Clean Eating #148: Convenience Foods: Bulk Breakfast Burritos

Bulk Breakfast Burritos

Okay, okay, the truth comes out.  In spite of the fact that I have been really busy this month with movie stuff, I just hate cooking when its hot.  I hate even thinking about cooking, meal planning, any of it.  If only I hated eating... nah.  No such luck.

I would think that logically I would crave fresh fruit, salads and the like.  No such luck.  I eat junk.  I also find that I eat a lot of convenience foods because I'm running around too busy to want to think about cooking.  So not only am I eating less healthy, I'm paying too much for it.

Today was my last straw when I bought a breakfast burrito at Quick Trip... ugh.  I ate a gas station burrito for Heaven's sake.  It is ridiculous.

So I came home and made a dozen breakfast burritos for my hubby and I, and a pan full of kiddable eggs for their own breakfast burritos.  Kids and teenaged boys don't really need to worry about having full out eggs and extra cheese:)

Ingredients:

• 24 egg whites
• 12 eggs
• 1 large onions (diced)
• 8 oz frozen spinach
• a little finely shredded cheese of your choice
• coconut oil
• seasonings to taste
• 12 whole wheat tortillas

Directions

1. Sautee the diced onions and spinach in a little coconut oil until tender
2. add mixed eggs & seasonings, cook on med-low with a lid, flipping occasionally (try to keep it all in one piece for less mess later
3. cut your eggs into "bars" and roll up in tortillas sprinkled with a little cheese
4. Wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate for heating later.

*Kids variations:  I used all eggs, extra cheese, plus added a couple of chopped baked potatoes to stretch out the eggs a little so they would last longer.  Kainan added jalapenos to his (eww!!)

And here is what happens at my house when I go out to a really long lunch with a friend and Paris and Abyni have a lot of time to kill... Its rockstar makeover and modeling time!!  I came home to find nearly 200 pictures on my camera!  My 13 year old is quite talented at the makeup and photos, and my 10 year old loves being in front of the camera:)

Those EYELASHES!!!  

The pouty lips...

Clean Eating #48: Blueberry Almond Oats Protein Muffins, Bars or Cookies

Blueberry Almond Oats Protein Bars

These have a lot of ingredients, but they freeze well and they are honestly DELICIOUS.  Even Squatch, my picky boy, gobbled them up.  It would make a great lunchbox snack or a great bar to grab and go.  You can vary the ingredients to your taste.  Let me know how your experiments turn out!

I actually started with our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe for this one.  I ended up adding several things, and by the time it was all said and done had a VERY yummy cake like textured cookie, rather than a typical 'bar'.  However, they were so delicious, I think I'll still call this one a keeper!  They are very portable as muffins, and I did bake some in mini loaf tins, with a very shallow amount of batter and those turned out more "bar like" but wouldn't hold up the way a typical protein bar would.  My hubby took these to work with him this week and loved them.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup melted coconut oil
• 2 cups agave nectar
• 5 egg whites
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups of whole wheat flour
• 2 cups blended oatmeal
• 1 cup plain old fashioned oats
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup wheat germ *optional
• 1 cup protein powder (I used French Vanilla)
• 1 cup chopped, blanched almonds
• 1/2 cup chopped blueberries (I used frozen berries, thawed and drained first)
• 1/2 cup chia seeds *optional

My mini loaf pan "protein bar"

Directions
Blend together wet ingredients, add dry ingredients and mix well.
Bake at 350 for... well depending on the form you use:
I actually preferred these in cookie form (rolled 1 inch balls and baked for about 8 minutes)
My hubby liked the 'bar' form because it was easy to grab and go (mini loaf pan for about 9-10 minutes)
The mini muffins... not so much.  I much preferred the loaf or cookie form. The muffins were too.. hard.

The kids ate them all, regardless, even the pan I burned.

What I'd do differently next time:
MORE BERRIES...  I would at LEAST double the berries.  Actually, since we're going on a little road trip today, I plan on making another batch to take with us... since all of my rotten children gobbled these all up in one day.  I might also try adding more protein powder.  I loved the nuttiness of the almonds and all the different crunchy textures, so I might add some more of this and that, too.  I'll let you know!

I'll also not bother with any muffins, and just make cookies and bars!

I will also try more varieties:
Cranberries and Almonds
Bananas and walnuts
strawberries and our berry protein powder
Raisins & leave more of the oats unblended

Any other ideas?

Clean Eating #33: Tuna Vegetable Salad Pita Sandwich

Tuna Vegetable Salad Pita Sandwich

I whipped up a few pitas from my bread dough in the fridge today because my Hubby was in the mood for a Tuna Salad Sandwich. I added some new-to-us veggies and fruit to the mix because... well, you know how I like my variety of textures and colors!  This would be great to pack separately for a lunchbox meal!

Ingredients:
2 Celery stalks, minced (Yay!  I am finally using that celery that I insisted we'd eat and Hubby insisted would go to waste!!  I get to be right again!  Oh.  Sorry... anyway, onto the ingredients!...)
2 Carrots, grated
1/2 Crisp Apple, diced (I know, right?  How odd is that??  But it was awesomely yummy!)
2-3 boiled egg whites, chopped small
1/2 cup peas
Green Onion, minced
Some Sunflower seeds
2 cans of White Tuna, packed in water
Fresh Baby leaf Spinach (to eat with the tuna salad.... I stuff some spinach in the pita before the tuna salad)
Whole Wheat Pita Breads

"Mayo"
1/3 cup of yogurt
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/2 tsp Parsley
2 tsp white wine vinegar

Mix together all of that and add yogurt mixture.

Now, if, like me, you're thinking, "WHAT?  I'm not ruining all that food with YOGURT!!!", you can do as I did and place a tiny bit of your tuna mixture in a separate bowl (yeah, yeah, more dirty dishes, I know) and mix it with some of the yogurt mixture to reassure yourself and/your spouse or children.

In our house it went something like this:

"Um. No.  Not so much.  We don't have ANY Mayo tat I can have?"

So, the family used our Olive Oil Mayo which does have less fat... and hey, they're eating raw veggies on a whole grain homemade pita w/fresh baby spinach... I'm not going to complain!

What I'd do Differently Next Time:

Hmmm... Find a different Mayo substitute, because as much as I've enjoyed the yogurt substitutes (ala the apple crescent roll frosting!! YUM!), yogurt was not meant to go with everything.  Maybe Greek Yogurt would have been better, but I can not make myself spend literally four tms as much for Greek as I spend for Dannon All Natural Plain yogurt.  Just can't do it!  

Other than that, this was a HUGE WIN!!  The crunchy veggies and sunflower seeds... DELICIOUS!

Any suggestions??

Oooh!  Just found this on cleaneatngmag.com

CLEAN EATING OLIVE OIL MAYO

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
• Sea salt, to taste
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

I will be trying this out!

Clean Eating Whole Wheat Bread Variations, Pizza Crust, Crescent Rolls, Pita Breads and more!

Whole Wheat/Whole Grain EASY Homemade BREAD!!!

Things to do with your favorite refrigerated whole grain bread dough:

Thanks to my mom and my grandma's love of home cooking & baking, I've been making homemade bread since I was a child.  All of my kids learned to make bread around age 5 when they first started learning to read.  We'd do a unit study on the story of "The Little Red Hen" and I'd print out my Grandma's bread recipe in easy to read print... and they'd make bread.  The kneading was always the favorite part.  The first few times.  Then, it got tedious.
Years and Years later, I found this magical book:
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients

I found them online, too and I got lost in their blog for about an hour:) 

You can use the whole wheat dough(s) fromt his book, or use your own favorite whole wheat recipes.  We've also used this recipe with good results, but the 'new' way is much faster since there is no kneading and you can make a bunch to use throughout the week!

Here are the results of my experiments (click for detailed instructions):

Crescent Rolls

Pita Bread

Dinner Rolls/Breads

Top with a light spray/brush of water/EVOO and sprinkle with nuts/seeds or seasonings of your choice!



Mini muffin pans make for super quick fun dinner rolls!  Top with grated Parmesan Cheese or sprinkle with garlic...

 



A small baguette/Breadstick for dipping and The "Moon" shaped loaf (shaped by hand from refrigerated dough, then sliced on the rounded side like so):

Pizza!

We had a pizza baking day with our new pizza stone... and boy, did that make a difference!  I'm sure its not as good as the more expensive ones, but for us, a $13.00 stone was about the same price as a large pizza... and we only had to buy it once!  Actually, with 6-7 people here, we may buy another one later, so we can cook more than one pizza at a time.  We LOVE our pizza!!  I can't wait to try it with bread!

We made it by baking the crust first AND by baking the crust WITH the toppings.  We decided that The boys like theirs baked with the toppings, and a slightly thinner crust, whereas the girls and I liked our with the cruist baked most of the way first.  It just came out a little crispier in my opnion.

Favorite toppings?  Homemade marinara sauce, baby leaf spinach, cooked, chopped chicken breast with rotisserie chicken seasonings, feta cheese, half grape/cherry tomatoes, shredded skim mozzerella or parmesan, pizza seasonings, mushrooms, green peppers, red bell peppers, lean ground turkey... and on and on and on!

Clean Eating #31: 100% Super Easy Whole Wheat Pita Bread!

Whole Wheat Pita Bread!

Ingredients: 

1-2 pounds of refrigerated Whole Wheat bread dough

*I used my Whole Wheat with Flaxseed Dough from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Seeds/ground nuts of choice

tiny bit of water

• Take about 1 pound (small grapefruit size) of dough from your refrigerated dough.
• Sprinkle table with flour, adding some to the top of your dough
• Use a rolling pink to roll out to 1/8th inch circle. DO NOT poke any air holes, this is what make the pita naturally puff up and have that nice "slice" in btween layers when finished.

• Spray or brush top lightly with water & top with seeds/nuts of your choice (I used ground flax & chia seeds)

• Place on floured cookie sheet/flat pan
• Let rise for 15-30 minutes while oven & pizza stone heat.
• Slide onto on pre-heated baking stone for 5-7 minutes.  The pita will be puffed up and slightly brown

• Remove from oven and poke an air hole so the bread can flatten
• After it cools, cut in half and viola!  You have the nice, naturally separated Pita! 

• Fill with your favorite clean ingredients and have a wonderful snack or quick lunch.  These can be wrapped in plastic wrap and stored for later use.

We like to fill them with veggies and a little cheese and use them as "calzones" that we dip in our Clean marinara sauce.  I know my boys would love them with spicy sauteed veggies and we all love them with clean chicken pot pie type filling.

What do you like in your pita bread?

Clean Eating #24: Four Banana Muffin Variations & Super Supreme Pizza

Banana Muffin Variations:

I took our OMG Banana Crunch Muffin recipe and not only made some fantastic improvements to the texture (baking powder and soda changes ftw!  Add 1/2 tsp baking powder per cup of flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda per RECIPE)  These were THE cutest looking muffins.  They would make a fantastic thing for a gift basket for someone who eats clean!  You can NOT tell that these are whole grain "healthy muffins"... really!), but I also made these variations (all have the banana base).

Double Chocolate Walnut Muffins...
LOVE.  These made my hubby literally groan outloud they were so good.  And the texture... perfection!  I added 2 o of chopped unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped walnuts and an extra 2 Tbsp of brown sugar Xylitol to sweeten the chocolate.  I topped with coarsely chopped walnuts.  

Blueberry Almond Muffins... AMAZINGLY fantastic blend of flavors using dried blueberries & ground almonds.  Topped with ground almonds.  Again, the baking powder & soda made the texture perfect.

Banana Coconut Muffins...  These were exquisite as well.  Seriously a really fun combination of flavors.  I just added some raw flaked coconut.  I topped the muffins with some and slightly pressed it into the batter before cooking.

Mixed Berries Banana Muffins... These needed some tweaking, mainly because I used frozen berries and then my batter was too wet. I mixed up some more dry ingredients (1 c. whole wheat flour, 1. tsp baking powder & 12 tsp baking soda) and it helped tremendously. I topped these with slivered almonds and some chia seeds for a wonderful crunchy top.  The chia seeds were amazingly crunchy, I loved them.

Time Saver Tip:

Shredding your fresh apples with a cheese grater makes for super quick and easy applesauce for your recipes.  Applesauce replaces some of the oil, saving on calories and fat.

Super Supreme Clean Whole Grain Pizza

Using the pizza crust that Squatchmo made last week, Patrick made this divine pizza:
 We didn't care for this recipe as bread so much, but as pizza, it was heavenly!  I even ate some and I am not a supreme pizza kind of girl.

If I had the time, I'd photoshop out our old decrepit pan, but I decided not to, because I'd rather go cuddle with my hubby and watch a movie:).

Clean Eating #15: Carrot Zucchini Muffins, a Great lunchbox snack

Carrot Zucchini Muffins

Verdict:  Yummy.  Ironically enough, although I thought the pumpkin ones were sweet enough and the girls thought they weren't sweet enough, they loved these... whilst I found them to be lacking a little sweetness. I'm not sure I'd change anything though, since the kids liked them.  Less sweetness to combat sugar cravings sounds good to me!  **ETA:  Now that I've eaten several of these (the downside of good food, I need to stop eating it!!) I think the sweetness is just right.

I bake my muffins in mini muffin pans at 375-400.

Blend Dry Ingredients:

3 cups of whole wheat pastry flour

1 cup whole wheat white flour.

4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp Cinnamon

Mix Wet Ingredients:

10 egg whites

1 1/2 cups of melted coconut oil

2 cups of dark agave nectar

1 cup of applesauce (unsweetened)

4 cups of shredded zucchini

2 cups of shredded carrots

4 tsp vanilla

2 tsp lemon juice

Blend mixture together... put into muffin tins.  This batch filled our 24 count mini muffin pans 4 times.  A lot of muffins... which is great, because if my kids don't devour them all right away, they freeze really well for lunches later!

The Bean helping me out.  She loves shredding veggies.

What I'd do differently next time: 
I'm not sure if I'd change much.  They were really moist and turned out really well texture wise.  I think I'd want a little more... spice or something.  Any suggestions?  Nutmeg?  Is there a cinnamon-type spice that has maybe a little 'kick' to it?

At some point I want to try making yogurt cheese and using it for making some icing for the kids muffins.  Right now we're all trying to get off sugar, so anything extra sweet needs to just stay away!