I admit, my eye-catching title sure doesn’t make it sound simple, but trust me, this is the easiest healthy breakfast you could possibly create. You can plan ahead a little, right? It’s that simple.

I’ve been experimenting with oatmeal in the slow cooker and I’ve gotten it down to a science. It’s not only convenient, but it’s also the healthiest way to cook oatmeal to get all of the nutritional benefits. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but it’s not just about the ingredients here: the process is important in boosting the nutrition of this yummy breakfast. Yeah, I admit it — there’s a place for technique.

We’re not talking some snobby French cooking school technique … just follow these three simple steps and you’ll have your healthy oatmeal.

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When I say orange, I mean the color. The four-year-old and I wanted to make orange-colored muffins befitting of our jack-o-lantern muffin pans. We (read: me) also didn’t want to use chemical food coloring in the batter or the frosting, so we came up with pumpkin carrot muffins. If you were jazzed by the idea of orange-flavored muffins, don’t worry, we’ve got a variation just for you.

We’re about to serve these to, you know, normal kids at a little Halloween get-together we’re having in a few minutes, so I’m coming back to report how they fared with kids who weren’t raised on bizarre vegetable-filled muffins with natural sweeteners. Consider the experiment underway!

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One of my favorite healthy baking cookbooks is Uprisings: The Whole Grain Bakers’ Book. You’re probably wondering why, since I always substitute sprouted spelt flour for everything anyway, but the real reason is because these treats are creatively sweetened. In fact, this cookbook has made me think even beyond itself. Most of the recipes are sweetened either with honey or maple syrup, which I’ll do, but I like to venture out into other territories as well. Sucanat, agave syrup and different fruits are all sweetening options I think about when baking these days.

Like making this pumpkin cornbread, for instance. The recipe my pumpkin cornbread was based on used a whopping 2/3 cup of brown sugar. To me, that’s gross on so many levels. First of all, I can’t stand a sicky-sweet baked good. Cornbread should be mostly savory, in my opinion, and that much sugar would seem out of place. Did I mention how offended my liver would be, at being asked to process all of that sugar? I’m apologizing to the livers of the world, or at least to anyone who has eaten that pumpkin cornbread.

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I’m sure you’ve fallen into the same trap with your kids. No matter how healthy you try to be, as soon as they’re old enough to start ordering their own food at restaurants, they discover the kids’ meals… and the French fries. I really have a bone to pick with pretty much every restaurant in the northern hemisphere, because if they didn’t celebrate the French fry as a vegetable, then perhaps children across America would be eating more broccoli.

Nevertheless, the four-year-old loves French fries, so we give him French fries, often and in great, heaping quantities. But stop! Before you report me to the Department of Social Services, we make him oven-roasted potatoes cut in the shape of French fries, and he doesn’t know the difference. And yes, mine are as crunchy — sometimes crunchier — than the deep-fried versions at your local watering hole… uh, I mean restaurant where you’d appropriately take your kid. Yep, that’s what I mean.
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I think I may have stumbled onto a great discovery in healthy beverages, my friends. After a little treadmill walk at work, I was thirsty as all get-out for something invigorating. I was really jonesing for one of the Harvest Bay coconut waters I keep in the fridge, but I also wanted another cup of hot green tea to top off the afternoon. So as I held the Harvest Bay in one hand and the Rishi Emerald Lily in the other, I thought: why not do both at once?

So, that’s just what I did. The result: a caffeinated, mega anti-oxidant, electrolyte-replenishing super cocktail. And it tastes good!

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Gourmet cooking doesn’t have to entail hours of cooking with a list of ingredients longer than your normal grocery list. Create meals bursting with complex flavors that will please every food snob in your life, easily.

All my years of getting multitudes of chard from the CSA farm, I’ve experimented with at least 70,000 ways to cook it. Time after time, I always come back to this easy, versatile saute. Three little ingredients and somehow the flavors magically blend together… perfection.

You can serve it as a side dish, with your protein on a bed of it (think grilled chicken or fish, even tempeh) or add sliced sausages to your saute and create an easy, healthy main dish.

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I’ve experimented with agave here and there, mostly in my snow cones, but not so much in baking. I decided it was time to give it a go, and not panic if the muffins flopped. If they came out terribly, I’m pretty sure my four-year-old would have eaten them anyway.

Luckily, they did not. In fact, I was pretty pleased with these berry muffins. They started off to be raspberry muffins, but when I was too lazy to walk down the stairs to get another package of frozen raspberries, they became raspberry-blueberry muffins. It’s not often, but sometimes laziness pays off in a big way, because I think these muffins were better for the combo.

I really was concerned that the agave would change the texture of the baked goods, so I based this recipe on one that I’ve used maple syrup in, thinking the consistency was similar enough for it to work. This muffin recipe is pretty similar to my oatmeal strawberry muffins, only I used organic melted butter instead of oil and of course the obvious substitution of agave for the sugar.

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