobics. Only one more weekend left of getting to be in an outdoor pool and get exercise. Booo! I wish I could have this weather and schedule all year round. The rest of Sunday was filled with making food for the week and folding and putting away laundry. As much as I hate laundry, I love starting out the week with a full and clean closet.

I made another round of macro bowls(spinach, kale, zucchini, quinoa, lentils, beans and sweet potato) for us to have for lunches this week:

Took a break to have a lunch of leftover pizza, salad, tomatoes and chips.

 

 

I felt like I haven’t made us a proper dinner in a few weeks. When I said this, Brian gave me a strange look like I was a crazy person. I just felt like I hadn’t put a lot of time or effort into a meal lately. Which is the direct result of it being summer and using a lot more fresh food that doesn’t need as much preparation. Anyway, I having a strong yearning to do a little more cooking and use our early wedding gift. Look at her. She’s a beauty. I named her Camille, because she’s French, you know. And she can make honey, almond, rosemary roasted carrots with the best of them.

I also made a simple and quick tomato sauce, which had tons of great flavor:

With some seasoned green beans, the meal came together kind of like this:

Brian gave the carrots two thumbs up. I really like the almond carrot combo. Delightful. It would probably be a recipe better reserved for cooler temperatures, but those are probably right around the corner. And the tomato sauce on the chicken really jazzed it up.

 

Tomato, tomato, egg, tomato

I almost made it to this weekend with out posting about last weekend.

Last week was a little nuts. I started a new workout regimen. I was doing strength before work and cardio after work. This left me with little time to actually make dinner. So, I made good use of my old friend the crockpot this past weekend.

After leaving the gym Friday night, I stopped and picked up dinner at Whole Foods. I snagged a bag of their house made thai pepper popcorn. It was the perfect snack for relaxing on the couch and watching a movie.

Saturday I got up early, worked out, then made a large and delightful breakfast to fuel the day.

Toast with egg, avocado and sriracha with a side of clementine, and homemade greek yogurt with chia, flax and strawberries. This powered me through a trip to Whole Foods to take advantage of their one day bulk bin sales:

After getting home, I threw a curry in the crock pot.

Feeling good about being able to come home to a hot dinner, I headed downtown to do some marathon shopping. After trying on over 50 dresses, I bought one. Success.

I recently inherited a plethora of homegrown tomatoes and a half dozen ears of sweet corn. I have been greatly enjoying those all week. Is there a limit to the number of tomatoes one can eat in day? I think not!
Tomatoes for breakfast:

Tomatoes for lunch:

Tomatoes for dinner:

Oh, the joys of summertime.

Raisin Bran muffins

I was at the store recently and had an impulse purchase of a box of Raisin Bran.

Raisin Bran is one of the few cereals I like. I also like to knit, garden and go to water aerobics. I am a 85-year-old woman.

Being that 1-2 bowls of cereal every few months if about my limit, I needed to find something else to do with the rest of the box of cereal. With a quick Google search, I quickly learned that there are numerous Raisin Bran muffin recipes out there. Apparently, they are a thing. Well, I don’t want to be left behind on the cereal muffin trend, so I made cereal muffins.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 2 1/2 cups Raisin Bran cereal
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl, which together the flour, baking soda, salt and sugars.

Stir in the cereal. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the oil, egg, buttermilk and vanilla.

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry. Stir until completely combined.

Cover mixture and refrigerate for 45 minute to 2 days. This allows the cereal to soften. Part of the reason I chose this recipe was the ability to let the batter rest before using it. My oven was full of DIY Greek yogurt, so I couldn’t bake them up right away. See how the batter is soupy before letting it sit, then much thicker afterwards?

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375F. Use a muffin tin with liners or lightly grease a muffin tin. Divide batter between 12 muffins.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Store in an airtight container or refrigerate.

I really liked these muffins because they had nice flavor without being too sweet. The only change I might make is adding additional raisins to the recipe.

The early morning

Wow. It’s only 9am on Sunday and I feel like I can already give you the weekend update.

It’s amazing how productive a weekend can be when I don’t over schedule myself, go to bed at a decent time and get up at a decent time.

Friday night, Brian had plans with a friend to see Pacific Rim, because I refused to go see it. I brought dinner home and relaxed on the couch. It was awesome.

I went to early morning yoga yesterday. I hadn’t been in a few months and was so glad I went. My knee has been killing me lately from a combination of running and biking and yoga is the only thing that seems to help. On the way home I stopped and Whole Foods to pick up something to drink as I was super thirsty. I tried a new beverage. It was delicious!

Then I hurried home to change clothes and meet my friend Katie at the pool for some aquatic exercise. There was a super creepy guy in our class which made us giggle uncomfortably most of the time. It was really awkward.
I spent the afternoon running errands and had a delicious dinner of a bleu cheese burger and vegetables.

For dessert, I roasted myself a giant marshmallow over the stove. The mega marshmallow was an end cap clearance find at Target. While it was amazing, it was almost too much, but I’m sure it won’t stop me from eating another one today. And more importantly, how did I ever live without a gas stove?

It’s been another early and productive morning. I got up, started laundry, ate eggs with sriracha and got to work on my first ever batch of homemade Greek yogurt.

After heating up the milk and letting it cool, it has an 8-12 hour incubation period. I got antsy waiting for the milk to heat and we know a watched pot never boils(a good thing in this case as you only heat the milk to 180 degrees), so I swept the house. While I was waiting for the milk to cool, I cleaned the bathroom. The yogurt is now at the incubation stage. Just hoping it turns out well!

I also have another recipe in the works right now. It’s a raisin bran muffin batter that has to sit and refrigerate. Can’t wait to bake those up later.
Well, off to aquatic exercise, then I plan on spending most of the rest of the day pool side! See, it pays to get up early and be productive!

Holiday weekend

Maybe it wasn’t technically a holiday weekend, but with the 4th falling so close to the weekend, it seemed like one. Thursday we had a few people over to grill out and enjoy the back yard. There was a ton of food and festivities(maybe a little too much for some of us).

We now have oodles of left overs that I have been trying to recreate into other dishes so that we aren’t eating burger after brat after burger.

Saturday I woke up at 5:15am and couldn’t go back to sleep. So, I headed up and did some work in the garden and headed to water aerobics, only to learn that it started at 11am, not 10am. I didn’t want to wait around so I headed home and started creating some calzone dough. I made two different fillings, one being ground taco meat, corn and black beans with cheddar cheese and the other of chicken, pesto, tomatoes and swiss. I thought they turned out pretty tasty.

Saturday afternoon I spend relaxing and watching a Law and Order: SVU marathon. Delightful. It’s amazing how crimes can be wrapped up neatly in a one hour TV segment. Saturday night I headed to Michael’s craft store and browsed their clearance. I got some fun glitter paint and goods to make some bracelets. A wonderful little night at home.

I had recently heard in a podcast that if you want really fluffy eggs for omelettes to put them in the blender. It will also make your eggs go farther, needing you to use less. So, after making a batch of almond milk, I cleaned out the blender and threw in one egg and 3 egg whites. I also threw in a few handfuls of spinach(who not???). It made my eggs super fluffy and green! I had a 12 inch skillet full of eggs. I topped them with marinara. Delicious and colorful.

Once my food settled, I headed to meet some friends for an aquatic exercise class. Get a tan and exercise? Yes, please! Lunch consisted of BBQ chicken salads and fruit. I topped the salad with grilled corn, black beans, carrots, cucumber and some crushed tortilla chips.

After realizing that yesterday was National Chocolate Day and being a little tired of eating meat at every meal, I decided that we would have chocolate chunk waffles for dinner. Well, Brian would. I had half of a waffle, veggie patty and some fruit. I don’t care for sweet breakfast foods all that much and I would have been really cranky later if I didn’t eat some protein.

Brian:

Me:

I hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend as I did. So happy it finally felt like summer!

Fun and fantastic

This past weekend was awesome. The weather was great and Brian and I ended up doing some spontaneous things and really taking advantage of the city. Something I need to do more often. That’s why I live here, right?

Brian took me out to dinner on Friday night because our fridge was bare! We hadn’t really gone grocery shopping in 2 weeks and we had been squeaking by on pantry staples and freezer meals all week. The upside to this was that, our fridge was bare. How is that an upside? It was the perfect opportunity to pull everything out and wipe down the shelves. A task that was long over due! Look at its glowing beauty afterwards:

After my speed cleaning fridge session, I headed out the door to walk to meet Brian for dinner. The weather was perfect for eating dinner outside and this place had a patio(no coincidence). We started off our meal with the bone marrow appetizer which came with a great arugula salad and pickled cherry. It was the perfect flavor combination.

I had a delicious and dark beer made with 3 different types of coffee beans:

And was only able to eat half of my Legend’s of the Daal wrap(very tasty):

The place is mostly known for their burgers. Brian got Elvis’ Last Supper with house made peanut butter and bacon. Surprisingly delicious.

On the way home, we decided to walk through Ribfest, which was happening right down the block. There was this sign:

To which, Brian reacted like this to the thought of a deep fried Snickers:

We continued walking, until we saw this sign:

To which the possibility of deep-fried Oreos was too much for Brian to resist. We headed over to the ticket line and within 10 minutes had a tub of fried Oreos. To which, the man next to us in line got a deep-fried Snickers and insisted I take his picture.

Because deep-frying candy and cookies isn’t enough, they top them off with chocolate sauce and powdered sugar:

I tried one of the Oreos. It was actually pretty tasty. Like a funnel cake married and Oreo and made tiny funnel cake Oreo babies. Brian was in heaven.

A Friday night of indulgence meant a healthy breakfast and exercise Saturday morning.

Followed by a trip to the garden. A very exciting trip where I would learn that all of my radishes had matured and were ready to be picked. I also got a few handfuls of kale and spinach and a lone strawberry. I think I’ve gotten more produce from my community garden plot in one month this year than I did all last summer!

After lots of errand running we grabbed lunch and then hit up Margie’s for a scoop of ice cream. They were switching out containers on Brian’s chocolate peanut butter and he got a mega scoop. That got all over his beard and mustache, but loos at those abundant ribbons of peanut butter. I had some serious ice cream envy and Brian happily shared with me.

Saturday we ate mostly vegetable for dinner. I grilled a ton of them for us to devour and a little chicken. I also made a delicious salad with the kale and spinach from the garden with a vinaigrette, hemp and sunflower seeds and blueberries.

Sunday was to be filled with rain, but we were surprised by a sunny day instead.

I had a breakfast taco to start the day. The eggs ended up overwhelming the tortilla, but it was delicious!

I slow cooked brisket in a marinade all day to make some delicious barbacoa for our tostadas for dinner.

While that was cooking and making the house smell wonderful, I got to work on a big batch of pumpkin and chocolate chip waffles to use as breakfasts in the upcoming days:

Made a tasty batch of tarragon chicken salad(can’t wait to share the recipe) that was the perfect meal of protein to sustain us on our 12 mile bike ride by the lake.

I don’t think we could have packed much more into our weekend. It was a great one! Hope everyone had as much fun as I did.