Half Birthdays, Water Guns, and Science Geeks

Family

This week we celebrated Ben's 5 1/2 birthday. I never thought I would celebrate half birthdays, but the idea came together kinda last minute. Ben was having a few friends over for one last time with our neighbor's giant waterslide and I decided to make a cake and have a mini-half birthday celebration. The cake was just so-so. I don't think I'd make it again. I made the basic vanilla cake recipe from the Pillsbury website, with the only substitution being about 3/4 of a cup of light cream (I needed to use it up before it went bad) and about 1/4 of skim milk. The cake was quite dense. I decided to make the cream cheese frosting again, but this time it came out too sweet. I liked it much better with Preacher's chocolate cake I made two weeks ago for my brother's birthday. Next time I will definitely use less powdered sugar. I used only one layer and cut it in half and made it literally a "half a cake". The other layer is in the freezer and I will frost for my parents the next time they are down for dinner.


Food
I have two recipes to share this week...


Heirloom Tomato, Bean and Feta Salad
I bought some amazing heirloom, yellow, and red cherry tomatoes, basil, zucchini, and corn from one of the many roadside stands in Lancaster. I used about half of the tomatoes and basil to make a salad that unfortunately I don't have a picture of. It was a delicious salad. I perused Tastespotting and looked a bunch of different recipes and then looked in my refrigerator/cupboards and came up with this:


1 pint of mixed heirloom, red, and yellow tomatoes (quartered)
1 can of small white beans, thoroughly rinsed
1 cup of chopped fresh basil leaves, stems removed
1/2 to 3/4 cup of fat free feta cheese
salt, pepper, garlic to taste
balsamic vinegar (approx 1/4 cup)
olive oil (approx. 1/8 to 1/4 cup)
cubed french bread (preferably a day old)


Toss everything but the bread together and let rest for an hour; add bread before serving.


Yum!

Zucchini Mini Chocolate Chip Muffins
(makes 24 muffins and 1 mini-loaf)
I want to call these muffins healthy and for the most part they are, I just don't have access to my Weight Watcher Recipe Builder anymore and so I don't have an exact idea of how healthy. I am planning to do a little web searching tonight to see if I can find another recipe builder to use in the future.


I bought some large zucchinis specifically to make some muffins. We were all out of our other muffins and I wanted to fill up the freezer with a fast and healthy treat for everyone. At first I was going to make a carrot, zucchini, pineapple muffin, but then realized I only had a little bit of carrots, so I decided to hold off on those for the next muffin recipe. Again, I used Tastespotting to help find a recipe and modified this one here. I  changed the recipe quite a bit, but I am VERY happy with the results. And was my taste-taster, Isabella.


Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins
1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup cake flour (I had about a cup left that I wanted to get rid of, so I used it in this recipe)
1 cup unprocessed wheat bran ( I used Hodgson Mills)
1 cup almond meal (from Trader Joe's -- really just ground up almonds)

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon Penzy's Baking spice

3 Eggs
1 cup skim milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 Cups shredded zucchini
1 Cup brown sugar
1/8 cup honey
1/4 safflower oil
1/2 - 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips (about 3/4 of a 12 oz bag)


Mix dry ingredients together in one bowl; set aside
In another bowl, beat eggs, add milk, vanilla, brown sugar, honey, oil and applesauce; mix thoroughly. Fold in zucchini and mini chocolate chips.


Fill muffin cups and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 minutes (about 5 longer for the loaf).


Fitness
It wasn't a stellar week for running or workouts. Chris left at 4 AM on Sunday for San Francisco and so I had to get a babysitter to do any workouts. I got two in; one 7.8 mile run and one 60-minute workout. I tried to get our babysitter back for one more morning, but it didn't work out. Chris returned on a red eye on Wednesday, but we had Cabot Safety Coloring contest party and Ben's Track and Field camp end of season BBQ, and then Chris had to be in Boston for 8 on Thursday, so I made up for it on Saturday with the 9.5 mile run. I also ran the pond this morning, bringing the week's total to 20 miles. Alls well that ends well.


Here's the only Garmin-linked run. Next week I should have more.
Flanagan Pond Loop (2.8) by mappy17 at Garmin Connect - Details


I'll end this post with some pictures from the Cabot Corporation Annual Safety Calendar Coloring Contest and the water gun fight at track and field.