Pumpkin muffins revisited

Last week I posted a recipe for pumpkin muffins that my kids just love. Thanks to helpful comments from the peanut gallery, I've revised my recipe a bit. I now use a 50/50 mix of whole wheat and all purpose flour (thanks, Happy Runner!) and half of the sugar originally called for (a request from my husband). The kids don't even notice the difference in the final product! I packed a couple of mini-pumpkin muffins in my son's school lunch this week, and he even told me, "Thanks for packing me a dessert, Mom!" Shhh! Don't tell him that these are actually not bad for him!

Without further ado, here's the final recipe.

Pumpkin Muffins

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cup packed pumpkin (from a 15-oz can - be careful not to get the pumpkin pie filling can!)
1/3 cup olive oil
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line mini-muffin pan with muffin cups.

Mix together pumpkin, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth. Mix together flour and baking powder and add to the pumpkin mixture. Mix until just combined.

Add batter to each muffin cup so that each cup is about 3/4 full. Bake until puffed and golden brown and a wooden toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean, about 20 min.

Makes about 3 dozen mini-muffins.

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Surprising HFCS food of the week

I found today's HFCS food of the week both surprising and pleasing. What is it? Baked beans (in a can, of course)! I am not fond of beans. For whatever reason, the flavor of beans doesn't appeal to me. But I do like baked beans. There's something about those creamy little white beans swimming in a sweet bar-b-quey sauce- yum!

We have been using Van Camps brand beans for a while. Once upon a time, we were on a fairly strict elimination diet around here because of our kids' food intolerances (outgrown, thankfully!), and Van Camps didn't have any of the offensive dairy or wheat that other brands had. It's a brand that we grew to love. I was disappointed to find HFCS as an ingredient in most of the Van Camps beans - Van Camps Beanee Weenees and Van Camps Pork and Beans both have HFCS in them.


So what is the pleasing part? The thing that pleases me is that while looking at baked beans on a recent grocery store trip, Van Camps brand was the only brand that had HFCS in it! I was actually quite surprised by that. All of the Bush's brand baked beans that I looked at were HFCS free! And the generic store brand was also HFCS free. Even Van Camps has a HFCS-free option - Van Camps Baked Beans.


Happily, there are a lot of good HFCS-free baked bean options out there, but be sure to read those labels - formulations can be very different even within a brand. Of course, you can also make your own, but sometimes it really is nice to have a can of beans handy!

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Snack time...poppers!

My son is pretty picky - especially when it comes to vegetables. He would rather be hungry than snack on raw carrots. He would rather go without dinner than face a stick of raw celery. But one vegetable he happily snacks on - even asks for - is edamame.

For those of you who haven't experienced edamame before, it's a simple but wonderful thing. Edamame is young soybeans - soybeans harvested before they start to harden when they are but wee babes - that are typically boiled in water, maybe with a little salt added.


Soybeans are an excellent source of molybdenum, and a very good source of manganese and protein. They're also a good source of iron, omega 3 fatty acids, fiber, magnesium, riboflavin, and potassium - just to name a few. Soy may have other health benefits as well, such as helping to maintain a good cholesterol level and keeping bones strong and dense, though it's doubtful that snacking on a handful of edamame alone is going to have a significant effect on your cholesterol level or bone density.

I'd be remiss if Ididn't mention concerns about excessive soy consumption - such as increased levels of phytoestrogens, or isoflavones (found in abundance in soy foods), in infants consuming soy formula and isoflavones' effect on thyroid function. Again, those may be valid concerns if soy is a big portion of your diet, but a snack of edamame every now and then isn't likely to impact your thyroid function.

We call edamame "poppers" because you pop the beans out of the shell straight into your mouth. Poppers is a lot easier for a little one to say than edamame, and it makes eating beans a lot more fun.

You can boil, microwave, or steam edamame for a tasty treat. I like to buy plain, no-salt added, frozen edamame in the shell and boil for 5 min. I used to add salt to the pods at the end, but I've discovered that we all like it just as well without the salt. It is good with a light sprinkling of flaky sea salt, but I leave that to our visits to the sushi bar.

If you have a picky eater - adult or child - give these a try! They're fun, tasty, and good for you to boot!

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Friday Links

Time to send out a little link love.

First, a couple of new blogs from the same guy - The Food Geek. His tagline is "Letting your inner geek and your inner gourmet mingle" - love it! You can find him at his personal blog, The Food Geek, and also blogging (and writing) for Fine Cooking.

Continuing on the geeky side, have you been to Cooking for Engineers? If not, check it out! You'll find a multitude of recipes nicely presented, food science explanations, product reviews, and more.

Last is Parenting Solved. Dr. Bryan Vartabedian's blog is packed full of good information for parents, especially if your child is on the younger side. Informative, entertaining, and sometimes opinionated - he's a must-read for me.

Remembering warmer times...

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Surprising HFCS product of the week

It's time to cruise the grocery store shelves and discover another surprising HFCS-containing product. This time it's not a food, which might make it even more surprising (or less if you're cynical) - liquid cough syrup! I guess it shouldn't be surprising since the medicine is floating in a thick, sweet, gloppy syrup, but maybe I expected more from my medicine.

I was surprised to find that all of the liquid Robitussin cough and cold products contain HFCS. I rarely use cough suppressant, but I will turn to an expectorant for congestion, and liquid is nice because it will coat your throat and provide a little relief from coughing that way. Take a look at the inactive ingredients for Robitussin Chest Congestion: anhydrous citric acid, artificial flavor, caramel, FD&C red no. 40, glycerin, high fructose corn syrup, liquid glucose, menthol, propylene glycol, purified water, saccharin sodium, sodium benzoate. Ugh.



There are alternatives. Not all cough and cold medicines have HFCS in them. Tylenol Chest Congestion, for example, is HFCS free. (It also has acetaminophen in it, though. Always check the active ingredients so you don't accidentally double up!) For kicks, let's just take a gander at Tylenol Chest Congestion Cool Burst Liquid's ingredient list: carboxymethylcellulose sodium, citric acid, FD&C blue #1, flavors, polyethylene glycol, propylene glycol, purified water, sodium benzoate, sorbitol, sucralose, sucrose.

Now I'm not banning all foods with food coloring or artificial sweeteners in our household (though we are naturally consuming less of both), but I do wonder what business they have in medicine. I would rather have a gross brown medicine free of artificial colors - especially if I'm going to give it to my child - than one loaded with it, especially as it seems that some people can be affected in negative ways by artificial colors. I'm sure that we could argue against some of the other ingredients too, but the artificial colors and sweeteners are the ones that really jump out at me, and both are ubiquitous in over-the-counter medicines.

So the moral of this story? Read those ingredients! All brands are not created equal. If you don't like the inactive ingredients in one brand, you might have better luck with another. Or you might find that you have to consume an ingredient you normally wouldn't in order to get the medicine your body needs.

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Snack time!

I'm a mom on a mission. My mission is to get my kids to eat as healthy as possible while still enjoying their food. Snack time is often a challenge here. My kids can be picky and finicky, so I'm always looking for good, healthy snacks that will keep them interested in good food (in addition to trying to sway them to like fresh fruit and veggies). So, this is going to be a semi-regular feature here - healthy snacks that taste good. My kids are my jury here, but these snacks are just as good for adults.

My son came home from preschool a few weeks ago and asked if I would make him some pumpkin muffins. They made them a couple of times in their preschool class, and he loved them. Well, I put it off - for several weeks - because neither I nor his father care for pumpkin. Last week, I found a recipe that looked fairly easy and full of pumpkin at Smitten Kitchen. Both of my kids love these muffins! They consume them with a fervor that I can't quite translate into words.

I'm thrilled (and more than a little surprised) that my kids like pumpkin, and here's why. Pumpkin is loaded with the antioxidant beta-carotene. It's also low in fat and calories and high in potassium. Add in a fair amount of vitamin C, fiber, and other nutrients like calcium, iron, and vitamin E, and it's a shame that our main use for pumpkins is as a Halloween decoration!

I tweaked the recipe ever so slightly, so I'm going to go ahead and give you the version that I used, complete with pictures of my muffins. If you want to see the original recipe and gorgeous pictures of the final product, head on over to Smitten Kitchen. I chose to make mini-muffins for portion control (though it doesn't really help when they inhale 2-3 at a time). I'm sure that a better baker than I could substitute whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose flour and decrease the sugar and still come out with a fine muffin.


Pumpkin Muffins

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cup packed pumpkin (from a 15-oz can - be careful not to get the pumpkin pie filling can!)
1/3 cup olive oil
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line mini-muffin pan with muffin cups.

Mix together pumpkin, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth. Mix together flour and baking powder and add to the pumpkin mixture. Mix until just combined.

Add batter to each muffin cup so that each cup is about 3/4 full. Bake until puffed and golden brown and a wooden toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean, about 20 min.

Makes about 3 dozen mini-muffins.

Are you a picky eater? Would you like to be a little less picky? Then head on over to Kid Appeal and enter the Recovering Picky Eater Challenge! I know around here my kids are much less likely to try a new food if I don't like it. I'd hate to shut down good food options for them because of my pickiness. So, I'm going to work on my dislike of beans and fish - much to the joy of my husband, I'm sure.

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I'm ba-ack!

I'm back from my holiday break. It was a busy time of holiday fun, illnesses, and just taking a breather. And now back to business! If you're at my website (and not reading this through a reader), be patient. The dust will settle on the new page design soon.

In the meantime, how about a little Corn Refiners Association ad spoof as we ease into the new year? You can take a look at the original ads here if you haven't seen then already. Love this spoof by the guys that made King Corn!



If you haven't had enough, Cheeseslave has more spoofs for your viewing pleasure.

And last, a BIG thank you to the folks over at James Hubbard's My Family Doctor magazine for including A Life Less Sweet in its most recent issue. My Family Doctor has a debate on HFCS in its Jan/Feb 2009 issue with experts debating both sides of the question of whether HFCS is worse than sugar. It's an interesting debate that leaves some unanswered questions. I'll be watching research on this subject in the years to come, but as I explained here, I'm comfortable with our decision to say bye-bye to HFCS.

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