Banana Cream Pie

Boy, was it windy out today! And not a warm wind, either. I was glad to not have to be out and about too early. While getting the ingredients out for my breakfast this morning, I came across a lone single serve packet of Barney Butter! This was the "star" ingredient in my bowl.
-1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup USVAB
-1/3 cup kamut flakes
-cinnamon
-banana
-Barney Butter
Barney Butter still isn't a fave of mine, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to test it out thanks to Coco.

My hubby and I spent the morning on the Dell website ordering my new laptop! I am so excited to be getting this, I can hardly wait! I'll finally be mobile and not stuck up in the den by myself when I preparing a post. DS had ball hockey today at noon so off we went to that. I brewed a monster size mateccino to go which held me through until we were able to eat lunch.

Speaking of lunch, I whipped another "tofudding" but used different flavours this time;
This one has 1/2 cup silken tofu, 1 cup fresh strawberries, 1/2 banana, vanilla and coconut extract, cinnamon, a drizzle of agave and a splash of USVAB. I topped it off with a bit of Cool Whip Free to make it all pretty! Then I ate a vegan ginger cookie....
Nice and spicy....just the way I like my gingerbread to be!

After lunch clean up was done we went back to the same mall we were at yesterday because they have a year round ice rink there and if you can believe it, DS wanted to go skating. Like ball hockey today wasn't enough! I am not a good skater and usually end up with sore ankles so I decided to be a spectator today rather than aggravate my ankle situation. I took a stroll through part of the mall while they were lacing up and wound up in a health food store that I noticed had a bunch of reduced items. I purchased some hemp seeds and a coconut chai tea.
I know, like I need more tea, but I couldn't pass this one up...it sounded too good! Before leaving I stopped by Tevana and grabbed an iced green matcha tea with a mango shot....
I had planned on getting this yesterday, but left without it. I'm glad I got one today because it was GOOD!!!

By the time we got home it was supper time so I got to it. My hubby had bought a seafood mix yesterday and I used it to make a sauce for dinner. Here's the blend that he bought;
It has shrimp, calamari, muscles, and squid. We are all seafood lovers in the Krista's Kravings household! To make the sauce I cooked down 2 onions and 3 cloves of garlic in 1 tbsp of avocado oil, then added the seafood and cooked over low heat until it was hot. Lastly, a can of diced tomatoes with herbs was added to the pot. The fam had theirs over macaroni, mine was served over polenta;
This meal was done in the time it took to cook the pasta and everyone loved it. I already have what little was left packed for my lunch tomorrow. :) My sweet end was the second last carob chip banana bread mini loaf;
I was feeling a little wild last night and decided at 9pm to make this banana cream pie for my hubby that Veggie Girl directed me to;
Seeing as I knew I wouldn't be touching this with a ten foot pole, instead of lightening it up like I usually do, I actually fattened it up! The recipe called for 1% milk, but the fam drinks 2% so that's what I used. Also, I just baked off a Tender Flake crust instead of making the graham cracker one. Here's a side view;
It must've been good because my hubby had a second piece....for lunch dessert!!!
He added Cool Whip to his pieces which he said made the pie. Next time I'll spread a layer of that right on top or maybe even fold it into the custard part. And by next time I mean tomorrow night because him and the kids have managed to eat pretty much the whole pie today.

I'm off now to help DS with some homework and then I want to catch up on my blog reading for the day. I'm also gonna try to fit in a bit of a workout later on. Ambitious, I know!

Bye for now!

Agent Cool Blue

Happy Saturday, everyone! I woke up early again today to hit the market for some goodies. I was a wee bit disappointed, though because it didn't seem like they had much there today. Maybe the nice weather had people out earlier than normal...Anywho, I was after my favourite breakie combo this morning, but realized that I'm out of carob chips so I decided to go for the taste of an old sandwich fave from back in the day! When we were kids Mom used to make us the coolest PB & banana sammies. She used a hot dog bun and spread one side with PB, the other with honey then plopped the naner down. We ate these "hot dog"style.
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Old Wessex 5 Grain cereal
-cinnamon
-banana
-homemade maple cinnamon AB
-cinnamon honey
-Splash of leftover blackberry juice from yesterday
YUM! I ate this a 8am and wasn't hungry until 2pm. Love a meal that sticks!

Rewinding back to the market, I bought some more local strawberries and 1/2 a dozen vegan cookies...
There were 2 ginger, cherry pistachio, PB and chocolate chunk. chocolate chip shortbread and chocolate chip. I took care of the cherry pistachio;
And my hubby took care of the PB & C and there was a ginger one still in the bag. I REALLY like the cherry pistachio and have plans to convert these 2 ingredients into a muffin!

I spent 2 hours giving the house a clean up that it needed quite badly before getting ready to run our weekend errands. I wasn't at all hungry for lunch when the fam was so just before we left I whipped up a green monster (although it wasn't really green) and bagged up a banana bread mini loaf to go...
Sorry for the crap picture...everyone was already outside waiting for me so I had to snap and run! The smoothie had 2 big handfuls of spinach, 1/2 cup USVAB, 1/2 cup mixed frozen berries and 5 fresh strawberries.

We decided to hit up a mall in the next town over to refill our Tevana/Teaopia canisters that have been empty for oh....6 months now?
Never one to venture too far when it comes to what my hubby will eat/drink, he got the same flavour as last time; Spring Blend. It's an awesome mix of strawberries and herbs and smells just like a field of berries. I, on the other hand, went completely different than last time. Pomegranate green was my flavour and I really liked it but this time I went for more of a "coffee"feel...Mateccino Mate..
The description reads; "Roasted yerba mate leaves, rooibos, sunflower petals, cornflower petals and chocolate flavouring." I wish this picture was scratch and sniff because it smells amazing and tastes wicked, too!

I'm gonna get off track here for a bit to tell you about something new I found for my kids. I have a hell of a time getting DS to brush his teeth and even though DD does, I know she doesn't always do a good job. I've been seeing a commercial for a product called Listerine Agent Blue that is like mouthwash for kids and leaves a blue stain on their teeth which forces them to do a good job by brushing it all off...
This has worked wonders for me (and them)! They think this stuff is so cool that they're both brushing 3 times a day now! Brilliant idea, Listerine!

Dinner tonight was baked salmon, steamed green beans and the rest of the zucchini fries;
I only ate 1/2 of the salmon you see here. For some reason I wasn't feeling it tonight. My sweet end was 2, yes 2, pieces of rhubarb squares! They're so good that one isn't enough! Next time I make this I'll be cutting the pieces larger.
Well, I'm off now to search the net for some simple banana cream pie recipes to make for my husband now that I've got lots of bananas to play with. You shouldn't be too surprised if you spot bananas and rhubarb baked into something delicious sometime soon, as well! *WINK WINK*

Bye for now!!

Muffins Revealed

Today started out dull and dreary again but the sun was out in full force by lunch-WOOT! I prepped by breakfast last night to give myself some extra breathing room this morning…and to save on a dirty pot.

-1 cup water
-1/3 cup steel cut oats
-cinnamon, vanilla extract, salt
-2 tbsp dried fruit
-1/3 cup-ish stewed rhubarb (the last of the batch)
I’ve only got one serving of steel cut oats left. This is not acceptable so I must buy more this weekend! I’ve grown really fond of their chewiness!

My tummy felt a little off all morning. Almost like I was hungry so I ate my dates earlier than usual but it didn’t help the situation. Weird, but it sorted itself out later in the day so all’s good!In light of this I opted not to go to the gym. I’m really starting to learn that I need to listen to my body’s signals and not push it when I have no desire to workout. Besides, I knew that I had Pilate’s at 5 so all was not “lost”. Instead, I went over to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things and then spent the last ½ hour at home chilling on my deck with my furry babies. All my potted plants are pretty water logged!

Seeing as I have no workout to talk about, why don’t we move on to the muffins that I made last night! Some of you were very close in guessing rhubarb….they’re actually strawberry rhubarb and they turned out fabulous! I basically worked off of this Hungry Girl recipe to come up with my version of pure bliss! Here ya go…

Strawberry Rhubarb Muffins

*1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
*1/4 cup brown sugar (not packed)
*2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
*1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
*1/2 tsp. salt
*2 cups stewed rhubarb
*1/2 cup fat-free liquid egg substitute
*1/4 cup agave nectar
*1 tsp. vanilla extract
*1/2 cup fresh strawberries, diced

Directions:

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
*In a large bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt
*In a medium bowl, mix together stewed rhubarb, egg substitute, and vanilla extract. Add this to the bowl with the dry ingredients, stir until just blended.
*Fold in the chopped strawberries
*Spoon batter into 12 cup muffin pan which has been lightly greased. Bake for about 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes, and then remove to cooling rack to cool completely.

98 cal, 0.3g fat, 2.3fiber, 3.2protein

I’m pretty impressed with the way these turned out! I thought the rhubarb might make them soggy, but they cooked through perfectly! I enjoyed one as a snack last night while still warm and another around the noon hour today.
Please disregard my chipped nails!! Time to take the stuff off. Big pat on the back for this one….with the help of Hungry Girl, of course! :)

Lunch was awesome, too. When I cook a pot of pasta I always throw in 6 eggs to hard boil because the fam lurves them that way. There was a lonely egg leftover last night so I turned him into egg salad with a bit of honey mustard and a scoop of cottage cheese, S & P. This got spread on top of a toasted Ezekiel English muffin with a side of cold zucchini fries…..
Uber satisfying! Just before home time I enjoyed some (previously frozen) blackberries;
Normally I am not a fan of eating thawed fruit, but these held their shape and consistency just fine. They were a wee bit on the tart side, though. There was some nice juice leftover so you can expect to see that make an appearance at tomorrow's b-fast!

Look what was waiting for me on my front porch when I got home from work...
Bananas!!!! My MIL found these bags on the reduced rack for $0.49/ea. SCORE! You can be sure to see more banana bread in the near future. Oh, yeah!

I knew when I got home from work that I was gonna need some fuel to get me through Pilate’s class. While home at lunch I had the fore thought to whip up a batch of “tofudding” a la Marianne.
This set up perfectly by the time I got home and it was just as good as the one I made the other night. I had to drive across town right after class to make DS’s ball hockey game. I decided to make a pit stop at Subway for a 6” veggie to eat at the game as last week’s wrap didn’t hold me over very long and I did too much snacking before bedtime.
As good as this was, it was a little messy to eat while sitting in the bleachers! C’est la vie!

It's 9pm now and I'm going to head out and get the grocery shopping done. The store is open until 10pm and I'm hoping there won't be many people there this late. By the way....if anyone is having trouble viewing my blog or leaving a comment could you please email me at kristaskravings@gmail.com and let me know? There have been a few of you who have let me know about some issues over the past few months and I want to see if I can pinpoint the problem! THANKS!

Bye for now!!

Two New Babies and Fun Mail!

Before I get started today I wanted to thank Coco for giving me this ever so cute friend award the other day!
Also, Marianne gave me this award a few weeks ago and I totally forgot to post about it! DOH!
Thanks, Marianne!!!! When I started blogging last August I didn’t realize how many new friendships I’d be making along the way! This has really been a fun ride so far and I hope it continues on for much longer!

Next up is my snack from last night because it coincides with breakfast. I finally got around to making the tofu pudding that I’ve been drooling over at Marianne’s blog the past few weeks!
This flash infused photo does no justice to how awesome the pudding was. I followed Marianne’s method using a 1/3 cup silken tofu, 1 tbsp Cocoa Camino dark hot chocolate mix, splash of USVAB, a squirt of agave and a scoop of my homemade maple cinnamon almond butter. To. Die. For! I couldn’t eat it all so I saved the remaining ¼ cup for my oats this morning…..
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-1/4 cup tofu pudding
-banana
-pecans
I seriously did not want this bowl to end. Ever. Talk about dessert for breakfast! I wanted to mention that I blended up the pudding in the Magic Bullet which worked really well.

I satisfied my sweet tooth this morning with a helping of dried figs…
It’s such a dreary and wet day out today that even if I wanted to skip the gym, there was nowhere to go without getting soaked! This kind of weather usually gives me a bit of a headache and today was no exception so I decided to go on the elliptical for 30 minutes. If you’ve been reading, you’ll know that I like to close my eyes while on this machine and that always eases headache symptoms. I also got semi caught up with the BBBC

*3 sets of 30 mountain climbers
*3 sets of 50 bent leg raises with 5lb weights
*3 sets of 12 lying hip raises
*2 minutes ab blasting video moves done 3 times
*3 sets of 10 BOSU squats

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 152
Max Hr: 180
Calories Burned: 424
Distance: (on elliptical) 3.4 miles

For me there’s nothing quite like a warm bowl of soup on a rainy day so that’s exactly what I ate. I bought a can of Amy’s vegetable soup that was 50% off the other day and chowed down on that. Not sure why it was reduced….the expiry date was Dec 2011! Oh, well….who am I to look to deeply into a deal?
I have to say that as basic as alphabet soup is, this was fantastic! It was loaded with veggies and noodles and had a great rustic tomato taste. I’d buy this one again for sure. I split this carob chip banana bread mini loaf (that’s a mouth full!) in half and ate part of it before the gym and the rest for lunch dessert.

Quick little side note here. When I was in grade 4 the word “dessert” was on our spelling list. I don’t quite remember now but I think more than a few of us spelled it wrong on the test and the teacher told us that an easy way to remember how to spell it was that “dessert” has 2 s’s because everybody wants seconds of it. I never, ever spelled it wrong again! Funny how sometimes little things stick with us for life, eh???

The receptionist went home sick this afternoon so I had the pleasure of covering the phones for an hour. Not my favourite job, but it was a change of scenery! I actually don’t mind helping out…she’s a pretty nice lady, after all! When I got back to my desk I enjoyed some more watermelon for a snack but accidentally deleted the photo. And how could I almost forget to show off the Lily of the Valley that my hubby pulled last night???
I didn't want the cats (meaning Pepper) to knock it over while we were gone so I brought it to work with me.

I had TWO awesome packages waiting for me when I got home! Julie and I did a blogger exchange and I'm over the moon with all the TJ's goodies I got!! Check out some of this stuff !
Candied Ginger and dried dragon fruit (can't wait to try these out!!!)
TJ's raw almond butter
Soyjoy bars, a Clif bar, a 9 bar, z bars and jelly bellies
DarkBelgian chocolate covered almonds, Baja Bob's margarita mix and caramel bites. How lucky am I? The 4 of us already dove into the almonds and caramel bites. So, so good! I snuck the rest of the almonds into my hubby's lunch box so that I don't eat them all! The next bit of mail was from Janny at POM Wonderful. Inside the envelope I found 4 coupons for some free POM juice and helpful info about the company and the product.
It certainly was my lucky day! Thanks to both gals for the fabulous treats!!

I was a muliti tasking DIVA preparing supper tonight! The kids wanted spaghetti and meatballs so it was their lucky day that I had ground chicken thawed out for dinner. I whipped up some homemade meatballs and sauce, boiled the pasta, sliced zucchini for some fries, whipped up a batch of muffins and pan cooked a Spicy Bean SOL burger for myself. Oh, and there were dishes and clean up spread out in there, too. I was glad to sit down to this delish dinner;
My burger was on a toasted Ezekiel English muffin with LC cheese, ketchup, spicy mustard and relish. I pulled out a serving of the Rhubarb Rumble from last night for dessert. It was set up perfect and I thoroughly enjoyed it tonight.
Here's a sneak peak at the muffins I made;
Can you guess what kind they are? Come back tomorrow to find out and to get the recipe! *WINK WINK* It's a GOOD one....

Before I sign off to go watch SYTYCD yet again tonight, I have more baby picture's to share! My in laws had had 2 new additions over the past week. Here's Little Red Buttons...AKA Red. He was born last Thursday;

And this here is Smoke. He was born on Sunday night;
Babies are the best!

Bye for now!!

Rainy Wednesday

Whoa, it was a wet one today! The skies sure did open up, but the weekend is looking good and that’s all that matters. A bonus to all this rain is that my veggies and flowers will get the drink they need to give them a good strong start (and I don’t have to stand there with the hose at night)!

-1 cup water
-1/3 cup kamut
-cinnamon
-banana
-blueberries
-peanuts
Have I mentioned before how much I love kamut flakes???

Boy, did I ever get busy with rhubarb last night…and I didn’t even bake anything! I stood at the counter for an hour and a half cleaning and dicing it. I ended up with 3 six cup freezer bags full and there’s probably another 10 cups that I left in the fridge that I set aside for future “projects”. I also found a wooden tea box that I forgot we had and decided that it was time to put it back into use! It was bought filled with TAZO tea and now it’s a home for all my STASH tea, as well as some Tim Horton’s Chai and a few TAZO stragglers.
Now my tea is much handier than when it was all in individual boxes. And it looks nice, too!

I ate my dates before the gym today…
I did a longer run today and felt really good. I started out at 5.6mph and bumped it up by 1 every 5 minutes until I got to 6.2mph. That’s the fastest I’ve gone since my ankle issues. I was running a 9.13 minute mile before and it is my goal to get back up to that….slowly. I also did 5 minutes of balance work on the BOSU that I learned at physio last night. Great for the ankle and my core!

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 161
Max Hr: 181
Calories Burned: 476
Distance: 4.31 miles

I prepared a marvelous salad last night, too!
-romaine
-cucumber
-orange
-leftover chicken from last night
-strawberry pomegranate dressing
So refreshing! The only sucky thing was that I forgot my fork and had to eat it with a spoon. Not easy or fun. I already put a fork in my bag so I don’t forget it again tomorrow. Lunch dessert was a rhubarb square;
Much easier to eat with a spoon! And later on in the day I munched on some of this watermelon;
Somebody left some STASH tea bags in the kitchen at the office this aft. Are they crazy? There were 2 flavours and I grabbed a few of each…duh!
The fam had sausages for supper tonight so I pulled out a Lean Cuisine cannelloni meal for myself. I served it up with a good 2 cups of steamed frozen veggies;
This was GOOD! I really enjoyed this entree and it was the perfect size. For dessert, I had some of this....
It's called "Rhubarb Rumble". It was simple to make and I had all the ingredients on hand. I changed it up a wee bit so here's my version;

-3 cups chopped rhubarb
-1 pkg orange jello powder
-1.5 cups skim milk
-1 pkg of Kraft SF, FF cheesecake flavoured pudding

I completely omitted the crust, dishing up 1/2 cup servings into 6 bowls. I followed all the directions for making it. I'm not 100% sure what I think about this yet. Mind you, it's suppose to sit in the fridge until it sets up so my serving was still pretty runny. I had a scoop of Cool Whip Free on top to make it purdy and all. I'll save my "for real" review until I try it tomorrow! Just an FYI...I ran my version through Spark People's recipe calculator and came up with 59 cal, 0.3g fat and 1.2g fibre. It's a lightweight!!!

Well, lovelies, I'm of to the pool for the kidlet's swimming lessons. You can be sure that I'll be watching SYTYCD when I get back!! Enjoy the night!

Bye for now