The Healthiest and Yummiest Pancakes Ever

Happy Memorial Day! 

Every weekend should be three days long. It gives you time to settle in. Be together. Relax and catch up. We had a very simple weekend. No babysitters, no day trips, no live music or fancy dinners out. But it was the absolute best. Even tropical storm Beryl did not ruin our weekend. In fact, all it did was cause us to hold on to our hats as we explored...

...did some work in the yard...

...took some couch naps (after all of that yard work)

...and of course logged plenty of beach time.

We have been trying to clean up our diet. Diabetes runs in the family, and we want to avoid it and all of the things that come along with getting older. We also want to shed a few pounds and teach our children to eat more vegetables. In short, we want to be able to run distance, paddle the marshes, and bench press each other well into our nineties. So we've stopped eating grains, sugar, dairy, and anything that triggers an insulin response in the body. It's an experiment, but so far it's going well. After one week I notice that my appetite is manageable, I don't have ups and downs in the afternoon, and since my taste palette has been re-sensitized to real food, fruit and vegetables taste like heaven. I will let you know more as time goes on.

That said, what is Saturday morning without pancakes? I made these Paleo-friendly healthy pancakes and we all loved them, including the little ones. 

Pumpkin Almond Butter Pancakes

Ingredients:

2 egg

4 egg whites

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/3 to 1/2 cup maple almond butter (or regular if you can't find maple)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp nutmeg

oil for cooking (I like coconut oil for this)

First:  Put all the ingredients in a large bowl and beat with a whisk. It takes a few minutes to make everything smooth. 

Next: Heat a cast iron or nonstick skillet and add oil to coat the pan. Drop the batter in 1/2 cup servings. Flip when bubbles begin to appear and the edges are set. They cook up pretty fast which is a good thing if you have a child who loves pancakes as much as mine does. I served these with turkey sausage and agave nectar to go on top.

So far, eating healthy has been all pleasure and very little pain. And I'm glad, because we plan to live long enough to be able to afford our dream house on the beach:

No, I'm not serious. But I'd love to spend a weekend partying there!

Oven Pancakes

Oh, glorious weekend, how we love you. This was a good one. The light was clean, the air crisp, and there were ghosts and goblins everywhere. Here's how we spent our two days:


Playing on the beach. Fall days are so nice at the shore. It's not too hot and the sun feels good on your skin.

Starting in October the dogs are allowed to stay on the beach all day, and they are everywhere and sooooooo happy. You've never seen so many happy dogs! If you're lucky sometimes the salt air mixes with wood smoke from fireplaces in the houses that line Sullivan's Island.

 

 It's enough to make me want to build a bonfire, roast s'mores, curl up in a sleeping bag and spend the night on the beach. But that will have to wait until these guys are a little older.

Listening to Warren Haynes live coming in through our windows. He was right down the street at the Southern Grounds music festival.

Watching Tennessee get beat by the mighty Alabama. It's a rebuilding year. At least now we have a classy coach, and one who can rock the orange pants with style. And here are the two Volunteers on game day.

Painting pumpkins. It's not the color combo that I would have chosen, but I like to let him do his own thing.

Anticipating moving into our house. We'll be there in four short weeks. I guess I should begin packing us up (what?). Here's what it looks like so far.

Eating soup, soup, and more soup. Recipe to follow later in the week. And for Saturday breakfast this oven pancake which was oh-so-easy and very popular.

Oven Pancake

9 eggs

1 1/2 cup flour (I used half white and half whole wheat)

1 1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

Put all in blender and blend until smooth. In an oven preheated to 425 degrees, melt 2 T butter. I used a cast iron skillet, but a 9x13 baking pan would work too. Next pour the mixture in the pan and cook for 20 minutes.

Serve these with whatever you like. We used strawberries and powdered sugar, but apples, bananas, whipped cream and maple syrup would all work as well.

And finally, sitting in this traffic jam as we waited for the bridge to open on our way home.

Goodbye weekend, hello Monday. The end.

Better Banana Bread

A friend of mine just expressed her frustration that ice-cream and Honey Buns are on the menu everyday at her kindergartner's school. Yuck. What five-year-old is going to choose vegetables when he has the option of filling up on ice-cream? Because it can be hard to help our children make healthy food choices outside the home, it's important to provide them with healthy options at home. I like this banana bread recipe because it's lower in sugar than most. It also replaces some of the fat with yogurt. I make it even healthier by substituting whole-wheat flour for one fourth of the white flour. The best part is it still tastes delicious.

This recipe is straight from my America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook which I can't say enough good things about. These people are total food nerds. This is a crowd who will dork out on making forty-seven batches of banana bread just to test out whether changing the nutmeg/cinnamon ratio by 1/4 teaspoon makes any difference in taste. They spend all their time in the kitchen so that we don't have to, and I appreciate them for it. I also have their Healthy Family Cookbook, which is sort of my go-to cookbook. Their recipes never let me down.

Banana Bread

2 cups all-purpose flour (or 1-1/2 cups + 1/2 cup whole wheat flour)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 very ripe bananas, mashed well (they must be very ripe or your bread will be gummy)
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/4 cup walnuts, toasted

1. Preheat oven to 350 and generously coat a 9 x 5 pan with vegetable oil spray.
2. Whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Whisk the bananas, melted butter, eggs, yogurt, and vanilla together in a separate bowl. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry with a rubber spatula until just combined. Fold in the nuts. Do not overmix; the batter will look thick and chunky.
3. Scrape the batter into the pan an smooth the top. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs attached, about 55 minutes.
4. Cool in the pan 10 minutes and then move to a wire rack for 1 hour.