The Quiet Life of Violet

Tasty Delicious, Semi-Healthy Spelt Pumpkin Spice Muffins!

A week or so ago on my Twitter (I'm kind of a Tweeter), I mentioned that I made some super yummy Pumpkin Spice Muffins and a few lovely ladies wanted the recipe, so here ya go!

Just so you know, the picture below isn't of the actual muffin... my sweet camera, Miss June, decided to bite the dust last week and I wasn't able to get a nice picture of my sweet little army of pastries. I searched We Heart It for a similar looking muffin and found the picture below. This recipe makes a much oranger, pumpkiny colored muffin.

As a side note, these muffins can actually double as a cupcake if you decided to frost them, as they're super moist. A nice cream cheese frosting would be delightful!

[Source]

 

Violet's Pumpkin Spice Spelt Muffins:

Ingredients:

1/4 cup         Organic butter, softened
2/3 cup        Organic brown sugar
1 cup             Organic canned pumpkin puree
2                      Eggs (organic, free range or pastured are best!)
1/2 cup        Almond milk (sub cow's, rice or hemp milk OR orange or apple  juice)
2 tsp.             Vanilla extract (I used homemade vanilla made by my MIL!)

2 cups            Spelt flour (sub gluten-free baking mix, whole wheat or white flour <-- ew)
2 tsp                Baking powder
1/4 tsp            Salt

2 tsp                 Cinnamon, ground
1/8 tsp            Ginger, ground
1/4 tsp             allspice, ground
1/4 tsp             nutmeg, ground
OR
1 TBSP                 Pumpkin Pie spice

Optional add ins:
chocolate chips, nuts or seeds (walnuts, pecans, sliced almonds, sunflower seeds, roasted pumpkin seeds, etc..), dried cranberries, cherries or currants. The possibilities are endless! 

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 375*. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin using butter, palm oil or olive oil. Cream together butter and sugar (I used my Kitchenaid stand mixer). Mix in pumpkin puree, eggs, almond milk and vanilla.  

In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt and spice. Add flour mixture a little at a time to the wet mixture and stir to incorporate. The batter should be a bit runny.. kind of like thick pancake batter. Add a little more almond milk if it's too thick.  Spoon batter into muffin cups. Bake for 30 minutes or until muffin tops look "done" and a toothpick inserted into the middle of muffin comes out clean. Let muffins cool for a few minutes and then use a butter knife to gently go around the edges of each muffin cup to "pop" the muffins out! Eat plain, topped with butter or frosted.

 

YUM!

Pink Pepper - Honey-licious Peanut Butter

 

Most peanut butter on the market is full of crap. Bad oils (hydrogenated -- ahhh!), additives and white sugar. Now, if you're into eating healthy or just want to try and do better than you're doing, this super easy recipe is for you! Its actually not even a recipe. It's a mix-it-all-together-until-it-tastes-best sort of thing.

Ingredients:

• Fresh ground, plain peanut butter "paste"(I buy this from my local store. Most places with a "health" section and bulk bins will have a machine that you can use. The peanut butter comes out of the machine fro-yo style -- take as little or as much as you want, but I only get what I'll use in the following few weeks.)

• Honey (I buy raw honey, as it still has all of the good enzymes and stuff in it  -- conventional honey is pasteurized and sometimes it's half honey, half honey flavored corn syrup. Read before you buy! I buy THIS kind.)

• Salt (I use Real Salt. Has lots of yummy minerals in it, the way it should ! Tastes amazing, too.)

• Olive oil (I use Trader Joe's brand of Organic, cold-pressed oil.)

Directions:

1. Find a nice jar with a screw top lid that you'd like to use. Cute jars are better.
2. Plop desired amount of peanut butter paste (it IS paste-y, no?) into jar.
3. Add a honey, a tablespoon to start with, and mix with a strong spoon. Use your muscles.
4. Taste. If its not sweet enough, add more honey. It WON'T have the normal consistency of regular peanut butter yet. Don't you worry.
5. Add the olive oil, a Tablespoon at a time and mix until desired spread-ability is achieved. 

6. Add salt to taste.

Peanut butter is done. BAM! Healthy delicious peanut butter without all the crap.

Will keep for about two or three weeks (I'm going on week three over here) in the cupboard. Only make what you think you'll use in the next few week.  Store the rest of the plain peanut butter "paste" in the fridge until you're ready to make more.

---

Like the first picture? Peanut Butter Nachos. Oh YES. Schmear some Honey-licious Peanut Butter on tortilla chips, top with banana slices and little chocolate chips. Hello, delicious!

 

Will Stand For Carrot.

A couple of weeks ago, Dustin and I were visiting his parents and we were able to spend some time with our sweet little mush-puffs who have been at Camp Grandma (what we call it) for a while now.

Now, let me start off by telling you that Widget (the big, stripey one) loves produce. He takes after  his Momma. He'll eat pineapple, green beans, potatoes, apples, LOVES watermelon (you need a laugh? Watch a dog eat watermelon.), bananas, asparagus and ESPECIALLY carrots. This boy is MAD for carrots...  baby, whole cold big ones, shredded, mushy, you name it.

Well, Dustin and I were enjoying the evening air sitting out on his parent's patio and Dustin happened to be eating a carrot....

Yeah, these are my men. <3
(and, yes... Dustin ate a dog-spit carrot.)
:)

1,300 Things to be Thankful For (week 2)

26.  A fresh pad of Post-It Notes.

27. The soggy gumball at the bottom of the sno-cones from the Ice Cream Man.

28. Freshly cut sunflowers in the house.

29. Peeling off the bandaid,  even though it hurts.

30. The smell of a brand new book (Yep, I sniff books).

31. Games of Ladder Golf  in the backyard.

32.  The sheer size of Drive-In movie screens.

33. The crisp smell of my Mother-In-Law's sun dried towels.

34. Bananas with a bit of green still on them.

35. Rainy days that were made for watching movies.

36. Finding money in a random pocket.

37. Tape-style lint rollers that really work well.

38. Boys who hug trees.

39. Venus Fly Trap plants.

40.  Cellphone/camera/electronic batteries that don't die after an hour.

41. Ice water on hot days.

42.  Water weeds in aquariums.

43. Having 10 fingers.

44. Backyard patios with tastefully draped Christmas lights.

45. Really good sneezes.

46.  Only sneezing once in a while.

47.  Plops of cookie dough on a parchment lined baking sheet.

48. Taking the time to make a really good salad.

49. Fireflies flitting here and there at dusk.

50.  How the dishes magically get taken care of when I throw a dinner party. (<3 Mom)

Flashback Fridays: I Got To See The End.

Lost came out in 2004. After my Mother's urging, I started watching it and soon became HOOKED. Like, majorly hooked, but not quite.. "druggy" hooked. Not so hooked that I had a note book and wrote theories and drew doodles with "I <3 Sawyer" ('cause he's a major babe). 

In June of 2005, we found out that my cancer had come back, for the first time since childhood, in my right lung. I remember being in Stanford, the hospital, with my Mother, laying on that terribly plastic hospital bed, freezing and puking, sleeping and feeling like utter crap.

My Mom and I used to watch Lost together. The T.V. was tiny, but there were subtitles, so it was sufficient. If not in the "House of Germs" (Mom's term), we'd watch Lost together in the at home, Tivo-ing if we were too tired to stay up. 

I remember being so sad and feeling so desperate. I remember crying and being so scared for my life. Scared that I would die. That I'd wither away and my life would become this sad, after-school movie story. My soul would ache and I kept secretly praying and begging -- "Please let me live. I want to DO things. I want to buy a  house. I want to have babies.. I.. I... I want to see the end of Lost." In my head, I even came up with the idea to write a letter to the CEO of ABC, asking them to share the ending with me, a poor little dying girl, if it came down to that. I'd promise not to tell anyone and the secrets would go to the grave with me. (I wonder if they would have done it?) Yeah, my state of mind sometimes dipped into this huge jar of negative sauce, but it was warranted. :)

After I got better, I begged Dustin to watch it then he was hooked. We continued to watch it together, episode after episode. I'd talk with my Mom on her lunch breaks about the episodes until she finally got fed up with the confusing storyline and stopped watching. Dustin and I  stopped watching it on TV around the middle of the third season, for some reason, too.

On a whim, we picked up some of the seasons on DVD and decided to have Lost marathons and watched the first through fourth seasons back to back... two or three episode a night. Ha!

I got sick again and then got better again, and last winter, we watched the fifth season (my favorite) together through Netflix.  More date nights, but this time, we made the episodes last. We had to resist the urge to watch more than two episode a night and spread the viewings out over a few weeks. We'd eat artichokes and oven baked cod with our eyes glued to the T.V.. Mounds of vegan mac-and cheese (I wasn't eating cheese at that point) with peas and corn on the cob. Tacos and hot tea and Locke. Pieces of Lost's story were slowly falling into place, new characters were being introduced and still there were so many questions to be answered. Characters found new lovers in old friends, the past and present became interwoven in this massive, meaningful blanket that was Lost. We loved every second of it.

 By the time the last season, the sixth, premiered in February, we were all caught up. Bubby and I watched each fresh episode every week on Hulu together. More artichokes and cuddles and cod.

This past Sunday was the last episode. The end. No more. Fin. So many of my friends talked about how sad they were that it was ending and I was, too. And then, when Dustin and I were watching the second to last episode, it hit me....

I cried the happiest, most thankful tears. A blubbering mess. Dustin looked at me like I was possessed until I explained it to him....

I've made it. 

I'm alive.

I got to see the end.

Flexipe #2: Quick and Easy Pizza Sauce.

Quick and Easy Pizza Sauce              

I whipped up this quick and easy pizza sauce one day after realizing that spaghetti sauce doesn't quite cut it on a pie. The spag sauce, I discovered, made my crust all watery and was all liquidy and gross. No bueno, folks!

This recipe is flexible in that you can kind of fudge around with the proportions of the ingredients to your liking!

Gluten Free. Vegan. Soy free. Yummy.

Directions:

First, you take one can of tomato paste (I used a 6 ounce can of Trader Joe's Organic paste) and plunk it into a bowl.

Next, add a splash of red wine, about two Tablespoons.

Take two large cloves of garlic (more if you like things really garlicky and less if you don't) and mince. I use this SUPER awesome garlic gadget that I got at Target called the Chef'n Garlic Zoom. Dude, if you dislike the mincing process as much as I do (I'm always terrified I'm gunna lop off my fingers.. and ruin the garlic.), spend the ten bucks and pick one up. It's even kid friendly, once it;s loaded up. I bet your kidlettes would love to help you and glide the little gadget across the counter like a race car!

Take three fresh basil leaves (dried is fine, use about... a teaspoon)

Use a nice sharp knife and chop to desired size (Big ribbons? Tiny specks? medium sized chunks?). I like nice, Chicklet sized pieces.

I like to add a bit of agave for sweetness. It's a liquid sweetener made from the agave plant (tequila, baby!) and has a low glycemic index, which means that it hits your blood slowly and gives you very little, if any, of a sugar rush. Hate those sugar rushes. Yuck.  I used about a teaspoon. I get it from Trader Joe's, also organic. You could use honey, apple juice concentrate,

Next, add about a good tablespoon of good quality olive oil. I use Trader Joe's Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I like Trader Joe's.. can you tell?! :)

Next, extra spices! I love fennel. LOVE it! I use about a 1/2 teaspoon and give it a nice chop, then plop it in the bowl. Dustin like things a little spicy, so I add either chipolte powder or ground cayenne. Just a bit to start! A little shake. Or, if you don't want any spice, skip it, baby!

[Why, thank you, Mr. Lemon. Your assistance in holding my bottle was greatly appreciated!]

Now, give it a mix! Stir it really well, making sure to get all of that olive oil incorporated.  Now taste the sauce and add salt to taste. SALLLTTTT. Mmmmm. (Salt and I go way back. Sometimes, we sneak away from Dustin and have long weekends together. Don't tell, okay?)

Now, this makes a thick sauce, which I like. If you want it a little thinner, add a bit of veggie/beef/chicken broth, or some water. You could get fancy and add different teas or even juice (V8?). I'd start with a Tablespoon, mix and taste.  Now, stir time! Give the sauce a good mix, taste and make any adjustments. More sweetener? More garlic or cayenne? More wine? (You Wino!) A little oregano or rosemary? It's all up to you!

Makes enough to cover a 14 inch pizza heavily (this is without any extra liquid -- the thick style sauce) with about a tablespoon leftover.  I'm sure if you thin it out, you could stretch this to cover two of those pre-made, 12" crusts. 

Ideas:

* Use the sauce on pre-made crusts for a quick dinner.

* Make a Pita Pizza by stuffing a pita pocket with sauce, toppings (veggies, cheese, meaties, fake meaties, herbs, etc..) and bake until cheese (if using) is melty.

* French bread pizzas! Melty meatball sandwiches!

* On baked potatoes, like THIS chicky does. 

* As a dip for bread sticks!

* You can also eat it with a spoon, like I do. Seriously. BUT! Don't eat more than a few spoonfuls unless you have a stomach of steel.. the acid will give you a tummy ache. Not that I'd know from experience. ;)

Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to link back in the comments sections if you try this Flexipe and blog about it!

xx (double cheek kiss),
Violet