Banana Oat Smoothie

This makes a great quick breakfast smoothie. I was drinking them almost daily for a while, just to break up the eggs-and-toast nightmare routine. (Okay, it wasn't really a nightmare--I like eggs and toast--but seriously, every day?)

Banana Oat Smoothie with cinnamon instead of cocoa.

You can play around with this quite a bit--try different greens, or some spices like nutmeg or cinnamon (those are really good in this, actually, with or without the cocoa powder). It's fairly forgiving because of the oats, banana, and cocoa powder. Together, they cover a multitude of flavors. (And when it looks like chocolate, even little kids will drink it!)

This recipe makes one good-sized mug full.

Ingredients:
1/3 c. oats
handful of spinach, rinsed
2 Romain lettuce leaves, rinsed
2 bananas
1/3 c. milk (or nut milk or whatever you prefer)
1/2 t. cocoa powder

Directions:
1. In blender, grind up oats until very fine. Add spinach and lettuce and grind again until greens are pureed. (A bit of liquid goes a long way in this, so if they're taking their time, pour in just a teeny bit of water or milk to help it go down.)
2. Add remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth.

Fried Oats and Applesauce

This little breakfast treat has come up twice in conversation in the past week or so, so I figured I'd put it up on here. Try as I might though, I could not get a decent picture of it--sorry guys! But that's not the important thing, right? On to main event!

Okay, before we actually get to that we do have to take a little detour. I grew up eating this and it was pretty much the only way I'd eat oatmeal. My whole family loved oatmeal the traditional mush style. I wanted to like it, really I did, but I tried it every way I'd ever heard of and none of them did it for me. Fried oats though is delicious. Now that I make it for myself, and especially with this pregnancy, I make it the healthy way. Both the sugared-up way and the sugar-free way are delicious. Basically to make sugar-free fried oats, leave out the sugar, brown sugar, and use unsweetened applesauce and whipped cream (those last two I do even if I'm not watching my sugar intake--I just don't buy sweetened applesauce).

Sugared-Up Fried Oats (aka: Papa Conner's Fried Oats)
For ONE serving:
1 to 2 T. butter
1/2 c. whole oats
2 T. sugar
2 T. brown sugar
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. nutmeg
1/3 c. applesauce (I highly recommend making sure it's cold--the only warm applesauce that should ever exist is homemade applesauce your grammy just finished making)
whipped cream (I just put in a tad of vanilla)

1. In a pan over medium heat, melt butter. When butter is completely melted but not browned, add oats. Stir well to coat oats in butter. Allow to fry for about two minutes, stirring occasionally so all the oats are lightly toasted. Add sugars and spices. Stir to coat the oats.

2. Place applesauce in the bottom of your serving bowl. Pour the oats over the top and listen to it sizzle! Add a dollop (or a layer, if you're me) of whipped cream over the top. Eat and be delighted!

Popovers

This is a wonderful, no-fail recipe.  I made them for Sunday morning and they turned out to be the best popovers I've ever eaten!

2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 450 degrees and grease 6 muffin tin cups well (I just spray them well with cooking spray).  In a medium bowl, lightly beat eggs.  Add flour, milk, and salt and whisk just until smooth--do NOT overbeat.  Pour batter into muffin cups to fill.  Bake at 450 for 20 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350 and bake for an additional 20 minutes.  Serve immediately.  Makes 5 or 6 large popovers.

Pumpkin Bread

My church has started a test kitchen and we held our first meeting last week. (We also started a blog. Guess who's in charge? You can visit it here.) The theme for our first meeting was pumpkin and other gourds and root vegetables. There was some pretty creative stuff there, but I admit, I was expecting lots of pumpkin pies and pumpkin bread. I also admit that though that was what I was expecting I decided to make pumpkin bread anyway, and yes, I was one of the two people who had brought something someone else did. A food party faux pas, which I am now over.

Anyway, when I found a recipe that seemed good enough, I delved in whole-heartedly, only to come to things like, "3 cups sugar" and "1 cup oil" and think, "I bet I could do better..." and I--well--I don't know if I did or not to be honest, since I never made the original recipe! But this recipe is at least a little healthier, and oh-so-moist! 

Ingredients:

1 can (15 oz.) solid pack pumpkin

3 eggs

1/2 c. oil

1/2 c. yogurt (plain or vanilla)

2/3 c. water

2 1/4 c. sugar

3 c. flour

2 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

1 t. nutmeg

1/2 t. cloves

1/2 t. ginger

Directions:

1. Mix pumpkin, eggs, oil, yogurt, water, and sugar together. Blend well.

2. In separate bowl, dry whisk the remaining ingredients (flour through ginger). Add to pumpkin mixture in three batches, mixing well after each addition.

3. Pour batter into prepared baking tins (this made two 4-by-9 loaves). Bake at 350* for 50 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes. Remove to a wire rack and cool completely.

NOTE: My loaves started darkening quite a bit around the edges, so I put some tin foil over just those spots to keep them from burning.