10 grain Muffins

The recipe is for 10 grain muffins but I don't have a muffin pan yet. So I improvised and substituted. I used whole wheat flour instead of unbleached flour and two small eggs instead of one XL egg.

I baked the whole batter in a square cake pan and cut the cooled 'cake' into 'fingers.' These 10 grain muffin-cake-fingers freeze and thaw (in a toaster oven) beautifully. The twins love them and some days it makes up their entire breakfast because they refuse to eat anything else.

Hungry Girl

My nutritionist (sis-in-law) is always sending me links from a site called Hungry Girl. It's a great site crammed with all sorts of tips, reviews and strategies to help one eat right.

'Chew the right thing' has popular recipes redone to swap out the calories. Even though I don't make a lot of those items (calzone? moo shu? onion blossom?), I read them to find healthy substitutes.

And there are pictures - lots of pictures. I love it when there are pictures.

Roasted broccoli

This really was the best broccoli of my life.

Don't wash the broccoli (I know, I know but the temperature will kill everything.) Cut into pieces, toss with olive oil and salt. Bake at 400F (the recipe says 425, but I used my toaster oven) till the edges brown. That is all I did since I was making it for the kids - I decided to spice it up later which I never did because it was incredibly good with just salt and olive oil.

My daughter could not have enough of it. She just kept going and going and asking for more. My son ate it all but wasn't as crazy about it as her.

Pineapple greek yogurt from Chobani

Another great product from Chobani - 2% greek yogurt, probiotics and live cultures, no artificial flavors or preservatives, no gelatin……… it does have 18 grams of sugar but I split one between the twins and add some full fat yogurt.

Pineapple flavor is one of the kids favorite - there are pieces of fruit in this which the twins didn't really like.

Chobani champions

During the move, since I could not make yogurt, I switched back to flavored yogurts. These Chobani champions are made with 2% greek yogurt and no preservatives or artificial sweeteners.

Since they were really thick, I added some kefir and the twins liked honeynana the most.

Baby rice rusks from Hot-kid

Even though these are for much younger babies, I picked them up because the twins had never had them. They look exactly like the rice-cake jokes - hard, dry, tasteless, white and textureless to boot because they are made for babies.

These baby mum-mums are surprisingly tasty and the twins totally took to them.

Can we still eat that?

Before our move, in anticipation of it, we started to eat our way through the pantry and freezer. I came across a few items (OK, more than few) past their expiration dates. Some should have been eaten a couple of years ago and some a couple of weeks ago. Since I really don't like to waste food (always clean my plate, thank you) I went looking online to figure out if I can still eat some of the stuff.

There is an entire website devoted to just that. StillTasty, an 'ultimate shelf life guide.' They have a 'your questions answered' page (does vinegar ever go bad? what about pure honey? olive oil?) and even an iPhone app.