When life hands you bananas...

With Rhiannon's early, early weekly schedule, breakfast is tricky.  A 5:00 am breakfast before seminary makes her feel yucky, so what we've done this week are quick muffins or breakfast burritos on the drive from seminary to school.  I made them up the week before school started and threw them in the freezer. All they need is a quick minute or less in the microwave before I go pick her up.  It has been great!

These have been favorite muffin winners so far:

Mel's Kitchen Cafe Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Oh my goodness, these are good!  They were the first ones to go.

Second place were these power muffins found on a website that featured kid-approved and diabetic friendly recipes.  I was just looking for a recipe that had greek yogurt in it, for added protein.  I like these muffins, but I like them even better heated up with some butter spread on them, haha!  Next time I'd skip paper liners and just grease the muffin tins really well, because these muffins tended to stick to the paper.  Still yummy, though!  And I had all the ingredients!

Power Muffins:  Blueberry + Yogurt + Oatmeal

So, with my muffin supply running low, it seemed fortuitous when a friend gave me a bag of bananas yesterday that were ripe and ready to go!  I made more muffins!  I enjoyed putting my food processor to work and used my can of dried eggs, too--I LOVE using dehydrated eggs in baking but haven't figured out how to make them work for scrambled eggs or "fresh" concoctions yet.  The one time I tried it wasn't...good.

  

These banana oat chocolate chip muffins turned out pretty good!  They don't have flour or oil in them!  And c'mon, anything with chocolate chips is good, right?

Banana Oat Greek Yogurt Muffins

As far as the breakfast burritos go, Jason, Rhiannon, and I have devoured them.  Wade isn't a scrambled eggs fan so they're not his favorite.  Leaves more for us!  These are fun and FAST to make!  I cooked a large pan of scrambled eggs, browned a tube of turkey sausage, and then assembled these little pockets by putting eggs, sausage, and some shredded cheddar cheese in the middle of a large burrito-size tortilla.  Then I folded the sides up and grilled them on my electric griddle until both sides were browned.  Tasty and EASY!!!

Thanks to Google and the Internet, I finally figured out how to freeze up all this goodness, too.  I learned that once you've cooked/baked to your heart's content, you:

1) let the food items cool completely to room temperature  (this doesn't take too long)

2) place food on a baking tray and put them in your freezer for 1-2 hours  (HURRAY for my big freezer!)

3) pop them in a freezer bag and call it good!

4) store in freezer for up to 3 months

Who knows how long we'll do this, but for now, breakfast burritos and muffins are saving our mornings!

A comedy of errors

Last Thursday was a comedy of multiple errors.  I spent over four hours making sugar cookies for Wade's Arrow of Light ceremony.  I've made sugar cookies countless times, but for some reason that day was one miss after another.  Here's how it went down:

Error #1:  I forgot the eggs in the first batch of dough and had to add them at the very end.

Error #2:  The second batch of dough was super sticky.  Thankfully I realized in time that I had used the half-cup measuring cup instead of the cup, so I knew how much flour had been left out.

Error #3:  Trying to glaze the cookies.  I had images in my head of the wonderful EASY glazed Christmas sugar cookies we made growing up, but instead of calling my mom for the glaze recipe, I found one online and went for it.  It was disgusting and slid right off the cookies.  40 cookies went straight to the trashcan.

Error #4:  Food coloring.  Luckily I had ONE can of vanilla frosting and had j.u.s.t. e.n.o.u.g.h to frost all 85 arrow cookies--this was a small miracle because I did NOT want to go to the store!  However, when I added my Wilton yellow food coloring gel, the color was attrocious and came out more a peachy color instead of yellow.  By that time I simply DID NOT CARE.

Final Fail:  I went to shake sprinkles on the cookies and didn't check one of the bottles.  Since it didn't have a shaker top, I ended up dumping half the bottle of sprinkles on one cookie.  Nice.  I was really happy I had that other bottle!

In the end, my little labor of love turned out fine.  I kept saying to myself, "I'm doing this for Wade.  I'm doing this for Wade.  I WILL make this happen for Wade."  The kids at the pack meeting loved them and they were all gone in 5 minutes.  Score!

Some big "firsts" today

It's been a happy, busy Saturday!

Jason and I got our P90X3 workouts in.

I took the dogs for a good walk.

Wade (with a little help from Mom) got his science project board completed.

We went to Game Stop and cashed in a gift card from the Round Rock Sheens (thanks, guys!!!!!!!!!!!)!

Rhiannon had a blast at her second-to-last volleyball clinic class.  She said they worked on a lot of defensive moves today.  She'll be sad when the class ends next week and asked me if we could get a volleyball so she could practice some of the things she's learned in the backyard.  :)  I love that she's having a good time with it.  Besides tennis and swim lessons and one season of soccer, she hasn't tried anything else "sporty".  She said she could definitely see herself wanting to do volleyball again--here in town they offer this particular clinic to kids all the way up to age 19--yay!

Wade scored his first-ever touchdown in his team's flag football game this afternoon.  It was a pretty exciting moment, the first time he's done that since he started playing flag football a few years ago.  We'd never seen him run that fast, ha-ha!  We asked him how he felt when he got the ball in his hands, and he said, "I felt like I was on steroids!"  Adrenal kicked in and got him to the goal line!

And then tonight the kids joined me in the kitchen for their first official "Cooking with Mom" lesson of the year.  Last year I failed in my goal to teach them 12 meals.  This year I said we'd do 6, and we got off to a great start tonight.  For the first time ever, both kids cut up raw chicken (and survived).  They read the recipe, got all the ingredients prepped, and then made the meal with very little help from me.  They learned 3 cooking tips:  be safe, be clean, and always get your ingredients together before you start (so that you know you have everything!)  It was cool, and the "Angel Hair Pasta with Chicken, Broccoli, and Carrots" was tasty!  Good job, kids!

For their reward, I told them I'd take care of kitchen clean-up for the night.

Which is why I'm procrastinating and blogging right now, HA! :)

Happy Saturday!