Healthy Eating

I hadn't intended my next post to be about food, but I just have to talk about these muffins.

See, I'm on a quest to feed my family more nutritious food. These muffins contain pureed carrot and pureed avocado. There is a richness to them that I wasn't expecting. They are moist, tender, and oh so very, very, good. And the fact that they contain carrot and avocado pleases me. Even picky Strong-Willed One loves these muffins. Basically, I took the Double Chocolate Muffin recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and modified it.  Here's the modified recipe:

          Chocolate Muffins

          1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

          1/2 cup granulated sugar

          1/3 cup packed brown sugar

          1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

          2 tsp baking powder

          1/4 tsp baking soda

          just under 1/2 tsp salt

          1/2 cup pureed carrots

          1/2 pureed avocado

          1/2 cup vegetable oil

          1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Grease 12 standard muffin cups or line with paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Make a well in center of flour mixture.
3. In a small bowl, combine purees, oil and egg. Add wet mixture all at once to the flour mixture; stir just until moistened.
4. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Bake 18-20 minutes. Cool on wire rack for 5 minutes; serve warm.

Next time I make these muffins, I'm going to substitute whole wheat flour for half of the all purpose and use applesauce in place of the oil. I don't like to make too many changes to a recipe the first time; it can be hard to know what went wrong.

from allrecipes.com

I also made a Garbanzo Bean Chocolate Cake for dessert tonight. This is the first time I've made this cake, but I had it at Bible Study last week and couldn't believe that it's main ingredient was chick peas! We'll see tonight if mine turned out as well as my sister-in-law's did.

Since we're on the topic of food, let me show you what I've been eating for lunch/dinner the last few weeks.

Drinking green smoothies has really changed what I want to eat. I crave vegetables and don't really want the rice, potatoes or noodles that are usually a part of our dinners. A nice big salad made with romaine lettuce, green and orange peppers, cucumber, avocado, shredded carrots, shredded beet, grape tomatoes and diced chicken. The meat changes, based on what I've cooked for dinner and have left over.

On a completely different note, Little Guy got all excited when I pulled out the camera to take pictures of the food. So, of course, I took some pictures of him!

He's such a ham!