MarloElaine

I’ve been getting a lot of compliments on my Delicious Pumpkin Muffin and Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffin Recipes.  Lately I’ve been baking single batches of the low fat version and adding chocolate chips.  Here’s the new and improved recipe:

Reduced Fat Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

Recipe Summary:
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30-35 minutes for muffins, 20-25 minutes for mini-muffins
Yield: 18 regular size muffins, or 2-3 dozen mini-muffins
 
Ingredients:
DRY:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
 
WET:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
3 large or extra large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups raw shredded pumpkin, fresh or previously frozen
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

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Hand washing is the best way to prevent the transmission of germs, even better than all the hand sanitizers on the market.  Encouraging children to wash their hands before eating and after using the washroom is very important.  We also teach our kids to wash their hands as soon as they come home and after handling money or library books.

My kids love to wash their hands with foaming soap pumps.  They don’t need to spend as much time lathering up their hands, and the foam rinses off easily.  The problem is, the pumps empty so fast and replacing them can get expensive, not to mention wastefully and environmentally unfriendly.

I have yet to see foaming soap refills at the stores, probably because a special dispenser is required to make the foam.  My solution is to just refill the bottles using regular liquid soap.  You need one part soap for four parts water.  For example, one ounce of soap and four ounces of water.  The first time I did it, I accidentally used 2 ounces of soap and 6 ounces of water to fill my 8 ounce bottle.  The foam was thicker, but still worked fine.
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If your family is like mine, you spend a lot of time shopping at warehouse stores such as Costco or Sam’s Club. The groceries are often priced at a great value, but packaged in huge quantities. Whenever I pass by the beautiful slabs of fresh salmon, I’m tempted to buy a package. If I’m not having people over, the thought of eating salmon every day for a week usually changes my mind.

We discovered a new recipe when we hosted a pot luck Christmas party with friends a few weeks ago. Our dear friend Anne borrowed our kitchen to make her new salmon dish. She brought three ingredients, assembled them, and popped them in the oven. About 30 minutes later, a delicious main course was served! By the end of the night, every delicious morsel had been eaten.

Ingredients:
1 cup mayonnaise (may use regular or low fat)
1 packet onion soup mix (any brand)
1 large salmon fillet from Costco

Preparation:
Stir the onion soup mix into the mayonnaise. Refrigerate the sauce until ready to bake.

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place the salmon on an aluminum foil covered baking sheet. Be sure the pan is deep enough to catch any drippings.
3. Cover the top of the salmon with the onion-mayo sauce.
4. Bake approximately 30 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. When your kitchen fills with the scent of onions and salmon, start checking the fish. The internal temperature of the thickest portion should reach 140 degrees. If you don’t have a cooking thermometer, the fish should flake easily with a fork when fully cooked.
5. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 5-10 minutes. The sauce will turn into a tasty brown crust that keeps the fish moist and tender. Delicious!

Serve over a bed of rice and a side of steamed spinach for a super healthy, easy meal.

We’ve also prepared the salmon by seasoning it with salt and pepper and grilling on a hickory plank as well as sprinkling it with Hawaiian salt and olive oil before baking. We’d love to hear how you prepare your Costco salmon.

Please check out our other recipes.  Many of them have 5 ingredients or less!

The Motrin website is running a commercial or “Mom-Alogue”  that makes babywearing seem like a painful, unpleasant thing done only for vanity.  The first line of the commercial is, “Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.”  Here is another quote, “It TOTALLY makes me look like an official mom.”

I just loved wearing both of my kids in the BabyBjörn  and Hip Hammock.  It had nothing to do with being trendy and everything to do with comfort and convenience for my baby and myself.  As long as I adjusted my babycarrier properly, I did not need any pain medication because of it.

The online babywearing community is outraged and vows never to buy Motrin brand ibuprofen again.  Barb, a babywearer and former Motrin user, posted a transcript of the commercial on her blog.  Jessica believes that Motrin is picking on fragile, new moms thus angering many moms.

I have not purchased any Motrin brand products recently, and I do not plan to in the future.  There are many other brands and generic options available for both adults and children that work just as well, and are often a lot less expensive.

Update 11/17/08: 
Motrin and it’s parent company McNeil Consumer Healthcare have heard the voices of the many outraged moms who have e-mailed, blogged, twittered, etc.
 
The Motrin.com site went down sometime on Sunday, November 16th.  As of Monday evening, the following message replaced the controversial Mom-Alogue:

“With regard to the recent Motrin advertisement, we have heard you.

On behalf of McNeil Consumer Healthcare and all of us who work on the Motrin Brand, please accept our sincere apology.

We have heard your concerns about the ad that was featured on our website. We are parents ourselves and we take feedback from moms very seriously.

We are in the process of removing this ad from all media. It will, unfortunately, take a bit of time to remove it from our magazine advertising, as it is on newstands and in distribution.

Thank you for your feedback. It’s very important to us.”

Sincerely,

Kathy Widmer
Vice President of Marketing,
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

I just baked a double batch of Pumpkin Muffins today. I experimented with chocolate chips after seeing a friend’s chocolate chip pumpkin bread recipe. They turned out really good! Here’s the revised recipe:

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

Recipe Summary:
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes for mini-muffins or 35 minutes for regular sized muffins
Yield: 6 dozen mini-muffins or 3 dozen muffins
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