The Munchy Monster Arrives on Day 4

As promised:

Pumpkin-Peanut Butter Muffins
(There's only one in the picture because that's all that's left a mere 12 hours later!)

Preheat oven to 160 C.  Line muffin tray with paper muffins cups.
Place in the blender:
1 cup leftover cooked pumpkin (or squash from those cheezy potato skins!)
1/3 cup vanilla soy milk (or water or apple juice)
1/3 cup vegetable oil, I used sunflower
3 T peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 T ground flaxseeds (NOT optional!)

Blend all until smooth and light.  Set aside.

In a bowl mix:
1 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Pour wet ingredients into dry and stir until just mixed.  Spoon into 12 muffins cups and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of one comes out clean.

NOTE:  The flaxseeds are standing in for the eggs here, so don't leave them out.  When mixed with liquid, flaxseeds turn into goo and that's what we're going for here.

I tasted the muffins and they were indeed wonderful, but because I try to stay away from sugar, I concocted the smoothie in the picture above with some of the same ingredients for similar taste with a lot less damage:

Carrot Spice Smoothie
1 banana
1 carrot, grated
1 Medjool date
1 T ground flaxseed
1 T tahina or peanut butter
few dashes of cinnamon
drop of vanilla extract

Holy Beta-Carotene Batman, and your blood sugar will thank you too!

Wow, then the rest of the day got really wierd.  I'm having some strange physical symptoms which could just be fighting off an illness or...could I actually be detoxing the dairy?  Or maybe that bit of wheat and sugar is messing with me, or it's a lady thing....who knows, but I just sort of munched and munched on a lot of things today.  Some healthier than others:

I had mashed potatoes which I made from the leftover potato innards from the potato skins, with sea salt and nutritional yeast.  Then there was whole grain toast with olive oil, zaatar and sea salt.  I had some dried fruits, a lot of nuts, some 70% chocolate (non-dairy), more nuts...  see where I'm going with this?

Dinner was salad with leftover avocado dressing and Mudjaderra, aka Persian Rice, Lentils & Fried Onions.

and everyone ate it, kids and all, yay!

Tomorrow will be a new day and I will be spending some time working to re-gain balance with my eating.  It is important not to just look for physcial or food reasons when we become crave-y with food.  Quite often there is some sort of underlying anxiety or stress and once we get it out and dealt with, food no longer becomes an issue.