Recipe Request - Muffins

This was once posted on the Canadian Heart & Stroke foundation website but I can't find it there now. The recipe comes from Rosie Schwartz (The Enlightened Eater's Whole Foods Guide). These are what my friends know as my maternity muffins. I started calling them that because I bake them for everyone I know when they have a baby. Healthy, nutritious and very yummy! They freeze well and each muffin packs 4 grams of protein, 3 grams of fibre and 219 mg of potassium. They are an odd muffin to make. They remind me of little nests. The muffin is mostly vegetable so when you scoop the mixture into the muffin tins it feels and looks like just a clump of wet carrot and zucchini.



Carrot Zucchini Bran Muffins
(makes 12 muffins)

3/4 cup bran cereal
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup grated carrot
1 cup shredded zucchini
1 egg lightly beaten
1 egg white lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (200 celcius). Soften bran by mixing together with buttermilk in a separate bowl; set aside. In a large bowl mix dry ingredients and carrot & zucchini. Stir well. In another large bowl combine eggs, vanilla and oil. Mix in mushed buttermilk and bran. Mix dry and wet ingredients. Do not over mix. Spoon into greased muffin tins. Bake 18-20 minutes or until tester comes out dry.

Week One - Work Boxes

Monday:
- Read Aloud to Mommy (Little House Series - keeping with the pioneer theme this month)
- Writing activity (a worksheet where he answers questions about him)
- Miquon Math (2 or 3 sections from where we last left off)
- Oral recitation of the days and months
- Cutting with scissors
- Board game
- Making houses with architecture stamps

Tuesday:
- Read Aloud (Little House)
- Writing copywork (silly poetry)
- Singapore math lesson
- Working on address and phone numbers
- Cutting with scissors
- Colouring worksheet (geometric shapes)

Wednesday:
- Read Aloud (Little House)
- Writing activity (tbd)
- Miquon Math
- Spelling work with Dolch list 1, worksheet & puzzle
- Science read about Mercury and paint the first planet- styrofoam ball
- History, talk with mom about Pioneer village experience, look at books
- Weather Video (documentary)

Thursday:
- Read Aloud (Little House)
- Writing copywork
- Singapore math lesson
- Grammar Lesson
- Read poetry with Mom
- Geography, lesson on difference between country, province, city
- Computer time, email 2 people

Friday:
- Read Aloud (Little House)
- Writing activity (write a poem)
- Math worksheets
- Spelling work with Dolch list 2, worksheet & puzzle
- Science, work on weather instruments
- Social Sciences worksheets
- jigsaw puzzle

3 Hours of Prep Time Later...

...and I have completed my first week agenda for those work-boxes! Well, a little of that time was also consumed with organizing the weekly schedule. I am a scatterbrain at heart. I grew up making lists because lists are the only way I can attain the level of organizational perfection I strive for. To me that is as relaxing as a nice bottle of Italian Pinot. When our cell plan ends in a few months Rob and I are getting IPhones and he tells me I can put my schedule on Google Calendars and it will update my calendar on the phone, which will always be with me...but I digress.

So, instead of trying to figure out what to do with the boxes the night before (which I am convinced would fall apart within days), I have a binder which holds all the information I will need to muddle through. Each week has a schedule, a blank sheet with seven boxes for 5 days where I can jot down what I plan, and a blank meal plan sheet. Why the meal planning? Well, I have a pretty thorough meal planning system. Keeping it in my binder makes it easier to remember that Tuesday is lunch in the car on the way to X activity and Thursday is pick up take-out food night because X ends at 6pm. Really, without all these detailed lists, my life as I know it would fall apart. People may laugh but I can honestly say that since the kids have been born I have been freakishly prepared and on schedule. In all the trips we've ever taken I can think of two times when I forgot something, like a toothbrush or night time pull-ups. I need to overcompensate for my bipolar/ADD/mildly OCD brain. Again, I digress...

I figured out how much time I have each morning sans Miss Iz and have a list of things I would like to accomplish with Alex while he is alert and *not* distracted. I also have a list of reminders for other activities that can be thrown into one of the boxes. Monday and Tuesday are shorter work days because some homeschool activities will eat into our alone time. Wednesday through Friday are the good days where we have more time to do what we want. I have a few master templates at the back of my binder to remind me what the goals will be. For the next while we will be focusing more time on writing skills and adding regularly scheduled lessons for history and geography. There are a few science projects that will take up fair chunks of our time too.

I think I will post the Week 1 agenda separately. Maybe I'll do it weekly. We'll see,