Sunday Funday.

I'm sure I've said this before but Sundays are a notoriously busy day around our house, especially Sunday mornings.  Andy works his 2nd job 7 days a week and goes straight from his cleaning job to downstairs at the church to start doing sound check, etc. 

Which means grumpy Mama, who doesn't like to wake up early is also in charge of getting myself and the three kiddos up, dressed & fed in time to go downstairs for church by 10am.  This is probably not a big deal for other awesome Moms that can set their alarms and jump out of bed like they mean it.  Not for me.  I procrastinate, I check Facebook, I hit snooze, I complain and then I start running around like a chicken with my head cut off. 

So I'm gonna switch it around on this blog and give you a recipe first!  You might like this if you hate reading my writing or came here just to eat.  Makes sense.  But since Sunday mornings are so crazy it helps if I am smart enough to plan ahead and bake something on Saturday that the kids and adults scrambling to get everything done have something to grab and eat while getting ready.

This Sunday's breakfast was......

Snickerdoodle Muffins! 

I made these ones especially for the Praise Leader of our family since Snickerdoodle's are his favorite cookie.  I also figured all the kids would actually eat them since they don't really contain anything that might be considered good for you.  But oh well, cause they are tasty!

adapted from www.eatmedelicious.com

2 Sticks unsalted butter, room temp.

1 cup sugar

2 tsp. Vanilla

2 eggs

3/4 tsp. Baking Soda

3/4 tsp. Baking Powder

3/4 tsp. Cream of Tartar

3/4 tsp. Freshly Grated Nutmeg

1 1/4 cup Greek Yogurt

2 1/4 cups AP flour

For the coating:

3/4 cup sugar

1 tbs. cinnamon

[1] In a stand mixer cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.  A few minutes.

[2] Add vanilla and eggs one at a time, waiting for each egg to incorporate.

[3] In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cream of tartar, and nutmeg.

[4] Alternating flour mixture and yogurt add to your wet mixture.  Starting and ending with flour, scrape bowl if necessary.

[5] In a shallow dish whisk together coating toppings.

[6] Using an ice cream scoop, I like my stolen Jamba Juice "disher" spring loaded scoop.

Scoop the batter into your coating and roll each scoop around till it's fully coated.

[7] Place each ball into a greased muffin tin. 

This recipe made about 24 muffins for me!

[8] Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

So after a good morning of muffins, praising God and fellowship we left to go check out Olomana Gardens in Waimanalo.  Andy has been wanting to see this place for awhile and usually the tours can be a bit pricey.  But being the bargain hunters that we are we found out today was an open house with free tours and a potluck!  Can't beat that. 

Olomana Gardens has a huge aquaponics set-up.  Which I know nothing about but maybe Andy will get to guest blog about this someday for those that are interested.  The tour was pretty cool with lots of information and a beautiful backdrop of Waimanalo Valley. 

We saw their fish tanks, the duck weed they were growing, along with Papayas, Taro, tomatoes & pretty much anything else you could imagine.  The kids got to pet horses, chickens, and a pig so everyone was having a pretty good time!  Jonas was so excited cause he helps Andy a lot with their aquaponics system so he kept running ahead with the tour guide pushing a lot of older Asian men out of the way.  Rude, perhaps.  Cute, definitely. 

The open house was pretty neat too, free beer & aquaponics?  Andy was in heaven.

It's such a joy spending time with our kids as they explore new things, especially things we're interested in too.  And hopefully, somehow, tying it in with homeschool, just so we don't feel guilty for the days we miss in the classroom. ;) 

Made one last stop at Sweet Home Waimanalo to try out their famous smoothies and check out the food.  It's a bit pricey but definitely looked good if you're into organic, healthy, locally grown stuff.

We tried a Peanut Butter Bellows Smoothie & a Local Kale Smoothie and took a beautiful drive along the ocean back home. 

God is so good to us, I only hope that we do him justice in giving him everything he deserves from our lives knowing we can always give more. <3 

God Bless America. Happy 4th of July!

Had an awesome low-key 4th of July yesterday celebrating with the kids, my Dad, brothers & sisters and some of our church family at their home in Maile. 

Despite all the differences I have with our government and how anti-authority I am, just a bad teenage habit that I just can't seem to shake, I do know how blessed my family & I are to live in this country.

We get good health care, for now anyways, through the state.  Participate in the Women's, Infants & Children program here and that's about it.  While I do appreciate everything this country does do for us I also take pride in the things we do for ourselves. 

All that being said I am a proud Navy brat of a man who served our country for more than 20 years.

I have lived in more houses than I can remember and greeted ships searching for my Dad's face. 

I am thankful for those that sacrifice their fathers, husbands, sons for our freedom.  

[My Patriotic fruit plate.]

I also love the chance to celebrate, enjoy the company of friends, & eat! 

The kids could barely stand still long enough to take a picture.  They just wanted to go swimming!

Stars && Stripes!

Left:  The view from our friend's back lanai of sunset.

Right:  My 4th of July belly!

27 weeks & 4 days.

We all decided we were too tired to try and fight the crowds to see the fireworks but on the way home we got lucky and got to watch the whole show from the comfy-ness of our van on the side of the H-1. 

Hope everyone had a happy & safe 4th of July!  

Red, White & Blue-Berry Muffins

adapted from www.joythebaker.com

7 tbs. unsalted butter

1/3 cup whole milk

1 large egg

1 egg yolk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups AP flour

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

Topping:

3 tbs. cold butter, cut into small cubes

1/2 cup AP flour

1/4 cup sugar

[1] Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Melt and cook the butter shaking often.  Watch the butter as it begins to foam and smells nutty.  It will turn brown pretty quickly, once you see brown bits floating around and brown foam take it off the heat.

[2] Whisk milk, egg, egg yolk and vanilla until combined.  Once butter has cooled slowly add it to mixture while whisking.  Don't add it while it is too hot or it will cook your eggs!

[3] In a separate bowl whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Add milk & butter mixture and stir gently to combine.  Gently fold into blueberries.

[4] Divide batter into muffin cups, makes 12.

[5] To make topping you can pulse all ingredients in a food processor until it looks crumbly or use your fingers to mix until it looks like small peas of butter, but be quick!  You don't want the butter to melt.

[6] Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins.

[7] Bake for 28-30 minutes in a 375 degree F oven.

Yum! 

Scribe's Tablets Craft & Banana Oatmeal Muffins

I consider my self a Jill-of-all-trades.

I cook, I clean, I cuss, I teach Sunday School. 

When we came back to Hawaii we knew we would probably have to pick up a lot of random odd jobs around the church in exchange for our housing.  In addition to playing the drums, being the Property Manager and Facebook group admin I also became the Sunday School planner/teacher. 

Not exactly my strong suite.  So thank goodness, once again, for Pinterest, and all these other inspired Sunday School teachers and for the [literally] stacks of books I cleaned out of the Sunday School room.  

So here's our lesson plan from today!  I get so many ideas from everyone willing to take their time to post the things they do so I thought I could do the same. 

These would also work really well for homeschooling to help teach letters or numbers cause you can just "erase" the board each time.  Plus they get to eat it when they're all done! 

Scribe's Tablets

adapted from the book More Than Mud Pies

You will need:

Quart size freezer bags

Milk

Food Coloring

Vanilla Instant Pudding Mix

[1 large box made about enough for 6 kids]

1/4 measuring cup

Tablespoon measuring spoon

[1] Give each kid a resealable bag.

[2] In each bag pour 1/4 cup milk, 2 tablespoons pudding mix & a few drops of food coloring.

The mix is kinda yellow so blue will turn green, red will turn orange, etc. 

[3] Seal the bags tightly getting as much air out of them as you can.

[4] Have the kids knead the bags, it will turn thick pretty quickly! 

[Lily with her tablet.  She will use any excuse to wear a fancy dress!]

From there you can do whatever you want!  We drew pictures of the cross, wrote our names, etc.  Depending on who is preaching that day our class can be pretty short so this took the perfect amount of time.  Then the kids can eat their pudding! 

We also learned this verse to go along with the erasing or "hiding" of the pictures.

Sundays are also are most hectic morning, Andy works 6 days a week now and Sunday is one of them.  We actually get to spend a lot more time together so we're not complaining about it but it does make an already busy morning even busier! 

He works until about 9am and then we have to be downstairs at church by 10am for band practice, Sunday School set-up etc.  This doesn't seem too early but as you know I hate waking up early and making sure 3 kids under 6 are also fed & dressed, not to mention my coffee made, always makes for a little chaos. 

So I decided to be pro-active this week and last night I made these Banana Oatmeal Muffins for an easy breakfast with some fruit and yogurt.  We had 3 brown bananas left from our big Costco bunch and I was intrigued by the no flour idea so it was perfect!  These are pretty dense muffins because of how they're made but super easy, filling, and everyone liked them so we will definitely try these again.  Maybe next time with a little maple syrup?  Yum.

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

adapted from http://travisjessjones.blogspot.com

2 1/2 cups oats

1/2 plain Greek Yogurt

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. baking soda

2 over ripe bananas

 [1] Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.

[2] Grease a 12 cup muffin-tin.  

For this recipe don't use paper liners, they will stick.  Just grease your pan or use silicone liners if you have them. 

[3] Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes. 

Grab one & go! 

The Nutella Chronicles: Nutella Swirled Banana Bread and Nutella filled mini donut muffins.

I am one of those people that grew up on Nutella.  I don't know how and I don't know where but we have always been a home with Nutella.  My Mom is a junk food junkie, not in a bad way [I love you Mom!] so this was just one of those things, her favorite way to eat it is with Walker's Shortbread cookies.  Sigh.

So I didn't go on a magical trip and discover it as an exotic treat, Nutella is a thing of memories & my childhood.  I hope my kids have those same memories. :) 

I bought a big 2 pack at Costco of the stuff a few weeks ago so I've basically been baking anything that has it, cause really why wouldn't you want a surplus of Nutella and baked goods?  

This is also my first lesson learned in blogging.  I found both of the recipes on Pinterest and like almost every recipe I make I tweaked it to fit what I thought would be better or for what I personally had on hand.  When I went to write this blog I hadn't pinned the exact recipes I used so I had to go through pages of recipes to try and find them so I could reference them here. Errr.  Ok blogging world, lesson learned.  I will start writing my recipes down!  There, you happy?

Nutella Swirled Banana Bread

adapted from www.barbarabakes.com

 

1 Cup mashed very ripe banana, about 3 medium bananas

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 plain Greek yogurt

1/4 cup butter, melted

2 eggs

2 cups AP flour

1 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

1/4 t. salt

1/2 cup Nutella

 

[1] Combine mashed banana, brown sugar, Greek yogurt, butter & eggs in a stand mixer and mix on medium until well blended.

[2] In a separate bowl whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

[3] Note: I made these into mini loaf pans, cause I had disposable ones and didn't want to clean up but you could use one big standard loaf pan here. It makes 4 mini loaves.

Slowly add flour mixture to wet mixture.  Mix until it just comes together.

[4] Grease pans, I make my own Pam type spray, and spoon batter into bottom.  About halfway up.

[5] Use about 1/8 cup of Nutella per pan, a little more won't hurt anybody.  Kind of layer the Nutella between two layers of batter and then put a big scoop on top.

[6] Use a butter knife or skewer to swirl the Nutella through the layers, I made the mistake of not swirling enough which gave my bread kind of a crispy Nutella top which I kind of liked.

[7] Bake at 350 degrees F, or 300 degrees if your using a Convection oven, which I am while my oven is out of order.  For about 35-40 minutes.

[8] Let cool on a rack, if you can wait that long!

Nutella filled Mini Donut Muffins

adapted from www.mochithoughts.com

 

   3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 egg 

1 1/2 cups AP flour

2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1/4 t. Nutmeg

1/4 cup Veggie Oil

3/4 cup low-fat milk

1 t. Vanilla 

Nutella for filling

 

[1]   In a large bowl whisk together sugar, egg, veggie oil, milk & vanilla.

[2] In another bowl whisk together dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, salt & Nutmeg.

[3] Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet until just combined.

[4] Grease a mini muffin pan with cooking spray and fill each one halfway.

[5] Using a teaspoon add a dollop of Nutella to each muffin.

[6] Cover Nutella with a little more batter each, try not to fill too high, I did and they came out ok but it could be a mess.

[7] Bake at 350 degree F for 12 minutes.

[8] When the muffins have cooled down for a few minutes run a butter knife along each edge.

Pop muffins out while they are still warm and then roll in cinnamon sugar! 

[1/4 cup sugar & 1 t. cinnamon]

Makes about 36 mini muffins.

Have a Nutella-licious day!