Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hey everyone, I am back! Yay!!
While it took me a bit to recover from the tonsillectomy (oh my, does that hurt... ouch!), right after I got better I managed to cut my right-hand index finger and now got a couple stitches to take care of. Thankfully it is nothing big or serious, so I am still around the kitchen, of course!
St. Patrick's is not something we celebrate, no Irish backgrounds in our families and we actually only got to learn about this here in the US.
However, Matheus learns about everything at school and come home with his little head full of ideas. One of those being that today he wanted a lunch box full of green food, and who am I to argue with that, right?!!
So, we went for green grapes, broccoli, and these yummy Spinach Muffins, which actually comes from my friend Akemi's kitchen!!
Her recipe is in reality for a Spinach Pie, but I thought that muffins would be more "lunch-box-friendly" and gave it a try, and it worked perfect!
I actually made the full recipe, scooped part of it into 4 muffin cups, and the rest I put on a pyrex dish and baked as a pie. Both came out great. We had the pie yesterday for dinner and the muffins were taken today to school.
And since it was my day to volunteer at the classroom I ended up going to have lunch with Matheus at the school too and have to say that the muffins were a success! The kids loved his "green bread" and he was so happy with his green food that he devoured all the veggies, muffins and fruit! Tell me about a "eco-friendly-green-boy"!!!
This is soooo easy to make, and I love the addition of onions and garlic to the batter, it gave it so much flavor, really cool!
I mixed my filling (chopped ham and grated mozzarela) into the batter so it would be easier to pour into the muffin tins and it all came out perfect, we all liked and I hope you will also enjoy, pretty healthy and cool colors too!
Thanks Akemi!!
Ana

To see the recipe in Portugues click here: Torta de Espinafre!

Akemi's Spinach Pie
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon salt (add more to taste)
Leaves from 1 bunch of spinach (I used about 2/3 of a bag of spinach - added until it was green as I wanted it to be!)
1 garlic clove
3 tablespoons chopped onions (about 1/4 onion)
2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup whole wheat and 1 cup white flour)
1 tablespoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350F.
In a blender process the eggs, milk, oil, salt, spinach, garlic, and onions until all mixed up and no pieces remain. Pour batter into a large bowl and add to that the flour and baking powder. Mix until incorporated.

At this point you can add your filling right to the batter or pour half the batter into a baking dish, fill it with desired filling, and then pour rest of batter on top, smoothing it up with the back of a spoon.
To make it easier I mixed up chopped ham, grated mozzarela, and a couple tablespoons grated parmesan right into the batter.
You can also use diced tomatoes if you want here, I just didn't use it because I didn't have it on hand... Another good option would be a chicken filling, yummm!

Bake your pie for 35 to 40 minutes at 350F. In case you are making muffins check on them after 18-20 minutes, they should be done by then!

And here is Matheus' lunchbox for the day! Yummy!