Clean Pumpkin Protein Bread

A month ago I decided to eliminate all artificial sweetener from my diet in an effort to relieve stomach aches that I constantly had.  I immediately saw an improvement.  After eliminating this I decided to continue trying to clean up my diet.  I started by contacting a friend who works with the wellness department at a local hospital and she recommended eating clean.  After looking more into this I started reading Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Recharged book.  I have to say this has helped me so much (eat clean website)!  It has allowed me to start eliminating things that really do not add any nutritional value to my diet including white flour and sugar.  Along with this it encourages you to eat 5 - 6 small meals a day rather than 3 larger ones.  If you are looking for something that is less of a weight loss plan and more of a healthy eating plan this is a great one to look into.  While making these changes I also have started changing some recipes that are tried and true recipes to be clean.  This one is a fall favorite that I've made clean by adding protein to the mix and eliminating the white flour and sugar.  It does still have a large amount of oil in it but I haven't yet figured out a good way to cut back on that without affecting the texture of the bread (applesauce made it spongy).  Enjoy a healthy recipe for fall!

Pumpkin Protein Bread
Ingredients:
1 cup of oil (whatever kind you would prefer as long as it is a mild oil)
3 eggs (or 5 egg whites)
1 cup of pure honey
1 1/2 cups of canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie)
2 tsp vanilla
3 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ginger
3 cups of whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 scoops protein powder (I used vanilla flavored)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees
In the bowl of a mixer mix together all "wet" ingredients

In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until combined
Pour into 2 large loaf pans that have been sprayed with non-stick spray
Cook 45 minutes at 325 degrees or until toothpick inserted comes out clean
Let rest on counter in pan about 10 minutes
Flip out onto wire rack to cool
Cool before cutting (if you can resist)

Step By Step Easy Lasagna Recipe

Jon Arbuckle: Garfield, did you eat all four boxes of lasagna?
Garfield: [hiccups] It's not my fault. They started it. 

This lasagna has quite a story.  It is a recipe my mom would make all the time growing up.  She also would give it to me before I went back to college whenever I came home to hold me over until the next time.  As I got older I found out her recipe and started making it myself.  When my husband and I were talking before we dated I made him this lasagna to thank him for helping me with something (honestly can't remember why), and as they say food is the way to a man's heart.  Little did I know that lasagna was his favorite meal ;-).  So both the quote used and the recipe are a nod to my husband (Shale).  He loves lasagna and loved Garfield growing up.  I made this recipe a lot (because it is so simple) and then stopped making it for a while as it was getting a little boring.  However, when I told Shale I was making it the other night he was so thankful.  I knew I needed to share it as it is simple, feeds a lot and can be frozen.  The nice thing I like about the lasagna is you can throw in anything you like.  I've used mushrooms, fresh spinach, hot italian sausage, ground beef, chicken, you name it you can pretty much use it.  For this particular time I used roasted garlic and ground turkey breast in the sauce.  For the directions it really helps if you can visually see how to complete the recipes so I've done step by step pictures to help you out.  Enjoy your Italian dinner made simple!!!

10 Recipes Every Newlywed Needs to Know

Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths.  No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. 

Mark Twain

I love this turquoise/yellow wedding

I'm celebrating my first anniversary today!  It is so crazy to think how fast a year flew by.  Before getting married I had this thought (actually we should probably call it an illusion) that I would cook a new dish for dinner every night, keep an immaculate house, decorate, spend time with the husband and still have time for things like running, working, friends, etc...  Sadly in about month 6 of our marriage I realized this was definitely not going to happen.  At that point I had a basket of laundry to do, the floor needed to be vacuumed, I didn't feel like cooking and couldn't remember the last time I had ran.  It was then that I realized married life wasn't the clean houses I saw when I went over to visit someone (because they shoved everything in the closet before hand), it wasn't the elaborate dinners (because really they had picked it up at the local restaurant before hand), it wasn't a perfectly designed house (because they had hired an interior decorator for that) or the relaxed feeling I felt when around the couple.  Actually it may have been the relaxed feeling but that was mainly because the wife (or husband) had taken the advice in the parenthesis above so really they were just chilling.

Turquoise/Orange Inspiration

Joking aside though I did come to realize that marriage is more than living up to these standards I had set in my head.  Marriage was loving someone, serving together, standing side by side, and (for those who are a Christian like me) bringing God glory in all you do.  I quickly learned that in reality the laundry could wait until tomorrow, the house would always need something else dusted, decorating is a lifetime project, and some nights it's ok to order in.  I do have to say though in regards to cooking there were a few amazing dishes that really helped me get through this first year of marriage.  If you know me you know I love experimenting with different dishes but every now and then even I have to have those standby recipes to fall back on when everything else fails.  So for those of you who are newlyweds, write these down! For the rest of you who already have your recipe "repertoire" why not consider adding some of these.  I promise they are delicious, filling and always seem to please both the husband, guests, and myself.

A semi-healthy Italian dinner

La scoperta di un piatto nuovo è più preziosa per il genere umano che la scoperta di una nuova stella.
Brillat- Savarin

(The discovery of a new dish is more precious to human beings than the discovery of a new star)

Kate Spade Gwinnett Lane Line

I absolutely adore this fine china line by Kate Spade and Lennox. Perfect for serving up beautiful dishes like the one I'm about to share. I love Italian food but unfortunately I've found that many Italian dishes can be very heavy or fattening so I try to stick to the ones that contain a vegetable based sauce such as marinara or pomodoro sauce. However, I was recently searching for new recipes and came across one in which the sauce was made of spinach. Now before you go and close out this post read the rest because the recipe really turned out beautifully. It is a great way to sneak in some extra veggies while being absolutely delicious, and we could all stand to add a little more spinach to our diet. One of my close friends, Bethany, who knows her health stuff recently posted that we wouldn't need to take any extra vitamins if we would just eat spinach everyday. Spinach is a great nutritional addition just check out the amazing quantity of vitamins at the bottom of this post (courtesy of http://www.nal.usda.gov/ nutritional index). Along with the healthy part of the dinner I also decided to make something a little unhealthy. Lately I've been trying my hand at baking breads and I am currently in the process of making a sourdough starter. I was hoping to make sourdough bread tonight but unfortunately my starter wasn't quite ready so instead I tried out a simple baguette recipe I had found. The bread and pasta turned out perfect and the bread was surprisingly much larger than I expected. Both of the recipes are very cheap which goes to show that you really can save money by making simple things like bread at home. So here's to a night of both healthy and unhealthy dishes. I know these will be in my permanent rotation of fall-back-meals and I hope they become part of yours also.