I think you could feed my husband chicken pot pie, chili and grilled cheese sandwiches any time of year, but for me, that is fall and winter comfort food!
We have been thrilled to find that many of the local churches have chicken pot pie dinners or fundraisers from parishioners, so we do not have to make them at home but end up with homemade food!
Pumpkin is a wonderful food that I like and add to many dishes. Tomato soup, pasta sauce, muffins, cakes, drinks…even my morning coffee get pure pumpkin puree for a punch of flavor and fiber!
Buying a low sugar muffin mix or a sugar free cake mix and adding a can of pumpkin and baking is an easy way to increase the fiber, expand the flavor and keep extra fat out. I am not against fat, I think it is a great thing, but I’d rather spread some butter on my muffin than swirl oil into my muffin. It’s all about the value of the calorie to me. Sometimes I will put a handful of unsweetened coconut in or some trail mix or even bits of nuts I have on hand. Again, the value of the fat of the nut or coconut is something we’ll actually enjoy, so I don’t worry about putting those in.
Portioning is important to me. If you put a huge muffin in front of most people, they will eat the entire muffin. It feels wasteful to leave a bite or two or three behind and even though I subscribe to the ‘better to go to waste than go to waist’ approach, I don’t want to make things that are oversized and build waste in, as I mostly want to have all food be used, enjoyed and not end up in the trash. I went to the local dollar store and bought traditional cupcake pans and make my muffins in those. I can easily get 18 muffins out of one batch of mix that calls for only 10-12 to be made ‘mega muffin’ size. That normal size muffin is exactly the right amount!
Another thing I enjoy doing is adding at least one scoop of unflavored protein powder to the mix before baking, but depending on the muffin mix I will add flavor. So in a plain pumpkin muffin I might add two scoops of chocolate powder. A peanut butter and pumpkin will get two scoops of peanut cookie powder. Be creative, think of fun flavors but don’t get too crazy. Think about what you enjoy together and have that be a great guide. I one time mixed pumpkin with mint cookie. Let’s just say that I didn’t feel terribly bad feeding those to the dogs. Awful would have been a huge improvement on those beautiful but horrid tasting muffins!
So, to what have you added pumpkin recently?
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