Sugar Free Pumpkin Custard Pie (WW** Friendly)

Okay, so I realize it's not technically pumpkin pie season, but to that I say: Who Cares? My husband's father and my mother are both diabetic, so I've come up with some pretty inventive recipes for pies and desserts over the years that they could enjoy just like everyone else.

I made this a couple weeks ago just because I saw a can of pumpkin in my basement pantry and decided to.

Also, since having my son, sugar is not my friend and immediately sends weight to Mah Belleh, so this is a great option for something sweet without the actual sugar.

What you need:


1 Pillsbury frozen pie crust
1/3 c. water
2/3 c. splenda
(2) TWO 0.8 oz pkgs of Jell-O Cook N Serve Sugar Free Fat Free vanilla pudding.
3/4 c. evaporated skim milk
1 ½ c. canned pumpkin (not the pie filling)
2 large eggs
1 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla

Directions:
1) Combine water and splenda in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low for 5 minutes. Let cool.
2) Whisk the two packages of dry pudding mixture in. The consistency will be extremely thick and "goopy". This is okay.
3) Beat the two large eggs and whisk them into the mixture.
4) Add the evaporated skim milk and pumpkin.



5) Add spices and vanilla.
6) Pour into pie crust and bake @ 350 deg for 30-35 minutes or until center is firm.

Note: if you want, you can brush the bottom of the pie shell with egg whites and bake quickly for 5 minutes before pouring in crust. This helps form a "seal" on the crust.


(I realize this isn't the best picture but the pie crust was old and in the freezer too long and as a result broke apart easy)

-You can serve with Sugar free coolwhip as well.

**This is 2.5 pts for 1/8 pie. If you use egg beaters instead, it becomes 1.5 pts/piece

One handed food options

Breastfeeding has so many benefits for everyone, blah blah blah, let's talk about how damn hard it is to consume food when you've got someone attached to your chest - it's so difficult! I've been doing really well consuming whole foods and keeping things healthy and I started going through my recipe book filled to the brim with magazine recipes over the past 10 years looking to see what I could make that really is one handed eating. I have a feeling my posts will be along these lines at least for the next few weeks. So healthy & one handed eating it is. If you have a recipe that fits this bill I would love it and would love to post it here so just e-mail me at cassjustcurious at gmail dot com.

Whole Wheat Pasta Salmon Salad

What you need:
Whole Wheat Pasta (however number of servings you're making)
Salmon (I roasted extra lemon salmon last night for dinner last night)
Very finely chopped Red Onion (as much as you like)
A bit of Fresh Dill (fresh is way better)
Very thinly sliced Cucumber
Capers (if you like them)
Salt & Pepper to taste
Plain Yogurt Strained over night or Low Fat Mayo or Greek Yogurt

What you do:
Cook the pasta and soak in cold water to cool the noodles to room temperature - if you keep them room temp the mayo/yogurt will distribute more evenly then ice cold pasta. Mix in your cooked flaked salmon and then add in the onion, cucumber, dill and capers. I put the lid on the pyrex container and shake it to get things distributed. Then I add the Yogurt or Mayo - today I made it with Low Fat Mayo and Greek Yogurt mixed together to keep the health factor up. Put the lid on again and shake and chill.

I made mine to have as lunch so I used an even pasta to salmon ratio to keep my protein intake up and I happen to love cucumber so I use lots of it. I don't have exact measurements here because I tend to eyeball it. This is an easy to eat lunch because the stuff stays on the fork and as I've tested today does not drip on to babies head while breastfeeding.

Strawberry Bread and Butter

This post has been brought to you by Multi-Tasking Mommy.

I know that we are past strawberry season, but I wanted to be sure to share this yummy recipe with you. My Mom makes it every year during strawberry season and it is delish! I would almost call this comfort food.

Strawberry Bread
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups quick oats
1 tsp of each cinnamon, salt, baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups crushed strawberries (4 cups whole)

Mix all dry ingredients except sugar. Beat eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla; stir in dry ingredients just until mixed. Add berries and gently stir.

Pour batter into 2 greased and floured loaf pans. Bake 375 for 45-50 minutes.

Strawberry Butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 tbsp icing sugar
1/4 cup crushed strawberries

Beat butter until light and creamy. Beat in sugar and then strawberries.

Spread on bread and enjoy!

Blackberry Crumb Cake

We belong to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) where each week, we get a share of a local farmer's organically grown produce. The past two weeks we've been able to pick our own blackberries, leaving me to come up or find some recipes to make with them. Look how fresh and yummy:



So, I searched and tweaked and present you with BLACKBERRY CRUMB CAKE:

What you need:

Cake:
2 c All-purpose flour
2/3 c Sugar
3 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 tsp. Salt
2 Eggs
1 c Milk
1 stick butter, melted
2 tbsp. Lemon juice (about one lemon)
2 c. fresh blackberries

Crumbs:
2/3 c Sugar
1/2 c All-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
4-5 tbsp. butter, softened
1 c Chopped nuts (I used pecans, but walnuts and other nuts would work as well)



-Preheat oven to 375
-Make the crumbs by combining all the ingredients with a fork until soft but still crumb-like. It should look like this:



To make the cake:
1) In one large mixing bowl measure the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir well to blend.

2) Into another cup, combine eggs, milk, butter and lemon juice (In that order - otherwise, the hot butter will cook the egg a bit).

3) Stir liquid ingredients into dry ingredients until blended. Batter will be very airy - like biscuits.

4) Turn into buttered 13-by-9-inch baking dish.



5) Sprinkle berries evenly over the batter.



6) Sprinkle with the Crumb Topping.



7) Bake for 30-40 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test.

8) EAT

Strong Enough for An Amishman but Made for a Woman

This recipe comes courtesy of Pomjob

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I grew up like five minutes from the famed Amish County, U.S.A., where baked oatmeal is a cornerstone of the breakfast table (at least according to all the area bed & breakfast establishments). I don't remember my first encounter with the delectable dish but I remember rediscovering it a couple years ago when I went to a new breakfast hotspot in my hometown. In an area where men (i.e., my brother-in-law) really do wear shirts reading "Vegetarian is Just Another Name for Bad Hunter," there are few options if you're not of the meat and egg-loving persuasion. Out of desperation, I decided to try the baked oatmeal and it was heaven on a spoon.

My recipe for baked oatmeal has been different every time because I always modify a recipe I find online, but I never write it down. Thank you, Chop.Stir.Mix, for the opportunity to write down my latest variation for posterity.

First, gather your ingredients. I like short, sweet recipes so don't let this list intimidate you. You can mix and match; this is my first time trying it with banana, usually I chop up an apple but I was fresh out. I tried to make this healthy so I substituted applesauce and yogurt for oil. Craisins are my newest foodsession so I tossed in a handful; you can try walnuts or pecans, too. It's so versatile.

3 c oatmeal (regular or quick oats)

Dash salt (optional)

1 t cinnamon (I'll use more next time)

½ t nutmeg

2 t baking powder

¼ c brown sugar

½ c applesauce

½ c lowfat vanilla yogurt

2 eggs (or the equivalent)

1 ½ c lowfat milk

Dash of vanilla

1 mashed banana

½ c raisins

½ c Craisins

Get that banana good and smashed (enlist a kid to help with this step, if you have on hanging around). Mix milk, banana, applesauce, yogurt, eggs and vanilla in one bowl.

In a big bowl, combine oatmeal, salt, brown sugar, spices and baking powder. Add wet ingredients to try ingredients and stir.

Add a handful of raisins and another of Craisins. After one more quick stir, pour into pan sprayed with non-stick spray. I'm using a 9x13 pan to make a thinner oatmeal, for thicker slices use a 9x9 pan.

Now you can either put it in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes or until the center is firm but not over-baked, or cover and store in the refrigerator and bake it in the morning. The flavors blend well when refrigerated overnight. I'm going to pop it in the oven before I shower and it'll be nice and hot to take into the office. No one in my office had ever heard of baked oatmeal before I brought it into the office a couple months ago. They rioted when I took home the half-empty pan at the end of the day because I was traveling for the rest of the week. It's THAT good. (Although my coworkers will eat pretty much anything. Except those chocolate candies contributed by my Ukrainian coworker that someone thought was made with bird's milk. It wasn't until I pointed out that birds don't produce milk that that rumor was put to rest, but the candy was eventually throw away because bird's milk, yum!)

When piping hot, dish up bowls and top with milk (some prefer the milk heated, I like it cold) or yogurt. It's great as leftovers, too. Wrap individual squares and eat as a breakfast bar as you run to catch the bus. (Oh, am I the only one that runs for the bus EVERY morning?)

Postscript: The banana flavor is very strong. I will add more cinnamon next time because I like my baked oatmeal like I like my men: SPICY!

Say it ain't so Strawberry Jam

Do you read my blog? Then you know that I'm pregnant...STILL. I've resorted to "things that I've always thought about maybe doing" list and on that list was making Strawberry Jam the way my Grandma Teresa used to do it. Now I knew this would be a project and I embraced that because I have NOTHING to do.

Step One: Find Ball preserve jars and lids

Now this proved more difficult then I thought - 7 stores later and a Twitter from the very greatest of Matriarch's AndreAnna and I found them at the craft store. But they didn't have new lids and if there is anything I remember about from my Grandma was that you needed NEW lids. On a whim I looked in the hardware store this morning and did you know they have LIDS and the jars and everything. The hardware store that is literally a 10 minute walk from my house could have saved HOURS of hunting yesterday.

Step Two: Find fruit

I went to BJ's Warehouse and they had perfect Strawberries so that was decided easily enough. I had found the Sure Jell that I needed earlier so I was ready to go.

Step Three: Find recipe
My Grandma loved to write down recipes and because of this I have BOOKS and BOOKS of her recipes so I started hunting this morning. I looked. And I looked. Nothing. So finally I called her up at the nursing home...I love my Grandma and we have a load of amazing memories together but she's not altogether present now and she's not big on talking on the phone so I didn't know how this was going to go. So she said Hi and asked how the baby was and I said still inside and she gasped and asked how long I planned on baking her. So she's fiesty today - that's good for me. So I ask her where her recipe is to make Strawberry Jam and she said on the box of the Sure Jell. Rock on Grandma.

Step Four: Prepare to make the jam
This is involved because I planned on "canning" the jam as I didn't want to have to refridgerate all this jam. So you have to wash with hot soapy water everything and then I ran it through the sanitze feature on our dishwasher and then you boil the lids.

Step Five: Chop up your strawberries

I used the food processor because I'm lazy like that and I didn't have a potato masher.

Step Six: Cook with your Sure Jell and 1/4c. Sugar until it boils for a minutes

Step Seven: Add the rest of the sugar (3 3/4c.) and bring to a boil again for exactly one minute. Remove from heat. Skim off foam.

Step Eight: Pour into your jars - put your boiled lids on top of the jam and then screw on the top.


Step Nine: Now if you're going to give it all away or if you're going to keep it all in your fridge you can stop here but I wanted to go ALL the way there so I canned them.

Which basically means you boil the sealed containers for about 10 minutes. If you don't have a "canner" (which I'll be honest I don't even know what a canner technically is) you can just stick a hot plate grate in the bottom of your pan - you just don't want to put your glass jars right on top of the bottom of the pan for reasons that I do not know but Grandma said so lets go with that.


Step Ten: Open up one of the still warm jars while standing in front of the sink and try really hard not to consume the entire jar with the spoon in your hand.


I would love to say that this was SO much cheaper then buying a jar of jam from the grocery store...but it wasn't. In the end each jar ended up costing about $3.00 including the price of the jar and lids so it WOULD be cheaper when (hahaaha with a newborn) I make the next batch of jam. What I will say is that it tasted WAY better then any jam I've ever had before. EVER. Seriously this stuff makes smuckers taste like crap in comparison. Now if you don't mind me I'll be going to make some toast with equal part Jam to Bread.

Best Bread Recipe Ever

This recipe comes courtesy of Morgan over at My Place of Beauty

Here's what you are going to need:

Three Mixing Bowls
One spoon You need a spoon to stir the dough.

Two measuring cups A 1/4 cup and a 1/2 cup will do the job.
One measuring spoon A one-teaspoon measurer will be just perfect.
One bread pan Obviously, to bake the bread in.
One hand towel This is just to cover the bread dough as it rises so it doesn't get drafts or dust or anything on it.

1/4 cup milk
5 teaspoons sugar (or 1 1/2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoons salt
5 teaspoons butter (or 1 1/2 tablespoons)
1 package active dry yeast (you can get yeast near the flour at your local grocery store)
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups flour (get unbleached white for your first attempt)
Corn starch or nonstick cooking spray (just to prevent the bread from sticking to the bowl or pan)

Ok, to begin with, you'll need to get the bowl warm. The easiest way to do this? Put hot water in the bowl, let it sit for a minute, and then pour it out, and wipe out the bowl. You could also put water in the bowl and then heat it up in the microwave.

Mix 1 cup of hot water (put a cup of water in the microwave and heat it up for about 1 1/2 mins.) and the package of yeast in the bowl until all of the yeast is dissolved and you have a brown/tanish liquid that has a few bubbles in it. Let it sit for a minute, while you melt the butter in the microwave.

Add the butter, milk, sugar and salt to the yeast mixture and stir in until the liquid returns to about the same color as before (tanish) and everything is well mixed.

Here's where it gets sticky: Mix in 2 cups of flour to begin with. It's going to stick to the spoon at first, but mix hard and fast. When it's mixed in well, add 1/4 cups of flour to the mixture until the dough is sticky, but doesn't stay stuck to your fingers.

Take a bit of flour in your hands and put it on the surface you will be kneading the dough on. Turn on a timer for 10 minutes. Turn the dough out onto the surface and beat on it, twist it, turn it, and beat on it some more for 10 straight minutes. When the timer goes off, take the dough and put it in a bowl. (Do not clean the flour up, leave it for later.)

Take the other bowl you have out and fill it with water. Put it in the microwave for 2 minutes. Take it out and (quickly) put the bowl with the dough into the microwave and cover it with the dish towel.

Wait 1 hour.

After the hour is done, the dough should have doubled in size. If not, it's okay, if so- great. As long as it rose some, it will work out.

Turn the dough back out onto the floured surface and roll it out. Spread it out in a rectangle shape, with one side being roughly the length of the bread pan and the other side being about a bread pan and a half long.

Then roll the bread like you would a soft taco. Take the ends and tuck them under on the side where the seam is, and place the bread in the pan seam down.

Put the bowl with the water in the microwave for 2 minutes again and then put the bread back in, with the towel over it, so it can rise.

Wait one more hour. (You can clean up the flour at this time.)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Put the loaf in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) for thirty minutes. When it's done, pull it out and immediately remove it from the pan to cool.