Easy Pumpkin Muffins

Seriously. Easy. Delicious. Fatless!

Easy Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients

• 1 15 oz. can pumpkin puree
• 1 box cake mix (chocolate, vanilla, white - I used butter) 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix cake mix and pumpkin together.
3. Spoon batter into lined muffin tins. 
4. Bake for roughly 30 minutes.

Salted Peanut Butter Cocoa Torte

Here it is!

As you all know by now, I am addicted to Cookie Chips! I absolutely love them, so much so that I wrote the company and brazenly asked for a job (no one can say I don't have Chutzpah!). Alas, Joanne (the owner and CEO!!!!!) called me and said she would give a personal reference to her food broker who sells the Cookie Chips for Hannah Max Baking Company. As of now, you can get Cookie Chips at Safeway. If you have not tried the Cookie Chips yet, I highly recommend this recipe to get started or just go get a bag and take them on a picnic. I assure you they won't last the afternoon!

I made a Lemon Bread Pudding with the Original Cookie Chips and have now created this magnificent, ridiculous, character of delish which I call "Salted Peanut Butter Cocoa Torte." It sounds fancy and looks lovely and sophisticated but is very easy to make. Trust me, it's going to knock people's socks off!

Salted Peanut Butter Cocoa Torte

By: Gwen Akacin

Ingredients:

Pie Crust:

1 3/4 Cup Graham Cracker crumbs

1/2 Cup Organic butter (melted)

1/4 Cup bakers sugar

Pie Filling:

1 1/2 Cups Organic Heavy Whipping Cream, Separated

1/4 Cup sugar

1/2 Cup Organic Milk

2 Cups all natural Peanut Butter

3 Envelopes unflavored gelatin

1 Can sweetened condensed milk

Pie Topping:

1 1/2 Cups  Organic Heavy Whipping Cream

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 cup sugar

1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract

1 Bag Sea Salted Peanut Butter Cookie Chips

Directions:

1. Pre heat oven to 350.

2. Mix graham cracker crumbs, melted butter and sugar in bowl. Shape the crust into the pan using the bottom of a cup. See that it's as even as possible.

3. Bake crust for 5-7 minutes. Remove from oven; set aside to cool.

4. Beat 3/4 cup whipping cream with a mixer until soft peaks form. Add sugar until peaks are stiff.

5. In a medium sauce pan at medium low heat, combine milk, the remaining 3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream, peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk until liquid in consistency and fully combined.

6. Add gelatin to peanut butter and whisk constantly until dissolved.

7. Fold peanut butter mixture into whipped cream until smooth.

8. Pour filling into crust and refrigerate until set about 1 hour.

9. In a mixer, combine whipping cream, sugar, vanilla extract and cocoa. Beat until stiff. 

10. Top cooled, set pie with cocoa whipped cream "frosting."

11. Crush whole bag Sea Salted Peanut Butter Cookie Chips with a rolling pin and sprinkle evenly on top of pie.

Something New!

I want to start a cosmetics company. I want to call it Moxie Make-Up and Cosmetics. I want to use TOMS one for one business model and give make-up and cosmetics to under served, at risk, low income, inner city ladies, beginning here in the U.S. then branching out to other countries and communities. Beauty should not be unattainable. Alas, where to begin? Where to get the capital? How?

I have a student named Renee. She recently went to the dermatologist for some skin irritations. He said she needed to stop wearing perfume or using lotion with scents and so on. As a teenager, she is pretty horrified at he thought of walking through life without the scents associated with being a girl. I was too when my doctor told me the same thing. So as a little present I made her Rockin' Renee. An Eau de Parfum made strictly of all natural products.

I hope you like it, love!

My Cute Town

I have a few "pet peeves." One of them is when folks who live in my town say bad things about it. It ranks right up there with Americans joining in to slam our country with Europeans. Something is just principally not right about that.

Another one is bad grammar, but I'll save that for another post.

How can someone say, "Sacramento = no culture." We have a beautiful and very cosmopolitan museum.

People say all the time, "What a cow town." Apparently they haven't been to Vacaville - actually named 'cow town.'

And why do natives from here say things like, "I hate it here." I say, "Then get out!"

We have excellent recreational trails for biking, hiking and walking, we have outstanding restaurants, we have a thriving art community, we have good hair salons and we have trees second only to Paris. Plus we are the state capital. A town offering all that is much more than a cow town or any other slanderous label a dimwit can put on it.

Have I mentioned the real estate? Look how sweet this is!

So the next time you find yourself or someone else talking about Sacramento as if it was a less than awesome place, I urge you to think of the charm I am showing you here and also, my mother taught me, "If you haven't anything nice to say, then do not say anything." Or move away!

One Flow Yoga

Last year I posted about my love for Bikram Yoga. It's hot, sure but that is not why I had to stop. The rote repeat of the same 26 poses and my constant anxiety begged me to quit. I soon realized that my life seemed incomplete without real yogic principles in my life.

I am a fidgeter. Always have been. People have names for the kind of person I am; Late Night Linda, Pusher, Spaz...whatever. "There is no shame in my game." It's just me and I need a centering philosophy such as yoga to bring me down so my feet touch the ground. Or else I am...well, picture a fat guy in pants too small...he buttons the pants and...POP! The button snaps away from his bulging belly and ricochets off walls. I am the button in this scenario.

I looked on YELP! and One Flow had a perfect 5 star rating. I was skeptical.

I called my friend Lori (we are 25 year veteran friends) and asked her if she wanted to join me at a Yoga studio I've wanted to try. On our own we had been to several studios in the area but never found a "home." For a few reasons, the need for a companion, a lack of "yoga" in the poses being taught, too far from our houses and so on. Both Lori and I need a workout, that goes without saying, but we were looking for the marriage between strength and spirit in addition to a plain old workout. We found it.

Credit

One Flow Yoga is owned and directed by Kate Saal. Her heart is huge and her aura glows with brilliance in many ways. She is a powerful presence but never overwhelming and when she teaches, her voice is like tropical beach; relaxed and warm. But the most amazing thing about her studio, the practice she imbibes in her students, is that there is no necessity to kill yourself or compete with others, instead she teaches that spirit surrounds us, that we know ourselves and that we must love ourselves in order to fully love others and that a Yogic practice is a personal journey. The other instructors drive the same road and it is this cohesion that has made One Flow our home. So, if YELP! had more than 5 stars that is truly the rating this studio should have and I cannot be more emphatic about it!

More photos to come.

Ciao Bella!

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In the springtime, I ache for the old days when I romped around the Lazio region in Italy. I called Rome home but engaged in all things Italian. I went to the green grocer every Wednesday in Campo Dei Fiori. I dined at our favorite restaurant, Suburra with my friends ( Yep, still friends with them). And drank plenty of Roman wine too. EST EST EST!

I sunk into La Dolce Vita, loving a 90 second breakfast of cornetti and espresso. I loved a romantic walk in Trastevere and I even attended the occasional mass.

The culture shock was not when I moved there but instead when I returned back to the states. I yearned for anything even remotely resembling the slow Italian lifestyle of pausa in the afternoon and a slow walk to some where significant.

In about 2006 or so (already 5 years after my return back to California) I found a magazine called Bene. I loved it. It was picture perfect and not pretentious. It was all about the Italian lifestyle. Sadly, I can't find it anymore.

As Spring has sprung here in Nor Cal (Crocus' abound),  I begin to make my usual pasta dishes, think about the tomato garden and create the plan for making my own Buratta. So I looked for pics from this great magazine that I enjoyed so much. It makes me pretty gleeful that I found some cover photos!

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Cookie Chips

Cookie Chips are only the greatest treat I have ever found! The Original Flavor is 120 calories and tastes like you baked them yourself. They are like chocolate chip cookies sans chocolate chips, which personally I love! But wait! There's more....flavors, I mean! I also love the Salted Peanut Butter Flavor. I have only been able to find them at Safeway (which I hate because I think Safeway is sub par, at best). However, I'll use that store anyday for these delicious morsels of goodness. Check out HannahMax Bakery if you can't find them. I'm telling you, they are ridiculously amazingly great!