Thanksgiving Baking

I volunteered to bring a few dishes to Thanksgiving dinner this year and I whipped them up last night and today. 

But what oh what did I decide to make??

I spent last night whipping up some sweet potaoes.  And today baking and sampling a delicious dessert.  Plus some cranberry sauce.

 

I decided on pumpkin whoopie pies!  Following Angela’s recipe but with a few alterations.  I added an egg (not sure what that did to the recipe).  And added a tad more cinnamon to the batter (it didn’t taste pumpkiny enough to me).  The frosting was super dee duper sweet.  I ended up using about 2 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice in the frosting.  And added a teensy bit of almond milk.  It was slightly thicker than I wanted – I don’t think I used quite enough butter.

 

Homemade Cranberry Sauce:

• 1 12-oz bag cranberries
• 1 peeled apple, chopped
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup agave nectar
• Cinnamon

Boil water, cranberries, and apple until cranberries pop.  Add agave nectar and some cinnamon and reduce to simmer.  Simmer 15-20 minutes, or until sauce it thickened.  Remove from heat and let cool.

 

Candied Sweet Potatoes (will show picture with dinner – not quite done with them yet!)

• 3 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp cinnamon (I used more)
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• Salt

Microwave sweet potatoes until cooked.  Let cool.  Scoop out the insides into a bowl.  Mix in egg, seasonings, and brown sugar.  Spread in baking dish, top with marshmallows, and bake until warmed through or marshmallows are golden.

 

I’m actually working tomorrow morning (6 am-2:30 pm shift).  I’m glad to be working Thanksgiving, because that means I get Christmas off(!!).  And I’m lucky to be working the morning shift, because that means I get to hit the road immediately after, and meet my family halfway home at my aunt’s house! 

I’m excited to see my whole family –it’s been over 3 months since we’ve all been together, and since I’ve seen my brother and sister.

 

I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow, wonderful family time, and safe travels.

 

And don’t forget about my giveaway ending Friday evening at 6 pm!

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Soup’s on!

Yesterday was a little better in the hunger department.

I started off with pumpkin yogurt topped with a crumbed muffin, almond butter & pumpkin butter.

No more muffins….

After a couple of errands, I came home freezing and remembered I’ve been wanting to use my butternut squash to make soup!

Simmer simmer!

I microwaved ~ 1 lb. of butternut squash cubes.  Then mashed them before putting them on the stove with about 3 cups of low sodium chicken broth.

However it seemed way too thin, so I had the brilliant idea of overloading it with pumpkin.  Then decided to add the rest of my broth to make TONS of soup.  Simmered for 20 minutes.  Took out the chunks and pureed them in the blender.  Then I seasoned it with nutmeg, pepper, and a bit of sugar and cooked a tad bit longer.

At first I didn’t really like it, it grew on me and ended up having 2 huge mugfuls.  And croutons put it over the top.  I ended up declaring this soup delicious.

This is all I had leftover.  Whoops!

I spent a bit of the afternoon at work hanging out with this guy.

Spread on carrots, no less.  + a giant apple.

Dinner was inspired by the fact that I needed to use my sweet potato.  And since I was too hungry to wait for sweet potato fries to bake, microwave it was!

Topped with pineapple flavored cottage cheese.  I also sprinkled the actual potato with cinnamon and spread some pumpkin flavored cream cheese on there.  Delish.

And I admit I devoured a can of green beans while I was waiting for the potato to cook.  I like canned green beans.  Guilty.

 

I would thinking of something interesting and/or creative to say right here, but it’s late and we’re about to watching Harry Potter #6 (in preparation of seeing Harry P in the theaters tomorrow!). 

Are you a Harry Potter fan?  If you are, do you like the books or the movies? Or did you cheat and only watch the movies?   The movies are okay, but I honestly find them rather boring.  The books of course were excellent!!

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Fluffy as a Pancake

Last week I had a couple days where I was able to sleep in (man I miss those mornings.  I’m tired and dying this week).  Anyways, I took advantage and made some pumpkin pancakes!

This recipe is deeeeeelicious and makes a huge batch. 

So, I have plenty in my freezer!  It’s honestly one of the best homemade pancake recipes I’ve found.

And pancakes topped with cream cheese are just….well…awesome.  Yes, that’s it.

 

Today started my “back-track-no-sweets-for-21-days” challenge.  You know I’m all for treats and things in complete excess moderation.  Which might explain the fact that I still had half a cookie post-run, and hot chocolate tonight. 

Even though I’m on a “back-track-no-sweets-for-21-days” mission.

But I’m okay with that, because it’s mainly the loads of Halloween candy (I blame you candy bowl at work!!), cookies, and fudge I’m trying to wean off of. 

Baby steps, folks.  Baby steps.  (Baby steps always reminds me of “What About Bob?”  Anyone….anyone?)

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Sweetie Pie

Tonight my friends put a little putluck together. Right away I knew I wanted to make this bread pudding. Knowing I would be working from 6 am – 5/6:00 pm, I prepared most of it last night.

I toasted up 8 pieces of bread. The recips calls for 5, but my bread slices were super tiny!! Only 50 calories per slice to give you a better picture. I bought the cheapest bread at Walmart! That might explain it.

Toasty.

While they were toasting up, I whisked the rest of the ingredients

• Milk (3/4 cup 2% milk, 3/4 cup almond milk. I didn’t want to use up tons of my almond milk 😉 )
• 3 eggs
• Pumpkin (used in place of sweet potato)
• Pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt

Cut up bread and put in baking dish!

I baked the bread pudding at my friend’s house so it would be fresh and hot just in time for dessert!

TOO. MANY. SWEETS. TODAY.

Oy.

My whole day wasn’t sweet-tastic. But much was.

Breakfast was sweet. Awesomely sweet.

Yogurt + peanut flour + maple syrup sweet. Cereal + banana + nectarine sweet. Jam sweet. Yummmmin sweet yummins.

Mid-morning breakfast: some oatmeal, eggs, cottage cheese & COFFEE. Big and filling.

Therefore I wasn’t too hungry at lunch. Salad bar it was!

Loaded with beets, feta, sunflower seeds, cottage cheese & Italian dressing.

I couldn’t help but grab this apple pie leftover from last night out of the fridge. I picked at half.  Mostly the bottom crust.  My favorite part.

It was falling apart, so I figured they wouldn’t serve it to any patients. Right?!?! 😉 SWEET.

Then that afternoon one of the chefs offered everyone some samples of desserts she was preparing. Um hello. How could I say no?

Delicious dense chocolate cake things. I had 1 1/2 small pieces. (Keep in mind these are small like 4-5 inch plates).

And carrot cake.

MAJOR SWEET.

I rushed home after work, changed, and grabbed a snack on my way out the door to nannying.

MASSIVE SWEET.

But nature sweet 🙂

When I found out dinner wouldn’t be until 7:30 or 8:00 (dang – these people eat late!!), I knew I needed a snack. Leftover cheesy veggies I actually cooked up last night, but was too full to eat. Topped with hummus.

And a big ol’ scoop of Nutzo.

At the potluck I had: (apologies for the horrible photos. Iphone camera + dim lighting doesn’t work out too well).

Couple handfuls of tortilla chips.

A sundried tomato breadstick

Veggie pizza and fruit salad (this plate x2)

Can’t forget the sweets – dessert.  PIE!! Oh pie. If I had known someone else was supplying dessert I wouldn’t have made mine.

Just kidding. Obviously I love every excuse to bake sweets.

Banana cream(!!)

Chocolate cream pie, and of course pumpkin bread pudding. And vanilla ice cream to top it all off.

You know what my plate looked like 😉

HOLY SWEET.

I actually only ate the crust off the chocolate cream pie. It had coconut in it – not a fan.

So. Full.

If I’m not careful, I’m gonna turn into a sweetie pie soon.

Oh who am I kidding….I already am one 😉

PS: everyone really liked the bread pudding.  I was so happy!  I feel like pumpkin and bread pudding are both hit and miss with people.  Make it!

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Mama’s Congo Squares

First up, Thursday night at Farmer’s Market, I had the BEST teriyaki chicken bowl ever. As luck would have it, I forgot both my camera AND my phone at home, so no picture. But it looked a lot like this, just minus the greens (I only had chicken & white rice. Doused in about 1 cups worth of teriyaki sauce)

[Source]

I had to post about this because it was actually quite a good step for me. This was most likely slightly fried chicken with skin over about 2 cups worth of white rice. In the past during my stricter (aka not healthy) eating period, I would never ever get white rice. I would have found something at Farmer’s that was bland and all completely healthy/low calorie. Sure, white rice is “empty” carbs and brown rice is better for you. But some white carbs now and then are not going to kill you!

I was very very satisfied with my absolutely delicious meal 😀

Then Friday morning I fueled up with 1 Vans Flax Plus waffle with figs (picked up at Whole Foods this past weekend with a coupon!). Topped with a blog of yogurt and some syrup.

Then I headed out on a run which was actually quite difficult! Even though I’ve been slowly increasing my mileage on my long runs, my short runs still seem just as difficult as they did 2 months ago. Why do I not seem to be building up my endurance?

Distance: 4 miles
Time: 37:33

Later in the afternoon I got to work on baking for Old Navy’s fundraiser bake sale. Since I had no oats to make cookies, I used my great-grandma’s Congo Square recipe!

Mama’s Congo Squares

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter
• 1 lb box brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 eggs
• 2 2/3 cups sifted flour (I used whole wheat – all I had)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Mix-ins (chocolate chips, nuts, etc)

Heat oven to 350F. Grease a 10 1/2 x 5 1/2 inch pan (I used 8×11) with 1/3 cube of butter.

Cream rest of the butter with brown sugar and vanilla.

Beat in egg, one at a time.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add dry ingredients slowly on low speed.

Mix in chocolate chips &/or nuts (I used chocolate morsels and cinnamon chips)

Spread dough evenly (it will be very thick) and bake for 25 minutes.

Let cool and cut into squares. It will be dense/doughy!!

I always loved licking the mixure.

Although growing up, my mom’s Kitchenaid one looked like this. I took pride in licking it so clean she claimed she “didn’t need to wash it!”

[Source]

My sister always got to clean out the bowl. Unfortunately she’s not here today to do so 😦

Good thing I am though 😉

Ooey gooey doughy goodness.

Although I do like my mom’s cookies more.

This morning I made protein packed whole wheat oat pancakes!

Dry ingredients:

• 1 scoop whey protein powder
• 3 T wheat bran
• 2 T whole wheat flour
• 3 T multigrain oats
• Cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg white
• Almond milk (didn’t measure – pour to right consistency)

Then topped with cream cheese, PB, & some syrup.

They were a bit dry this morning. I think I may have used too much protein powder.

Now I’m off to enjoy the heat! My brother’s band is playing at a day party (aka drunken Freshman day party), so I’m hoping to get in, see them play, and get out quick 😉

Have a wonderful Saturday!

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Meatless Monday

Ahoy! I hope everyone’s weekend was all you hoped it to be 🙂

After working from 7-4 on Saturday, I crashed and was on the couch the rest of the night watching TV and then the Blind Side (good movie!!). Sunday was just cleaning, grocery shopping, and more sitting on the couch 😉

I kept breakfast this morning light since I ate at 10:15, and I knew I was eating lunch out!

Yogurt + blackberries (which I splurged on this weekend) + cinnnamon PB + a handful of cereal. And since I ate it before I remembered to capture it on camera, here are the ingredients which went into the making of such a breakfast:

Excited to try the PB! Good, but not nearly as life changing as the maple almond butter. Had to get every last bit out.

Seriously. Don’t judge. You’d do the same.

I then proceeded to foam roll for a good 25 minutes and stretch. I’ve taken over a week of from running, but yet have majorly slacked on the rolling, which isn’t good. Roll roll roll it out! (sang to tune of ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’)

Then the roommate and I got our shop on at Express with our $15 off of a $30 purchase coupons. I walked out with some new jeans y’all for $24!And a new clutchity clutch from TJ Maxx.

Speaking of new clothes, I also put my discount to some work the other day when I stopped in at Gap. Loving these new jeans I got for only $22!

And also needed some longer shorts I could wear to work.

Is it just me or do those pictures remind you of online shopping and clicking on different colors of the same shirt. And then the shirt color changes in front of your eyes? I’m pretty sure I did actually change bottoms and re-take the picture, as much as it looks like I’m standing in the exact same pose.

Now back to today’s shopping…Took a pit stop for some grub – Veggie pizza (I think it had tomatoes, broccoli, olives, basil and garlic?) with goat cheese (instead of mozzarella) on whole wheat. + a small side salad which escaped the camera.

Love this restaurant’s (Pizza Solo) whole wheat crust. So chewy! I’ve been dreaming about this pizza since the last time I went (when I got Teriyaki chicken pizza), and thought of the idea to get goat cheese on one. It was good, but I’d definitely get some different veggies next time! And maybe some chicken?

I practiced some major self restraint and only had half, which I was happy about 20 minutes later when I was full. And I’ll be happy tomorrow when I have leftovers.

Throughout the afternoon I snacked on dried apricots

And some Nature’s Path granola (so good!)

For dinner I whipped up a version of eggplant parmesan!

• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
• Garlic salt, paprika & cumin
• 1 eggplant
• 1 1/2 cups (half a jar) butternut squash pasta sauce
• 1/4 cup mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese

1. Combine the bread crumbs & spices.
2. After peeling and slicing the eggplant, dunk each slice in the egg whites and then coat them with the bread crumb + spice mixture.
3. Cook in skillet sprayed with pam or with a bit of oil. Flip to cook both sides.
4. Lay the eggplant in a pan. I used a square 8 x 8 pan, so I had 3 layers of eggplant. After the first layer, coat with pasta sauce and sprinkle with half the cheese. Layer the rest of the eggplant on top. Top with pasta sauce and the rest of the cheese.
5. Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes.

Delicious!!! This was so good. Very happy it turned out right since I didn’t look at any recipes.

Plus night-time snackage – frozen blueberries, hot cocoa, and an apple with PB. For some reason my night-time snacks always miss the camera

Now it’s no surprise that my meals were meatless today since I don’t buy/eat meat much at school. But I realized just now that my meals were meatless versions of usually “meaty meals.” Vegetarian pizza instead of meat pizza and eggplant parmesan instead of chicken parm! Go me 😉

Now if only the weather here were actually warm, I could get some beach and sun time in 🙂 Unfortunately it’s been low 60s for a while and doesn’t look to warm up! Where is our California summer weather??

Is it warm where you’re living right now?

And anything exciting over the weekend happen?

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Happy Hour

Breakfast this morning was something I’ve had on my mind for a while.

Breakfast sandwich!

I microwaved 3 egg whites and layered it on a sprouted cinnamon raisin bagel which I spread pesto hummus & whipped chive cream cheese onto. Oh, and can’t forget the ketchup. This side looks pretty.

I had issues cutting it again.

The sweet and savory combo worked quite well and this was delicious. As was the addition of the pesto hummus & chive cream cheese. Happy belly.

I then headed to work where I made tons of money spent my paycheck on clothes. Ha. Whoops. In my defense it was all clearance items, and a few things I’ve been eyeing for a while. It was a bit depressing though when all my normal sizes didn’t fit at all. It’s one thing for my size to be tight, but quite another to have to go up 1 or 2 sizes. Seriously need to get my butt in gear here!

Lunchie chowed down during my 15 minute break:

• Chobani yogurt
• Kashi Go Lean cereal
• Strawberries (added post picture)
• Spoonful of PB

It’s hard to figure out an eating schedule with work. Sometimes I’m not hungry before work or during my break, but I know it’ll be a couple hours before I can eat again. So I know I need to eat something! Frustrating to make myself eat when I’m not hungry though!

Then it was time for happy hour!

Source – google images.

Starbucks frappucinos are all half off from 3-5 pm until May 17th! I know they are chemical laden and just plain not good for you. But who can deny themselves a frappie once and a while? 😉

Caramel light frappucino with non-fat milk. Perfect pre-run snack with a jolt.

My run was short but sweet.

3 miles in 28 minutes. I only did about 4-5 minutes of walk breaks throughout.

I’ve been building up the distance of my weekly “long run,” but keeping my other runs at 2.5-3.5 miles each. I really can’t wait until I can start adding miles to these runs too and head out for a 5-6 miler without a second thought. All in good time 🙂

Dinner was unpictured. I’m not joking when I say I was so starving, I started to eat it right off the pan, and then continued eating while talking to my roommates. And before I knew it, all my delicious parsnip fries were gone. But yup – parsnip fries!! Coated with nut butter. You betcha I’ll be making those again 😉

I also had the same salad I’ve been enjoying recently, which looked like this:

Finished off the texas caviar mix. You were quite tasty, but I probably wouldn’t buy again.

Oh can’t forget my little handful of granola in between my run and dinner 😉

Coconut Pomegranate Granola

• 3 cups oats
• 1/4 cup raisins or other dried fruit
• 1/2 cup nuts (I used almonds)
• 8 oz pomegranate juice
• 2 TB coconut oil
• 1/4 cup ground flax meal
• 1/4 cup Agave syrup

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Combine above ingredients and toss to coat
3. Spread on baking sheet and bake 25-30 minutes, tossing every 10 minutes or so.

So honestly, I had high hopes for this granola. But it never crisped up in the oven! Maybe it was because I used a container of multigrain oats. But it was still tasty 🙂

Are you a frappucino fan? Favorite flavor?

Caramel light frappie obsessed over here! Lovvvvve that caramel drizzle.

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The Return of Billy

Today Tae Bo came back into my life with a kick!

You wanna piece of me? 😉

When I woke up, I was still full from last night. See this deadly stuff?

Not even sure I shoud post this on the blog…..

Yes. Deadly. Purely Decadent’s coconut milk cookie dough ice cream. HOLY. Gone within 2 nights. Must avoid this in the future. The end.

So I was still full/off feeling this morning. Enter my light breakfast.

Kashi Go Lean cereal, banana cream pie yogurt, and DCD peanut butter.

Yes fake and fake. But love this favor so I cannot deny.

Then I punched my way fit with 30 minutes of Billy Blanks Tae Bo. I used to do tae bo all the time. In fact, freshman year, the peope below me highly questioned what I was up to in my room 😉 It actually helped me lose much of my weight originally. It built insane amount of muscle!

I’ve decided to start incorporating tae bo back into my workout routine (granted my knee feels okay with it. It has aggrivated my knee in the past). Since I’ve gotten bored with my weights routine, I figure this will be a way to tone and mix things up!

Post-workout eats – juicy juicy mangooooooo.

And a Trader Joe’s whole wheat flatbread topped with tomato basil hummus.  Love these new flatbreads!  Chewy and yum.

I then proceeded to scour downtown on the mission for “cute brown boots with heels that can pass as cowboyish boots.” Very specific. Defeated and unlucky, I came home to order some from zappos:

Can’t beat free shipping and free return shipping if they’re ugly don’t fit.

El snackos at el worko.

Blueberry pomegranate flax muffin (see recipe below!) with PB.

So moist. So delicious. So yum!

A hearty piece of this…bread. Dessert bread? It was something good.

And fruit.

Dinner was some texas caviar blackeyed pea mix over salad topped with tomato basil hummus (from Farmer’s Market).

So you want that muffin recipe, eh? A few weeks ago, POM Wonderful sent me some pomegrante juice to sample. So far I’ve

• marinated chicken in the POM juice
• Dressed a salad with pomigranate dressing

Next up? Baking with the POM juice!

Blueberry Pomegrante Flax Muffins

• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup ground flax meal
• 3/4 cup wheat bran
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 T canola oil
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup agave
• 3/4 cup POM pomegranate juice
• 1/4 cup milk of choice (I used soy)
• 2 cups frozen blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Sift together dry ingredients.
3. Mix together wet ingredients (except the blueberries)
4. Combine the dry with wet ingredients.
5. Fold in the blueberries.
6. Fill muffin containers and bake for 22-24 minutes.

These turned out wonderful!

They’re delicious, but still slightly a little bland. Next time, I would:

• Possibly increase the amount of agave or add more sweetner
• Add more wheat bran to bulk up the fiber (increase the amont of liquid if you do this)
• Add more flax meal
• Try it with bananas!

Delicious with nut butter or even a bit of cream cheese 🙂

Tomorrow – stay tuned for some pomegranate granola!

What would you use pomegranate juice for?

I still have more bottles in the fridge and need ideas people! So give me your best ones 🙂

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Gettin’ Busy

I know there are a multitude of motherly devoted posts floating around out there today. So add one more to the bunch 😉

Mommy – I love you!!! You’ve done so much for all of us. I don’t know how you put up with 5 kids!! We share a passion for health, nutrition and fitness, and I don’t think I would have those interests if it weren’t for her!

Trying our first Cosmos in Mexico together (yes, she never had a Cosmo until a few years ago!)

We did the SF Women’s Nike marathon 3 years in a row. Only one year I walked the half with her, and the others years I ran on my own. But it was still great to have her support. I keep trying to motivate her to run, and dream to run a half with her one day!

Love you Mommy!!

This weekend, the kitchen and I have gotten busy. Most of the roommates were out of town, and I some POM juice I wanted to experiment with, so I thought to msyelf “Taylor – this would be an excellent weekend to bake.” So bake I did.

Yesterday I whipped up my first ever batch of homemade granola! (Recipe to come tomorrow)

And maple pecan nut butter.

1. Toast 1 1/2 cups pecans at 350 for 6-8 minutes.
2. Process in a food processor, sraping down the sides as needed.
3. Once the nuts are smooth, drizzle in 2-3 tsp maple syrup and 1/4 tsp salt.
4. Continue to process until completely smooth.

My mini-food processor is not that powerful, and I definitely didn’t process this for long enough. I also added way too much maple syrup, and it became an ooey gooey mess. But I do not lie when I say it tastes exacly like cookie dough. Therefore, I deem this pecan butter a complete and utter success. Not very practical for spreading, but definitely practical for crumbling over food – such as oats or apples!

And also practical for eating straight up. Duh.

Today I hit up the gym (2.5 mile treadmill run!), then hit up our school’s baseball game. Which was slightly painful. I came back and snacked on this:

Which was good!! I was not expecting to like an orange-chocolate bar. But it tasted like a fig newton.

And granola:

Someone send me lotion ASAP.

And then got busy with Mr. Kitch again. Together we made Blueberry Pomegranate Muffins.

I seriously couldn’t wait 1 minute to try these out as my plate obviously shows 😉 Spread with some nut butter for good measure.

Oh and uh seconds, obvs.

This one a bit more cooled & structured. With cream cheese in the middle.

Nommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Recipe for these to come tomorrow as well. Be patient my friends! It is a virtue 🙂

Now I’m eating carrots and ranch + BBQ sauce dip.

And obviously won’t be hungry for a big dinner, since I did eat all this at around 4:30-5:00. Snackin’ my way through the evening!

How was everyone’s Mother’s Day? Did you see your momma?

My siblings all pitched in to send our mommy an edible bouquet. I’m kind of sad I’m not home to try out some of the fruit!!

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Cookies and Concerts

Happy Sunday to everyone 🙂

I’ve kept extremely busy since my last post, so I won’t recap everything, but here are some highlights!

Friday I got busy in the kitchen. I saw this no meat dessert, and wanted to test out the waters. I have a good amount of soynut butter that I’m not the hugest fan of the taste on it’s own. So I wanted to try it out with that. I also made a few other modifications.

• 3 tablespoons water 1 egg
• 1 tbsp ground flaxseed meal
• 1 1/4 cups Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All-Purpose Baking Flour whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1/2 cup organic palm fruit oil shortening canola oil (I really had no idea if this would be an acceptable substitution)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sunflower seed butter chocolate soynut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Since I wasn’t concerned about making the recipe gluten free or vegan, I used 1 egg instead of the flaxseed substitution, and regular whole wheat flour.

The cookie dough was extremely oily, I swear I could squeeze out the oil as I was putting the dough on the cookie sheets. I’m not sure if that was due to the fact that I used a different type of nut butter, or oil.

They turned out decent! I wasn’t a huge fan of them, but they went quickly and got great reviews at the BBQ I took them to. Everyone just said they tasted like a very mild peanut butter cookie and just needed a bit more flavor.

I didn’t tell my roommate what I used in them, I just told her I used “a different type of nut butter.” And she loved them. Later when I said I used soynut butter, she squealed out “EWWWW!!!” haha. Oh picky people, why are they so against other forms of food? 😉

I also made a batch of brownies if these didn’t turn out. They were a hit last time so I knew they’d be a success. Again, I used this recipe and used egg starts, whole wheat flour, and omitted the walnut because that’s what I had on hand.

Yes I baked my brownies in a pie pan. Our cake pan and square pan were both at separate locations.  And don’t mind the hole in the middle 😉 Because of the different pan, I had to keep checking if they were done yet.

Such good brownies. Highly recommend them! Ironically, these weren’t nearly as popular as the cookies though. Maybe because they were more moist and harder to eat? 😉

My roommates are in complete shock whenever I make anything from scratch. They always use boxed brownie mix or cookie mix from a bag. I admit, I did grow up using boxed brownie and cake mixes (I didn’t make real brownies until here at school!). But my whole life my mom would always make her special cookies from scratch. I would never even think to use a bagged mix! Funny how people are raised differently 😉

Yesterday (Saturday), I was up early to run around on my feet at work from 9-12. It was Old Navy’s grand re-opening and it was crazy!! It was fun to rock out to the DJ though. I wish we had a DJ everytime!

Pre-work fuel:

• Greek yogurt (homemade)
• Kashi Good Friends cereal
• Bottom crumbs of my Life cereal (pretty much the best part of the box)
• Dark Chocolate Dreams PB
• Crofter’s jam

Soooo full, but I couldn’t eat for 4 hours and I’d be on my feet!

Post-work fuel:

Gotta love free pizza 😀

I then hit the road for my 3 1/2 hour drive home. I came home this weekend for the Brooks and Dunn concert!! We picked up dinner on the way, and I absolutely had to get my favorite burrito ever:

• Chicken breast
• Mango vinaigrette (instead of salsa)
• Pico de gallo
• Lettuce
• Brown rice
• WW tortilla

The sauce the cook this chicken breast in is amazing. LOVE this burrito.

Unfortunately we hit incredibly bad traffic on the way to the concert and missed Jason Aldean (the opening performer).

We made it there for Brooks and Dunn, though! They were great live. I had fun with my sisters 😀

And since they have a ridiculous amount of singles and have been around for 20 years, there were a lot of “down” moments where we just hung out on our blanket and goofed around with good music in the background 😉

And it was great people watching. Hilarious to see everyone completely drunk and dancing. These 3 guys were grinding up on girls in front of us the whole time!

This morning started with a yogurt mess that escaped the camera (but you’ve seen it all before 😉 ). But I did capture this delicious looking beauty that my mom had for me.

Cinnamon apple wrap.

But honestly not a big fan. It was too much wrap and not enough apple. And the apples tasted too lemony. I’m not a big fan of lemon zest in my apple pie or apple desserts.

It had great potential though!

I’m off to spend the rest of the day enjoying time with my family. Which probably means a family trip to Costco 😉 Not going to lie – my family enjoys going to Costco together. And celebrating my birthday! Enjoy your Sunday!

Were you a boxed mix or a make-from-scratch kinda family growing up? What about now?

Like I said, I never think to make cookies from a box/mix. But brownies and cake? That’s another story. I’ve recently started making brownies from scratch, and it’s super easy – and delicious!

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