Sweet Potato Muffins

These muffins are fairly healthy... or at least not unhealthy...and they're delicious. They're a little earthy and substantial thanks to the oats and flecks of sweet potato. They'e the perfect treat for a crisp Autumn evening or morning.  (Or, if you live in Mississippi, they can be the perfect treat for a hot, steamy, very summery evening, even though THE CALENDAR CLEARLY STATES THAT IT'S FALL.  Okay.  Moving on.)

You'll Need:
1 & 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar (see, barely any sugar! definitely not unhealthy!)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (you could just use cinnamon)
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/2 cup mashed sweet potato (What I do is stick one medium sweet potato in the microwave for about 3-4 minutes until it's soft and steamy, then peel the skin off and roughly mash the potato on a plate with a fork.  It doesn't need to be perfectly smooth.)
1/4 cup melted butter

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.  In another bowl, combine the melted butter and the sweet potato and whisk together, then add the rest of the wet ingredients.  Stir to combine.  Then add the wet to the dry and whisk together until all the flour is incorporated. It will be a bit lumpy because of the oats.  That's perfectly fine.  Spoon the batter into a greased muffin tin, filling the cups 3/4 of the way full. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400 for about twenty minutes.  Makes 12 muffins.

Enjoy!

Some Thoughts on Co-Sleeping, and on Blessings

Jeffrey starts out each night in a little crib beside us, but he won't go back to sleep in it after his first nursing of the night, (trust me, I've tried...and tried...and tried.) And while co-sleeping was never ever ever my plan, since J was a really awful sleeper from the get-go, (in the hospital, two different nurses remarked something along the lines of "wow, they don't usually fight sleep like this so early," and I knew then that I was in trouble,) I learned that me getting some sleep is more important than my pre-baby principles, and I also have kind of fallen in love with having him in bed with us for most of the night. It's a season of life, and I know it will pass some day. That is a happy thought and a sad thought.

I think part of the reason I'm so willing to co-sleep...so willing to give up my space and nightly energy...is because I remember my time in Ethiopia. I remember the rows of metal cribs and the motherless little babies sleeping alone, night after night. The orphanage staff at Layla did a good job, but they were vastly outnumbered by the babies, and so often when I arrived in the morning some babies were still in their cribs, lying there in soaked, dirty cloth diapers, (I remember that every single baby there had terrible diaper rash,) and I vividly remember the look of surprise on their faces when I would come up to their beds with my arms outstretched. Some of them would come eagerly and immediately. But some would stare at me for several seconds, as if saying "what? What are you here for? Oh, for me? Really??"

It broke my heart then, and it breaks my heart now to remember those faces and to know that there are so many, many motherless babies in the world right this minute who are sleeping in beds alone, and have never known anything else.

Then I look at Jeffrey, curled up beside me, his rabbit tucked under one arm and his hand clutching a chunk of my hair with all his might. He is my baby, and I am so humbled by the gift of being his mother. I don't have to wake up every hour with him in the night, (thank you, growth spurt,) I get to. I don't have to give up all my alone time to be at his constant beck and call, I get to. It's not a chore to be his only source of food and therefore his comforter of choice. (Your time is coming, daddy. I promise.) No, it's a gift. And I'm thankful for it every day. Every night. Even the bad, sleepless nights. They're all worth it.

Jeffrey never looks at me with surprise when I lean over his bed to pick him up. Joy, yes. Excitement, yes. Impatience, yes. Surprise? No. He expects me. He knows I'm his mama, and that I'm coming for him. He's not an orphan.

And neither am I. I have such a kind Father, so loving and sufficient, and yet I am often still surprised when He answers my cries in the dark nights. My surprise isn't because He ever ignores me, but rather because I am often afraid of the magnitude of my unworthiness. But, incredibly, He doesn't look at me and see my unworthiness. He looks at me and sees His Son's robes of righteousness clothing me.

Jeffrey and I. Both so loved. Both so protected. Both given no reason to be surprised when our cries are heard.

We both have so much to be grateful for.

Scalloped Sweet Potatoes with Goat Cheese (and Pumpkin Bread!)

There are two reasons why I will never have a truly successful cooking blog. One is that I can never have the patience to take pictures of each step of a recipe, and the other is that I cook too much like my mama. (A little of this, a sprinkle of that, a dab of such-and-such, and voila! I might have a delicious dish but I can't for the life of me tell you exactly how I made it.)

But last night I made up a recipe for scalloped sweet potatoes, and they were scrumptious, so I'm going to tell you how I made them. (Warning, this is a "sprinkle a bit of this" recipe, so if you're a stickler for exact teaspoons and tablespoons, read at your own risk!)

Autumnal Scalloped Sweet Potatoes 

Serves 4, but could very easily be doubled

You'll need: 
2 medium/large sweet potatoes, thinly sliced
1 & 1/4 cup heavy cream 
Salt 
Cayenne Pepper 
Dried, crushed Rosemary
Goat Cheese 
Sharp Cheddar Cheese, grated 

First, melt a tablespoon of butter in your baking dish,(mine was  about 8×8,) and rub it around the bottom and up the sides. Then, arrange a layer of the sweet potato slices and season them with salt, cayenne pepper, and the dried rosemary. (Don't go overboard with the cayenne, unless you want the dish to be really spicy. You're going to season each layer, so there will be plenty of seasoning.) Then, crumble up some goat cheese and sprinkle it on top of the potato layer. Pour a few tablespoons of the cream over the whole thing. Repeat the process two more times, or more, if you have room in your dish and plenty of ingredients. Don't put goat cheese on the top layer. 

Cover the dish with tinfoil and bake in a preheated oven at  375° for thirty minutes. Take the tinfoil off and bake for another thirty minutes. (Watch to make sure the top doesn't brown too much. It should brown a little.) Five minutes before it's done, take it out and sprinkle the top with the cheddar cheese. Pop back into the oven until the cheese is melted. Take out, and enjoy! 


And, because it's that time of the year, here's Cindy Ballard's recipe for Pumpkin Bread!

You'll need: 
1 & 2/3 cup all-purpose flour 
1 cup sugar 
1 tsp baking soda 
1/4 tsp baking powder 
1 tsp salt 
1/2 tsp nutmeg         {I like to use three tsps of pumpkin pie spice and one tsp cinnamon as the spices} 
1/2 tsp cloves 
1/2 tsp cinnamon 
1/4 tsp allspice  
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup orang juice 
1 cup canned pumpkin 
2 eggs 

Stir together all dry ingredients. In a large bowl, combine oil, oj, eggs, and pumpkin. Mix well. Add dry ingredients and blend thoroughly. Pour into greased loaf pan and bake in pre-heated  350° oven for 60 minutes. Cool for five minutes and remove loaf from pan and place on rack to finish cooling. 

Easy, Creamy Chicken Pasta with Greens

This pasta dish isn't for you if you're trying to lose weight or if you don't like butter and cream. (If you fall into the latter category, we just probably can't be friends.) It's so delicious though, and it's incredibly simple to make. I look at it like a good "splurge" meal - sometimes we just need cream and carbs!


Creamy Chicken Pasta with Greens

Serves 4, or 2 with leftovers (yay I love leftovers!)

You'll need:
2 chicken breasts, cubed
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 tsp cayenne pepper (or 1/2 tsp, depending on your spice tolerance)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup whipping cream
2 tblsp butter (or more, if you choose to sauté the chicken in butter rather than olive oil)
2 cups greens of your choice (I used a mix of spinach and baby kale)
Pasta of your choice, cooked according to package directions (for this recipe I usually use linguine or penne)

First, season the chicken with the spices. (I like to use a couple of tablespoons of Emeril's Essence as an easy all-purpose substitute for the other spices. If you do that, just be sure to add salt too.) In a large skillet, sauté the chicken and onion in olive oil, (or butter, if you're feeling particularly decadent,) until the chicken is golden and the onions are translucent. Then, add the butter and cream, reduce the heat to low, and let the chicken and cream simmer until the sauce thickens. (You won't have to add any extra spices to the sauce, because the spices from the chicken will perfectly season it.) Meanwhile, cook pasta. When pasta is finished, drain the water off and add the greens directly to the warm pasta. Then, spoon the chicken and sauce directly onto the pasta and greens, and mix until it's all combined.

Serve with French bread, because, why not? Carbs are amazing. (Also, according to Tyler, the kale and spinach totally negate the butter and cream. Ha)