Hooray!

So, as an offering towards the previously-mentioned gods of health and well-being, in the hopes of continung in good spirits and wellness, I wanted to share with you a new recipe I've discovered that is not only healthy but tasty as well!

Things I Love: Cooking Edition!
Morning Glory Muffins

I found this recipe in an issue of Cooking Light (another thing I love, btw!) and decided to give it a try. I've been working on improving my diet and as I don't typically eat many fruits or vegetables and I'm not all that great about eating wheat bread or whole grains, I thought this might be a way to work those kinds of items into my diet easily. I whipped up a batch of these babies tonight and they are SO. YUMMY. (They are also filling: I had two of these for dinner and didn't need much else!)

As many folks know, I have allergy issues with dairy and eggs, so I made a few alterations to the basic recipe. But first things first: the recipe has a number of items in it that you may not have on hand, like ground flaxseed and wheat bran and - if you're at all like me - whole wheat flour. Wheat flour you can find at pretty much any grocery store, and the other items can be picked up in your grocery store's health food section or a place like Whole Paycheck Foods.

A couple suggestions following my first trial run:
a) the flaxseed will be in the refrigerated area; I bought a bag of the ground flaxseed meal by Bob's Red Mill and it was quite reasonably priced, particularly for how much you get! (It also has another recipe on the back for muffins; bonus!) I poked around in the bulk foods area before giving up and looking in the refrigerated case.
b) If you can find it, try buying the wheat bran in bulk; it's not terribly expensive but at least if you hate the muffins you won't have a bunch of it sitting around mocking you.

Substitutions: The recipe itself appears to be fairly malleable, as it notes that you can substitute dried apricots or raisins for the chopped dates. I dislike dates, so I threw in a cup of currants and about 1/3 cup of chocolate chips. It turned out quite well. I suspect you could also do without the dried pineapple and use dried cranberries instead, or crushed banana chips or something similar. Those allergic to nuts could just leave out the walnuts altogether and be good to go.

In place of the standard fat-free yogurt, I substituted a cup of plain goat's milk yogurt. I'm only allergic to cow's milk products, so sheep and goat products are fair game. The Redwood Hill yogurt is tasty and, again, I got it at the local health food store. Bob's Red Mill also makes an egg replacer product for those who cannot tolerate eggs at all.

So - go forth and bake! Eat! Enjoy! I'm going to go have me another one of those puppies... YUM. (And I do believe they should freeze rather well too!)