Apple Season

Last week, I got my first experience with canning. My friend Melody invited me over to help her can some apple pie filling. It basically involved making the delicious sauce, preparing the apples (made much easier with her handy peeler/corer/slicer tool) and canning them. Her parents have apple trees so that made the filling very inexpensive. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I expected and I am excited someday to do canning myself.

On Friday, I got some fuji, gala, and braeburn apples for $0.50/lb from Tacoma Boys. I used them to make homemade applesauce for the first time. It was fun and easy! Just peel, core and slice the apples. Put them in a pot and cover them with water and a lid, then boil them for about 10 minutes until they’re soft. Puree them in the blender, adding the juice from boiling them as needed. I ate some warm with cinnamon. Mmmmm.

Now I really want some apple trees! I want to can an abundance of apple pie filling, apple sauce and apple butter. My own apple trees would make that much more economical.

A Muffiny Day

Lately I’ve been wanting to make a bunch of healthy muffins for the freezer to use as quick breakfasts or snacks. Yesterday I was finally able to! First, I made a batch of low fat blueberry bran muffins (recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/low-fat-blueberry-bran-muffins/detail.aspx). I used all whole wheat flour rather than using half white flour. They turned out great…lightly sweet and very hearty! I also made a batch of raisin bran muffins (using a recipe my mom used when I was a kid). I substituted applesauce for the oil the recipe called for and used all whole wheat flour. I even over-cooked them slightly and they still taste fabulous! I wanted to make some banana nut muffins but I didn’t have any walnuts which the recipe called for. So I made up a recipe for whole wheat banana almond muffins! Yes, I made it up! Huge success, here is my recipe:

Whole Wheat Banana Almond Muffins

1/2 cup applesauce

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

1 cup mashed banana

1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup ground almonds

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 375. Spray muffin pan.

Mix the applesauce, honey, brown sugar, vanilla and egg in a large bowl. Mash the bananas with a fork; add to applesauce mixture.

In blender, grind whole plain almonds until they form a fine powder; pour into a separate bowl. Add the whole wheat flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Mix. Add to the banana mixture. Mix.

Pour into muffin pan and bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until done.

I like to use the muffin pan that makes 6 bigger muffins rather than 12 small ones. That way one muffin is enough for breakfast. After they were completely cool, I spread them out on plates and put them in the freezer for an hour or two to get hard. Then I put them in freezer bags and tossed them back into the freezer…that way they shouldn’t stick together. Happy muffin making!

Spinach: Surprisingly Scrumptious

I don’t recall a single time I ever ate spinach in my childhood. I don’t think my mom used it very much, although maybe she snuck it in without the family knowing it. If it was ever offered, I claimed that I didn’t like it. When I went to college and started cooking for myself, I always used iceberg lettuce as my green leafy vegetable of choice, and I kept using it after I got married.

Around a year and a half ago, on a church women’s retreat, someone put on a demonstration of how to make smoothies using fresh spinach. Of course the demonstration included samples, which were delicious and exciting. When I got home from the retreat, I bought spinach for the first time ever so that I could make my husband a spinach smoothie. He’s always up for trying new (even green) foods, and he enjoyed the smoothie very much. Ever since then, spinach smoothies have been a fairly regular treat in our home. But for a long time, I didn’t try using spinach in any other way.

When I was pregnant, we took a childbirth class which met once a week and included dinner.  The teacher used dinner as a way to teach nutrition, which was a big focus of the class. One of the first meals she cooked for us was tacos and instead of lettuce, she offered spinach to use as a topper. I hesitantly put some on my tacos and was surprised to find that it didn’t make any difference! This opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of spinach. We now use it for pretty much everything we used to use lettuce for…salads, sandwiches, whatever! I also mix it in to eggs, pasta dishes, and soups. When you puree it and add it to a white casserole, it turns the casserole a beautiful pesto green and doesn’t change the flavor at all!

Spinach is one of those ridiculously nutritious foods. I just looked up the nutrition facts for it and was going to list all the good vitamins and minerals spinach contains, but there were so many of them that it would have looked silly. It is also very affordable. I normally buy the 1 pound tubs of organic baby spinach from Costco which cost $3 or $4 because I don’t have to worry about washing it. And of course the non-organic kind is even cheaper.

Here’s a couple recipes for you:

Spinach smoothies

1 orange

1 banana

~10 strawberries

2 big handfuls of spinach

1 cup water

Blend together. Use frozen fruit or ice if you want it to be slushy. There are a million variations…I also love using fresh mango or peach or pineapple!

Spinach salad

6 cups of spinach

½ cup pecans

½ cup dried cranberries

½ cup crumbled bacon (I cook it in the microwave)

Croutons

Toss together with your dressing of choice. Add whatever you want…I like these ingredients because there is no chopping required! It’s super fast and delicious.