Peanut Butter and Banana Muffins

My friend and neighbor, Jen, called last night. She had been at home yesterday with a sick kiddo and found herself with some extra time and decided to do some baking. She also decided to try to clean out the left-over baby food that her toddler no longer eats. So, she found a recipe that would allow her to bake and use up the left-over baby food. Success! She called to tell me that I just had to try this recipe and post about it on my blog. So, here you go!

I made these muffins this morning. I just happened to have some overripe bananas in the freezer that needed to be used. Just as Jen said, they were delicious! They were taste-tested and approved by myself and my son, by his teachers at pre-school, my friend Linda and the ladies who attended the Zumba class that I taught this afternoon and a few others along the way.

While Jen used baby food bananas for her muffins, I used a banana that I had in the freezer and just threw it in the blender. She used baby food carrots and I used orange puree (pureed sweet potatoes and carrots) that I had in the freezer. We both used flour blend instead of plain whole wheat flour. Slightly different ingredients, but the same result-healthy and delicious muffins!

Hope you enjoy these as much as we have. I even have some stuck in the freezer to take for snack next week at pre-school.

Just a reminder - all you have to do is click on the title of this post to access the recipe. Or click on the Recipes tab on the right sidebar.

Puree Party Schedule

Who wants to Party? Puree Party that is! Are you curious just what exactly a puree party is? Then just click here to check it out.

If you live in the Evansville area and want to join us then just click on the sign-up link and pick your date to attend.

The dates being offered right now are 9/29, 10/7, 10/14, 10/19, 10/29 - all from 8-11 pm.

Look forward to partying with you!

French Toast and Rocks

I made french toast for the first time today. I am not sure why I had never made it before, but nevertheless, it was a first. I made orange puree earlier in the week so that I could make a ton of chicken tenders to freeze and had some puree left over. My intention was to make applesauce muffins, but I discovered that I was out of brown sugar and therefore could not make muffins. I was determined to make something for breakfast that would use this orange puree. So, I looked through my cookbooks and discovered this simple recipe for french toast. Eggs, orange puree, cinnamon and whole wheat bread. Yum! There are a million variations of this recipe I am sure and I intend to try more, but this was a good start.

I almost forgot about the rocks. If you ever need to make some rocks, I have a great recipe. I attempted to make oatmeal raisin breakfast cookies, but instead ended up with, you guessed it, ROCKS. No taste, hard as a rock and just plain awful. They can't all be winners, right? Do you have a favorite oatmeal raisin cookie recipe to share? I would love to hear it!

Kitchen Tip Tuesday - No mess meatloaf

I love meatloaf. But, I certainly do not love mixing it up. If you are like me and don't like getting your hands dirty or cleaning up the mixing bowl later, then try placing all ingredients in a sealed plastic bag and smash/mush/smash/mush until the meatloaf is completely mixed.

Then, place in pan to cook. Toss the bag!

Also, I never just make one batch of anything. If I am going to make the mess then I might as well make it really big. This past weekend I made my favorite meatloaf recipe x 8.

Even if you don't have a ton of freezer space at least double the recipe so that you have dinner tonight and one to freeze for another night.

Another reason I love meatloaf, is that with this super healthy and tasty recipe I turned 8 pounds of lean ground beef and turkey into 16 pounds of meatloaf. Not only am I stretching the budget, but I am sneaking healthy ingredients such as old-fashioned oats, wheat germ and pureed broccoli, spinach and peas into dinner.

Don't forget to hop on over to Tammy's Recipes to check out more kitchen tips.

Kitchen Tip Tuesday

Quickie: We have frozen lots of seasonal berries this summer after going to the orchard to pick blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries and blackberries. To make them easier to use at a later date, freeze them on a wax paper/parchment paper lined tray in a single layer for about an hour and then place in freezer bags.

Sorry no pictures this week.

If you want more kitchen tips head over to Tammy's Recipes and check out her new look.

Strawberry Oatmeal Cookies

Cookies? Strawberries? Oatmeal? I am in!!!!

When I got my new Sneaky Chef cookbook this was one of the first recipes that I tried, but I was not a big fan. My husband liked these cookies, my son liked these cookies, my mom liked these cookies, but I thought they needed a little work. So, I waited a while to make them again. Quite a while. In fact, several months passed with a batch of these hanging out in my freezer. Then, my son requested strawberry cookies for snack at school and I decided I needed to get busy. I think I just didn't give this recipe a fair shake on my first attempt, because with very little modification that have met both my approval and my friends at Mommy and Me aerobics today. So, I thought that I should share this delicious recipe with you.


It is made with strawberry puree. Sounds fancy, but just take any strawberries that you are worried will go bad (doesn't happen often around here, but it is possible), wash and top them and throw them in a blender or food processor with a couple of tablespoons of water. Turn on the food processor until the consistency is smooth and you have strawberry puree. This can be frozen like other purees for future use.


The recipe calls for one cup of puree. I added just a smidge more. That is a technical and very specific measurement. Then when I baked them I sprinkled the tops with sugar. I used a one tablespoon Pampered Chef scoop to measure out the cookie dough and then about 1/4 teaspoon strawberry jam to fill the tops. The original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of jam in each cookie, but my cookies must be a smidge smaller as there is no way that there is room for 1/2 teaspoon of jam on each one. I also baked them for about 10-11 minutes. My oven must run really hot, because the recipe calls to bake them for 25-28 minutes and they would have been crispy critters if I had left them in the oven that long. Also, I like my cookies a little soft and not too crunchy so I tend to bake them for a little less time, too. Please modify the time as appropriate for your oven.


I did freeze these in the dough form and they were just OK. I also tried making the dough the night before and baking in the morning and again they were just OK. I am going to try to freeze some fully cooked tonight to see how they turn out, but so far they are best made fresh and enjoyed then or shared with friends!


Moral to the story, don't give up on a recipe; try, try again!

Applesauce

This past weekend my son and I travelled to Kentucky to visit my mother and were fortunate to visit Reed Valley Orchard to pick blackberries. It is amazing to me how much sweeter they are when you pick them fresh as opposed to buying them in the store. Earlier this year we were also able to pick fresh blueberries, raspberries and black raspberries as well. At that time, I froze the blueberries and black raspberries and my mom and I made raspberry jam/syrup (supposed to be jam ended up more like syrup, but still delicious). Seth really enjoyed picking the berries, although I think that we ended up on the winning end of the deal as he ate as many in the orchard as he picked and were weighed so that we could pay for them. He does love fruit. After this visit, we made blackberry jam-YUM! You can see how beautiful the blackberries were:

Something I learned while at the orchard is that they sell imperfect apples. What I mean by imperfect is that they were not picture perfect. They had small spots on the peel or were an odd shape, but otherwise they were perfect apples. So, I bought a bushel of these "imperfect" apples for $6.75. Can you believe that? What a great deal! Always one for a great deal, but then I thought what am I going to do with that many apples? APPLESAUCE! These were the earli-gold variety and known for making great applesauce.

Most recipes for applesauce call for coring and peeling the apples, but I couldn't make myself cut off the healthy peel. So, we had a little experiment to see if we could make applesauce with the peels left on. I sliced and cored the apples using an apple wedger.

Then boiled them with a little bit of water and sugar. After making one batch of applesauce we decided to use even less sugar than called for in the recipe.

Then, the recipe called for putting the cooked apples through a food mill. Well, I don't own a food mill and neither does my mother and we also thought that sounded like a tedious process, so we threw it in our trusty food processor and VOILA . . .applesauce with peels and all.

Now, I am no expert canner. In fact, novice may be stretching my experience at canning, but Mom has canned her share of green beans, jams and soups. So, we canned our applesauce in a pressure canner. For more specific instructions on this entire process you could visit a website like this.

We did not add cinnamon or anything to the applesauce as I am planning on using it in some of my sneaky recipes, plus it just didn't need it. It was delicious and simple and homemade. What a feeling of accomplishment.

Planning on adding a real sneaky recipe soon, for those of you who have noticed that there has not been one of those added in a while.