Banana Bread Pudding and a Long Run

Let's cut to the chase... since once again, I SHOULD be doing homework and am instead writing a blogpost, because the things I made this morning was really, really good.

It was pudding...or maybe more like soft serve ice cream....or a super thick smoothie (you decide!) but it had the taste of banana bread. Really. I kid you not. EXACTLY like it... and then that added cold, frozen dreamy creaminess that 'banana soft-serve' has, for those of you who have just blended up frozen bananas know.

I STRONGLY recommend this. I think it may be my favorite thing I've made thus far! Sweet, refreshing, fruity, and really... banana bready :)

BANANA BREAD FROZEN PUDDING

1 frozen banana

1/3 cup almond milk

1/8 cup rolled oats, ground in food processer to powder

Dash Cinnamon

Dash Nutmeg

OPTIONAL TOPPINGS:

Coconut Flakes

Chocolate Chips

Chopped Almonds

Peanut Butter

Caramel Sauce

1. Put everything into your blender and blend on high until you get a creamy, soft-serve ice cream/pudding consistency.
2. Top with whatever your little heart desires. I went with coconut flakes (overcoming my fear of saturated fats!) and some cocoa roasted almonds, which were awesome because a little bit of chocolate got in there in the almond bites but I also got the plain-banana bread taste in others, which I LOVED. ENJOY!

Here she is! All topped up!

Okay, so I ate the toppings first :)

 At practice today we got the pleasure of getting in a long run. I love long runs, because you can really let loose and get the acid out of your muscles but still get in a bit of a workout. I find that my mind really clears up and I start to get in touch with my body more and more as the run goes on. Plus, you can talk with your teammates! We played a little game in which we speculated where all the people we knew would be in 10 years. It's funny, but according to us, it seems that we will all be doctors or physical therapists or physchologists. That tells you a bit about the kind of girls on our team, haha....fun-loving but also loving. And smart. I love my team. They are always there for me. Plus, when I shared the embarrassing fact that yes, I started a blog, no one laughed. They were very interested in learning how to make a smoothie taste like banana bread, I'll say that!

Question of the Day: Where do you see YOURSELF in 10 years?

Finally Friday: and Some Healthy Chocolate Bread!

It's been a long week. The first week of school often is, of course, but this one seemed especially lengthy. Maybe it's because it's Junior year and I'm starting a whole bunch of new classes and receiving a tornado of new information that I have to keep straight. Maybe it's the difficult XC workouts we've been starting the season out with (they've been pretty monotonous, and I certainly feel the burn. I've also been told by my coach not to put our workouts on the internet for fear that other teams will get them...so I can't actually tell you WHAT we did. Just that it was hard and tiring). Maybe it's the sad fact that I haven't had time to update my blog as much as I really would like to. Or maybe it's a combination of all those things. (I think my vote's on the last one!)

Today is going to be a time to catch up on all the blog posts. It was also a night to spend in the kitchen, experimenting with this and that and whipping up more delicious recipes...or at least I hope they're delicious. It's been hard to try out new concoctions, because I'm paranoid that my recipes are going to fall flat, literally and metaphorically.

The first one tonight didn't.

Chocolate Almond Protein Bread

3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup egg whites

1 oz. cocoa roast almonds

1/3 cup almond milk

1 scoop vanilla (or chocolate) protein powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. almond extract

1 T. Dark Chocolate Cocoa Powder

1/4 cup Sugar in the Raw or Agave

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Grind almonds to powder, then keep grinding to a bit of a wet paste in a food processor.
3. Combine all ingredients and mix well.
4. Pour into greased loaf pan and bake in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
5. Cut into slices and remove from pan. Can be frozen and kept well that way! ENJOY!

*A little note here. This ENTIRE loaf of bread has only 735 calories. I cut mine into 8 slices, which came out nice and THICK, and each one has only about 95 calories! And it tastes AWESOME. I'm not kidding. Especially warm....and a little bit gooey....ahhhh

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What's your favorite thing to cook, or at least type of cooking? Mine is probably sauting and stir frying, because it's so involved, but it would have to be followed closely by baking, as you might be able to tell!

A Plethora of Pumpkin

School starts this week, and I cannot believe it! People always say that summer flies by... but they's be right about that. It's a sad, sad story for those of us who want that extra time outdoors in the sun, getting tan and eating ice cream at the beach (by now it's back to being too cold for good old Long Island Sound).

But I'm still excited. I mean, it's my Junior year! Okay, so I'm about to become one BUSY girl between XC and AP homework, but this is going to be the year when you really start to have fun at school: prom, spirit week, SATs, and just being an upper classman! But I'm nervous to see how I do keeping up on the blogging. It's a lot of fun, so I don't want to give it up.

I just hope you're enjoying it as much as I am.

What was I doing to prepare? Oh, you know... cooking.

Lots and lots of cooking.

I figured I could make a plethora of freezer meals/ already cooked oatmeal that will get super thick and creamy in the fridge so I will have another 5 minutes here and there to do other things. It better be worth it...I was cooking for 4 hours. (Who am I kidding? I loved every minute of that four hours. It was like my little present to myself. OF COURSE it was worth it!)

One of my favorite flavors, next to chocolate and peanut butter, would have to be pumpkin. Especially since school is starting up, I can finally say that it's "fallish" enough to start putting the pumpkin in just about everything. Plus, I was trying to be economical by buying the GIANT 40oz can, only to realize that most recipes don't call for more than 1/2 cup or so...

Oh well. All the more pumpkin-y items to make!

Here are the recipes that inspired my little pumpkin party:

• Powered Up Pumpkin Oats by Lindsay at 'A Pinch of Yum'
• Pumpkin Muffins  by Katie at 'Chocolate Covered Katie'
• Pumpkin Protein Pancakes by Julie at 'Peanut Butter Fingers'
• Apple Cinnamon Chobani Bread (which I made pumpkin!) by Kelly at 'The No Sugar Sweet Life'

And best of all... I still have about 1/3 of my can of pumpkin left! Looks like there will be more baking in store for today! Now the awful dilemma as I decide what I want to make... (I'm trying to make things that will keep well or can be frozen so I can heat them up for a speedy pre-school breakfast or workout snack! See my post about what makes good pre-workout fuel here.)

Here's what I did to adapt the recipes:

• Doubled the Pumpkin Oats Recipe so I could eat it TWICE, it was THAT good. Also, substitued 1/2 cup Kashi GoLean for the bran flakes to give it some more clusters, added 1 tsp dark chocolate cocoa powder in at the end, and substituted brown sugar with honey. Also, by leaving it in the fridge overnight, it got MUCH thicker and creamier, so I added another 1/2 cup almond milk before heating again and it was AWESOME. Even better than before, if I do say so myself. You could also eat cold as a pudding and I bet it would be great.
• For Katie's muffins, I actually quadrupled the recipe so I could make 4 muffins and freeze them. Instead of chocolate chips, I added raisins, chopped walnuts, and coconut flakes. As a side note, I had to bake for longer because there were more muffins (about 20 minutes instead of 12).
• For the Pumpkin Protein Pancakes, I subbed Greek Yogurt for the cottage cheese and also added 1/2 scoop vanilla whey protein powder to the mix. I added 1/2 tsp baking soda because I wanted my pancakes even fluffier (it worked!) and then, because I'm a naughty girl, I added chocolate chips to the batter (no measurements here!)
• The Chobani Bread was slightly more work to recreate since I was totally changing the flavors, but I proceeded with as much confidence as I could muster. HA! Recipe, you shall not phase me! Instead of cinnamon, I used pumpkin pie spice (if you don't have this on hand, combine some nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger). I subbed the agave with molasses for a different, deeper flavored sweetener (I used 1/4 cup). Instead of apple cinnamon yogurt, I used plain with 2 drops stevia, and then instead of the applesauce I used 1/2 cup pumpkin puree. I STILL used the softened apple in the bread because pumpkin-apple is actually a very nice combo and it gave the bread the extra lightness a midst a more dense cakey-part. As an attempt to be creative, near the end of the bread's baking I mixed together 1/4 cup oats, 3 T. chopped pecans, and 2 T. brown sugar and took the bread out to sprinkle these on. I then turned the oven to broil and waited to get a nice crust on top. Yumm!

Phew! Well, now you know how I spent a good portion of my day. How was your Saturday? Do you ever get really caught up in the kitchen just going around like a whirling dervish and trying to make 10 things at once? Tell me your story!After all, as I had to remember when trying to make adaptations:

IT IS BETTER TO DO THE WRONG THING THAN IT IS TO DO NOTHING.

What do you think of today's quote? Tell me!

Not Your Momma's Hummus

Despite terrible nausea last night, I buckled down to a goal I set for myself: try something completely new in the kitchen. Which was easy to do given the plethora of new things I've bought in the past several weeks to make accommodations for vegetarianism and a blog... Over here Heather asked about what everyone's pantry looks like: well, mine is kind of a mess. (Today's mission...organize it!) I have beans strewn over several shelves, the flour and sugar are way in the back and I have to push through boxes of crackers to access them, there are duplicate open packages of things (arggghhh), the nut butters are in disarray... it's a train wreck.

Plus, it leads to those feelings where you walk up looking for a good snack, can't immediately see anything you like, and maybe end up heading over to Dairy Queen for a blizzard. Maybe. (My freezer's not working...no banana ice cream could be made D:  )

NEVER FEAR! Sarah is on the job! Or maybe I should say... Beanie is. I've already had a rant about his superpowers here, so I won't repeat, but let's just say that he's magical. Maybe even more so than Harry Potter. (Not than Hermione, however. That would be stretching it. Sorry, sorry, geek reference!)

My first new creation looked something like this:

HUMMUS!

Or, because we had nothing I could dip into it, like this:

A PARFAIT!

TO START, YOU NEED CHICKPEA FLOUR

HOMEMADE CHICKPEA 'FLOUR'

(Makes 3/4 cup of flour)...And WAYYY economical- half the price of store-bought!

*1/2 Cup Dried Chickpeas, rinsed and cleaned

*3 cups water

1. Cook the chickpeas! What was once 1/2 cup dried should now give you about 1+1/3 cups. Drain off all excess water and transfer chickpeas to small bowl.
2. Here's the annoying part... and probably the reason that most people would just BUY flour. Pop each chickpea out of its little skin and put in separate bowl. Throw skins away. Don't get too frustrated if you can't get every little piece of the skin off or if you slaughter smoosh the chickpeas when doing so. You'll have a chance to get skin off again later, and chickpeas need to get smooshed anyway.

Little Demons Chickpea Skins

3. After you've gotten off all or nearly all of the skins, mash up your chickpeas with a fork or the back of a spoon. Or even use a food processer (like everything else I own, mine seems to be broken). HOWEVER, I think the little chunky texture is good especially if you prefer a beany taste so I do recommend the fork/spoon method.

4. At this point, my 'flour' was fairly dry so I called it good. Remove any other visible skins you see. If you are really a perfectionist, however, or if for some reason your bean mash is still pretty wet, use paper towels to squeeze out the excess moisture.Makes about 3/4 cup flour. AND YOU'RE DONE!

*Note, you could just prepare an entire package of dried chickpeas (1 lb) to make more all at once. I didn't because, as I said, this was an experiment, and my Dad didn't want any waste in case it didn't turn out! 

*Homemade Flour (3/4 cup) - about 25 cents

*Store-bought Chickpea Flour (3/4 cup) - about 45-60 cents

Connections on the Blogosphere

Well, I'm starting to get my blog out there, and MAN it feels great. I pretty much squealed in delight when I got my first comment and then went for a 5 minute dance rave... which my poor sister had to witness. I think she's scarred for life. But a special thanks to Rachel for being the person behind that comment. You will forever hold a special place among my 'blends' (I am now picking up on blogging slang, this particular term meaning blogging friends. Oh, I am in way over my head...AHHH).

Today's run, sadly, was back to the old routine mostly because of insufferable heat (I'm a wimp) and an overwhelming desire to return to the computer and get on with all my little blogging endeavors. I don't think I've ever done something 'halfway', and this is proof. Later today I plan on taking my little doggy for a walk just to be sure I get enough fresh air. I think, sadly, at this point I would take a laptop computer on a walk with me if A) I had one and B) I could type and walk at the same time. There simply are never enough hours in the day for everything I want to do. I don't know what's going to happen when school rolls around next week.

An Empty Bowl Awaiting Today's Recipe.... Pretty Bowls Make Everything Taste Better!

Today's breakfast consisted of a slight adaptation of Katie's Peach Breakfast Bake. An update on the status of our fridge/freezer: still not working. The repairman finally got a chance to come yesterday and it turns out we'll have to order a new part and then he'll have to return to install it. So, out came all of our frozen foods, and I am trying my hardest to be as not-wasteful as possible when it comes to them. Frozen peaches that were dethawed already? Check. Time for some peachy-keen recipes, then! (The other sad thing is nothing keeps, so I've been trying to make single-serve things. And although Katie's recipe supposedly serves 3 people, I adapted it to my needs for... 1. I mean, it only came to about 400 calories total after my modifications, so I think it was justified...Maybe.)

Here's A Picture of Mine

Hi-Ho CHEERIO PEACH COBBLER

*For the Peaches*

2.5 Cups Sliced Peaches (Thawed, from frozen bag. Or slice your own)

1 T. Brown Sugar

1/2 T. Cornstarch

1/2 T. Lemon Juice

1/2 tsp. Cinnamon

Dash Nutmeg

Dash Ginger

*For the Topping*

1 Cup. Cinnamon Cheerios, crushed a little bit

1 T. Coconut Butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine all ingredients for peaches in small bowl.
3. Top with slightly-crushed cheerios (you will want some to remain as whole O's)
4. Drizzle entire dish with butter
5. Bake for 45 minutes
6. ENJOY! I like it better served cold, actually, but it is good warm too. You can combine it with yogurt, whipped cream, ice cream, fro-yo, or pudding. I also might recommend some vanilla protein oat pudding!

*Note, I ate this whole bake. It wasn't too incredibly filling, I would say, so for a big fruity breakfast you might do the same. Or eat half as a small pre-workout meal and the rest at the end for your post-workout recovery snack. In any case, enjoy it how you like!

*In my recipe, entire dish, yes EVERYTHING totals up to be: 405 calories, 75g carbs (Don't freak out-most are natural sugars from the peaches or whole grains from the cereal!), 6g fat

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

What is your favorite dessert flavor/indulgent dessert, specifically? Mine would have to be peanut butter chocolate pretzel. All together. MMMMMM. I plan to make some awesome adaptations of healthy things with your ideas, so keep me posted!