Chocolate Mint Protein Muffins

Date: November 19, 2018

Author: astottler

Happy Thanksgiving week! I’m getting to celebrate a bit early, but I wish it were under better circumstances.

The Camp Fire has been raging in Northern California these past few weeks. This tragedy has blown an insane amount of smoke throughout the state, including into my school. We had all of last week’s classes cancelled. The air was really too bad to go outside at all. I went home this past weekend, and they ended up cancelling all of Thanksgiving week of class as well.

I think it’s been a rough couple of weeks for our state.

On a lighter note, I obviously brought my kitties home with me.

I dressed kitten up.

Anyways. The point of this post. We had a couple of ripe bananas that needed to be used up, and I was starting to feel the holiday baking. I wanted something a little bit healthier, so these muffins were born! They have about 5g of protein each, which I know is not a ton, but they’re not huge muffins and it’s more protein than normal muffins have! Plus, they’re delicious! I got the whole family’s stamp of approval with these.

Chocolate Mint Protein Muffins

Makes 6

Ingredients:

1/4 t salt

1 packet/1 scoop of chocolate protein powder (I used Quest)

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 t vanilla

3 T egg whites

2 T milk

2 bananas, mashed.2 T mint baking chips

1 T dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together all wet ingredients.
Add and stir in dry ingredients.
Put into muffin tin.
Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

WIAW-Where’s My Protein??

Date: January 14, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! As per usual, I will be linking up with the fabulous Jenn for What I Ate Wednesday!

My morning started bright and early. I quickly gobbled up my raspberry goat yogurt overnight oats, before heading to the gym to train quidditch.

The weight lifting went well-some people had to come early because they had to leave early, and the barbells were full when we started lifting, so I had to improvise a bit-everything worked out in the end! I also taught them correct rowing form, as they requested a rowing component for this workout. For those curious, here’s the workout I took them through.

Warm Up: Dynamic Stretching and Leg Swings

4 sets of 6 push presses

3 rounds:

6 bent over row

6 kneeling press

12 lunge jumps

20 calf raises 3 ways (toes forward, toes in , toes out)

1 min plank

Then-conditioning:

1 partner rows 500m while the other does oblique crunches-2 times through so everyone rows 500m two times

They shouldn’t be as sore as last week’s leg focused workout, but everyone was feeling by the end!
The best part? We finished just in time for me to grab a cappuccino before running to class. Which is probably why I felt so good all day!

Lunch was a mish-mash of things. I’m well stocked on veggies right now…and that’s about it. I didn’t make it to the dining hall the night before to steal things for lunch, so I was caught without any protein. In the end, I decided to try out my new blender bottle, and a packet of vanilla chai protein drink mixed with almond milk.

Also on the menu were blueberries, asparagus with Italian herbs, and butternut squash with cinnamon and a touch of honey. I have to say-this meal was a little lack luster because the butternut squash wasn’t quite seasoned enough, and asparagus is hard to eat out of a bag. Without a knife. With tough ends. And…i really didn’t like the protein drink. At all. When will I learn? It was kind of bland and the predominant taste that came across for me was fake sugar. I only made it through about a third of it! But I was SO full from all the veggies, so I guess it evened out!

I had class until 5 today, which meant I had to go to Crossfit later-at 6:30. For a pre-workout snack I enjoyed a Square bar, as well as a small tangerine from our CSA box and a handful of garlic roasted pumpkin seeds.

Crossfit was deceptively difficult. For strength, we worked on heavy snatches. The WOD was a 16 minute timed workout-3 rounds of 10 overhead squats and 150 jump ropes, followed by a ladder of 25m shuttle run and 1,2,3,4… burpees. It was a leg burner!

By the time I finally made it back to the dining hall, a lot of the food was gone. Since I was running kind of low on protein, I wanted to make that a main part of my meal. Guess what they didn’t have? Literally the only protein source was a couple of leftover hard boiled eggs, so I added one to my salad.

Salad, cabbage, polenta with mushrooms, and roasted potatoes with ketchup.

And I guess this counts as protein?

I’m feeling pretty good about this quarter. I have a couple of classes that I need to work my butt off for, but I also have Human Nutrition, which is basically the best thing ever. You know a huge difference from last quarter? I actually have friends in all my classes now. In the past I felt like I was always doing my own thing, but now I pretty much have someone to sit with and chat with in all my classes-yay for new friends!

It’s difficult to explain, but I feel like I’m finally coming into myself this quarter. (Of course that’s easy to say in week 2…) I’ve tried new things that I thought I’d love, without giving it a second thought that they were new or I wouldn’t know people (Mariachi and weight lifting.) I also finally feel like a leader. Teaching weight lifting to quidditch has made it apparent how knowledgable I really am. And practicing for spin like crazy makes me feel like I really can lead a class. I’m at the point in my life where I feel like I can inspire people, I can make changes is people’s lives, and I can make a difference in the world. I feel like I can do anything! One thing I signed up for on a whim that I’m SUPER excited about is the Bay Area Childhood Obesity Conference. It’s really cool-there are speakers, as well as break out groups where the participants get to discuss things.

In addition, I’m starting to think about what to eat during the project. For breakfast, I’m thinking high quality yogurt with homemade sunflower seed butter, and homemade mixed berry compote? (No added sugar of course-just berries!) Or maybe overnight oats with a higher quality grain than instant oatmeal? Like quinoa? Or is that weird?

One of the biggest question marks right now is dinners-should I try to cook them myself? Make do with dining hall fare, but being very careful? Lots of planning to do!

Do you have any good whole food recipes that are quick and easy? Please link them up!

WIAW-Protein!

Date: July 16, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! Thanks as always to Jenn for putting on this foodie party every week!

Since today (Tuesday) was the MLB all-star game, I planned by workouts for the week around having a window open to watch. (It was a disappointing game for the NL, and only 1 Giant even got to play. Boo.) As a result, I went to morning instead of evening Crossfit.

Before 7am Crossfit, so I had a Thinkthin bar. Crossfit was a good one- 10,9,8…1 of pull ups and kettle bell swings, with 100m sprint in between.

And guess what? I may have sort have gotten myself a job for the summer. The manager of my Crossfit box was talking about how he needed someone to sweep/clean the box for free membership, so I volunteered! I don’t have unlimited class access for this month, so that would be awesome! Plus, I would love knowing everything is clean and sanitary.

After Crossfit, I drove out to the bay to get in a training run.

I had 4 miles on the schedule for today, but since I ran about a mile in Crossfit (between the warm up and the WOD), I stuck to 3.

And guess what? I somehow managed to get an appointment with the foot doctor on Thursday. Hopefully he can help me figure out a way to run pain-free, which would be amazing.

After my run, I got a quick rowing workout in. I’ve lost a lot of upper body strength, and rowing is a great way to build that up. Of course the millions of pull-ups (banded) I do at Crossfit help with that too….But yeahh my rowing shape? Not so great today. I probably spent a total of 30 minutes on the erg today.

After all that, it was shopping time! I went to Whole Foods for some Chocolate Almond milk, and picked up some coffee with almond milk to go.

I really, really didn’t like this. I’m not a big coffee fan, but this just tasted sour to me. Maybe it’s because it was a light roast? I’ve never had light roast before, and I guess I usually just have cappuccinos when I drink coffee (so sophisticated, I know). I wanted to drink as much as I could because I paid for it, but in the end I tossed about half of it.

Then, it was on to GNC for the much-coveted Quest bars. I’ve only had tried them once a long time ago, but since everyone has been raving about them, it was time to check them out again. Plus, I eat Thinkthin bars as pre-run/pre-workout fuel, and they were getting old. Quest bars seemed to have a similar nutritional profile, so I thought I’d give them a try.

*Note: Sadly, I was not compensated by Quest to review this product so I had to go out and buy them myself. 🙁 All opinions are my own.*

They were buy 2 get 1 free, so naturally I had to try ALL the flavors, right??

Soooo if I buy enough protein, will it lift the weights and build the muscles for me?

I immediately broke into the cookie dough.

It was really good! After a few bites, I heated it up. After having it hot, I don’t think I can go back to having it cold. YUM.

HOWEVER. Here’s my one big thing. I HATE the taste of stevia. This has stevia, which didn’t bother me while I was actually eating it, but left a really weird/gross taste in my mouth for a long time afterwards. I separated the bars into 2 piles-those with stevia, and those without. I’m pretty sure I’m going to like those without way more. I had a bite of the apple pie, which has no stevia and I really liked it.

Here’s my other issue with these bars-although they don’t have all that many ingredients, they do have a lot of artificial, weird things. I lot of them have quite a bit of sugar alcohols, which are known to upset stomachs. So I may have felt that a little today.

Overall, I like these bars. I’m a little scared to eat them pre-run though, and I’m almost positive I’ll like the ones without stevia way better.

Enough of that, onto other food as of late! (Not just today, just haven’t posted it yet!)

Egg scramble with spinach, garlic and herb laughing cow, and cheddar.

Cheesy garlic and herb brussels sprouts and sausage from Carrots n Cake. This was of course delicious, and perfectly satisfying. I used sun-dried tomato chicken sausage, and the flavors worked really well. I would recommend making this! I think we’re going to use the rest of the sausage over spaghetti squash and tomato sauce.

A healthy protein mug cake: chocolate protein powder, cocoa powder, half a banana, baking powder, vanilla, coconut flour, egg whites, and bittersweet chocolate chips. The chocolate chips definitely make mug cakes.

Snap peas and leftover dijon vinaigrette.

Peaches literally the size of softballs. This picture doesn’t do them justice. Gotta love Costco!

Most of the sweet potatoes we have are orange, but I got some amazing white ones at the farmer’s market the other week. I’ve been trying to find that kind ever since! These ones looked a little different in color on the outside, so I thought maybe they were the white variety. Imagine my surprise when we cut them open! I kind of love purple sweet potatoes, so this was just fine with me!

Complete with rotisserie chicken and mango barbecue sauce, and spinach and mushrooms sauteed with garlic and olive oil.

Some other random things:

1. I’ve spent some time lately writing blog posts “for a rainy day.” As in, when I’m back in school and life gets just a little too crazy. Don’t want to leave you guys hanging! I want to have a nice little arsenal for before school starts.

2. I ordered some workout tanks! I’m super excited; two of them have already shipped! I made some custom Fitness is Sweet tanks, plus another workout tank not designed by me. I’ll leave you all in suspense until they arrive 🙂

3. After a lot of thought and deliberation, I’ve decided not to go to Healthy Living Summit. I really wanted to go, but it doesn’t exactly make sense for me this year. It’s across the country, it’s right before I start school, I don’t know anyone going, it’s pricy, and my blog is not even a year old. I thinking that next year would make a lot more sense.

And with that, have a great week!

Do you like Quest bars? What is your favorite flavor? Thoughts on Stevia?

I could do a whole post on my personal thoughts on stevia, but that could create a big old controversy!