Frozen Pumpkin Bars: Recipe 10 of 12

Welcome to Busy Women Mealtime Makeover! Whether you are one of the lovely busy ladies participating in the makeover or just interested in taking your meals up a notch – girl, do I have some rockin’ recipes for you! From now until October 13th I’ll be featuring twelve new delicious makeover-friendly recipes. (And if you want to join in and get the entire makeover PDF complete with meal plans, shopping lists and recipes, videos and photos of me cooking for added support, weekly emails with additional recipes and kitchen tips and tricks and access to our online forum, you can totally start a few days late – click here and sign up!)
This week we’re talking dessert. Oh baby…
Pumpkins, decorative gourds, mums… Yep, Fall is here my friends. Something happens to people when the seasons change. It is like a restart button of some sort. It’s nature’s way of saying, “things are getting a little boring around here – let’s change it up.” I love that. Sometimes change leads us to reevaluate what’s going on and gives us the opportunity to make better decisions.
This is what happened to my girl Gina. She realized that her family was dealing with health problems that were directly related to the food they were eating. Wow. She decided to take control. This can happen to you too my friend. All you gotta do is say, “I’m ready.” Read Gina’s story below and check out her rockin’ Fall dessert recipe…
Gina, you are busy right? Tell me why you made healthy eating a priority.
Four years ago, life as I had known it, changed. At that time, I had no motivation to cook, my kids and I lived on Doritos, chips, Wendy’s and Halloween candy – candy corn and Take-5’s were my ultimate favorite. Well, who am I kidding? They still are! We were bloated, catching colds and just overall run down.
Once I pulled myself up off the floor and got a grip of my life, I began slowly removing that yucky stuff. I really tried to regroup and focus on making healthy eating a priority for a few reasons. First, because my daughter is highly allergic/sensitive to artificial food dyes. She’d have these wild and violent tantrums, uncontrollable crying for days on end after exposure and even slurring, visual disturbances, almost seizure-like. I’ve been aware of this since she was 2.
Then we have my little guy, Travis. He has crazy seasonal allergies and allergy induced asthma. When the doctor sent me home with a nebulizer, I didn’t think I’d ever use it, but when you see your child not being able to breathe at all, holy cow, that is some scary stuff. He ended up on it at least 2 – 3 times each year, sometimes 2 times in the same season. I hate that thing and I hate the medication. I wondered how I could fix this?
I began making green smoothies regularly. Our “green” began as baby spinach leaves, but to my amazement, my kids loved them so much, we quickly upgraded our “green” to kale. We also started having Dr. Suess breakfasts. Yep, you guessed it…..”green eggs”!! After about a year of this, it dawned on me that I haven’t had Travis on the nebulizer since last October! I couldn’t believe it! He is my testimonial, allergy induced seasonal allergies can be managed by diet alone.
Between school, homework, dinner and sports for 3 kids, we need to really put thought into our meal planning and making quick and healthy meals. For us, this often means that on a Sunday, we make a large green salad with a huge variety of veggies, preparing a large serving of quinoa and brown rice (they keep well in Tupperware container); and also soaking dried beans and grilling up a bunch of chicken breasts. This way, we have plenty of food readily available for “recycling” into different meals in short periods of time.
Do you have a favorite Fall recipe you would like to share?
This is the easiest pumpkin recipe ever. I make it a lot in the summer with strawberries and/or blueberries. However, we decided to give it an autumn flare this time.
These babies are better than ice cream! Perfect cool treat for the warm autumn days.
Frozen Pumpkin Bars
Ingredients:
1 bag of organic granola
1 large container of organic vanilla yogurt
1 cup of organic pumpkin pie mix
Pinch of cinnamon
Directions:
Spread out granola in a casserole dish.
Mix pumpkin pie mix and yogurt together and spread out over granola.
Sprinkle with cinnamon and freeze for at least a few hours or even overnight. Once frozen, cut into squares to serve.
Enjoy!
Thanks Gina for this amazing recipe.