Good But Not Great

It’s Sunday, and I’m back at school! Let’s go through my day!

I began with a quick breakfast before hitting the gym. I decided to do some experimenting, attempting to capture that amazing buttery, cinnamon-y goodness of cinnamon raisin toast with butter, but in a healthier way. I started with my French Toast base. I mashed up a banana, and then mixed in milk, and egg and egg white, cinnamon, and vanilla. I ended up only using half of this mixture because I wanted my bake to be more bread-y. I tore up a slice of whole wheat bread, and placed that in the mixture. And the final touch? A mix of cinnamon and dextrose (this is a glucose heavy sugar, you could use regular cinnamon sugar) to fill in the cracks! After baking this in the microwave for 1.5 minutes, I topped it with a little Smart Balance. Here’s the result:

It was good, but not amazing. I didn’t really capture the buttery factor enough. Oh well. That with a smudge of peanut butter and a cutie, and I had myself a meal!

Not bad at all! 

At the gym, I went to Spin, and then made up yesterday’s missed workout. It was my favorite weights workout, plus a few embellishments. Here’s roughly what I did:

Back lunges from a platform(several inches)- sets of 3 each and decreased reps when weight got really heavy (I started at 135. last set was 175)

Single leg RDLs, 6 each leg, 4 sets. I worked up to 55 pounds. I supersetted this with 25 heel raises

A tiny (just a few minutes) of work on the erg trying to bring up my stroke rate (I have a lot of trouble simply moving fast enough)

1/2 kettle bell swing tabata (I did 2 minutes of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off)

3×1 minute weighted plank (Place plate on your back)

Plus stretching and rolling out! I’m usually really bad about stretching, and I want to try and make a better effort! This workout tends to work muscles that complement each other for maximum exhaustion, and I’m already getting a little sore! I love having go-to workouts that I know will make me sore every time. Single leg RDLs do that for me. No matter how many or what weight, I’m almost always sore from them. Just a disclaimer: I’m not a trainer, and please don’t try this workout if you haven’t worked with weights before!

My gym is right next to Whole Foods. How perfect is that?? I needed to pick up some things, so Whole Foods was my next stop. I had a short list, but natrually I had to explore the whole store!

Free smoothie sample anyone? I was just telling my friend the other day how I haven’t had any free samples in a while! Love them! At whole foods, I got some random healthy ingredients, and some dried fruit and nuts. Nothing too exciting, but always fun! Oh, plus some soups for this week! And after the grocery, guess what time it was?

Ohhh yeah. Not that that cake was mine….but wooo!

I had a great big salad while watching the game!

Rotisserie chicken, apple, walnut, dried cranberries, and of course, avocado! All tossed in balsamic vinaigrette. And on the side? Only the best bread ever!

Cranberry walnut! Plus it’s whole wheat! This is one of my favorite breads! I really wanted to try my hand at baking some myself over the summer, but I never got around too it. Seriously, this stuff is so good! Can’t stop at one piece!

At halftime, it was time for me to get to work. I’ve talked about how great it was to have protein bars in the freezer last week, so this week, I decided to make something as well.

5 Minute Peanut Butter Granola Bars! Recipe courtesy of Anne from fANNEtastic food. The recipe called for Chia seeds, and I knew I’d never be able to use up a whole bag before they went bad. But look what Whole Foods had?

How perfect is that? 3 shots was just about right! To this recipe, I added raisins and skipped the ground flax, because I didn’t want to open a whole new bag (which I ended up opening anyway….) Aaaand the final result?

I ended up deciding to roll these into balls because I liked being able to have a bite sized piece, so that became this:

Perfect! I like how these granola bars aren’t too sweet. What first attracted me to the recipe was that they had brown rice syrup. 

After my granola bars, I did a little experimenting. We had some leftover hazelnuts from a recipe over Christmas, so I tried my hand at hazelnut butter.

Add a few more whirs, salt, dark cocoa powder, and a few squirts of honey…

Not bad! It was a little dry. It probably could have used more blending but it was kind of difficult in my food processor so I left it. I ate a bit of this on bananas. Again for today, good but not great.

After the Niner’s game (!) I pitched for the first time since my last softball tournament 6 months ago. I’m considering trying to play this summer, and I suddenly had an itch to get back at it a little. It went surprisingly well! I was way less rusty than I was expecting! It was nice to be back out there.

Today was certainly the day of making interesting food. I whipped up another recipe from fANNEtatic food, Blueberry Apple Cinnamon Yogurt Bread.

Helper? Not so much….

While the bread baked up (the batter was certainly delicious, and no eggs so no reason not to lick the bowl!), it was dinnertime.

This is my all time favorite dinner. All recipe courtesy of Cooking Light. Cheese Souffles, Thyme Mushrooms, and an herbs and greens salad. The salad always tastes so fresh; half of it is whatever fresh herbs you have on hand or buy! 

Such a great dinner. And the bread was finished just in time for dessert.

Unfortunately, I took it out a little too soon so the middle wasn’t totally done. Instead of put it in longer, I decided it was fine, since I was planning on freezing most of it for later anyway, and when I freeze it, I always microwave it. Still delicious!

Ignore the sloppy spot in the middle…

After all that great food and a few episodes of Castle, I packed up and headed back. Ok, while I absolutely love my cats, I am allergic to them. That’s right. This future crazy cat lady is allergic to cats. I’m not sure what causes my allergies to flare up; the entire time I was home for break it was fine, but today, my allergies are going crazy! I guess that’s a sign it was time to come back! Although I’m sure I have a cat’s worth of fur on my person and on all my clothes…I found cat fur all over a shirt I was wearing the other day. The mystery? I had received the shirt that morning! How does Charlie do it? (Because it always seems to be his fur…)

I have a lot of work to get done tomorrow. I also have team weights, and I’ll probably hit up a Spin class later as well. Plus, I have a new book that I’m absolutely dying to read.

After a yearlong Biology project last year, I discovered a passion for the science of sugar, its metabolism, and its effects on the body. Dr. Lustig has a popular Youtube video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth. After stumbling across this video, I was hooked. I’ve watched it 3 or 4 times, and read several other books. Plus, I downloaded all the Podcasts and interviews I could find with Dr. Lustig, and listened to them while I ran (I know, nerdy, right?). I am beyond exciting. I totally forgot that the book was coming out this soon (January 2013 seemed so far away!), so I am beyond excited for this. I’m a little rusty on sugar metabolism right now, which is why I haven’t posted about it. But this seriously could not have come at a better time, during my 30 day no sugar challenge. After all, it’s a little hard to stomach all this with a belly full of cake. On my challenge, I’m not cutting out all added sugars, just sweets. In honor of the book release, and all the attention surrounding it, I am considering doing and blogging about a few days of absolutely zero added sugars to raise awareness of the sugar lurking in so many foods. I’ve done this for a few days before, and believe me, it is difficult to find foods. Especially bread. Trader Joe’s is one of the only places I’ve been able to find bread without added sugars. And this would be even more difficult at a dining hall, because ingredients aren’t listed on everything. So who would want to try this with me to raise awareness to the something so many food processors pour into our foods? We should be able to have more control over what we eat!

What do you think of a zero sugar day to raise sugar awareness?