Cranberry Corn Muffins

 

As you may or may not be picking up on,  I am not one of those people that likes to have 3 boxes of Bisquick or 20 cans of tomatoes on her pantry shelf. I get a little stressed out when I buy too many cans and I have to stack them on top of each other...but I also hate running out of stuff, and I do believe in buying in advance, just in small quantities. Currently sitting on my self was an almost empty container of cornmeal. It's on my grocery list for this weekend to buy a new one, so of course I wanted to use up the old one first! The pumpkin cornbread I made last week left me craving more cornbread-y type things. I had these muffins bookmarked, and decided to give them a whirl since I just happened to have some frozen cranberries in the freezer.

Here's the original recipe:

¾ cup cornmeal (I had JUST enough!)
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup fresh cranberries
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar (I only used 1/2 a cup)
½ cup milk (I used skim)
½ cup canola oil (My plan was to substitute applesauce for part of this, but turns out I didn't have any! Maybe next time)
sweetened condensed milk, for drizzling (I opted to leave off the glaze)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375°F.  In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, oil, sugar, and milk.

In a separate, larger bowl, whisk your flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt. Stir in your cranberries.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Lightly coat a standard-size 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray.  Divide the batter evenly among the cups, filling each about 2/3 full. (I made 16 and they were kinda big. I would probably make them smaller next time and make 24)

 

 

Bake for about 22-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean.

The result? good :) sweet and tart at the same time!


Next up...Nutrition news:
In the past week, my classmates and I have had visits from the Egg Council lady and the Dairy Council lady. Both visits have left us drowning in handouts and recipes and coupons! It appears that when you work for a council, people give you lots of free stuff. It's a tough call as to which lady I liked better. The Egg lady gave us these sweet whisk keychains:

 

 

But the milk lady gave me THIS:

 

 

Yes, that is a femur...and yes, it is a pen!!

Anyways, today I thought I would share my favorite handout with all of you. It's called:

The reason I like it is because it not only tells you how many servings of each food group a typical person should be getting, but it also shows you examples of what constitutes a serving size. Since portion control is, in my opinion, on of the biggest problems in America, I think it's important for people to realize exactly how much they are eating. Click the two photos below to enlarge if you can't read them!

 Here are some more serving size equivalents:

 And just a reminder:

 Also, let's talk about the food pyramid for a second. When I was in school, it looked like this:

 In 2005, they changed it to look like this:

Personally, I don't really like the look of the new version. It looks cluttered and disorganized...but the information is good, so if you're old school like me, try to look past the appearance and take note of the important information it contains. One of the biggest changes they made was to add the steps on the side to help people realize how important physical activity is in our daily lives.
Check out this website for more food pyramid info:

My Pyramid- This is the USDA's website. It offers great explanations about the new pyramid, has a program where you can track your food intake and also has a menu planning tool

And finally, for my newest oatmeal combo:

 

+

 

=

DELICIOUS

Enjoy!

--Lindsay--