Breakfast

Hola!

/ runningchickago / 11 Comments

Hey everyone!

This past Friday, my mom and I came home from Spain.  We had a great time there – lots of great food, sight-seeing, shopping, and relaxing.  I’ve decided to break up my trip recap into three different posts based on the cities I visited: Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona.  I may have taken a million and a half pictures and I plan on sharing all of them a bunch!  My vaca recap will start tomorrow… today I’m sharing a recipe!

After having delicious food in Spain (they’re crazy about ham, mayo, fish, and anything deep-fried), I’ve been trying to go back to my “usual” routine: lots of fruit and veggies, whole grains, and lean meats.  Hello, delicious turkey-avocado-tomato sandwich, I’ve missed you.  You too, steamed broccoli.

I’ve been doing pretty well eating healthy, but after seeing a friend’s facebook status about eating chocolate chip pancakes and bacon (yes, I’m talking about you, Stace! 🙂 ) I couldn’t help but to make some pancakes for myself.  I’m not a huge breakfast person, but last night just seemed perfect for breakfast-for-dinner.

The pancakes turned out amazing but unfortunately there are no pictures to capture their beauty.  But trust me when I say, you gotta make these.

Whole Wheat Pancakes (with a hint of chocolate) – note: I used Skinny Taste’s recipe to get a basic idea on how to make it, but modified it significantly.  See the bottom of this post for more info about my reasoning*)
Ingredients
2 Cups + 2 TB Nonfat Milk
2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
4.5 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 scoop Chocolate Protein Powder
1.5 TB chocolate chips (all chopped up)

Mix dry ingredients together (except chocolate chips) in a medium-sized bowl.  Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.  Chop up chocolate chips so they’re smaller and chunkier (this way, more pancakes will get chocolate chips 🙂 ).  Add chocolate chips to mixture.  Cook ’em up on the stove top, and enjoy!

Makes 27 pancakes.  Nutrition facts (per pancake): 54 calories, .75g fat, 1.18g fiber, 3.2g protein.

I loved these pancakes because they were not overly-chocolatey at all.  I shared some with my dad and he said he could taste a hint of something, but couldn’t tell what it was.  Guess I must have eaten the chocolate chips in that pancake…woops 😉 These will definitely be my new go-to pancake when I’m looking for some fiber & protein – and something slightly sweet!

Time to make something for lunch!  I went to CrossFit with my friend Jen today, and I am ready for some food!  Curious about CrossFit?  Definitely try it out.  Today was my first time ever doing it and I enjoyed it.  Best part?  A place nearby allows you to take your first class for free.  Will I pursue it in the future?  Probably, I just need to figure out how it will work in my schedule.  I loved how it was fast-paced –  you weren’t able to get “bored” with your routine.  You could also really feel your muscles working, which I loved.  Guess who’s gonna be sore tomorrow and Wednesday and Thusrday…this girl!  Love it- gotta love knowing you had a great workout! 🙂

Have a great day! 🙂

(*Reasons for Pancake Recipe Modifications: I cut out the sugar and vanilla she recommended because I used some chocolate chips and the chocolate protein powder, and thought it would be sweet enough.  It was, especially with maple syrup drizzled over the pancakes at the end 😉  I also left out the salt because I knew baking powder had sodium in it, and figured the pancakes wouldn’t miss it.  Finally, I omitted the cinnamon because…I’m not the biggest fan of that spice.  🙂 )

Ah-mazin Craisin Muffins

/ runningchickago / 9 Comments

Could this title be any cornier?

…sorry I’m not sorry…I love puns and corny jokes…

Anywayssss, as you can tell by the title, today involved craisins.  And raisins.  I wanted to bake some raisin bran muffins and this morning was the perfect day to do so.  Usually I like to wake up early to get in a workout, but today I switched it up.  I slept in and baked all morning.  Booyaa.

As much as I love raisin bran muffins, they are usually loaded with fat and are approximately a zillion calories.  One muffin isn’t worth all those calories to me (froyo > muffins).  After much googling, I was able to find a recipe that looked pretty solid.  I mean, a recipe that has 5 stars and 829 reviews, and ingredients that aren’t completely terrible?  I think I’ll take it.  🙂

I used this recipe, but changed a few things around (like using whole wheat flour instead of regular, soy milk instead of buttermilk, etc).  Here’s my take:

Craisin Raisin Bran Muffins

hello, delicious

Ingredients
1 & 1/2 cups Cascadian Farm Organic Raisin Bran Cereal
1 cup soy milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup Trader Joe’s whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup craisins (I used some from Trader Joes)

Directions
Preheat oven to 375F.  Grease muffin pan.  Mix together cereal and soy milk.  Let stand for 10 minutes (or longer…I kinda ate breakfast and did other stuff while baking 0:) )

warning: if you make this recipe in the morning, it’s incredibly tempting to eat this as normal cereal instead of using it to make the muffins. good luck.

Beat oil, egg, sugar and vanilla together.  Add the oil/egg/sugar/vanilla to the soy milk/cereal.  Mix together whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Add dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.  Add craisins (yum!) and pour batter into muffin tins.

ready for bakin’

Bake 15-20 minutes (my oven took 15) or until toothpick comes out clean.  Enjoy!  And try to not eat the entire pan.

check out the inside of the muffin! omnomnom

These muffins were so incredibly moist and delicious.  Honestly, they are the best-textured muffins I’ve ever had.  And, not completely unhealthy.  Wanna know some facts?  186 calories. 7 grams fat.  1 gram sat fat.  2.5 grams fiber.  I think I’ll be making these pretty often…and before races!

I even got my Mom to eat a muffin (she pretty much never eats muffins) and she said she’d be eating some more this week.  Winninggggg (remember when everyone used to say this?)

Well I’m off to go camera hunting with Joe!  So many awesome cameras, so little money time.

Have a great night!

Question for you:
What’s your favorite type of muffin?

Is this heaven?

/ runningchickago / 19 Comments

…no, it’s peanut butter.  But it tastes like heaven.

Butter Toffee Peanut Butter = ❤

 

On all of the blogs I read, I haven’t heard much about Naturally Nutty.  They have a variety of nut butters and even a seed butter!  The company also has a great story, which you can read about here.  Because I love them so much, I wanted to spread the word and let you guys know about how good this stuff is.  It also gave me an excuse to eat lots and lots of it for “experimenting”…so…

Anyways, ever since my trip to Traverse City, Michigan for The Bayshore Marathon, I’ve been putting this peanut butter on everything.  My Aunt Kathy introduced it to me a few years ago and I’ve been in love with it ever since.  It had been about a year or so since I last had some, so I knew I had to stock up on some once I made it to TC.  Of course, you can buy it online (which my fam has done in the past) but I decided to hold off until race weekend to make it that much more special.

Now that my love peanut butter and I are reunited, I’m taking advantage of it.  With delicious treats such as:

Peanut Butter Banana Waffles

Van Waffles + Naturally Nutty Butter Toffee + Banana

I used Van Waffles Wheat Free/Gluten Free Flax Waffles, along with 2 TB of Butter Toffee Peanut Butter (1 TB per waffle), and sliced up a small banana on top.  This breakfast was so sweet and tasty that I couldn’t help but make it a few times last week.  If only there were more waffles in a box…then I could have had it every day…

Butter Toffee PB Granola

can’t wait to put this on my yogurt…

This was my first attempt at making granola.  Did it turn out perfect?  Sure, if you don’t like your granola super crunchy.  Generally I do, buttttt I love the flavor so much that I’ll let it slide 😉  I used Peanut Butter Finger’s peanut butter granola recipe to get a general idea of oven temperature, cooking time, etc.  Here’s my version:

Ingredients
2 TB Naturally Nutty Butter Toffee Peanut Butter
2 TB Jif Natural Peanut Butter
1 Cup Oats

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 F.  Melt the Naturally Nutty and Jif peanut butters in microwave (note: Naturally Nutty Butter Toffee doesn’t melt too much, so don’t worry.  That’s why I used the Jif- to make up for it and be super melty).  Add oats to melted peanut butter and stir until coated.  Bake for 7 minutes.

Thoughts
Julie (Peanut Butter Fingers) had honey in her recipe, but I didn’t want to add it to mine because the Naturally Nutty Butter Toffee Peanut Butter is already sweet.  I think the honey may have helped add a crunch-factor to the granola, but the soft granola tastes delicious.  If you try this recipe, let me know if you added the honey- and if it added a good crunch/taste to the granola!

I plan on putting this granola on top of yogurt, adding it to nuts/craisins/etc for a trail mix…and just eating it straight out of the bag.

I also plan on googling many more peanut butter recipes and seeing how they turn out with Naturally Nutty’s Butter Toffee Peanut Butter.  Pretty sure I will be using their Peanut Butter Pancake recipe tomorrow 🙂

Alright, I’m off to go run some errands!  I’m looking to buy a new camera so tonight I’m starting the hunt. 🙂

Questions for you:
I’m thinking about buying a DSLR camera, do you have one that you would recommend?  I’m looking for one that (obviously) shoots great pictures, but also isn’t completely ginormous.

Back to peanut butter, what’s your favorite peanut butter recipe? 🙂

Have a great night!