Blueberry Soup and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Last Sunday, I made breakfast before church--which never happens. I had planned to prepare everything before morning but a late night on Saturday kept me out way past my bedtime and I didn't want to cook when I got home!  On Sunday morning, I made Blueberry Soup and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. Both were delicious and had the husband and kids asking for seconds. The recipes are below.





Blueberry Soup


1 pound frozen blueberries
1 1/4 cups vanilla yogurt
3 Tablespoons powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons orange juice concentrate
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
canned whipped topping


In a blender, combine all ingredients except whipped topping. Blend until pureed. Pour into bowls and serve with whipped topping. **My whipped topping can was defective so the topping was runny--same flavor, it just didn't look as pretty**


This recipe was adapted from a Strawberry Soup recipe from Taste of Home. You can find the original recipe here.


Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

2 cups canned pumpkin
5 eggs
1/2 cup apple butter
2 1/2 cups + 2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 Tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 bag semisweet chocolate chips


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease 2 muffin tins (24 muffins). In a large bowl, mix the pumpkin, eggs, apple butter, 2 1/2 cups sugar, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice and salt until well mixed. Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda. Add into the wet ingredients and mix well. Add chocolate chips and mix in. Divide the batter between the muffin tins. Sprinkle the tops with the remaining sugar. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. 


I adapted this recipe from a recipe I found online at In Erika's Kitchen. I didn't intend to alter the original recipe so much but I found myself lacking some essential ingredients like cooking oil and various spices. I had to make several substitutions but they still turned out good. You can find the unedited version here.


If you make either one of these (or both!), I would love to know what you think of them!

One Bite--Week 2, Task 26

I'm skipping around. Task 2 wasn't something I was ready to jump in just yet. I picked task 26, make staples from scratch. I knew when I started this task that it was going to take me more than one week to be ready to move on, so think of this as a mid-task progress report :) I'm linking up with Sam's Noggin again this week. Feel free to join us over there and say hi or link up your own progress.

Task 26--Make Staples from Scratch

This week was my planning week. I looked over all of the resources in the ebook, and then did more research on my own. One suggestion I found was to not replace all the store-bought stuff in your pantry at once. Start small and replace a few things each month. So that's what I did. I planned what I was going to make from scratch, got my list ready, and over the next week, I will actually make and use homemade taco seasoning mix, chili seasoning, and biscuit/baking mix. Those seemed like the easiest to get started with, and the ones I would be most likely to use and continue using. Some others that I have in mind for the coming months are instant oatmeal packets, fruit leather, chicken and beef broth, and my own version of seasoned salt (no recipe, this one will be by trial and error). 


So even though I didn't really *make* my homemade staples this week, I made plans. That must count for something...at least that's what I'm telling myself!

If you would like to follow along, click here to purchase a copy of One Bite At A Time, by Tsh Oxenreider.


And I thought I would take a picture of the darling old woman that DELETED my entire post by walking across the keyboard a few minutes ago. I had to retype the whole thing while she watched. Now I remember why I usually blog from work!

3 in 30 Update

When I jumped in to the 3 in 30 Challenge, I wanted to choose goals that would impact my life immediately; goals that would have measurable and/or noticeable progress fast. Otherwise, I feared that I would get frustrated and give up without giving the challenge a real chance. Tomorrow is my first Friday check-in and I'm posting a little early because my IT guru is coming tomorrow and that may limit my free time at work. So for my first ever progress report...
  
1. Drink More Water--So far so good. I'm actually sitting here with my giant water that I bought after lunch and have refilled. So far, no major caffeine withdrawal symptoms (yeah!) and I am sleeping better (double yeah!). And an added bonus, my normal Diet Dr. Pepper costs $2.28 every afternoon. The water only costs me $.87. Saving money and improving my health.


2. Wash, Dry, Fold and Put Away 1 Load of Laundry Each Day--This is crazy. My laundry room is almost completely empty of laundry. This never happens. Ever. I will admit to a few dirty clothes--but only what is not enough to make a full load. And the thing is, I'm excited about it! When I come home on my lunch break, I do laundry! It's strange how I dread it so much when it piles up but only having a few things dirty makes me giddy. Hand over the geek crown.

3. Have Breakfast and Lunch at Home on Sundays--No Sunday yet but I do have a plan. I am making pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and blueberry soup for breakfast and beef stroganoff for lunch. I will post the recipes another day. 

I love comments :) How is your 3 in 30 Challenge going?

3 in 30 Goals for October

Happy 1st week of October! For us, it means we are *finally* settling in to the "back-to-school" routine. I know. We should've settled in weeks ago but we don't do things like normal families. Truthfully, if we started doing anything at my house you could call traditional, well, I like to think that the people around us would be much less entertained. I know we would be less entertained. I think *normal* would bore us. It's much more fun to be that crazy family that never does anything as expected. But I digress...

The real purpose of this post is to share my 3 in 30 Goals for October. The mathematical equation for 3 in 30 looks something like this:  1 month + 3 goals = 3 new habits. And yes, I realize that equation makes me a little nerdy. I'm good with nerdy.  

3 In 30 Goals for October

1. Drink more water--I do not drink water. Ever. It's not that I don't like water, I just like Diet Dr. Pepper more. I have somewhat desensitized myself to caffeine in that I can drink it at any time of the day or night and not worry about it keeping me awake. But I'm addicted to it so if I don't have it, I get jittery and cranky. Specifically, this month I will swap my afternoon Diet Dr. Pepper with water. Easy enough. I did try this yesterday and I really enjoyed the water. I did wake up with a slight headache this morning, probably caffeine withdrawal, so I won't cut it out completely after lunch but a giant cup of water every afternoon is an improvement. I am also going to have water when I go to a restaurant instead of my normal sweet tea or soda. 

2. Wash, Dry, Fold and Put Away 1 Load of Laundry Each Day--I'm one of those strange people who actually doesn't mind doing laundry. I don't love it, or really even enjoy it, but it's not the worst task on my to-do list. What I tend to do is to put it off until I am completely overwhelmed at the thought of even looking in the laundry room. Then I deny deny deny. In the old house, I could close the laundry room door and pretend it didn't exist until someone complained that they didn't have clean underwear. The new house laundry room doesn't have a door. I can't ignore it now. And to make matters worse, you can see the piles of laundry when you walk from the kitchen to anywhere else in the house. If I just do 1 load each day, I think I can stay afloat. 

3. Have Breakfast and Lunch at Home on Sundays--I know that sounds a little odd. Most Sundays, we rush to church and eat whatever we can grab that's fast for breakfast (cheetos anyone?). For lunch, I never have a plan. We eat out or go to the grocery store for something fast, cheap and easy. I want to plan and cook something for both meals that reflects the day. Besides church, Sunday is the only day of the week that we usually have nothing planned, and nothing pops up at the last minute. It's a relaxing day, except for the stress of last-minute meal planning. I want to have a nice, sit-down, family breakfast and lunch on Sundays. That will require advance planning, maybe some advance cooking. I will surely use the crock pot for at least one of those meals. In the long run, I think it will take the stress out of Sunday and let us focus on God and family. 


That's it! At the end of the month, I will *hopefully* have made 3 new habits. If you would like to join the 3 in 30 Challenge, visit the site and sign-up, link up, and encourage the other participants. 


What are your goals for October?

What I Didn't Do All Weekend

What a fabulous weekend! It really was one of the best ones in a while. Oddly enough, I didn't do anything at all that I had planned to do. Funny how that works. I had a giant list of things that I was going to do, but none of them really had much to do with the family. My plan looked something like this:

• catch up on laundry
• post my 3 in 30 goals 
• make some design changes to my blog 
• take husband and kids to the fair
• watch the Razorback game
• make a dessert for our church homecoming dinner

Big fat fail. My list looked a little more like this:

• washed and put away about half of the laundry
• never opened my laptop
• not even sure where I last put my laptop
• took kids to fair (with help) but husband bailed at the last minute
• took a 4-hour nap during the game
• bought a cake at the grocery store a few minutes before church

All that planning got me nothing. Except half a funnel cake (my darling boy ran right into me and the funnel cake hit the ground). And a nap. The nap was pretty great. It's not everyday I get to ignore all of my responsibilities for some extreme self-indulgence. So the fabulous part?

• Listening to E giggle through the entire tilt-a-whirl ride
• Completely melting when he gave $5 of his own money to the animal shelter
• Meg holding my hand, on purpose, without force, when she didn't want anything
• Hannah letting me dry her hair
• 4 hours of undisturbed napping
• Church homecoming
• Tons of other small, nice things

The lesson for me--just because things do not go the way I planned, that doesn't mean it can't still be wonderful and fabulous. This picture is from the fair, just me and my darlings.