I posted last week about the Mom Conference, and it has been seriously so helpful for me. I’m sad that all the speakers & lectures are over, but I’m pretty excited about applying the things I learned.
One tip that I took away, was a challenge to make Mondays “No Sugar Mondays”. Doctor Rach mentioned that the American Health Association recommends no more than 3 teaspoons of sugar per day for 4-8 year olds and 4-6 teaspoons for 9-12 year olds. However, the average American child consumes a whopping 30 teaspoons of sugar per day.
Now, our family usually eats pretty low sugar, so I don’t think my little one is taking in anywhere near that much in a day, but that staggering statistic was enough to make me excited about ditching sugar (in all it’s forms, honey, molasses, maple syrup, refined sugars, HFCS, etc.) for one day per week.
I had already made up my meal plan for the month, but still thought that I was up to the challenge anyway. (This was late Sunday night). I ran into my first roadblock when I realized that we were out of milk, meaning I couldn’t make the no-sugar breakfast that I planned to.
Scrap that. We ended up having these banana muffins that I had leftover in the freezer. They are still pretty healthy, but definitely have a little bit of sugar in them (not to mention the white chocolate chips on top that my daughter prefers to just pick off and eat).
The next hiccup I ran into was for the very next meal. We were planning to have sloppy joes, but I had forgotten that ketchup (even my organic, no high fructose corn syrup, ketchup from Trader Joe’s) has sugar in it. I scrambled to find a different recipe and settled on one with decidedly less sugar, but it still had a tiny bit of molasses in it. I managed to easily make our sides of corn and hummus sugar-free. However, I remembered that even though I had used homemade hamburger buns with our sloppy joes, they still had a wee bit of sugar in them (honey).
Alas, this whole “No Sugar Monday” was a lot more difficult than I had originally thought. (Plus, whenever you tell me I can’t have sugar, that just makes me crave it even more. With quite disparaging results, I might add.) Next week, I’m going to plan ahead a bit more to make sure we can have a completely sugar-less day.
On to the muffins – which aren’t completely sugar-free – but it’s not Monday anymore, so our family is off the hook.
It seems like I’ve posted lots of dinner recipes, so here’s a recipe for a healthy snack or breakfast for your family. We had them for snack one day, mostly because I adore muffins for snack, then I packed the rest of them up and put them in the freezer for another quick snack.
With these cinnamon maple muffins, it was love at first bite. I knew immediately that I would have to blog about these. They were light and airy, which I loved. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to get a nice moist, airy muffin with completely whole wheat flour. And that’s another that is great about these muffins…100% whole wheat. Finally, I love that there is no refined sugar, only a bit of maple syrup to sweeten.
Go ahead and try these muffins, I know you’ll fall in love with them too.
- Adapted from: A Kitchen Addiction
- 1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 egg, slightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup maple syrup
- In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Make a well in the center. Add in the milk, applesauce, egg, vanilla, and maple syrup. Stir just until well combined.
- Grease muffin tin, or line with baking cups. Pour in batter, dividing among 12 cups. Bake in a preheated oven at 350° for 12-14 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean. Let stand for a couple minutes in the pan, then remove to a wire rack to cool.
