recipe

With five minutes to go before the school bus is due, your well-meaning attempts at breakfast can quickly deteriorate from a homemade nutrition-fest to packaged-weird-sweet-pastry-thing-in-the-toaster (where it morphs into toasted-weird-sweet-pastry-thing, which you gobble down while running out the door, only to crash a couple of hours later in math class when your body is craving some real nutrients).

But with just a teeny bit of baking wizardry on the weekend, after school or in the evening, you (and your family) can enjoy a luscious, nutritious, yummy muffin in the morning in the same time it takes for the toaster to work its magic on that pouchy “pastry.” The key to success here is to make a bunch of muffins at once, then to toss them in the freezer and use later as needed – for breakfast, with lunch or for a delicious (and, as it happens, nutritious) snack.

Family-Friendly Pumpkin Muffins

A Cookin’ Teens Original

© Rising Moon Media, 2008

Ingredients

Dry:

3 3/4 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup mixture of small, dried fruits such as mixed raisins, dried blueberries, dried cranberries, etc.
1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

Wet:

1 can plain pumpkin (29 ounces)
1 cup of unsweetened applesauce
6 eggs

To Prepare:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spritz three 12-cup muffin tins with cooking spray, or grease each cup with a teeny bit of butter.

In a large bowl, combine the first eight dry ingredients (flour through salt) and mix well with a fork. In a second bowl, combine the wet ingredients and mix well with a fork. Add the wet ingredients to the bowl with the dry ones, then add the chocolate chips, dried fruit and nuts. Combine thoroughly and spoon batter into muffin tins. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in a muffin comes out clean. (Try to avoid stabbing the chocolate chips with a toothpick or it might be hard to determine whether or not the muffins are cooked.)

When the muffins are done, remove them from the tins and let them cool on a rack or a plate. Once cool, wrap the muffins singly or in pairs in plastic wrap, then toss the wrapped muffins into a couple of freezer bags and put the bags in the freezer. When you plan to eat the muffins, either take them out the night before and let them thaw on a plate, or, if you don’t plan that far ahead, take them out of the freezer when you need them, remove the plastic wrap, and heat them in the microwave for a minute or two – or about the time it takes for the pouchy pocket to pop up out of the toaster and morph into a pastry.

Tags: quick, easy, snack, breakfast, recipe

A Cookin' Teens Original

Rising Moon Media, 2008

Ingredients

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (plump, rather than skimpy)
1 bag baby spinach leaves
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons fresh parsley (chopped), or 2 teaspoons dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chicken broth
the juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon butter
Optional:
2 teaspoons capers, drained

To Prepare

In a medium-sized bowl, combine breadcrumbs, parsley, pepper and salt. Place the raw chicken breasts smooth-side up on a cutting board. With a good knife, slice the chicken from top to bottom into slices about 1/4-inch wide. (Don’t worry if they come apart.) Drop those pieces into the breadcrumb mixture and coat them on both sides.

Heat oil in a large, non-stick frying pan over medium high heat. Add the chicken slices to the pan, making sure they don’t overlap, and cook a few minutes on each side or until all traces of pink are gone. (You might have to cook them in two batches. If so, add a tad more oil prior to the second batch.) Remove the cooked chicken from the pan and put it aside. Add broth, lemon juice, butter and capers to the pan, and simmer. With a wooden or plastic utensil (or some other material that doesn’t scratch), loosen the cooked bits in the pan. Stir in the spinach and cover. Cook until the spinach wilts (just a minute or two). Return the chicken to the pan and toss with spinach mixture.

Serve with crusty bread, cooked rice, or angel hair pasta. Enjoy!

Tags: quick, easy, chicken, Italian, recipe

A Cookin' Teens Original

Quick and Yummy Spaghetti Sauce With Stuff from the Garden

If (sadly) you don't have access to this stuff from a garden or farmer's market or grocery store, you can eliminate the eggplant, bell pepper and zucchini and the sauce will still taste good!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and diced
1 large eggplant, NOT peeled and cut into bite-size chunks
1 bell pepper (green, red, yellow or orange is fine), seeded and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1 zucchini or 1 yellow squash, seeded and grated
6 large tomatoes, chopped, or one 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
1 can (6 oz.) tomato paste
1 large handful of fresh basil or 1 tablespoon dried basil
1 can black olives (pitted), drained and chopped
1 teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon salt
8 ounces shredded mozzarella (optional but tasty!)
1 ½ pounds of spaghetti
To Prepare
Before you start making the spaghetti sauce, fill a large pot about two-thirds full with water and turn the heat up high. This will help ensure that the pasta and the sauce are ready at around the same time).

In a large, non-stick skillet, heat the olive oil and butter over medium heat. When the butter is melted, add the garlic and onion and stir. Cook for a couple of minutes, then add the eggplant and the pepper. Cook for about three minutes, stirring occasionally, then cover and simmer for about five minutes more. If chunks ’o veggies turn you off, remove the eggplant and pepper now and either dice them or puree them in the food processor, then return to the pan. Next add the carrot, zucchini, tomatoes and tomato paste, salt and pepper. Stir, cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. (This would be a good time to add the pasta to the boiling water in the other pot.) Add the olives and basil, then stir, cover and cook for about 10 minutes more.

Remove from heat and serve over drained spaghetti. Top with mozzarella and enjoy!

© Rising Moon Media, 2008

Tags: quick, easy, pasta, Italian, veggie, recipe, vegetarian

You get home from school – famished as usual – and rifle through the cabinets searching for something sweet. But then you come across something salty. And crispy. And that age-old debate begins: Sweet? Salty? Sweet? Salty? While you’re pondering, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. You can have your salt and sweet it too.

This snack not only fulfills your cravings, it gives your body something substantial to work with while you’re doing your homework or getting ready for gymnastics practice. If you’re going to make one or two of these little bites for yourself, you might as well make a whole batch because once that bacon smell is in the house everybody will come looking for the source.

Ingredients

10 slices of bacon, cut in half cross-wise to yield 20 pieces
20 cubes of pineapple, either fresh or from a can (If you use canned pineapple, make sure it’s unsweetened.)
If you don't have pineapple, or you're in the mood for really sweet, substitute 20 dried dates for the pineapple.

To Prepare

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Wrap a half slice of bacon around each cube of fruit, tucking the ends of the bacon underneath the fruit.

Arrange the wrapped fruit bacon-ends-down on an aluminum-foil-covered baking sheet that has raised edges.

Bake for about 7 minutes, then take out the sheet and turn over the little bacon bites and return to the oven. Cook about 7 minutes more or until the bacon is crispy.

Enjoy!

Tags: quick, easy, snack, recipe

You get home from school – famished as usual – and rifle through the cabinets searching for something sweet. But then you come across something salty. And crispy. And that age-old debate begins: Sweet? Salty? Sweet? Salty? While you’re pondering, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. You can have your salt and sweet it too.

This snack not only fulfills your cravings, it gives your body something substantial to work with while you’re doing your homework or getting ready for gymnastics practice. If you’re going to make one or two of these little bites for yourself, you might as well make a whole batch because once that bacon smell is in the house everybody will come looking for the source.

Ingredients

10 slices of bacon, cut in half cross-wise to yield 20 pieces
20 cubes of pineapple, either fresh or from a can (If you use canned pineapple, make sure it’s unsweetened.)
If you don't have pineapple, or you're in the mood for really sweet, substitute 20 dried dates for the pineapple.

To Prepare

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Wrap a half slice of bacon around each cube of fruit, tucking the ends of the bacon underneath the fruit.

Arrange the wrapped fruit bacon-ends-down on an aluminum-foil-covered baking sheet that has raised edges.

Bake for about 7 minutes, then take out the sheet and turn over the little bacon bites and return to the oven. Cook about 7 minutes more or until the bacon is crispy.

Enjoy!

Tags: quick, easy, snack, recipe