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Healthy Eating

Healthy Eating/ RECIPES/ Sweets

Chocolate Mudballs

Well, Laura at “Heavenly Homemakers” has done it again.  She has taken a simple recipe, used whole ingredients, and provided my recipe box with one more “make often” recipe.

These chocolate mudballs just hit the spot!  They are great when you are wanting a bit of a chocolate treat, but use ingredients like wheat germ and oats to make them a treat that has some health benefits.  Love that!

I whipped them up in literally minutes, right before I left for my Tuesday Night Women’s Bible study group.  These women are often my taste testers with new recipes, I love their honesty and can count of the variety of tastes in the room to know whether or not a recipe is blog worthy! (I made bars that resembled bird seed one week and we all wondered if the birds would even eat them…they were NOT good:) These little mudballs received rave reviews, so here they are!

 

Mudballs
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup chocolate chips 
1/4 cup sesame seeds
Cook the peanut butter on honey over low heat until melted. Add remaining ingredients. When cool enough to handle roll into oohey gooey mud balls.
This batch made 12 balls, next time I will double the recipe.
My girls loved these.  They felt like they were eating cookie dough, and were disappointed that we had to share with my group!  I made them yesterday, and plan on going to the store for more sesame seeds so I can make them again today.  
I had a reader send me a recipe she thought I would like (how sweet is that?) and she was right on.  They are balls that are just like these, with just a couple ingredients switched up- they use ground flax seed instead of wheat germ, so it would be a great way to get those Omega 3’s!  Here is the link to that recipe if you want to check it out, the link will take you to a Disney website.  I will let you know when I make them how they turn out.
This post linked to:
Food On Fridays @ann kroeker. writer.
Recipe Swap Wednesdays @ Remodelaholic
Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays @ Blessed With Grace
Just Something I Whipped Up @ The Girl Creative
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HEALTH/ Healthy Eating/ How-Tos

What Will Kill Our Children

This post is linked to 30-Minute Blog Challenge @ Steady Mom.

It is estimated that one out of every three children in the United States is obese.  It is an epidemic.

This video is one of the absolute best I have seen in making this real.  Please, please watch even just a few minutes.  Jamie Oliver is now on my list of favorite people.  I love his message, I love his delivery (he is funny!) and I hope as many people as possible can view this video.  Please share this with those you love.  Share it on facebook, email it, tweet it-get the word out and save our children!

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HEALTH/ Healthy Eating

Omentum–huh?

photo from Oprah.com

Omentum, ya know what that is?
Belly blubber.

Why should you know what the Omentum is?  Well for one, having a large, unhealthy omentum can shave up to 15 years off your life.

A healthy omentum appears lacy and almost see through, like the one oprah is holding.  The one Dr. Oz is holding is from a deceased man who was only about 30 pounds overweight!

The omentum is split into 2 segments.  The greater omentum is a mass that sits in front of the stomach and the lesser omentum covers the liver.  They both store fat.  When the greater omentum is large, the stomach appears distended and hard, which many call “a beer belly.” That hard, intense look is the omentum, pushing up against your stomach, all coiled up. This is not the type of fat you can pinch, it is a hard fat.  Hard fat=scary fat! It is scary because the bigger the omentum fat, the higher the risk of inflammation in the body that leads to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.  Big omentum = big risk of disease.

Photo from Oprah.com

The omentum also stores hormones like cortisol (which is called the stress hormone).  High stress can stimulate growth of the omentum.  Take care of your stress!  People with high levels of stress find that it is very difficult to reduce the size of this hardened belly fat.  Stress and belly fat are connected.

I love this video from Dr. Oz, it is an animated video of what happens to food when you eat it and how it stores as belly fat.  It is a GREAT animation, brings it all to life for me and helps it all make sense.  If you don’t want to watch all 5 minutes, move the timemarker under the video to about 2:15, that is where the animation begins.

So, is your omentum too large?  There is a very simple way to discover if you have a healthy belly.  It is called the hip to waist ratio.  Here is a brief video of how to measure your waist (*correctly) and figure out your hip to waist ratio, and what it should be.

For more of what this post is about, click here.




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Brunch/ Healthy Eating/ RECIPES

Healthy Buttermilk Coffee Cake

We had company from out of town this weekend.  I love having company, especially when it is dear, dear friends who are coming to visit.  I have a post on “anti-procrastination” coming up, where I will talk more about our company, as I think everyone should meet them-yes, they are THAT great.

While they were here, I made coffee cake.

Our friends are coffee snobs, so I knew I would need coffee cake to go with our coffee snobbery.  I left it up to them to make the coffee, and boy was it GOOD, they know coffee!
I made the coffee cake, and was really happy with it! I had never made it before, and it was on the healthy side, so I was not sure how it would turn out.  I knew if it bombed, I would still be loved, because coffee is the only thing they are snobby about. 🙂

I found the recipe at Passionate Homemaking.  It uses many wholesome ingredients including buttermilk, and if you read this blog regularly, you know I have a thing for buttermilk.  It is part of my every week shopping trip, it is great for the gut and cheap!  You can read more about the benefits of buttermilk here. (scroll down when you get to the post)

Healthy Buttermilk Coffee Cake

2 1/4 cup flour (I used 11/4 cups whole wheat flour & 1 cup white flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup rapadura (or sucanant  (whole cane sugar))
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup walnuts, optional (I left these out)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk
Combine flour, salt, and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon into a large bowl. Add sweeteners and oils. Mix till well blended. Take out 3/4 cup for topping and add chopped nuts, and 1 tsp. cinnamon and mix. Set aside. To the original batter, add soda, baking powder, egg and buttermilk. DO NOT OVERMIX. If you do so, it will not rise well. Place in oiled 8×8 pan or pie pan. Sprinkle topping. Bake at 300 degrees for approx. 45 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. (I had to bake mine for about 55-60 minutes)

My friends liked it, my kids liked it, and it complimented our coffee just perfectly.  I will for sure be making this again!  Thanks for the recipe, Lindsey at Passionate Homemaking!

This post linked to:
Made By You Monday @ Skip To My Lou
Market Yourself Monday @ Sumo’s Sweet Stuff
Mouth Watering Monday @ A Southern Fairytale
Tasty Tuesdays @ Balancing Beauty and Bedlam
Tuesdays At The Table @ All The Small Stuff
Foodie Friday @ Designs By Gollum
Real Food Wednesdays @ Kelly The Kitchen Kop

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FUN/DIY/ HEALTH/ Healthy Eating/ How-Tos/ RECIPES/ Valentine's Day

Fun For Kids Food!

Thinking outside the lunchbox.

What little one would not want to eat this? Read more here.

Something that surprised me when I started blogging was COMMUNITY.  I had no idea I would ‘meet’ such great people.  There are many amazing mom bloggers that I have learned so much from, and have had a great time commenting back and forth with.  I’d like to introduce you to one of them.  Her name is Sarah, from For The Love Of Naps.  Isn’t that a great title?  She is a “Lover Of Naptime,” the mom of two young boys, and she “takes each day, starts fresh, and tries to learn moment to moment.” Her perspective on life and parenting is one to be admired. This quote is under her header on her blog:

“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”
-Anna Quindlen(Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11)

Yep, she ‘gets it,’ and I love reading and learning from someone who does! She has a great way of seeing things through the eyes of children and instinctively knows what would delight them. Here are a few fun food posts of that in action, shared with her permission.  Read on, then take some time to go visit her, here.

Just in time for Valentines Day, a healthy- for- your- heart breakfast.

See how she did it here.

She created some love at lunchtime, read about it here.

If she lived closer, I’d invite myself over and just hope she would serve food

on a toothpick! She even suggested making little mini pea kabobs, so cute.

How blessed are her boys?  Brings this verse to mind:

 “Her children get up and give her honour, and her husband gives her praise…Proverbs 31:28

Healthy Eating/ Meals/ RECIPES

Simple Shredded Chicken

The last few weeks, I have been using this method of cooking my chicken, and really love the simplicity of it.  I stocked up on Smart Chicken Bone-In Chicken Breasts when they were on sale.  They come 2 to a package, which I have found makes about 2 cups of shredded chicken.  I use the bones to make Bone Stock, then I use the chicken in Chicken Soup for my husbands lunches, or I use it for different dinner recipes that I have (Chicken Tacos, Chicken & Rice casserole, Chicken Pot Pie, Chicken Tortilla Soup, etc)

All I do is:
1.} Thaw the chicken
2.} Slice open package and get the chicken out with tongs so I don’t have to touch its slime:)
3.} Plop it in a stock pan
4.} Cover it with water
5.} Quarter an onion and add.
6.} Peel and cut in half 2-3 carrots, add.
7.} Wash and cut in half 2-3 celery stalks, add.
8.} Bring to boil
9.} Turn down heat and simmer for 11/2 hours, or until no longer pink.
10.} Take a long whiff of my incredible- smelling house.
11.}Remove chicken from broth using tongs (don’t pitch that broth!)
12.} Let cool.
13.} Take off bone and shred. (don’t throw away those bones!)
14.} Use in a recipe or freeze in a mason jar for later use.

Use bones to make very healthful chicken stock:
1.} Throw bones in crockpot
2.}Add broth saved from above steps.
3.} Do steps 4-7 above. (depending on how much broth you had from cooking chicken, you may not need to add water.  Just eyeball it and fill crockpot up about 2/3 full.)
4.} Add 1 Tbls vinegar (this helps all the healthful minerals extract from the bones into the stock)
5.} Cook in crockpot on low 12-14 hours.
6.} Cool and strain.
7.} Put in mason jar and freeze until needed.
8.} Remember to season with salt and pepper when ready to use.

Read this post for more information on the health benefits of making your own stock.


This post is linked to:
Food on Fridays @Ann Kroeker. Writer.
30 Minute Blog Challenge @ Steady Mom
Made It Mondays @ The Persimmon Perch

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Healthy Eating/ How-Tos/ RECIPES

Real Food Challenge-Update

For those of you who signed up for the 28 day Nourishing Traditions Challenge, I wanted to let you know where I am at with it.  I said in the post “It will be interesting where this challenge takes us, and if there will be a point I draw a line and say, “nope, not ready for that.””  Well, that point hit at day 3! LOL.
 
I’ve read much on this movement and really do believe that it is important to try and eat foods in the most minimally processed state–but–I am only willing to go so far and spend so much of my life’s time doing it.   Day 3 talked about soaking grains–have not done it and not sure if I ever will, and I am willing to read on and continue to learn, but I know for me and my family, this level is just a bit too much. There are others that have been on this Real Foods journey much longer, so maybe for them that next step is not overwhelming.

I am all about baby steps, so the emails I am receiving from the challenge are throwing me.  The same email they tell you to change white grains to brown grains, they tell you that is not enough and that you need to start soaking your grains and making everything from scratch.  Sorry, but THAT overwhelms me!  It is a huge step for some people to just go from white bread to 100% wheat, or to change white pasta to whole grain pasta, so to expect people to be ok with “trade the white to wheat, grind your own wheat, soak your grains, make your bread homemade”…that is enough to make anyone give up and go buy a box of Twinkies, in my opinion!!

I guess what I am trying to say is if you signed up and are reading the emails, don’t freak out and give up on the idea of eating real foods.  It can look many different ways for many different people.   There are lots of people out there like me, who have made small steps to becoming more healthful and have had great success, without taking it to a level many of us won’t ever be.

I, personally, read the challenge and appreciate learning what others are doing and why, but I am careful.  I do not want to become consumed with feeling like I have to do everything they say in order to measure up and make a difference for my family.  I refuse to become a perfectionist about it all, and I rest in knowing that small changes here and there are enough.  If I allowed myself to become consumed, it could do my family more harm than good, by taking away from other, just as important, areas of nourishment for them–like emotional nourishment, for one.

Anyway, I had to communicate with you, my readers.  So many of you have sent such wonderful emails communicating your desire to eat healthier foods.  You have expressed excitement as you have tried new things, and you have expressed frustration when it seems overwhelming.  I hate to think that a link I shared would add to that frustration, especially when it seems to be going against what I am always saying…”one step at a time!”:)  So, if one of those steps involve removing yourself from the Nourishing Traditions Challenge email list, so you won’t get overwhelmed, by all means do what you need to do!!  If instead, it is intriguing to learn what the process is for some people, stay signed up and read on!

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