3 More Quart Size Spice Mixes

By on

Fajita Mix:

3/4 c seasoned salt

3/4 cup oregano

3/4 cup cumin

1/2 c garlic powder

1/2 c chili powder

1/4 cup paprika

Yield:  3 1/2 c

To use mix 2 Tbs oil; 2 Tbs fresh lime juice with zest; and 2 Tbs fajita mix to marinade 4 chicken breasts overnight.

Spaghetti Sauce Mix #1:

1 1/4 cup onion powder

1/2 cup garlic powder

3 Tbs dry mustard

2/3 cup brown sugar or stevia

10 Tbs salt

3 Tbs celery seed

1 cup bay leaves, crushed (or leave these out and add 4 bay leaves to each batch)

2 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 cup basil, dried

1/4 cup oregano, dried

To Make: Simmer together 2 lbs browned ground beef; 8 ounces chopped mushrooms; 12 oz tomato paste; 2 pounds (canned) chopped tomatoes; 2 tsp of Worcestershire sauce and 2 1/2 Tbs of mix. (This is an untraditional spaghetti sauce that is delicious!)  See below for a more traditional one.

Spaghetti Sauce Mix #2

2 1/4 cups stevia in the raw

3/4 cup parsley flakes

6 Tbs celery seed

3/4 cup salt

6 Tbs garlic powder

6 Tbs  onion powder

6 Tbs oregano

6 Tbs  basil

12 crushed bay leaves (or leave out and add 1 bay leaf to each batch)

To Make: Combine 5 1/3 Tbs to 18 oz of tomato sauce; 1 lb browned ground beef or Italian sausage and 6 cups of water.  Simmer for 45 minutes or until thick.

 

 

 

 

3: Quart Jar Spice Mixes

By on

Update:  For even more mix recipes check out my new post here.

I’ve been out of town and there’s so much to catch up about.  But first I’d like to give you a post that’s actually useful :).

Our large family uses a lot of spice mixes especially ranch dressing mix; taco seasoning; and onion soup mix.  I’ve never purchased a packet of seasoning from the store–it’s too expensive for my sensitivities :).  But I have gotten tired of running out of seasoning and having to make it on the fly.  Life is much easier since I’ve put together a whole quart of stuff at a time.

Quart Spice Mixes

Read more…

The Cookie of all Cookies?

By on

I found this pin:

Source: vintagerevivals.com viaAgnes onPinterest

And the description said: Swig Sugar Cookie Recipe. This is the cookie that all other cookies for the rest of your life will be compared to.
So I had to bake it and find out. I tell you, it was hard not to change anything about the recipe. It’s completely out of character for me. I’m not sure I have ever followed a recipe exactly before, ever.  I even went to the store to buy real full fat sour cream, just so it would be perfect.

 

The dough came out super fluffy and so easy to work with.  Not sticky at all.  And my cookies ended up just like the ones in the picture above (except that the photographer was not nearly as gifted :).).  I put them in the freezer, so they would be cold (like the recipe insists–and yes that was a great idea!)  Then mixed up the frosting and set out for folks to DIY on their cold cookies.

DSC_0129

Next was to round up a house full of taste testers.

DSC_0135 DSC_0140 DSC_0141 DSC_0134 DSC_0132 DSC_0131

 

DSC_0136

DSC_0137

The verdict:  These were really hard to stop eating.  Maybe because I told them they were the cookies to compare all cookies to, and no one could decide if that were true after just one cookie.  While everyone decided the cookies were excellent, it was hard to say they were better than a really good chocolate chip cookie.

We had lots of frosting left over and  I wondered if the recipe could be improved on.  So Sunday afternoon we made a new version of the cookies in a smaller batch:

1/2 cup softened butter

1/2 cup Greek yogurt

2/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1 egg

1 Tbs vanilla extract

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

2 1/2 cups flour

Cream the butter, yogurt, sugars, vanilla  and egg until light and fluffy.  Add remaining ingredients until a soft dough forms.  Drop by Tbs onto a greased cookie sheet and press flat with a glass dipped in sugar.  Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.  Cool on a rack then freeze until cold.  Frost as desired.

The verdict:  The finished cookies looked almost exactly like the original.  The flavor was much better (and they had half the fat of the original cookie),  but the warm cookie texture was not quite as good.  The texture improved a lot after cooling and then again after freezing.  They ended up with a nice crisp edge with a soft interior. The vanilla was an excellent addition.  The dough was not as easy to work with–it was a lot more sticky.  Chilling a bit would have helped this.  If we bake them again, we will use our second recipe–they went over smashingly with the family who wished I had baked a bigger batch :). And I STILL have frosting–so looks like more baking in our future.  Look out kid’s at school–we need a place to share all these cookies :).

Peanut Butter Apple Oatmeal

By on

You look hungry.  Come on in and have some breakfast.

Apples and Peanut Butter Oatmeal

This is one meal that will stick to your ribs :).

March Blog photos 025

It’s sugar free and high in protein.  But we don’t have to tell the kids.March Blog photos 026

The apples are cold, sweet and crunchy.March Blog photos 027

The peanut butter oatmeal is warm and creamy.March Blog photos 028

Dairy free?  Perfect.  Gluten Free?  Take a huge bowl.March Blog photos 029

Yes, it’s Fit Mama approved.  No guilt here.

Print
Apples and Peanut Butter Oatmeal

Prep Time: 1 minute

Cook Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 6 minutes

Yield: 1

Serving Size: 1 1/2 cups (all of it)

Calories per serving: 341

Fat per serving: 13g

Apples and Peanut Butter Oatmeal

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup rolled oats (I use quick oats, but you can use any kind. If you are gluten free, be sure to get specially marked gluten free oats.)
  • 1 cup milk (I use almond milk since this is a cooked recipe and can only drink cow's milk when it's raw.)
  • 1 Tbs stevia (I use Aldi's brand of stevia in the raw)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 Tbs peanut flour (Peanut butter will also work. I use peanut flour because it is higher in protein and lower in fat and calories without sacrificing peanut flavor. It is all natural and can be purchased online from Southern Grace Farms.)
  • 1/2 chopped tart apple (I like Fuji, Jonagold, or Braeburn)

Instructions

  1. In a small saucepan whisk together egg, milk and stevia. Stir in rolled oats. Cook and stir over medium high heat until thickened and creamy. Stir a lot so it doesn't burn on the bottom.
  2. Remove from heat and take a few tablespoons of oatmeal and stir the peanut flour in until it is smooth. Then return to the entire batch and stir in. (If you try to stir the peanut flour into the whole batch, you will get powdery clumps that never seem to stir in.)
  3. Roughly chop the apple and sprinkle over the top.

Notes

41g carbs including 9g fiber; 20g protein!; and 48g of calcium 🙂

https://www.groceryshrink.com/peanut-butter-apple-oatmeal/

What’s your favorite breakfast?

The Evil Twin’s Recipe for Orange Cranberry Granola

By on

You already know I have another blog.  A fitness blog.  Sometimes I feel like a fraud having a fitness blog.  I’m not holding myself up as an example of an amazing fit person.  Just a regular person with a life long weight issue and my journey to beat it.  But sometimes I think people might get the wrong idea if they read it–like I never mess up or eat a muffin at school on Mom’s and Muffins day and then find out that the 3/4 serving was 690 calories!  (Costco and I aren’t friends right now.)

orange Cranberry Granola

I feel like my two blogs are like the pins I see on pinterest or even the articles in a woman’s magazine.  The front cover will read the best headlines:  “How to drop 20 lbs in one week!” and “The best triple chocolate molten lava cake on the planet” right next to it.  On my other blog, you might read about pomegranate salad and over here—ooey gooey cinnamon rolls.  Or Orange Cranberry Granola.

cranberry granola 2

Challenge #1: I have a freezer full of fresh cranberries that were given to me a year ago after Christmas.  The stores donated them to Harvesters to pass out to the underprivileged.  The underprivileged wouldn’t take them so it was into my freezer or the trash.   I LOVE cranberries, if the recipe has plenty of sugar.  Cranberry muffins, breads, cakes, salads…they are all delicious.  Unfortunately, the sugar part of it doesn’t mesh with my fitness plan so well and the rest of the family won’t eat cranberries.

book day, granola 018

Challenge #2:  I feel guilty buying sugary cereal.  It’s so bad for our health and to serve it as the first meal of the day almost seems criminal.  But the kiddoes got used to sprinkling a bit of sweet crunchy cereal onto their plain cheerios or bran flakes and held a revolt when I refused to buy any more.  (I shouldn’t have ever purchased it, but that $.50 sale snookered me.)

Solution for both?  I started to wonder if I put the cranberries into sweet crunchy granola I might have the best of both worlds.  I could use up a few cranberries, and the kids could sprinkle sweet stuff on their cereal.  Only I would know what was in it.  The trouble is, there aren’t any granola recipes on the web that call for fresh cranberries.  What if it didn’t work?  What if I wasted all the nuts?  What if I wasted money?!!  So I had to think about it for a few days .

book day, granola 019

Then I remembered the joke Darren and I had when I first started this blog.  I would try a LOT of new ideas and recipes that didn’t work.  We decided my subtitle should be:  Wasting my money so you don’t have to waste yours.   It made me feel a little better, lol.

So I decided to save all of you from wasting your money and try making granola with fresh cranberries and it was AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS!  Crunchy, sweet, clumpy–everything granola should be.  Now, I have to keep telling myself, “It’s for the kids.  It’s not for you!”   I could fill a heaping bowl and cover it with raw milk and mindlessly eat thousands of calories while watching an entire season of Downton Abby and not even feel sick.

Here’s the recipe exactly how I made it, and then at the end I will tell you the changes I’d like to try, just to improve the nutrition a bit.

book day, granola 008

Orange Cranberry Granola

6 cups old fashioned rolled oats

1 1/2 cups wheat germ (for gluten free, you could try oat bran, flax meal, or chia seeds–the wheat germ helps things clump up, so when subbing ingredients keep that in mind.)

6 Tbs dark brown sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 orange, zested

1 cup almonds, chopped (I measured from the 3lb bag sold at Costco, because they are the best price anywhere.)

1/2 cup pecans, chopped (Also bought from Costco, these are almost twice the price of almonds so I went light.)

1/2 cup sunflower seeds (purchased from a bulk food bin.)

2 cups fresh cranberries (frozen and then roughly chopped while still frozen hard)

1/4 cup white sugar (I think you could do with less or even sub stevia for this.)

3/4 cup honey

1 stick butter, melted

1.  Stir together the cranberries and white sugar.  Set aside

2.  In a large bowl, combine oats, wheat germ, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, nuts, cranberries, and orange zest

3.  Melt together honey and butter and bring to a boil for 1 minute.

4.  Pour honey mixture over oat mixture and stir until everything is completely coated.

5.  Spread into greased baking pans.  (I used two large cookie sheets with a lip.  The more spread out it is the crunchier it will get.)

6.  Bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes, stirring after every 15 minutes.  Rotate the pans every time you stir.

I started baking mine at 275 degrees, but the extra moisture in the cranberries makes it cook more slowly.  So I upped each baking session to 20 minutes and then added a fourth for 15 minutes.  The pan closer to the heat source got darker than I wanted during that last 15  minutes session and then I found out that it didn’t get as crispy as it will until it was completely cool.  The butter helps with this :).

So next time, I will take out the white sugar completely.  And dust the cranberries with stevia.  And I might take out some of the brown sugar.  It helps the cereal get crunchy and adds a nice flavor, but mine was plenty sweet.  It was deliciously sweet, actually, but sweet enough that I think I can get away with reducing the sugar some and no one would notice.

Also, I wonder if I could use a little less butter and use some of the juice form the orange instead?  There seemed to be plenty of sauce for the amount of stuff I had.  It was perfect enough that I wondered if I could ease up a bit and not miss it.    Also water/juic mixing with wheat germ makes even more clumps.

 

 

Always Ready Oatmeal Muffins

By on

My friend, Allison Hall, has an amazing recipe for Always Ready Bran Muffins. I tried it this week using rolled oats in place of the bran and they were a hit.

image

image

image

image

image

Always Ready Oat Muffins
3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup hot water
3/4 cup brown sugar or raw sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup butter or coconut oil
21/2 cups whole wheat flour (or gluten free flour blend with xanthan gum)
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 cups sour milk (or milk with 2 Tbs lemon juice–dairy free milk will work too.)
1 cup white chips or dried fruit

Mix oats and hot water. Let stand 5 minutes to soften oats. In a separate bowl, cream butter, sugar, eggs and molasses. Add oat mixture, soda, salt and flour alternating with milk.  Store in the fridge up to 4 weeks.

To cook: Fill greased muffin tins or cupcake liners 2/3 full (I use an icecream scoop.) Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Makes about 3 dozen.

Cook as many as you need and chill remaining batter for next time.

Kid Friendly Food: Cheeseburger Soup

By on

Cheeseburger Soup 002Cheeseburger Soup 005 Cheeseburger Soup 006 Cheeseburger Soup 007 Cheeseburger Soup 011 Cheeseburger Soup 007Cheeseburger Soup 006Cheeseburger Soup 012

If you are on my menu subscription plan, you might have noticed in the cooler months  plan a delicious, innovative soup twice a week.  Why?  Soups are the most cost effective meals out there.  They are slow cooker friendly and all in one meals that busy moms can appreciate.  And the warm liquid fills up a hungry family quickly.

Here’s one your kids will love!

Cheeseburger Soup:

1 can or 2 cups of beef broth

8 oz of tomato sauce

1 can tomato soup

3 cups water

2 tsp stevia or sugar

2 tsp parsley flakes

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder (or 1 cup chopped onion)

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp yellow mustard

1/4 tsp celery seed (or 1 cup diced celery)

2 lb hamburger or ground turkey, browned and drained

4 carrots, peeled and sliced

3 potatoes, peeled and cubed

(Depending on your families likes chopped onions and mushrooms are yummy in this too.)

2 cups Shredded cheddar jack cheese

1 cup chopped dill pickles

8 slices of whole wheat bread or hamburger buns

1.  Combine all except cheese, pickles and bread into a stock pot.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer.  Simmer for 15 minutes or until carrots and potatoes are tender. turn off heat and stir in cheese.

2.  Cut bread into cubes.  Spritz with canola oil or olive oil spray and sprinkle lightly with garlic salt.  Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until golden brown and toasted.

3.  Dish soup into bowls and allow to cool to eating temperature.

4.  Put out bowls of extra shredded cheese, bread cubes, pickles, and shredded lettuce as toppings and let everyone top their own.

 

Homemade Hamburger Buns

By on

 

There was a time in my life when baking buns was not noteworthy.  I just did it, because that is how we survived.  I’ve gotten lazy since then.  It happened between the birth of my 5th and 6th babies.  Life just overwhelmed me and baking bread was “too hard.”  But today, I made hamburger buns and feel like shouting it from the rooftop.  After it was done, the thinking about it was the hardest part.  The doing didn’t take long. A Grocery Shrink Plus member did it last week and posted her beautiful pictures on our facebook group page. I said, those are awesome.  Thinking,  “I don’t have time for that anymore.”  Famous last words :).

Homemade Hamburger Buns

My daughter had a birthday party this month and I bought fancy foods from Aldi that used up my grocery budget quickly.  Our budget has no room for fluff–or very little of it.  It’s necessities only–or it won’t last.  And last it didn’t.

image

I went to the store with my last $20 on Monday and we bought a gallon of milk, a few fresh veggies and some yogurt.  I had to put food back before getting the checkout line after I estimated the total in my mind.  Brandon (age 5) was a little traumatized.  He’s never seen me make these hard decisions before, or was too young to understand.  He tried to give me money so we could buy whatever we wanted.  I explained to him that I have plenty of money, but we decided at the beginning of the month how much we would spend on food and I was determined to stick to that no matter what.  It’s like a game :).  He wasn’t sure it was a fun game…lol.  We have a full pantry, so it isn’t as big a deal to run out of grocery money.

I started the buns with the recipe from King Arthur Flour.  I have a different one in my Grocery Shrink Plus menus, but wanted to try something new.  I adapted it quite a bit–switched from butter to oil so the rolls would be soft, even cold.  And used 100% fresh ground whole wheat flour.  Hard white wheat makes my bread so much better than when I used hard red wheat.  And now I can buy 25 lb bags of wheat berries from Wal-mart!

I keep my wheat grinder on the counter all the time, cleaned, with the hopper full of berries and the lid on.  Then all I have to do is flip a switch for fresh ground flour.  It takes a lot of the dread out of baking for me.

Here’s my adapted recipe:

100% Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns

  • 1 cup lukewarm water
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 1 large egg
  • 3 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/4 cup stevia in the raw
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1 tablespoon yeast
  1. Combine water, and sugar until sugar is dissolved.  Stir in yeast.  Wait a few minutes for it to soften and activate.
  2. Stir in 1 cup of flour, oil, egg, stevia and salt.
  3. Add remaining flour a little at a time until a soft dough forms that pulls away from the sides of the mixer.  Knead by hand 8 minutes or by mixer 3-4 minutes. Oil lightly and cover with a towel.  Let rise until double.
  4. Roll dough out 1/2 inch thick and cut with a wide glass. Set on greased pans and allow to rise until double.
  5. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
  6. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

 

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Apple Pudding–guilt free!

By on

image

6 oz mountain high, 2 Tbs peanut flour, 2 Tbs cocoa powder, 1 Tbs stevia, 1 chopped apple

Oops!  This post was supposed to go over to my other blog (centsablyfit.com.)  It’s my breakfast :).  If you haven’t popped over there this is a sampling of what you will get.  Lots of super fast and easy recipes that facilitate fat loss and muscle building.  This one was super delicious!  I love the combo of peanut butter, chocolate and apples.  This one is completely guilt free!