Best Banana Bread

One of my friends from high school is now a Dietitian and just started her own healthy eating blog. I love it! I always feel like we should be eating healthier, but then I look into what 'healthy eaters' consider a normal diet and it's full of hard to find ingredients, expensive products and lots of time consuming cooking. So instead I go heat up a corn dog and carry on with my day. (ok, we don't actually have corn dogs in the house THAT often, but I think you get my point)

I'm loving Erin's site 'cause it's real. Real budget, real food and realistic recipes. If you want to find some good ideas you should check it out- thehealthyapron.com .

We haven't tried a ton of the recipes yet, but so far my favorite is the banana bread. I've tried a lot of banana bread recipes out there searching for that perfect moist texture and this is seriously one of the best. (ok, so the recipe I have that calls for over a cup of butter for one loaf tastes a little better... but I never feel like I can actually make that recipe so it hardly counts. And this recipe is second only to the butter recipe) It's still definitely a treat, but is much better for you than any other recipe I've tried. Here's the link of you want to her see post- http://thehealthyapron.com/2010/02/06/lowfat-oatmeal-banana-nut-bread.aspx

Oatmeal Banana Nut Bread

From The Healthy Apron

1 1/4 c. All-Purpose Flour

1/2 c. packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 tsp canola oil

1 large egg, beaten

2 medium egg whites, beaten

4 medium overripe bananas

1 c. uncooked Old Fashioned Oats

1/3 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven 350 degrees and spray 1 loaf pan with cooking spray. Combine all dry ingredients including the oats and cinnamon. Mash bananas in a separate bowl, adding the oil and 1 whole egg. Mix thoroughly. Add the wet ingredients into the dry flour mixture. Mix well, forms a thick batter. With a hand mixer, beat the egg whites until medium stiff peaks form. Fold the whites into the batter in three separate additions. Fold in chopped walnuts last. Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake 45-50 mins. Allow to cool 5 minutes and then flip out onto a wire rack.

Nutritional information per slice (10 slices per loaf): 221 calories, 5.4 grams fat (0.8 grams saturated fat), 44.8 grams carbs, 3.5 g fiber, 5.3 grams protein

Happy Easter

This year Doug and I tried something a little different for Easter. My sister told me about the book A Christ-Centered Easter and I wanted to see if it could work for a family of adults. It was great. It's main purpose is to get families (specifically families with children from preschool to teens) to focus on the story of Christ during the Easter season. It goes day by day for the week before Easter- each day is full of scriptures to read, suggested discussions and activities for all different age groups. You choose what you want to do and all of the info you need is there in the book so it takes very little prep each day.

The book made our Easter week great! I mean, I'm sure we could have studied what happened during that last week of Christ's life on our own, but it was really nice to have it all together and laid out for us. I think this was the first year I've really truly been excited to celebrate Christ's resurrection on Easter rather than get candy. (not that we got rid of the candy tradition, because I love all traditions that involve food!) I'm pretty sure celebrating Easter week this way will have to become one of our Easter traditions.

We mostly read and studied the happenings for each day, but we did do a couple of the activities. (most of the activities were geared towards kids) My favorite was the Jerusalem Dinner. Ours was quite simple this year and consisted of what pre-prepared foods I could find at Target that were on the book's list of food that probably existed in Jerusalem during Christ's life. One year when I'm feeling up to a little more cooking I think we'll try the full out passover dinner with bitter herbs and lambs leg and such. But this still got us in the right mindset so it worked great. We ate it on our living room floor while we watched To This End was I born.

Now we just need to find a way to do this for Christmas. Anyone know of any similar books to study/celebrate Christ's birth?

Visit from Mom

My mom came to visit for the last week of March. It was great to have her here. The first day at our house she literally cooked for the ENTIRE day and FILLED our freezer with amazing food to eat for a very long time. Aren't I just the luckiest daughter? I really think that one day I might just write a book about how freezer meals saved my life. How did I ever cook dinner every day? (the answer to that question is, well Jessica- you used to be able to stand up for more than a couple minutes at a time...)

Whenever my mom comes we always turn the house into a project factory. It was especially true this time since I was too tired to do anything but lie on the couch. So we spent our time sewing and knitting. I made a set of Easter ornaments which I was excited to hang up just in time for Easter and we both spent way more time knitting than any normal person should. So basically, it was the perfect visit :) Thanks for coming Mom!

And there goes March

Well. My Argentine bug (or what I like to lovingly refer to as Wormy) presses on. I'm pretty sure he's building an army inside of me to eat away all of my energy (don't think about that statement too much, because it's very likely quite true...).

I really try to update this blog once a week just to have things recorded. But the end of February and beginning of March was really uneventful for us. I've been sick and Doug's been working.

Just because I like it better when blog posts have pictures, here's the only picture I could think of taking-

Yep. It's a wall. But not just any wall- this is the wall that I stare at whenever I'm too sick to move. Which lately has been about 90% of the time.

I read this book about living with chronic illness that said that when you're sick, you shouldn't measure your life by the things you do. Instead, you should measure it by the relationships you develop and the things you learn. As I lie in bed and stare at that wall I try to think of what God wants me to learn from all this. Trust me, I've learned a LOT! The past couple months one of the big things has been gratitude. Here are just a few of the things that I feel so lucky to have-

Doug. I won't expound on this one because it'd get all mushy. But I will say that God was very kind to wait until I had Doug to make me this sick.

Doug's health- I can't even imagine what we'd do if something happened and Doug couldn't work. We're already living the fall back plan (you know how you always think, well- if one of us gets sick or hurt the other can provide for the family. Welp, it's not an 'if' statement for us.) and would literally be left with no options if something happened to Doug. Let's all pray that I can keep being grateful for this one for a very very long time!

Health Insurance- I know there's been so much going on about how horrible our health care system is, but I'd just like to say that we have awesome health insurance that allows me to get just about any type of health care I need.

Our House- I know, I know, it's vain. But all I get to do all day is lie down and look at our house and furniture. I'm just really really glad that I think it's pretty. :)

So many more! The list literally goes on and on and on. God is so merciful. He can make life good no matter what is happening in it.