Healthy Pumpkin Spice Muffins You'll Love

It's a rainy, warm, and muggy day in July (translation - movie day!), but inside my house it may as well be November! I've got my cozy pants on, fall scented candles burning, and pumpkin spice muffins in the oven. I just ran out of the zucchini muffins my little one brings to school, so it was time to make another batch!

I like muffins because they are portable, don't necessarily have to be refrigerated during the day, and they are easy for kids to eat. But, muffins can also be a calorie and sugar bomb if you're not careful. I've adapted this recipe over time and now feel confident giving them to my kids as a sweet treat that won't send them into that crazed and dazed look that they get when they have too much sugar. 

 Here's what Dr. Sears has to say about the affects of excess sugar on kids.

Here's the recipe and the nutritional low-down so you can make some of your own!

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Who says you have to wait for fall?

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup bread flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp pumpkin spice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup raisins

It's Easy:
1. Mix your dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls, and then combine them, stirring just enough to combine them. Do not over-stir or your muffins will be too tough.

2. Spoon into greased muffin tins about halfway full. I opt for smaller muffins. We can always have another one, but its hard to undo eating a big one!

3. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy!

This recipe should make 14 muffins, and each has 112 calories, 4 grams of fat, 3 grams of protein, and 5 grams of sugar, most of those coming from the raisins. Please note that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 12 grams of sugar each day for children. One of these muffins represents almost half of a child's sugar needs for the day. Take a look at a typical muffin recipe, note the amount of sugar called for, and consider where that muffins may fall in your child's sugar needs for the day!

To reduce the sugar in these muffins, do not use as many raisins.

Read more about sugar allowance in Sugar Shake Up: How Much Do You Need?

These muffins are sweet and simple, and I love that my kids love them. They made my house super cozy today and when paired with low-sugar yogurt or low-fat cheese, will make a great snack later in the week.

And, they make my house smell great!

Get out there and get healthy today, even if you bake muffins!

And the Healthy Moms Go Wild!

I've got two kids, and my friends have even more. And maybe its because I am in the wellness industry, but it seems that every time I turn around, another mom is pulling her hair out in frustration over the same thing: junk food, and how it is e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e in our kids lives. They vent to me, and I vent back to them, and we're all saying the same thing: "Stop giving my kids junk food!!!"

It may just be me, but it seems like in the past year or so I spend a lot more time playing defense for my kids. At every turn, junk food in the veil of "treats" awaits. It reminds me of this blog post I read a few months ago, which may as well be the anthem for healthy-minded parents everywhere.

Why is Everyone Always Giving My Kids Junk Food?

Camp. Vacation Bible School. Birthday parties. Vacation. Grandparents. Free cookies at the grocery store. Road trips. "Just this once." "Don't be so controlling." "Its not a big deal." It never ends - people want my kids to eat crappy food all day long, and they think I am over-reacting when I think that's a bad idea. But here's the thing - I am right.

Sorry, Charlie. Junk food is a major reason why our country is not only overwhelmingly obese, but getting sicker every day. Here's a clue to why.

8 Foods We Eat in the US That are Banned in Other Countries

And you know, I'm okay with my kids eating sweets once in a while. That's part of life and I don't expect them to never have a piece of cake or learn first-hand (because sometimes that's the only way you can learn) what happens when you eat an entire bag of gummy worms at once. But its not controlling, high-maintenance, over-reacting, or strict to try to prevent that from happening every dang day of your kids' life, or even every weekend.

It's good parenting.

And I would be so bold as to say that the opposite - consistently providing sweets, candy, known junk food, soda, juice, and other sugary and artificial foods to your kids - is bad parenting. There. I said it!

And I am worn out over it. I am wearing thin. I'm tired, my punches aren't as fast. My resolve is wavering. Because I am just TIRED OF FIGHTING. It would be so easy to let them sit and eat cookies all day long, trust me.

But they deserve better, and we are the ones to give it to them. We aren't doing them any favors by constantly offering junk food and assuming that a) they want it, b) that is all they will eat, and c) it's okay because they aren't overweight. Heart disease can begin as early as five years old, and chicken fingers are a major contributor.

I don't expect my children to live a monk's existence, but I don't think I'm being mean or elitist when I say no to fast food, juice boxes, the kid's menu, and candy as standard kid's fare. I hope that some day, my picky eater who wants to live on Annie's Chocolate Chipper granola bars and milk, will reach for an apple instead. All I can do is provide a good example and keep our standards high.

And in the meantime, it would help if you'd quit offering him fruit chews.

Love ya! Mean it! :) Get out there and get healthy, even if I just annoyed you a little.

Bread Snob Bakery: Homemade Pre-baked Pizza Crust

Yes I eat green beans with my homemade pizza. You don't?

I'm going on a family vacation, and when we travel to the beach, each member of the family takes responsibility for one night of dinner. My night is Pizza Night! We love to each have our own little crust so we can put on what we like. Having your own little pizza is also great for portion control because you can't really go back for more. 

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

Except that I'm a bread snob, and I knew that I would want to make the crust myself. But, I also knew I wouldn't have time to do that on vacation. So I resigned myself to buying store crust. I went to the grocery store, found some "healthy" crust, and put it in my buggy. Then I took it out. Then I took it back off the shelf, looked at the list of ingredients, and sighed. I knew I needed to do this. I needed to get over it, suck it up, and go for convenience. Dang it. I put it in my buggy and walked on. But I couldn't do it. I went back, put the crust back on the shelf, and decided I would find a way.

I just cannot buy that crap.

Luckily, making my own crust and pre-baking it a little made it just like store-bought crust but without all the cancer and stuff. Now we can still have Pizza Night and I can still have vacation, and I can feel 100% awesome about the food my children and precious little nieces are gobbling up after a day playing at the beach.

Here's how I did it.

1. Start with the basic pizza dough recipe. Mix the ingredients, knead for three minutes, allow to rise in a warm place for about two hours or until double in size, and then roll it out onto a lightly floured surface.

• 2 cups bread flour 
• 1 cup warm water (140 degrees)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 1/4 tsp (or one packet) dry active yeast
• garlic, italian seasoning, etc.

2. Separate your dough into five equal pieces. Because I am a portion freak, I got out my digital scale and weighed 100 grams each. This is going to be a 200-calorie crust.

All rolled out and ready for the oven!

3. Roll each piece into a circle, the size of which depending on the thickness of crust you like. I am a volume eater, so I roll mine pretty thin so I can fit lots of veggies on top.

4. Place each little crust onto a greased baking sheet or baking stone and put back into a warm oven to rise for another 30 minutes or so. If you're feeling all fancy and stuff, sprinkle each one with garlic and dried basil.

5. After they have risen, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake them for about 10 minutes.

Out of the oven, ready for storage.

6. After removing from the oven, lightly brush with olive oil. Lightly. Olive oil is good for you, but it has a lot of calories!

7. Allow them to cool, and then store in an air-tight container in the fridge until ready to use.

In my case, I kept them in the fridge for about three days and then took them out for a test dinner. I added sauce, toppings, and cheese just like I would for store-bought crust, and put them in the oven for 10 minutes at 450. The result was absolutely perfect. I was so pleased with myself! I asked my family members about 15 times how they liked it until they shouted, YES, THE PIZZA CRUST IS GOOD CAN WE TALK ABOUT MINECRAFT NOW?

Yum! Can you tell which of these is mine?

I'll be baking up another batch this week for our beach trip, and I expect another great result. You don't have to buy store crust if you don't want to. Sure, baking these crusts takes some time and effort, but it is well worth it to have the convenience later in the week without giving in to junky processed food. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Get out there and get healthy today, even if you have to plan Pizza Night.

So What's the Deal with GMOs?

So what's the deal with GMOs? Why is everyone mad about them, why don't companies want us to know when we're eating them, and what's the big deal? Well, here's the deal.

GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organisms, which are plants or animals that have been engineered using DNA from bacteria, viruses, or other plants or animals. GMOs are man-made or manipulated to meet the increasing demands of the food marketplace. Since genetically modifying food makes it produce a higher yield, be more resistant to drought and infection, and better tolerate the addition of nutrients, this type of science makes a lot of sense for food companies because they can make more food faster, which makes them more money. And remember, food companies are corporations, not human health service organizations, despite the smiling pictures of friendly neighborhood farmers on their packages of chips.

But what's good for a corporate budget isn't always good for humanity. More evidence is showing increased health problems and environmental damage as a result of GMOs. When I say health problems, I mean that GMOs have been linked to thousands of sick and dead livestock and damage to virtually every organ studied in lab animals. The reason is because genetically modified food is not food. It is a food-like substance. And the human body was created to eat food, not food-like substances.

GMOs are so serious that most developed nations, including Australia, Japan, the European Union, and dozens more, restrict or ban the production and sale of them. Why has America not taken the same position? Read the second paragraph again.

The reason why people are up in arms about GMOs these days is because we are becoming increasingly convinced that eating food-like substance is bad for us, and that we have a right to know whether or not what we are eating is food. Back in the good old days, if you wanted to eat healthfully you could do what I did when I started eating clean: focus on fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and whole grains, and avoid packaged foods. With the prevalence of GMOs, even these foods may not in fact be foods.

A lot of people think that we have a fundamental right to know whether we are in fact eating food, or if we are eating something that looks a lot like food but is in fact a man-made product posing as food. But, the United States does not require GMOs to be labeled, which prevents us from knowing the origin of our food unless we grow it ourselves. There are some enterprising and hard-working people out there who are willing to do this, but it is not a realistic option for most of us.

So what's a food-eating human to do? Well, food companies might not be required to label whether their products contain GMOs, but a few organizations have done that research for us:

The Non-GMO Project was created to give consumers an informed choice. They verify products and list them so you can be aware of which boxes on the shelf contain food and which do not. Check the list of Verified Products on their website before you head to the store. 

If you forget that list at home, no fear! This handy phone app, Buycott, lets you scan a barcode and see whether it contains GMO ingredients. When GMOs stop being profitable, they stop being.

And, you can take action as well by signing the Just Label It petition. Seriously, folks, this is about our food. Its our sustenance. Its what we feed our kids, and what our future depends on. We will most literally and completely die without it. You have a responsibility for your own health, and if you're going to choose a battle, choose this one.

Now, a note of reality - just as with the certified organic seal, foods that are listed as non-GMO are not necessarily healthy for you. There is plenty of sugary candy food out there bearing the organic and non-GMO labels. GMO-free only means that it is pure, natural, and real. Not healthy. There is a difference.

Get out there and get healthy today, even if it means you have to get all up in arms about food quality. That battle is worth it, because you are worth it.

Bread Snob Bakery: Homemade Bagels!

Well it is no secret that I am a food snob. Not a foodie, a food snob. There is a difference! I don't need fancy food, I just need good food! And, the height of my snobbishness is with bread. 

Bread these days usually can't even be called bread anymore. With dough conditioners and preservatives designed to extend the shelf life of breads, some of which have even been found to cause cancer, the bread aisle is probably the most confusing section of the grocery store. 

Learn about 5 bread ingredients you should avoid like the plague!

We deserve better bread! I love nothing more than a good burger (okay, maybe good pizza), but countless potentially epic cheeseburgers have been ruined by being served on a nothing bun out of a plastic bag. I pack my own homemade hamburger buns in ziplock bags to use in restaurants when I feel the bread is inferior. Yes it embarrasses my husband but I don't care. Its not like I wave it around and tell everyone! I'm cool, man, I'm just super passionate about bread.

See my homemade hamburger bun recipe here.

Well you can read all about my homemade hamburger buns (which this week feature minced onion), but this week I am making bagels. I tried this last weekend and sent them to my husband's office on Monday. He came back with raving reviews so I am making another batch today for our Memorial Day weekend trip.

You'll need a bread maker! Here's the recipe:

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon water
1 tbsp honey
3 cups bread flour
1.25 tsp salt
1.5 tsp dry active yeast
You can also add cinnamon, onion, garlic, poppy seeds, whatever you want!

Put all of the ingredients into the bread maker and select the Manual or Bagel Dough setting. 

Ignore the time on the bread maker and take the dough out after 50 minutes with lightly floured hands and separate it into 10 equal pieces. 

Roll each piece into a ball and poke a hole in the middle to make a bagel shape. 

Place each bagel onto a greased baking sheet and allow to rise in a warm place for 20 minutes or until double. If the hole in your bagel has closed up, just poke it out again. No biggie.

Boil some water in a big pot (2 quarts should do) and drop three bagels at a time into the boiling water. You want to leave enough space for them to swim around freely. After 15 seconds, flip them over and let them boil for 15 more seconds on the other side. Then, remove with a slotted spoon and let dry on a baking rack.

Once they have all been boiled, transfer them back to the baking sheet and bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until toasty on top.

Enjoy the aroma of good, simple, wholesome bread in your house for the rest of the day!

This process takes about an hour and a half from start to finish, with about 20 minutes of actual working time. You can do this. And more importantly, you should. Slow down, take your health seriously, and make time for better bread.

You deserve it!

Get out there and get healthy today - eat good bread!

The Bread Revolution (I'm losing it btw)

www.freedigitalphotos.net

Bread. I am having a serious love/hate relationship with bread. It's not a carb thing, it's a quality thing. For a clean eater who wants to buy simple, healthy food, the bread aisle is one of the most frustrating sections of the grocery store. As one of my dear friends vented to me recently, bread just gets more and more confusing. Soda, candy, and other junk food we know is bad for us. That's easy to spot. Not always easy to resist, but easy to identify as junk.

Bread, not so much. No, it masquerades as health food all day long! Just look at the packaging: brown, pictures of shafts of wheat alongside healthy-looking nuts, oats, seeds, and more. Humble farmers and old-timey font add to the message that this bread is just like the kind your grandma made.

Except I'm thinking your sweet grandma didn't go around to the local barbershops, sweep up the hair lying on the floors, boil it down in acid, and pour it into her bread. And I'm guessing she didn't stop at the market and pick up some Azodicarbonamide, either. Especially if she lives in Australia, Europe, or Singapore, since its been outlawed there and use of it will result in 15 years of imprisonment and $450,000 in fines. Bread just ain't what it used to be.

Why? Read more about five ingredients you shouldn't have in your bread.

It's gotten downright ridiculous. Preservatives and dough conditioners give bread a longer shelf life and predictable mouth-feel, but at what cost? Personally, I feel less and less comfortable buying commercial bread as I read more about the potential side effects of chemicals that are added for the convenience and profitability of the company that made it. Bread should be bread. Pure and simple.

Do we really need this stuff in our bread?

So, I've launched a bread revolution in my house. I'm taking back bread! I am so committed. I'm a bread-baking fool these days, and my home is filled with that wonderful aroma of yeast and dough. Its just great! Except for one thing. My family ain't buying it. Or eating it. They want their store-bought bread.

So the revolution, well, it's a little of a David and Goliath thing, with me holding a puny little slingshot and a nice warm loaf of bread as my rock. "Plenty of people would kill for homemade bread," I exclaim to my loving family. They understand. I try the martyr angle: "I guess I'll bring it to the homeless shelter, where people may appreciate it more." They nod sympathetically. I am stumped. Who on EARTH would not want homemade bread??? It's delicious! Seriously. 

Okay, so not all of my loaves have been masterpieces. And maybe I shouldn't have thrown out all of the bread in the house and provided only my experiments for sustenance. But I'm getting better, and I'm not giving up. This year, I will become good at baking bread, and more importantly, I will find at least one recipe that my family will eat for sandwiches. 

And yeah, I'm totally going to tell you all about it the whole time. Read here about one of my attempts - successful, yay! - at hamburger buns.

So, tell me - do you have any tried-and-true bread recipes for me to try? Post them in the comments! I'd love to give them a shot, try them out on the natives, and let you know how they like it!

Get out there and get healthy today, even if your family wants store-bought bread.

Homemade Hamburger Buns (Great taste, no cancer!)

One of my goals for 2013 is to find some bread recipes that my family will actually eat on a regular basis so I can stop buying the terrible bread currently offered in grocery stores. Even the "good" bread has dough conditioners and preservatives that include ingredients like human hair and substances known to cause cancer. How can I cook my sweet little boy a grilled cheese sandwich on cancer bread?!? I can't. That's why I bake bread.

Read more about how human hair ends up in your bread.

Tonight was experiment numero uno: hamburger buns. I am so happy with how they came out. I used a Betty Crocker Bread Machine Cookbook recipe and it's pretty simple. Now that I know the recipe works, I can start tinkering with different types of flour, adding seasoning, etc.

Here's the recipe for your bread machine:

My buns straight from the oven!

Ingredients
1 cup water
2 tbsp melted butter
1 egg
3 1/4 cups bread flour (I had to use all-purpose, which was fine, but bread flour would be best)
1/4 cup sugar (I'll be tinkering with lowering the sugar content)
1 tsp salt
3 tsp quick active dry yeast

Instructions: Place all ingredients into bread machine pan in order listed. Select the "dough" or "manual" setting on your bread machine and let it run. Mine took about 90 minutes to knead the dough. After it is done, remove the dough from the machine and let it rest on a lightly floured surface, covered with a towel, for 10 minutes. Then, shape into 15 small rolls, place on a greased cookie sheet, and allow to rise in a warm place for 30-40 minutes or until doubled in size. I flattened mine a little so they would be more like buns than rolls and put them in a warm oven. Once they have risen, bake them at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven, slice, and serve! Put unused buns in the freezer.

The result? They were really, really good. I had four taste testers and they all loved them! I doubt I will ever buy hamburger buns again. Give these a try! They are easy and well worth the time to bake them, especially since the bread machine does all the hard work!

Good bread is a real treat, and you deserve good bread. Get out there and get healthy! Skip the bread aisle and make your own!

The Healthy Food Serenade

Heads up: I'm about to reveal a potentially embarrassing but hopefully helpful fitness tip that I hope makes you either:

a) find comfort in the fact that as dorky as you are, there is someone even dorkier,
b) get inspired to try it yourself, or 
c) do both. :)

Music is a great motivator for me when I'm running, and I often use music with my clients to illustrate points, emphasize milestones, and celebrate the start of new exciting chapters in wellness. When I set out for a run, I crank it up and sometimes even stop to dance a little in the street. But over time, I've started catching myself finding more and more metaphors for food relationships in music. It first happened when I caught myself singing along to Queen's "Let Me Live" and directing the lyrics towards my anger at sugar for always taking, taking, taking and never giving back:

Why don't you take another little piece of my soul

Why don't you shape it and shake it

til you're really in control

All you do is take

And all I do is give

All that I'm asking

Is a chance to live

It seemed to really describe the roller coaster of trying to live in moderation with sugar, but knowing that I never really could have a healthy life as long as it was flowing through my body. Over the years, I've found more and more songs that illustrate how I feel about food - great food relationships and not-so-great ones - and really enjoy serenading them as I run. Today, it was Christina Augilera singing "Makes Me Wanna Pray." Here's a sample of the lyrics that seemed to define how I feel about healthy food:

What is this feeling coming over me?

I'm taken back in disbelief

Is this really me, ha! in the mirror I see?

Staring back at me: Could it be? 

A new reflection of a woman complete

All of a sudden I'm so care-free (well alright)

'cause love is doing something strange to me (well alright)

Got a new flame, ha! 

haven't been the same

Something in me's changed, rearranged

And I feel that I've been saved

You got me feeling like you're that something I've been missing

Everything's heaven 'cause life with you has been a blessing

If you click on the video below, turn it up loud! Come to that dorky place with me and sing a love song to the key to being in love with yourself, the choices you make, and the body you get to live in.

Get out there and get healthy today, even if you stop to dance in the streets and sing love songs to healthy food! I won't judge you. :)

Arsenic...GMOs...where does it end?

I've been sad this week in a way that I can't seem to shake. Usually, I can turn bad news upside down and find a way to be positive and optimistic about its significance. But this week, news of arsenic in our food coming to me on the heels of an article detailing the results of studies on GMOs and their affect on health, has made me downright depressed.

I'll admit it, I rolled my eyes and pshawed when my mom told me that now arsenic had been found in rice, chalking it up to a sensationalist media trying to scare up news on a slow day. After all, there are entire cultures that include rice as a staple of their diets. People have been eating rice for eons without trouble.

Well, almost. People have been eating rice for eons, but not necessarily the rice we eat now. No, these days it seems that food is one thing you don't want to "buy American." I came to this decision when the latest issue of Consumer Reports landed in my mailbox. Right there on page 22 was an article titled, "Arsenic in your food," with the subheading, "our findings show a real need for federal standards for this toxin."

My heart sank and I began to feel sick. For the past six months or so, my baby has eaten brown rice at least a few times a week, and the little "Cheerios" I give him to snack on are actually made from organic brown rice. Brown rice is perfect for baby casseroles, mixed with little veggies, beans, and cheese. He loves it. And I do, too. The Black Bean Jambalaya recipe I posted last week, along with other favorites from my Louisiana upbringing - red beans and rice, gumbo, you name it - all feature rice prominently, and I have lapped it up like a puppy my entire life. Now I feel like I have been spooning little bites of cancer into my baby's mouth, telling him how he was growing to be such a healthy boy.

But more than that, I just felt violated. I had also recently read this article sent by a friend about the results of studies conducted to determine the long-term effects of GMOs - genetically modified organisms - in our food. 

"Safe" levels of GMOs can cause tumors and multiple organ damage

In short, it isn't good: tumors, organ damage, etc. GMOs are in more than we think, and the latest news from TakePart tells us that regulation for labeling of GMOs is still a long way off, which means we are likely eating them and don't even know it.

Which "natural" food companies are fighting the effort to label GMOs?

And what sickens me even more is that fruits, vegetables, and grains should be safe. Sure, when you buy packaged food you know you're likely getting crap. Even the stuff with the organic label. Preservatives and sugar and preservatives and sugar no matter how brown the package is or how many solemn farmers are on the front of the label. But produce? Even if you don't buy organic - which many people do not either because of cost or lack of access in their community - fruits, vegetables, and grains should be safe. 

Why the Farm Bill failed and what that means for us.

Now, it feels like even that is questionable. 

As I went through my pantry and freezer tossing our rice and the cute little frozen muffins of baby food into the trash, I began to get angry. As I studied the labels of the few processed foods I do buy to look for hidden sources of arsenic rice, I got downright pissed off. 

Of course, the FDA says that there is no need to freak out about any of this and that we should not change our eating habits because of a little bit of poison - an actual poison, I'm not just being dramatic - in our food. 

How freaked out should you be about arsenic in rice?

And of course they do. The food industry is a very powerful and intimidating lobby.

What the hell? Where does this end? At what point will the health and safety of human lives take precedence over profit and business? 

Get out there and get healthy today, working for change in the way our food is grown, regulated, and distributed. It will take a lot of people demanding change - and voting with their forks and wallets - but it can happen. 

We deserve better.

Homemade Hot Pockets! Kinda!

One nice thing about having a baby around is that we don't have leftovers anymore. I spent years training myself to cook less food because the leftovers went to waste, but now I have a welcoming repository for them: my baby's tummy. And this week, I impressed myself by taking a collection of leftovers and making them into what turned out to be pretty much homemade hot pockets.

I've always admired those people who turn one meal into several by just rearranging leftovers. And this week I was one of them! I had a leftover bbq chicken breast from the night before, and more homemade pizza crust than I could fit on the pan for that night's dinner. After foraging around in the fridge for a few more things, I made these chicken wrap-ups that will be the perfect thing for his little lunchbox. Here's what I did:

Ingredients
A bunch of spinach, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
Some red onion, chopped
1 grilled boneless chicken breast, chopped
About 1/2 a cup plain yogurt (I used Oikos Greek)
About 1/4 cup sour cream
Whole wheat pizza-style crust (I use this recipe to make pizza crust at home and it works well)

Directions

1. Sauté the spinach, celery, and onion in a pan until they are cooked through. Since I was making this for my baby, I made them really tender. You can use your own discretion.

2. While that's cooking, mix the chicken, yogurt, and sour cream in a bowl. This is essentially chicken salad. Add salt, pepper, whatever you think will be good. I put in some cajun seasoning 'cause my baby likes the spice y'all.

3. Roll out your dough and use a biscuit cutter (or a glass, like I do) to make little crusts. In retrospect, these were a little too small so for bigger appetites use something bigger, like a bowl, to make your cut-outs.

4. Put a dollop of your chicken salad on the dough and fold it over! I used a fork to press the edges together so it would stay closed in the oven.

5. Spray a  pan and lay them out. Bake at 450 for about 15-20 minutes or until they are golden brown on top. 

6. Enjoy! You have just made homemade hot pockets!

You could fill them with anything, but of course I would recommend not going the pizza/cheese/meat route. Egg whites scrambled with spinach and onion might be a nice idea! Or, apples with cinnamon and chopped pecans would warm a crisp fall afternoon. 

Get out there and get healthy with your leftovers!

The Lasagna Everyone Wants to Know About

I make a mean lasagna. It's really, really good. I make it for people when they have babies or surgery or some other life event that is accompanied by comfort food. Since I've recently had friends who have had surgery and had babies, I've been making a lot of lasagna.

I think a lot of times people think I must be this really great cook because I like healthy food, but I'm not. I'm average. So when people ask for my "recipes" for stuff, I worry that they'll be disappointed in the simplicity of what I make. There are no exotic ingredients, no secrets, and not much wow factor. I'm not a foodie, I just make food. But, whenever I make lasagna people want the recipe so here it is!

Healthy Heather's Super Easy Lasagna

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground turkey breast 
• 1 chopped red onion
• 1 jar of crushed tomatoes (a big one, like 24 ounces)
• Italian seasoning, garlic, salt, pepper
• 1/2 package of 100% whole wheat lasagna noodles
• 1 bag of fresh spinach
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Directions
Cook the turkey in a large, deep skillet and then drain it to wash away any grease. There probably isn't any but do it anyway.

Then add your chopped onion and cook until the onions are almost clear. Add in your tomatoes, season it up with garlic, salt, pepper, and italian seasoning until it tastes good to you.

Then let it simmer until most of the liquid is gone and it is almost like chili. This might take a while so go run a few miles, do some burpees and some high knees, and come back after you're done with all that.

Mix your ricotta cheese with the parmesan cheese, add in some dried basil and garlic, and set it aside. Try very very hard not to taste this because once you do you will want to eat it with a spoon!

Next boil a big pot of water and cook the noodles. 9 noodles does the trick for me, as I put my lasagna in an 8x8 pan and that's enough for three layers. But you can use less or more depending on the size of your pan. See how I am not a good cook? I'm just winging it here.

Anyway, once the noodles are cooked and your sauce is nice and thick, it's time to layer. I start with a layer of noodles, then spoon some sauce over them. Since the sauce is thick, I spoon it in 9 little spots on the noodles, three across each one like where you would cut a piece. Put a thin sprinkling of mozzarella cheese, and then cover the sauce/mozzarella layer with a nice layer of spinach. Next comes the ricotta/parmesan cheese mixture, and I do the same thing with the three spoonfuls across each noodle, nine total. Then, start again! Noodle, sauce, mozzarella, spinach, ricotta. Then a third time. Eventually you'll run out of ingredients and you're done. Put some more mozzarella cheese on top, sprinkle some Italian seasoning over it, and viola! You have a lasagna.

Bake it at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes or until it is all bubbly and looks done. Serve with a ginormous salad of spinach, tomatoes, banana peppers, red onion, kalamata olives (just a few!), cucumbers, and a sprinkling of feta cheese. That's so you don't eat too much lasagna. :)

It's not bad nutrition-wise: about 250 calories per serving! It's hearty, delicious, and definitely comforting. I'm glad people like it so much! 

Get out there and get healthy today, even if you eat lasagna. :)

Our Food Journey: Going Grass-Fed!

Back at the beginning of summer, I wrote this post about my goal to gradually transition my family to an organic diet. I set the goal to make switches and swaps on the grocery list every week until we were eating a more ecologically friendly and pesticide-free palate of food. That journey has progressed nicely, but not in the way I expected. While we are eating some things organic that we weren't before, the real transition has been in even more processed foods being eliminated from the grocery list.

Instead of buying bread, I'm baking it. Granola bars and other processed snacks, even those touting the USDA Organic seal, are rare. My son has made a great transition to eating fruit and cheese for snacks instead of (yes, still organic but still processed) cheddar bunnies or peanut butter crackers. It's nice to have an almost-bare pantry and an overflowing fridge.

But last week I picked up The Omnivore's Dilemma again and started reading. I've been taking some rest days from running and spending two days a week on the elliptical, which gives me time to read. And, that means time to start thinking again about the way our food choices affect the world around us.

I've never claimed to be an environmentalist or animal activist. I'm not against those appeals, its just that my focus is on eating simpler food for health's sake, not the world's. But, the more I read the more the two worlds get closer together. That's what led me to the store looking for grass-fed beef this week.

I've eaten grass-fed beef before but more out of curiosity than anything else. Now I'm more mom-on-a-mission to avoid being part of the machine. That's why this article called "Truth in Labeling" was so valuable to me: it sheds light on the new supermarket lingo and offers a reality check on food labels. We all know food marketers will say whatever it takes to get us to buy buy buy, but the FDA also muddies the waters with loopholes, technicalities, and grandfather clauses that make what we think is organic and clean, well, not quite. It annoys me that I feel like I need a graduate degree in semantics just to go grocery shopping, but I'm also thankful that there are resources to help me figure it all out.

I am not a food photographer.
But this bison burger was delish!

I made a bison burger this week for the first time! It was delicious and I'm looking forward to making more swaps to friendlier meat. My pantry and fridge are not 100% organic yet, but hey - I gave myself until the end of the year! We're on our way!

Get out there and get healthy today, even if it means learning the secret grocery store code!

How Food Becomes Candy

I just made a snack for my son: some pineapple, a few strawberries, and a low-fat cheese stick. He gobbled down the strawberries and poked at the pineapple. 

"You know I don't like new fruit, mom."

"Try it. You'll like it. It's super-sweet."

"Like candy?"

"Almost. I think fruit is sweeter than candy. It's like candy from nature."

This exchange reminded me of how quickly food in our world doesn't just taste like candy, it becomes candy. One stroll down the yogurt aisle proves it.

What is yogurt? Cultured milk, right? Yes. But look at the label for 90% of the yogurt in your grocery store and tell me how many are really yogurt. Let's take a look at Chobani's Pineapple Low-fat Yogurt for example. The package promises only natural ingredients, fruit on the bottom, and features that "it-must-be-good-for-me" buzz word for yogurt: "Greek". Flip it over and see what else it has:

Evaporated Cane Juice, Pineapple, Pectin, Pineapple Juice Concentrate, Locust Bean Gum, Natural Flavor, Turmeric (for Color).

First ingredient: sugar. Oops! This just became candy!

Let's try another one. Stoneyfield Farms Organic YoBaby Drinkable Yogurt for toddlers. It's organic, so it must be good, right? Well let's see. It starts out as yogurt with its first ingredient: cultured whole milk. Then it adds organic sugar. Woah! It just became candy! See how fast that happened? And I used to give that to my son. Yes it is organic but it doesn't matter anymore because this is not food. It's candy. And we don't eat candy because candy isn't food.

I made this at home. It was super yummy and had that oh-so-magical Greek yogurt, all-natural ingredients, and fruit on the bottom. And the top and middle, too. But it didn't have any sugar. It was not candy. It was food!  My little baby eats fruit and yogurt all the time, but not YoBaby. I make him Greek yogurt with some pureed mango mixed in. Sometimes blueberries. But no sugar. Babies don't eat candy, silly! 

Both Chobani and Stoneyfield Farms have some excellent products that actually are food. They are the ones where the list of ingredients begins and ends with, "cultured milk." I buy and eat them all the time and they're great! I add my own fruit and nuts to make them into a delicious snack that tastes like candy...but isn't.

I saw this at my local grocery store and knew that a lot of people would pick it up thinking it would be a healthy snack. Its fresh fruit and yogurt! Doesn't Gillian Michaels eat that? But wait...take a look at the ingredients list. I see cultured milk....and then a whole bunch of other stuff including sugar, artificial sweetener, corn starch, and down at the very bottom, fruit. This is not food. This is candy. Put it back and go get food.

The yogurt aisle is just one place where candy is pretending to be food. Check out the bread aisle, and OMG just the cereal aisle alone is practically like trick-or-treating. How do you not buy candy? Easy. Read the ingredients and put back anything that has sugar as one of the first five ingredients. Oh, and beware of anything with more than five ingredients. :) Hint: You might want to buy a bread maker and start eating oatmeal.

Candy is not forbidden in my house. We trick or treat and we have candy canes at Christmas and jelly beans at Easter just like everyone else. But, we don't let candy pretend it is food. The next time you head to the grocery store, plan to spend a little extra time reading labels and make sure you're buying actual food. 

Get out there and get healthy today, even if it means not letting your kids eat candy and call it food.

HH