This is almost identical to the autumn peach pancakes I made last week—except for the pumpkin, of course. Derrick says these are his favorite of the pancakes I’ve made so far.

Pumpkin Pancakes

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup Smart Balance milk
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Smart Balance Butter, melted, plus more for serving
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ can pumpkin (Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla. Preheat a nonstick griddle over medium heat.

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry. Switch to spoon. Stir in the melted butter. The batter should be thick and smooth. Stir in pumpkin.

Spoon the batter onto the griddle 1/4 cup at a time. Cook the pancakes until set and thoroughly bubbly, about 3 minutes. Flip them with a spatula and cook until golden brown, about 2 minutes more. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

I’ve been making pancakes every other weekend, and I think they’re worth the time and effort of making them from scratch compared to using a mix. The taste difference is huge. This recipe has become my baseline for almost all of the fruity pancakes I’ve been experimenting with.

I created this recipe this morning, and it had nice flavors. I had a few left over, so we’ll see how well they reheat for breakfast tomorrow.

Autumn Peach Pancakes

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup Smart Balance milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Smart Balance Butter, melted, plus more for serving
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup frozen peaches, thawed.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla. Preheat a nonstick griddle over medium heat.

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry. Stir in the melted butter. The batter should be thick and smooth. Fold in the peaches.

Spoon the batter onto the griddle 1/4 cup at a time. Cook the pancakes until set and thoroughly bubbly, about 3 minutes. Flip them with a spatula and cook until golden brown, about 2 minutes more. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

This week we made our first batch of muesli…well, almost muesli. After seeing this video over at Summer Tomato, Derrick and I were both excited about muesli as an alternative to cereal or granola for breakfast.

Unfortunately, since we live in Milledgeville, we were unable to find a 5 grain cereal as recommended in the video. We knew that rolled oats would work, but we wanted the benefits of multiple grains. We found this Kashi 7 Grain Puffs cereal, which tastes like a healthier Rice Krispies. The con of the Puffs would be that we do not have the option of eating this food cold or hot, as with traditional muesli.

We are on our third day of muesli-eatin’. I have had bowls with both almond milk and Smart Balance Milk. The almond milk brings a sweeter flavor to the cereal and complements the nuts.

Almost Muesli

Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs
Cashew Halves and Pieces
Almonds (Low Sodium)
Peanuts (Unsalted, Dry Roasted)
Sunflower Kernels
Golden Raisins
Dried Cherries

Mix ingredients together in a big bowl. You’ll know when you’ve got the proportions right. Puffs should be the most used ingredient, and the dried fruit should be the least used. Store in a container to preserve freshness.

I bought a bunch of bananas yesterday for smoothies this weekend, but I woke up worried that we wouldn’t be able to use them all. Thinking about a new Saturday morning recipe, I googled peanut butter and banana pancakes. I found this recipe over on allrecipes.com, but, since I was missing some of the ingredients and a lot of the user comments were critical, I used it as a baseline to create my own peanut butter and banana pancakes recipe. I also surprised Derrick with one of these, topped with butter and syrup, as breakfast in bed.

Rachel’s Peanut Butter and Banana Pancakes

1 cup flour
1 ¼ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. sugar
½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. nutmeg
2 heaping spoonfuls of chunky Smart Balance peanut butter
1 ¼ cup Smart Balance skim milk
¼ tsp. vanilla extract
1 small banana, peeled and chopped into itty bitty pieces
Smart Balance cooking spray.

Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Mix in peanut butter as well as you can. I just waited until it wasn’t clumpy anymore and it was broken up. Add milk and vanilla; stir just until blended. Stir in banana pieces.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Spray it so your pancakes don’t stick in between pancakes. Spoon batter onto skillet using a ladle. Cook until pancakes are done, whether you like them gooey on the inside or burnt to a crisp. They’ll turn a nice brown thanks to the peanut butter.

This is the second scramble recipe that I’ve posted on www.rachelm.com , because it’s one of those meals I cook all the time. Remember that I believe strongly in using what you have! Scrambles are great for this! I had grits for breakfast this morning, but, after mopping and exercising this morning, I wanted to make sure to get some protein in for lunch. We’ve eaten goat cheese veggie burgers two nights this week, and, though Derrick likes goat cheese, I knew I needed to figure out another recipe to use up the leftovers. We’ve been eating spinach on the burgers and on salads, but there’s still quite a bit left in the bin. We had leftover chopped red pepper from making a blueberry salsa this weekend. A good scramble should be flavorful, colorful, and filling, and this one definitely was!

Goat Cheese & Spinach Scramble

2 organic cage-free brown eggs
1 handful baby spinach
Chopped red pepper (add enough to give color and crunch to the dish!)
1 oz. goat cheese, crumbled
1 tbl. olive oil
Pinch kosher salt
Dash black pepper

Pour in olive oil and preheat pan to medium. When pan is warm, add two eggs. Scramble. When eggs are almost complete, add salt, pepper. A minute later, add spinach, red pepper, goat cheese. Make sure cheese is mixed around, since goat cheese likes to stick to one place. When eggs are done and spinach is wilted, so is the meal. Enjoy!

Remember that every ingredient in your kitchen presents an opportunity. Use what you have. When I wasn’t in the mood for granola or cereal this morning, I looked in the refrigerator and put together this healthy, colorful, and delicious recipe. I don’t have a picture because I ate this meal too quickly! Yesterday, I bought an organic spinach and arugula salad mix. Arugula has been tough to find in Milledgeville until Walmart started carrying it a few weeks ago. Arugula is a strong, flavorful salad green that I use in both regular salads and pasta salads. I also had a red tomato in the fridge that needed to be used.

Spinach, Arugula, Tomato Scramble

2 organic cage-free brown eggs
1 medium tomato, diced (if you have an extra slice, eat it while you cook!)
1 handful spinach and arugula
Smart Balance Cooking Spray or 1 Tsp Olive Oil

Spray frying pan and preheat it to medium. When pan is warm, add two eggs. Scramble. When eggs are almost complete, add spinach, arugula, tomato. When eggs are done, so is the meal. Voila! Enjoy your breakfast!

I’m not a morning person. After waking up, I need about an hour before I’m sociable, another hour before I stop feeling drowsy and nauseous. And though breakfast foods arguably make up some of my favorite foods, during my undergraduate and MA degrees, I slipped into the bad habit of skipping the first meal of the day. Of course, by skipping that first meal, I ultimately overindulged in lunch and dinner and second dinner. Eating that second dinner at 9 kept me up until 2 or 3. Missing breakfast not only affected my diet, but also my sleeping habits.

So when I decided to begin my quest towards happy healthy eating, one of the first things I did was begin to eat breakfast….at its regular breakfast time in the AM. This is one of those easy adjustments to your diet that most people know about but inevitably ignore. I’m not sure why some of us think by skipping this meal we are ultimately gaining something. There is no benefit to skipping breakfast—that extra half hour of sleep isn’t worth it! You will not lose weight by skipping this meal. Beginning your day with a meal not only starts you off with an energy boost but sets you up for good habits later in the day.

My body’s natural clock wakes me up around 8 or 8:30. If I’m not hungry, I will still eat. I need to get something in my stomach within the first hour or so of my morning, otherwise I find that my day’s food consumption will inevitably be out of whack. I am a creature of habit, so both my mind and body appreciate this routine. Today, I’ll be eating two leftover gluten free pancakes. Yesterday, I had a single serving of cottage cheese with two pineapple rings and a glass of apple juice. The day before yesterday, I had a bowl of fruit and nut granola topped with almond milk. The trick is figuring out what you like—and sometimes I like a meal so much that I’ll eat it every day for a month or more. This spring was the spring of grits, when I microwaved myself a bowl daily. When I was feeling a little bored, I would sprinkle cheese on top or drop a fried egg in the middle, but I usually had it plain with a dollop of Smart Balance Butter. During the stressful time of trying to graduate and get married, I liked knowing that every day I would get up to a meal that would fill me up. I just didn’t have to think about it—grits were it for me.

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This morning, as I enjoyed a bowl of cereal and an egg white scramble (tossed in cheese and a couple bacon bits) with a glass of V8 Fusion, I got to thinking about what exactly my V8 juice is. Passion Fruit Tangerine tastes sort of fruity, with a strange carrot smell and aftertaste. For the most part, I feel healthy drinking it, compared to say… a beer with my breakfast, which would be decisively unhealthy. According to the front of the bottle, the juice contains a full serving of vegetables in addition to its full serving of fruit, AND it is approved by the American Heart Association, as it meets food criteria for saturated fat and cholesterol for healthy people over the age of 2… and I am definitely over the age of 2!

But when you look at the actual nutritional value, this is where I get a little confused. At 110 calories, it has pretty standard juice calorie intake. 0 fat, 70 mg of Sodium (3% daily value), 600 mg Potassium (17% daily value), 27 g total carbohydrate (including the 24 g of sugars) (9%), 0 Protein. None of this sounds particularly healthy in anyway. Onto the vitamin breakdown, Vitamin A 15%, Vitamin C 100%, Calcium 2%, Iron 0%, Vitamin E 10%.

With the exception of Vitamin C, V8 juice doesn’t seem to be giving me any amount of substantial nutritional value, so who cares if each serving contains a full serving of fruit and vegetables? A multivitamin would give me more nutrition than V8 seems to provide! Is there some sort of unquantifiable vegetable goodness which is soaking into my brain as I type this?

Don’t even get me started on peanut butter. Choosy moms choose Jif, but why? So I can get 4% of my daily Iron, 15% of my daily Vitamin E, 2% of my daily Riboflavin, and 20% Niacin? What does any of this even mean? Who cares about my Riboflavin levels? Why has the peanut butter and jelly sandwich been such a staple of the American lunch if there is absolutely nothing worth saving in here?

This has seriously just become a jumble full of questions. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I feel like the labels lie. Thoughts from you fine food-eating folk?

Today I was preparing to make my famous favorite pasta salad for dinner and blog about it. I opened the fridge, pulled out the mozzarella and was appalled to find a spot of red mold right in the middle of it. RED. I even called Mom & Dad to see if mold could be red. Dad and I had a conversation just yesterday about how often college kids get sick by cutting mold off of bread and cheese and eating around the “safe parts”. As a paranoid food eater, I toss out everything at the first sign of spots, stink, or expiration date. Regardless of what Lars Eighner may have told me about food’s everlasting powers , I am conservative in my decision of what to eat and not to eat. (See here if you haven’t had the chance to read his “Dumpster Diving”; M-ville people: I had a blast when I taught this essay! http://www1.broward.edu/~nplakcy/docs/dumpster_diving.htm)

As my planned dinner was thrown out the window, I decided to improvise and try to make French toast for the second time. I made it for the first time a week or so ago, and the results were okay, but the meal was not necessarily a success. Last time, I followed the instructions in Cooking: a commonsense guide to a tee. I really enjoy this cookbook because it contains a lot of basic information, like how to cut up a chicken, how to cook an egg over easy—simple stuff that I’ve never necessarily tried but want to do! I recommend adding it to your collection if you’re a mostly beginner cook like me.

So this time, I decided to Rachel-ize the recipe, and it turned out fantastic.

Commonsense Cholesterol-Free French Toast ala RayRay

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