Meg vs. Dinner: More Pinned it, Did it Recipes

I cooked a lot earlier in the week, then ran out of steam; Thursday the kids and I split a piece of Costco pizza and a bag of Caesar salad. But we'll focus on the days I actually cooked:

I have made these green muffins a few times, and the kiddos are happy to gobble them up:

I don't use the nuts she recommends since I am not about to go buy them just to make muffins, so I have substituted the ground nuts for ground flaxseed, and left off the topping altogether. The muffins are just a little bit sweet and banana-ish, and you can't taste the spinach at all. They remind me of a really good bran muffin (not the dense, dry, not-so-good kind). These are a new staple around here.

Next up was spaghetti squash. I have been wanting to try it out for a while, and our favorite local produce market had them for $1 each, so I couldn't resist. I followed the instructions for this garlic and butter squash recipe, which was basically to poke some holes in it and cook for an hour at 375. It turned out a little bit crunchy, so my little guys wouldn't eat it (didn't believe me that they were noodles). I read one comment that suggested cooking it at 400 degrees for 60-90 minutes to avoid the crunchiness, so I will have to try that next time and see if I can sneak it into my toddlers' diet. Otherwise, I thought it was pretty tasty and not as difficult as I expected.

Lastly I made up these sweet potato parker rolls:

Hers are so pretty!

Of course I was lazy (I can't keep track of timing rises when I have three kiddies pulling at my pant leg!), so I dumped all of my ingredients in my breadmaker and set it on the dough cycle.

Half-way through, I realized one of the paddles had popped up and so it had only half mixed and kneaded, meaning I had to start the cycle over again. Even so, the dough seemed to rise just fine and the texture was good. So these are some fairly forgiving rolls (very important around here!). Here they are before baking:

And after:

I have to say that I was expecting them to be a bit sweeter than they are. I think they could have used a little sugar, but it could just have been the particular sweet potato that I had or the fact that I botched the whole mixing and rising process! They were tasty enough for me to polish off most of the pan within a couple of days. But they won't be my go-to rolls in the future (unless I happen to have a sweet potato that I can't use otherwise).