How do carrots go from this:
to this:
to this:
The magic of a juicer! On the heels of my last post about wanting to be healthier and more economical, I have found a great ingredient in the mix. I got a juicer for Christmas, and have been making fresh juices for the last few days. Carrot is a staple ingredient, and I have mixed spinach, apples, oranges and ginger in it, too. It tastes great, but takes a surprisingly large amount of fruit to make a glass of juice. So maybe in that way, it isn't economical. However, the fruit and veggies produce pulp, which gets left behind in the juicer. So, I drink the juice, and then use the pulp for baking later. Although I try to keep us away from too many sweets, I have started to think that baking treats with fresh and sometimes organic ingredients is better than sending the kids off with a store bought snack, even if it is a 100 calorie pack, all of which have a surprisingly high amount of fat. (BTW -- I realize this sounds both crunchy and pretentious all at the same time, but believe me, we have our share of sam's club snacks in the house. How else would I know about the fat content in a 100 calories snack?)
Last week, I used a recipe from the
Deceptively Delicious cookbook to make carrot muffins. They were
okay, but not a hit with the kids. Last night we made these
no bake oatmeal raisin carrot cake bites. They were more of a hit.
So, Mac enjoyed the carrot cake bites, I got my juice, and we didn't waste any food. All is good.
However...
Mac only got 3 of the 18 carrot cake bites. Tim and I ate the other 15! And we ate all 12 muffins last week in 24 hours. And the cookies I made two weeks ago, we finished almost all 24 of those in less than 24 hours. I have gained at least 2 lbs. from my "healthy eating experiment" and there are never any snacks left past the next day to pack in Mac's lunch!
And speaking of experiments -- I tried a new fried rice recipe with frozen trader joe's dumplings tonight. Mac literally spit her first bite back onto her plate (we are currently addressing table manners). Granted it was the dumplings and not the rice, but the rice wasn't much better received. She ate what she had to eat to get dessert, and not a bite more. And you can imagine what happened to the rest.
That's right -- Tim and I ate it.
