Pumpkin Parade



Hello my sweets! To say it's been a while is an understatement. I've just been busy playing mom. Oh AND I switched grades AGAIN. I know I'm crazy, but this time wasn't really an option. They didn't need as many teachers in fourth grade this year. Ya know the golden rule: last one in is first one out. So I'm teaching 5th grade ELA and SS this year. So I get to join the slave to STAAR club. If you don't know what STAAR is lucky you. :)

Anywho, one of my favorite things about playing mom is cooking with my little princess. That girl loves to cook. It's actually my new favorite sentence from her, "I cook wit mama", love her!  She cooks it all. I've even been brave enough to let her help with the meat. I just can't turn my back b/c she thinks she has to taste everything I pull out.



It looks like she was praying here, it's a possibility.

Well last weekend I did my once a month crazy cooking sessions. I cook tons of things to prep for her school lunches and weekday breakfast. I came across this recipe and decided to clean it up a little. It was AMAZINGLY delicious and I decided this should be the post to get me back in the blogging world, mainly b/c my friend Amber was helping to host the pumpkin parade and I told her I would link up. (check out her Fashion Fridays LOVE them)  Enough with the jabber, on to the deliciousness.

Pecan Streusel Pumpkin Muffin

First thing first preheat your oven to 350

Gather your ingredients

Muffins

1 1/2 cups of organic unbleached flour
1tsp baking powder (I use Rumford Aluminum Free)
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp baking soda ( I use Bob's Red Mill, just seems to blend better)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
15oz organic canned pure pumpkin
1 1/4 cups of sugar (see why I said cleaned it up a little)
1/3 cup safflower oil
2 eggs from your neighbors backyard

Streusel Topping

1/2 cup of organic unbleached flour
1/3 coconut sugar (you can use brown)
1/4 cup Trader Joe's unsalted dry roasted pecan pieces
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp. soften butter

You will need 3 bowls. One for your dry ingredients, one for your wet ingredients, and one for your topping. First, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, pie spice, baking soda, and salt. In the second bowl mix the can of pumpkin, sugar, safflower oil, and eggs. I guess you could use any type of oil or melted butter. But that's what I had in the pantry so that's what I used. Combine your dry and wet ingredients and set aside.

In a smaller bowl combine all the ingredients for the topping. I just pinched the butter off into little pieces and then mixed it all together until it was crumbly. I used my fingers and gently squeezed and smushed until it was crumbly. Yep, those are legit baking terms right there.

Lightly grease your muffin tins. I filled each tin up with mix and left a little room for the topping. I got 12 muffins. Plop them in the oven and let them bake for about 20 mins. (If your in a good mood be a good wife and wash dishes while you wait). You can stick a fork in the middle to double check. When you take them out they will continue to cook a little while the pan is hot. My muffins were nice and plump. Most of all amazingly delicious and moist.

I would love to tell you they were low cal but that's just not the truth. But they are worth every bite. I plan to play around with it and try some applesauce and banana to reduce the calories. However, they are just perfect for a little princess that is not counting calories.



I'll be sharing this post on WillsCasa. Check out her pumpkin post pretty nifty and gave me an idea. Princess is working on the color green and rectangles at school. I'm thinking of spray painting pumpkins pink, cutting rectangles out of those cheapy sponges, and letting her dip them in green paint to put on the pumpkins. But we aren't heading to the farm until next Saturday so that will have to wait for now. :) I hope you enjoy these muffins as much as we did. They are even better warm!


I'm also sharing here and here and here

Cooking with Toddlers



Wow, I can't believe it's been a year since I started this little blog. 31 post, 6532 views, and 1 lone follower later I'm glad your reading! I am not worried about the lone follower. I am Queen of stalk your blog w/o following. :) Clearly people are reading from the stats. But thank you, thank you, and thank you some more for reading!

So, I've talked a lot in past months about my new natural lifestyle. I've been pretty honest with the one area of struggle being FOOD. I do really well at cooking clean but I still crave sweets. Yes, I know about Whole 30 and No I'm not interested. :)

Any who, part of my tot school schedule was to cook with princess on Thursdays. I find myself trying to duplicate a healthy version of crap food. I thought I would share some of the easy things princess and I have done together this summer.




Pineapple Freeze Pops

1 fresh pineapple diced
1 cup of coconut milk beverage
splash of vanilla
2 TBSP raw honey

Toss everything in the blender and pour into mold of your choice. This was super easy to do with Layla Grayce. She tossed in the pineapple and the milk and I did the rest. I ordered these molds off amazon.

Banana Fudge Pops

 

1 banana



1 can full fat coconut milk (comes in a can, look in the Asian aisle)
1/2 cup coco
3/4 cup pure maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla

Toss it all in the blender and pour in molds of your choice. Are we seeing a pattern here? She literally just turned two a couple of weeks ago. So we are keeping it simple folks. :) I got these molds from Target but Dollar Tree had pretty much the exact same molds.

Breakfast smoothies

1 cup of strawberries
1 cup of ice
1/2 pomegranate juice
fresh lemon juice

Toss it all in the blender and then sip away. :) You could totally make this a frozen treat too!

Homemade cheese crackers

Now this recipe is not my own. I originally saw it here. It's pretty easy, flour, cheese, butter, pinch of salt. They were amazingly delicious. When I made the cheese mixture I could of just eaten it with a spoon. It reminded me of velveta. Could it be possible, a healthy, chemical free version of velveta.... Now, it would of been 1,000 times easier to just roll these into cylinder logs and slice. I actually tried this but it was way boring to princess to just put the crackers on the cookie sheet. So I started rolling the dough and pulled out the cookie cutters. We were working on circles this week, so she used a circle cookie cutter. Here is a picture of the dough once it was all mixed.

I hope you get your little tot in the kitchen and whip up some deliciousness!