Kitchen Adventures: Toddler Approved Apple Muffins

Mealtimes at my house have become a battle of wills and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm generally on the losing side of them. I guess that is when you know you are the parent of a toddler. It seems like every play date I go to these days always ends in the "what is your baby eating these days" conversation. Which is great because then I don't feel so alone. Recently, a friend sent me this recipe for apple muffins and the little man LOVES them. I'm not sure where this recipe originally came from so if you are the source, please let me know and I will make a note of it in this post. 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup vanilla yogurt (one 6 oz container)
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup chunky applesauce (I have used both sweetened and unsweetened applesauce)


Directions:

Preheat oven to 400.
In a small bowl, mix yogurt, baking soda, and baking powder. 
Set aside. 
In a large bowl, mix all dry ingredients (except baking soda and baking powder, which you've already put in with the yogurt).

The yogurt mixture should be slightly puffy by this point. 

Add the applesauce and eggs to it and stir.

Mix wet ingredients into dry.
Pour into greased muffin cups (or use liners). 
Fill muffin cups about 1/2 full. (I like to only do half b/c then the muffin doesn't come out of the top of the cup and overflow the edge.)
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until tops are golden brown, with cracks in them.
Let cool and serve! 

The last batch I made actually resulted in 16 muffins so its up to you and how much you fill up the cups. I have also frozen these and defrosted them as needed. I hope you and your family enjoy these muffins as much as we do.

Kitchen Adventures: Lightened Up Version

Like everyone else, we are trying to cut back here as we recover from the gluttony of the holidays. I've been scouring my cookbooks and magazines to find a few healthy recipes for us to try. I recently found a great recipe for Salsa Chicken from Cooking Light's website. It was simple and easy to prepare. Plus it was perfect for a weeknight since it only took me about 25 minutes to fix. 

I served it with a side of black beans and salsa for a perfect and healthy dinner on a weeknight. I would love to hear if you have found any quick and easy healthy meals to start off the New Year. 

12 Goals for 2012 - Part Two

I realize this is a long post so I wanted to split it up. A few of my other goals for this New Year are: 

7. Mingle with other moms: I don't have many mom friends but the ones that I have I treasure. I hope to meet more new moms in 2012 because its nice to know that someone else is in the same boat as you.

8. More playdates for W: Since W isn't in daycare anymore, I have worked very hard to give him socialization with other babies. We tried Gymboree and playdates but I still feel like I'm falling short, so in 2012 I'm committing to get him around other babies.

9. Spend our money on experiences instead of things: Since we don't need any more stuff, I want to spend our money on experiences in 2012 instead of things. 

10. Learn Spanish: I took Spanish in college but now know very little Spanish. This year I want to learn more basic words and phrases so that I can speak it to W. Fortunately for us, my husband’s best friend just moved to Atlanta and he is fluent in Spanish. 

11. Spend a night away from W: So this year, I hope to do something I haven’t done yet and that is spend a night away from the little man. I know it will be hard but it’s a must. I need the

break and he needs to spend more quality time with his grandparents. 

12. Travel: I'm not sure I will swing it financially but I'm dying to hit the road again. The problem with being a traveler at heart is that no matter how many places I've been there are a hundred more places I want to go. I hope that 2012 will have me packing my bags!

What are your goals or resolutions for 2012? I am declaring 2012 will be a great year for all of us. 

12 Goals for 2012 - Part One

I don't know about you but I'm ready for a new year. 2011 was a trying year for me and I struggled a lot in my new role of motherhood. At the same time, I wouldn't trade a second of it. Every year I make resolutions and after a few weeks most them are forgotten. So for 2012 I'm not making resolutions, instead I'm setting goals for the new year.


Worry Less and Enjoy More: I feel like I spent more time this past year worrying than anything else. I worried about my job, the baby, the house, my health, my marriage - you name it and I worried about it. So this year, I've decided to not worry so much about the present, the future or the past. Instead, I want to enjoy the time I have with my family.


Get organized and purge: I must confess that my husband and I are both pack rats. It wouldn't be so bad if just one of us had a lot of stuff but when both of you do it can be a problem. When we moved into this house, I thought for sure we would have so much room but it turns out we don't because we have so much stuff. Now, on top of all of our stuff we now have a ton of baby stuff and I have finally had enough. One of my goals is to get rid of some of the things we have and to organize the things we want to keep. I know this will take me most of the year to do and it will be a long, hard process but I hope that at the end of 2012 we will have less stuff to weigh us down.


Complete a few house projects: If I had $50,000 laying around, I would have the perfect house because I could fix all of things that I hate about our house. Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of money so I have to pick my battles. The bad part about moving when you are 5 months pregnant is you don't have the energy to tackle the small DIY projects. I want to finally take the time to do a few simple projects that will make our home more enjoyable, because its those small things that I hate and drive me crazy on a daily basis.


Eat healthier: One of the great things about having a toddler around is that they watch you all day long and they watch what you eat. In the last few weeks, I have had to give up snacking around my son because he wants to eat when he sees me eat. Planning healthy meals can be a challenge with a picky eater, but I want W to see us eating healthy so that he will be a good and healthy eater as he grows up.


Expand my culinary horizons: I know I've written about this before but I really want to commit to experimenting more in the kitchen. It seems that we are always eating the same few meals and I'm tired of it.


Find my purpose: Since getting laid off from my job, I've really struggled with my purpose in life. The job market hasn't helped me either since it seems impossible for me to find another job these days. I have enjoyed and have treasured the time I have spent at home with my son but I feel like something is missing. I don't know what it is but I know I'm meant to do something else too.


I realize this is a long post so I'm going to break it up into two. Stay tuned for more goals for 2012! In the meantime, what are your goals or resolutions?

It's a Wrap on Christmas 2011

Well, Christmas is officially over in our house. We finally packed up the tree and put it back in the garage until next year. Since W is now toddling around and into EVERYTHING we made the decision to put the tree in our formal living room this year instead of the den. Thanks to the baby gates we installed a few months ago the tree wasn't the great temptation that we thought it would be. Of course, anytime we did anything around the tree (including opening presents on Christmas Day) the little man was more interested in climbing the stairs.

We had a wonderful and busy second Christmas in our new house and with the little man. We were surprised at his birthday party that he didn't have much interest in opening presents and that continued with Christmas this year too. I'm sure next year he will be all about opening those gifts. Instead this year, I did the wrapping and the opening so it was fun for me.


We were so lucky that my grandmother (and W's only living great-grandparent) was able to come up to Atlanta for the weekend. My granny's at that age where she doesn't like to travel away from home overnight. She claims its because when she's off with us we treat her like an invalid but I digress. I know W won't remember that she was here but our family will and that made the holiday more special. She also bought W his first bible as a Christmas gift and that is something I will treasure for the rest of my days.

We had a house full this year with 8 adults. I wasn't sure if we could do but we can. And we had a great time with everyone under one roof from dawn to dusk. My sister's boyfriend is from Germany so he shared a few special customs with us. We all enjoyed the experiences and I hope it made him feel better to have a little bit of home with our holiday celebrations.

The Feuerzangenbowle - mulled spice wine before the flames

and after

Here are just a few candid shots from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

I hope you and your family had as wonderful of a holiday as we did. I don't know about you but I'm ready for 2012!

The Happiest Days of My Life

So this post is in honor of my grandmother who just celebrated a birthday. Since its never polite to mention a lady's age, I won't tell you how old she is but I'm in my late 30s and she was 50 when I was born so you can pretty much figure it out from there. 


Every time I talk with my grandmother, she tells me how lucky I am to have been home with my son and how I shouldn't go back to work. Of course, she is of a generation of women that didn't have the option of working and raising children so I understand where she is coming from. 


Even though, my grandmother didn't have a choice about working outside of the home, she loved being a mom and raising her children. She tells me all the time how those were the best years of her life. But I know her child rearing days had to be hard. She had 4 children within 5 years and she didn't have the luxury of disposable diapers and take-out. She had to cook every meal from scratch and in those days husbands didn't babysit or change diapers. I can't imagine what her life was like in the thick of those days. 


Regardless of the reality, here she is at the end of her life and those years were her happiest. I hope that when I'm her age and I look back on my life that I will remember these years as my happiest too. One of the great advantages to being an older mom is that I've done a lot with my adult years. I've traveled the world and enjoyed wonderful experiences unlike my grandmother. So far none of that can compare to this journey called motherhood - it has been the most wonderful of wonderful experiences. 


I hope that when I look back on my son's first year, I remember when and where I was when he rolled over for the first time (that's probably a bad example since I was at work), said his first word, stood on his own, or took his first steps. I hope that I remember the happy days, the smiles, wet kisses, and cuddles and not the arguments, feeling so tired that my bones ached, or the crying, all the crying (from both him and me.) I don't want to remember the bitterness I felt after getting laid-off, the sleepless nights from worrying about college funds and savings accounts, or all of the "things" I didn't get to buy or do. So today in honor of my grandmother's birthday, I'm committing to enjoy this time because as we all know there are no guarantees on tomorrow. 

Christmas Cookie Swap

I recently attended my first ever cookie swap with a play group that we've been hanging out with over the last few months. When I told my husband, I was going to a cookie swap his first reponse was "Are you going to make the toffee cookies?"A few years ago, I found a recipe for Oatmeal Toffee cookies on the back of the Heath Toffee bits bag. My husband loves toffee so I made them and now a few times a year he request them. They are perfect during the holidays. 

I will admit up front they aren't pretty cookies but they are delicious. If you are looking for a new or different cookie recipe this year, you might just want to check out these Oatmeal Toffee cookies. They are a little bit of toffee, a little bit of chocolate, and a little bit of oatmeal and its a perfect combination. You can find the recipe from Hershey's web site and you can find the Heath bits in the baking aisle with the chocolate chips. 

Happy Baking!