Cranberry Banana Coconut Muffins

These muffins pack so much into your breakfast: bright red tart cranberries, sweet chunks of banana, tender coconut, and ground flax seeds.

I actually adapted this recipe from the base in these apple muffins.  It's a great base for a lot of different fruit combinations.  This one, I'll confess, is sort of the random bits lying around my house: bananas getting too ripe in the fruit basket, some frozen cranberries, half a bag of shredded coconut, and a half-zested orange.  I think that some of my favorite foods come about from cleaning out the fridge.  There is something so joyful in having such a bounty of leftover bits and pieces, and being able to whip up amazing muffins or a great soup or stock with them.

If you want to clean out your own fridge -- keep the wet and dry ingredients the same, and just add in 2 cups of fruit and an optional 1/2 cup of nuts.

Apple Muffins

These are simple, wholesome muffins, packed with chunks of fresh apples.  I am a huge fan of muffins, but usually I end up eating them alone.  My husband liked these so much though that I actually had to share the leftovers!  They are good and filling to eat for breakfast with a piece of fruit.  My usual complaint about muffins is that after I eat one, I'm hungry an hour later.  So I consider these quite a success!

Molasses Ginger Cookies

There are so many delicious fall flavors out there, and boy are they out there.  Everywhere I turn, I see pumpkin and apple flavored treats, and I've been sure to indulge.  Sweet apple topping on my frozen yogurt at my favorite ice cream shop, an apple cider donut at the donut shop, pumpkin coffee at the coffee shop...there is no shortage.

But it's a little too easy to focus on pumpkins and apples, and to forget about some of their important sidekicks: ginger and molasses.  In these soft, chewy cookies, molasses and ginger take center stage, with the warm, intense flavor of molasses and a double dose of ginger, from ginger powder and chopped crystallized ginger.
Some people around here claimed the flavor in these cookies was a little too strong, but some people also have been nevertheless seen with their hands poking back into the cookie jar.  (Only then did I confess to having accidentally been a little heavy handed with the ginger powder.)  I think they are perfect.  And they are so deliciously chewy, which is my favorite cookie texture.  Leave yours in the oven a little longer if you like a crisp cookie.

Thai Chicken Pizza

This is one of our favorite twists on pizza night -- Thai Chicken Pizza!  It's like a combination of thai take-out and pizza delivery...but it's cheaper, fresher, healthier, and doesn't take all that long to get on the table.

I've adapted this recipe (slightly) from a great book: EatingWell On a Budget.  I love Eating Well magazine and especially love their cookbooks, but I think that this one might be my favorite.  It offers healthy, budget friendly, quick meal solutions.  Really, what more can you ask from a cookbook?

EatingWell's Louisiana Catfish with Okra and Corn

Monday, Monday.  Is the weekend really over?  I kicked ours off by making my husband a Southern-style dinner.  He loves catfish, so I cooked up Louisiana Catfish with Okra and Corn.  I served it with cornbread and collard greens, prepared our favorite way. 

The catfish recipe was so quick and easy, but light and packed in a lot of flavor.  I love Cajun seasonings!  i found the recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks...EatingWell on a Budget.  I have a feeling I have talked about this one before...but it is really that good.  This is the only cookbook that I've really found that includes recipes that are quick, healthy, and inexpensive.  Do you know any other cookbooks that cover all three?  I find a lot that can fit in two out of three of those categories, but this is the only one I know that is three for three!

I followed the recipe pretty accurately, so I encourage you just to click on over to the EatingWell website and check it out!  It's a keeper!

His and Her's Power Salads

If there are two things I love in this world (well, beside my family), they are salads and stripes!  So this salad, in neat little rows, really made me happy.  It started off as a Cobb salad from EatingWell Comfort Foods Made Healthy, but I am not really sure that you can call anything a Cobb salad without the avocado and blue cheese!  Neither of us eat avocado, and I am the only one who eats blue cheese.  Sometimes when there is pricier ingredient like that that only one of us eats, we end up just skipping it to stay in our budget.  I could never eat up a whole container of blue cheese before it goes bad!  I will have to have that next time I'm at a restaurant!

But this cute little salad, if you like it like the Dishwasher or if you like it like the Cook, packs in a lot of protein, and is very refreshing on a hot day.  To tell you the truth, it was exactly what I was craving when we got back from Paris a couple of weeks ago.  Now, I love French food, and in fact, I ate myself into a tummy-ache one night.  So maybe that's why when we got back I was really craving a crunchy American salad!

His Power Salad (it's the one on the left!)
serves 1
Ingredients:
2-3 cups chopped red leaf lettuce
1/2 large skinless, boneless chicken breast, poached and diced
4 thin slices turkey bacon, cooked according to package directions and crumbled
2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1/4 feta cheese crumbles

Her Power Salad (it's the one on the right!)
serves 1
Ingredients:
2-3 cups chopped red leaf lettuce
1 diced plum tomato
1/2 cup diced peeled cucumber
1/2 large skinless, boneless chicken breast, poached and diced
2 thin slices turkey bacon, cooked according to package directions and crumbled
2 hard-boiled egg whites
1 Tbsp shredded low-fat Mexican blend cheese

Dressing for All
serves 4
Ingredients:
3 Tbsp red-wine vinegar
1/2 small onion, very finely chopped
1 Tbsp whole-grain mustard
freshly ground pepper to taste
a pinch of salt
4 tsp canola oil
1 Tbsp agave nectar

Directions:
1. Arrange each salad on plates, placing each ingredient in neat rows.
2. Whisk together the salad dressing ingredients.
3.  Pour about 2 Tbsp of dressing over each salad.  (You will have leftovers.  Enjoy them, this is a very well-balanced dressing.)

EatingWell's Lemon Squares

                                 

I tried this recipe from my Eating Well Comfort Foods Made Healthy cookbook, but you can also find the recipe online right here, at the Eating Well website.  It's a great recipe!  I have always made a full fat, calorie-laden lemon bar, and the Dishwasher didn't even notice that the recipe wasn't the same!  I used a 9 inch square pan because I don't have an 8-inch pan, so my lemon squares came out a little flatter than they should.  These bars have just the right balance of tartness and sweetness, which is hard to come by in a lemon square.  I used all purpose flour as we didn't have any whole wheat pastry flour hanging around...add that to my shopping list too!  Next time I'd like to try this with limes or key limes...or even try the shortbread crust with a different topping.  Pecan squares would float my boat!

Mocha Popsicles

What's colder than an ice cold mocha?  Mocha popsicles!  This recipe takes about ten minutes to prepare, is very light in fat and calories, and, very importantly in such hot weather...is very, very cold and refreshing.  Let's not talk about how many of these I've been eating a day. 

I adapted this recipe (very slightly) from Eating Well on a Budget.  The Dishwasher and I love Eating Well and love their cookbooks, and we both think this newest cookbook is one of the best we've bought.  The yield for this recipe will depend on the popsicle molds that you use.  I got 6 popsicle plus half a cup of extra liquid, which I drank, happily and guiltlessly.  I bought myself these Tovolo popsicle molds from Amazon.com a few months ago, and I really, really love them.  The tray at the bottom catches drips from even the messiest of eaters (ahem), and it makes a nice adult-sized popsicle. 




Mocha Popsicles

The original recipe calls for regular half-and-half...and the portion size is very small, so you could go ahead and use that.  I happen to like to eat, well, multiple of these a day and am therefore glad I went with the fat-free half-and-half.

Ingredients:
2 cups hot brewed coffee
4 1/2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup fat free half-and-half
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

Directions:
1. Whisk the sugar and cocoa powder into the hot coffee until they have dissolved.
2. Whisk in the half-and-half, the vanilla extract, and the salt.
3. Pour into your popsicle molds, insert sticks, and freeze for at least 6 hours.  Run your popsicles under hot water for a minute or two to unmold them.

P.S.  When they say wait 6 hours, they aren't kidding.  I tried to cheat, and it didn't end well.