Banana Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins

Enjoy them with a little bit of margarine or just on their own. These muffins are stuffed with vegetables to make you feel good about your snack! (Along with a little chocolate to satisfy your taste buds) 

This started off as an old family recipe for a good tasty banana loaf, I took it and ran with it. Added a few extra ingredients, tweaked existing ones to make it my own. 

One thing I love to have ready to go is some mashed up banana in the freezer. I will be starting a new job shortly so I took a little time off to enjoy the spring before starting at the bottom of the vacation pool again. First day one of the first things I did was take a bag of mashed banana and shredded zucchini out of the freezer!

It's been incredible having time to bake for fun again! Sometimes it gets a little exhausting coming home from work at 5pm stuffing some food in my face and baking a cake. I'm grateful that it's still something I enjoy doing and this little vacation was just what the doctor ordered.

Below is my recipe for these delicious banana zucchini chocolate chip muffins.

banana zucchini chocolate chip muffins

Review: Dandruff Shampoo

The winter comes with many challenges from digging yourself out of your driveway and not over eating during the holidays. One thing that gets me every year is the itchy and annoying dandruff plaguing my scalp! Thankfully there are many products on the market available to combat this so I decided to try them all out (when my head was particularly bad) to see which one is the most effective.

Now considering that the combination will certainly eliminate the dandruff without directly knowing who was the successful bottle, we will assume that all 3 products will eliminate dandruff equally and instead focus on the other benefits of each. Such as:

Ease of lathering

Ease of brushing after the wash

Weight of hair from the product

Feel of hair from the product

The three contestants are Head and Shoulders, Selsun Blue, and a generic anti-dandruff shampoo.

They all vary is price and weight. (All prices in Canadian dollars) The most expensive being Selsun Blue 300ml for $13.99, next is Head and Shoulders 400ml for $8.99, and no surprise the generic brand was the most affordable 700ml for $8.99.

I decided to start with the most expensive bottle and move down. The Selsun blue has a lovely orange tone to it's shampoo. The lathering was a little rough at the beginning as my hair was in rough shape but once a rinse and repeat occurred it was much smoother. Unfortunately the ease didn't last, I found that my hair became very grainy and coarse from this wash, it was also very difficult to put  brush through it after the wash, I had to put another product in it to help smooth it out... After it dried my hair came back to life and is nice and soft. Took us on a journey to get here though so I'm not sure how I'm feeling about this one so far.

Within a day I realized Selsun Blue's angle is essentially just to dry out your scalp, it was stiff and dry for the day after washing my hair with this product. Not happy with this outcome at all.

Second up with your classic Head and Shoulders, I had ease of lather but sadly still some trouble brushing out my hair (although at this point I think it's me not the shampoos...) Head and shoulders made my hair feel soft and light which I really appreciated but surprisingly my dandruff managed to come back?? I suspect it was the contrast of shampoos on my head though. Going from one that dries out your scalp to one that moisturizes it.

Lastly I tried the generic brand and I have to say this one was my favorite. It lathers up nice, smooths out my hair and eliminated the pesky dandruff without completely drying out my scalp. It keeps my hair feeling light and fluffy! It also helps that it is the most economical of the choices.

The verdict: Scrap the expensive name brands and go for what works. Your generic brand dandruff shampoo will do the trick.

I wanted to share my experience here, I also submitted small reviews in Influenster.com this is a great place to share your experience with products (and every once in awhile they have campaigns for free products!!) Click Here if you'd like to have the inside look of new products and have the opportunity to get free samples.