La Vida Fresca

Friday night has finally arrived. Ahhh. Not that we’re doing anything special — just catching up on some work and relaxing. I must have slept all wrong on my neck last night because I’m doing that Frankenstein head turning thing and my neck and shoulders have hurt all day. Ugg. But I just might try a little (easy) yoga this evening and see how that goes because I really feel like doing something stretchy. One of these days I’m going to get around to something that actually involves movement, I swear.

Here’s what today’s food looked like:

Half an alligator pear …

A hard-boiled egg white (I didn’t mean to make the photos look so similar but … isn’t that cool?)

Veggies steamed in the rice cooker with cheddar and Monterrey Jack cheese cubes mixed in

With some of this sprinkled on top

And lookie what I found in the freezer — some chocolate-covered pretzels I almost forgot about.

There was also a big iced coffee and some more dates and almond butter just a little while ago (sadly I only have about five dates left and probably 1/3 of the almond butter I just bought three days ago).  At dinnertime I just had some chicken that I cooked for Kevin’s salad.

Now off to wash dishes, possibly do some yoga, and definitely read.

Have a great weekend!

Here, I’m sharing a recipe that I used for cupcakes with added protein powder. It’s basically the common canned pumpkin and cake mix recipe but with added protein and water to help balance out the protein. You could probably experiment using some egg whites instead or a combination of water and egg whites.

This recipe is simple. There are five ingredients: cake mix, canned pumpkin, water, protein, and some chopped up chocolate.

Take a regular box of cake mix and combine with four scoops of unflavored whey protein powder. You could use whatever kind you want here but I really can’t stand flavored protein powder with fake sweeteners so I use unflavored. I really only use protein powder in smoothies and cakes/muffins anyway.

Once they are combined, add a 15-ounce can of plain pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling). Add 3/4 cup of water. Mix with mixer just like a regular cake mix. Stir in chopped up chocolate pieces. I would’ve preferred some nice dark chocolate but all I had were Hershey miniature milk chocolate bars, so I used three (I figured in three mini bars ~45 calories each in the nutrition stats).  The texture of the batter is going to be much thicker than regular cake batter.

Next, put into muffin tins prepared with paper liners and fill to top of liners. This actually makes about 15 cupcakes. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

This is an alright post-workout snack both because it’s fortified with a little protein and because it’s a cupcake.

Stats for one cupcake:

~180 calories

6 grams of fat

26 grams of carbohydrates

8 grams of protein