because I'm not at all late to the pumpkin bandwagon

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I feel like the second the leaves start to lose the slightest tinge of green, we are pretty much bombarded with pumpkin EVERYTHING.  A recent foray to the Trader Joe's in Rochester cemented this for me - pumpkin macarons?  pumpkin scone mix?  pumpkin cream cheese?  Pretty much pumpkin ANYTHING.  I'm not all that gung ho for the ubiquitous orange blob, and generally leave my pumpkins for carving and seed roasting.

However, Lil Z found her own little pie pumpkin in the pumpkin patch, on a flash-lit pumpkin hunt with her Sparks troop, so I really had no choice but to do something with it, lest it rot and she be devastated.

So I decided to make pumpkin muffins.  And I discovered that it's really hard to find a reasonably healthy pumpkin muffin recipe.  I find that life is already full of too much white flour, excess sugar and blood-sugar spiking treats, so when I actually get my schmidt together to make something, I'd prefer it be healthier (and less like cake in disguise).  I eventually found a recipe that fit the bill - these were really tasty - they aren't particularly sweet, and I'd be tempted to replace 1/4c. of the pumpkin puree with oil of some sort, but they are quite delicious.  This batch would make about 18 muffins, but I made 12 muffins and 30 baked mini-doughnuts (just pipe the batter into the pan and bake for about 10 minutes.  I immediately dipped the mini doughnuts in cinnamon sugar, and next time, I'd do the same to the muffins - the recipe could possibly use a bit more sweetness (but not too much; remember, we're not making cake!).  You have to love the fun papers too, eh?  I picked those up from Dollarama - 60 for $1.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins 
recipe lightly modified from Badger Girl Learns to Cook

3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (canned or homemade --> I would be tempted to replace 1/4 c of this with oil)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup water
1 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup oatmeal (I used oat bran)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a muffin tin or line with paper liners (pro tip: you can spray the liners and they won't stick to your muffins).

2. In a large mixing bowl, mix together honey, eggs, pumpkin, vanilla and water (since I didn't puree my pumpkin, I just put these in a mixing bowl and whizzed it with my immersion blender).

3. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together flour, oatmeal, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, powdered ginger and ground cloves. Combine dry ingredients with the wet. Stir until just blended.

4. Fill each muffin tin 3/4 full. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Makes 18 muffins (or 12 muffins plus 30 mini-doughnut).  If you want to make cinnamon sugar, just combine 2 T of sugar with about 1/2 t of cinnamon.  Dip the muffin tops/doughnuts while still hot and steamy.

Lil Z thought the donuts were pretty much the best thing ever. And I agree. :)

muffins are really cake in disguise

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When I was growing up, my mom used to make a dozen blueberry muffins fresh, from scratch, almost every morning.  Those muffins were LEGENDARY.  My brothers used to devour them as quickly as she could bake them.

I was actually indifferent to blueberry muffins (a fact I didn't tell her until much later), but my friends used to pretty much fall all over themselves to see who could claim the fresh-baked muffin in my lunch.

A nice homemade muffin is such a comforting treat....if it's fresh, it has that delicious crunchy top, the sweet taste, that feeling of satiety....yum.

Somehow though, in the unnamed number of years since I had my mom making my lunch (we'll just say it's a lot more than 10), the muffin has morphed.  It's gone from a few bites, to a cake-like monstrosity sugar bomb.  So muffins have a bad rap now (unlike the nutrition halo enjoyed by granola bars).

I maintain that muffins can totally be part of a tasty snack or breakfast, we just need to do a few things with them.  We need to make them smaller.  We need to cut the sugar.  And we need them to be whole grain.  Because I also love chocolate chip muffins, I'm going to use the Tim Hortons Chocolate Chip mufffin as a comparison.

Weight - TH has a 115g muffin.  My muffins weigh between 50g and 68g.

Calories - TH is 410 calories. A muffin should not be 400 calories.  These muffins are about 181 calories.

Sugar - TH is 37 g.  That is almost 10 teaspoons.  Mine have 8g.  That's about 2 teaspoons.  They still taste sweet.

Fibre - TH has 2g.  Mine have 4g, despite being half the size.

Sodium - TH has 430 mg.  Mine have 94 mg.

Bottom line, these muffins are denser, pack more fibre, way less sugar and sodium.  They are about equal in terms of fat, but mine get the fat from avocado and canola oil.

I got this recipe from the October 2012 issue of Clean Eating, and just tweaked it a wee bit.  It's not my recipe but it's so yummy, and I couldn't find it online anywhere to share it with you.  So I'm posting it.  And the picture is from my phone, so it is sub-par.  I'm feeling lazy, and didn't feel like dragging out my DSLR.

spelt avocado-banana chocolate chip muffins
stolen and lightly modified from October 2012 Clean Eating


1 3/4 c spelt flour (or whole wheat flour)
1/4 c brown sugar (or evaporated cane juice; I was out!)
1 t baking powder
1/2 t sea salt
2 eggs
2 T canola or olive oil
1 ripe avocado, peeled and pitted
1 ripe banana
1 t vanilla
1/2 c dark chocolate chips (I use minis for better distribution of chocolate OMNOMNOM)

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Line a muffin tin with papers, or mist with cooking spray.  I let Lil Z pick the papers.

3.  In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

4.  In a medium bowl, place the avocado and banana.  Mash with a potato masher/pastry blender/fork.  Lil Z helped with this too.  Add eggs, oil and vanilla.  Combine with a whisk.

5.  Add liquids to flour mixture, and stir lightly until mostly combined.  Add chocolate chips and fold in.  Don't overwork your batter or your muffins will be hockey pucks.

6.  Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 full (I use a 1/3 c. measure and don't quite fill it).

7.  Bake for 21-25 minutes, until tops are browned.  Let cool in pan for about 5 minutes, then remove and let cool on a rack.  Voila.

According to clean eating, here is the nutritional lowdown: per muffin, 181 calories, 7g fat, 27g carbs, 4g fibre, 8g sugar, 4g protein, 94mg sodium.

These are DELICIOUS.  Hubs, who normally eschews my chocolate chip muffins in favour of my mother's blueberry ones (apparently chocolate chip muffins are juvenile?) just loves them.  Lil Z hasn't tried them yet, but I am willing to bet that she is going to just love them.  And I love that I've given her something that's packed full of healthy fats, satiating fibre, and just enough chocolate to make it all yummy.

Had to post this because you NEED to make these muffins.  Dense and delightful.

real fruit, real food, dang good muffins

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If there's one thing that drives me nutty when it comes to selling food, it's when companies advertise something they are not truly delivering. They aren't breaking the law, because you can always find out the real story through the ingredient list and the nutrition facts table....but it's still a poopy practice that makes me crazy.

Case in point - companies that sell products with fruit on the package, but no fruit *in* the package. Baked goods are one of the WORST offenders for these.

For example, take this blueberry muffin mix - if you click the link and read the label....it does not contain any actual blueberries (although it does contain delicious-sounding artificial blueberry flavor bits, which themselves contain sugar, oil, artificial flavour and 2 different artificial colours). Blech. No thanks. These triple berry muffins are just as bad - containing the similarly appetizing imitation berry bits.

As an alternate example, there are those products that DO contain real fruit....just not so much the fruit that's being promoted.

This one actually peeved me, because it's a product I've purchased before (as you can imagine, I don't buy muffin mix, so I haven't fallen for the tactics above....that said, if any of you ever buy cake mix, before the carrot and banana nut cake....they probably don't contain carrots or bananas....always read the label....or google a recipe and make your own cake). The example above, while enlightening, don't really irritate me THAT much, because I don't think anyone really expects packaged muffin and cake mixes to be healthy, wholesome foods.

But when I buy an unsweetened applesauce product, labelled with a flavour....I do think it's reasonable to expect that the flavour labelled on the outside matches the ingredients that make up the product within. Mott's Fruitsations is a brand of applesauce product that advertises itself as unsweetened, boasts the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check label and in general, would like you to think that your Raspberry, Cherry, Starfruit puree is as pure and untainted as unicorn poop.

Except check out the ingredient list: apples, water, concentrated apple puree, vegetable juice concentrate for colour (black carrot), natural flavour, concentrated raspberry puree, ascorbic acid.

So um....I don't see any starfruit on that label. I don't see any cherry on that label. I do see black carrot juice for colour, though since the end product does not taste like carrot, I can only imagine that the tiny amounts of "natural flavour" and "concentrated raspberry puree" are the source of the berry deliciousness of this snack.

And it is pretty delicious, not gonna lie.

But I still feel that it's misleading to be a supposedly healthy product with these supposedly natural ingredients, and it turns out that the flavour is not, in fact, coming from the ingredient, but from some 'natural flavour' that is likely INCREDIBLY far processed from an actual fruit.

Don't even get me started on things like granola bars. Cereal bars (like the jam-filled Nutri-Grain bars) are some of the worst offenders over-promoting ingredients that barely make an appearance. My favourite? The cherry-pomegranate one. Ingredients for the filling are as follows: invert sugar, corn syrup, water, glycerin, cherry puree concentrate, sugar, modified corn starch, pomegranate juice concentrate, sodium alginate, sodium citrate, natural and artificial flavor, malic acid, citric acid, methylcellulose, dicalcium phosphate, caramel color, red #40.

I love how they advertise it as full of antioxidants, but I mostly see a bunch of sugar, gelling agents, additives I don't really understand, marginal amounts of concentrate fruit [which is also essentially sugar], flavours (both natural and artificial) and two different artificial colours.

Again...blech. Do yourself a favour and buy a pomegranate and some cherries. Eat them with oatmeal. You'll be much better off.

Allllll this bring me to the point that you really have to read product labels carefully. If you want a fruit muffin, I suggest you set aside 40 minutes and make yourself one. In fact, I suggest you make the one below. :)

It's not complicated to make (I've added a bit of complication, but not too much, I swear! And it's totally optional) and the end result is a muffin that you can feel relatively good about. You can pronounce all the ingredients, it's made with whole grains, it's not AS sweet as a purchased muffin, and it's got real fruit.

You'd still be better off with fruit and a bowl of oatmeal, but it wouldn't taste this good. ;)

Triple-berry explosion muffins

stolen and modified from here

1 1/2 c oat bran (or wheat bran)

1 cup milk

1/2 c unsweetened applesauce

1 egg

1/2 c honey

1 t vanilla

1 c whole wheat flour (I think spelt would work well too)

1 t baking soda

1 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

2 T ground flax (optional)

2 T ground chia (optional)

2/3 c frozen raspberries (still frozen)

2/3 c frozen blueberries (still frozen)

1/3 c reduced-sugar jam (I used strawberry) - this is optional

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line tins with paper. Get all your ingredients together.

Except forget a few, and then get them out after.

2. Mix together bran and milk. Let stand 10 minutes.

3. In a large bowl, mix applesauce, egg, honey and vanilla.

4. In a small bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, chia and flax seeds. Again, the seeds are optional - if you have 'em, go for it, but they aren't necessary.

5. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Give it a quick stir. Add the bran, stir just a few more times (lumps are fine...remember, the more you stir a muffin batter, the more your muffins will resemble hockey pucks. Be gentle).

6. Stir in raspberries and blueberries. Gently spoon into 12 muffin cups.

7. OPTIONAL: Using a piping bag (or icing gun), gently poke about 1 teaspoon of jam into the centre of each muffin. I use an icing gun with a plain small round tip. I added a bit more on top, because I still had a loaded icing gun. :) It does up the sugar content but it's a nice little surprise.

Filled muffins:

8. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Once the jam is bubbling and oozing a bit, they are done. Let them sit in the muffin tin for about 5 minutes (especially if you haven't used paper...lower-fat muffins do tend to stick a bit!).

Cool on a rack.

These muffins are delicious....when you look at the ingredients, you can tell they are pretty healthy, but when you taste them, you just get to enjoy the delicious summery tang of real berries, just a hint of sweetness and a whole lot of whole grain goodness.

NOTE: I have also made these muffins omitting the berries and jam, and using dark chocolate chips. They were awesome. Also worth trying.

Hope you enjoy! And don't forget to check me out on Facebook!

pork and muffins. not at the same time.

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In terms of food budgeting, today was medium.

It was GOOD because I brought and English muffin and toasted it at work (and topped with some peanut butter, which I keep in a jar at my desk. And which I do not ever eat with a spoon.)

Okay, that last sentence was a lie. :p I don't do it often though. And I don't double dip.

It was also good, because I brought my lunch and ate all of it. But then I was staaaaaarving partway through the afternoon. And when I reached into my lunch bag to grab the apple I totally thought I had brought....I came up empty-handed.

So of course I ended up at the caf and bought a boiled egg (0.55), a piece of cheese (1.00) and a medium coffee (1.50). Meh. It wasn't the craziest of snacks, but when I think that I can buy a DOZEN eggs for $3 (and water is almost free), I feel like a bit of a heel.

To be fair though, there was a strong possibility of going out for lunch, and I didn't go for it.

But Hubs is rubbing in the fact that not only did he not spend any extra $$ on food today, but he didn't really do so last week either. Meh. :p

In terms of cooking, the planned meal for tonight was pulled pork on multi-grain toast with provolone, accompanied with a quick coleslaw. I really did a lot of mods to the pulled-pork recipe, so I can't fairly evaluate the Clean Eating version. But my version was good. And super easy.

Slow-cooker pulled pork with toast and coleslaw

***NEW - PRINTABLE RECIPE HERE: https://sites.google.com/site/definitelynotmartha/home/pulled-pork-sandwiches-with-coleslaw

1.5 pounds pork (I used a centre-cut roast - you could use tenderloin, chops, or a more traditional cut like shoulder or butt)

1 cup broth

sea salt, black pepper and thyme

1. In the morning, put the pork in the slow cooker on low. Put it fat side up, to keep it moist. The fat will render slightly during cooking and keep the pork from drying out. Pour broth around the pork, and sprinkle with salt, black pepper and a good bit of thyme.

(sorry, no pics...was too crazy with Monday morning madness to take photos)

2. When you get home, take the pork out of the slow cooker (I used a 2.5 qt cooker. This recipe is best suited to a small slow cooker. If you don't have a slow cooker, you could braise the meat in the oven - at about 275F - for 4ish hours). Don't try to quick cook your pork, or it won't shred.

My pork cooked from 8 am to 6 pm. This worked for me. The fat had rendered a little bit, but when I took the pork out, I was actually able to scrape most of the fat off. It's win-win, because, as mentioned, the fat keeps the meat moist, but then you can scrape it off, so you aren't stuck eating it.

3. Shred the pork with two forks. If it doesn't shred, you've probably either a) cooked it not long enough, or b) cooked it at too high a temperature. DO NOT COOK ON HIGH.

4. Strain the juices from the slow cooker. If there is fat, skim it off the top. You can see here that there was very little fat in mine. ***I'm assuming that if you read my blog, you're probably trying to eat healthy. If I am mistaken, leave the fat in. It will only make things better. ;)

5. Pour the juices in a pan, and boil to reduce by half. I added about 3 T cider vinegar, 1/4 c of sherry (it was hanging out in the cupboard...nobody here drinks that crap). I also added about 1/2 t chipotle powder, to add spice and smoke.

6. Mix the juices with the shredded pork. Taste. This is a pretty 'clean' version --> in order to be to your taste, you may need to add some sweetness (ketchup, bbq sauce, honey), some acidity (vinegar), some salt (worcestershire sauce, salt), or some heat (sri racha, cayenne). I added a little bbq sauce, and then drizzled some over top of our sammies.

Coleslaw

1/4 head of cabbage, chopped

1 large carrot, grated

1 tiny onion, chopped

1/2 t mustard seeds

1/2 t celery seeds

2 T cider vinegar

1 T dijon mustard

1 T olive oil

1. Mix cabbage, carrot and onion.

2. Make dressing from mustard seeds, celery seeds (you can omit these if you don't have 'em), cider vinegar, dijon mustard and olive oil.

3. Toss dressing with veggies. Taste and adjust accordingly (again, this is a clean recipe; you may be used to something sweeter and/or saltier).

Sammiches

multi-grain bread

reduced-fat provolone cheese slices

pulled pork

coleslaw

1. Toast bread. Top with cheese slice while still hot. Top with approximately 3 oz of pulled pork. Serve with coleslaw. I drizzled mine with bbq sauce.

Voila. This was awesome. Hubs devoured his (and then ate a plate of just pork, mixed with bbq sauce and sri racha). Lil Z thought it rocked and pounded it back.

After dinner, I cleaned up (unplanned visitors coming tomorrow) and then had to re-jig the week's menu. We're going to have company tomorrow, so rather than serve the ginger chicken soup (which only serves four and would be tight, leaving us with no lunches for Wednesday), I'm going to make a shrimp pasta carbonara dish. I have loads of frozen shrimp, a pound of bacon and some pasta. I think I"ll do a creamy sauce using shallots, garlic, evaporated skim milk and fresh-grated parmesan. It may end up short on veggies, but I think it will be good. And it will keep me on budget. :)

Last, I mixed up a batch of muffins. YES, in case you were wondering I did spend my entire evening physically in the kitchen tonight. I don't mind....it's one of my favourite places. Plus, hubs is monopolizing the TV (playoff hockey, *sigh*) so it's not like I have anything better to do anyway. :p

These muffins are from the April/May 2011 issue of Clean Eating. Pretty straightforward to make. I made a couple of modifications (shown in brackets).

Mango Spice Muffins

***NEW - printable recipe available here: https://sites.google.com/site/definitelynotmartha/mango-spice-muffins

from April/May 2011 issue of Clean Eating

2 c whole wheat flour

1/2 c evaporated cane juice (or sugar...they are essentially the same)

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1 t ground ginger

1/4 t ground cloves

1/2 t sea salt

(2 T ground chia seeds (optional - they have fibre and omega 3s. I decided to add some))

(2 T ground flax seeds)

1 egg

1/4 c oil (I used canola, CE recommends safflower)

1 c nonfat greek yogourt (I used non-fat regular yogourt that was 1 week past its due date. It smelled fine...)

1/3 c milk (1/2 c milk if using the flax and/or chia as they soak up liquid)

1 t vanilla

1 large mango, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch dice. Mine actually made about 1 1/4 c, just like the recipe said it would. (For anyone who does not know how to wrangle a mango, I've posted a how-to for you)

1/4 c raisins (I used walnuts instead. Lil Z gobbled all of my raisins)

2 T unsweetened flaked/shredded coconut

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Line a muffin tin with papers (or spray if you are a masochist, and enjoy scouring muffin tins). In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cane juice, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cloves and salt (and chia/flax). In a separate large bowl, beat egg. Add oil, yogourt, milk and vanilla. Whisk to combine.

Dry ingredients:

2. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir gently until flour is moist.

Fold in mango and raisins walnuts.

Spoon batter evenly into prepared muffin cups and sprinkle each muffin with 1/2 t coconut.

3. Bake until edges are light golden brown and a tester comes out clean when inserted into the centre of a muffin...about 16-18 minutes. Let cool in pan for five minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Voila! Brekkie for the next couple of days. The rubber duckies are a bonus. ;)

Last, I wanted to leave you with a cheap night-time snack idea. Hubs is pretty much the king of night-time snacking...and going out to pick up a $3 bag of chips at the local convenience store/pharmacy can really add up. One thing that we've found awesome for those late night cravings (besides willpower....) is popcorn. Not the scary orange microwaved sludge, but simple air-popped popcorn with a bit of butter and salt. I have also been known to mist my popcorn with a bit of canola in a pinch. This is super tasty because it's all natural (no weird chemicals) and you can control how much salt and butter you end up putting on your popcorn. Popped corn is also a good source of fibre, and you can get kernels for dirt-cheap at bulk stores. Here is hubs in action.....

So that's my day. And now it's really late, so I'm out. Thanks for reading!