Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins - GF

I have seen some recipe's for oatmeal blueberry muffins floating around lately.

I happened to have a craving for them for about a week, and I also just happened to have some gluten free oats in my pantry and blueberries in my freezer. 

They are only slightly sweet and would be great toasted for breakfast.  They are very moist.

My family LOVED them!!!

INGREDIENTS

11/4 C quick cooking oats ( I had gf oats)

1C any gluten free flour or GF flour mixture

1/3 C white sugar

1T baking powder

1/2 t salt

1C milk (I used Almond milk)

1 egg

1/4 C vegetable oil (I used grapeseed)

1 C blueberries

DIRECTIONSHeat oven to 425F

1. Combine oats, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Mix in milk, egg, and oil; mix just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Fold in blueberries.  Fill greased muffin cups 2/3 full with batter. ( I used a 1/4C measuring cup and it was the perfect amount to pour into each muffin hole)

2. Bake at 425F for 20 to 25 min.  (They were done in 20 min in my oven)

I can see where some brown sugar sprinkled on top before popping in the oven would be oh so tasty!

Also, I would double this recipe next time!

You could also add in a little mashed banana if you wanted.  This is an easy recipe to play with.

Edited to add:  I have made these several times now.  I ran out of my grapeseed oil and so I used coconut oil! Oh, so delicious!  It is still below 80 here most days so I had to melt it, before pouring it into the batter.
We love coconut oil for all sorts of thing anyway and it is one of the healthy oils!
Give it a try with pancakes!

Garden 2012 update #2

We started to harden off the seedlings today.  Can you believe they were just seeds a month ago?

Here are tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant sitting out on the sunny front porch.

These are strawberries in one of the raised beds Brendon built last week.

 The fantastic little beds lined up so sweetly.  The first one contains the strawberries.

The second and third raised bed are herbs or they will be! 

The fourth one will be asparagus.

 One of our blooming fruit trees. 

 Brendon watering the strawberries.

 Mavis our border collie.  She is a hilarious trip!!!

She would love to live on a livestock farm, but for now she contents herself chasing birds, bees, runners and cyclists!

 Zippy one of the farm cats.  I agreed to outdoor cats and am proud to say they did their job this week and caught a critter! 

 RJ the other farm cat.  He is a lion and gives grasshoppers a terrible fright!

 Sarah is 13 years old.  This is the smartest and best guard dog.

Love her, but she's sure aging!

This is a great old dogwood! It's on the side of my front yard.  My neighbor thinks it's possibly near to 100 years old.  I don't know, but it's pretty neat.

Garden Spring 2012 update

On Saturday Brendon built 3 garden boxes to make raised beds for herbs and asparagus.

Here he is working hard. 

 Tonight the neighbor was out plowing and tilling his garden!

So Brendon and the kids went to talk to him and he loaned the tractor to Brendon!

 The tiller is awesome!

 Brendon having fun!

Garden 2012 Spring edition

We mowed today for the first time in 2012! 

Brendon mowed over the winter garden to get it ready for spring tilling and planting.

We enjoyed our fall/winter garden and it is SO much easier to garden that time of year, because weeds are

largely not an issue.  We had collards, turnips, radishes, various lettuces, broccoli, and cabbage.

It's so fun to send a child out the door to pluck some things for dinner!

This is our garden freshly mowed.

 We are trying potatoes for the first time.  Brendon read about the trash can method and we are giving it a try!  Here are three cans already planted with seed potatoes. 

Apparently you plant the potatoes and when they grow through the dirt you add more dirt and cover.  Repeating until it gets to the top of the can and then you just let them grow until they are ready.

 We love to eat berries.  We planted a few blueberries.  Berries tend to be crops which are heavily sprayed (also potatoes) and we try to avoid the heavily sprayed foods as much as possible.  But, have you seen the price of organic berries? Yikes!  We decided to grow our own.  It will be next year before we get any fruit off of them, but we are looking forward to it.  I think we have six blueberries planted.

Baby Blueberry Bush.

 Baby Raspberry Cane

We planted various types of apples and pear and a couple other fruit trees.

We won't get any fruit off of them this year, but we are looking forward to next year.

 This is my favorite farmer!  Planting the raspberry canes.

 We had to cut down a tree in the front yard.  We will turn most of it into mulch. 

Our most awesome neighbor has a friend with a mulcher.  We will pay to use it, but it's still much more economical than any other solutions we have asked about.

All this gardening is actually quite alot of work, but we have learned alot and the rewards are just fantastic!

We love to do it and we get to feed our family nourishing food that we know all about.

Brendon is keeping a detailed journal this year of what he's doing when, cost etc... 

Father Daughter Dance 2012

 Our homeschool group hosts a Father/Daughter Dance each year and Isabelle looks forward to some partying with the girls each spring.  Look how she's growing up!  I'm so lucky to have such a great girl and handsome husband! 

Shrove Tuesday 2012

Our children look forward to Shrove Tuesday (or Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras) every year.

And who wouldn't, with a variety of pancakes and sausage and bacon for supper!!! Please don't forget the maple syrup and cream on top!

Plain pancakes, m n m pancakes and blueberry pancakes and a plate full of pork!

Two happy children!

Let me tell you it is not a problem for grown ups to feel like a little fasting the next day!

Valentines Day 2012

We had a fun evening with the family on Valentines Day this year.  A homeschool family did a little baking fundraiser for another homeschool family that had a father needing a heart transplant.  (He has his heart and is doing well!) Anyway, they went all out with these cute boxes for the cupcakes and cookies.  They did a superb job.  They cookies and cupcakes were beautiful and everything was delicious too.

 I felt like making strawberry shortcake too.  I did buy the little cakes, but made the cream and sweetened the strawberries.  YUMMY! 



Christmas 2011

 We set a pretty table for Christmas breakfast.

 Our tree.  (we were still working on those bookshelves)

 Isabelle Christmas Eve

 Christmas Morn!

 Stocking contents!

 Joseph's stocking!

 A Gift!

 A Gift for the boy!

 Over at Mimi and Papa's!



Shepherds Pie for Christmas

5lbs potatoes
2lb ground beef
1 onion diced
2 cloves garlic chopped or pressed
8oz cheese shredded
2 cups mixed frozen vegetables
salt (or season salt)
pepper
other herbs as you like (I use herb de provence alot)
make a little brown gravy either packet or bouillon with some flour (1/2 to 1 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 to 400
Boil potatoes and make cream/mashed potatoes however it suits you.

Brown meat in skillet and cook through and then drain.  While meat drains cook onions and garlic in pan for a few minutes then add vegetables and continue to cook for a few minutes.  Add the meat and cook for a few minutes. 
Pour meat into a casserole (like 9X14 or equivalent), then make gravy in the pan.  Pour gravy over meat and veg mix.  Spread potatoes on top.  Sprinkle cheese on top of that. (you might not use all the cheese it just needs light sprinkle so you can still see plenty of potato)

Bake 20-30 min until cheese bubbles.

Technically shepherds pie is made with lamb and this is actually cottage pie, but that's all a bit technical and we call it shepherds pie anyway.

Thanksgiving

 I made this chocolate cake. I love to make cakes and I had never made this one before.

It's a keeper! YUM!

 My cousin Shelley brought these pretty table centerpieces.  She cut down a birch tree and had

holes drilled for tea lights!



 Oh, the delicious food!

 More awesome desserts!

 More delicious food!

 My girl!

 Good old friends!

 Kelle, Lora, Sebastian and Mom!

 The football crowd.

Our house lit up for Christmas!!!

Fall 2011

 We have a big old tree with oodles and oodles of leaves.  So nice

and shady in the summer.  So many to rake in the fall!

Isabelle and Joseph helped clean up the front yard.

The yard is now covered in leaves again! 

 Someone sent us Flat Stanley.  He helped with the leaves.

We need to mail him back!

 This house will continue to be a work in progress, but here

it is so far.