Banana Soft Serve - I finally tried it! And more bootcamp food.

You know, this stuff has been all over the blog-o-sphere for at least a year now.  And I've been meaning to try it.  Really.  But, I've never had time or the urge.  But I found myself with 9 frozen bananas, so this week was the week.  Besides, I never was the "cool kid", so I should continue the trend and adopt the latest thing - years later.

My husband was doubtful.  After about a minute, he suggested the Blendtec instead of the food processor.  I said "no, the blog I read said that the Vitamix didn't work well".  Then, a minute into it, he said "this is not going to work."  I said "it takes 5 minutes!"  I followed the directions from Gena, but also checked out Averie for advice too.  It worked.  Here's what it looks like before the toppings.

Well, darned if it didn't work, and it was delicious.  I topped mine with a crumbled cookie and some chocolate syrup.  Spouse liked it, kid ate half and THEN said he didn't like it.

More bikini bootcamp recipes:  Roasted tomato and white bean soup:

Baked tilapia with vegetable hash.  (This is heavily adapted.  Original recipe called for grilled tilapia with vegetables on skewers.  This was easier.)

Scrambled egg with spinach, mushroom, onion, tomato (and I snuck in goat cheese)

Spinach salad with nuts, chickpeas, some other yummy stuff, with an orange dressing.

Note to self: if you are going to take a day off of the "diet" and eat a slice of sodium-filled pizza, do not do it the night before your weekly "weigh-in", because then all it does is depress you and make you feel like a failure for only losing 0.2 lbs.  When in reality, you probably lost 2 lbs and are carrying around extra water.

Bikini Bootcamp

Sounds strange, I know, but bear with me.  On a recent whirlwind trip to DC (I do owe an update on that, don't I??), I found this gem of a book.  We were staying with great old friends, and my friend had this book and has used it a couple of times.  She said while she had difficulty following it to the letter, she really felt AMAZING each time she used it and it did work.

What drew me to the book originally was the recipes.  I (of course) perused the book at her house (specifically, the recipes section), and it was enough to sell me on the book.  When I got home, I hit up Amazon.

I was sufficiently warned about the amount of work to do all of the exercise and all of the chopping.  But, you know, I already exercise.  And I already cook a lot.  I am accustomed to chopping.  I figured, what's the big deal?  No problem!

Wow.  Was I wrong.  It's partly that the recipes are cooked from scratch (naturally).  Some of them require several steps - one soup recipe calls for 3 different steps that take 2.5 hours total.  Not exactly do-able on a weeknight.

Green dinner

Salad with beets and goat cheese

Fava bean and sauteed zucchini spread with cilantro

On bread

With guacamole and snap peas (those 2 pics were fuzzy, so just picture them in your mind)s

Links and Quotes of the week

The email from Mark's Daily Apple this week had this quote: "Make your easy workouts longer and easier, and your hard workouts shorter and harder. "  I love this philosophy!

Tips for staying fit on vacation by Weight Watchers.  I have used most of these tips: Staying Fit on Vacay

Nice graphic on activity (via Mark's Daily Apple).  Scary stuff.  I sit way too much!

Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins

On our camping trip, my neighbor brought along some buttermilk oatmeal muffins.  I was dying to try them, so I bought buttermilk.  When I got the recipe, I realized that they require steel cut oats (which I don't have) and 8 hours of soaking time (which I also didn't have).  So, google and allrecipes became my best friend.

I found this recipe and adjusted it a bit.  First, I doubled it.  Then, I used half the amount of oil (olive, because that's what I had), and added 4 oz of berry flavored applesauce.  Then I sprinkled in some cinnamon and added brown sugar.  Also, I didn't have 1 full cup of brown sugar, so I only used 1/2 (I always cut the sugar anyway).

These were nice and delicious and simple.  And they made 22 muffins.  Next time, I might try to add grated carrots or apple.  Why not?

The Denver Airport has pretty healthy food.

If you are ever there, you will be able to go to Itza and get an Itza wrap filled with delicious veggies on a whole wheat wrap!  And you can find fresh fruit too.

You will pay an arm and a leg for it.

Of course, there's also McDonalds.

We had both.

A recap of our whirlwind weekend trip to DC (hubby's there for 1.5 weeks, so we went out for the weekend) to follow.  It wasn't frugal!  (Well, except for flying on frequent flyer miles, but even that wasn't particularly frugal, since the last-minute booking meant it cost 100,000 miles for two tickets.)

I got a new plate!

Leftover mother's day vegetables on one side, with the leftover chicken added to a stir-fry on the other side.