Chicken Little attends Laurelhurst Elementary and they had an ubercool program this week where the kids attend 3 presentations on health and nutrition. There were some very talented presenters and somehow I managed to wrangle my way in.
My presentation was on how to ditch the store and grow your own groceries. I had a slideshow (actually the one in the sidebar you see on this site) with a handout, my composting worms, my uber cool neighbor Tiffany who has children at Laurelhurst as well and one of Tiffany’s chickens.
Here you see Tiffany cheerfully demonstrating an egg and explaining how important protein is to a growing child. In the foreground you can see Chubby happily eating some scratch on the sheet.
The night before I turned this small amount of ingredients:
Into 100 squash muffins from our home-grown butternut squash. Instead of the frosting Jamie Oliver calls for in the above linked recipe I opted to simply sprinkle a little powdered sugar over them. Much quicker for me and healthier for the kids. They sort of reminded me of snow on squash that way.
I substituted Lentz spelt for the wheat, decreased the amount of sugar and used my squash and eggs which made those 100 muffins cost about $7, mostly because I used sunflower oil. Normally I only bake with butter and coconut oil but butter is pretty spendy and nut allergies are through the roof with kids so I chose to leave out the wheat, dairy & coconut.
I was glad I did because one little girl sitting next to the muffins had a wistful look on her face. In fact the only thing I could think of the whole time was how much she looked just like Anne Frank. I finally asked her if she wanted a muffin and she told me she couldn’t have dairy. Her face lit up the room when I told her they were dairy free. That made the whole thing worth-while for me right there.
Not only were these muffins made with love but they were a pretty dang healthy treat with freshly ground whole spelt and/or emmer (I was testing but the spelt ones were lighter with a loftier crumb), pastured eggs and squash. The mom volunteers and most of the kids gave them the thumbs up.
As Jamie would say “why don’t you give them a go?”
Squash Muffins
Based on a recipe by Jamie Oliver14 ounces winter squash, skinned, seeded, chopped then “whizzed” in the food processer until fine
2 cups brown sugar
4 large eggs
3/4 cup melted butter, coconut oil or sunflower oil
2 1/2 cups spelt or whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
dash cloves or allspice
1/4 teaspoon sea saltPreheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease muffin tins well or line with paper liners.
Mix the squash, sugar, eggs, and oil together. In a separate bowl combine the flour, powder, spices and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, gently mixing until just combined. Don’t over mix or the muffins will toughen up.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until they test clean and let them cool on a wire rack. Once they are cooled you can shake some powdered sugar over the top. I’m sure cream cheese frosting would be great with them as well.
