Hello Spring? Is That You?

The last week has been crazy!  Gorgeous one day, rainy and gross the next.  I love being outside and so does Sunny.  On every nice day we've either had errands to run, stuff to do, or I haven't been feeling well so I've promised her to goto the park the following day.  The following day it has rained each time!  Today was one of those rainy days.  

Despite the rain it's been warm the past week also.  This means {atleast to me} that winter is finally over!  And no more winter means that I can start planting my seeds.  I started my seeds today.  I'm growing peas, watermelon, dill, sunflowers, spaghetti squash, spinach and a few other things.  I'm not trying to go completely wild and I'm only planting stuff that I will eat.  I still need to pick up carrots, corn and a few different varieties of berries.  My goal is to actually eat the things I grow.  Last year I didn't use many of the vegetables that came out of my garden.

As a celebration for my new set of vegetables and the warm weather coming I made a loaf of carrot raisin bread.  It was so good!  I had to tear myself away from it.  {I'm seriously a carbo-holic}  This bread would be awesome for breakfast.  

I think you need to go run to the store and pick up the ingredients for it and make it.   

Carrot Raisin Bread
Adapted From:  Clean Eating Magazine  (/)
Serves: 8
Nutritional information follows

Ingredients
.75 cup whole wheat flour
.75 cup all pourpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
.5 T ground cinnamon
.66 cup grated apple
1 cup grated carrot
egg substitute equivilent to 1 egg
1 single serve Greek Yogurt (I used toasted coconut vanilla)
.5 cup sugar free maple syrup


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 and spray a loaf pan
2. Whisk together dry ingredients
3. In a separate bowl stir together wet ingredients, carrots and apple
4. Mix wet into dry
5. Spoon into baking dish and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (mine took about an hour)

I've got big news, and A LOT of new recipes coming for you in the near future.  I'm really excited to share all of it with you.  Share something with me.  Are you planting anything this year?  Do you prefer to be indoors or outdoors?  

Something To Go With The Smoothie....

Last nite I told you about the Spinach Smoothie.  Today I'm giving you the recipe for the muffins that were in the background of the smoothie photo.  I snuck vegetables in those too!

I adapted this recipe from Happy Herbivore Light and Lean cookbook.  My recipe isn't vegan but it's equally delicious and I'm pretty certain it has less fat.  

Orange Zucchini Muffins
Makes 12 regular or 30 mini muffins

Ingredients

1.5 c flour
1 T baking powder
1 small banana
.75 c skim milk
.5 c fat free Greek yogurt
zest and juice of a clementine/blood orange
1 cup shredded zucchini (about 2 small zucchini)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 and spray a muffin tin (I made mini muffins as you can see)
2. Squeeze all the water out of your shredded zucchini and set aside
3. Whisk together dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.
4. In a blender or food processor puree banana, milk, yogurt, zest and orange juice
5. Mix banana mixture into flour mixture.
6. Fold in zucchini
7. Bake 18-25 minutes for regular muffins and 15-20 minutes for mini muffins

These were delicious.  The orange stood out but didn't overpower.  The zucchini added a nice bit of moisture.  You can actually substitute the orange for any citrus probably.  The original recipe calls for lemon.  It would be nice to try with grapefruit.  

An Inspired Post

My trip to Smoothie King really opened my eyes to the possibilities of vegetables.  The fruits really blend well with the vegetables.  They also hide the taste.

Tonite was smoothie and muffin nite.  I decided to slip some spinach into my smoothie.  I was surprised at the fact that I couldn't taste the spinach at all.   

The one in the front is mine.  The only difference between mine and the girls' is the fact that I added spinach.  But honestly, I bet if I had added spinach to theirs they wouldn't have known.


Spinach Smoothie
Serves: 1
Calories: 226
Carbs: 41 g
Protein: 17 g


Ingredients

4 oz (.5 cup) Fat free plain Greek yogurt
.5 medium banana
About 2  cups of spinach
.25 cup blueberries
.25 cup raspberries
4 frozen strawberries
.25 cup light soymilk

Directions

1. Put all ingredients in the blender and puree until smooth.

Do you add vegetables in unexpected places?  I'd love to hear about it! 

Recipe Redux

Cupcakes are everywhere these days aren't they?  You can find 40 bajillion flavors. Normal flavors (chocolate, vanilla, and carrot), off-the-wall flavors (beer, apple onion, and corned beef with cabbage), ones for every dietary restriction (vegan, gluten free, and sugar free), and combinations of all of the above. I love cupcakes. They are great pre-portioned desserts (as long as you only eat one.)
Sunny's birthday is tomorrow. She's one lucky duck. She's getting a watermelon cake at home before presents and cupcakes after dinner at Ken's work. Why 2 different desserts? Because we are bringing cupcakes to share with to Ken's coworkers because we like to spoil them and they adore the girls. I made chocolate zucchini cupcakes with a marshmallow creme-cool whip frosting.
I love this recipe. It's sweet but not too sweet.

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

Adapted from Happy Herbivore
Calories:  86
Fat:        0.4 grams
Carbs:  19.3 grams
Sugar:   6.9 grams
Protein: 2.1 grams

Ingredients
1.25 cup whole wheat flour
.25 cup unsweetened cocoa  
1.25 tsp baking powder
1 banana, mashed
.25 cup sugar  
.5 cup applesauce
.25 cup skim milk (non-dairy milk would work also)
1 t vanilla
1 cup shredded zucchini

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350.
2. Grease your cupcake pan (or use liners)
3. Combine dry ingredients
4. Mix together the banana, applesauce and sugar
5. Stir in the milk, vanilla and zucchini
6. Add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture
7. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full
8. Bake 18-25 minutes (stick a toothpick in it and if it comes out clean then it's done)

You can substitute the sugar for sugar free syrup.  This drops the calories to 70, carbs to 15.4, sugar is 2.8

I frosted them with a simple Cool Whip Fluff Frosting.  Word to the wise, when you want to do something impressive, stick to what you know.  I decided to try a new fat free frosting.  Cool Whip and marshmallow fluff.  It didn't stiffen up.  So now my cupcake's frosting is all runny.  It tastes good but, instead of the recipe I was planning on posting I'll give you a link to my normal fat free frosting.  Click Here for it.  Just so you know, the normal recipe is great because you can use any flavor of pudding that you'd like.  And if anybody has a good fat free frosting recipe, please PLEASE send it to me!  I'm always searching for a new one.    But it's really pretty though....

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