Happy National Chocolate Brownie Day!

You read right.  National Chocolate Brownie Day!  I love brownies.  I don't eat (or make) them as much as I used to because of my gallbladder.

My kids love brownies.  This was Mo's "birthday cake" from her party last year.

Don't they look delicious?  Brownies that I filled with raspberry and strawberry buttercream and topped with chocolate buttercream.  (Thank you Hershey's for the amazing recipe, found HERE) But the recipe I found for fat free brownies before fell short.  They tasted more like my mom's fluffy gingerbread cake than brownies.  Even though I like that cake, they fell short of what I was looking for.

When I found out about National Brownie Day I knew that I had a reason to try a new recipe. 

Vegan Double Chocolate Brownies from Kurry Leaves

Vegan Double Chocolate Brownies
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1.  Preheat oven to 360 degrees (180 degrees celcius)
2.  Mix all ingredients together
3.  Place batter in a parchement lined, greased 8x8 or 9x9 pan.  (You can use a spatula to smooth it down.  I had a 3 1/2 year old helping me so that's why mine aren't)
4.  Bake for 18-23 minutes  
5.  Cool and cut into 9 pieces

Store in the refrigerator.  They will keep alot longer if you do. 

With a little work this stuff....

Became this....

Not the prettiest batch of brownies but they are darn good!  Super fudgey.  Everybody in the house loved them.

These weigh in at 100 calories and 0.6 grams of fat.  And of course the pumpkin adds beneficial vitamins and nutrients.

 Now I'm going to go study for finals and eat a brownie.  Happy Brownie Day!!  Are you making a batch today to celebrate??  If so, share your recipe!

Donut Date Night

I might be a health nut (or freak if you prefer) but, I'm also a mom that occasionally enjoys spoiling her kids.  Tonite was one of those nites.  Mo went to a birthday party so I decided to indulge Kay's sweet tooth (which will be her downfall later in life, just like me.)  I took her to the nearby Dunkin Donuts.  Okay, I can't lie, I also enjoyed spoiling myself with coffee.  

 
Why no donuts?  It's a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins combo store.  Kay decided that she wanted ice cream instead of a donut.  

I ordered a Pumpkin White Chocolate Latte.  It was delish!  Perfectly pumpkin-y and just the right about of chocolate.  Plus, a medium only has 280 calories and no fat!  

Tonite was a nite about learning, not just desserts.  Kay learned that her tummy has adjusted to our new diet way of eating.  Her stomach is very upset right now from the hot chocolate and ice cream.  She even told me she wished she had gotten a donut instead. 

I look out for my kids healthy 99.7% of the time.  Indulgences should be no different.  Next time I won't even offer to let her get the unhealthier option.  I've always said you can indulge in a healthy way.  I need to start applying this to my kids too.  

Do you indulge your kids in ways you wouldn't indulge yourself?

I work hard for a living....

I found these today.  I figured out my own personal paycheck and if I were to get paid for all I do it would be $183,546.  WOW!  
I wish I received a check that big just for my daily duties.  But honestly I wouldn't give it up for the world.  Even if the paycheck was bigger than $183,000.  


If you goto the Salary.com Mom Salary Wizard you can figure out your own.  

So, what are you worth?  Would you give it all up for a paycheck that high or do you like your "mom duties"?

Happy Belated National Cookie Day!

Yesterday (December 4) was National Cookie Day.  The first week in December is National Cookie Cutter Week.   In honor of the day I figure I'll let you in on the recipes for the Christmas cookies I'm making for the girls teachers at school and for Mr. Amazing's coworkers.

Sugar Cookies -- Courtesy of Mr. Alton Brown.  ( I love this man!)
Chocolate Chocolate Chip -- You can never go wrong with a recipe from Tollhouse!
Flourless Peanut Butter -- I have seriously come to appreciate Martha Stewart recently.  In this recipe I leave out the peanuts and chocolate chips
Chocolate Chip -- I have to throw in a healthy(er) option.  This is honestly my favorite cookie EVER.  I made myself a cookie cake one Mother's Day using this recipe.

I'll make sure to post pictures after I bake all of them. 

Aren't those plates awesome?  My mom gave them to me for Christmas about 4 years ago. 

But, here's a cookie recipe to tide you over until I post all mine.

Fat Free Fudge Brownie Cookies

3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder 
3 egg whites
1 cup chocolate chips
1 T vanilla extract

Mix everything together and drop onto a greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

It's supposed to make 24, I made 18 big ones.  

Curveball Week

I'm a bad mom.  My house ran out of milk last night.  I thought I had enough to last me until this morning but, it all got drank with dinner.  This is what my kids ended up with for breakfast.

Awwww, poor babies??  I think they're pretty damn lucky that we had no milk or they would have been stuck with boring cereal.  I wish I had taken a picture after I stirred it tho.

Curveball Oatmeal (serves 2)
2 servings of oatmeal, cooked to your liking (I used the directions on the tub)
4 T sugar-free maple syrup
4 T cocoa powder
2 T chocolate chips

• Stir everything together until the chocolate chips are melted and the cocoa powder is distributed evenly
• Divide evenly among 2 bowls 
• Finish with a splash of skim (or non-dairy) milk to cool and/or thin it out 

I added a sprinkle of cherry craisins to theirs.  For mine I reduced the cocoa powder to 1 1/2 Tablespoons and added half a banana and a splash of soymilk.  (I used soymilk in the girls too)

Calories --281
Fat --  7.2 g
Cholesterol -- 2 mg
Sodium -- 161 mg
Carbs -- 57.9 g
Fiber -- 7.7 g
Sugar -- 6 g
Protein -- 8.1 g

See?  It looks decadent and unhealthy but the calories aren't all that bad.  

Life loves to throw me curveballs though, just like the oatmeal.  This weekend life threw me another curveball.  I finally (after about 2 months) got my motivation back to exercise.  But, when I woke up Saturday morning determined to workout, my knees were killing me.  I've been in serious pain since then.  Now I'm on the hunt for a zero impact mega calorie burning workout.  Now isn't that a big FU to start off the holiday season?? 

Now off to the chiropractor.  Hopefully they can work the issues out of my knee. 

Do you have any curveball recipes? 

Roof Over Your Head

Happy National Roof Over Your Head Day!  Today is a day to appreciate all the things that we have, starting with a roof over our heads. This is what we saw over our roof yesterday.

Yep a pretty rainbow.  It boosted my spirits yesterday when I was seriously annoyed at the essay I was working on.  (Last one for the semester though, YEY!)

I consider myself a semi pro at a number of things.  One of those things is figuring out which things on a menu are possibly low in fat.  Somethings still trick me though.  I still to this day don't understand how restaurants add fat to steamed, STEAMED vegetables.

I was originally planning on doing a photo post on what I eat at a buffet.  Due to severe stomach pains our trip out to dinner was postponed.  So that post will be on Wednesday.  Tonite I'm making just a simple calzone.  

Sunday Post

(Don't you love my post title?  I couldn't think of anything witty, smart or even post related for the title.  So this is what my frazzled, 6 AM, essay writing brain came up with)

Is there any meal that you could eat 3x a day every day?

For me that meal is breakfast.  (The picture gave it away didn't it?)  I love it.  I love all breakfast foods (except grits...YUCK!) Okay, I can't lie, I love 95.7% of all breakfast foods.  I know that there are probably other ones that are gross that I can't think of at the moment.  I could honestly eat  breakfast foods 5 day a week, 3 meals a day.  I'm quirky though.  I don't like a big breakfast in the morning. All I want at breakfast time is something simple like oatmeal, or cereal and fruit.

The girls and I eat BFD (Breakfast For Dinner) at least a few times a month.  There's actually part of me that is considering doing a Christmas BFD.  But the family's a bit traditional when it comes to holiday dinners so that idea is going to be saved for a different day. 

I actually broke out the waffle iron last nite.  I VERY VERY rarely use it.  It cost me $7 at Target.  I put in a good word with Kay that if she wants waffles more often a new waffle iron would be a good thing for me to find under the Christmas tree.   

I made pumpkin waffles (which were a HUGE hit), blueberry waffles and chocolate chip waffles.  Because of my scatterbrainedness I completely forgot to get pictures.  Heck, if I wasn't so passionate about breakfast this post possibly wouldn't have happened (and I'm avoiding writing a paper.) 

Here's the pumpkin waffle recipe:Organic Gardening
And the blueberry: 8th Continent Blueberry Waffle Recipe  
[Note:  I actually used this recipe for both the blueberry and the chocolate chip ones.  Before I added the blueberries I split the batter in half and added blueberries in one and chocolate chips in the other.] 

Try them and tell me what you think!  Tomorrow I'll bring you a photo collage on what I eat at Mongolian Barbecue restaurants.