Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins

Nope, my kids don't eat peanut butter... not even with tons of jelly! I thought I'd try out these Peanut Butter and Jelly muffins, courtesy of Cooking Light,
I did modify the recipe based on what I had available, and added the flax seed meal, as always.
Makes 1 dozen muffins.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (use 1/2 whole wheat flour for extra fiber)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups fat-free milk
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
2 egg whites
2 tablespoons butter or butter substitute, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon flax seed meal (omega 3)
1/4 cup strawberry jam

Preheat oven to 400°.

Combine flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl; stir with a whisk. Make a well in center of mixture. Combine milk and next 5 ingredients (through vanilla); add to flour mixture, stirring just until moist.

Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups, coated with cooking spray (paper baking cups easier to use). Fill each cup half full with batter. Spoon 1 teaspoon jam into each cup. Spoon remaining batter on top to cover jam. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes or until muffins spring back when touched lightly in center. Let cool in pan 5 minutes. Remove from pan, and cool on a wire rack.

My daughter really enjoyed making and eating these, and ate two for lunch the next day. They are delicious... definitely worth the trouble... but very easy. Great to pack for school lunches. I'll have to remember this one!

Yogurt Smoothie Pops

My son just loves eating my homemade ice pops (sometimes for dinner), so I found some other healthy ingredients to add to them.

Ingredients:
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup orange juice
1 cup strawberries (use frozen if making a smoothie instead of the pops)
1 banana
1/2 cup swiss chard, green or rainbow
1 Tbsp flax seed meal (omega 3)
1 Tbsp light olive oil (omega 3)

Blend all the ingredients together. If making the pops, pour right into the pop molds and freeze. These are soooooo delicious. The kids want to eat them every night!

Strawberry Pizza

I recently saw a kids healthy sandwich idea, using cream cheese and strawberries on whole wheat bread. Strawberries are so plentiful right now, so I was trying to think of a way to incorporate these ingredients. My kids don't eat sandwiches yet so I thought to try in a pizza form. The kids had so much fun putting their pizzas together.
I used a whole wheat pita for the crust, cream cheese for the topping, topped with sliced strawberries. You can mix strawberry jelly with the cream cheese to sweeten it up before spreading it on the pita, but it's not necessary. Use the pizza cutter to cut into small, easy to handle pieces.
After the excitement of creating their masterpiece, both of my kids picked off a few of the strawberries, but refused to eat their pizzas. I, on the other hand, loved it! : )

kale smoothie?

Really, you can't taste it! A delicious way to utilize this green or any other bitter green. My daughter loved helping to throw all the ingredients in the blender. She told me, "It is very hard work". After making this smoothie, we poured some into ice-pop molds to freeze for an after dinner treat. If I was only using it for a smoothie, using frozen fruit would have thickened the mixture up a bit.
Here we used:
2 bananas
1 cup strawberries
2 handfuls kale, chopped
1 cup fresh squeezed OJ
1 cup cold water
Handful of ice

Success! My daughter ate two ice pops after dinner!! And my son, well, half the pop was his dinner. :(