Healthy Muffin Mix

Another staple breakfast at our house are homemade healthy muffins. I make some sort of muffin at least once a week so I created my own muffin mix to have on hand. My family loves these healthy muffins. We have our favorite variations, but you can easily adapt this recipe to use something you have on hand.

Here is the basic recipe:
2/3 cup oil (I have used canola and coconut oil, use what works for you)
1 1/2 cups honey (or sugar or sweetener of your choice. I have used less honey and added some stevia.)
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup oatmeal
2 tablespoons flax
1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Choose a variation for your muffin recipe:
Peach Muffins: add 1 1/2 cups mashed peaches. This tastes really good with the sunflower seeds!

Pumpkin Muffins: add 2 cups pumpkin and some chocolate chips. I love to used home grown butternut squash!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins: add three or so mashed bananas, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and chocolate chips. If you want to, you can leave out the chocolate chips and just have banana muffins. (These are also yummy with bran. I like to buy bran at Good Earth, pour hot water on the bran to soften it up while you mix up the rest of the ingredients.)

Blueberry: 1 cup of blueberries; you can add a crumble on top, with butter, flour, cinnamon and sugar.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins: 1 cup chopped apple (or applesauce), 1 teaspoon cinnamon; also yummy with a crumble on top.

Zucchini Muffins: Grate 1 1/2 cups of zucchini and add 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Directions: Mix up and bake in greased muffin pans for 17 minutes at 375 degrees. This makes about 24 muffins, depending on the variation.

Can you really eat healthy without spending a fortune?

Sometimes it can be a challenge to eat healthy on a budget! This morning I came across a couple of wonderful resources that dispute the claim that you have to spend a fortune to eat healthy. These come from Karen Urbanek's website naturesgardenwellnesscenter.com.

Here are the links:
Tips for healthy family eating, even with a blended family!
Healthy Lunches
How to eat cheap and organic!

Mayonnaise Recipe

Making homemade mayonnaise is super easy if you have a blender. The only trick is figuring out which oil to use to suit your tastes. I have played around with homemade mayonnaise for some time. I have tried canola oil, extra virgin olive oil, vegetable oil and various spices. The combinations are endless!

Here is the recipe for our favorite simple mayonnaise:
1-2 eggs
1 cup light olive oil (surprisingly, extra virgin tastes too strong here)
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt

First crack eggs in a blender, add lemon juice and salt. Start blender and slowly add half of the oil through the feed tube or hole in the top of the blender. Watch for the mayo to thicken and then slowly add the rest of the oil. Voila! You have homemade mayonnaise!

Try this recipe and let us know what you think. Later, you may want to experiment with adding a tad of dry mustard or other spices. I love Mark Bittman's cookbook, How to Cook Everything that is where I first learned about homemade mayonnaise. How to Cook Everything is one of my staple cookbooks in the kitchen. It also has other recipes for mayonnaise to try.

Yogurt Cookies!

I am always on the look out for more ways to use yogurt and the other homemade milk products that we have on hand. So the other night when I was craving a sweet treat and found an easy recipe on All Recipes, I decided to make yogurt cookies! They turned out wonderful and they are more healthy!

  Here is the basic recipe:

1 cup of sugar

1 tablespoon of molasses

1/4 cup of palm shortening

1/4 cup of regular shortening

1/2 cup of yogurt, (I used Greek)

2 teaspoons of vanilla

2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

semi-sweet chocolate chips

I really liked them, but next time I won't use regular shortening. I used this recipe from All Recipes, and hadn't made them before, so I followed the recipe pretty closely using what I had on hand.

 I really like the idea of this recipe because it makes eggless chocolate chip cookies and uses less fat in general. I love to cook with coconut oil and butter as my favorite fats/oils, but I also try to conserve them since we are living on our food storage. Palm shortening is something new that I have been learning about. It is a healthier alternative to regular shortening and butter. It is a solid at room temperature and is excellent in biscuits.

Homemade pizza

Who doesn't love homemade pizza? You can make the crust as thin or thick as you like. Appease everyone with their favorite toppings. You can make it healthier and for less money than store bought pizza. Plus, it is amazingly delicious!

My husband and I made it together. When I asked him what he put in the pizza crust recipe, he just said, "flour, water, olive oil, salt, and yeast." That's my husband!

Yummy Italian Carabonara!

Last night I had a meeting and came home to a most delicious carabonara pasta my husband Nate made! If you have never had pasta carabonara you are in for a treat. He used a new spaghetti that we have never tried before, it is "De Boles organic spinach spaghetti style pasta made with Jerusalem artichoke flour." First he cooked the bacon and boiled the pasta. Meanwhile he mixed 6 eggs and about a cup of homemade cream cheese (this is a first for us, usually he uses parmigiano), salt, pepper, and basil. Then he combined the bacon, egg mixture and the cooked pasta and cooked it further on a low burner. Delish!

What to do without eggs

One of the most important things I have learned living off our food storage is what to do without eggs. What is an egg substitute you might ask? There are two egg substitutes I like to use in baking, flax seed or non-flavored gelatin. These are also excellent egg substitutes if you have an egg allergy.

For the flax seed egg substitute, you just blend up several tablespoons of flax seed with one cup of hot water. Then you add one tablespoon of the flax mixture per egg you are replacing. I like to be very generous with this mixture, so I add more. Put the extra in a jar and put it in your refrigerator.

The flax egg substitute will look something like this.

You can also use non-flavored gelatin as a substitute for egg. Use 1 tablespoon of the dry gelatin for each equivalent egg you need. This is a wonderful replacement because you don't need a blender and can do it when your power is out. You can buy the Knox unflavored gelatin in the Jello and pudding section of your grocery store. If you have successfully used something else, leave a comment and share what you have tried.

Both of these egg substitutes really work! You can use them in cookies, cakes, brownies, pancakes, and anything else you are baking.