Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.
-Jim Davis, Garfield

Well. much to my surprise and great pleasure, my obsessive battle with a sinister enemy paid off. We have been enjoying a plentiful harvest of zucchini this summer. 

(The funny little surprise of our summer was finding out that our heirloom zucchini from last year must have been cross-pollinated with my pumpkins, resulting in some very interestingly shaped zucchini this year. Suggested name choices have been "pumpchinis" and "zumpkins".)

Here's the truth about me. I'm not real wild about just eating a piece of zucchini. The flavor puts me off a bit, but I'm really not a fan of the texture. Thankfully zucchini is delicious prepared in all kinds of ways that tend to hide what you're actually eating.

I thought I'd share a few of my favorites with you, just in case your fridge is overflowing with the green stuff too.

First off, the quickest way for me to get everyone in our house to eat a whole zucchini with no drama: I grate it up into spaghetti sauce. You'd never even know it's there. I've made spaghetti, lasagna, baked ziti. Nobody notices it at all!

Second, nothing can taste bad when it's been battered and fried. These zucchini slices are amazing. And a new recipe I just tried recently for zucchini cakes was delicious. The cakes were also great reheated for breakfast and used as hash browns.

As of last summer this is my absolute favorite recipe for zucchini bread. My only tip is that it doesn't keep well unrefrigerated (I probably should have known that, but I didn't and found out the hard way when it soured).

And last but not least, the new treasure I found while waiting in the dentist office on that dreadful day. I found the recipe in a magazine… Parents or Parenting…something like that. But I totally tweaked it, so now it's mine right?

Blueberry~Zucchini Muffins

(pictured above)

1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. ground ginger

Combine all of these ingredients in a large bowl.

Then in a separate mixing bowl combine:

3 eggs
1/8 cup honey
3/4 cup melted butter (NOT margarine)
1 tsp. vanilla

Stir all of that together. Then add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and combine.

Last fold in:

2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup blueberries.

Spoon batter into greased muffin pans and bake at 325 for 8-15 minutes. (I know that's vague but it just depends on the size of your muffin pan. If you bake muffins regularly I would just go with the amount of time you normally use)

or

You can also pour it into greased loaf pans and bake 40-50 minutes. 

But the muffins are cuter. Especially if you do mini muffins like I did.

Also, I don't remember how many pans of muffins this made. (Can you tell I'm not a food blogger?) It's more fun that way though. A little surprise!

So, all of that is what I've been doing with my zucchini. Do you have anymore great recipes I should try?

Three of the five of us in this house so far. 

It's the mildest cold you've ever seen. Just an annoying stuffiness, mild sore throat. That's about the extent of it. No fever, no aches and pains. Really not a big deal.

I thought this would be the perfect time to try out a natural cold and flu remedy that I had seen online. (You'll notice I am not giving you a link…reason #1. I wouldn't ever want the sweet girl who shared to read this. reason#2. keep reading, you'll realize you don't want the link)

Okay, so I went to the store yesterday and picked up all of the ingredients.

Apple cider vinegar, sage, rosemary, garlic, onion, ginger root, horseradish root, and cayenne pepper. Sounds appetizing, right?? 

I chopped and grated and measured and when I was done the remedy looked a bit like salsa.

So here's the thing. Once you reach this point, this stuff is supposed to sit for 2-4 weeks on your counter, in order for the vinegar to do it's job of breaking down and absorbing all the nutrients of the other stuff.

That wouldn't do me a lot of good for the cold I have today, so I browsed through the comments on the post and found a simple solution.  Just cook the mixture for thirty minutes, and though you'll lose a little of the nutrients through the cooking, it will be ready to use by the next morning. So I figured it was worth a shot.

Here's what it didn't say…. While it's cooking, this will make your house smell like the most overwhelming odor you've ever experienced in your life. So much so that you will open every window and door even though it's nine o'clock at night in November, just in the hopes of some breathable air.  And when that doesn't work your husband will go outside in the freezing cold because it's better than breathing the odor in the house. And your oldest child will try securing a piece of paper over her nostrils in an attempt to block the smell. And your little children will lay there and whine and cry that it smells SO bad.

But in my mind, we were this far in…no turning back.

The cooking ended. The remedy went on the counter. And we went to bed with the noxious smell still heavy in the air.  

Now fast forward to this morning. All of the solids have been strained out of the remedy. Some honey has been dissolved into it to give it a nicer flavor.  It's sitting, waiting to heal us all.

I ate my breakfast, thinking this was not the kind of thing you want to take on an empty stomach.  Measured out my two tablespoons, decided it would be best to take it in one big shot rather than sip it slowly. I was ready to be impressed.

The gagging started before it even made it to my throat. My WHOLE mouth rebelled against this thing that tasted exactly as bad as it had smelled the night before. It was BAD. But that's not the worst part. Oh no, not at all.

The worst part…my mouth was on FIRE. The burning was so intense I literally slammed the glass down on the counter and ran for the sink…downed about twenty ounces of water in maybe thirty seconds.  Everything was burning. My mouth. My throat. My ears. The INSIDES of my ears!! I could feel the burn making it's way down my esophagus and swear I felt it all the way down to my belly. And the whole time I felt like I was seconds away from it all coming back up. I kept it down by shear will power, because I knew, however bad it burned going down, the fire would be twice as bad coming up.

I spent the next half hour trying to stop shaking and focusing on forcing my stomach to settle down. The burn seriously didn't die down for at least that long.

So, the verdict. It was awful. It absolutely was the furthest thing imaginable from what the blogger who posted it described as "tasty". And I am so thankful I tried it first before letting my kids try it. That would have been awful.

But here's the thing. That side of my head that felt like it was completely blocked when I woke up this morning…no breathing possible through that nostril whatsoever…. That was gone the second I swallowed. Seriously, totally gone.

And it never came back all day. So does the remedy work? I really feel like I have to say yes.

Is it worth it? I. DON'T. KNOW.  I think this will be the dilemma of my life for the next few days. I keep wondering if there's some way to make it more tolerable.

Because I'm crazy like that, and I have a hard time letting go of things that work.

Anyways, in the meantime, I decided to take a more soothing approaching to treating our colds.

Chicken noodle soup and garlic bread. Because it's good for you. And it tastes good. And after today I appreciate that in a new and very big way.

So, do you like Taco Bell.

I do.  

But the problem is Taco Bell doesn't like me.  I don't have to wonder if what I'm eating there is bad for me.  I know it is, because it becomes obviously evident every time I give in to temptation.

Which is why I never go there.

But this week, I had a glorious discovery….

I can make soft tacos just like Taco Bell, only they are SO MUCH better.

 AND, they don't make me sick.  Big plus there.

I made my own taco seasoning from this recipe, and  dumped it on a pound of browned ground turkey. Add some cheese, lettuce and a warm tortilla, and you have the best soft taco ever.

Seriously, it's true.  Even my husband says so.  And he is not easy to please when it comes to fast food imitation.  

So this is our new favorite food right now.  Really good, super quick and easy, and very filling.

Do you have any new recipes you're in love with?

Wait, let me back up.

I have this issue.  With food.  Sometimes I love it.  But a lot of the time I feel like it’s such a nuisance, and I wish I didn’t need it because I’d rather not bother with it.

This side of me tends to come out a lot around dinnertime. 

I want to eat.  I can’t sleep when I’m hungry.

My family needs to eat.

But I’ve been busy all day, and I’m tired, and my kids are running around like a bunch of tasmanian devils. 

And I just don’t want to cook.

Sometimes we’re lucky, and there’s leftovers from a night when I was in a better mood and cooked something great.

Sometimes we just eat cheese crisp for dinner.  Those are the nights Hombre gets a little grouchy.

Another negative aspect of the quick and easy dinner (the other popular choice is Kraft Mac & Cheese.  Or even better….Ramen.) is that my girls seem to be developing an extremely limited palette when it comes to food.  Not good.

So…this has been our life for awhile. 

Then yesterday, along comes Miss Impulsive…”I have a great idea.  I’ll just do that once a month cooking thing and have all the meals in the freezer and that will make dinner SO easy!”

I made a month-long menu.

I made a grocery list based off of my month long menu.

We went shopping and bought a month’s worth of groceries (and Hombre may have had a flip out when we got the total at the register).

And I came home and started cooking.  Last night at 9 o’clock.  Started the cooking…went to bed…got up…went back to cooking…didn’t quit cooking until 4:30 this afternoon.

I’m so done with food at this point.  If you want an awesome diet, I’ve got one for you: cook and cook and cook and cook until you are so sick of seeing food and smelling food and touching food and cleaning up food that you will never want to eat again.  I promise it will work.

Anyway, I didn’t end up with a month’s worth of meals.  I knew that was unrealistic, if for no other reason than my limited freezer space.

I’d say I have about two weeks worth of meals.  And the rest of my menu plan revolves around slow-cooker recipes, so I really should not have to do any major cooking for a whole month.

I now have fully prepared:

• three chicken pot pies
• two pans of lasgna
• one pan of chicken enchiladas
• a double batch of potato soup
• a double batch of chicken soup
• a batch of spaghetti/meat sauce
• a batch of taco meat
• prepped toppings for pizza
• about a dozen servings of black beans
• ten jars of chicken broth (had to get the most out of cooking all that chicken)

My freezer is packed.  Every single pot, pan,dish and large utensil I own is dirty.  I took out two bags of trash today.

I’ll be back in 28 days to let you know if it was all worth it.  I have serious doubts at this point.  But I have to hope that it was worth it.  This could not all be for nothing.

Anyway, I have to share with you my most frugal find of the fall season.  Since you’ve all ridiculously stuffed yourselves with food for the last twenty-four hours I know you’ll be thrilled with my topic…

Pumpkins!

I’m sure this will not be news to some of you, but this was a first for me, so I’m talking about it.

Around the middle of October we bought three pie pumpkins for about six dollars to use as decor around the house.  My girls aren’t interested in carving pumpkins, they just like to set them out and have them look pretty.  So they decorated our tables and shelves for a few weeks.

Then, seeing as how the Christmas decorations would soon be coming out, we decided to cook the pumpkins.

Cleaning them out was a bit messy, but cooking them and turning them into pumpkin puree was super easy.

The cooked pumpkin was so much prettier than the canned stuff (not that  it really matters when you’re eating it, but still…).

I decided to be really cool and roast the seeds as well.

After that we moved on to the fun stuff…

Our favorite Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Cookies,

yummy pumpkin bread and muffins,

and the object of everyone’s desire…the pumpkin roll.

So, my point in sharing all of this is, for six dollars I got:

• a month of beautiful decor
• a large jar of pumpkin seeds to snack on
• and enough pumpkin puree for : five dozen cookies, six loaves of bread, and the glorious pumpkin roll.

I’d say that was definitely a good use of my money!

Any time you talk about celebrating seasons, certain foods always come to mind.

Our “fall” favorite, that we must have every year is Apple Jack Cookies.  They’re so good.

I got the recipe a few years back off of a Gold Medal flour package.  And I’ve searched online, but can’t find it anywhere, so here you go:

You’ve got to try them!  Tell me what you think

So, after a thrilling (although warm) day, we came home with over twenty pounds of apples.

In case you don’t know, that’s a lot.

I decided to be adventurous and  try making apple butter.

So we borrowed my mom’s handy apple peeler.

We peeled and sliced for over an hour…

and put them on the stove to steam until they were nice and soft.

**One thing to keep in mind…watch for these guys if you’ve purchased “pesticide free” apples.

Once the apples were soft I blended them all up.

From there I followed this recipe.

I put everything in the crockpot and went to bed.

The next morning I turned it on high and left it for about two and a half hours until it had thickened up.

Then came the canning.  This is the part that used to make me nervous.  But I’m a pro now.

The key is for everything to be hot.  I put the jars in an old cakepan full of water on the stove, and the lids in a pot of boiling water.  Once everything’s heated up well you just fill them and you’re done.

This wide-mouth canning funnel is really helpful.

After the jar is filled and the lid’s on tight, it’s good to let them sit undisturbed for a day or two, so that they seal well.

So, we ended up with 6 jars of apple butter, and (because I decided to be really daring) 4 jars of apple peel jelly.  Couldn’t let all of those beautiful peels go to waste!

Overall this was a lot of fun, and I would definitly like to make it a yearly tradition.

There is a downside of course…

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll let you in on a little secret:  we’re not big veggie eaters around here.  As in, if we get one serving a day, we are doing really good.  I can’t blame it on the kids.  In this case they are purely following where they’re lead.  I’m convinced the one determining force that brought Hombre and I together was our complete distaste for almost all vegetables.

So, when I started reading about green smoothies, I was intrigued.  Friends told me you don’t taste the greens, which I found a little unbelievable, but I figured it was worth a try.

So today the girls and I got busy with a big bag of spinach.

We may have gone a little overboard…I’m not really sure.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of people online give their green smoothies some sort of catchy name to entice their kids to drink them… like “hulk juice”.  My girls couldn’t care less who the Hulk is, so I had to come up with my own lure.

We decided we were making “Shrek Shakes”.  This had everyone’s interest immediately.

I decided to go for a pina colada flavor, since that’s my favorite fruity drink.  So our Shrek shakes consisted of a blender full of spinach, some orange juice, fresh pineapple, frozen banana, and some plain yogurt.

Always remember to assume the correct position before activating the blender…

Everyone was excited to give it a try, which is huge.  Most times our biggest battle is getting them to just taste something new.

The two little girls didn’t totally love theirs, which was a little dissapointing.  My personal opinion was that it smelled a little odd, but tasted fine…and I’ll take this over a plate full of spinach anyday!

Leave it to Miss A to fulfill my dreams…my little vegan in disguise…

She drank a glass and a half in about ten minutes.

Ok, I have a real treat for you today!!!

Are you ready?

My favorite breakfast smoothie:

*First let me clarify that I am one of those lucky people who will end up in a clammy, trembling heap if I don’t have a constant stream of protein in my diet.  So the more protein I can pack into my breakfast, the better my whole day will be.

So, my fave smoothie contains: 

1/3 c. plain yogurt

1/3 c. milk

1/2 a frozen banana

2 yogurt (ice) cubes (I try to keep a tray full of plain yogurt ice cubes in the freezer)

about 2 tbsp. of natural peanut butter (the kind where you have to stir up the oil)

My blender has a “frozen drinks” settings, so I run it on that a couple of times (there must be NO lumps or I won’t drink it).  The banana being frozen, and the ice cubes made of yogurt make it extra thick and creamy.  It’s so good!  You’ve got to try it.

**FYI: Hombre hates this drink!   I am not allowed to drink it anywhere near him….he kind of has issues with peanut butter.  So you know it’s got to be good or otherwise I wouldn’t put up with the dirty looks every morning.   

(P.S. Yes, there is a weird black spot appearing in some of my pictures lately, and yes, Hombre is going to make me cry my eyes out by sending the camera in for repairs, and yes, I have absolutely. no. idea. how to live for a single day, let alone several without a camera.  Now you know my tragedy!)                                            

I really like making it.  Once I got over my fear of yeast, I found it to be really enjoyable.

That hasn’t changed.  I still enjoy it.

But the bottom line is I can’t do it all.  I want to so badly.  But I just can’t.

I can’t bake all of our bread, make all of our snacks, cook all of our meals, line dry all of our laundry, clean my whole house, homeschool my two big girls, play with all three girls, spend time with my husband, go to church, serve in our ladies ministry, spend time with friends and family, attend homeschool events, participate in storytime at the library, scrapbook all of my photots, post daily on my blog, hand make all of my gifts, read my Bible, read for my bookclub, do the yardwork, take care of the garden, …….

I think you get the idea.

There are so many wonderful things I want to do and be, and I just can’t do it all.  And sometimes I think when I’m trying so hard to do it all, I end up missing out on the things God really has for me to do because I’m just too busy to notice.

So I’m making myself evaluate, and trying to invest my time and energy in the best of the good things.

So I quit baking our bread.  I will buy it at the store and it will probably have something artificial in it that wouldn’t have been in my bread.  But honestly I think the stress of trying to live up to unreasonable (self-inflicted) ideals is going to kill me a lot faster than a little corn syrup will.

I’ll still bake bread from time to time for fun, or special occasions.  We all enjoy kneading the dough!  But I’m no longer the solitary bread-source of the house.  And I’m glad.