Hungry Meets Healthy: Fall Treats and Football Beats

Saturday morning one of my firsts thoughts was "Today is football day!!" Wow. Weird. Who am I? Saturday was also designated "Shopping Day" and "Baking Day." When I picked up a can of pumpkin at Whole Foods the other day, I noticed a can of sweet potato puree. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with it, but I bought it anyway. One way I like to find recipes is by going to the manufacturer's site. The Farmer's Market site listed a few options including one for Apple Cinnamon Sweet Potato Muffins. Anytime I see cinnamon on a menu or in a recipe, I want it. Cinnamon is one of my things. You know, like Chick-fil-A, Mustard Seed, and lime green things. I scanned the recipe, altered a couple things, then made muffins!

The Wet:

1 15 oz can of sweet potato puree
1 large egg
2 large egg whites
1 tbsp canola oil
2/3 cup plain Greek yogurt

The Dry:

3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup quick-cooking oats
2/3 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup apples, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 350*. Combine wet ingredients in one bowl, and dry ingredients into another. Incorporate dry mixture into wet until smooth.

Pour evenly into a greased or lined muffin pan. Add chocolate chips to a few for good measure.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Then, use your mouth to destroy...

Make these!! They are incredibly moist and the addition of cinnamon + apple makes them a perfect fall treat. Plus, they contain tons of Vitamin A!

Here's the best part of being a food blogger: you will get down and dirty for some natural light for your photography.

At any moment my neighbors could have come out of their apartment. Oh boy, would they have judged!

Then it was time to go shopping. We stopped in Palmetto Moon so Boding could get a new Clemson koozie. We were pretty excited to find Clemson silly bandz! Omg are we 5?

I stole a C (for Christina?) and a tiger paw.

We shopped some more and I bought some skinny jeans from Ann Taylor Loft, a sweater from Banana Republic, and new powder and mascara from MAC. Shopping always works up an appetite, so we drove over to Village Bakery for lunch.

I got the Turkey and Provolone with cranberry on multi-grain bread with a side of Asian Salad.

This is my favorite sandwich from Village Bakery. The cranberries are the best part so I always ask for extra. The Asian salad was linguine tossed with edamame, bell peppers, carrots, peanuts, and cilantro.

After lunch we stopped by Pitt St. Pharmacy for some CANDY! Look at all this crack!

We found ring pops!! Boding spent 50 cents on me. This is probably the closest I'll come to getting a fancy ring from a guy for a while. Ha.

Silly bandz AND ring pops? YES we are definitely children.

Saturday evening we went over to Margaret's for a cookout and to watch the Auburn vs. South Carolina game. This was a great excuse to bake another fall treat, so I made pumpkin cookies!! When I made them last year, I used milk chocolate chips, but since Margaret is allergic to chocolate, I swapped them out for white chocolate.

They are even better with white chocolate chips. I also used half as much oil because I thought they were too wet last year. This time they came out more cake like and very tender. They were quite a hit at the party. See the recipe here.

More orange & navy for Auburn!