All the muffins

I thought it would be fun to start posting a new, healthy muffin recipe every Monday.  Because MUFFINS.  Sweet, crumbly....ahhhhh.  Who doesn't like muffins? That would be un-American.  

Now, if you're staying away from grain and dairy, this becomes a little challenging, but I am up for it.  This week's recipe....Lemon Poppy Paleo Muffins.  Minus the poppy seeds.  I could just imagine Luke deciding it was unacceptable to have little, black dots in his muffins.  The recipe is here, and was really simple to make.  I did increase the recipe by 50%, because the original yields 8 muffins.  A muffin tin makes 6 muffins.  So, you make 6 or 12, but none of this 8 nonsense.  Clearly, they did not consult a former actuary before writing said recipe.

A couple fun tools to help with this recipe are a microplane for zesting...

and a lemon juice squeezer thingy (you know what I mean)...

I'm always excited to use my tools.  And excuse the kitchen mess.  That's how we roll.  These came out really nice for having no flour or dairy!  They were still very cake like and crumbly...

And bonus points if you have a heart-shaped muffin tin.  Enjoy!!

The jelly sandwich conundrum of 2014

Luke has always been a pretty good eater.  Likes most cooked veggies, and will try most things I offer him.  He has gotten in a bit of a rut lately, though, and decided his meal of choice is a jelly sandwich with peanut butter on the side.  On a spoon.  He could eat this three times a day.  And of course, it's super easy and transports well, so naturally, it turned into a go to snack.  I am trying to move away from giving the kids lots of empty carbs (like bread and jelly, for instance), so this has become an issue for me.

Enter, the paleo english muffin.  It's a microwaveable quick bread that uses coconut flour, and has become a favorite at our house.  The recipe is here, but we made it in a different container.  I had one of these babies...

These magical, plastic containers are handy for quick breads like this, and for microwaving eggs, should you find yourself in a pinch.  You can buy one here.  So, I quadrupled the recipe, and measured out 1/3 of a cup of batter per muffin.  They cooked right up in 90 seconds, and sliced nicely once cooled.

Then you can either fry it in some coconut oil or butter, or toast it up.  Luke likes them soft, so I store a few in the fridge, and warm slightly when he wants one.  And as far as the jelly part, this is the best stuff I've found so far.  It's low in sugar, and tasty!  I'd rather it not have calcium chloride, but I looked it up, and it is basically a type of salt and is used as a preservative.  It is GRAS (generally regarded as safe). 

Compare that to Welch's...

I'm not hating on them, we had this in the house!  I'm just saying, you can do better if you look around.  The strawberry has half the sugar and all natural ingredients.  So, after some alterations...the jelly sandwich is now welcome in the Hope house once again.  Woohoo!!

I'll take the chipper chicken

Father of the Bride, anybody? That's one of my favorite movies from my childhood, and I can totally relate to Steve Martin freaking out over hot dog buns, now that I'm older. I like a good bargain. When we budget for a vacation, I break it down into how much it's going to cost per day and per hour of "fun". Matt loves that.



So, you can imagine it was a little difficult for me, at first, to justify spending extra money for organic meat and produce. Sometimes it's A LOT of extra money.  Spending $7 for a single pound of grass fed ground beef seemed crazy (mind you, a Wendy's single is $4.10...which is about $16/pound). The more research I do, the better I feel about my decision, but I still had some sticker shock at first.  So, if you are in that boat right now...here's a way to ease in.



Buy a whole, organic chicken.  I went with pasture raised (this was a happy chicken).  Even if you hate touching raw meat, and this grosses you out - stay with me.  Get a bunch of organic celery and 4 or 5 organic carrots too (they are stored loose in places like Whole Foods and Central Market).  Grab an onion, head of garlic, and make sure you have some thyme in your spice cabinet.  That's all you need to make some magic - and it won't break the bank!



I got my giant pot out (ever wonder why you needed that giant pot?  This is it!), and put the whole chicken in there.  

I actually set the chicken in the pot still wrapped up, and unwrapped it in there so I didn't have to touch it much.  It's not my favorite.  If you are brave, you can remove the skin from the breasts, but it will be easy to remove later. Add 2 or 3 carrots and stalks of celery, roughly chopped.  And quarter an onion, throw that in there.  I smashed a few cloves of garlic as well.  Then cover everything with water.  Here is Mr. Chicken with his friends in the pool.

Toss in a healthy pinch of salt, some cracked pepper, put on the lid, turn on high heat and bring to a boil.  Once it's boiling, turn to medium low, and simmer for a good hour and a half, until the meat is falling off the bones.  While you're cleaning up and waiting for your house to start smelling awesome, chop up the rest of your carrots and celery to add later.

Fast forward 90 minutes or so (you can't really over cook it), take off the lid and skim as much of the fat off the top as you can, and transfer the
chicken to a plate to debone.  Be careful...it might fall apart on you as you lift it out
and splash burning hot chicken stock on you (not that I've done this). You get a good amount of chicken! (that's a heaping plate)

Take all the cooked veggies out of the broth and toss them, add the chicken back in, and the remainder of your carrots and celery that you chopped.  I transferred everything to my normal soup pot to finish it off.  I had extra stock, so I saved it to freeze and use later.  Add a teaspoon or two of dried thyme, and simmer until the veggies are tender.  You might need more salt and pepper, too.

This made 18 cups of 100% organic, delicious goodness for less than $20.  And this is SOOO much better than the canned crap that actually costs more, and has chicken that is almost unidentifiable as chicken in it.  

 

Feel free to add some rice or noodles, but we like it with just the veggies.  Hooray for the chipper chicken!



*This post is dedicated to my cousin, Gayla Castle, who is deathly afraid of touching raw poultry.  Baby steps, cousin.  Baby steps.

Foundations

Our neighborhood is going through some major changes.  Lots of young families are moving in and tearing down the older houses, or adding on.  We have about six or seven lots, within a block or two, that have torn everything down and are starting from scratch.  It's fascinating to watch them smooth out the dirt, put in the pipes, and pour the foundation.  Luke loves to watch it, and I find it fun as well.  It's a new beginning.  A fresh start. 

It got me thinking about our foundation for health in our lives.  Most people don't think about what they put in their mouths every day, but that really is the foundation for all of us.  I am especially reminded as I start feeding Elizabeth her first solids. What I feed my children now will set them on a path for the rest of their lives.  I don't say that to scare you...I have given Luke his fair share of gold fish and jelly sandwiches.  But, I am constantly trying to do better, and try new things.  I want him to associate healthy foods with fun memories as well.  So many of us grew up with donuts as a Saturday treat, or sweets as a reward for just about anything.  But you can change that!  

To that end, here is a recipe we love.  I make them as muffins, and Luke loves them!  We omit the chocolate sauce (tried it once...meh).  Here's to building a strong foundation for ourselves, and our kiddos.  Stay hopeful, my friends!

~J-L

My Story

Hi there!  Glad you stumbled upon my blog…or came to read it because you are related to me and felt you must.  I’m Jennie-Laurie Hope, health-conscious foodie, and founder of Hopeful Fitness.  I am a mom of two, a 6-year-old boy and almost 2-year-old girl, and a wife to my wonderful husband Matt, whom I have been married to for 12 years now.

I grew up with a very healthy relationship with food until high school.  During those years, I was very controlling over what I ate, counting carrot sticks and slices of turkey to the point that I was too thin, and borderline anorexic.  Luckily, it didn’t get any worse, and by college, I went off the deep end the other way, eating entire pints of ice cream in one sitting, pizza, fried food – your basic college eating nightmare.  My nickname was JLDBananafudge, after my love of the Bluebell Bananafudge pops at the cafeteria.  So, yeah…

By my senior year of college, I had gotten married and was living a basically healthy lifestyle, eating everything in moderation and exercising a fair amount.  Enter life curve number one…

After three years of marriage, my husband was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, which was a huge shock.  At first, his doctor thought it was Type 2, even though he was not overweight.  Things were not making sense.  When his meds stopped working, we finally found an endocrinologist who diagnosed him as Type 1, and he started taking insulin.  I was about 7 months pregnant with our first baby at that time, so to say we were stressed out would be an understatement.

After a few years of trying to get by eating a regular diet and taking insulin, he started having burning and numbness in his feet and legs, which turned out to be a complication called diabetic neuropathy, or nerve damage.  Major wake-up call.  Our son was 18 months old by now, and it was just crushing to think about what might happen if Matt’s health continued to decline.  So, we began to research everything we could find, and came across a book called “The Diabetes Solution”, which changed our lives.  We started taking his diet very seriously, and he started a low carb lifestyle.  

Since then, I have done as much research as possible about low carb cooking and nutrition in general. I found myself talking with other parents and spouses of diabetics about everything I had learned, and I loved being able to share life-changing information.  It energized me and gave me purpose.  I was a pension actuary before becoming a stay-at-home-mom, and that transition was difficult for me.  Being a stay-at-home-mom is a wonderful blessing, and I fully believe the most important job I will ever have. But there were days I wanted to be able to use other skills, other parts of my brain…I found myself stress eating chocolate every afternoon, and checking Facebook every five minutes for a link to the outside world.  I needed something positive to look forward to when the day was really dragging.  

Enter health and fitness coaching!  I had been thinking for years about how to turn all of this knowledge I had gained into a business, but it always seemed overwhelming and impossible.  I came across Beachbody through my coach’s Facebook page, and the rest is history.  I love helping people with their nutrition and fitness goals, and it gives me an outlet to share all the recipes I love and research I come across.  

A few months in to my coaching, I actually had a major health issue of my own that you can read about here.  My level of commitment was definitely deepened through that experience, and I can't say enough about how coaching really kept me focused on something other than myself during that time.  Having that added purpose to my life was truly a blessing.

So, now I get to help people through my private accountability groups, and stay in touch with them for as long as they need it!  It’s very fulfilling and keeps me positive on days when the diabetes and tantrums and life curve balls try to get me down.  I lucked out with my married name – Hope.  Some days, that’s all we have!  Thanks for stopping by Hopeful Fitness!  You can email me at jennielauriehope@gmail.com to join me in a group sometime…I’d love to meet you!

~Jennie-Laurie

When life gives you lemons...

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade…right?  Or you take the lemon, squeeze the juice out, it gets on the paper cut you got earlier, and you throw a pity party for yourself.  That’s kind of how I was feeling yesterday.  I was recently diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.  I’ve known I had a “thyroid issue” for a few years now, but I finally started having enough skin issues to make me dig deeper into what was going on in my body.  Basically, my immune system is attacking my thyroid.  Yay.  Ain’t life grand?  Between Matt having Type 1 Diabetes and me having this, we are just one big, happy, autoimmune family.  

Honestly, it was a huge blessing that I knew so much about nutrition from studying diabetes and low carb/paleo diet stuff, that it was not a shock when my doctor told me I would also need to avoid gluten, dairy, and soy….FOREVER.  I’m seven weeks in now, and it hasn’t been terrible.  But there have been some sad moments, and some pity parties.  Yesterday was one of those days.  Soy is in EVERYTHING, in case you didn’t know.  Just start reading labels, and you’ll be pretty shocked.  I thought I knew a lot about labels, but I’ve been dissecting them at a whole new level lately.  And man, soy has really invaded the American diet.  But I digress…

I’ve been going to a wonderful Bible study with some other moms this summer, and we were just discussing this week how there are days we just feel empty.  We keep looking for something to fill the void (mainly stuff, things, “me time”…), but we usually come up dry.  I was feeling pretty spent last night, when I heard my baby girl crying in her crib.  Sometimes I let her cry it out – she was very tired…probably over tired.  But I had sympathy for her last night.  She was sad, and I could make it better.  So, I did.  And it was the highlight of my day.  I just gave her a small bottle, rocked her, and played a little game where we leaned our heads together until our foreheads touched.  And it was wonderful.  My lemonade for the day.