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Whole Wheat Carrot Pineapple Muffins

Whole Wheat Carrot Pineapple Muffins are sort of a 'creation from leftovers' special.  New Year's Eve here at my house was a family friendly affair, and we made eight different kinds of homemade pizza for all the kids and adults.  One of the pizzas we made was a Hawaiin pizza (we'll talk about the steak dinner pizza later!), and I ended up having a half can of pineapple tidbits leftover.  From the veggie tray, I managed to salvage a few carrot sticks - and the inspiration for Carrot Pineapple Muffins was born.  I added in some whole wheat flour, mainly because I have some lingering around, and I thought it would add some flavour and 'healthy' to a nice treat.  The amount of whole wheat flour can be adjusted up, if you'd like more whole wheat in your muffins, but in my experience, a little white flour is needed to lighten them up. If you do try all whole wheat and they turn out great, then let me know, I'd love to hear about it. To get the crushed pineapple called for in the recipe, I whizzed the leftover pineapple tidbits in my food processor until I had something probably more correctly called pureed or pulverized pineapple, but it worked.

For the New Year's Eve party, we had a Nintendo Wii competition for the kids, and a Playstation2 Sing Star competition for the adults!  I highly recommend Sing Star - what a hoot!  I'm pretty confident saying we all had a great time, and I can't wait for the next party.  

Baked Ham - photo

Here is my picture for Adrienne's Mulled Ham, which I made tonight for my kids and I.  It looks pretty good, doesn't it?

Now, if you've read Adrienne's recipe for the Mulled Ham, you might have noticed MY ham is missing a few things.  Like the pineapple.  And the poaching liquid. And the brown sugar.  There's a story behind that, of course.  I dropped the ham - not once, but twice. The first great drop landed on my fuzzy slipper (ew) and then bounced to the floor. The kids were on the Wii, so I quickly scooped it up, carefully set it back on the plate, picked it up - and dropped the whole thing again.  I didn't want to waste a good ham, so I cut off the outside, threw out the pineapple, ditched the poaching liquid, and put it back in a hot oven to fix it.  

So here is my version of the Mulled Ham - I call it 'Megan's Beat-up Ham'.  Enjoy!!  The link to the Mulled Ham recipe can be found here.

Mulled Ham, by guest author Adrienne Charlton

Hi everyone. This is a recipe for Mulled Ham (a ham baked in orange juice and mulling spices), by guest author Adrienne Charlton. No picture of it yet, but if I manage to bake a ham in the next couple of days, I will get a picture up!

From Adrienne (who is from Ottawa, Ontario originally, and is currently living in London, England):

Being in Britain, I am surrounded by remembrances of the wartime slogans like "make due and mend" and "keep clam and carry on;" so, when I was unable to find cloves for my Christmas ham I steeled myself and found a solution. The resulting flavour was so complex and seasonally appropriate that it definitely bears repeating. I hope you enjoy the recipe.

Peppermint Patties

No picture yet, as I'm in the process of making these! But these are the best and easiest holiday candies to make, in my opinion, and they taste so, so, so good. AND they're a four ingredient recipe (yes, 4 ingredients!) so that makes them even better.  These peppermints have a creamy centre, more like York peppermint patties, and not like an After Eight peppermint.

Easy Everyday Beef Stew

 

Tonight - it's peasant food again! This is my everyday go-to standard beef stew, that I throw in the pot and ignore for a while. It uses some ingredients that I call 'by-product' ingredients: bacon fat, ketchup swish (more on that later), and beef stock. Ok, beef stock may not be a by-product to everyone, but I found a great cookbook at a garage sale, called "Hazel Meyer's Freezer Cookbook". This is an excellent book for learning to extend the table, so to speak, or to cut back on grocery bills. Hazel says in her book that pretty much everything can be frozen; just fried hamburger in the pan? Well, add a cup or so of water to the 'empty' pan, give it a stir, and you've got stock! This works if you're browning or roasting anything - leftover gravy also makes an excellent base for stock. Put it in a container or freezer bag, and thaw it out next time you need a bit of stock. Ketchup swish is the same idea. It's about a 1/4 cup of water swished around in a nearly empty ketchup bottle. Perfect for this recipe, and lots of other things! We're all tight for money these days. Groceries are an easy way to help cut back on living expenses, and using ingredients you don't have to buy makes it even easier. Next year I think I'm going to start scavenging for food, although scavenging food for a beef stew could be a bit challenging. I'll keep you posted anyway :)

Apple Pie Muffins

 

It's been a while. Thanks to the power of Facebook and a little apple spice muffin bragging, here I am posting a new recipe. I was actually craving an apple pie, but that seemed like too much work, so I did a little hunting and came up with this recipe. It's an old recipe I had around, but hadn't made in a long time - I'll definitely have to keep it in the roster. There's a great topping on these, sorta like the top of a Dutch Apple Pie. Enjoy! These are really moist, yummy apple spice muffins. They taste good coming out of the oven, but they're even better the next day.

Oven Baked Salmon with Herbs

 

I found this Baked Salmon recipe on Recipezaar - my favourite recipe site on the web. Not surprisingly, I modified it from the original to make use of what I had on hand. This recipe says "Great for Beginners!" in the description, and that appealed to me. I also wanted a fish recipe that my kids would like, and thought this might work. Surprisingly enough, the picky-middle-child ate it up, the girl practically threw it at me, and the oldest boy took a few bits, said it was good, and went back to Guitar Hero. So I almost had two out of three, and two out of three ain't bad. A side of easy rice pilaf and some steamed broccoli made for a colourful and healthy supper.