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….
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. :)
The name of this healthy recipe requires a little explanation.
My dad has a talent for taking random ingredients in the kitchen and throwing them together for an amazing dinner. He’s not really a recipe-follower. Before he married my mom, he had the stereotypical bachelor pad and one of his easy dinner go-to’s became dubbed the “Bachelor Stir Fry.”
Basically he would take leftover ingredients or random vegetables in the fridge (bell peppers, onions, etc.), dice up some russet potatoes, and mix in some type of meat and cook them all together in a frying pan. Sometimes he included eggs, making a breakfast hash. There is no real recipe, nothing specific, so every time came out a little differently.
Last night I cooked dinner for my dad and I, and came up with my own variation of his classic dish. A few healthy swaps here and there, and BAM – we have Bachelorette stir Fry.
My obsession with sweet potatoes has only grown stronger in the past five years, so I swapped out the russet potatoes for some orange yams. I also included Sprout’s Apple Chicken Sausage, along with yellow zucchinis, yellow and red bell peppers, onion, garlic, spices and my personal secret ingredient ;)
Okay okay I’ll share my secret – I added maple syrup! Just a table spoon so it didn’t overpower anything. I could subtly taste it on the sweet potatoes and it was delicious. This recipe is a lot sweeter than my dad’s usual mix, but I personally loved it and everyone went back for seconds. That always makes a girl feel good! :)
We topped our bowl with some avocado since it was lacking any green color. We could’ve also easily swapped in a green zucchini or a green bell pepper. Dishes like this are very flexible.
Bachelorette Stir Fry (Sweet Potato Hash)
1.5 Tbs. olive oil
1 sweet onion
2 bell peppers, your choice of color
2 zucchinis
2 6oz. chicken sausage (I used French Apple Chicken from Sprouts)
2 medium yams
1 Tbs. black pepper
1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
generous pinch of salt
1 tsp. paprika
1 Tbs. maple syrup (try to use the real stuff, not Aunt Jemimah.)
Optional avocado for garnish
In a small skillet, cook the chicken sausages until browned. Let cool, then slice into 1/2″ thick circles. Set aside.
Dice onion, bell peppers and zucchinis. Peel sweet potatoes and dice.
In a large frying pan, heat olive oil. Add garlic for 30 seconds. Add in diced onion, bell pepper, zucchini and sweet potatoes. Stir to combine. Add in pepper, salt, and paprika. Cover with a lid on medium-low for 15 minutes until everything is very soft.
Add in the chicken sausage and maple syrup. Stir to combine. Keep heat on low for another 5 minutes.
Serve with avocado, ketchup, hot sauce, or whatever your favorite topping is. :)
Earlier this week, I re-joined the world of snapchat. (@kenzalyse) I thought it would be a fun way to share my relocation journey without bombarding Instagram and I felt like I was missing out on some of my friends’ fun stories :) so far the filters are my favorite part.
This morning I have a meeting with a realtor, a cycling class, and an iced coffee date. See you here next week! Xoxo.
