Photo Montage Galore

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

I’m still alive. Yup. Just haven’t had enough things to actually chat about on here lately. So…yeah.

Things of lately (obviously if you follow me on Instagram, you got the idea already. And if you don’t follow me on Instagram, then please do!)

Workouts have been pretty consistent. I have been mixing it up between outdoor runs, home circuit workouts, TRX, spinning, tabatas, and as of tonight….HOT YOGA! I purchased another one-month unlimited pass today and attended the Bikram Vinyasa Flow class. Love Love LOVE it because not only did I get a killer workout, but it allowed me to completely shut my mind off for 75 minutes. So lovely.

The creepy pic that’s second down on the right (in the above montage) was a workout I did early in the morning last Friday before we hit the road to Edmonton. It’s super tiny print, so here’s the quick, but effective workout I managed:

4 tabatas (Tabata= 20 seconds WORK, 10 seconds REST, repeated 8 times for a totaly for 4 minues). I alternated between 2 moves for each tabata.

1: Jump squats/Jumping jacks with pulse squat

2: Pushups/Tricep dips

3: Fire Hydrants (alternating between L and R sides. link to video demo here.)

4: Russian twist/Lying weight press

So yeah, we went to Edmonton (about a 3 hour drive north of Calgary) for one night. It was a long weekend here, and everyone seemed to be getting out of town, so that’s what we decided on. Nothing glamourous. Just a chance to get away. We hit up the West Edmonton mall (ummmm they have an ice rink and an amusement park and a water park and SEA LIONS. Yeah, and lots of stores too) and found a nice spot for dinner, MKT. I decided to indulge and ate some foods I would NEVER order. Of course, my stomach totally paid for it, but I really enjoyed the evening with Tyler.

The puppies have been getting some outdoor time, too!

We hit our usual spot today. But I decided to take the four-legged friends up a bit of a hill just to see the view. (Just kidding, it was just to see how disastrous it would be to climb a hill with stairs with two dummies on leashes). It’s a bummer the photo didn’t come out as sweet as the view, but I tried..Maybe try clicking on it to enlarge it so you can see my stupid little write-up.

And to round off my ‘catching up’ post (although I’m sure there’s tons I forgot, so I’ll probably mention them whenever) I made a batch of muffins this morning. I had a ton of fruit laying around the house, and I knew I needed to use some up before it all went bad (already have tons in the freezer, too!) I used a recipe that I’ve used before, but adapted to what I had readily available in the kitchen.

Skinny Banana Blueberry Muffins (adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction)

2 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 c agave nectar
1/2 c brown sugar
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
1 T white vinegar + the rest almond milk to equal one cup
1 egg beaten
1 1/4 c fresh blueberries

* Check out the original recipe, linked above. I used agave instead of honey, 1 full cup almond milk (w/1 T white vinegar) rather than 1/4 c yogurt + 3/4 c milk) and whole wheat flour instead of white whole wheat flour. Just improvising with what I had!

Preheat oven to 325, spray muffin tin with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
In another bowl, mix agave nectar and brown sugar until fully combined- no lumps! Add the banana, milk mixture, and egg. Slowly combine the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Once fully incorporated, fold in the blueberries.
Pour batter into muffin tin. Bake for 22-25 minutes, or until tops of muffins are slightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the muffins come out clean.

What food/meal have you been loving lately?

Favorite place to get away…even if it’s just for a night?

DO YOU LIKE MUFFINS??!! (you don’t have to answer that)

Right, so two posts in one day. Basically,

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

Right, so two posts in one day. Basically, it’s a long episode of The Bachelorette, and Tyler is playing video games. Soooo yeahhhhh…

Just two things I NEED to share. Number one: The workout I did today. Consider this your Monday Moves post for the week. It was a great mix of strength and cardio and I was super sweaty and ready to hit the showers by the end. (Note: I completed the workout nearly 3 hours ago and I have yet to shower. Cue the gross factor.)

(Source)

Number two: The cookies I baked today. I don’t know why I never thought of making these before, but DAYY-UMM they are yummy. I almost didn’t want to share, but realized I probably should since it would be rude to tell you about them, but not tell you how to make them and be all Cookie Monster-esque like me:

GIFSoup

K, onto the stuff. Might as well give you the workout first.

I did this workout with a 5 minute warmup on the row machine, 20 min spin after Circuit 1, and 15 minute run after circuit 2. I would have completed extra cardio after the third circuit, but I had already made a trip to the dog park earlier in the day AND I needed to get to the grocery store for dinner stuff before Tyler got home. There’s my excuse. Still a great workout, though!

Now…the COOOOOOKIES!

Browned-Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Here’s what you’ll need:

3/4 c butter
1/4 c sugar
3/4 c bown sugar
1 egg
3 tsp vanilla
2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
dash salt
1 c chocolate chips

Here’s what you do:

1. Place the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Continuously stir for several minutes until butter bubbles, then begins turning light brown.

2. Immediately place the browned butter in a mixer (or bowl if using hand mixer) and cream with both sugars.

3. Once they are fully incorporated, add the egg and vanilla.

4. Then add flour, soda and salt and mix until just incorporated.

5. Hand fold in the chocolate chips.

6. Place mixture in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 350 and prepare baking pans. After 30 minutes and once oven is ready, spoon blobs of the dough onto the baking sheets and bake for 12 minutes. Cookies will be soft to touch upon taking out of the oven, so allow them to cool on cookie pans for 5-10 minutes before moving to wire racks.

Night, y’all.

Fatten You Up then Slim You Down

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

I have two things to share with you in this post (don’t worry, Winesday Wednesday will be coming later today). Unfortunately, the two things I have to share contradict one another. The first, is a supremely awesome cookies recipe- one that is NOT healthified AT ALL. The other is a super sweaty treadmill interval workout.

What I’m trying to say is….make these cookies and then run this workout and you’ll be all good. I’m still here, aren’t I? And I did both yesterday…and plan to do both until those cookies are dunzo.

So this cookie recipe is something I actually came up with all on my own. No guideline whatsoever. Perhaps they already exist somewhere in the recipe world, but I haven’t come across it. Here’s how it came about: every time I ask Tyler what he thinks I should bake, his response is always chocolate chip cookies. I am always game for the triple c’s, but I recently spotted a few squares of baker’s chocolate in the cupboard, so I really wanted a way to incorporate those into a cookie recipe.

Insert: Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies turned out better than I imagined, and they DEFINITELY need to be accompanied by a glass of milk. They are super rich. (Some people cross the line at too much chocolate, but to those people I say poo-poo.)

Here’s What You’ll Need:

1/2 c butter
1/2 c brown sugar
1/4 c sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla
1 c flour
1/3 c cocoa powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/8 t salt
4 squares semi-sweet Baker’s chocolate
1 cup chocolate chips

Here’s What You Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare baking sheets with cooking spray

2. Cream butter, sugars, egg and vanilla.

3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. Add dry mixture to wet mixture and combine.

4. Melt chocolate squares in a double boiler (put a small amount of water in a sauce pan, turn the stove on to heat the water, and place a bowl that will rest comfortably on the sauce pan so that the bottom of the bowl will not touch the water level in the pan. constantly stir chocolate until it is just melted.) Add to the rest of the ingredients and combine. Fold in chocolate chips.

5. Refrigerate dough for about 30 minutes. The cold dough will result in thicker cookies!

6. Scoop balls of dough on cookie pans, and bake for about 13 minutes. After removing from the oven, allow cookies to sit on the pan for a few minutes before moving to a cooling rack. Makes 18 (I make medium-large sized cookies)

So good.

And now I have TWO kitchen helpers. They didn’t want to show their faces in the above picture.

Ok, so after you make these cookies and you eat a bunch of them and you’re all “oh man, now I really need to sweat this chocolate out but I don’t know what I should do about it” then consult the following treadmill interval workout.

This interval workout consists of 5 minutes of running with 5-1 minute sprints. You can do the same speed for 3 rounds of the entire circuit, or you can do the suggested increase in speed for round 2 and round 3. Either way, it’s a pretty sweet and sweaty run.

That’s all I have for you right now, stay tuned for the Winesday Wednesday post!!!!

Whole Wheat Sweet Potato Banana Muffins

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

I’m one of those people who don’t like things to go to waste. I keep all the weird shapes of leftover wrapping paper, I’ll write my grocery list and workout on the same sheet of paper, I use empty glass food/drink jars as flower vases or candle holders, and I try to use up leftover ingredients before they go to waste.

Case in point: (HA! See what I did there? my bloggggg name!) Brown Banana

I’ve made my fair share of banana muffins and breads and oatmeal bakes and you name it. So when I remembered the leftover sweet potato puree in the fridge, I got to brainstorming. Banana and sweet potato should go pretty well together, I thought. Heck, they’re both good-for-you foods. Let’s see what type of magic I can come up with. Dudes, I wanted to bake donuts with these…but I do not have a donut pan (it’s on the list, or you can just send me one now and we can cross it off). I DO have a muffin pan. Whole Wheat Sweet Potato Banana Muffins it is (or WWSPBM for short).

I wanted to also incorporate my coconut butter (way different than coconut oil) into the mix, but I knew that even after I melted it down to measure for the recipe, it would quickly harden again when combined with the other cooled ingredients. If you’re a coconut butter fan like me, you’d be totally ok with this. Pretend its like how a banana chunk would be in banana bread. Except coconut. You’re welcome for the elaboration.

If something like that freaks you out, or you don’t have it already in your pantry, use regular oil or applesauce. There, you’re saved.

ALSO- I ran out of pure maple syrup (what I originally WANTED for the recipe) when I made Homemade Granola Cereal last week, so I decided to use molasses instead. My suggestion: use the syrup. Unless you’re a huge molasses fan. Not that the molasses made them taste bad, but they are a bit more on the ~~bitter~~ less sweet side than if you were to stick with the syrup.

These suckers also freeze really well, and I have found the taste ‘settles’ after a day or two, making them even better. Eat them on their own, with nut butter or jam, or crumble them on top of yogurt with fruit.

I’m sorry, you probably wanted the recipe. Who am I with all this rambling? Must be the pink nails. Or the fact that my WEDDING INVITATIONS arrived today and I am anxious to get to addressing them.

WHOLE WHEAT SWEET POTATO BANANA MUFFINS (WWSPBM)

Here’s hat you’ll need (*substitutions mentioned above*):

2 1/2 c whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
dash of salt
1/4 c brown sugar
2 T molasses*
3 T coconut butter (melted)*
1 egg
3/4 c sweet potato puree
1 banana, mashed
1 c milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)

Here’s what you do:

Preheat oven to 375. Grease muffin tin.
In a medium bowl, combine the first 4 ingredients.
In a large bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Use a whisk to fully incorporate.
Gradually pour the dry mixture into the wet mixture. Stir until just incorporated.
Pour into prepared pan. I used a regular sized muffin tin and filled each to the top. Bake for 20 minutes. Allow pan to cool for 10 minutes before removing muffins to a wire cooling rack.
Store in an airtight container and freeze if desired.

Question: Ever come up with a random combination of ingredients when you bake?

***DON’T FORGET!!!!! Tonight is the last day to submit you pics for this week’s installment of Winesday Wednesday. Click Here to see ways that you can submit your pics!

Lemon Chia Cake with Brown Butter Glaze

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

OMG you guys, I can’t believe I came up with something in the kitchen and it actually WORKED. Usually when I modify recipes or try to get a little creative, the world goes BOOM and it comes out pretty fugly. But this…this came out P-E-R-F-E-C-T. And the most shocking part of all? THERE IS NO CHOCOLATE IN IT. Whaaaaa? Me make something delicious that is not chocolate?! (or pizza?!) Guuurl, you crazy!

This cake has some healthy and some not-so-healthy ingredients, so I suggest eating it everyday.

That picture looks totally normal until you rotate it a bit, and then you get a Pac-man cake.

Ahhhhh, yummy Pac-man cake.

Think I sound crazy? Probably because I’m experiencing a sugar high. So what if I ate cake at 10am?! Pff, don’t judge. I work out and eat lettuce at other times of the day.

Let’s get cracking on that recipe, shall we?

Lemon Chia Cake with Brown Butter Glaze

Here’s what you’ll need:

For the Cake

1 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
dash of salt
1/4 c butter
1/4 c coconut butter (if you don’t have this, just use 1/2 butter total. But MAN, does this give it a more unique taste and consistency!)
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
2 eggs
3 T lemon juice
1 c plain greek yogurt
2 T chia seeds

For the Glaze

1/2 c butter
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
2 T milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)

Here’s what you do:

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease an 8′ round pan and line bottom with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In a large bowl (I used my standing mixer) cream the butter(s) and sugars. Add eggs one at a time. Then add the lemon juice.
Add 1/2 of the dry mixture to the butter mixture and blend.
Add the yogurt and chia seeds.
Add the remainder of the flour mixture and blend until incorporated.
Bake for 35 minutes, until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the cake springs to the touch.
Allow to cool in pan for 15 minutes. Remove from pan, peeling parchment paper from the bottom of the cake, and place on dish/cooling rack to allow to completely cool.
For the glaze: On medium heat, melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir occasionally. Allow for the butter to brown (a few minutes). Pour in a dish, mix the powdered sugar, then add the milk.