Where did November go?

Gosh, it is nearly the end of November. December is right around the corner and the year is almost over. How can this be?

I haven't been too great at posting lately. I'm so irregular when it comes to posting. Here's a little Pinterest love and recipe that worked BEAUTIFULLY! Thought I'd share. I'll post some more later, after the house is clean. Wait, that chore will never be done. So I'll just post soon, promise ok?

Thin Mint Cookies (Think Girl Scouts, only cheaper)

Got this recipe from Pinterest.

Source: loveveggiesandyoga.com via Char on Pinterest

It worked great!

Ingredients:
1 roll/sleeve of Ritz Crackers
1 tablespoon Shortening
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 teaspoon mint extract flavoring **Measure carefully. A little too much and you have cough syrup tasting, YUCK!

Melt chocolate and shortening. Shortening helps chocolate stay smooth and not get hard when melting. Once melted add in mint flavoring. Measure careful!! Dip crackers into chocolate and set aside to dry/cool. If you have enough room in your freezer I would suggest setting cookies on a plate to cool quickly in there. If you live in warm climates (Hello, I live in 115 degree desert Arizona!) I would NOT suggest doing this in the middle of July. The freezer helps.

I promise, these don't taste like Ritz crackers. Chocolate helps!

Hope this makes your weekend better!

Hey, Hey Little Pumpkin Muffin

My pumpkin baking and cooking is not limited to the Fall holiday season, it is just kicked into overdrive. From Pumpkin bread, lattes, bagels, muffins, pancakes, cheesecake...the list goes on. I haven't tried something Pumpkin that I don't like.

Made these Pumpkin Pancakes a few weeks ago, delish! I didn't use a bisquik base, but made them from scratch. High Five! So with the latest muffin trend here in the Dewey house, I wanted to continue that. I used this Pumpkin Pancake recipe and put it into muffin tins. Add chocolate chips. Devour. Repeat.

Can you smell them fresh from the oven? Scoot closer.

Pumpkin Pancakes (from scratch, original recipe by me)

1 1/2 cup milk (soy or dairy-free work well too)
1 cup pumpkin puree (room temp)
1 egg
2 tablespoons apple sauce (in place of vegetable oil)
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 cups flour, white or whole wheat
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground all spice
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon salt
1-2 teaspoons ground flaxseed
*Optional: 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, chocolate chips

In one bowl, combine all wet ingredients, mix. In another bowl, combine all dry ingredients. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. I used re-useable muffin tins, sprayed with non-stick spray. Add dry mix into pumpkin/wet mix and mix until JUST COMBINED, don't over mix. Muffins/pancakes will be tough. Add chocolate chips at the end.  I scooped a heaping spoonful into each muffin tin. Baked for 15-18 minutes, until done in the middle.

Second batch, ran out of batter. Used water to fill empty spaces.

Here's a tip. If you run out of batter (I got 20 muffins total out of the batter), fill remaining empty spaces with water. This will help muffins bake more evenly. Works..like..a..charm!!

Aren't they cute? These will make great grab-n-go breakfasts too! If I don't eat them all before dinner :)

Pizza Bites

After making turkey chili last night for dinner, decided I wasn't full enough. I mean, I did run more than 3 miles on saturday, so it was ok, right?

Came up with these little pizza bite things, as I was envisioning pizza rolls back in my high school days. Man were those good!

Pizza Bites from IG

I had some chocolate milk to go along with it. Made sense, right?

Pizza Bites

1 can biscuits (8 count)

Pepperoni slices (used 16, would use more like 32)

Shredded Pepper Jack Cheese (all I had, about 1/2 cup)

Spaghetti Sauce (about 1/2 cup)

Garlic salt to taste

In a muffin pan, spray 8 openings. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Take out each biscuit, and roll flat, until it is about 3-4 inches in diameter. The bigger, the more room you have to stuff it! Place rolled out biscuits in muffin tin, sprayed with non-stick. The order I added the ingredients: Pepperoni slices (2 each roll), cheese (about 1 tablespoon per roll), sauce (about 1-2 tablespoons per roll). The dough will puff up so next time I'd double the amount of pepperoni. 

The sauce was fine, even burst out a little while cooking but still was enough to be moist. Add more or less of what you want. Pineapple or black olives would be good! I sprinkled garlic salt on top so it was a "garlic-bread" type. After you fill the rolls, pinch to close and flip over so the opening is on the bottom of the muffin tin. Sprinkle garlic salt on top. Bake for 13-15 minutes. 

These were perfect for a post-dinner snack. Ha!

Happy Monday!

Get your vegetable on!

Gotta get those veggies in somehow. I am pretty easy to eat my veggies. Now having a little one around, I'm doing everything I can to instill healthy eating and exploring new foods. So far, he's done great. 

Another great recipe that I found here and tried and the boys loved it! So much that I have no idea how many I made because they were eating them straight out of the oven. Luckily, I was able to grab a few for myself. These are great and a great finger food for toddlers. Woah, I have a toddler now.

Baked Zucchini Sticks (Original recipe here from SkinnyTaste) 

3 medium zucchini, sliced into sticks (3"x1/2". Mine were too skinny!)
1 large egg white
1/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs (I used basil, oregano, garlic powder)
2 tablespoon parmesan cheese (I added more)
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
cooking spray
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put egg white in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. In another bowl, or zip lock bag, place breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. Dip sticks into egg whites then into breadcrumbs and place on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Lightly spray sticks while on the cookie sheet. Cook in oven for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Serve with marinara sauce to dip in. WOW! These are great and a great way to get your veggies in!

Kid-Friendly, Dad-Approved Dinner

In an effort to be prepared for dinner time ahead of time with these two boys that I live with, I've come up with and found various recipes that help me do just that.

Thanks to various blogs, websites and cookbooks I can continue to find new and exciting things to eat and feed these hungry guys. I never realized how simple Chicken Nuggets were. I find myself saying while making these "Chickens don't have nuggets".

Easy Chicken Nuggets (Original recipe here from Weelicious)

1 lb chicken breast, cut into chunks (I've also used ground turkey too)
1/4 cup old fashioned oats
1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup panko bread crumbs 
1 tablespoon parmesan cheese grated
**2 tablespoons Wheat Germ (my own addition)

I have sub'd in ground turkey for the chicken and it did not taste any different. I've made these both ways before. I tend to add a little more parmesan cheese and I also added in some dried basil and oregano, about the same measurements as the parsley, to taste.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a food processor, combine chicken (or turkey), oats, parsley, garlic and onion powder and salt. Mix until meat is chopped and everything is mixed. 

Place bread crumbs and parmesan in a shallow bowl or dish, add in wheat germ. There is no taste difference. Keeps the nuggets crisp and just adds to crumb texture. Healthy addition! Form meat into small nuggets, about the size of your palm, but really as big or small as you wish. I would recommend keeping all nuggets about the same size, they will cook more evenly. Place nuggets in bread crumb mixture to coat.

Place nuggets on a cooling rack, on top of foil covered cookie sheet. Lightly spray nuggets with cooking spray (I use olive oil spray). Cook in oven for 15-18 minutes, and serve! These are also great as left overs in the fridge and warmed up the next night. Yum!

Huh, still blurry. Bummer.

These also work well if you want to freeze them. Just stop before cooking them. Freeze them on a pan and then transfer to a zip lock bag. When ready to cook, just pop them out of the freezer and onto a baking sheet with the cooling rack and spray with cooking spray. Cook for 18-20 minutes

Pumpkin Pancakes

Fall is leaves, cool temperatures, warm socks, hot chocolate & Pumpkin anything.

I love pumpkin anything, any time of year. Since everyone else is into pumpkin baking and the only thing I've baked pumpkin-wise has been bread, thought I'd give these a try. But, why do it the easy way? Let's do everything from scratch. Don't worry, its not much more work (seriously), I just didn't have the easy stuff (pancake mix) on hand. As I'm stocking up on pumpkin now, the real ones and baking them myself, I might as well make some good stuff with them. These are great for dinner the next day, or any time of day FYI.

Pumpkin Pancakes (from scratch, original recipe by me)

1 1/2 cup milk (soy or dairy-free work well too)

1 cup pumpkin puree (room temp)

1 egg

2 tablespoons apple sauce (in place of vegetable oil)

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 cups flour, white or whole wheat

3 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground all spice

1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon salt

1-2 teaspoons ground flaxseed

*Optional: 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a bowl, mix milk, pumpkin, egg, apple sauce & vinegar. If using vanilla add into milk mix. In a separate bowl combine flour, brown sugar, baking powder and soda and spices including flaxseed. Can use more flaxseed if you'd like. Adds a nutty-er taste but hardly can tell. Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients just enough to combine. Not mixing too much or the batter will make the pancakes too "heavy". I still haven't perfected this. Poor onto hot griddle and flip over when 'bubbling' begins. 

I'm not the best at cooking pancakes, still working on that. These had a slight enough pumpkin flavor but not overpowering. Personally, next time I'd add more pumpkin, vanilla and more cinnamon.

{Fall into Autumn: Northern Arizona}

Some things I love about Autumn are the the cool, crisp air, the leaves falling off the trees and the changing of the color of the leaves. Living in the desert with plants that don't lose their leaves, and cactus that don't exactly have leaves to lose, makes it difficult to see such things. Not to mention we just left our triple digit friends for the lower 90s a few days ago. Luckily for me, and many others that enjoy this, northern Arizona is not too far away! 

A little climb in elevation, drop in temperature about 20 degrees and a completely different climate exists. We drove up to Flagstaff last weekend and got to see some changing Aspen trees. Explored the hilly-mountainous area around Flagstaff and Jackson got his first hike in.
[Warning: Photo overload!] All from October 7.

Pinecones aren't that tasty.

Look Mom, I found dirt to play in!

Family trip success! Next on the agenda: Snow.