Fall Spice Granola

Here's a quick recipe to utilize those last few bits of pureed pumpkin left over after making your Thanksgiving baked goods. (Seriously, so many recipes call for 1 cup and not 1 can). This is such a low-maintenance recipe. It's easy to tweak: add some almonds, some extra cinnamon, some flax seeds, or whatever suits your fancy.

Fall Spice Granola

2 cups old fashioned oats
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
pinch of salt
3 Tbs. pumpkin puree
3 Tbs. pumpkin butter
3 Tbs. maple syrup
2 Tbs. canola or grapeseed oil

homemade granola + homemade yogurt = crunchy blogger

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine spice, salt, pumpkin puree, pumpkin butter, syrup, and oil and whisk until smooth. Add oats and stir until evenly coated. Spread granola out onto a large cookie pan lined with foil or a Silpat. Bake for 18-20 minutes, tossing the mixture halfway through baking. When granola is golden, remove from oven and allow to cool. It won't be cruncy right out of the oven, but it will harden as it cools.

This recipe makes eight 1/4 cup servings (or, let's be honest, four 1/2 cup servings). It would make a great hostess gift for Thanksgiving if you can hold onto it for that long!

#FirstWorldProblems

If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's a social media site on which people update their status, post opinions, and share news. If someone wants to discuss a trending or popular topic, they will use hashtags. If someone uses a #hashtag, it becomes a link and if you click on it, you can see what everyone on Twitter is saying about that subject. I am rarely on Twitter, mostly because it confuses me and it seems even more pointless than Facebook (which I'm obsessed with. Don't judge!)

Anyway, there's a hashtag going around in which people say things like:

I had to walk 15 minutes to get to my car today #firstworldproblems

This salad doesn't have nearly enough tomatoes in it #firstworldproblems

My stomach hurts from eating too much Halloween candy #firstworldproblems

I'm ashamed to say that I find a lot of these complaints coming out of my mouth these days. So lets play Cognitive Behavioral Therapy!

I was force canceled from work again because we have too many nurses and not enough sick babies.

Yes, it's stressful, but fewer sick babies is a good problem to have. And I'm blessed to have the PTO to pay for these unplanned days off. Sure, I'd rather use it on a long-overdue vacation, but all my co-workers who did go on nice vacations this summer and didn't hoard their PTO are having to go un-paid these days. Times like these do make me question a career choice where my livelihood depends on having sick babies in the world, though.

I can't get a good night's sleep these days even though I'm so tired.

But I have a nice bed and a warm apartment and a full stomach. Sometimes you can't win them all.

Running is such a convenient workout but now that I've been banned for the winter, getting a workout in is a huge, time-consuming ordeal.

Duh, at least I'm healthy enough to be able to work out and I have insurance that affords me a great physical therapist. And really, I'd be frustrated with running right now anyway thanks to fall asthma.

There's a weekend bonus position open at work. In exchange for working every Saturday and Sunday and forgoing a social life and Sunday church for the next 6 months, I'd be making a lot more money. Given the phone call we got Thursday night, more money sure would be nice. I. Just. Can't. Decide.

There's a point at which talking things over ad nauseam isn't going to change anything. I told my manager to put my name in. May she with the most seniority win. What happens, happens. In the meantime, I'm applying for lots of PRN nursing jobs. Job security feels a lot more fragile these days.

On the other hand, last week's sermon at church mentioned that people who wrote down what they were thankful for every night were significantly happier than those who wrote down what went wrong that day, or even just what happened that day. So you better believe that the Month of Thanksgiving has been extended.

One of Those Elusive Posts

11/11/11 hasn't necessarily been a lucky day for us.

Isn't that just like life? Our prayers the last few weeks have morphed from, "we're so happy, we don't deserve all these blessings" to me saying, "I'm a little nervous about being canceled from work so often and I'm not sure what God is trying to tell me between grad school, PRN job applications, and the weekend bonus option." But then we got a phone call on Thursday night that left us reeling (no, it's not a life or death matter, yes I'm sure I'll share eventually). And last nights prayers sounded a little something like this: "We're not sure why we're finding ourselves in the same place before the holidays this year as we did last year. What are you trying to tell us? What are we missing?" And we can only cling to the fact that God did some amazing things in the past year and we can only hope that closing some doors right now is just his way of preparing us to see another one that's open.

Peace is Every Step

Sometimes I lack the words to express what's going through my head, but this really hit home the other day so I thought I'd share:

We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.

{from Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh}

Gluten-Free Apple Cider Muffins

Around this time of year, apple orchards beckon with their numerous apple varieties, apple pie, carmel apples, apple cider and... apple donuts. I do want to try my hand at apple donuts but today I settled for muffins. These would be great with strudel topping, too!

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/4 cup quinoa flakes (or rolled oats)

1/4 cup almond meal

1 Tbs. coconut flour

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or use cinnamon with a tiny pinch of nutmeg and cloves)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

4 Tbs. vegetable oil

2 eggs

2 Tbs. shredded apple with juices squeezed out (could use applesauce as well)

1/2 c apple cider (I used Knudsen's Cider and Spice with no sugar added)

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients well. Blend we ingredients in a small bowl and then add wet to dry, mixing just until moistened. Pour evenly into 12 prepared muffin liners and bake for 16-20 minutes.

Totally a worthwhile study break!

First, you take the graham

I know it's not campfire season anymore, but I finally succumbed to this treat on the grocery store shelves:

The picture on the front looks really fake, but Kinnikinnick does gluten-free ingredients right. And I was shocked that these tasted so good. In fact, I like them better than original grahams! If Honey Maid and Biscoff had a gluten-free bun in the oven, this would be it. It's more cookie than cracker but that's fine with me. I've been eating them straight from the box, or crumpled on top of pumpkin oatmeal in the morning. It's like eating dessert for breakfast!

 I may have to try them in graham cracker crust for a holiday pie this year. Yum!

*The fine print: I'm in no way associated with this company and I bought the product with my own money. Gluten-free goods tend to be pricey so I like to share what I buy when it's worth the money every now and then!

No-nonsense November

I think my days of boredom are long-gone. I am now over-scheduled to the max (for me, at least). I have had a lot of lofty goals in the last few months and at the end of the month I look back and either think, "yeah that crashed and burned pretty early on" or, "oh I forgot about that one."

So I have one goal for November: only check Facebook and Google Reader once a day. I'm hoping that I find oodles of either productive or relaxing time when I'm suddenly not sitting in front of my computer for no important reason (too many double-negatives there?)

This means turning my computer off overnight so I'm not tempted to check in first thing in the morning. This also means not checking it last thing at night (hopefully I'll sleep better that way). Lunch break is a good goal, but I don't care about "when" as much as I care about "once a day."

Wish me luck!

Do you have a goal for this month?