Banana Apple Oatmeal

We love Oatmeal for breakfast, especially when it's loaded up with lots of fresh fruit.  We used to add fruit at the table, to each of our bowls individually, until I tried adding fruit while the oatmeal is cooking...  The result is AMAZING!!  The flavor and natural sweetness from the fruit is absorbed into the oats as they cook, making every bite absolutely delicious!

Banana Apple Oatmeal, topped with pecans and cinnamon

Serves: 6
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 - 40 min

Ingredients:
- 9 cups of water
- 6 bananas, sliced
- 3 apples, diced
- 2 tbsp. cinnamon
- 2 cups of steel cut oats (not rolled oats)

Instructions:
Put water, sliced bananas, diced apples, and cinnamon into a large pot and bring to a boil.  Let it boil for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it starts to break down the fruit.  Once the bananas are swollen and very mushy add the oats and bring back to a boil.  Cover, and simmer for 30 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until it reaches the desired consistency.

Add to bowls, top with nuts, cinnamon, or more fruit, and enjoy your delicious breakfast!

Experiment a little!
The recipe also works great with frozen blueberries, peaches, pineapple, or strawberries.  Add whatever fruit you like, and if it works well add a comment so I can give it a try too!

Bananas in

Apples in

The fruit is cooked.  It's time to add the oats!

It's ready!

No Guilt Ice Cream!

Take a look at the "ice cream" Anthony made last week. Okay, it's not really ice cream (did you see my quotes?), but this stuff is sooo good! We used to eat a lot of Ben and Jerry's in my house, but this stuff is sooo much better for you and won't add on the extra pounds. It really satisfies my after dinner sweet craving and it is made of just fruit!


To make the ice cream, we start out by taking a bunch of really ripe bananas (the more ripe the better), break each banana into about three pieces and freeze a whole bunch in a ziploc bag. When they are frozen we put them in our high power juicer along with other frozen fruit depending on what flavor we are making. (Thanks to Matt at the Rainbow Garden for the idea to use the juicer!) We used to use our high power blender, but the juicer makes it much lighter and fluffier.

You can concoct any flavor you want, but this time we made strawberry (just frozen strawberries and frozen bananas), cinnamon raisin (frozen bananas with cinnamon and raisins mixed in), and my favorite chocolate (frozen bananas and unsweetened cocoa). Yum!! I might need to make some tonight....

Anyway, this is a great thing to make for dessert if you are having trouble breaking that dessert habit at night!

Pumpkin Soup

Ev begged me for some pumpkin soup the other day. We had just came back from pumpkin picking so I just used one of the medium sized pumpkins we got. I cut up the pumpkin, cubed it and cut the skin off. I then boiled it with one onion in and a box of veggie broth until soft. I added some pepper, cumin and cinnamon and then blended it all in the blender. It was surprisingly easy and delish!















I also made toasted pumpkin seeds, but Ev acted like I was poisoning him when he tasted those!

Banana Oat Bars

These banana oat bars are so good and you don't have to feel bad about eating them! Ev helped me make this batch. Here is a link to the recipe:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Dr-Fuhrmans-Yummy-Quick-Easy-BananaOat-Bars-223077

We used the optional apple sauce and sprinkled the top with some pumpkin spice! Yum!