Muffin Monday.

Okay. I am NOT one of those homeschooling Mama's who does super craftily (a word?) awesome things with her kids each day of the school week. I never do muffin Monday or taco Tuesday, or count 100 kajillion different things on day 100 of school. I don't take advantage of President's Day to teach my kids fun facts about our past presidents, nor do I make super fun snacks and crafts on the first day of spring or have little goodie bags on their first day of school. I don't take advantage of St. Patrick's day to teach them about good old St. Patrick - instead, one year I made green eggs and ham and it was a total bomb so I've never done THAT again....

Anyway, you get the picture.

I barely know what day of the week it is, the holidays always seem to creep up on me, and day 100 of school kind of blew past a few months ago. I have great intentions, lofty ones, even - and I pin a million ideas onto Pinterest, I just seem to have a severe lack of follow thru.

Or maybe it's sheer lazyness.
Or simple survival.
Not sure yet. Still looking into it.

Anyhoo, lest anyone think that I'm cool like that, I'm not. I wish I was. I want to be. But I'm not, and it is what it is. That's my new motto in life. I have several homeschooling Mama friends who you could go and read about if you're wanting some amazing inspiration or some good "how to" advice or amazingly creative fodder for any number of ideas. Come over to my house if you want to feel good about yourself, though. Just sayin'.

So, today when I made us some muffins for our mid-morning snack, I was feeling all amazing about myself when I said we were having "Muffin Monday." That is, until Kaden said: "Oh! Can we do this every Monday?" And I knew better than to make any such promises, so I just said the old Mommy stand-by, "We'll see, Honey. Okay?"

But, I digress....

The whole point of this post was to share a muffin recipe that we make weekly around here. It's a kind of "everything but the kitchen sink" kind of a recipe where it's super healthy, you can feel no guilt about letting your kids eat as many as they want, and as long as you have a few staples, you can pretty much throw whatever you have in your cupboards into them.

Everytime I make them, my dry ingredients stay pretty much the same, but I mix and match my wet stuff. They are a pretty "bland" muffin - I would prefer to have a ton of chocolate chips in them, myself. However, two of my boys are not fans of anything overly sweet. And I guess, that would defeat the health purposes, anyway.

So, here goes:

Mix all the dry in one bowl:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dry old fashioned oats
3 teaspoons cinnamon - or more.
shake or so of nutmeg
1 or 2 shredded wheat cereal squares - optional. I had some today, so I threw them in.

Mix all wet in a different bowl:
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk - regular, buttermilk, soy, or almond.
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup applesauce
1 cup cooked oatmeal - I always make these when we have leftover hot cereal.
1 cup any fruit - blueberries or whatever
1/4 cup pure maple syrup or honey
1 Tablespoon pure vanilla

and today I also threw in:
2 mashed bananas
2 apples chunked
about 1/3 cup canned pumpkin
our leftover oatbran from breakfast - instead of the usual oatmeal
and a little fistful of ground flax seed.

Truly, whatever you want to put in, just chuck it in!
Mix all ingredients together, and voila!
Preheat oven to 375, grease your pans, and bake until toothpick tests clean.

For my fellow chocoholic Jesse and I, I put three chocolate chips on the tops of each of our muffins, and I do declare that just about made them!

Bake them on a Monday where you talk about the letter "M" all day and do various and sundry "m" crafts to be a truly rockin' Mama, or just be like me and bake them whenever your little heart desires....and have your four year old tell you that a "J" is an "I for Orange."