My 12 pound Pumpkin

No, I am not talking about my baby, because that would be frightening. 

With Daniel being out of town, I made a list of things I wanted to do while he was gone...the usual-go thru winter clothes (see what will still fit this preggo mama), run certain errands, and also try to bake and freeze some breads in prep for baby. 

I've been good at freezing meals before, but freezing breads and cookies is a new thing to me, and I will say-I like it! 

So I waddled my way to the market to buy a few veggies and a pumpkin. My plan was to puree the pumpkin, and make some muffins and breads to freeze.

I picked out a large pumpkin and the lady told me, "it's really heavy." Yeah yeah yeah, I'll be fine. 

So when she handed me the pumpkin, I almost dropped it. It was 12 pounds!!!! I know because I weighed it when I got home. Honestly, I didn't even think I was going to make it home. I know many of you carry around your 30 lb child all the time, but an oddly shaped pumpkin is a completely different story. I had to stop several times on the way back home to readjust, and was thankful I hadn't bought some other things that had been on my list. Granted, the market isn't a full mile from our house, but it's not like it's next door either! (and yes, my right bicep was sore the next day)

So I got home, weighed the pumpkin and got to work. I cut it in fourths, scraped the seeds out, and cooked it for about an hour and a half.

After I pureed the pumpkin, my plan was to freeze the puree in one cup baggies, and leave a few cups out to bake with. However, I ran out of ziplocks, so right now I have two large bowls of puree in my fridge.

So yesterday morning I decided to make Pumpkin spice pancakes. I didn't put the sugar cinnamon topping on, I just ate these like regular pancakes-butter and syrup. Let me tell you, these were delicious!!!!!!!!!!

Since it was just me, I halved the recipe, and got about 5 large pancakes out of it. I will probably make these again tomorrow too!

I made my fave Cream of Pumpkin Soup for dinner Friday night......yummmm yummmmm. Sorry I don't have a picture, but trust me it was yummy. I found the recipe here....I've never made the croutons. 

Saturday, I went to work on pumpkin bread and muffins. I used this recipe (but doubled it), and used 5 eggs. I ground 1 cup of oatmeal and substituted that for a cup of flour. I got 1 large loaf, 2 mini's, and 12 muffins. i froze everything but one mini loaf. And for Daniel, I added chocolate chips.

Right now I also have several pounds of fruit-some familiar, some not, in my kitchen. Friday my teacher showed up with several bags of different fruits for me to try. Let's just say I really took one for the team. 

I had my teacher and her friend over last night for dinner, and received several more pounds of fruit. This time, I at least knew what they were. :) 

In other news, I've been watching Season 1 of Downton Abbey. This morning I woke up and had the thought that it would be lovely if people would start calling me "Your Ladyship." Maybe a few too many episodes?? 

What do you like to freeze?? Any DA fans out there?

love

laura

Pumpkin Oatmeal Muffins

It's fall. Which means it's PUMPKIN TIME!!

Until last year, I had never tasted pumpkin and had convinced myself I didn't like it. Then a friend made a few recipes with pumpkin and I loved every one of them!

We buy our pumpkins in the market here....they look like long squash. I cut the pumpkin in half, deseed, cook for about an hour or so, then scoop out the pumpkin and puree it with a little bit of water. One pumpkin can get me about 10 cups of pumpkin puree. I still had pumpkin in the freezer from last winter, so i decided to get my fall baking on this past weekend.

I've been wanting to make a pumpkin muffin, instead of just regular pumpkin bread. But I wanted to make the recipe a little healthier. All of the healthy recipes online included ingredients I can't get here and/or sounded too healthy to even taste good.

So I took my regular pumpkin bread recipe and tweaked it a little. I have to get my splenda from the states, so I never cook with it. I always use it just for my coffee. But I decided to splurge and use it in this recipe, and it worked really well!

Pumpkin Oatmeal Muffins:

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup oats

3/4 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/3 tsp baking powder

1 Tbs ground flax seed

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup Splenda sugar blends (mine was a little closer to 1/3)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup oil (plus 1 Tbs)

2 eggs

1 cup pumpkin puree

Preheat oven to 350 (175 C)

In large mixing bowl, combine all of your dry ingredients. Mix well.

Add pumpkin, oil, and eggs to dry mixture. Mix well.

Grease muffin pans. I used a 1/4 measuring cup to pour the batter into the muffin tins. They were about 2/3 full. I baked these for about 22 minutes....you might want to check these at 20 minutes. When a toothpick comes out clean, remove from oven.

Cool in muffin pans for about 5 minutes. Then use a knife to go around the edges to loosen the muffin. Then remove the muffins and allow to cool on a baking rack for about 10 minutes.

Makes about 15 muffins. You could also make this into bread if you wanted. 

These were REALLY good! Daniel said he couldn't taste the difference between this and the regular pumpkin bread recipe. The main change was decreasing the flour and adding in the oats. Also adding ground flax and Splenda. These are super moist, and taste really sweet! 

I was worried that the oatmeal would give it a strange texture, but you couldn't even tell it was in there. These may not be the healthiest pumpkin muffins, but they are really good tasting ones!

I also experimented a little when I made my granola bars. I like adding in nuts like cashews, almonds, and peanuts, but the nuts don't seem to mix that well with the granola mixture. So yesterday I decided to blend the nuts first, then just add them in. They weren't as chewy as normal, so next time I need to add a little bit more honey. But I like how they came out. One change I have made to the original recipe, is I also add almost 1/2 cup of peanut butter. And when I half the recipe, I use a 7X11 pan, because an 8X8 is too small. 

When you take the granola bars out of the oven, you can either freeze them first for about 45 minutes, or cool in the fridge for about an hour. Then take them out and cut them. Because it's cooler here now,  I leave these out, but during the summer, they always stay in the fridge. I think they're chewier that way. 

love

laura

Veggie Nite

I've recently been inspired by all of the yummy-looking veggie recipes I've seen on Pinterest. I was SO inspired that I decided tonight's dinner would be called "veggie nite" and our dinner would consist of several veggie recipes.

My menu plan was:

Zucchini Boats from here
Roasted Cauliflower from here (I made this about 2 weeks ago)
Sweet Potato Fries
Roasted Asparagus

I was going to make these baked tomatoes too, but was already running out of room in the oven, so maybe tomorrow nite.

We technically only have one rack in our oven, but this other grill rack thing fits too, so you do what you can. It was difficult to get this meal together because everything baked at temperatures ranging from 350-450, and I had to choose one.

Also, there wasn't room for the asparagus, so I had to rotate stuff around a bit.

Anyways......look how pretty!

The zucchini boats were really good! I didn't have mozzarella cheese, I used powdered parmesan cheese instead (again, you make do with what you have, ha). The tomatoes were really where all the taste was at. Next time I will quarter the tomatoes and cook it all a bit longer.

The cauliflower, I had made before, and was delish.

The asparagus was just lovely. I just roast it with olive oil and a little garlic salt.

However.....the sweet potato fries, left A LOT to be desired! At first they were under seasoned, so I put more seasoning on, but in the end they just weren't that good. Maybe it's because as Daniel said "they're sweet potatoes." So I will not be trying these again.

And not only did we have fresh veggies, but we had fresh fruit to go with it as well! Pineapple, oranges, and strawberries, yummmity yum!

I am loving this fruit/veggie season right now!! Living here, you are slightly limited on buying fruits and veggies. You can only buy some things (mangos, pineapple, strawberries, cherries, asparagus, etc...) when they're in season. And I'm so happy that some of my favorites are all available right now!

have a good weekend!

love

laura

AND a huge good luck to my sister Sarah who is running in her first marathon relay! I'll post more on that later after I steal some pics from her!

Orange

I have started to embrace the pumpkin.

I have always claimed to not like anything related to pumpkin. Eck......

But a few weeks ago, my friend made pumpkin bread, it smelled good and I was hungry. So I tried it. I loved it!! I even had a second piece!!! And then this same friend is the one who introduced me to other varieties of the pumpkin.

So this Monday night, in honor of meatless monday eaters around the world, I made Cream of pumpkin soup with grilled cheeses. (p.s. everytime i type pumpkin, i end up putting a 'g' on the end.)

And when I say made, I mean MADE! None of this canned pumpkin......I bought a real pumpkin from the market (which looks like squash here), cooked it down in the oven, scraped it out of the skin, put it in the blender, and voila!!!

 I didn't make the croutons, just the soup. And next time I'll use less cream, or add half milk/half cream, it was a little too rich for me. But it was soooooo gooooood!!!!

I rather like our meals being all the same color. I'm making a dish in the crock pot this weekend that is also monochromatic. I strongly believe in themed meals :)

With the leftover pumpkin, I made pumpkin bread. It was my first time to make it and while it tasted great, it didn't look very pretty so I didn't take a picture. But I anticipate making it again soon, so I'll take a pic then.

In other news..... I ran twice this week, a 3 and 5 miler. Both were very hard! I didn't think it would be that bad, but it was. I'm supposed to run 9ish tomorrow morning. We will see what happens. My half is tentatively scheduled for Nov 26th. I'm almost at the point of just wanting to get this over with. While I love training and meeting goals, it takes up a lot of time. And I always say that I miss 'just' running, but then after training is over and I go back to running on my own, I get restless and end up training again for something.

BUT because my in-laws sent a monster sized package.....I now have GU!!!

I'll let you know how the run goes!

love

laura

Food & Travel

Real quick...Granola Bar update:

I put the granola bars in the fridge (bc it's wicked humid here). I ate some this morning and boy howdy were they delish!!! I've had to exhibit a lot of self control all day long to not eat all of them.
Oh, and i made the bars to take on our trip tomorrow, which is why i can't eat them yet.

So this week in food....I made chili. I love that it's almost the same as making it in the States, and just as easy! Crockpot meals (esp here) are my fave! I got the recipe from here (I used canned kidney beans).

Also on the homefront, Daniel made dinner this week. He surprised me with pork medallions, rice, and a vegetable medley of zuchini and bell pepper.  It was SO good! And i'm pretty sure food just tastes better if someone else makes it :)

Tomorrow, in the very early AM, we are taking a 10 day trip to the mountains. It's a place i've been before, but not for over 2 years, and i'm beyond excited! Other than being a place I love, there is AMAZING food (don't worry you'll get pics), temp's in the 50-60's, and just overall a completely different atmosphere from where we live now.

Because it's such high altitude, i'm not planning on running. I'm not even bringing any running clothes. It takes a few days to get adjusted, and you're just easily tired and out of breath, so it just wasn't worth it. I'm going to miss it though, i've been on such a good consistent schedule these past few weeks, and i hate to not run in great weather, but it's too difficult to run up there without really adjusting to the altitude.

We should have internet, so i'll try to post a bit with pics of the mountains and me wearing long sleeves!!

Random sidenote: I was able to get a pair of pants hemmed for about $0.65 cents this week! One of the many perks of living here.....

love

Laura

It's Granola

A few days ago i asked for recipes for homemade granola bars. My friend sent me one and i tried it out tonight. I changed a few things, but overall used the recipe.

P.S. I actually halfed the recipe because A. i wasn't sure how they would turn out, and B. i had a small amount of chocolate chips and haven't been able to find any at the import stores here. Not having access to chocolate chips is not good for my control issues.

I  added 1 Tbs flax seed to the recipe. Because my sister would want me to. And really, why wouldn't you?

I mixed together the oats, flax, flour,  honey, brown sugar, butter (I used room temp) and  vanilla together.

Then I added a cup (total) of chopped almonds, cashews, and chocolate chips.

I know it really doesn't look like a lot, but in the end, these turned out pretty thick. I lightly greased an 8X8 (recipe is for 9X13, but again i halfed it). I pushed the mixture in pretty hard into the pan.

I actually baked these for a good 25 minutes, if not more. But it was also in a toaster oven, so i guess it just depends on what you're using. They still seemed a bit soft to me when I pulled them out. I looked at some other recipes online and they suggested putting them in the freezer straight from the oven to harden them. Some people said that if you just keep them at room temp to cool, they'll fall apart.

So I froze mine for over an hour. Took them out, cut them and ate them! They were good, but not spectacular. I think because they looked like cookie bars i was execting something really sweet, but these aren't.

Daniel thinks raisins would be really good, but gag me. I want to experiment with adding peanut butter chips, more chocolate chips than I did this time, and maybe substituting peanut butter for some of the honey. But this is a great starter recipe, just add whatever you like for the "extras."

Here's the recipe!!

Chewy granola bars

4 1/2 c rolled oats
3/4 c flour
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 c butter
3/4 c honey
1/3 c packed brown sugar
2 c add ins (nuts, dried fruit, chocolate...)
325 degrees 9*13 pan

Mix all ingredient except addins. Then add addins. Firmly press in pan. Bake 18-20 min or golden brown. Let cool 10 min than cut. Let cool completely before removing from pan."
 

 
(Again I froze mine and halfed the recipe, but do whatever feels right to you.)
 
Stay tuned for another food post tomorrow!
 
love
 
Laura