Scrumptious Saturday!!

Today is the FIRST DAY OF FALL!!!! Yay. My favorite time of the year. I love the decorations, smells, holidays, clothing, leaves, the crisp air, apple picking, foods, and most of all everything PUMPKIN!!!! So today's recipe is pumpkin inspired. This time of year we add pumpkin to everything. I mean it is an amazing food why not right. I love pumpkin soup. I will post that recipe another day, but today I am posting my pumpkin bread. It is delicious and healthy, and guess what even my picky 6 year old son loves it (he calls it my pumpkin cornbread :) ) I used to make a really really unhealthy, fatty version with a box of vanilla pudding mix in it covered in a fatty frosting. I mean don't get me wrong it was delicious, but soooo bad for you. So this is a cleaned up version and it is equally as yummy. I am going to try to come up with a clean frosting recipe for this as well. I know this is not something I will be eating everyday (although I could!!), but we all deserve treats every now and then!! So here is my cleaned up version of pumpkin bread.


Clean eating pumpkin bread

1 1/2c of flour (I used whole wheat, but you can use coconut, oat, rice whatever you have)
1tsp baking powder
2tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp baking soda
1/2tsp ground ginger
1/4tsp ground cloves
1 egg beaten (I used a whole cage free brown egg, but you could do 2 egg whites instead if you want or chia seeds with water if you don't eat eggs)
1/4c dark brown sugar
1/2c organic whole cane sugar (you could use coconut sugar here)
3/4c plain non fat Greek yogurt (if you want a vegan recipe replace with silken tofu mixed with lemon juice or you could look for a vegan yogurt)
3/4c pumpkin (you can do a can (be sure to get a can with no added preservatives or sweeteners or fresh pumpkin puree, but be sure to use a sugar pumpkin)
3tbsp oil (canola, sunflower, olive or coconut)
1 1/2tsp pure vanilla
*optional walnuts, pecans dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8x4 bread pan with an olive oil spritzer.

In large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, ginger and cloves. Set aside.

In medium bowl mix egg, sugar, yogurt, pumpkin, oil and vanilla until well blended. Add to flour mixture, stirring until just combined. Stir in walnuts, pecans or chocolate if you want. Pour batter into pan.

Bake 60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool for about 10 minutes.

It is so yummy!! Now like I said I do not eat this all the time, but it is definitely less fattening than the other version I used to make. I am thinking of making a few loaves and freezing some (if they last long enough to be frozen they may all be eaten before then :) ). Please comment with any variations you have on your pumpkin bread.

Tasty Tuesday

Since fall is coming up I know a lot of us will be pulling out our crock pots to do some easy cooking, although I must say I use mine year around. So today's recipe is going to be a crock pot recipe. Now we do not eat beef that much in my house. We prefer to eat the lean meats, we mainly eat chicken, turkey and fish. Occasionally we do have beef or pork. It is a "special treat" sometimes. So here is a beef recipe for you that is yummy, easy and healthy.

Beef roast

3-4lb grass fed London broil (I like to get mine at the farmer's market, but anywhere that you can find one is fine) with all the fat cut off
1/2lb portabella mushrooms cut in half(you can use a different kind of mushroom, but this is what I like)
2 cups low sodium organic vegetable broth (you can use chicken or beef and you can also make your own)
1/2 purple onion chopped
4 organic carrots chopped
1tsp garlic powder
dash black pepper
1tsp oregano
1tsp parsley

Add your broth first, then mushrooms, carrots and onion. Place the roast on top of this and add seasoning to the top of the roast. I put it on high for 2 hours then low for another 3-4 hours. Now if you are putting this on in the morning before work or something you can just do low for about 6-8 hours or so. I will check it about 30 minutes to an hour before serving and mix it up and make sure it is all shredded.

My whole family loves this especially my picky husband and picky 6 year old. They usually have seconds on it. I have served it with a lot of different things. You could do sweet potatoes, brown rice, wild rice, whole grain pasta or quinoa pasta. Typically we will have steamed broccoli with it (that is my husband and 6 year old favorite veggie), but you could really do any kind of veggie with it. The best thing is with having a bigger roast there is typically leftovers. It is actually much better then next day. You could eat the leftovers the same way or try it as a sandwich. You decide what the right size roast is for you. You can do a smaller one just make sure you cut everything in the recipe down, or you can do a bigger one just make sure you are adding more of everything else as well. I hope you enjoy this as much as my family does. As I said we do not eat beef often so this is a treat meal for us.

This is a pretty good broth to choose, but the best would of course be homemade. I will get together a recipe for that to post.



Treat yo self!

I decided to treat myself yesterday because I felt very happy about myself, which I haven't in a long time. Looking at my progress I realized how far I've come. I still have a long way that I want to go, but I can see some progress and it made me feel good.

I know I shared both of these pictures here, but looking at them side by side made me feel good about my journey so far :) So with that good feeling we have to treat ourselves right. Well instead of going and celebrating in an unhealthy way I decided to do so in a healthy way. Last time I got some new running shorts, this time I went for something fun too. New shoes, a girls favorite thing right :)

I'm excited to wear my new treat to myself!!

So make sure you treat yo self too!

Treat yo self

I got some new workout shorts today as a treat for myself. I used to always turn to unhealthy foods to treat myself, but I am so much happier with my treat now. Everyone needs to treat themselves every now and then, my husband tells me this all the time. I had fun tonight breaking in my new shorts with some fun exercises! I love the Adidas shorts. They are the most comfortable to me. Also I love the bright colors of them. I know you can't tell a lot in the picture, but they are bright pink and yellow. I love that all the workout gear now has these fun colors!