The kids both had dentist appointments during school today. I still had them pack their lunches because I would be picking them up during their lunch breaks. My daughter had leftover pasta, string cheese, and fruit. My son had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and fruit.
There was a small container of leftover black beans that were processed with homemade salsa. I decided to make a wrap and put that on it. I sauteed up some onion, mushrooms, red/yellow/green peppers, garlic, zucchini, and yellow squash. I normally have raw spinach but today decided to throw it in the saute as well. I seasoned it with the garlic wine seasoning and used some local white wine. As I was building my wrap, I decided to go a little healthier today than normal. I only added avocado and cilantro versus piling on cheese and sour cream too. And guess what? It was still delicious!
I wanted to do a little baking today for two reasons. 1) My son asked for muffins recently. 2) I have multiple muffin ingredients that need to get used up soon. I started off with grabbing some sweet potatoes. I diced them and boiled them then put them through the food processor until I had a nice smooth mash. While they cooled, I got to work figuring out what recipe to use. I had made sweet potato bread several months ago and we all loved it. I found the recipe and decided to try to make a few changes to it so that it would be healthier (not as much sugar and no oil). I hardly ever make up recipes for baking because I'm always worried it won't turn out. For some reason, today I decided to dig in.
Original recipe called for 3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar. Man. That is a LOT of sugar. It also called for 1/2 cup oil. I decided to try 1/4 cup of each sugar and instead of oil to use 4 ounces of applesauce (one of the single serve packs). After they were mixed, I added in two eggs. The dry ingredients were mixed separately: 1 3/4 cup flour, 1 tsp soda, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg. Alternately add some of the dry ingredients and then add some water (1/3 cup water total). After it is all mixed, stir in 1 cup mashed sweet potatoes. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. I added a handful of craisins to half of the batch. Fingers crossed.... Not quite right. The muffins were really dense and didn't fluff up like normal. At this point, I was knee deep in competition with these muffins and I was not about to let them win. Round two. I decided to add in an extra tablespoon of each sugar. I also added in 1/4 cup of vegetable oil. I figured that maybe they needed some fat in them. I added 1/2 cup sweet potatoes and 1/2 cup mashed banana. I kept the rest of the ingredients the same (minus craisins because I had used the end of the bag). Ahhh. Much better. I wouldn't call these perfection just yet but they are well on their way. My daughter liked the banana sweet potato muffins. She said they could use more cinnamon though (I agree). My son liked the sweet potato muffins better. Really? I was surprised because of their texture. Although the sweet potato flavor really is delicious. I have quite a bit of the sweet potato mash leftover. Looks like round three will wait for another day...
After all the muffin making and dish washing, I really didn't feel like cooking dinner. We had to eat quickly in order to make it to a meeting at their school. I thought about just going out and grabbing Subway on the way to the meeting. Ugh. I don't want to give in. I'll end up being crabby later for spending the money. I found a partial bag of ravioli in the freezer. I heated up a jar of our homemade spaghetti sauce. I settled on a side salad of spinach, romaine lettuce, mushrooms, red onion, cucumber, and sunflower seeds. I found a small container leftover from my lunch of the sauteed vegetables so I threw those on the salad too. Why have I never done that before? Yum!
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