Pumpkin Banana Muffins

Are you ready for a delicious, delightful and darn easy muffin for fall baking?  Yeah?  Me too!  These muffins combine the banana bread flavor we all love with the yummy fall goodness of pumpkin. Two things I love about these muffins are that they are quick (you can't get much simpler than adding a few ingredients to a box mix) and that they contain a 1/2 serving of fruit and of vegetables!  So don't feel guilty about eating several, we gotta get in our veggies in some how right? :)   

Pumpkin Banana Muffins  Source: My sister, Lydia

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix

eggs as directed on the box

oil as directed on the box                                                                 

1 C pumpkin

1 C mashed banana

1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Prepare a yellow cake mix according to the directions omitting the water. 

3. Stir in 1 C pumpkin, 1 C mashed banana and 1 tsp cinnamon.
4. Pour into muffin tins.  (Two tablespoons of batter in each is perfect)

5. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

 This recipe is linked to: Countdown to 2011: Breakfasts at  Finding Joy in My Kitchen

Homemade Ranch Dressing Mix

We love ranch dressing at our house and I often will use it in recipes, but those little packets at the store can add unnecessary expense to your grocery bill.  You probably already have all the spices you need to make ranch dressing mix in your cupboard right now.  I have a little mason jar that I keep ours in and it has been so handy.  I am never going back to buying those packets!  A packet at the store is 0.7 oz, or 1.5 Tablespoons of your homemade mix.  I always use it the dry mix state but you can make it into regular ranch dressing or a dip if you like.

Homemade Ranch Dressing Mix  Source:  Heavenly Homemakers

Ingredients:

5 Tbl dried minced onion
7 tsp parlsey flakes
4 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp dill (Heavenly Homemakers doesn't add dill, but I had compared several recipes and chose to include it)

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together and store in an air tight container.

For Dressing:  Mix 2 Tbl dry mix with 1 C mayonnaise and 1 C buttermilk.  Allow flavors to blend for a couple hours before serving.

For Dip: Mix 2 Tbl dry mix with 2 C sour cream.  Allow flavors to blend for a couple hours before serving.

Taco Hashbrown Casserole

This is one my husband's favorite things I make. I guess it is a typical 'man' food, meat and potatoes!  Cheese, sour cream and ranch on top of shredded hashbrowns and taco seasoned hamburger = Yummy!  I found this recipe in our local newspaper and it was an instant hit with my family.  The original recipe has less of the ranch sauce, but I have adjusted the recipe to reflect how we like it best :)


Yesterday despite the cooler weather, we played outside for about an hour.  I feel like the days we can do that are numbered!  We had a great time throwing around a football and pretending  to make touch downs.  Lincoln at his 3 years already is getting the hang of a good touch down celebration! I wonder if our neighbors enjoyed watching it as much as I did :)

Taco Hashbrown Casserole  Source: The News Gazette


Ingredients:


1 C sour cream
1 C milk
1 pkg Ranch dressing mix (or make your own! Recipe to come!)
2 lbs hamburger
1 onion, chopped
1 bag shredded hashbrowns
Velveeta Cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Fry hamburger and onion, drain oil and add the taco seasoning.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the sour cream, milk and ranch dressing mix.
4. Put the shredded hashbrowns in a 9 x 13 pan.  Cover with hamburger mixture.  Pour the ranch sauce evenly over the top.
5. Top with thin slices of Velveeta Cheese.
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Apple Enchiladas

I don't know about you, but the kind people who made us dinner and provided us with food when my boys were born were real life savers! It was such a blessing to not have to worry about making dinner or having to eat fast food all the time.  One of my best friends just had an adorable little boy, Greyson, and I wanted to do the same for her.  Her husband loves Mexican so I made my Taco Hashbrown Casserole (recipe to come!) and these Apple Enchiladas for them. 

As typical for me, these Apple Enchiladas are easy!  The sauce is amazing, I loove it.  The recipe makes lots of sauce, more than you need for the enchilada itself, perfect for drizzling over some vanilla ice cream to go along with your dessert.  The recipe only makes 5-6 enchiladas so you may want to double it :)

Apple Enchiladas  Source: Making Dinner & Making a Difference (Carle Hospital ICU)

Ingredients:

5-6 flour tortillas

1 (21-oz.) can apple pie filling

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/3 C margarine

1/2 C white sugar

1/2 C brown sugar

1/2 C water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Spoon pie filling evenly into all tortillas, sprinkle with cinnamon.

3. Roll up tortillas and place seam side down in a lightly greased 8 x 8 inch pan. 

4. In a medium saucepan, bring margarine, white sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon and water to boil.

5. Once mixture begins to boil, reduce heat and simmer, stirring constantly for 3 minutes.

6. Pour sauce evenly over the tortillas and bake for 20 minutes.

A Use for all that Halloween Candy

Do you have tons of Halloween candy at your house?  Are you trying to think of a way to keep your kids from eating it all at once in effort to avoid over-sugared kids and tummy aches?  Well, my sister Lydia comes up with some of the cutest ideas!  She told me today about a "Candy Calendar" she made for her kids using some of their Halloween candy.  Here is the idea, there are 54 days left until Christmas (wow!) put 54 pieces of Halloween candy in a bag and allow your kids to pick one piece of candy each day and cross off the number counting down to Christmas. 

I love the way this rations out the candy and builds excitement for Christmas!  Plus, Lincoln is working on learning his numbers and this is a fantastic way to work on our counting, number recognition, and length of time in days, weeks and months.

This is the perfect time to grab some discounted Halloween candy for Christmas. I went out today and got 50% off candy that was not even in Halloween wrappers which will be great for Christmas stockings!  Caramels and Hershey kisses were also 50% off- marvelous for Holiday baking!   I have a super super cute owl recipe that you will want Candy Corn for, an amazing caramel brownie recipe and there are tons of uses for Hershey kisses!  Stock up now and we can bake later! :)

Super Easy Smoothie

I really like smoothies, I used to work on campus just two doors down from a Smoothie King.  It was wonderful having a healthy snack so close by but for some reason I never made them for myself at home.  Smoothies are so easy to make that I can't believe I didn't make them sooner!!  REALLY easy.  You could add any fruit you like or if you want to make things super super easy, I'm talking two ingredients easy,  just pick up a couple of cans of Jumex the next time you are at the store.  The Jumex was very cheap at my local Wal-Mart, $0.38 a can.  Homemade ice is free, so the total cost for this recipe is $0.38 per smoothie!!  Two cans of nectar along with the ice was enough to fill our blender.  The Jumex is not super sweet but I really liked it for breakfast and thought it was a refreshing and healthy start to the day.

Lincoln and Carson were smoothie fans too.  Carson hasn't figured out that you need take breaks when drinking a frozen drink and kept giving himself 'Ice cream headaches.' It was humorous to watch him sipping away and then grab his head, but keeping on drinking.  He wouldn't let me take the smoothie away and didn't understand that it was what was causing his head to hurt, silly little man!  I guess he thought I wanted his smoothie for myself :)

Super Easy Smoothie  Source: Abby (An 'A' For Effort)

Ingredients: 

2 cans Jumex nectar (any flavor, we like the strawberry banana)

Ice

Optional: Additional fruit or fruit juice

Directions:

1. Combine Jumex and ice in a blender.  Grate until ice is finely grated.

2. Add additional fruit or juice if desired.

Attempting to be the "Queen of Clean"

"Cleaning the house while the kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk while it's snowing."- Phyllis Diller

I bet everyone with kids is smiling after reading that quote because it is so true!  When the kids are around it really does feel like you are shoveling while the snow is still falling!  Today I woke up with the cleaning bug.  I blame it on my mom who came over yesterday and was talking about a book, The Queen of Clean by Linda Cobb, that she has been using to find all sorts of ways to clean things using products you already have at home.  I am interested in finding more 'green' ways of doing things and using less chemicals.  This book (or her website) is a perfect fit for this! 

Matt and the boys went down to Jeff & Val's to watch the football game and I was free to clean all I wanted!  (Okay, how sad is it that when given time to myself I choose to clean?!?  Sigh!)  Can you still be my friend even if I am a complete dork? I made my own cleaners using The Queen of Clean for:

Shower- Heat vinegar in the microwave and pour into a spray bottle.  Spray hot vinegar all over the shower.  Wait 15 minutes.  Use a nylon scrubber and wipe off the soap scum.  Rinse with water.

Tile grout on the breakfast bar- Combine 1 Tbl Borax, 2 Tbl baking soda and 1 Tbl water to make a paste.  Scrub the paste into the tile grout using a toothbrush to remove the dirt.  Wipe clean with water.

Air Freshener- Combine 2 C water, 1Tbl vinegar, 1 tsp baking soda in a spray bottle.  It will foam up a bit.  Once the foaming stops use as you would Febreeze.

My favorite was the tile cleaner.  I couldn't believe the difference it made!  I would have taken before and after pictures, but honestly I didn't want you to see the before! :)  The vinegar on the shower was pretty stinky (to be expected though I guess!) Icouldn't argue with the results though, it did work :)  The air freshener I liked but mine still had some perfume scent to it because I refilled my old Febreeze bottle so I am not sure if it would normally smell of Vinegar or if the amount is small enough to not be noticeable.  So I guess I haven't decided on that one yet.  I will have to borrow my mom's book and try out more of these.  It definitely added a little something different to my cleaning to mix things up a bit :)  Let me know  if you try these out!  If you have any cleaning tips like these send them to me and I will try them out too!