Saturday, April 4, 2009

Forgotten Camera and a New Nut Butter

Boy, did I ever wake up one stiff pussy cat this morning! As soon as consciousness hit me I knew I was in trouble. My elbow pits even ached! After a bit of careful, cautious stretching in bed, I stumbled downstairs, hooked up the Wii and cranked out 8 of the stretchiest yoga poses the system offered. That helped immensely and it fulfilled my OSG BBCC requirements for yesterday!! Breathing a sigh of relief, I made my way back to the kitchen for breakfast.
-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Old Wessex 5 Grain cereal
-cinnamon
-mashed naner
-scoop each fig preserves and homemade almond butter
This was the end of my almond butter. Boo! But....if you keep reading, you will see that I tried out a different, more traditional nut butter later in the day! ;)

After eating...which I did while watching "Property Ladder"....I got some laundry going and hit the computer for a bit. Once I knew the machine was done hogging all the water, I jumped in the shower. DS had a power skating session from 12-1 today in a neighbouring city and once my hubby realized I had jumped in the shower (at 11:10) he reminded me that we had to leave the house by 11:30!! YIKES...the time had certainly gotten away from me! So, I was showered, dressed, face on and hair dried in 20 minutes flat. Talk about a rush. Needless to say, half way there I realized I had abandoned my camera on the kitchen table!!! That's enough to make me panic, but I kept my mouth shut because I knew I had already made us short on time. Oops!

Hockey was fun to watch today because the kids did some really neat drills and the coach even took a nice spill. We all made sure to clap for him!! *WINK!* DD and I enjoyed a hot chocolate while watching. The rink was freezing....like see your breath freezing....so the warm drink was most definitely called for! Afterwards we hit up Subway down the street for lunch. I know, Subway for the second time in 3 days. In my defence, I offered to make wraps for everybody but my hubby decided that Subway would do and it is one of DS's favourite places to eat. Hockey makes him hungry, too. He inhaled his 6"turkey & Swiss before I was 1/2 way through mine! My pictureless sub was a 6" roast beef on WW with lettuce, tomato, green peppers, cucumbers, hot peppers, black olives, grated carrots and sweet onion sauce. It was awesome!!

Before going home we stopped at Walmart to grab umbrellas for me and the kids. I also picked up the new edition of Clean Eating magazine.
This is a fantastic magazine that I read cover to cover. One nice thing about it is that there are very few advertisements. I get frustrated with some magazines because it seems like ads make up the bulk of them. On the way home I munched away on this dark chocolate Cadbury Thin bar...
After watching a bit of Ultimate Recipe Showdown on the Food Network, I got to work on fixing some dinner. The weather is still miserable and windy so I wanted to make something warm and comforting. I found the perfect recipe that I had pretty much all the ingredients for in the Clean Eating mag.....Chicken Divan. I cheated a bit by using precooked & sliced chicken breast that I had in the freezer and frozen broccoli. The only 2 ingredients I had to switch up was 2 onions in place of leeks and a can of red kidney beans in place of canellini beans. This dish turned out FANTASTIC! The fam had their's over WW penne and I served mine over a bed of WW couscous.
Mine certainly did not turn out as pretty as the picture in the magazine, but as my Mom always told us as kids when we complained on the appearance of our dinner, "who cares what it looks like, it's just gonna get chewed up anyways"! :)
There was no way I was fitting in a sweet end after that plateful! Instead, I got to work on some homemade PB! I started off with 1lb of unsalted peanuts;
They peanuts formed into a butter MUCH sooner than the almonds did! This took only 4 minutes. Yes, I timed it!
Here are the 2 jars that I got at the end...
I seriously considered adding some cinnamon or maple syrup or both to the mix, but opted not to in case I wanted to make something savoury at some point. What I will do next time is fill a jar with plain PB and add some flavourings to the second half. That way I have a bit of both.

My goal is to do my Shredding later on tonight, but I can't promise! We'll see if the old bones can take another 20 minutes assault!! If I don't get it done, I will do it 2 times tomorrow...once in the morning and once in the evening. I will also be counting that as my 2 days of cardio as per the OSG BBCC for the weekend. Before I sign off for the evening, Sarah over at Tales Of Expansion is hosting a wicked Bob's Red Mill giveaway!! Go check it out!!!

Bye for now!!

14 comments:

  1. I love Clean Eating mag and subscribe to it, totally worth it in my opinion :)

    I made the Pomegranate syrup from that issue and it was so good. Way to go with the homemade peanut butter, it looks delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fig spread + homemade nut butters + Clean Eating magazine = HELL FREAKING YES!!!


    Enjoy shredding!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh wow, I need to start to get the Clean Eating Magazine! I see it in line during check out and stuff. =D

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a great day!! Clean Eating is one of my favorites :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Homemade nutbutter! YUM!

    And I have never seen the Cadbury Thins!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Krista,
    Very impressed with your homemade PB. How many days do you think it will keep in the fridge? You totally inspired me to make my own now.

    Lots of fun reading here at your blog. Will visit again.
    cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Good job on the homemade PB. Feel free to whip me up a batch if you get bored ;)

    And the Chicken Divan looks mighty tasty. I haven't gotten to read through my mag yet, I've just browsed it. Gotta get through Eating Well first. I'm the slowest reader ever apparently! I take my Rolling Stone mags to the gym to read, since it seems weird to read food mags while working out. HA!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Isn't Clean Eating amazing?! I am a subscriber (thanks to a kind Christmas gift from my dad), and I can't get enough of it! Unfortunately it is sent to my home address rather than here at school, so I am so jealous of your issue right now!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I need to get that magazine!!!! it seems so interesting and I'm so with you about Ads, I hate to get a thick magazine and realize later that most of it was Ads.
    Great job with making your own PB. I love a little salty nut butter too! :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. So many great things in this post!!
    Love the nut butter!!

    I would love to do a meet up if I get up near your way! I'll let you know. Also, i'll be keeping my eye out for that Yogi Tea! :)

    Leah

    ReplyDelete
  11. Nice homemade nut butter!! I finally picked up that issue today - your dinner looks like it turned out great! Way to go with the time crunch too! Impressive :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. OOh homemade nut butter!!! It looks so creamy!!!

    The chicken divan looks very good!!!

    We have gorgeous weather today (sunday), so enjoy!!!

    ReplyDelete
  13. omg i wish my homemade nut butters would come out smooooth like that!!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Yay! I love your nut butter creations. I need mine to come out that smooth next time :o)

    I love Clean Eating - that chicken divan looks so good!!

    ReplyDelete

I'd love to hear from you!! Please leave a comment!