An Oatmeal a day

As I sit here with my littles this morning, after a long weekend at grandmas, I'm thinking about all that I have to do. I have 50 lbs of peaches that need canned sitting on my counter, countless fruit flys to send "home", and laundry up to my nose. But right now, this very second, I'm eating one of the best overnight Refrigerator Oatmeals I've had in awhile. I always love my go to banana peanut butter oatmeal from The Yummy Life...I won't lie that where I get most my overnight oatmeal recipes from, or I use her base and add a few different ingredients depending on what I have on hand.

Last night we pulled back into our home at 9:30 PM, frantically got the kids in bed, and the truck unloaded. It was then 10:00 and I knew I was going to have "a day" the next morning with two appts coming before noon. Baking muffins just wasn't an option, and I always have frozen pancakes or waffles on hand, but I just wasn't feeling it. I had very few ingredients, so I opted for an easy and quick peach overnight oatmeal....cause remember, I have 50 freakin pounds of peaches on my counter! haha

Here is the recipe (with my changes) for a delicious fresh peach overnight oatmeal:

1 cup milk (any kind, but if you use sweetened almond, it will make it sweeter)
1 cup greek yogurt (I used vanilla, but there is a peach one that would probably be really great)
1/2 tsp of vanilla (recipe called for 1/4 tsp)
2 T honey
2 cups non instant oats

You can then add in any fruits/nuts/etc that you want. This recipe I opted for

1 LARGE fresh peach cut into chunks
3 T chia seeds

Other add ins:
nuts such as chopped almonds, walnuts, pecans cashews
frozen fruit
fresh fruit
wheat germ

Put the milk, yogurt, vanilla, honey, oatmeal, and any non fruit add ins (especially chia seeds) in a ball jar (or any container that will fit all your ingredients. stir first with a spoon to get things mixed around, then put on a lid and shake baby shake! Open jar and add in addt add ins and mix carefully till they are all incorporated. Place in fridge overnight and eat in the morning.

We have enjoyed refrigerator oatmeal in summer and in winter...and I won't lie, I've made it and put it in a cooler for breakfast when we have gone camping!

I hope you enjoy this...there are many variations, so look around.

much love,

Annisa

Pumpkin Waffles and a Freezer Tip

Good Morning everyone! (ok, that's not how I feel until about 30 min after I officially open my eyes.) I'm a slow waker uper and as much as I love my husband helping out, helping out doesn't usually, in this case, include bringing the kids into me BEFORE I've had a good 30 min of wake up time....love you babe! But we are moms, and dads, and our jobs never end. So for our troubles, let's treat ourselves to some clean pumpkin waffles.

enter pumpkin waffles

I initially got the recipe from HERE but since it has 2 cups of white flour, I had to revise. If you don't want them clean, feel free to use the above recipe....I'm sure with the white flour its not a miss. If you want to clean it up, exchange the two cups of white flour her recipe calls for and change it to 2 cups of Whole Wheat flour...thats what I did.

Here is what I learned:

because the wheat flour is more dense, you tend to taste it more than you would white flour. So the next time I make this, I will put in 1 1/4 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice.

So, follow the recipe above, and change out the flour and add a bit more pumpkin pie spice.

We really enjoyed this recipe today and ate it with a small amount of butter and pure maple syrup. They syrup sweetened it up and gave it the edge it needed!

Now, for the freezer tip:

I'm a big freezer fan. I like to over-make the breakfasts I can so that when I AM in a daze, breakfast can be healthy and easy. Whenever I make waffles or pancakes, I make them as directed then place them on a plate so they can cool. Once they are cooled, I use wax paper and put the wax paper in between layers of waffles/pancakes. Then I put them in a ziploc baggie and get as much air out as possible. I put them in the freezer in a section I have dubbed breakfast (this section also has all my smoothie makings (bananas, spinach, fruit etc)). When I have mornings that I cannot make breakfast from scratch, I usually have something healthy in the freezer that just needs to be popped in the toaster and we are eating in less than 5 min. Perfect if you are Brian Reagan and need to be up and eating and out the door in less than 3 seconds.......and perfect if you don't want pop tarts.

Brian Reagan pop tarts

Enjoy the comedy, I need it this morning!!

Annisa

Muffin top....and muffin bottom

Do you ever have one of those lazy night watching Person of Interest or Elementary (my two drugs of choice currently) and see how "in shape" everyone seems to be? That was me Cira last night.  I vowed that I would get up this morning at 6:45 and work out for a half hour, get spiritually enlightened, and shower, all before thing one and thing two awoke. It all was going as planned until I was drowsily headed off to no mans land when my 2.5 year old woke up with "shadow syndrome"...you know, mommy! I'm scared of shadows. Ok, so I just made that name up but in my book it exists, and exists, and exists...all till 1 am. At that point I knew either I stick to my plan, or I'm nice to my kids today. I chose to be nice. ;)

I lieu of exercise, I knew I had to eat a really healthy but delicious breakfast....enter bran muffins.

Now before you go closing your browser, give me a chance! When I had my first baby, a friend of mine, Allison, brought me over these warm and delicious bran muffins. I was weary, but my man tried them first and before finishing one, said, hey, you need to get this recipe. They were really good and we ate them all. Jump forward nearly 3 years and a drastic change of lifestyle for my family. I had allison re-forward me the recipe and from there I made several revisions until today....I have found the hopefully final version of bran muffins.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Annisa's Clean Eating Bran Muffins:

I'm really proud of this recipe, and I hope that you enjoy. I even took it to two neighbors today and they both said they loved them. Thanks Whitney and Audrey for being my guinea pigs!!


Annisa's Clean Eating Bran Muffins
Mix and let sit for 3-5 min:
1 1/2 cup All Bran Cereal (try to find a healthy one with no added anything....lol)
1 3/4 cup Skim milk
1 Egg
1/2 cup Coconut oil (melted, but not boiling)
1/3 C honey (if you want these to be more sweet, add more honey, but with that comes more calories and a world of "I should stop eating now...really, and now....") I find that 1/3 c is just right

Add to the cereal mixture:
3/4 C Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 C Coconut Flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Mix the above and put into baking wrappers. This will make about 14-15 good size muffins. I made 12 muffins, and 9 tiny tiny muffins. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 min. Just enough so a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool and enjoy. I prefer no butter, but feel free to use the raspberry butter recipe on these or regular butter. Enjoy!!!

Butter, anyone?

My appologies for being...well, MIA for several months. I've had quite a summer, you know, moving, putting in a yard, raising kids, organizing my new homw, and sleeping a little somewhere in between all that. It's starting to get a bit cold here, and those of you who don't know me, will soon begin to understand that all I do in the winter, besides hanging out with thing one and thing two is BAKE, and COOK and GET CREATIVE!! So I told my husband a couple nights ago, I wanted to get back to blogging all my great finds. Which leads me to TODAY. Yikes, no more caps, I PROMISE.

This recipe is used for special occasions....big sigh....because its not clean...at all.
Although butter can sometimes be debated as clean or not, we use it here in our house and I feel its ok. The one debatable item here in this recipe is raspberry preserve. Ok, not debatable, its totally unclean, I'm talking high fructose corn syrup not clean. Thats why we don't make it very often, but we enjoy it when I do decide its ok. I found the recipe on Pinterest and you can go to that original post here.

There are several other recipes that call for additional sugar (I know, I was trying not to gag, because this is really sweet as it is. I would never want to add more sugar). In the future, I'm going to get the guts to try the no sugar raspberry preseve, and I'll post my finds on that as well.

I have not been able to duplicate my butter to look like the picture in the post provided, but trust me, when you taste this, it won't matter what it looks like. I'm still working on my photog or phratography skills, as my husband and I always joke. So todays wasn't stellar, but hey, its my first day back, its going to be rough!

This recipe is a huge hit wherever we go, or whomever we invite over, or whatever we put it on. I love to put it on our bran muffins...recipe forthcoming.

We are all smiles here and are looking forward to a great day!

As Ellen would say, "be nice to each other", and I wish the same. Cheers!

Annisa

Avocado and Egg Sandwich...with sprouts!

I felt like this was a good time to post this recipe I've had because it is the day after Easter...and the dilemma starts...what do I do with all these hard boiled eggs?? You can only have so many devilled eggs.

I had a few avocados the other day that I wanted to use up...ok, that NEEDED to be used up. So I went to my clean eating board on Pinterest and found a recipe I'd been wanting to try. I made a couple small changes, and it was delicious! Because my kids don't eat actual "sandwiches" yet, I just gave them some of the mixture and put it a bowl with a spoon. They ate it with crackers. I added sprouts to mine, and I'm sure if you wanted you could add some kind of cheese that you consider clean.

One thing about this recipe. You really need to eat it in one meal. Because avocado has a tendency to turn brown, its not very appealing a few hours later....bleh! Let me know if you like this, its a great alternative to adding mayonnaise to your egg salads, and adds some goodness!

Original recipe found HERE

Caesar Dressing....cause I'm in a salad mood

Well good morning everyone! I say good morning because my kids slept till almost 9, and I had a new friend stop by and surprised me with a visit (thanks Whitney!), so I'm JUST getting showered and now I realized its time for lunch! So I'm still celebrating my morning. haha

I had a friend from Utah ask me for a Caesar dressing recipe that I use because it doesn't have anchovies...and I have failed miserably to get it to her...until NOW. Its whats for lunch, so why wait?? Tipping my hat to you Susan!

There are a couple reasons why I love this dressing. First, because I'm not putting anchovies in ANYTHING I eat. Second, it really is that good. It isn't extremely thick like some mayo based dressings, but the good part is, there isn't a STITCH of mayo in this. This is clean, about 150 calories for 2Tbs, and just darn good. I hope you enjoy!

Caesar Dressing

1 C Olive Oil
1/4 C Water
2 Tbsp Lemon Juice (fresh is best, but I've used lemon juice from those yellow "lemon" looking containers...you know what I'm talking about...)
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 lg egg yolk
2 cloves garlic
1/4 C grated Parmesan Cheese (fresh is best, and then you can put some on top of the salad, but kraft can be used as well)

Add all ingredients to blender and blend well. Its best after it has been refrigerated for a couple hours. It thickens up  more that way.

I start with a bowl of thinly sliced romaine lettuce. I usually use mixed greens for almost any salad I use, but I find romaine sticks to tradition with this dressing. I then add grated parm cheese and top with croutons. If I'm making this for dinner, I do grill up some chicken and slice it for a more filling dish for Peter, but during lunch its me and this dressing SANS chicken.

I hope you enjoy this and let me know how well you like it.

Props to BLENDTEC for this recipe. YUM!

I'm back!!!! oh and a fruit smoothie....

Well, It has been an eventful couple of months. We moved, we have renters in our old home, we've already had to speak in church, and our new home is getting used to us being in it...I think.

I fell off the wagon last week (clean eating speaking) and I'm just unhappy when I do! I feel horrible, I'm sleepy, I'm grumpy, and I seem to not fit in my clothes very well (bloating I'm sure). So today we start again!!(cheers in the background)

My husband has been enjoying this hiatus and when I mentioned to him last night that the oreos and pringles he was stuffing in his mouth was going to be his last meal, he says, "oh, but we haven't eaten like this forever!" I have to admit I was proud of myself. Although it wasn't that hard to find recipes that peter would love, It has been hard keeping crap out of the house.

Today is a new day, and you can do ANYTHING with new days. I began my clean eating this morning with a Tropical Smoothie, and I'll share it with you below. Many cheers for all of you and sticking to clean eating, let me know if you've seen a difference!!

Tropical Breeze
(thanks Blendtec)

1 C. Pineapple Juice
1/4 c coconut milk
2 bananas (I used 2 frozen)
2 Tbsp shredded coconut (unsweetened)
2 C ice cubes

blend and enjoy!