Brynnley and I kicked off our domestic afternoon with a baking session, intending to get a freezer stash of toddler-friendly breakfasts for my postpartum season coming up!
My two year old is very picky, and happily favors all food void of nutrition. You know, the toddler staples: buttered toast, tater tots, Mac n’ cheese, and chicken nuggets. And don’t you dare try to pull a fast one and sneak in those “hidden veggie” nuggets. Her healthy-detector is fine-tuned. 😉
I have found a loophole in her palette, however. The secret seems to be chocolate chips. So in an attempt to add some nutrition to her future breakfasts, we whipped up a double batch of these Sweet Potato Peanut Butter muffins – with mini chocolate chips.
She DEVOURED one with a glass of milk the moment they cooled off. Success! I found them just as tasty as she did, so we are sharing the recipe:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees & line a cupcake pan with muffin liners.
Once your roasted sweet potatoes have completely cooled, remove them from the skin and add them to a large mixing bowl.
Add peanut butter, eggs, maple syrup (or honey), baking powder, salt, pumpkin pie spice and chocolate chips.
Stir until well-combined and smooth.
Fill your muffin tins 3/4 of the way full with batter.
Bake for 18 minutes, then allow to cool completely.
Store in fridge. Enjoy with a cup of yummy coffee or milk!
I’m not sure how this recipe works because it’s nearly all wet ingredients. It must be the six eggs that really add the muffin texture!
We packaged them in individual baggies and stored them in the freezer so that we can easily pull out one at a time to heat up for Brynnley’s breakfasts over the next couple of weeks.
You can also always order my Strong Like My Coffee mugs from my little boutique page here: Strong Like My Coffee boutique. They come with a wooden topper and a golden stir spoon ☺️
In my last blog post I mentioned that I would be attending a Meal Prep class to help get my freezer stocked with some meals for those first couple of weeks after the new baby arrives (due early July.)
Overall I think the concept is really good & I got 10 different dinners all packaged up in the freezer, ready to be thrown in a crockpot or sheet pan. Each one says 4-6 adult servings, though I would say 3-4 would be more accurate. It was very rushed though – we assembled all 10 different dinners in under 75 minutes and the assembly line-style process meant you really couldn’t catch a break to wipe off your cutting board or clean up your work station throughout. I would have preferred they use all allotted 2 hours and gone a little slower.
Each dinner incorporates meat and veggies (though not as many veggies as I would have included) and I achieved my goal of getting some healthy dinner options at the ready, so I’ll call it a win. I’m not sure yet if I would attend again though; I will need to wait until we cook them up!
We have not been interested in many shows or movies on TV lately, so I’ve opted to read more instead. I’ve finished 8 books in the last 6 weeks which is really good for me! I typically always reach for thrillers or romantic comedy fictions. However during pregnancy and postpartum, I seem to develop a kind of anxiety where I just come up with the most ridiculous but scary scenarios of terrible things that can happen to my toddler or baby. I also have pretty vivid and scary dreams too, wake up easily, and take hours to fall back to sleep. So I try to limit the thrillers I read or anything disturbing on tv – even the news.
That’s meant I’ve actually been reading more non-fiction lately. I’m starting the audio version of The Anxious Generation. Most of what he’s sharing so far about the negative effects of social media and smart phones on kids going through puberty is not surprising or new at all, but there are many studies that show how strongly kids ages 9-14 specifically are impacted by living in a screen-based world rather than a traditional play-based world. Even though we have many years until we have to navigate this with our own kids, it’s still interesting to think about as a parent now!
Well that catches us up this week! Let me know if you make the muffins and if you like them :) I have a couple other picky toddler recipes to try out, but they don’t involve chocolate chips so we will see how they are received….
Last week I filmed and shared a little vlog on my YouTube channel that just followed a day in the life with Brynnley and I as Zeb was on a four-day trip. He’s a commercial pilot, so our lifestyle is unique in that he’s gone between 3-5 days a week. That means a whole lot of solo-parenting, and a lot of unique challenges to our family’s schedule. Which is something I thought I could share a little more about here as well!
Until I started dating Zeb, I actually had no idea that pilots spent many nights away from their home. I assumed they had a “route” that they flew back and forth and ended back at home each night. Nope! There’s nothing normal or regular about their schedule! They also do not have a designated “route.” Based on seniority, they can request certain criteria in their flight schedule but very rarely do they fly the same trip twice!
Zeb’s trips can start on any day of the week, including Saturday and Sunday. They can be 2 days, 3 days, or 4 days. Their layover and hotel can be in pretty much any city with a major airport. Sometimes he’s in Burbank, Salt Lake City, and Houston, and other times he’s in Nashville for three nights in a row! Some trips he flies from 5am-noon every day and other trips he’s hanging out in a hotel until 4pm and flying until midnight. It’s ALWAYS different.
One of the interesting aspects that many people don’t think about when it comes to a pilot (or flight attendant) schedule is packing meals and snacks for their trips that can be up to four days long. Most of the airplanes my husband flies actually don’t have microwaves to heat up his meals! He takes a rolling luggage bag and a large cooler bag on each trip. Many days he starts his trip as early as 5am and it might be 12 hours until he can transfer his food into a hotel mini fridge for the evening. So logistically, there are some restrictions to what kinds of food he can take along with him to avoid eating out for all four days. Eating airport and restaurant food is not the healthiest option but it also adds up to so much extra money spent on food!
(Packed him pumpkin pie on thanksgiving!)
I don’t mind meal prepping for him so that he has nutritious food to eat on his trip, but it’s taken a while to figure out what types of foods keep well for multiple days in a cooler bag and are something he will actually EAT and not bring back home to dump down the garbage disposal.
This post is only going to contain one recipe that was a hit for his last four-day trip, and I’ll continue to share more as I make them each week! I’ll have to start a new little page on this blog specifically for pilot meals, packing tips, and more about this bizarre lifestyle.
First thing to consider when picking a recipe to meal prep for his trip is that it has to taste good both hot and cold, in case he needs to eat it as lunch or dinner on the airplane and doesn’t have a way to heat it up.
On his most recent trip, I made a shredded chicken tamale casserole that was a hit!
Shredded Chicken Tamale Casserole
A Yummy Cornbread-Crusted Casserole Full of Chicken, Beans and Corn!
Preheat oven to 400 degrees and grease a 9×9 casserole dish.
In a medium bowl, stir together the cornbread mix and the ingredients listed on its packaging. Add diced green chiles, set aside.
In a separate large bowl, combine the shredded chicken and spices. Add black beans, creamed corn, 1/2 cup Monterey Jack cheese, 1/2 cup Mexican blend cheese, and green enchilada sauce.
Pour the chicken mixture into the greased casserole dish and spread evenly.
Pour the cornbread batter evenly over the top of the chicken mixture.
Bake for 25 minutes. Then add the remaining Monterey Jack and Mexican blend cheeses.
Continue baking for another 15 minutes until the cheese begins to brown.
Allow to cool and enjoy! Optional toppings: sour cream, cilanto, salsa, and avocado.
I divided up some big portions into three containers for Zeb to pack along with some Spanish rice, just in case he was extra hungry!
I had one container left at home for myself and can attest that it was yummy hot AND cold, if necessary!
Some snack staples that Zeb also usually packs along are beef jerky, almonds, and a few of my homemade “Cat balls” (peanut butter energy balls). He has unlimited airplane snacks, including whatever is offered to first class, which have actually come a long way from pretzels! Now there are fun options like pistachios, chocolate covered almonds, and Sun Chips. He brings me home some extras sometimes and I never want to eat another Biscoff cookie in my life haha.
Any other fellow spouses of an aviation crew member? Share your favorite meals to pack with me!
We experienced the nicest day in Idaho in over 180 days on Easter. The Boise area actually broke a record from the 1800s about most consecutive days under 60 degrees. Even when it did start to creep into the upper 50s, intense wind always made it less pleasant to spend time in! You don’t know how APPRECIATED that sunshine was! Brynnley and I celebrated Easter with a beautiful brunch at my parents’ house and then spent as much time outside as we could.
On Saturday I had a girlfriend come over for a little brunch together while we watched the newest episodes of Love is Blind. I have to say, I am not a reality TV junkie. My TV is typically always just rewatching Friends and Gilmore Girls episodes on repeat. But there is something about the (totally ridiculous) Netflix show Love is Blind that always hooks me. My friend Nicole and I bond over our mutual love/hate relationship with the cringy show that we can’t look away from.
I’ve had a wheel of French Brie cheese in my fridge from Costco for a bit and I needed to find a use for it. Obviously I took to Pinterest and searched “brunch recipe with brie.” I found some really pretty crostinis with melted brie, apple butter and honey. Then I remembered a recent photo I’d seen from a restaurant that used shredded hard boiled egg on top of avocado toast and I immediately wanted to recreate that as well. I decided to just make both, using crostini as my base for a few different tiny toast varieties.
French baguettes are less than $2 at the grocery store. You can slice them into whatever thickness you want your toast, and lay them out on a lined baking sheet. I sprayed them with olive oil and popped in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Even if they don’t have quite as much of a golden glow as you’d like, I wouldn’t cook them longer than 10 minutes. They really crunch up. A few of mine were overcooked and we joked that we needed subtitles on our show because we couldn’t hear the words over the sound of our chewing!
For our tiny toast toppings, we had mashed avocado, sliced cherry tomatoes, shredded hard boiled eggs, thinly sliced apple, cherry jam, brie cheese, honey, balsamic vinegar, and everything but the bagel seasoning. I made one of each variety and went back for seconds! You have to try this brunch idea for your next girls get together. They were SO CUTE and tasty and it really wasn’t much effort to throw together.
I’m currently in the middle of two intriguing books. April is my turn to host book club, and I picked Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes. I loved Me Before You, which is a movie now if you aren’t interested in reading the book. As you know, I’m always in the middle of an audiobook and a physical book at the same time. Somone Else’s Shoes is my audiobook right now, which I usually listen to on 1.3x speed to get through it a little faster. Sometimes they just talk so slow! But the narrator is British and one of the characters has a THICK cockney accent which I already can’t understand so I have to put it back to normal speed. It’s so funny that she is speaking English, my native language, and it is still so difficult to grasp what she’s saying. Sometimes I’m listening in my car and I just giggle because it truly sounds like someone speaking a foreign language haha.
The physical book I’m reading right now is The Younger Wife, which my friend Rebecca sent to me in her birthday present for Brynnley which was so sweet! The next episodes of Love is Blind don’t come out until Friday so I should be able to get in a few more chapters tonight and tomorrow ;)
It’s almost time to pick out my seeds and plant my vegetable garden again! This will be my third spring/summer growing a little veggie patch in my backyard garden box and I’m excited for Brynnley to be old enough to come water it with me and watch everything grow. She will at least be able to share some fresh picked blackberries with me! Those are my mini updates for this spring so far, and I will leave you with some Easter cuteness until my next post. :)
