Damn Daylight Savings...And A Recipe

Daylight Savings totally knocked me off stride yesterday! We totally forgot to change the clocks before going to bed so when I thought I was rolling out of bed at a very late 10am, it was actually 11am. Sheesh. Backing up even further, though…while reading our local newspaper online Saturday night I realized that there was a write up on DS’s hockey team. Being the crazy person that I am, I herded the kids into one bedroom, gave them the laptop to play chess on and made my way to the store in what turned out to be CRAP weather to the damn paper. (Note: hubby was at hockey). Two spinouts with the car and one wipe out in the parking lot later, I was home with the goods. Not exactly my most responsible moment, but in that moment I had to have that paper! Here’s the article:

I may have cropped the article to showcase my personal interest. HA! Mine’s Mr. Noah. If you’re at all interested in the whole article, here it is.

Back to Sunday morning. Seeing as I slept the morning away, I ended up with brunch instead of breakfast. Hungry Girl pancakes to be exact:

On the side, as a dipper, I had about a 1/3 cup of goat yogurt with some PB2 mixed in.

Awesomeness!

After sprucing myself up some, DD and I made our way to the mall to kill a few hours. I didn’t really buy anything because I’m saving my pennies for Buffalo this week. I did leave with a delicious NF, 1/2 sweet dark chocolate cherry mocha, though:

Holy, freaking awesome! A green tea latte is still my fave, but this is running a very close second. On our way back we scooped DS from his buddies place and my hubby from home then we all went to my parent’s place for my b-day dinner. My first course was salad and 1/2 of the bun shown.

Then I had a mix of food. Lentil salad, sweet potatoes, flank steak and some stew;

My sister made a killer cherry Danish cheesecake!

This is my piece which I just could not finish. My hubby helped me out on the last few bites, though!

This was really, really good. Lisa says the next time she’s going to try it with apples and caramel drizzle. Um, yeah!!

We were home in time for me to watch The Amazing Race and then I decided to bake some muffins. One of the hockey Mom’s made some great muffins for the hockey party, but I missed out they went so fast so I decided to try my own. I used a Hungry Girl banana bread recipe as a base.

Dark Chocolate Blueberry Banana Muffins

• 1.5 cups WW flour
• 3/4 cups sucanat
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• dash of salt
• 1.5 cups mashed banana (about 3)
• 1/2 cup egg whites
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup blueberries (I used frozen)

1. Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl
2. Combine next 4 ingredients until well blended (I used my Magic Bullet for this step)
3. Add wet to dry
4. Stir in chips and blueberries until evenly distributed
5. Divide batter into a 12 cup, greased muffin pan
6. Bake at 350* for 30 minutes

Unbelievably amazing. Seriously.

On to today, shall we? I woke up at a more reasonable 7:30am. DS has hockey camp all week from 8:30-4 so I got him fed and did a few dishes before driving him to the rink. I was good and hungry by the time I got back home so breakfast was a must.

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup Quaker oats
• cinnamon
• blueberries
• kefir

As I was eating this a package was dropped off at my doorstep. I wasn’t expecting anything and was totally surprised to find a GREAT birthday package sitting there. And from a great blogger and real life friend to boot! Check out the perfect package Jessica from Jessica’s Garden put together for me! I’d love to say that I dug into the tea first, but those Malteasers didn’t stand a chance. I ate a handful then I made a tea….

I played on the computer until lunch rolled around. DD and I had flat out pizza’s Mine had roasted red peppers, black olives, spinach and goat feta on top:

The we roamed around the mall for a few hours to kill some time and to get out of the house. By the time we left the sun had come out and the day was glorious! We picked DS up from camp at 4 and I immediately pulled a chair on to the deck and read a magazine in the sunshine. Just lovely!

The fam had pasta for dinner so I decided to have some of the penne plain with spinach sautéed in white balsamic and a re heated trout fillet:

This ended up being really, really good! My sweet end was an Activia “dessert”:

The boys just got back from playing catch at the park and DD and I enjoyed a 45 minutes walk with our neighbours pup, KC. Life is good! Anticipating the need for a snack later on, I already sliced some strawberries and pineapple:

Now that it’s ready to go, I’ll grab it for sure.

Bye for now!!

Achy and Stiff

Let’s just begin by saying that after yesterday’s strength sesh in the gym and 2 killer Pilate’s classes I got out of bed very gingerly this morning. Oh, the pain!!! You know its bad when it hurts to sit down….and get up! LOL! At least my kids were entertained by my hobbling about this morning!
-2/3 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-peaches & blueberries
-International Delights French vanilla coffee “creamer”
This breakfast was 100% pain free!

I ploughed my way through a stack of paperwork at my desk this morning. I was happy to see the back end of it! There was no delicious food in the staff kitchen like yesterday so I broke around noon and ate a Clif Bar for a snack:

Regardless of my aching muscles, I went to the gym at lunch. Not sure if that was smart or not, but I just did cardio so I’m thinking no harm was done. First I did a 12.5min walk at 4mph with a 7% incline, then I ran for 12.5minutes at 6pmh with a 1% incline. Lastly, I hopped on the elliptical for 20 more heart pumping minutes. And I made sure to stretch really good at the end.

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 164
Max Hr: 182
Calories Torched: 500
Distance: 4.3 miles (combined)

Lunch was not only tasty, but filling. I brought some egg whites which I nuked and then set between a sliced Ezekiel English muffin which had a nice layer of goat’s milk brie on it:
Yumalicious!

Later on in the day I ate a bowl of mixed fruit (cantaloupe, watermelon, pineapple, grapes and honeydew). I had been looking forward to this all day!
I swear there’s honeydew under there!! I’ve been buying the trays of pre cut fruit the past few weeks because I’m WAY more likely to eat it if it’s already been prepped for me. Obviously I need my very own sous chef! LOL!

Dinner came early once again as we all had to be out the door shortly after 5pm. DS had hockey practice and then right after it was to the church for his First Reconciliation. My hubby helped coach again and then stayed at the complex with DD for her swimming lesson. Tired yet??? HA! All I wanted was pancakes so I made a batch using a hungry girl recipe. I had no dairy so I used a tbsp of almond butter in place of the cottage cheese. To top them off I used PB2 and chopped hazelnuts. The pancakes also had blueberries folded in:

I’m glad I went ahead and made these because they were SO satisfying. I grabbed the last 2 vegan chocolate chip cookies for the road…

At hockey practice tonight all the boys had Canadian flags taped to their helmets. DS informed me they did that to show some Canadian pride! Love it. Here are a few shots he let me take!

I dragged him off the ice at 6 so he could change and head to the church. The rink and church are practically side by side which is why he got to go on the ice at all. The kids behaved well which can be tough at 8. They sang a few cute songs before meeting individually with the priest. I took a few picture’s but they’re fuzzy and he looks possessed! See for yourself…

LOL! He really does enjoy singing and it’s a pleasure to watch him. My hubby and DD aren’t home from the pool yet so DS and I are watching Aliens in the Attic again. It’s a pretty cute movie so I don’t mind. I’m feeling really wiped out so I think it’s gonna be an early bedtime for me. Here’s to hoping I’m not so stiff in the morning!

Bye for now!!

Bar Review and Valentine Day Treats

I had another great sleep last night. That’s 2 in a row! Go me! Actually, the whole day was super productive which leaves me feeling satisfied. I revisited an old favourite for breakfast this morning:
-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-chocolate PB2
-carob chips & walnut pieces
I lapped this up with pleasure! :D

I ate a Sencha Green Tea Bar in “Morning Lychee” this a.m. before hitting the gym:
THOUGHTS:
-at first I was very hesitant because I’ve never tried a lychee fruit before and the smell kinda threw me off. I couldn’t quite place it, but it reminded me of some type of alcohol. Not gonna lie, the first bite threw me off, too because it tasted boozy!! But I’m a champ and kept at it. After a few more bites the taste really grew on me. The packaging states “a tropical fusion of lychee berries & sweet coconut”, I couldn’t taste any coconut at all which was a bit disappointing.
-I love the texture of these bars. They’re chewy like a rice crispy square, but there are loads of seeds to give it a great consistency.
-They’re 220 calories but a good size bar so I feel it’s totally worth it. Because they are thicker and denser than a lot of bars, they take awhile to eat so there’s no rushing through it. And they are gluten & wheat free which I appreciate even though I don’t have issues surrounding those ingredients.
-1 bar = 3 cups of green tea. Enough said.

RATING: 4/5
**NOTE: This bar was not sent to me for review. I bought them myself to try. See here for my thoughts on the “lively lemongrass” flavour.

The gym was awesome today! I decided to run and did I ever show that treadmill whose boss. BOOYA!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 164
Max Hr: 193
Calories Torched: 501 (!!)
Distance: 4.4 miles

That is hands down the best run I’ve had in a long time; since at least before Christmas. I got into a groove early on and never looked back.

I packed myself a serving of quinoa stew for lunch today:
I always add a little hot water before heating my (thawed) frozen foods in the microwave. It helps to loosen the mix up a bit so it’s not like a glob of paste in my mouth. LOL! I also found a box of cute cookies in the staff kitchen so I helped myself to one:
This was SO freaking good! The base was cracker-like and the chocolate topping was filled with caramel. SO worth it!!!

Just before quitting time I ate a pink grapefruit that I butchered cut up this morning.
Grapefruits are something I’ve always loved, but I hate the pith on any citrus and I find this in particular to be the worst culprit. Cutting and sectioning the fruit, while a pain in the ass, eliminates this problem for me. Oh…I’ve still been eating way to many of these:

My hubby and I put a Valentine’s order in with one of our local high school’s (CHSS) bakery for some treats. This particular school is a trade school so it’s the students that make and decorate all the food. I always support them come “special occasions” such as V-day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc and have never been disappointed with the product. Take a look at this stash that landed at my desk this aft!
This is a 4 layer chocolate/banana cake with chocolate ganache. My hubby ordered 2. Yes, you read that right…2! Next is 6 dozen cookies.

One dozen is my hub’s, the other 5 are for the kids classes. Read on to see what we did with those.

I popped a roast in the crock pot this morning because the boys were on the ice at 4:30 and DD had skating lessons at 5:20. Us gals ate first. Along with my meat I ate a few potatoes that were also in the crock and some mixed veggies:

Once back home the kids and I assembled their Valentines using a cookie, some chocolate and v-day baggies. Here are a few of them….

So right now I’m in the middle of baking mini muffins for a “coffee break” my department is hosting at work tomorrow. I used this recipe for blueberry chia muffins and replaced the blueberries with cinnamon chips. I doubled the recipe but only have 1 mini muffin baking tin so the second batch is still in the oven. I’ll take a picture of the finished product for tomorrow’s post.

Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty exhausted right now. I plan on making a tea and settling in to watch Vampire Diaries. The only kind of candy I want right now is eye candy!! ;)

Bye for now!!

Unconventional Green Tea

Is it really only Tuesday? It feels like it should be much later in the week! Ouch!
-1 cup water
-1/2 cup flax seed porridge
-cinnamon
-craisins
-carob chips
-walnut pieces
Another microwave creation! I’m so lazy…

Tried a new (to me) bar today before the gym:
A Sencha Green Tea Bar in lively lemon grass. Let me tell you, it was lemony for sure! At first the taste took me off guard, but after a few bites I was loving this beast!
The consistency was that of a rice crispy treat, but chewier. And 1 bar equals 3 cups of green tea! Yowzers!!! The packaging claims that the blend helps support heart health, metabolism and healthy skin. Here’s the ingredient list:

“Ingredients~ Organic Pumpkin Seeds, Organic Roasted Soybeans, BlackSesame Seeds and Flax Seeds, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Dates and Dried Plums, Organic Brown Rice, Glacéd Lemon Peel and Crystallized Ginger, Concentrated Soy Protein, Rice Flour, Matcha Tea and Green Tea Extract,Natural Flavors, Spices, Sea Salt and Lo Han Guo.
Contains Soy and Almond”

(SOURCE)

Impressive, no? I think I’m going to go grab the other 2 flavours that were in the store.

I hopped on the elliptical at lunch today. My hips are stiff from my interval running yesterday so I thought this the best option.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 149
Max Hr: 172
Calories Torched: 414
Distance: 4.9 miles

I brought a serving of quinoa stew for lunch today. This stuff is so tasty!
And later on in the afternoon I snacked on some almonds and TAZO tea.

DS had hockey practice at 5 and my hubby was on the ice, too. I cooked them and DD a batch of chicken fingers and a Caesar salad. I decided on Erin’s All Bran pancakes for myself. I used a 1/3 cup each All Bran, Egg Beaters, and Oikos, an 1/8 of a tsp of baking soda and baking powder and vanilla and agave. My toppings were the last bit of yogurt mixed with PB2 and some jam. Here’s the jam I used used:

This blend is freaking amazing! Have you ever tried it? Anyways, here’s the pancakes.

Mixed with the topping, these tasted like stuffed crepes. Outrageous!

I just got back from 1.5 hours of Pilate’s and I am beat out. In a good way, though. I’m pretty sure I’ll be sleeping soundly tonight. :D Tomorrow’s hump day! How about that?!

**Look out for a special post first things in the morning!**

Bye for now!!