Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

'Tis the season for making pumpkin goodies! This recipe (from recipelion.com) caught my eye, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. The muffins made my house smell wonderful, and taste good with Autumn Spiced Tea!

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup solid pack pumpkin
1/4 cup melted butter
1 egg
1 6-ounce package of semi sweet chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt; make a well in the center. In a small bowl, combine milk, pumpkin, butter and egg; add to the well in flour mixture. Add chocolate chips, stir until dry mixture is moistened. Spoon mixture into greased muffin cups, filling each 3/4 full. Bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Cool 5 minutes, remove from pans, completely cool on racks.

Notes
Instead of pouring the batter into the muffin tin, I decided to use the paper liners. Unfortunately, the muffins stuck to the paper! I've never had that happen before. Next time, I will either pour the batter in the pan or try foil liners. These muffins are very dense and rich, and oh so yummy!

Pumpkin Patch!

We took advantage of the one day of sunshine this past weekend to take our annual trek out to the pumpkin patch!
After getting off the hay wagon, Noelle seemed more enamored with the muddy "horsey feet" than the sea of bright orange pumpkins that lay before her!
So many pumpkins, so little time...
Noelle was very happy with her selection!
...so was Nathan! WOW!
Papa and Nathan...
Mama and Noelle...

Fun times!

Bacon-Wrapped Apple Barbecue Chicken

Ingredients
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
2 apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and grated
Juice of 1 lemon
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
8 slices bacon
Salt and pepper

In small bowl, combine barbecue sauce, grated apple and lemon juice. Rinse chicken breasts and pat dry. Wrap 2 pieces of bacon around each chicken breast half. Place wrapped chicken in slow cooker and top with barbecue-sauce mixture. Set slow cooker to low and cook for 8 hours. Season with salt and pepper and serve.
(Recipe from All You magazine, October 2009)

Healing Words

This week's proverb was "Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." (Proverbs 12:18) We discussed what "reckless" and "pierce" means, and about how these kinds of words are very hurtful and hard to forget if someone speaks to us in this way. I also shared with her James 3:8 which says, "...no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison." We talked about what wisdom is, and came up with examples of wise things to say. I helped her make these little band-aids so that she could be looking for ways to bless others with her words when she sees that they are hurting or upset.