Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

Praying you all have a beautiful, blessed Christmas celebrating the birth of our wonderful Savior, Jesus!
Love,
Matt, Amber, James, Hannah and Ellie xoxo


"...Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
Luke 2:10-14


Jesus is the reason for the season!

Shade Clothing Giveaway

Check this out! Petit Elefant is giving away a WHOLE outfit from Shade Clothing. Wow! A whole outfit!! Shade Clothing has some adorable and modest clothes at affordable prices. I discovered them a couple of months ago and fell in love. I was so excited to find this giveaway. Go enter for your chance to win today! You must enter by December 14th.

http://www.petitelefant.com/2009/12/shade-outfit-giveaway.html

Carrot Muffins

Today I was making some carrot juice (LOVE my Champion juicer!) and thought that it would be nice to make some muffins or something with the carrot pulp that's leftover. So, I headed to Google and found a recipe on Allrecipes.com. It sounded pretty simple, so I thought it would be worth a try. However, as I was going through, I realized that it called for lots of salt and LOTS of oil! I altered the recipe some and this is what I ended up with:

Carrot Muffins:

1 cup dried blueberries (The original recipe called for raisins, but my hubby doesn't eat raisins, so that's why I used the dried blueberries. I think dried cranberries would also be good. Or maybe chopped prunes. I suppose pretty much any dried fruit would work. Just get creative!)
2 cups warm water

1 cup spelt flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
(Originally, this recipe called for 2 cups of all-purpose flour. As mentioned before, I thought they asked for too much salt and oil, and of course it didn't really dawn on me until I had everything measured, so to make up for that I just added an extra cup of flour. I've started using spelt flour recently because of its nutritive value, and always try to use whole wheat, but I thought with both of those together it might be too heavy, thus the 1 cup of all-purpose flour.)
1/4 -1/2 cup wheat bran (I didn't measure, just dumped some in. Not in the original recipe. Another thing I added for a little extra punch.)
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

4 eggs
1 cup oil (I used a combination of extra virgin olive oil and walnut oil. You can't taste the olive oil at all, and it's much healthier than regular vegetable oil. And walnut oil has essential Omega-3)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
Sqeeze of agave nectar (Probably could have used a little more of this)
1/4 cup applesauce (For a little extra moisture since I had added extra flour)

3 cups grated carrots (I used the pulp leftover from juicing...works great! I think next time I might mix it in with the wet ingredients though...it didn't want to mix very well at the end.)
1/4 cup sliced almonds

Directions:
1. Combine blueberries and water in a small bowl and set aside to soak while you prepare the other ingredients.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease muffin tins, or line with paper liners. This recipe, how I altered it, made 30 muffins.
3. Sift together flours, wheat bran, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. In a separate bowl combine eggs, oil, sugar, molasses, agave nectar and applesauce and beat well. (You could add the carrots in at this point, or save them to mix in at the end.) Combine egg mixture with flour mixture; mix just until moistened. Drain blueberries and fold into batter along with carrots (if you haven't already added them) and almonds. Spoon in to prepared muffin cups.
4. Bake 20-30 minutes. I think I baked mine about 23 minutes. Let cool and then enjoy!

These are not sweet, cupcake like muffins. They are hearty and have a very rustic look. But they are packed full of good stuff and are delicious with a little butter and honey on top. I know, I added quite a bit of extra items, but I love to see what healthy things I can sneak into everything I make. Now that I think of it, ground flax seeds would be another great thing to throw in there! I suppose the possibilities are endless!