Pear Muffins

Pears are available year-round, but fall really is pear season.  My favorite way to eat pears is actually a no-recipe dish...a fully, juicy, tender ripe pear sliced thinly with thin slices of Havarti cheese.  I'll eat that for breakfast, dessert, snack, you name it. 

Pears are a valuable addition to one's diet for reasons other than their deliciousness though. 

WARNING: things are about to get a little gross. 

Pears contain sorbitol which is a natural osmotic laxative (the type of laxative that "just makes it easier to go", as the commercials say).  So do prunes and plums, but I know a lot of folks are anti-prune even though you shouldn't be...but that's another post.

If you're thinking about prepping some snacks and meals ahead in preparation for having a baby, pears should be on your list somehow.  If you've just ejected another human being from your body, whether via the baby chute or through the "sunroof", chances are there's gonna be some issues in the osmotic laxative department (personal experience speaking here).  If you're helping someone who is laid up after a surgery or long illness, chance are they're having some issues in the osmotic laxative department.  If you're caring for an elderly person, chances are...well, you get it.  Medication (particularly pain medication), surgeries, inactivity due to injury or bed rest, dehydration from illness, normal aging all tend to cause constipation, and pears will help.

OK, enough poop talk.  Pears are good for what ails you.

I've frozen batches of these muffins before just as is.  They are gooood, but get a little soggy on top in the freezer.  I've played with different ways to freezer-fortify them, and what I've come up with is a good solution I think that can be applied to any type of muffin.  A streusel topping that incorporates nuts or coconut will stand up to the freezer pretty well.  The nuts/coconut doesn't lose crunch and keeps the otherwise-soggy muffin tops covered up.

You can always make the batter and freeze it for later baking which totally side-steps the freezer-sog problem, but it does require back-end time to bake.  If you freeze before baking, spoon the batter into paper cupcake liners in a muffin pan.  Freeze the whole pan, then remove the filled liners to a ziptop bag for storage.  To thaw, put the liner-cups in the muffin pan while still frozen and let thaw in the fridge or at room temp.

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Roasted spicy chickpeas

A tasty, low-fat snack to start your New Year's healthy eating resolutions off right!  I've made roasted chickpeas before following the South Beach Diet's recipe, but they're pretty darn bland and I can't get my husband or kids to eat them (for whose benefit they are made, after all!)

Beans are a pretty healthy snack that most people don't think of.  If you roast them, they'll hit the same crunchy texture points that chips and nuts do but with less fat...see below:

Per 1/4 cup        Roasted Chickpeas             Raw Almonds
Calories             75                                        135
Fat (g)               4.5                                        11
Carb (g)            10                                          5
Protein (g)         3                                           5
(calculated by myfitnesspal.com)

So I decided to try making roasted chickpeas like I do roasted nuts...tossed with a bit of oil and some kind of seasoning...and it turns out that they're pretty darn good this way!  I used homemade taco seasoning so they're salt-free, but you could use packaged seasoning mixes like ranch dressing, mixed minced fresh herbs or sweet spice mixes like pumpkin pie spice.

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Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Muffins

Oh look!  There I am, reflected upside down, in the spoon!

I was reading a newspaper article recently that claimed Halloween was the only "major" American holiday that didn't have a signature food or meal associated with it...Thanksgiving has turkey, Mother's Day has brunch, St. Patrick's Day has green beer, the list just goes on LOL

That statement rang true at first, but as I thought more about it, I realized Halloween does have a signature food...the pumpkin!  I think most of us tend to think of pumpkins as edible only in pie form, but they're part of the winter squash family and as such, are versatile menu players. 

Peeling a fresh whole pumpkin for a recipe is an undertaking, and I prefer when possible to use canned puree (not pumpkin pie filling which is actual pumpkin plus a bunch of other stuff).  The following recipe for soup (which I made for our pre-trick-or-treating repast) only calls for 1/2 a can, so I made muffins with the remaining puree...less waste = less cost = less aggravation.  I am brilliant ;)

The soup recipe is from the Frugal Gourmet Cooks American.  You can make this soup up to the point of adding the scallops and milk and fridge or freeze it (be sure to include scallops and milk as part of the freezer kit to finish the soup).  Just reheat the soup base to a simmer, add the milk and scallops and simmer 5 minutes to finish.  Or if you don't have front-end time to make the soup in its entirety, prep and group the ingredients for next-day or same-day cooking: onion/celery/garlic/ginger in one bowl, flour/spices in another, stock/Worcestershire/Tabasco in a bowl, pumpkin/squash cubes in yet another and scallops/milk saved for last. 

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Microwaved Beet Chips

These are delicious and cooking them won't heat up the house because it's done entirely in the microwave.  Woot-woot!  Beets are a sweet veg, and the flavor-texture result here is crunchy but melt-in-your-mouth, lightly sweet and lightly salty all at once.

The two in the back left are a leetle burned, but the rest are as they should be

The tricky part is that I can't tell you how long to nuke 'em.  It depends on how thinly you've sliced the beets, how powerful your microwave is, how many slices you're cooking at once.  I can tell you that these will burn between one second and the next if you're not careful though.  Start with a short time frame, then add time in 1 minute or 30 second intervals when you're getting close.  And watch them like a hawk with your finger on the STOP button in case you start to see or smell carbonization.  As usual, I screw up so you don't have to.

What I can tell you is what I did.  I have a "mid-size" microwave (don't know offhand how many watts).  I used 4 2" diameter beets and hand sliced them as thin as possible (pretty thin, but not totally regular or even).  I made the first batch with as many slices as I could fit in the microwave (about 3/4 of the slices).  You'll see the slices go from hard, to softened, to slightly curled to leathery to burned.  I started with 3 minutes.  They were just starting to look softened, so I added 3 minutes.  Then I added 1 more minute.  After 7 total minutes of cooking, they looked a little leathery but I thought they could use more time.  At 7 minutes 45 seconds, they were done but I didn't pull the emergency stop fast enough.  Fifteen more seconds gave me smoking briquettes and a reeky microwave. 

The second batch was much smaller, so at 3 minutes they were looking just leathery.  I gave them 30 more seconds, and stopped the microwave with 12 seconds left to go.  I spread the cooked chips on a paper towel and let them stand a few minutes.  They crisped up as they cooled. 

Four tennis ball sized beets will give you four small (about 1/3 cup) servings of chips.  Or one big afternoon snack.

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Low carb, high protein snack foods

If I titled the post Tofu Jerky, would you have bothered to read?  Thought not.

It's been a bazillion years since I made this, and I forgot how much I actually like it.  Granted, you gotta like jerky in general.  But let me tell you, the kiddos are loving it...their gateway into the world of truck stop food :D  And it doesn't need refrigerated (which a lot of low-carb snack foods do).

The trick here is to press as much water out of the tofu as possible first so that it takes up as much marinade as possible.  That means this is a 3 step process (press, marinate, bake) and none of those steps are short ones.  So make a lot at once to make it worth your while.  Also, slice the tofu as thin as you can manage to get a better finished product and to shorten up the baking time...more thickness means more moisture means longer baking. 

If you have a food dehydrator, you can use that too instead of baking or Alton Brown had some kind of jerky-making set-up involving a box fan and an A/C filter that you can try, if you're so inclined.

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Berry Good Smoothie

"It smell delicious!" says my almost-3yo.  He has no clue there are beets in it...shhhh!!  This is my latest attempt to slip more vegetables into my kids' snacking routines.  You can use whatever combo of berries you wish, just be sure to get about 3-4 cups of berries total.

This recipe makes a lot of mix.  I needed 4 full ice cube trays to stash it all.  It also has a high mess/stain factor, and I'd use paper towels or a red dish cloth to mop up after yourself.  Be prepared.

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Mixed Grain Granola

We've hit the time of year that if I need to turn on the oven for dinner, I'll go ahead and make something else that requires the oven at the same time.  If you're going to heat up the house, you might as well make the most of it and avoid doing it again later.

Since I had to bake tofu for dinner tonight, I decided to make some granola too.  This is a recipe from Martha Stewart's Favorite Comfort Foods (gotta say, she and I have really different ideas about what constitutes a "comfort food" in general).  I change ingredients to use what I have on hand and I always make a double batch and freeze half.  It's like the oven...if you're going to the trouble, you might as well get twice the use out of it.  It's yummy eaten like cereal with milk, sprinkled into yogurt or eaten out of hand as a snack.

Martha calls for oatmeal, soy flakes and wheat flakes.  I don't think I've ever found soy flakes, but I've used quinoa flakes, barley flakes, wheat flakes and "mixed grain cereal".  It's all basically like oatmeal, but made with grains other than oats.  You might need a trip to a natural foods store to find alternate grain cereals, or you might find them in the natural foods or "special diet" section of your grocery store.  You can just use all oatmeal, but the mixture of grains brings nutritional variety as well as different flavors.  Just be sure to get 6 cups total of grains.

If you plan to freeze part or all of this recipe, try not to break the granola up too much as you bag it.  I don't recommend using a vacuseal bag as the pressure of the vacusealer will smash the granola into near-dust.

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Breaking News: Toddler Eats Vegetables

In case anyone thought I was exaggerating about E liking smoothies with spinach...

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Microwave Pumpernickel Muffins

These are not too bad.  What a ringing endorsement, huh?  Haha!  But did anyone else try those microwave cake kits in approximately 1987?  Blark.  These muffins do not suffer from the same ills I recall from microwave baking 20+ years ago.  Microwaves are famous for not browning food, but these delicious whole grain muffins don't need extra browning.  The microwave leaves the muffins extra tender and of course, it's unbelievably fast, kid-friendly baking without heating up your house.  I also experimented with freezing the uncooked batter and baking single muffins from their frozen state...results are a little ugly, but still tasty.  I think these may enter the lineup of quick ready-made breakfast/snack options.

This is a recipe I dredged up out of a 1980's era cookbook, but unfortunately I don't have the citation.  The only adaptations I've made are to use what I routinely keep in my pantry/freezer and to make the whole process a little less fussy. 

I was a bit short on my 3 oz. of cream cheese when I tested these on account of a certain Little Dude liberating some of the product and giving himself a little moisturizing cream cheese facial in the middle of Meijer, but I think it turned out okay.  I think using a teaspoonful of prepared flavored cream cheese would be on point here, too--the muffins are not so insistently pumpernickel-y that a sweet fruity cream cheese would be out of place, but they are savory enough to support a garlic-and-herb type of filling as well. 
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Green smoothie

I have been scheming ways to get more vegetables onto our snacking menu, and I now give you Green  (honeydew-spinach) Smoothies.  No, it does not taste like spinach.  I promise.  It tastes like sweet honeydew lightly accented with cardamom. 

I recommend scoping out your produce section to see if they have a "clearance" area.  I rescued a container of pre-chunked honeydew that was on its last good day (and was thusly discounted); this is the BEST fruit for this type of recipe because it is super-duper ripe, soft and sweet.  And on sale, ka-ching!  And you're saving perfectly good produce from being thrown away.  Fruit rescue perhaps isn't as emotionally fulfilling as animal rescue, say, but it does put me in a dancing mood.

You want to get the spinach pureed as smoothly as possible so the texture doesn't rat you out.  I did pretty well with pureeing the spinach with the honeydew, but next time I'd zap the spinach in the microwave for a few seconds to make sure it's really soft and whiz it in the food processor by itself first to get it even smoother.  My instructions reflect that planned change of procedure.  As with the other smoothie recipe detailed on this blog, you'll need 2 or 3 ice cube trays to freeze the mixture.

Honeydew-Spinach Smoothies
Makes 7 toddler-size smoothies or about 3 adult-size smoothies

1 10-oz. box frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
1 cup apple juice
1 lb. cubed very ripe honeydew (about 4 cups)
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp cardamom
1 cup vanilla yogurt

Put thawed, squeezed spinach in a microwave-safe container and zap for about 10 seconds.  Squeeze again.  Put spinach in a food processor and add a tbsp or so of apple juice.  Puree until very smooth.  Add honeydew and puree again until smooth.  Add cardmom, sugar and yogurt and puree again.  Pour mixture into a container with a pouring spout and stir in the remaining apple juice.  Pour into ice cube trays and freeze.



Kitchen Assistant (optional)

 To make a smoothie: Put 3-4 cubes in a blender with 1/2 cup water (for a toddler portion), or 6-8 cubes with 1 cup water (for an adult portion).  Blend and serve. Pin It

Shlurp!: Fruit Smoothies

I made up a bunch of smoothie-in-an-instant before Boy #2 was born thinking that I was going to need all the quick, healthful, easy, homemade snacks I could get (as opposed to my post-Boy #1 snack of choice, Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies ::blush:: ).  Turns out I HATE smoothies.  Good thing Boy #1 digs ‘em!

My smoothie mix is based on a Raspberry Soup recipe from the cookbook from the Cedar Crest Victorian Inn, a beautiful B&B in Asheville, NC.  I substitute local honey for sugar and only use half as much as the original, and leave out the water in order to create a "concentrate" for freezing.  The original recipe also calls for using all raspberry-flavored ingredients; it's very tasty to reinforce the primary fruit with yogurt and juice in the same flavor family, but also fun to mix things up.  Try orange juice with blueberries, apple juice with peaches, and so on. 

You can choose to strain the mixture or not.  I don't strain partly because I think food is at its most healthful when left whole and partly because I'm a lazy cook :D

Ice cube trays are one of the staple pieces of equipment in my kitchen.  Freezing things like leftover broth, extra wine, and tomato paste in cube form gives you versatility in portioning when you're ready to cook later.  One regular ice cube tray holds about 2 cups of liquid; this recipe will require 2 or 3 trays.

Frozen Fruit Smoothie Mix (makes 7 toddler smoothies, or about 3 adult smoothies)

20-24 oz. frozen fruit (e.g. raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, peaches), thawed

1 cup juice

1/4 cup honey

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 whole cloves

1/2 tbsp lemon juice

8 oz fruit-flavored yogurt

Puree the thawed fruit and juice in a food processor or blender.  Transfer to a large saucepan. Add the honey and spices. 

Bring just to a boil while stirring over medium heat.  Allow to cool and strain through a fine sieve, if desired.  Whisk in lemon juice and yogurt. 

Pour into ice cube trays to freeze.  You can store the mix in the trays or pop them into zip-top bags when frozen.

To make a smoothie: Put 3-4 cubes and about 1/4 cup water in a blender for a small smoothie or 6-8 cubes and about 1/2 cup water for a large smoothie.  Blend until desired consistency. 

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