(Heavenly) Creamy Pumpkin Cheesecake

September is here and that means pumpkin-flavored everything is coming!

I'm sure you've seen this floating around the Internet

 I got really into baking over the summer and I have a whole board on Pinterest full of recipes that I want to try. It’s really weird because I never used to like baking, but all of a sudden I do. A class discussion last week has made me think that maybe baking is my other medium (i.e. my way to get my creativity out when I’m not writing). Whether that’s true or not, however, does not change the fact that I’ve discovered a love for baking.

I mean, I’m waking up before the sun to make my brother pancakes/waffles/muffins, and it’s not just because I’m an awesome big sister!

A couple weeks ago I was nominated to bake the dessert for a dinner at my grandparents’ house. Mom told me to make something pumpkin-y because she’d bought canned pumpkin and needed pumpkin recipes to share on her blog. I decided I wanted to make pumpkin cheesecake because I had a ton of recipes on Pinterest for pumpkin cheesecake.

Cheesecake is amazing. I have a serious addiction to The Cheesecake Factory’s cheesecake. However, cheesecake is also extremely fattening and I was very concerned about using three blocks of cream cheese in a single recipe. So I decided to make up my own recipe by looking at a couple other recipes and changing up the ingredients a bit.

My recipe turned out so well that I am apparently supposed to make it for Thanksgiving dinner.

The crust is made of Oreos mixed with melted butter. Simple enough, but it tastes heavenly. I am way too lazy to clean our blender once it’s dirty, so I ended up mashing up the Oreos for the crust by hand. It took a while, but I was able to get them fine enough for a crust.

Crush up an entire package of Oreos and mix with melted butter

Use as many of the Oreos as you can. I did not heed my own warning, so I
used an entire container of Oreos, minus one.

Once the Oreos and butter were mixed, it was time to form the crust.

 Next was the filling. Like I said, three blocks of cream cheese seemed way too much to me. I opted for one block of cream cheese, one block of reduced fat cream cheese (you know, the kind with the funny name that starts with an “n”) and Greek yogurt. If you’ve read my other recipe posts, you probably think that I have an obsession with Greek yogurt. The answer is yes, I have an obsession with Greek yogurt.

Once the cheeses and yogurt were mixed, eggs, pumpkin, vanilla, and sugar all went into the batter.

There was a moment of slight confusion when I was looking up recipes. I couldn't understand the difference between pumpkin puree and canned pumpkin. Apparently, there is no difference! My mother got a kick out of my confusion.

This is canned pumpkin/pumpkin puree

After all of the ingredients were blended, it was time to fill the Oreo shell.

This cheesecake was my very first cheesecake (besides some low-fat cheesecake bars I’d made a few months back). I had to google how to tell when it was done (because obviously the toothpick trick doesn’t work on cheesecakes). Google said that it needs to be liquidy in the center, but the entire thing was liquidy. It also said that cracking is a sign, so that’s what told me it was done!

It was beautiful. It was delicious. Eating it was like tasting a little piece of heaven. And honestly, although it was pretty time consuming, I will gladly make it again for Thanksgiving just so that I can taste it again!

Recipe

Ingredients

1 package of Oreos

½ cup butter

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt

8 oz cream cheese

8 oz reduced fat cream cheese

2 eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Directions

Crush up the Oreos however you prefer (I did mine the old fashioned way with a rolling pin and a bag). Melt the butter in a sauce pan and then stir into the crushed Oreos. Press mixture into bottom and sides of a spring form pan, then cool in freezer for about fifteen minutes. After cooling, bake the crust at 350 degrees for five minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

Beat cream cheeses and sugar until creamy, then add the eggs and beat until smooth. Add yogurt, pumpkin, vanilla, and spices and then beat until everything is combined and batter is smooth and creamy. Once the batter is ready, pour into the Oreo crust.

Bake cake at 350 degrees for forty-five minutes. It will still be liquidy and jiggle when you tap the sides of the pan, but that’s OK; this cheesecake is creamier than it is thick. Let cool and then place in refrigerator over night.

Motivational Monday 3 - Your Life, Your Story

Your life is your story. Some people, when they don’t like their story, choose to end their story instead of changing it. I won’t judge those who decide to end their story; that was their decision and everyone is entitled to make their own decisions. However, I will say that ending a story can be a very bad mistake.

We all deserve happy endings. We can’t get those happy endings by ending our stories before they’re ready to be over.

Another mistake that people make is allowing their stories to continue to be less than what they deserve. Although ending a story before its time isn't the answer, allowing a story to be less than exciting isn't acceptable, either. We were all given one life to live; why live one that you don't even enjoy? If you aren't enjoying your life, change the story!

As a writer I’ve written a ton of stuff. Not all of it sees the light of day and I hardly finish any of it. However, there is one project that I’ve stuck with for about five years now. It has driven me absolutely nuts. It has gone through so many changes and revisions. I’m even going to throw out the idea that I had for its sequel and start over.

Unfortunately, real life is different than a fictitious story. I can change what I write, but I can’t ever change what I’ve done. However, I can change what I’m going to do. We all have choices to make. Our choices define us and our stories. We might have made some bad choices in the past, but we can learn from our mistakes and make better choices that will, hopefully, set us up for better futures.

If I don’t like how a certain story is developing, I can change it. The same is true when it comes to the stories of our lives. It’s true that changing a fictitious story is probably a lot easier than changing a real story, but that’s because real stories have a lot more to lose. We were all given one story to live. Instead of ending it when it doesn’t turn out the “right” way, why not change it? Don’t we deserve to enjoy our stories?

So relax. Breathe. Your story may not be the one you planned, but there’s always a chance to change the story.

And we shouldn’t forget that our stories overlap with others’ stories. Our stories overlap with our family’s stories, our friends’, or coworkers’ and classmates’ stories. Everyone who you encounter in your life is living their own story, and as soon as you have contact with them, no matter the brevity, your stories have overlapped. Even if your story is turning out OK, someone you encounter may be struggling. So be a positive influence; you might be the bright spot in someone’s story that makes them decide to change, rather than end, their story.

Cheers!

Molly

The Truth About Metabolism

Let’s talk about metabolism. The word “metabolism” is used a lot in the world of Health and Fitness, and there’s this thing called “Metabolic Training” that’s been gaining popularity. But how many people actually know what metabolism is? The average person usually knows that people with high metabolisms tend to be skinny and people with low metabolisms seem to carry more weight. In reality, it’s not as simple as that.

According to my very large and very expensive textbook that I had to buy for a biology class during my first semester of college, metabolism is all of the chemical reactions carried out in your body. According to the Medline Plus website, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Metabolism refers to all the physical and chemical processes in the body that convert or use energy.” Basically what I’ve read is that your metabolism takes in your calories and transforms them into energy, then takes that energy and does stuff with it to make your body work efficiently.

Although people like to blame their metabolisms for weight gain, the truth is that it’s usually not your metabolism’s fault. Your metabolism is how your body converts food and drink into energy. The real problem is when you take in more calories than you really need, or when you take in the wrong kinds of food. According to Mayo Clinic, “To lose weight… you need to create an energy deficit by eating fewer calories, increasing the number of calories you burn through physical activity, or both.”

Let me put it this way: metabolism is how your body converts calories into energy, but you only need so much energy. If you bring in more calories than your body actually needs, your metabolism has no need to convert your food into energy and it gets stored as fat instead. If you’re more active, you need more energy and thus your metabolism has need to convert the calories you consume into energy. An article on kidshealth.org puts it this way: “Just as a car stores gas in the gas tank until it is needed to fuel the engine, the body stores calories — primarily as fat. If you overfill a car's gas tank, it spills over onto the pavement. Likewise, if a person eats too many calories, they ‘spill over’ in the form of excess fat on the body.”

I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that you can’t really change your metabolism; you get to keep the one you were born with. The good news is that you can do things to help your metabolism so that it seems “fast” or “high.” Any ideas what these things might be? I’ll tell you: exercise and eat right.

According to an article on the website for Mayo Clinic, “The more active you are, the more calories you burn. In fact, some people who are said to have a fast metabolism are probably just more active — and maybe more fidgety — than are others.” Exercising and being active don’t speed your metabolism; they just help it out by making it convert the calories you consume into the energy you need.

What you really need to be paying attention to is your basal metabolic rate, or BMR. This number measures how much calories your body uses energy (or burns calories). People with low BMR numbers don’t burn as many calories as people with high BMR numbers do. BMR is influenced by genetics (unfortunately). The good news is that BMR is also influenced by how active you are. Kidshealth.org says that, “BMR is also influenced by body composition — people with more muscle and less fat generally have higher BMRs.”

I mentioned eating right as another way to help your metabolism out. I’m not going to go into that right now because I’m going to write a separate post about that in the coming weeks. However, I will let you know of another way you can help your metabolism out. Although there is no miracle pill that can help you lose weight, taking vitamins and supplements can be of great benefit.

Chromium, cinnamon, and vitamin D are all said to be good for your metabolism. I take them every day and I know they help me. See, I have suffered from hypothyroidism ever since I was a little girl and so my metabolism really is lower than most peoples’ if I don’t take my pills. I have a prescription for my thyroid, but I’ve also noticed that vitamin D, chromium, and cinnamon all help me out. So take your pills!

Although metabolism is usually blamed for unwanted weight gain, it usually isn’t at fault. Your metabolism’s job is to convert food and drink into the energy your body requires, so if you take in more calories than your body needs, your metabolism has to store the leftovers as fat. If you want your metabolism to “speed up,” the key is to require more energy so that your metabolism converts more calories into that energy. And, unfortunately, the key to requiring more energy is to become more active. Eating right and taking vitamins and supplements can also aid in “speeding” your metabolism.

Here’s a tip: strength training is the best way to “amp up” your metabolism, with a little bit of cardio thrown in. I’ll discuss this more in a later post!

Cheers!

Molly

P.S. I said it before but I'll say it again: I have no background in health and fitness; all that I know I've gathered from research.

Baked Fried Chicken

I used to cook with ground beef all the time; we hardly ever bought chicken and it was rare to have pork in the house. Now prices are rising and it's cheaper for us to eat chicken all the time and pork every so often. Thankfully chicken is healthier than ground beef so I'm OK that we're eating more chicken and less burger.

The problem is that I'm running out of recipes. I don't want to make anything too complicated or has weird ingredients - I look mostly for slow cooker recipes that call for common household ingredients. I love baking Chinese dishes, but my brother gets tired of it. I also like making healthy dishes, but my brother is too picky to eat healthy all the time. Anything I like making, my family gets tired of too quickly so I'm always on the hunt for new, simple recipes.

This recipe isn't for the slow cooker but it's simple enough. Oven fried chicken. I found the recipe while browsing pinterest and thought, "I love fried chicken! This oughta be yummy!" Mom was a little skeptical because she made oven fried chicken before and said it wasn't that great, but I was determined to try it. It was something new, something supposedly yummy, and something on the healthier side of the "fried food" spectrum.

The recipe calls for chicken breasts to be sliced up and tossed in a mixture of flour, salt, seasoned salt, black pepper, and paprika.

I deviated from the recipe I found when it came to the frying part. The recipe called for butter to be melted on a baking sheet in the oven, and then you fry the chicken by cooking it on the baking sheet for ten minutes, flipping it, and baking for another ten minutes. Since starting to watch what I eat, I don't like to use butter a whole lot. Instead, I opted to use a smaller amount of butter and mix it with olive oil.

I wasn't comfortable frying the chicken in the oven, so I fried it in a pan and then just baked it in the oven until it was done.

The verdict: Kyle ate even more than he thought he was going to. Success! Mom liked the recipe, too, but said it needed more flavoring. I think the problem was that not all of the flour/seasoning mixture got used, so I think I will sprinkle more of the seasonings on the chicken strips when they're frying in the pan.

Baked Fried Chicken (serves 3-4)

Ingredients

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1.5 lbs)
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp seasoning salt (I used Tastefully Simple's Seasoned Salt)
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp paprika
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp olive oil (I love to cook with olive oil, but some people don't like to fry with it. Use your preference!)

Recipe

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place flour, salt, seasoning salt, pepper, and paprika into a large freezer bag (or a bowl). Seal the bag and shake to mix.

Cut chicken breasts into strips and place in freezer bag with flour mixture. Seal bag and shake to coat chicken.

Place butter and oil in a skillet and heat on medium. When butter is melted, place chicken in pan and cook for about one minute per side. (Suggestion: season chicken a bit more when frying, maybe 1/2 tsp for each strip per side.)

Line a baking sheet with foil and spray foil with nonstick cooking spray. Place chicken strips on baking sheet and bake in oven for ten minutes, turning over halfway through. Make sure chicken is cooked thoroughly before serving!

Serve with your favorite sides and enjoy!

Molly

Altered from The Recipe Rebel.

Keep Calm: Let Go and Let God

Photo courtesy of Sabrina Bailey from The Red Room Photography.

On Monday I did a post about how worrying is a pointless activity that most of us like to waste time on. For today’s worship-filled Wednesday post, I’m going to dive into that further. Don’t worry if you haven’t read “The Rocking Chair” post yet; you don’t have to. However, if you are interested, you can read it here.

So many of us spend time worrying about our pasts and/or futures. We think that what we did in the past was stupid or some choice we made led us to where we are now, and if we had just made a different choice things would be so much better. What we sometimes fail to recognize is that the past is the past and nothing we do can change what happened. The good news is that no matter what our pasts are like, we have a God who loves us. You can read more about that in my “Identity Crisis” post.

I like to make plans. Seriously. I will make plans for tomorrow at least five times a day. Before I go to bed I think, “OK, I will wake up and do this, then this, then this, then this,” and on and on until I’ve basically planned out my entire day. But the Bible tells us that it’s not up to us what our tomorrows will bring.

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” James 4: 13-15

I have a MudLove bracelet that I got to support children’s cancer. It says “be still.” I try to wear it every day so that when I start to worry I will be able to look down and remember that it’s not my job to figure everything out; it’s my job to be still. The bracelet even has a period. So even if I want to protest, it’s like it tells me “Be still. No ands, ifs, or buts about it!” (Sidenote: my bracelet doesn’t really talk to me. That would just make me crazy, and I am NOT crazy… yet.)

The Bible specifically tells us not to worry. Jesus himself tells us that worrying is pointless! So why do we insist on doing it? Is it that we don’t trust Him to take care of us? Maybe it’s that we don’t trust Him to take care of us the way we want to be taken care of, which is probably one of the stupidest things ever. God is God. We are not God. God knows what we need even before we know what we need.

“‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?’” Matthew 6: 25-27

Corrie ten Boom says it this way: “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows. It empties today of its strength.” We are so busy worrying about what might or might not happen that we fail to carpe diem. We are deliberately sabotaging our happiness and we do it time and again.

“‘Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6: 34

Why do we continually waste time worrying about our futures when Jesus specifically tells us not to? Maybe it’s not that we don’t trust Him; perhaps it’s more that we just don’t remember. That’s why it’s so important for us to read the Bible and delve into His word. Memorizing scripture isn’t something people do just for fun; they do it because it is a weapon against earthly matters, including worrying.

Now I don’t know this for certain, but maybe if we spent less time worrying and more time reading the Bible to see what it says about worrying we would worry a bit less. It’s definitely a habit I need to practice more.

Cheers!

Molly

Applesauce Waffles

If you read my last breakfast post about the Oatmeal GreekYogurt Pancakes with Blueberries, you know that I’ve been waking up super early once a week to make breakfast for my family. I was not happy when my alarm went off this particular morning, but I dragged my butt out of bed. When I went to go look up the recipe I’d saved online, though, I found out that the Internet connection was down!

Argh!!!

Fortunately, I’d already mixed up the dry ingredients the night before (saves a lot of time), and I’d looked at the recipe before going to bed so I knew what wet ingredients to use. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the exact measurements to use for the wet ingredients. So I pretty much made the recipe up, twice.

Mixing dry ingredients the night before saves time
(and sanity if you can't access your recipe in the morning!)

My original recipe called for a little less wet ingredients than I ended up using, but it was just as well that I used extra; the batter was really thick even with the added wetness.

As I said, I mixed up the dry ingredients the night before. This included flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, brown sugar, cinnamon, and ground ginger. I ground the oats up with a mini food processor thingy (that we’ve had for a few years but I’ve never used) so that they had a more fine texture.

Blend the oats so that they have a finer texture.

The wet ingredients were the tricky part. I knew I had to use milk, eggs, Greek yogurt, applesauce, and vanilla, but I didn’t know how much! Thankfully the waffles turned out well in the end.

Even though I didn't know how much wet ingredients
to use, the batter turned out well.

It’s been a while since I’ve made waffles (and the last time I made them I used a box mix), so I had a bit of trouble with the waffle iron. By the time I got to the last of the batter I think I had a pretty good handle on things. The only problem I had was that the waffles seemed to be burning before they were cooked all the way through. They tasted fine, but they just looked darker.

Mom and Kyle both liked the waffles (although Kyle said I should have made blueberry pancakes again. That was before he ate the waffles, though). They were filling and nutritious, and Kyle still doesn’t know that what I’m feeding him is healthy.

The recipe made six and a half Belgian waffles (26 mini waffles in all) and when I plugged everything into Calorie Count, they came out as 270 calories per waffle (or four mini waffles), 190 mg of Sodium, 2.4 g of fat, and 9 g of protein. Of course it all depends on what ingredients and brands you use, so I’d recommend plugging your own values in at Calorie Count.

Applesauce Waffles

Ingredients

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup old fashioned oats (ground up in a blender/food processor)

2 tsp baking powder

¾ tsp baking soda

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

¾ cup milk (I used skim but you can use whatever you prefer)

¾ cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

Directions

Mix up the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl, combine all wet ingredients.

Pour dry ingredients into the bowl with the wet ingredients and mix well. Set aside.

Heat waffle iron, letting the batter sit as you wait for the iron to heat. One the iron is heated, spray with nonstick cooking spray and pour ½ cup of batter in pan. Cook until the steam stops, then remove the waffle. Spray iron again and pour more batter, removing waffle when steam stops.

Serve waffles with your favorite toppings and enjoy!

I enjoy drizzling my waffles with honey; the honey gives a sweet taste,
but it doesn't overpower the waffles.

So… what do you do if you need to get online and the Internet connection is down?

Cheers!

Molly

Motivational Monday 2 - The Rocking Chair

My professor for Abnormal Psychology did things a bit differently than my other professors. Instead of using slides or projectors, he just talked to us. He told us stories that related to what we were learning about because he believed stories clicked better with our brains than hard facts.

I liked abnormal psychology because my professor didn’t talk at the class, he talked to us. Along with telling us stories that related to the content we were learning, he engaged us in conversation. One of his favorite things to do besides teach was give advice.

My professor spent his 75 minutes with my class stuffing our brains with content and advice. I go to a community college and, although we have a lot of helpful resources, the dropout rate is pretty high. My abnormal psych professor encouraged us that even if our exam grades were low, that didn’t mean that we were failing the class. He told us that too many people dropped the class because they thought they were failing, when in reality their overall grade was about a B.

Just because you don't think you're doing well, doesn't mean that you aren't.

“Worrying is like a rocking chair,” I remember my abnormal psych professor telling us. “It gives you something to do but it never gets you anywhere.” He told us that too many people spent their days worrying about the past or the future and that too many failed to live “in the now.” He encouraged us to live in the present moment because one day we’ll wake up and realize that we let our entire lives go by. (And then he related what he was talking about to Gestalt Psychology, but I can’t remember how exactly. Or maybe it was Carl Rogers….)

Too many people spend their days worrying about their futures. They plan stuff out, they worry that this or that will/won’t happen, etc. People also spend a good chunk of their time thinking about mistakes they’ve made in the past. What is it about the present moment that makes us not want to live in it? The present is all we’ve got, isn’t it?

I used to live with my head in the clouds. I thought too much about my future and didn’t spend enough time in the present. Now that I’m older I’m realizing that what they say about worry and rocking chairs is true: it gets you nowhere but manages to waste your time. I’ve gotten a lot better at “living in the now.” Whenever I catch myself worrying about the future, I make myself focus on what I’m doing right then and there.

What’s going to happen will happen, and worrying about it won’t keep it from happening. And if you’re really struggling with keeping your focus off of the future, at least try and think of what could go right. Think about what you can do now to make sure that you have a better future. And if you’re struggling with past mistakes, I encourage you to check out my post “IdentityCrisis.”

Remember: Worrying about tomorrow only robs today of its joy.

Cheers!

Molly