Carrots with Rosemary Butter

This is an easy way to spruce up carrots!  

Ingredients:

3 Cups of carrot sticks

1 1/2 Tablespoons of butter

1/2 teaspoon rosemary

1/2 teaspoon parsley

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Steam the carrots.  In a pan, heat the butter and combine the melted butter with the spices.  Add the carrots and toss to coat.

Strawberry Oatmeal Smoothie

We've enjoyed drinking this smoothie around our house this week.  It's fast & easy.  It also freezes well, so if you want to make smoothie Popsicles for the kids, this works great.

Ingredients:

1 Cup of milk (I've made it with both soy milk and regular milk)

1/2 Cup uncooked oats

2 banana's - broken into chunks

14 large frozen strawberries 

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 teaspoon white sugar

Mix the milk and the oats together in a blender. Blend until smooth.  Add the rest of the ingredients. Blend together & then  serve.

This recipe is modified from the Strawberry Oatmeal Breakfast Smoothie on Allrecipes.com

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

These are delightful little muffins! My friend Megan shared this recipe with me years ago & we love to make these around our house.  I especially crave these in the Fall, but I made them the other day & decided that I like them any time of year.  :-)

Ingredients:

2 1/2 Cups flour

2 Cups sugar (or 1 Cup of honey)

3/4 teaspoon baking powder (1/4 teaspoon for high altitude)

1 teaspoon baking soda (1/2 teaspoon for high altitude)

3/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger

3 eggs

2 Cups pumpkin puree

1 Cup chocolate chips (or broken up chocolate bar)

Preheat Oven to 325 degrees.  Grease 30 muffin liners.  In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar (if using it), baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon.  In another bowl, combine the eggs, pumpkin puree and honey (if using this).  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until smooth.  Add the chocolate chips.  Bake 25-35 minutes.

Pumpkin Puree

Pumpkin Puree is easy to make & easy to freeze.  You start by cutting up one large pumpkin into pieces.  You don't want any of the peel or the green part next to the peel (if there is any) to be mixed in with the pieces you cut up.  There are several ways to cook the pumpkin.  I like to steam it (picture below) until it is nice and soft.

The other options are:

1. You can boil the pumpkin pieces in water until they are soft.                                               
2. You can roast the pumpkin pieces on a cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven until the they are soft and tender.

Once the pumpkin pieces are nice and tender, you can use a mixer or a fork to mash them up - until there are not any chunks left in the pumpkin puree.  I sometimes have to add a little water to the pumpkin mixture to make it smooth.

I like to freeze my pumpkin puree in 2 Cup portions.  It can last for months in the freezer.