Guilt-Free Cinnamon Roll Muffins

These are super good... And Harlee ate like 3/4 of a muffin with Mom's approval!  I already ate, like, three muffins myself... But the greatest thing is I don't FEEL like I ate that many, because nothing in these weighs on you heavy and makes you feel like crap!  Yay!

We've been trying to make better eating choices at home lately... Ever since I cut out carbs for about a month and lost quite a bit of weight from it I've been feeling more motivated about making this a lifestyle change.  But it sucks not being able to enjoy all the guilty pleasures my former carb-a-holic lifestyle allowed me to eat like pastas and breads and pastries...

So I started looking into ways to still enjoy these things without "breaking the rules".  I mean, this is just a choice for me, but there are people out there who HAVE to live this way due to health reasons.  I'm sure they don't want to feel restricted, so what do they do?  I discovered the blog Against All Grain which was written by exactly that kind of person - a woman with a health issue who didn't want to feel restricted.  She's got some great recipes!  From there stemmed a search for other recipe sites, and there are tons out there!  Suddenly I'm feeling more ambitious about this - a whole new avenue of cooking/baking has been opened up to me!  I'm experimenting with almond flour and coconut flour, which are great alternatives to wheat flour and they're gluten free (and carb-free :-D) and baking with stevia or other alternatives to refined sugar.  But NOT Splenda or Sweet 'n' Low or Equal or Nutrasweet or whatever.  Those are man-made and not good for you.  Just because they're zero calorie doesn't mean they're not having any affect on your body!  Aspartame is in a lot of those zero calorie sweeteners (and diet soda too).  Here is a great article about the dangers of aspartame and how it damages brain cells and leads to all kinds of problems, the least of which are headaches and migraines.  But anyway, this post isn't about all the scary crap that's in the food we eat, I can save that for another day or two!

This is about some yummy cinnamon roll muffins I made today with coconut flour and butternut squash.  I took the recipe from Paleo in PDX, and here it is:

Topping:

• 2 Tbsp melted butter, ghee or coconut oil (I used coconut oil)
• 2 Tbsp raw honey
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon

Combine all ingredients and set aside.

Muffins:

• 1/2 cup butternut squash puree (fresh or canned, but to make fresh just halve the butternut squash, scoop out the seeds, place cut-side down in a baking pan of 1/2 inch of water and cover with foil, and bake at 375 degrees F until soft, about 30-40 minutes.  Scoop out the "meat" and puree in a blender)
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup melted butter, ghee or coconut oil (I used butter)
• 1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup raw honey
• 1/4 – 1/3 cup raw pecans for topping, optional

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients together — except pecans–in the food processor and process until a smooth, fluffy batter forms. Alternatively, you can mix all the dry ingredients together, whisk the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, and then whisk the wet ingredients into the dry.
2. Grease muffin cups or line with parchment paper liners. Fill each with approximately 1/4 cup of batter.
3. Spoon cinnamon mixture over each muffin and top with pecans, if using.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffins comes out clean.

Enjoy!   Justin suggested I find a recipe for a cream cheese frosting to put on top next time... I think I agree with him!  I think next time I'll also mix cinnamon into the batter as well, so the flavor is more even throughout, though they were pretty yummy already anyway.  And now my house smells yummy too!

Drug Free is the Way to Be!

Perfect timing for this post, since it’s Red Ribbon Week and all!  Today I’ve decided to give you some back story as to why I prefer to do things naturally.  I was raised on homeopathic and naturopathic medicine due to my mom’s interest and accumulated knowledge.  Cold and flu season, we didn’t go running to the nearest pharmacy to get a flu shot, rather Mom gave us immune-boosting supplements such echinacea and vitamin C.  Goldenseal and pau d’arco are good ones too.  Voila, we made it through cold and flu season with nothing more than a bit of congestion, if anything.  What’s interesting to me is that she got a late start in working with natural remedies with my sister and I, but started right off the bat with my brothers.  Guess which kids were the healthiest all throughout their school days?  I’m not saying none of us had our issues, but I can say that hospitals haven’t seen any of us and our doctors had some preeeetttyyyy out-of-date files.  Anyway.  So this was my upbringing.  Then one day when I was I guess 18-19 years old I got sick.  I don’t know what it was, or why I got it, but I suppose it could have been some form of flu.  Throwing up, dizzy, feeling like c.r.a.p.  For the first time I caught something more powerful than whatever naturopathic stuff I had on hand could handle.  I had already missed a week of work and didn’t want to miss any more, so out of desperation I called a doctor.  A real MD.  I hadn’t been to one since my mandatory high school physical.  I was in the waiting room forever, of course, and only in to see him for like 5 minutes.  Of course.  WTH??  You can’t assess something like this in just 5 minutes!!  This was so aggravating.  Obviously he didn’t care that much.  He just scratched out a prescription for penicillin and sent me to the pharmacy.  And out of desperation, I obliged.  About a week later I was no longer throwing up or feeling horrible, so it either ran its course, my naturopathics finally worked, or the penicillin did.  But I’ll tell you what the penicillin also did.  I broke out in the most hideous rash I have ever seen/experienced.  I was covered in little red blotches on every inch of my skin, and every 5-10 minutes a random patch on my arm, or my leg, or my stomach, or wherever would erupt into welts and burn and itch like CRAZY.  Um, bring back my throwing up and nausea, please!  This is WAY worse!!  Everyone who looked at me kept their distance, and then would either tell me to call the doctor or take some benedryl or something.  I tried benedryl.  It put me to sleep.  I woke up to hideous welts and itching.  I searched online, but couldn’t find anything.  And hell no I was not calling a doctor, it was a doctor that got me into this mess in the first place!  I’ve never had this problem with natural medicine!!  I later came to find out I’m allergic to penicillin.  The rash was my body’s way of detoxing itself from the poison, which makes sense, with skin being your body’s largest organ.  The rash finally went away, but I was never the same since.  I developed a respiratory sensitivity – I couldn’t handle smoke as well and I’d wind up wheezing if I did too much physical exercise, and worst of all my pre-existing cat and dog allergies (which were just sneezing and itchy eyes) progressed into my windpipe swelling and constricting and making me feel like I was breathing through a straw and gasping for breath after a short period of time with the animal.  Not good.  I also developed chronic yeast infections.  That’s probably TMI so I’ll stop there, but anyone who’s had one before knows how HORRIBLE they are, and imagine having them at least once a month for YEARS.  Eventually I saw a local massage therapist who did a lot of natural work along with manual therapies, and I explained my problem to her, not even sure if she could help.  She did a lot of really fascinating things involving muscle testing and pressure points, and we learned that I really needed to get some probiotics in my system.  The penicillin killed off any/all of the good bacteria in my system and I was left defenseless, therefore a breeding ground for things like yeast and weakened against things in the environment like smoke and pet dander.  I started taking probiotics.  Slowly but surely my yeast infections dissipated, and my breathing became easier.  Holy crap.  I needed to know more.  And I needed to share this!!

That’s kinda why I’m a massage therapist today.  My main goal in my career is to assist people in making natural, healthy choices for their wellbeing and to avoid drugs and even surgery.  I’m only 3 years in, and I’ve helped a LOT of people in simple ways.  I refer to this career as a diving board – with this license I have access to a WHOLE lot of other avenues in natural healing that I can dive into, and I’m so excited to see where I’ll have gone with it in 5, 10, 20 + years.

After the penicillin incident I vowed never to take a drug again.  It was natural or bust for me.  I know it’s not the doctor’s fault that I’m allergic to the prescription he gave me, and neither one of us knew it when he prescribed it, but I’m sorry, he only spent 5 freaking minutes with me in that office, as crappy as I felt I would have liked a little more care than that!

I became more adamant about living my life naturally after that, learning more about supplements and remedies to ward off different things, but fortunately I never came across anything quite so severe as whatever that bug was that led me to the penicillin ordeal.  My immune system has been compromised ever since then, but I’ve been doing fairly well treating myself naturally when I do catch any bugs, given my circumstances.  Before I ever had kids I knew I’d raise them the same way.  In massage school I became friends with people who lived life similarly, and I learned from their knowledge base and also got support.

In the meantime I looked at a lot of different things like cancer (does anyone other than me feel like chemo just kills you slower than the cancer does??) and how chemo patients suffer so horribly.  And it was definitely an eye-opener when a friend of mine from massage school did some volunteer chair massage for stress relief for cancer patients, and when she asked different doctors if they would administer chemo and radiation to their own loved ones, they said no, they wouldn’t… um, red flag?  Then I watched as a good friend of mine found out her elderly father had lung cancer, he decided he’d rather die of cancer than chemo, and after opting against any western “therapies” she took matters into her own hands and helped him boost his immune system naturally.  About a year and half later he was completely cancer-free.  Yes, I’ve seen some pretty awesome stuff with naturopathic medicine.

Enter pregnancy, and now you can see why I made a lot of the choices I made?  Aaaanddd why I was so disappointed in the birth outcome.  I’ve said before, though, that it was humbling.  I learned a great sense of balance – that maybe being so ANTI-Western medicine isn’t the best way to be.  It has its place, and it’s a good thing when needed.  But I was still going to continue to avoid it.  I reversed a positive Group B Strep test into a negative one by ALL natural ways, and now, after a year of battling some really rough postpartum depression, I’m beating that in natural ways too.  More about that in future posts.

It’s been an interesting learning experience and I’ve really enjoyed it, and so far I’m really impressed with my son’s immune system as he’s growing.  I’ve been doing a LOT of different things to keep him healthy, such as visiting the chiropractor regularly, using essential oils in every day life, adding probiotics to his juice (I’ve told you how gung-ho I am about probiotics, and I intend to tell you more too!), using side-effect-free homeopathics when he does experience any kinds of issues, and trying to keep meals and snacks as healthy as I can.  I’ve been doing the same for Justin and myself, too.  Lots of vitamins, natural supplements, and healthy eating habits as well as my regular use of oils and probiotics, and we visit the chiropractor too.  All these wonderful things to stay well, and with no hideous side effects or harmful toxins that can be detrimental to our lives or lifestyle in the future!  See?  Drug free really IS the way to be!

I’m excited to elaborate on a lot of these choices we’ve made, and educate you to help with decisions you may need to make regarding your own or your family’s health.  I hope you’re as excited as I am!

The Season of Change

Happy Fall everyone!

I've been thinking I need to switch up this blog.  I kept thinking of great posts, and then never got around to writing them.  Yes, I'm busy, so I can use that as an excuse, but times like right now (Harlee is napping, Justin is hunting, the house is actually still clean from yesterday (whoa!!)) do actually happen every great once in awhile, so why am I playing on Pintrest rather than getting my thoughts out there for you all to read?  Okay Pintrest is pretty great too... but not as productive.

After some contemplation I realized it's because the concept of my blog has been waaaay too "run of the mill".  And I'm not a run-of-the-mill kind of person.  I love my little family and what I've got going here, but writing about our day to day happenings just didn't seem that exciting to me.  But, while I was pregnant, I did have a lot of fun sharing all my new findings and thoughts and feelings about natural pregnancy and birth.  But the whole "Once Upon the Papenbergs" title wasn't matching up to that kind of "natural lifestyle" theme.  So today I ditched the old title, even the old domain, and I am now officially converting over to Naturally Jami.  Yay!

I changed the About My Blog tab too, that way you have a little background on what brought about the change.

So.  Continuing on.  I have a napping 15-month-old that has taught me SO MUCH and I've been really excited to share some of my findings and experiences with you.  I have lots of plans for this blog, so hopefully I'll stick with it and get to share everything.  Things like natural ways to help tummy aches (and not just for baby, but for grown-ups too!), relieve sinus congestion or runny noses (currently dealing with that with my little guy...), and I hope to share recipes for healthy snack alternatives as well.  I'm also planning on educating and explaining, too.  This small-town rural southern Illinois family of ours has proven to be pretty unconventional when it comes to the "norm" in child-rearing, and I'd like to use this as an opportunity to explain why we do what we do.

But PLEASE know that I am NOT in any way trying to TELL you what to do.  If I want to tell you what to do, I'll just come right out and say, "You need to do XYZ."  But that won't happen very often unless it's a special circumstance because a) it's annoying and b) it's rude.  Seriously, I only want to share my thoughts and opinions, radical as they may be, simply for education's sake.  I truly believe our differences are what makes the world go round.  If everybody thought like I think and did what I do, life would be pretty boring.  But I wanted to make sure you all know that's how I feel.  Believe it or not, a couple of "friends" actually deleted me from Facebook because of my blog posts about natural pregnancy and birth, I'm guessing because they felt I was being pushy about it?  I have no idea, but it did make me realize that I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to tell them to be just like me.  I just aim to educate, and then you may do whatever you want with that knowledge.

Alright, I think that about sums it all up.  I'm excited for this change, I hope you enjoy reading, and I hope you learn something too!