Quinoa Zucchini and Carrot Muffins

Pinterest failed me last week. BIG time.

As I was making this recipe I kept thinking, this is SO MUCH butter, and it look SO WET that there's no way it will turn into muffins. I should have listened to myself.
Burned on the outside, sunken in the middle, and what's with all those air pockets? Terrible recipe. The comments on the blog all said it worked for them, so maybe I'm just broken, but it made no sense.

So I looked up muffin ratios and found that recipe to be WAY off in terms of baking powder, and there were way too many eggs and too much butter and way too much sugar.

Now this was the only such recipe I could find, and I was (and still am) determined to use up that 20 lb bag of carrots I bought at Costco, so I decided to come up with my own. And it turned out pretty good :) I'd like to try one more time and see if I can't perfect it, but here's what I have right now. They're a little heavy, so I'm thinking the zucchini wasn't quite wet enough and a little milk would help. Any muffin experts out there are welcome to chime in.

Jill's Quinoa Zucchini and Carrot Muffins
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/2 c butter
3/4 c brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 c grated zucchini
1 c grated carrots
1 c cooked quinoa

Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Cream butter and sugar, then add egg and vanilla. Stir in veggies.
Add dry ingredients to wet until mixed, then add cooked quinoa.
Divide into muffin cups.
Bake for 15-20 mins at 350 F.

Makes about 2 dozen.

Simple Spinach Artichoke Pizza

Lately I've been making food based on the hope of squashing a bad craving. The other night for dinner I was feeling like a huge plate of nachos. Probably not the healthiest choice. I started wondering how bad it would be to add spinach to nachos...that's when I decided I should probably make something that isn't cheese based.

I always start with spinach. It's one of the best veggies you can eat, loaded with iron and folate. And I just can't get away from the combination of spinach and mozzarella. Cheese is terrible for you, but sooooo yummy! Just don't eat too much, I guess :) But like I've said before - whatever you have to do to a veggie to get yourself to eat it, DO IT!

This took 5 minutes to prep and 2 minutes to cook.
Here's what I did:
1. Spread a (whole wheat) tortilla THINLY with ranch dressing.

2. Chop up a handful of spinach and throw it on the tortilla.

3. Add 1 or 2 artichoke hearts. I bought a really simple, cheap, store-brand can of artichoke hearts without any extra flavoring. They're quite yummy. Tear them up as you go so you can spread the leaves around a bit.

4. Grate some mozzarella on top.

5. Broil until the cheese is melted (or, if you're me, until you've turned around and helped your kids for 5 minutes so that by the time you pull it out the edges are charred).

Voila. So easy, so yummy, and tons of veggies. You're gonna need to fold the pieces in half to eat them, and they'll be messy anyway :)

How to Build a Healthier Dinner

I saw a great film a few years ago called "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead". Now, I'm not recommending that everyone go on a juice fast. It's definitely not something that will benefit everyone. But I do see the benefit in retraining your body to desire more vegetables, and whatever method you find that helps you reach that goal is great. For me it was froze veggies, and then smoothies. Now I just love veggies (obviously).

But here's the part of that movie that had the biggest impact on me:

This image shows the national average of food intake per day. The 60% stands for processed foods, including white bleached carb type products. Now look at this image:

This is how every plate you eat should look. Isn't it a little insane how much processed CRAP we put into our bodies? It's no wonder people are always lacking energy and getting sick.

So with all that in mind, here's how you should build EVERY meal:
Decide on a veggie
Come up with a protein that goes well with the veggie
Decide if you need carbs or not and choose wisely
Top it off with a HUGE glass of water

My example meal for this formula is the amazing dish I came up with last night. As it is July and our garden is ridiculous...

...my veggie choices are limited to basically zucchini. This worked out well, because we made zucchini chips the other day and had leftover breading. I. Love. Zucchini. So here is the recipe we (kind of) made for zucchini chips. Ours had more breadcrumbs than called for, and I would have liked more parmesan. Next time.

Choosing meat for me is really easy: Tilapia. Always tilapia. It's the easiest and quickest meat for me to cook, and I'm typically STARVING when I get around to making dinner. Also it's ridiculously good. Here's how I cook tilapia:

1. From the freezer, pull it out of the little vacuum pouch they sell it in and stick it on a plate in the microwave for 1 minute. Even if you're cooking more than one filet, 1 min should be long enough to defrost it.
2. Heat oil/butter in a pan over medium-high heat. I prefer butter, so I have to watch to make sure it doesn't burn. When your pan starts sizzling, it's likely hot enough.
3. Place your fliet(s) in the pan. They will sizzle A LOT so watch out. Season the tops however you want. I typically use lemon pepper or just salt with rosemary. Let them sear for about 2-3 minutes, until you can see the edges turning white.
4. Flip your filets and turn the heat down just a tad. Cover your pan with a lid and let them cook for about 3 minutes.
5. Check the solidity of your filets by squishing them with the flat of a spatula. If they start flaking apart, they're totally done. If they still feel kind of squishy, go ahead and flip them again. Also if you can see any pink in the vein be sure to flip them again to get that cooked.
6. If you poke the filet with the tip of your spatula and it cuts itself in half, it's done. If you end up cutting it in half and the middle looks gooey instead of flakey, let it cook a little more.

The breadcrumb overage from the zucchini actually worked out for the carb section of dinner. I said above that you should decide if carbs are necessary for you, and here's what I mean by that. Back when I decided to eat a lot healthier, I decided that the easiest way to cut down on calories is to come up with lunches that don't contain any carbs. I did it this way because I was cooking for my entire immediate family at the time, and with all the teenage boys I knew my healthy-style dinners wouldn't go over very well. Lunch was the meal I could control, so I did. I usually had a salad, or some kind of simple vegetable, or a green smoothie. Low carb lunches worked well for me because I NEED carbs in the morning to give me energy, and they're fine at dinner, but lunch is right before naptime, and the more veggies I ate, the longer I could stretch it out. I've never felt hungry in the afternoon eating this way, and allow snacks as long as they are fruits or vegetables. I was able to get rid of my bread dependency in this way, and that has really gone a long way in my weight loss/maintenance.

But let me say again: decide what works for you. If you can't survive without some carbs at lunch, try to cut down on the amount. I would recommend replacing carbs with a fruit or veggie that still has some but contains all that other good stuff to kind of cancel it out. A good choice is sweet potato or carrots. Also, try beans or quinoa as your carb - they double as protein!

At any rate, my typical formula for carbs in a day is kind of out the window right now. PREGO WOMAN NEED PASTA!!! So I made pasta. I got some of the colorful kind at Costco and whipped up some farfalla last night. Then I used this recipe for a light sauce. I LOVE this recipe. It's super light, but super tasty. And I got to use the leftover zucchini chip breading up in the pasta, so that was great. So let me clarify - I didn't follow this recipe exactly either. Instead of the whole breadcrumb-making section I just used what I had left from the zucchini. Also, I make breadcrumbs a lot more simply. I toast a piece of bread, then throw it in my Blendtec. Done.

So that is my lovely dinner. Pretty simple, and it only took about 30 mins to make.