I was thumbing through a free grocery store magazine when I came upon some lunchbox ideas. There were a couple of ideas that I liked but neither of them had a recipe with amounts to use so I gave it a go and did a little experimenting. When everything was done I thought I might never buy a Larabar ever again because these were just like them only I made mine with raisins where it seems that the Larabar corp. uses dates for the majority of their bars.

Copycat Larabar recipe

1 1/2 C. Organic Raisins
2 C. Walnut Halves or Almonds
2/3 C. Ground Flax Seed
1/4 C. fine coconut (optional)

I started with the walnuts and ground them in my food processor. Once they were fine I transferred them to a bowl. Next I placed the raisins in the food processor and chopped them up a bit. They are going to get sort of gooey and clumpy but don’t worry. Once the raisins are done add the walnuts and ground flax seed into the food processor so that you have all ingredients except the coconut in the food processor. Grind it all together until the color is even. Shape into balls or whatever other shape you like. Roll in the coconut. Store in an airtight container.

I’ll experiment with some more copycat Larabar recipes but for now this is what I’ve got. I’ll try an Apple Pie one next.

I don’t know Heidi Swanson but I can tell you that I would love to be in the kitchen with this gal. She has an obvious flair for food and flavor and I adore her recipes, especially since she focuses on natural and whole foods. I stumbled across her blog while having a conversation with a fellow foodie on a long train ride. The first recipe I tried was the one that my train buddy emailed to me…. it was a chocolate chip cookie recipe that was sugar and wheat free. I took them to all of my fitness buddies and everyone loved them! So did my kids.

I’ve since made several of Heidi’s wholesome recipes and I love being subscribed to her blog so that I’m constantly being faced with a new flavor when I open my inbox. I dare you try one….any one. I’ll even help you get started with an idea other than the sweet one I pointed out above. How does summer squash soup sound? If you’ve got an abundance of summer squash this one will be sure to tickly your fancy and give your summer squash a lovely place in the kitchen.

I’d love to know what you think about Heidi Swanson’s blog or where your other favorite and unique recipe blogs are at.

I couldn’t believe it.. the other evening I was watching David Letterman while putting our 5 month old to sleep and on comes this commercial telling me that high fructose corn syrup is okay for me. It stated that high fructose corn syrup is safe in moderation.

I immediately thought to myself… how can you moderate high fructose corn syrup when it’s in just about every mainstream food product out there!?

Apparently others share the same thought with me.

Don’t believe the hype. High fructose corn syrup is not okay. It’s a highly processed by-product of corn. Keywords here are higly processed and by-product. Need I say more?

I found a recipe for some zucchini muffins, or cupcakes if you like, over at Vanilla Garlic… although i added some chocolate chips to make them chocolate zucchini cup cakes. The recipe does have a bit more sugar in it then I would like but I went ahead and made them anyway. I haven’t figured out a way to reduce the amount of sugar since the zucchini adds so much moisture I didn’t think applesauce would be a good sweetener.

Here’s what I think about these Chocolate zucchini cup cakes: They are have super great taste. They weren’t as moist as I recall zucchini bread being but they do have a nice dense texture. As I mentioned, I added chocolate chips instead of raisins because they were a special treat. I love the cinnamon flavor and I added a little bit extra then the 2 tsp. the recipe called for.

I needed to let some of the zucchini cupcake mixture sit while the muffins cooked because I had limited cupcake pans. While it sat some of the moisture from the zucchini must have separated so I needed to mix it back into the mixture. This set of cupcakes was much wetter than the previous ones. While they were cooking they were so wet that they had to cook longer (by about 5-7 min), but the end result was a moister cupcake that was a little bit lighter. The top and edges was a little bit ‘crunchier’ but with cream cheese frosting it’s excellent!

Maybe I should have mixed everything longer before spooning it into the muffins but either way I thought a small (maybe 3 Tb. liquid could have been added. (Maybe applesauce might be a good substitute to replace some of the sugar and then less oil could be used also.)

They are a bit difficult to remove from the cupcake holder. I’m not sure why…I used paper cupcake holders rather than the aluminum ones so maybe that is why. I also recommend filling the cupcake holders up 3/4 full instead of the recommended half. Most of mine were filled only 1/2 and they had a lip of holder remaining around the edge. The holders that had more of the zucchini muffin mix looked more ‘bountiful.’

I also made only half the recipe for the cream cheese frosting so that there wasn’t as much on the cupcakes, as I was making them for small children.

Overall, the muffins are good but I would like to know a method to cook them using less sugar.

Recently I bought a few jars of baby food because my 8 month old wasn’t very interested in eating so I never knew when I might offer him some food. The jars just seemed convenient even though I had some frozen cubes of homemade apple and butternut squash baby food that I had made. Over the past couple of weeks, he has shown an increased desire to eat food and we now feed him at least twice a day.

I was heating up a jar of food in some hot water on the stove while holding him on my hip and making some food for the rest of the family. After thinking about it for a minute I didn’t understand why I wasn’t making him food. The logic is pretty simple, I make wholesome meals for everyone else in the family, why wouldn’t I make homemade food for our baby? Read more…