Thoughts on Food & A Recipe

I feel sometimes like my entire day revolves around food. Making dinner, making food for myself, feeding Max and Maggie four times a day, and nursing Lucy {what feels like} almost constantly. It's a lot of food to think about. I've found that if I'm busy and distracted, feeding myself is usually the chore that gets neglected. Partly because eating isn't especially appealing unless I make it interesting. For example, if I eat peanut butter toast for breakfast three days in a row, the thought of breakfast on the fourth day is depressing and I end up wandering around my kitchen aimlessly saying, "What am I going to eeeeeeat?"

Does anyone else have this problem? It's not an issue if not-me is making the food {which is why we've started eating out a lot more often since Lucy was born}, but when I have to {again} put forth thought-effort and then physical work-effort, it doesn't always seem worth it. Do you know what IS worth it, for sure? Pumpkin muffins and banana bread. Hash browns and spinach omelets for breakfast. Knowing that I provide my family with a good dinner most nights. Eating enough that I don't get migraines is for sure worth it, but I'm not always good at seeing that far ahead.

Speaking of pumpkin muffins, I said last week that I would share the pumpkin muffin recipe that's been making me so popular around here. You should be warned that these muffins are extremely delicious, and you might just want to eat them all by yourself. {I ate a grand total of six yesterday.}

{ adapted from this recipe }

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking soda 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg* 1 teaspoon ground allspice* 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon* 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves* 2 cups {or one 15-oz can} pumpkin puree

1 1/2 cups white sugar 1/2 cup light brown sugar 1/2 cup applesauce 1 cup low fat vanilla yogurt** 4 egg whites 1 egg 2/3 cup water 1 cup chocolate chips***

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line two 12-cup muffin pans with paper muffin liners.
2. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves. In a large bowl, beat together the pumpkin, white sugar, brown sugar, applesauce, yogurt, egg whites, and egg. Blend the flour mixture into the sugar mixture, alternating with the water, to form a smooth batter. Fold in the chocolate chips. Transfer to the prepared muffin pan.
3. Bake 16 to 18 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool on wire racks. Makes 24 muffins.

*I added heaping measurements of all the spices and it turned out perfect; I'd like to say that I did it on purpose, but really I'm just clumsy and dumped in more than I should have.

**We actually used 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt and 1/2 cup sour cream; my guess is that you could use all sour cream, or plain yogurt, or really one measuring cup's worth of any combination of those three ingredients and you'd be fine.

***I put in chocolate chips because it's the only way Christian will eat them, but you could also add raisins, blueberries, or {my favorite} chopped walnuts.

If you end up making a batch of these muffins, I'd love to hear how they turned out!