new years resolution: eat healthier

we had 3 couples over for a new years brunch yesterday. and despite all the food that we were going to have, at the last second i decided to "whip up" some muffins as well. why is "whip up" in quotations you ask? read my profile over there to the right.

however...all ingredients were in my pantry (in their mod. mates) including the wheat bran and the ground flax seed. and what makes this recipe time consuming is the grating of the carrots and apples. but this time, i pulled out my quick chef, threw in my carrots, spun, and measured into the bowl. then the apples, spun, and measured. and it was done. in maybe a quarter of the time. woah. maybe i'll make muffins more than once this year...

i got this recipe from my mom - the carrot and apple keep them moist only needing TWO tbsp of oil! the wheat bran and flax make them higher in fibre. they're my favourites and until my quick chef, i only got them when my mom made them. not anymore...

1 1/2cup flour

3/4 cup ground flax seed

3/4 cup wheat bran

1 cup brown sugar

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt (but i never put this in)

2 tsp. cinnamon

3/4 cup milk

2 eggs

2 Tbsp. oil

2 cups shredded carrot

2 cups shredded apple

1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins (i didn't use either)

1 cup shredded coconut or walnuts (i used coconut)

mix it all up. put batter into muffin papers (b/c they can be a little sticky straight into a muffin pan and i don't want to have to wash it of course). they don't rise too too much so fill the cups about 3/4 of the way full. bake at 350F for about 15 minutes. it makes 18 - 20 decent sized muffins. yum.

they went over well at our brunch and this morning here's one with my coffee.

"i'd whip up some cookies but my sugar is a rock"

sure, i'm not a baker. but i am a wife. i'm a wife with a husband who has excited fits over other people's baking to the point of embarrassment. sometimes it's like the guy had never had a cookie ever in his life when my mom pulls out her homemade peanutbutter cookies. it's enough to make a non-baker try her hand at baking every once in a blue moon. like, how hard could it be?

when you rarely bake, you have to go out and buy all your ingredients every time. you bought that brown sugar a couple months ago, used a cup, then let it turn to stone in the bag you bought it in. sure, when i tell people this, they want to tell me a trick to softening brown sugar with bread or an apple but when baking inspiration hits, there's no time for such tricks.

well one evening, i had friends coming over in the evening. i thought to myself, "why don't i whip up a batch of cookies?" and i began to scour my one cookbook for a cookie recipe with ingredients i had. chocolate chip. because i had started many a recipe without checking first to see if i had everything, i eyeballed my pantry - bag of brown sugar? check. bag of chocolate chips? check. flour? check. i looked ready.

i started to mix. 1 cup of flour. i pulled out that bag of flour - it was whole wheat. shoot! where was the white flour? oh yeah, i now remember using that up a few months ago. oh well - it's still flour. add brown sugar. i picked up the bulk bag. stone. hmm... i tried shaving off chunks and after having no success i thought, "what's wrong with white sugar?" and added it to the bowl. things started going a little smoother until it was time for the chocolate chips. i reached for the bag in the pantry only to discover eight chips in it. my husband, desperate for sweets, had slowly eaten the entire bag handful by handful since the last time i'd attempted chocolate chip cookies a couple years earlier. i had some dried cranberries. they're sweet. into the bowl.

i pulled these albino cookies out of the oven as our friends were making their way in. the cookies looked terrible. after a test bite, turned out they didn't taste so great either. i put them on a plate and put them on the table anyways. my husband ate them, happy to see something resembling cookies. no one else did. and that was the last time i made cookies until i stocked my pantry with modular mates.

i now have soft brown sugar, lots of flour, and chocolate chips. i no longer have the bulk bags strewn around in my pantry either which makes it much more organized.

the modular mates are on sale beginning december 26th and on into january - 40% OFF! this is the time to begin your pantry organization. it can be your new years resolution. i bought my super oval modular mate sets with my host credit at my first tupperware party (yes, not on sale - haha.) hosting a party makes you money and from december 26 - january 15th, if you host a party, you get DOUBLE the host credits. that can buy you a lot of modular mates.