Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

  These didn't rise well for some reason, so just imagine that they did.  Another muffin post! A friend made these for the kids recently, and we loved them. I think the magic is the combination of the (freshly ground) oat flour together with some whole oats. They're also not too sweet; just perfect with the chocolate chips. The Recipe: 2 bananas 1/3 cup butter, melted 2/3 c sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 2 c oats, ground into flour 1/2 additional oats  1/3 c chocolate chips Grind the 2 c oats in the blender Add all other ingredients besides the additional oats and chocolate chips; blend Mix in the additional oats and chocolate chips Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes   The Verdict:   Overall grade:  A Overall reason:  Easy to make, great texture Time to prepare:  10 minutes of work, 25 minutes of baking Kid quote:  No quotes were uttered. They were stuffing their faces. 

I don't know how to take a good photo of a muffin. The 4-year-old has been requesting carrot muffins for a while now. I used  Cookie and Kate's recipe  as a guideline, but made several changes:  - I substituted wheat flour for Bob's Red Mill 1:1 gluten-free flour - Instead of 1 3/4 cups of flour, I used 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of quick-cooking oats - I skipped the ginger and nutmeg, and went heavy on the cinnamon instead - I didn't measure the amount of carrots I ended up with, but I'm pretty sure it was more - I skipped the walnuts and went heavy on the raisins - I added a little bit of brown sugar and skipped the turbinado sugar on top - I used vegetable oil instead of coconut oil - I disregarded the instructions about adding things in a certain order, and instead dumped everything into a bowl at once and then mixed. The fact that I didn't use coconut oil helped this (I had nothing that was prone to solidifying), and also the fact that I had no gluten in the ...

  Decorated by Miles I might stick with this recipe in the future even on occasions when we don't need it to be gluten-free. It's delicious. Perfectly fluffy, with just the right level of moisture, and not too sweet until you add the frosting. In fact, I may use this as a "carrot muffin" recipe without the frosting. I used  this recipe from Gluten Free on a Shoestring . I made no changes except that I used store-bought frosting. I'll bet the frosting in the recipe is better, but who's got time (or an electric whisk) for that? The Recipe (from Gluten Free on a Shoestring): 2 1/4 c gluten-free flour (I used Bob's Red Mill 1:1) 1 tsp baking soda 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp cinnamon 3/4 c sugar 1/2 c brown sugar 1/2 c neutral oil 4 eggs, beaten 1 tsp apple cider vinegar 1/2 c milk (I used oat milk) 1/2 c chopped pecans 3 large carrots, grated Combine dry ingredients Mix in wet ingredients Fold in pecans and carrots Place in prepared pans - make ...

  Nobody point out to the kids that this muffin is green. This is the latest installment of my ongoing efforts to get the toddler to eat more vegetables and fiber. Both kids like these, and nobody has questioned the greenish tint. I worked from  this recipe . The changes I made are: adding spinach, replacing the two egg whites with one whole egg, replacing the honey/molasses with extra brown sugar for FODMAP reasons, and adding some (gluten-free) flour because I just didn't trust that oat bran alone would allow these to set in the oven. The Recipe: 1c oat milk 1 egg 1/2c frozen spinach, defrosted 2 tb canola oil 2c oat bran 1/3c brown sugar (or a little more, depending on toddler's pickiness level at the moment) 2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 1/3c gluten-free flour (I used Bob's Red Mill 1:1) 1/2c blueberries In a food processor (I used a magic bullet), blend the spinach with the milk, egg, and oil. In a bowl, combine this mixture with the sugar. Add the dry ingredients a...

  This picture brought to you by dropping the entire loaf on its way out of the oven, thereby losing the top layer. Who is in charge of the photography around here??? Another low-FODMAP recipe for the toddler, and this one packs a good amount of hidden carrots inside! I worked from  this recipe from Flavor the Moments . I swapped the coconut oil for vegetable oil (easier), coconut sugar for brown sugar (I had no coconut sugar), skipped the ginger and nutmeg and coconut and walnut (toddler), and upped the carrot content (nutrition). I also added a little bit of flour (Bob's Red Mill 1-1 gluten free flour) to make sure it would bake ok, since I had added extra carrots and I was also turning a muffin recipe into a bread. It was DELICIOUS, even with all of my changes. This will be a staple around here. The Recipe: 1/3 c vegetable oil 3/4 c brown sugar (could probably get away with less) 2 eggs 3/4 c almond milk 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 c oat flour 1/3 c flour (gluten free if necess...

It's more photogenic with real oat flour. This one is made from baby oatmeal powder for the extra iron. I've tried a lot of oat-flour baking concoctions for the toddler. He is generally so excited to have anything resembling bread that he eats them no matter what, but lots of them haven't held together and/or haven't tasted great. This one has been reliable, even when I do things like swap the oat flour for baby oatmeal powder, and it's simple to make. And it tastes good! I never cared before about "healthier" recipes that bragged that they used only maple syrup as sweetener, with no white sugar. It felt all the same to me. But toddler belly definitely seems happier digesting maple syrup, so here we are. It's from  Detoxinista , and I didn't make any changes to the recipe except that I usually use butter instead of coconut oil.  The Recipe: 1.5 c oat flour 3/4 c pumpkin puree 1 c maple syrup 4 tsp pumpkin pie spice 3 eggs 1/4 c melted butter or coc...

The batch after this one was less flat. Both tasted good. For the low-FODMAP toddler's impending birthday, we needed some cookies that were safe for him to eat. He reacts badly even to gluten-free flour mixes, so I looked for a recipe with just oat flour. I picked  this one from Pinch and Swirl , and it's good! I'm keeping it for the future. The original recipe said to refrigerate the dough before baking for at least an hour, and up to 3 days. I did just an hour for the first batch (pictured above). The second batch was in the fridge for more like 90 minutes, and those cookies didn't flatten out nearly as much, so I've changed my refrigerating instructions to "at least 90 minutes." My only other change is that I actually decreased the amount of chocolate chips a bit. It was still plenty! These cookies have a lot of butter and sugar, but for low-FODMAP purposes, I won't muck with substituting applesauce. We'll stick with the real stuff. The Recipe: ...

  Smells like almonds. I made a cherry bread with last year's cherries, and it was delicious, but had no nutritional value. This year, I wanted to find some middle ground. I worked from  this recipe . I substituted the eggs for flax eggs (1 tb flax meal and 3 tb water, mixed together a few minutes before using) only because I was out of eggs, but I might keep this change. I used almond milk with a splash of lemon juice instead of the buttermilk. And I added chocolate, which of course made it a little less healthy, but much more satisfying. I used butter instead of oil because it tastes better. And I adjusted the baking time and temperature to make bread instead of muffins, because who has time to clean a muffin tin these days? It's a good sweetness for us, since we eat it as a treat. But if one wanted to make it even healthier, the sugar could be reduced a little bit and it would still be good. This recipe is a keeper. Especially when this is just a fraction of the cherries on...

"The older you are, the more sprinkles you get." For this year's husband-birthday, we made his favorite kind of cake. I used  this recipe  from Skinny Taste, because it's the right level of healthy-ish for me. It's bulked up and sweetened with crushed pineapple and plenty of carrots, with just enough sugar and oil to taste like cake.  Maybe one day I'll own a hand mixer and I'll start making my own frosting, but I just buy store-bought ones for now. The Recipe: 3/4 c all-purpose flour 3/4 c whole wheat flour 1 c sugar 1/4 c flaked sweetened coconut 2 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 2 tsp cinnamon 2 tb canola oil 2 eggs 1 1/2 tsp vanilla 2 c grated carrots 20 oz crushed pineapple, drained 8 oz cream cheese frosting Mix flour, sugar, coconut, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add canola oil, eggs, vanilla, carrots, and pineapple. Fold to combine. Pour into an oiled 8" cake pan. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely, t...

  Almondy magic. I took rainbow cookies for granted until I moved out of New York and learned that I couldn't buy them anymore. Now, I make them about once every 4 years because they're kind of a lot of work. But so good. This recipe is courtesy of my sister, the rainbow cookie queen. The batch in the above photo was made with marzipan instead of almond paste because the grocery pickup made that substitution and thanks to Covid, I wasn't willing to go store-hopping to find the real thing. It worked and it's delicious, but the marzipan made the whole dough thicker than it should have been. I unscientifically reduced the amount of the sugar in the recipe since it's sweeter than almond paste, but the original recipe is below for a brighter future when I can go out and buy almond paste. The Recipe: 8 oz almond paste 1 c butter, softened 1 c sugar 4 eggs, separated 2 c flour 6 drops red food coloring 6 drops green food coloring 1/4 seedless raspberry jam 1/4 c apricot ja...

  Not too shabby for my first pie ever that didn't start with buying crust already in a pie tin. Next time I'll tuck in the edges better, and also maybe use an actual pie tin. View of the inside. For my first ever apple pie, I knew I wanted something simple, something with a lattice top, and something that started with just layering raw apples inside the crust, rather than cooking the apples into a saucy filling. I decided to use  this recipe from Allrecipes , thinking that maybe I'd step things up to make a fancier pie in the future. But it is SO GOOD that I think this will be my forever pie recipe. I watched YouTube videos to learn how to do the lattice top, and then the 5-year-old actually carried out the work of doing it. It's a fun project to do with kids.  So good. The Recipe: 6 cups peeled, thinly sliced granny smith apples (I used 7 medium-small apples) 1/2 c white sugar 3/4 tsp cinnamon 1 tb butter, plus more for greasing the pie dish dough for 2 9-inch pie cru...

I'm excited about the whole oats. One food that I've been missing in quarantine is Laughing Planet's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I tried one previous recipe for vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and it wasn't quite right, but it led me to believe that I was on the right track with flaxseed and coconut oil. So I tried  this one from Love to Be in the Kitchen , and I'm a fan. It's not vegan - it has egg - and I think the egg is maybe the thing that does set it aside from the Laughing Planet cookies. I might try to experiment with eliminating the egg in favor of more flaxseed. I also think that maybe they could have even more oats in them. But aside from a slight obsession with figuring out EXACTLY how Laughing Planet makes theirs, I really like these and they fulfill my craving. I made no changes to the original recipe except that I cooked them 11 minutes, despite the recipe's warnings not to exceed 10. But I'm glad the recipe emphasize...

The lower left is chocolate, not burned stuff. My criteria for a good banana bread recipe are: 1) Lots of bananas. I don't understand these "banana bread" recipes that use 2 bananas. 2) Butter and sugar. Not canola oil or coconut oil. Not maple syrup or honey. If I'm going to make banana bread once in a while, I just want butter and sugar. In responsible quantities. 3) Chocolate chips. 4) Oats. I was pressed for time when searching for a recipe this time, but  this one from Crafty Cooking Mama  looked like a good starting point. Five bananas! The changes I made: 1) Deleted the nuts and added the chocolate chips, obviously. 2) Added 1/2 c instant oats, and some yogurt to offset the extra dry ingredient. 3) Deleted the nutmeg. I just don't like it. The result was delicious! I could definitely push it further in the healthy direction (less butter and sugar, more oats and yogurt and maybe applesauce), but it's not terribly un...

Want. I finally found the right level of healthiness in my pumpkin bread. I've experimented with a lot of recipes that tried to insert things like oats and flax seeds and they usually ended up being too dense. This one appealed to me because it uses the entire can of pumpkin (I don't understand pumpkin recipes that don't use the whole can), and also because of the low sugar content. I followed  this recipe from Healthy Seasonal Recipes  and the only change I made was to use 100% whole wheat flour, because it's easier than taking out and measuring more flour from a different canister. Lazy, but it turned out great. The texture of this bread is so delicious. It's moist from the abundance of pumpkin and a little bit fluffy but not too much. I was worried that it might not be sweet enough, but the tiny bit of sweetness (combined with the chocolate chips) is just right.  I will try to resist adding flax seeds next time. This one is a winner just as it is. ...

I forgot to photograph it until it had been sitting in the fridge with foil, hence the flatness. This year, I volunteered to make the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and I made it with tofu! No one complained except the toddler. I used  this recipe from Nutritious Eats  because it used pumpkin pie spice instead of cloves/allspice/nutmeg/etc. I don't use enough of those spices to buy them all individually.  The biggest problem was the crust. I tried to get a Trader Joe's frozen crust, but they only had their gluten-free version, and I mistakenly thought that it would be almost as good. It wasn't good. Next year, I'll make sure to get a better crust. The texture was great, and the taste was good, and it's actually pretty healthy. The only modification I'll make to the filling next time is that I'd prefer it with a bit more spice. I'll read some other recipes and figure out whether than means adding ginger, or just increasing the amount of...

This photo makes me sad that it's all gone now. This recipe comes from Grandma Judy, because I've only had her version of clafoutis and it is so delicious that I don't care to compare other recipes.  It's a great sweet breakfast or substantial dessert. It reminds me of french toast meets frittata, but more sweet and fruity. And we've definitely had it for dinner when we're low on dinner ingredients. The Recipe: 5oz fruit (cherries, berries, peaches, pears, etc), cut into pieces if larger than bite-sized zest from 1 small lemon 2 tb sugar, plus about 2 tb additional to sweeten fruit 1/2 c flour 1/4 tsp salt 2 eggs 1 c milk 1 tb butter powdered sugar for serving Mix lemon zest with sugar in small dish Sift together flour and salt. In separate bowl, beat eggs and whisk in milk.  Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and whisk together.  Stir in the lemon sugar. Preheat the oven to 425. In a 10-inch skillet, melt butte...

Proud of his chewy piles of turd A few days before his third-and-a-half birthday, Miles declared that he wanted to make Noop. He said that noop is mashed berries, flour, sugar, and cinnamon ("cimanin"), and you microwave it for one minute. We'd like to think that he called it Noop because it's nuked goop, but probably not. So, we made it. It was very very chewy, but it tasted good. Cinnamon and strawberries! Who would've thought? After batch #1 (photographed), he wanted to try again to make it more dry, so we did another batch with more flour, but he didn't like it because it had less strawberry flavor. So I am blogging version one until we make further adjustments. He says that the next batch will have chocolate chips, brown sugar, and puffed kamut in it. (I vetoed adding raw farro.) Let's call this batch #2 - not worth keeping. UPDATE Batch #3 - Miles wanted to add oats and chocolate chips. So we did about 1 teaspoon of quick cooking oats, ...

Chocolate chips should be on the top of every loaf of bread This year, I found a 6-pack of zucchini starter plants for the same price as one plant. At the same time, the house-flippers next door took down a large portion of fence, creating a new extra-sunny, south-facing patch of garden that we didn't have before. The result is wayyyy too much zucchini for a family of 3.  I worked from  this recipe . I like it because it does use a lot of zucchini, it's delicious, and it's definitely healthy-ish. If I were going to make it often, I'd experiment with making it healthier; I think it could be good substituting most of the oil with flax seeds and applesauce, and the applesauce would allow it to have less sugar. And oats. Always oats. But as is, it's very good. The only change I made was that I inadvertently used less cocoa powder than the original recipe called for, because I tripled the recipe (TOO MUCH ZUCCHINI) and ran out. But it was plenty chocolatey...

That one time that I wasn't too lazy to rotate the loaves halfway through baking. This is the only Challah recipe that I will ever make again. It's perfect. Thanks, TBI Preschool.

Looks like a brownie, tastes like a brownie, feels better than eating a brownie. As with this  farro salad , this recipe was inspired by a trip to the fabulous  Camas Country Mill .  We went for sandwiches, bought bread and a scone for a treat, and then I was lured by a cute little jar of lentil brownie bites, so we got one of those too. It was delicious, and so I came home to do some googling. The result was  this recipe from Vegan Richa , which doesn't taste exactly like the one I had at the mill, but it's nearly as delicious and perfectly easy to make. If I didn't have an Instant Pot, I don't think I would have bothered. I've never been successful cooking lentils on the stove top without it bubbling over and making a mess at some point in the cooking process, and also I wasn't excited about having to dirty two pots and a food processor. But lentils are so easy in the instant pot, and after 2 minutes of cooking, they were easy enough to mash that I d...